Kurdish challenges

Abstract

In the early months of 2003, when the American invasion Iraq was being prepared, it looked as if the Kurds were willing to consider re-integration in a remade, democratic post-Saddam Iraq. The American planners of the invasion and administrators of the occupation had made it clear to the Kurdish leaders that they wished to see a united Iraq with a strong centre, and the Kurds appeared to concur. The two major Kurdish parties, the KDP and the PUK, had continued pleading for autonomy and federalism, which they have both written into their party programs, until weeks before the war. But then, not wishing to antagonise the Americans, the party leaders changed their tune and for a long time avoided even mentioning the words federalism and autonomy. They even appeared willing to accept the American demand that the Kurds’ own armed forces, the peshmerga, were to be dissolved and become part of the new Iraqi army.