Finding Peace in In Iraq’s Kurdish region.

[Swede]

"We’ve been living in what feels like two separate countries because we are so separated from the violence in the south,” said Mowloud Murat, a top political adviser with the Kurdistan Islamic Union. “If there was a civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis in the south, ... the Kurdish leaders would have no choice but to separate us from the rest of Iraq.”

The Kurdish north has operated as an autonomous region since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when the U.S. military established a no-fly zone over Kurdistan. Kurdish leaders point out that they had more than a decade head start on the rest of Iraq in practicing democracy, which has contributed to relative stability in Kurdistan.

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2006/Nov/20061126Feat006.asp

[LynnTheDem]

1. How's that fratricide war coming along in Kurdish Iraq?

-Who's killed the most Kurds?

The Kurds.
More Kurds have killed Kurds than the number killed by Turkey, Iran, and Hussein combined, during their 3 decades long "fratricide" war.
http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistan3/2-6-04-opinion-zorab-sense-of-frustration.html

-Who asked Hussein for help in 1996 to fight against Kurdish warlord Talabani and his Kurds?

Kurd and warlord Barzani.
http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2005/4/independentstate130.htm

Read the HRW reports on Kurdistan; "finding peace"? Yeah sure. Soon as they stop killing and torturing each other, maybe.

[independentpiney]

2. Their fratricidal wars have taken alot of lives

perhaps more than Saddam or Turkey in the last 3 decades, but since the fall of the Ottomans? I think you'd find Turkey killed far more, with numbers close to the Armenian genocide. If the Iraqi Kurds aren't given control of Kirkuk, they will secede, 11 Turkish provinces will move to join them, and Turkey will respond brutally . PUK and KDP may continue some internal warring and power plays, just as the various Palestinian groups have, but they will similarly concentrate the bulk of their fighting against their external enemies.

Just like the I/P issue, it goes back to British duplicity during and after WWI. The Kurds were promised autonomy in the Treaty of Sevres, only to have it taken away at Lausanne, because the Brits wanted a strong Turkey as a buffer against the Bolsheviks, and to give Iraq the oil-rich Kirkuk area.

BTW, thanks for the Kurdistan Observer link, not the first valuable one I've gotten from your posts.