Kurdistan and the Iraqi State

This chapter assesses the role of Iraq’s Kurdish national movement and its relations with the Iraqi state, including how it and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) project engaged with a larger effort toward what was promoted as remaking Iraq as a democratic society. Seen within the context of the imperial project of Pax Americana, the KRG was part of an American-led regime-change plan, to assemble a post-invasion government to replace that of Saddam Hussein. The KPG became the nucleus for a wider array of forces, which, in pursuing their respective ethnic, sectarian, and clan interests, propelled the ensemble toward the destruction of the Iraqi state and civil society.