The Kurdish Liberation Movement in Iraq: From Insurgency to Statehood

Yaniv Voller. The Kurdish Liberation Movement in Iraq: From Insurgency to Statehood. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. 175 pages. Hardcover $145.00

Reviewed by Khalil F. Osman

Introduced into the Middle East following World War I, the modern Westphalian nation-state system has not been kind to the Kurds. One of the world's largest ethnic groups without a state, the Kurds have seen their dream to have a state of their own repeatedly fizzle into growing disappointment as the new nation-state system took firm roots in the Middle East. The Kurdish people ended up being divided among the populations within Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. In his The Kurdish Liberation Movement in Iraq: From Insurgency to Statehood, Yaniv Voller utilizes the concept of "de facto statehood" to examine the transformation of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Iraq from a fragmented guerrilla undertaking into a functioning autonomous administration that rose from the tribulations and tumult of the 1991 Gulf War.

By mooring his theoretical framework in the conceptual anchors of de facto statehood, Voller takes a leaf from the constructivist school of international relations (IR), which sees the interests of actors in the international system as malleable rather than fixed. Such an approach is rooted in the rising tide of disenchantment among IR theorists and scholars with the overextended claims of realism regarding the state as the primary actor in the international arena. But in seeking to move away from realism's obsession with the state, Voller has sought solace in the theoretical haziness of the de facto state. A non-state actor from the international perspective, the de facto state is after all a conceptual oxymoron.

Having plotted the theoretical and conceptual contours of his research, Voller moves to provide an account of the rise of the Kurdish liberation movement in Iraq. He traces the genesis of Kurdish nationalism to Kurdish tribal uprisings,...