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:
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)