Federalism in Iraq - History

History

After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1919, Iraq became a League of Nations mandate under temporary British control. Mahmud Barzanji led a Kurdish revolt against the British and in 1922 attempted to establish a state in northern Iraq. In 1924 the British defeated Mahmud, and the Mosul region was incorporated into the Kingdom of Iraq. After the British occupation, Kurdish leaders continued to press for autonomy within Iraq. In 1970 the Iraqi government agreed to create the Kurdish Autonomous Region covering three provinces of northern Iraq.

After the end of the Gulf War in 1991 the Kurdish region rose up against President Saddam Hussein and gained de facto independence under the protection of a no fly zone. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the short-lived Transitional Administrative Law recognised the existing Kurdish regional government and defined Iraq for the first time as a federal country.

Read more about this topic:  Federalism In Iraq

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!
    Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)

    All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.
    Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)

    The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.
    Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)