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This article analyzes the causes of the civil war in the Kurdish region of Iraq between Mas'ud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) that broke out in May 1994. The conflict called into question the future of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that was created after the 1991 Gulf war under the protection of the Allied no-fly zone.
At the end of the 1991 Gulf War, the Kurds who had fled to the borders of Iran and Turkey were able to return to their homes in northern Iraq.' There they began to build a de facto state and government.2 This was accomplished largely under the aegis of the allied Provide Comfort Operation, and No-Fly Zone. The unprecedented 1991 United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 688 also played an important symbolic role by condemning "the repression of the Iraqi civilian population... in Kurdish populated areas", and demanding "that Iraq . . . immediately end this repression."3 In addition, limited but important Turkish cooperation and protection played a part.
The Kurds also helped themselves by taking impressive strides toward unifying their ranks, which had so often proven difficult in the past. The Iraqi Kurdistan Front (IKF), composed of eventually eight different parties, held elections in May 1992 that led to the formation of a parliament in June and an actual government, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), in July. In October 1992, this fledgling Kurdish government declared its ultimate intention of becoming a federal state within a future post-Saddam Husayn, democratic, Iraq.
The two main parties-the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Mas`ud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani-split power equally between themselves in a coalition. By the end of 1992, Talabani claimed that "cooperation . . . has been strengthened to the extent that opinions have developed within their ranks, even at leadership levels, calling for unifying these two parties."4 Barzani added that "it pleases me to assert that all affairs are managed now as if the two were a single party."5
This cooperation, however, did not last long. The KDP and the PUK broke up in 1994, and the civil war that ensued threatened the very existence of everything they had achieved. The purpose...