By Tahseen Wsu Abdullah
After World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurdish issue became a complex regional issue that has not been resolved for the past hundred years, which is directly related to the situation in which the states of Kurdistan were divided. On the other hand, the colonial states have not always considered whether Kurds as a nation with a different identity and culture cannot live within the framework of the imposed systems that are based on assimilation of Kurds as a nation within the dominant identity expressed. This is true for all four states of Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria, because the Kurds as a nation within the framework of each of these states have not seen themselves as owners, but on the contrary, the Kurdish struggle has always been to break the legal, political, and geographical framework. It is culturally and socially based on opposition.
The part of Kurdistan that was annexed to Iraq, according to an international agreement to protect the interests of the powers, has seen many ups and downs over the past hundred years. In other words, during the lifetime of the Iraqi state, this part of Kurdistan (South Kurdistan, the Kurdistan Region) has been in a continuous war that has continued to this day, although the war has changed according to historical stages It has been confrontation through military mechanisms that have been attempted to eradicate, and at other times soft tools have been used to eradicate the Kurds as a nation Apart from its cultural and identity framework, the policy of the Iraqi government after the regime (post-2003) has often revolved around this framework It happened that the dominant ruling elite in Baghdad completely deviated from the principles that all parties shared They were formed on it. This is the story of the Kurds in Iraq over the past hundred years.
After 2005, the state system was based on federalism according to the constitution, unlike more than eighty years ago when the state was based on strict centralism. The experience of decentralization and federalism was appropriate for post-Saddam Iraq to the extent that the majority party or community, Iraqi Shiites, established itself in the main nodes of the state and political process. They quickly opposed this system and prevented the creation of another region in Iraq, whether in the Sunni areas or in southern Iraq. In addition, the political process in Iraq was strongly influenced by regional equations, which was not in the interest of implementing a federal system.
Currently, the Kurdish story in Iraq and the ruling elite in Baghdad remain separate, so that the mentality of the political elite in Baghdad fully demands centralization of power, but the Kurdistan Region has passed this stage is difficult to start Several tragic stations refuse to return to the starting point.