The Kurds in Iraq suffered brutally at the hands of Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s and during the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991. The rest of the 1990s would be largely beneficial for the Kurds as they were granted autonomy from the government in Baghdad and did so with the support of the United States — the lone super power in the post-Cold War global order.
As the U.S. entered the wars in the wake of September 11th, it sought to not only defeat those responsible for the attacks, but also to reorder the world so the possibility of such an attack occurring was decreased. The Bush administration went all in on the “democratic peace theory”. It sought to create representative democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq in the hopes that democratic countries would neither go to war with other countries, nor allow non-state actors within their borders to grow powerful enough to do so.
As the U.S. invaded Iraq, the country was in chaos. Kurdistan was not. In the north, the Kurds had used the decade between Operation Provide Comfort and the 2003 invasion to build a relatively safe and stable enclave insulated from the disarray further south. When the 173rd Airborne jumped into Kurdish Iraq, they were greeted by Peshmerga, the Kurdish military force who were more than happy to provide intelligence on Saddam’s forces in the north.
As sectarian violence ripped Iraq apart, Kurdistan remained stable and secure.
As the U.S. sought to reconstruct Iraq after the initial disarray, the Kurds’ importance was recognized and they were brought into the government. The Iraqi Constitution, adopted by referendum on October 15, 2005, recognized the Kurds in a way that had yet to be done so in any of the countries where a sizable Kurdish population existed.
Unlike in Turkey, where the Kurdish language was banned from being taught or used in most public settings, Kurdish was recognized as an official language in Iraq. The suffering of the Kurds under Saddam was acknowledged. Kurdistan, and its leaders, were recognized as a federal region and the laws enacted in Kurdistan since 1992, court decisions, and contracts that did not contradict the constitution were considered legal and binding.
The rights and power of the Kurds articulated in the constitution came to fruition when Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), became the President of Iraq, a position he would hold until 2014. The position of president was to be reserved for a Kurd and is currently held by Fuad Masum. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan (DPAK), an alliance of the two main Kurdish political parties, the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and other smaller parties, won 53 of 275 seats in parliament. Separate Kurdish parties not aligned with the DPAK won an additional six seats.
As sectarian violence ripped Iraq apart, Kurdistan remained stable and secure. In the three provinces that made up the KRG (Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Dohuk) there were only two deaths, according to iCasulaties.org, one South Korean officer from a non-hostile injury in May 2007 and one U.S. death due to a vehicle accident in May 2003.
Kurdistan benefitted from the relative peace in their region and the new found national power they held in Baghdad. Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Dohuk thrived. New colleges were opened, foreign investors put their money into businesses, and energy exploration in the region produced findings that could provide ample support for the autonomous region if Baghdad did not.
The Peshmerga remained separate from the Iraqi Army, which had its ranks culled of minorities under Prime Minister al-Maliki. The police were also separate from the Iraqi Police, which was largely made up of former Iranian backed Shia militia men whose parties had achieved legitimate political power. While only autonomous, Kurdistan had become, in everything but name, its own nation.
In mid 2014, the relative calm which had taken hold in Iraq following the successful 2007 surge was shattered as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) captured Mosul in a blitzkrieg assault from Syria. Next, they took the fight to the doorstep of Kurdistan.
