Inequality Is Sewn Into the Map of Iraq

Posted: October 17th, 2017

By Bilal Wahab

Bilal Wahab is a 2016-2017 Soref fellow at The Washington Institute, where he will focus on governance in the Iraqi Kurdish region and in Iraq as a whole. He has taught at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani, where he established the Center for Development and Natural Resources, a research program on oil and development. He earned his Ph.D. from George Mason University; his M.A. from American University, where he was among the first Iraqis awarded a Fulbright scholarship; and his B.A. from Salahaddin University in Erbil. Along with numerous scholarly articles, he has written extensively in the Arabic and Kurdish media.

This September, voters in the territories controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of northern Iraq voted overwhelmingly to declare independence from the central government in Baghdad. In response, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran have conducted joint military exercises around the KRG in an unprecedented show of solidarity between three historic rivals. The concept that the KRG might leave Iraq brings up an old argument, most recently popularized by former Vice President Joe Biden, that Iraq is actually three countries now – split between Kurdish, Shi’a, and Sunni populations – and that it should be allowed to split. Monday’s incursion by the Iraqi army into Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk seems to underline this point. The Cipher Brief’s Fritz Lodge spoke with Iraq expert and Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute, Bilal Wahab, about how the chance for peaceful federalism in Iraq has probably already passed.

TCB: Where does the idea to split Iraq into three pieces come from?

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