The Kurdish Exception

A few days before he returned to the United States, America's departing Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad made a farewell tour of Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region, the one part of Iraq where such a trip would have the feel of a victory lap. While Baghdad and the rest of Iraq have teetered on the brink of full blown civil war, the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq has remained an oasis of calm and prosperity. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the $200 million Ifraz water treatment plant – the second-largest U.S. reconstruction project in Iraq – Khalilzad called attention to the Kurdish exception. “Not all of Iraq is like Baghdad,” he said. The Kurdish north is “ a shining example of what the rest of Iraq could look like.”

But even here in the safest part of Iraq, the natives are restless. After Ambassador Khalilzad finished speaking at the Ifraz ceremony, Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), took the podium and launched a broadside against the central government in Baghdad. Iraq's Arab leaders have not delivered on their promises to Kurds – as spelled out in Iraq's constitution -- for economic and political control of their region and for the resolution of disputed territories such as Kirkuk, according to Barzani. “Our patience is not unlimited,” he said. “Every day that passes without solving these issues makes it more difficult to explain to our people why we are committed to this agreement.”