Bilal Wahab was the Nathan and Esther K. Wagner Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute.
Articles & Testimony
The rise of the Islamic State brought the Kurds together, but its impending fall now threatens to tear them apart.
For nearly a century now, the question of whether there should be an independent Kurdish state has loomed over the Middle East. The issue achieved new urgency after U.S. forces evicted Saddam Hussein from northern Iraq after the Gulf War in 1991, effectively creating the preconditions for Kurdish autonomy there. The American-led invasion in 2003 and the war that followed have merely accelerated that process. Today, however, with the collapse of Syria and continuing tumult in Iraq, the question is less whether there will be an autonomous Kurdistan, but how many Kurdistans will emerge from the regional crack-up -- and who will run them...