Reconsidering Independence: Iraqi Kurdistan’s post-2003 Pursuit of Self-Determination and Autonomy

How does the Iraqi Kurd leadership employ political strategies to establish, in practice, an independent international status, while Baghdad and the international community continue to oppose its formal sovereignty? This apparent contradiction is the principal focus of the study. Rather than waiting for gradual attrition and becoming a ‘state-in-waiting’, the Iraqi Kurd leadership, well aware of the international lack of appetite for the formation of new states, has acted to address the impediments of independence in several ways. Geopolitically, Erbil poses itself as an alternative to Baghdad’s instability (a buffer preventing spill-over from Iraq). This section also analyzes Erbil’s sidelining of pan-Kurdish nationalism in order to appear nonthreatening to neighbours. Economically, it fosters strong trade ties with Turkey and Iran, among others, to export its oil and establish interdependencies. Internationally, Erbil has promoted its strategic importance for Washington’s regional ambitions, particularly vis-à-vis Iran. Territorially, the leadership has successfully lobbied for the Iraqi Constitution’s Article 140, which is meant to de facto place the oil-rich city of Kirkuk under Iraqi Kurd jurisdiction, after a referendum. Article 126, moreover, prevents amendments to the constitution that would in effect take away the power gained by the regions, without the consent of the regional governments. To reframe the original question, then, this paper asks: must independence imply statehood? Or can there be possible alternatives, like the Iraqi Kurd model, where a region chooses to rejoin with the parent-state under a highly decentralized arrangement (bordering somewhere between federalism and confederation) with significant power-sharing allocations. Erbil’s geopolitical, economic, international, territorial, and legal actions have lead to formal autonomy. Moving away from 1980s notions of nationalism (Anderson/Gellner), a multinational-state has been crafted in Iraq. This study is well situated to describe self-determination under non-territorial autonomy (NTA), a new model where nationalism is separated from the state.