The name “Kurdistan” has a long and curious history but it did not become politicized or contentious until the 20th century, particularly after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of new states that incorporated Kurdistan – understood as the “land of the Kurds” – in their new borders. Today the term has received renewed attention as it no longer just signifies an innocuous geographical term or a nationalist dream; it is the name of the political entity in northern Iraq that has many features of statehood but is not, in fact, a state. The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) is a curious entity indeed; it looks like a state, it acts like a state, but it is not certified as a state through international recognition. The KRI’s current “state capacity” has been the result of a determined state-building project that began nearly two decades ago, and yet it remains somewhere between state and statelessness. Is it in the process of forging an alternative kind of polity? This question has consumed not only the governments of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria – the four main states who house most of the 30 million Kurds who refer to themselves as “a nation without a state” – but also the wider world. The obvious questions that loom large in the minds of many are: what do the Kurds want? What are they really building in northern Iraq? What would an independent Kurdistan look like? Is independence what Kurds seek? If Iraqi Kurdistan seceded from Iraq, what would this mean for Kurds outside of its borders? What would happen to the rest of Iraq? These are certainly pressing questions and there have been many insightful responses in recent years. However, more interesting is how the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is working to sell its very unique state-building project to the rest of the world in its bid to gain international recognition of and support for its venture. This paper analyses the KRG’s marketing campaign, waged not only through the usual diplomatic (or para-diplomatic) channels, but also via the Internet and through its novel development of what can only be described as “nationalist infomercials.” This performative aspect of state-building (literally acting out the state in an attempt to sell sovereignty) may represent both old and new chapters in the history of nationalist movements, but ones that have not yet been adequately theorized. This paper examines the question of a potential Kurdistan through a new lens of analysis that explores not simply the cold, hard struggle for sovereignty, but the softer “para-diplomatic” performances acting as the creative energies that market these struggles to the international community.

The American invasion of Iraq has been a success - for the Kurds. Kurdistan is an invisible nation, and the Kurds the largest ethnic group on Earth without a homeland, comprising some 25 million moderate Sunni Muslims living in the area around the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Through a history dating back to biblical times, they have endured persecution and betrayal, surviving only through stubborn compromise with greater powers. They have always desired their own state, and now, accidentally, the United States may have helped them take a huge step toward that goal. As Quil Lawrence relates in his fascinating and timely study of the Iraqi Kurds, while their ambition and determination grow apace, their future will be largely dependent on whether America values a budding democracy in the region, or decides to yet again sacrifice the Kurds in the name of political expediency. Either way, the Kurdish north may well prove to be the defining battleground in Iraq, as the country struggles to hold itself together. At this extraordinary moment in the saga of Kurdistan, informed by his deep knowledge of the people and region, Lawrence's intimate and unflinching portrait of the Kurds and their heretofore quixotic quest offers a vital and original lens through which to contemplate the future of Iraq and the surrounding Middle East.

Examines how the idea of Kurdistan, as a homeland and a source of national identity, was created within international political history.

Examines the potential regional implications of an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq.

The Cambridge History of the Kurds is an authoritative and comprehensive volume exploring the social, political and economic features, forces and evolution amongst the Kurds, and in the region known as Kurdistan, from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. Written in a clear and accessible style by leading scholars in the field, the chapters survey key issues and themes vital to any understanding of the Kurds and Kurdistan including Kurdish language; Kurdish art, culture and literature; Kurdistan in the age of empires; political, social and religious movements in Kurdistan; and domestic political developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Other chapters on gender, diaspora, political economy, tribes, cinema and folklore offer fresh perspectives on the Kurds and Kurdistan as well as neatly meeting an exigent need in Middle Eastern studies. Situating contemporary developments taking place in Kurdish-majority regions within broader histories of the region, it forms a definitive survey of the history of the Kurds and Kurdistan.