Iraq: Kurdish challenges

Abstract

Is a new, stable relationship between the Kurds of Iraq and the rest of that country, short of separation, possible? During the Cold War, the question would not even be put in this form; the international system took the territorial integrity of the existing states for granted (the only exception being Bangladesh’ separation from Pakistan). Eritrea’s separation from Ethiopia in 1991, the wars in former Yugoslavia and the break-up of the Soviet Union marked the beginning of a period in which ethnicity acquired a higher degree of legitimacy as a relevant factor in the international system.