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DUBAI: Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, the Kurdish people have aspired to self-rule. 

With more than 20 million Kurds living in parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkiye, Kurdish national movements began to form in the 1920s. However, it wasn’t until 1992 that the Kurds of Iraq made their first significant advance toward autonomy, taking advantage of the defeat of Iraqi forces in the Gulf War to elect their own Kurdistan Regional Government and National Assembly in Erbil. 

The struggle to establish a Kurdish state began in earnest in the 1960s, following the return to Iraq from exile in the Soviet Union of nationalist leader Mustafa Barzani. He had been invited to return by Abdul-Karim Qasim, an army officer who had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy and seized power. Qasim promised autonomy for the Kurds in return for Barzani’s support. 

When this autonomy failed to materialize, tensions between Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party and Baghdad escalated into armed conflict; the First Iraqi-Kurdish war lasted nine years, cost thousands of lives and ended in stalemate. 

By that time the Baath Party was in charge in Baghdad, and in 1970 President Ahmed Hassan Al‐Bakr reached an agreement with the KDP, promising the Kurds autonomy in the northern regions of Iraq.

However, the central government in Baghdad failed to take concrete steps to grant the Kurds any real power, and continued to exert control over the region’s military and administrative affairs. Repeated violations of the agreement led to a renewed conflict in the mid-1970s. 

The 1980s marked another period of intense repression and violence against the Kurds, during the rule of Saddam Hussein. Following his invasion of Iran in 1980, he launched a series of brutal attacks against the Kurds. 

During the 1988 Anfal campaign, which was condemned by human rights groups and governments worldwide as genocidal, tens of thousands of Kurds were killed and their villages destroyed by Iraqi forces. 

Saddam justified his actions as a response to what he perceived as Kurdish disloyalty and collaboration with Iran during the war. 

When the Gulf War ended in 1991, Kurds in the north of the country and in Shiite communities in southern Iraq, encouraged by the defeat of Saddam by US-led coalition forces following his invasion of Kuwait, rose up against the government in Baghdad. 

Saddam’s response was particularly brutal, on a massive scale. In an effort to protect the Kurds, the US and its allies imposed a no-fly zone in northern Iraq. This, along with broader international support for Kurdish autonomy, eventually paved the way for a de facto autonomous Kurdish region in the north of the country. 

At the time, however, Kurdish political forces were divided between the KDP, the nationalist movement still led by the Barzani family, and the leftist Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Jalal Talabani. 

The two political factions vied for power with the aim of asserting dominance over the Kurdish government. Their rivalry ignited a civil war that began in 1994 and continued for four years. 

After the repeated failure of peace negotiations, the US eventually intervened to broker the 1998 Washington Peace Agreement, which laid the groundwork for a more unified Kurdish leadership. It called for a ceasefire, the return of refugees, and a power-sharing arrangement between the KDP and the PUK, with key positions in the government divided between both parties. 

After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the toppling of Saddam’s regime, Kurds were included in the Iraqi Governing Council established by the Coalition Provisional Authority in July 2003. They were also granted significant political power in a new Iraqi Constitution, which recognized the Kurdish region as an autonomous federal region within Iraq. The Kurdistan Regional Government was officially formed. 

On Jan. 31, 2005, the Kurdistan National Assembly elected Masoud Barzani, Mustafa Barzani's son, as the first president of Kurdistan Region. He ruled over three, Kurdish-majority governorates: Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Dohuk. 

The regional government was granted full control over its internal affairs. It established its own security forces, called the Peshmerga, and recognized Kurdish as the official language, alongside Arabic. 

Despite this degree of autonomy, tensions between Kurdish authorities and the central government in Baghdad continued to rise over issues such as control of oil resources, territorial disputes and political representation. As the regional government sought greater control over oil fields in the Kurdish region, often in defiance of Baghdad’s wishes, it led to disputes over revenue sharing. 

When militant group Daesh swept across the north of the country in 2014 and the Iraqi army collapsed, Peshmerga forces took control of the multiethnic, oil-rich region of Kirkuk. 

In 2017, the regional government held a referendum in which a vast majority of voters in Kirkuk supported independence. However, the referendum was met with strong opposition from Baghdad and much of the international community, which feared it would distract from the war against Daesh. 

Haider Al-Abadi, Baghdad’s prime minister at the time, said he would not discuss the outcome of the referendum and instead would “impose Iraq’s rule in all districts of the region with the force of the constitution.” 

The Iraqi army swiftly occupied Kirkuk and, after a series of clashes with Peshmerga, the regional government backed down. On Oct. 24, 2017, it offered to “freeze the results of the referendum” and proposed an immediate ceasefire. 

“We are all obliged to act responsibly in order to prevent further violence and clashes between Iraqi and Peshmerga forces,” it said. 

“The confrontations between Iraqi and Peshmerga forces … have caused damage to both sides and could lead to continuous bloodshed, inflicting pain and social unrest among different components of Iraqi society.” 

Five days later, Barzani announced he would step down as president of Kurdistan Region. In November the regional government announced it would respect a ruling by Iraq’s Supreme Federal Court that no region or province is allowed to secede. 

The ruling, the regional government said, “must become a basis for starting an inclusive national dialogue between Erbil and Baghdad to resolve all disputes.” 

For the Kurds, however, the very existence of the Kurdistan Regional Government still represents a major achievement in their pursuit of political autonomy and cultural recognition. 

• Nadia Al Faour is a regional correspondent for Arab News.  She previously contributed to international publications such as The Guardian and USA Today.