The KRG's independence referendum should be treated as a tactical bid to unify the Iraqi Kurds and strengthen their position toward Baghdad, but without jettisoning their gradualist approach. This fall, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) plans to hold a referendum on independence that it says will start a process of secession from Iraq. Despite this clear declaration of
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The main threat to the people in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq is not ISIL, but failed governance which endangers human security. Some people in the Kurdistan region of Iraq think of security in terms of security of Kurdish people and their territory from military attacks by neighboring countries or the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). This understa
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Due to the war with ISIL and international support, the Kurdistan region is currently run by an autocratic administration under the influence of neighboring countries. The continuation of a de facto autocracy in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has led to an extension of oligarchic authority and created a neglected nation, poor society, locked economy, and an irresponsible and c
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When Ashti Hawrami, the oil minister from Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdistan region, unfurled a map of untapped oil fields for a team of ExxonMobil officials in the spring of 2011, they saw possibility and profit. The minister pointed to the blocks that had already been taken by other foreign firms as Iraqi Kurdistan, long at odds with the country’s central government over
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The campaign against the Islamic State (IS) in Mosul has diverted attention from simmering problems inside the Kurdistan Region of Iraq that will affect post-conflict stabilization. Within the last several months alone, there has been another assassination of a Kurdish journalist, an "honor" killing of a university student, death threats against a female Kurdish parliamentari
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