Kurdistan

Abstract

Chapter 5 focuses on the Kurds, the region’s largest stateless minority group. This chapter compares and contrasts the efforts by the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, which has operated with more or less unfettered autonomy since 1991, and Rojava, the Kurdish entity that appeared in Syria during the civil war in 2011. Both maintained liminal positions within their parent state, pledging their loyalty to the governments of Iraq and Syria while at the same time maximizing their autonomy from any central control. They articulated their demands for separatism by pointing to the denial of Kurdish self-determination at the end of World War I and engage international society for support.