A mere two weeks following the Kurdish independence vote on 25 September 2017, the Iraqi army assisted by paramilitary forces pushed into Kirkuk in a surprise move.¹ It seized not only the city and its oil fields, but most of the adjoining “disputed territories” — mixed-population areas along the boundary of the Kurdish region — from the two main Kurdish parties’ forces, which had held these areas since the arrival of ISIS in June 2014.² Moreover, the Council of Representatives in Baghdad voted to cut the region’s share of the national budget from 17 to 12 per cent.³

These twin...

In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, a U.S. protective umbrella allowed the KDP and PUK to consolidate their control in the Kurdish region, establishing the basis for an autonomous administration — the KRG — in their respective zones of influence.¹⁵ After the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, the two parties struck a strategic partnership in 2007 that provided for equal shares in governance and resource allocation, with the declared objective of consolidating the region’s autonomous status and build up a unified administration and security apparatus. Yet the two parties’ stranglehold on the region’s institutions prevented other parties...

The Kurds have a long history of troubled relations with Iraqi central governments, including recurring cycles of insurgency and counter-insurgency culminating in rampant village destruction and mass killings by the Saddam Hussein regime in the late 1980s. The removal of that regime and the arrival of opposition parties with which the Kurds had made common cause prior to 2003 offered the promise of significant improvement. That promise has been only partly fulfilled. The Kurds have been frustrated by government dysfunction in Baghdad, as well as lack of progress on the issues of greatest importance to them: the status of the...

The future course of Iraqi Kurdistan will depend to a large degree on the outcome of an intra-leadership competition that, given current dynamics, is likely to empower hardline figures over reformists. This outcome could trigger a vicious cycle, which would further shrink space for political representation in the Kurdish region and undermine efforts to find a sustainable solution to outstanding issues between Erbil and Baghdad. It could also be a factor that contributes to political fragmentation that would turn Iraq ever more into a staging ground for the growing U.S.-Iran regional rivalry.

The current U.S. administration’s escalatory rhetoric vis-à-vis Iran...