Iraq Archive

Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region made history this week by voting “yes” in a highly contested referendum on independence from the central government in Baghdad. While the poll is only one step in what is sure to be a long, fraught political process, it points to a broader push for autonomy by Kurds throughout the region, including in Turkey, Syria and Iran. With the self-proclaimed Islamic State in retreat and Syria’s war winding down, WPR has compiled 10 key readings on the buildup to the referendum and what comes next. Purchase this special report as a Kindle e-book. Road to the […]

Iraqi Kurds voted for independence on Monday, a move that generated controversy within their semiautonomous territory of northern Iraq and threats from powerful neighbors Turkey and Iran, and most of all the Iraqi government in Baghdad. All three are bent on preventing any further steps on the road to Kurdish statehood. Some Iraqi Kurds themselves would even have preferred to give priority to economic and political reforms before pushing for full independence. It was easy to come up with many reasons for why the referendum was ill-advised, or why the prospects for true independence will remain poor. All that criticism […]

Iraq’s Kurds are slated to vote on a referendum for independence on Sept. 25, despite fervent opposition from outside parties, including Iraq’s central government. With tensions building, the referendum has become a lightning rod among the coalition of forces united to eliminate the self-proclaimed Islamic State, whose stronghold straddles Iraq and Syria. In an email interview, Ramzy Mardini, a nonresident fellow at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council, discusses how the referendum might affect the international campaign against the Islamic State, the post-conflict state of affairs in Iraq and relations between the Kurds and […]

Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s devastating military defeats in 1991 and 2003 demonstrated that taking on the U.S. military in conventional battles is a very bad idea. Knowing that, some of America’s adversaries, like Russia and Iran, turned to what security experts call the “gray zone”—methods that relied on proxy forces, psychological warfare and other provocations at a level that would not compel U.S. intervention. Extremist groups like al-Qaida, the Taliban and the self-styled Islamic State cannot muster the resources for full-on gray zone aggression even if they wanted to. This has forced them to rely on insurgency instead. Luckily […]