It appears as though the Kurds are slowly coming to accept the new interim Iraqi government despite concerns about self-rule and the autonomy of Iraq’s nothern Kurdish provinces. While the Kurdish objections are worrying, they are also understandable. The Kurds have been the whipping boys of the Middle East for centuries. Despite being an industrious and brave people, the Kurds have often been persecuted by Turks, Iraqi Sunnis, Ba’athists, Iranians, and pretty much everyone else. The Kurds have been dreaming of Kurdish self-rule for years, and they want to ensure that dream does not die.
The Kurds are realizing that the best way of achieving self-rule is through working within a federal Iraq in which the Kurds will be granted the rights they desire and the ability to be largely autonomous in the north of Iraq. Indeed, thanks to the no-fly zone, Iraqi Kurdistan has been largely independent and free for almost a decade now. They understandably don’t want to lose what they’ve gained.
The Kurds will likely not do anything so dramatic as to risk the chance of the transition suceeding. If either the Sunnis or the Shi’a win in an Iraqi civil war, the Kurds will likely end up losing the most. The Kurds are also incredibly pro-American, and have been one of the strongest supporters of the liberation of the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein. American units fought alongside Kurdish peshmerga troops against the Ba’athists and Ansar-al-Islam terrorists.
The Kurds have strong reasons of basic self-interest tied to supporting the transition to an Iraqi democracy under the current Iraqi constitution. It is that self-interest that will ensure that their threats to leave the government are more a way of reminding the other Iraqi ethnic groups of their existance and importance than an actual plan of action.
