Saladin’s dream

Kurdistan has its own land, its own people and a constitution: all the requirements and characteristics of an independent state. But it’s still a pipe-dream. 

The Kurds, the largest ethnic population in the world with- out its own state, will soon be rewarded for their bravery with a new state of Kurdistan when Iraq inevitably breaks up. Sound fa- miliar? This is the narrative that the provisional government in Erbil has been promoting for 15 years. Everyone likes the Kurds: brave Peshmerga fight- ers resisting Islamic State (IS), friends of the West and (although nobody wants to say it out loud) not Arabs. But who are they really? The project of an independent Kurdistan is as doubtful as ever. In fact, one of the most dynamic Kurdish political parties in Iraq (Gorran) is against it. 

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