Within the broad contours of Islamic traditions, Muslims are enjoined to fast during the month of Ramadan, they are invited to a disciplined practice of prayer, and they are offered the Quran as the divine revelation in the most beautiful verbal form. But what happens if Muslims choose not to fast, or give up prayer, or if the Quran's beauty seems inaccessible? When Muslims do not take up the path of piety, what happens to their relationships with more devout Muslims who are neighbors, friends, and kin? Between Muslims provides an ethnographic account of Iraqi Kurdish Muslims who turn away from devotional piety yet remain intimately engaged with Islamic traditions and with other Muslims. Andrew Bush offers a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, rejecting simple stereotypes about ethnic or sectarian identities. Integrating textual analysis of poetry, sermons, and Islamic history into accounts of everyday life in Iraqi Kurdistan, Between Muslims illuminates the interplay of attraction and aversion to Islam among ordinary Muslims.

Today’s youth are challenging the older political class around the world and are forming new political generations. Examples from South Africa and elsewhere where peace processes were deemed to be successful show signs of youth disapproval of the current post-conflict conditions. Moreover, the Arab Spring witnessed numerous youth movements emerge in authoritarian and illiberal contexts. This book was prepared in light of these discussions and aims to contribute to these ongoing debates on youth politics by presenting the situation of youth in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) as a case study. It will be the first book that specifically focuses on the Iraqi Kurdish youth and their political, social, and economic participation in Kurdistan. The contemporary history of the KRI is marked by conflict, war, and ethnic cleansing under Saddam Hussein and the tyranny of the Ba’ath regime, significantly affecting the political situation of the Kurds in the Middle East. Most of the recent academic literature has focused on the broader picture or, in other words, the macro politics of the Kurdish conundrum within Iraq and beyond. There is little scholarship about the Kurdish population and their socio-economic conditions after 2003, and almost none about the younger generation of Kurds who came of age during autonomous Kurdish rule. This is a generation that, unlike their forebears, has no direct memory of the decades-long campaigns of repression. Studying and examining the rise of this generation of Kurdish young millennials—“Generation 2000”—who came of age in the aftermath of the United States invasion of Iraq offers a unique approach to understand the dynamics in a region that underwent a substantial socio-political transformation after 2003 as well as the impact of these developments on the youth population. Pursuing different themes and lines of inquiry the contributors of the book analyze the challenges and opportunities for young men and women to fulfil their needs and desires, and contribute to the ongoing quest for nationhood and nation-building. "In this book, our aim is to bring together a variety of perspectives from local and foreign academics who have been working on pressing issues in Kurdistan and beyond. The chapters focus on an array of themes, particularly including political participation, political situation and change, religiosity, and extremism. ... Taken together, the chapters provide us with an introduction to youth politics in Kurdistan. This book is just the first attempt to open academic and nonacademic debate on this subject at a time when protests around youth-related issues are becoming a more prevalent method of political engagement in the region. Our hope is that more research follows and supplements what has not been addressed in this book, especially through the introduction of first-hand youth perspectives to the core of this analysis and giving them a voice in nonviolent platforms." CONTENTS Foreword: Youth in the Kurdistan Region and Their Past and Present Roles - Karwan Jamal Tahir Kurdish Youth as Agents of Change: Political Participation, Looming Challenges, and Future Predictions - Shivan Fazil and Bahar Baser CHAPTER 1. Youth Political Participation and Prospects for Democratic Reform in Iraqi Kurdistan - Munir H. Mohammad CHAPTER 2. Social Media, Youth Organization, and Public Order in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Megan Connelly CHAPTER 3. Constructing Their Own Liberation: Youth’s Reimagining of Gender and Queer Sexuality in Iraqi Kurdistan - Hawzhin Azeez CHAPTER 4. Kurdish Youth and Civic Culture: Support for Democracy Among Kurdish and non-Kurdish Youth in Iraq - Dastan Jasim CHAPTER 5. Youth and Nationalism in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Sofia Barbarani CHAPTER 6. An Elitist Interpretation of KRG Governance: How Self-Serving Kurdish Elites Govern Under the Guise of Democracy and the Subsequent Implications for Representation and Change - Bamo Nouri CHAPTER 7. Educational Policy in the Kurdistan Region: A Critical Democratic Response - Abdurrahman Ahmad Wahab CHAPTER 8. Making Heaven in a Shithole: Changing Political Engagement in the Aftermath of the Islamic State - Lana Askari CHAPTER 9. Kurdish Youth and Religious Identity: Between Religious and National Tensions - Ibrahim Sadiq CHAPTER 10. Youth Radicalization in Kurdistan: The Government Response - Kamaran Palani

“A valuable history [and] a stark warning to Washington policy and strategy makers.” —James Stejskal, former US Army Special Forces and CIA officer In 2002, Sam Faddis was named to head a CIA team that would enter Iraq to facilitate the deployment of follow-on conventional military forces numbering over 40,000 American soldiers. This force, built around the 4th Infantry Division, would, in partnership with Kurdish forces and with the assistance of Turkey, engage Saddam’s army in the North as part of a coming invasion. Faddis expected to be on the ground in Iraq within weeks, the entire campaign likely to be over by summer. Over the course of the next year, virtually every aspect of that plan for the conduct of the war in northern Iraq fell apart. The 4th Infantry Division never arrived, nor did any other conventional forces in substantial number. The Turks not only refused to provide support, they worked overtime to prevent the United States from achieving success. And an Arab army that was to assist US forces fell apart before it ever made it to the field. Alone, hopelessly outnumbered, short on supplies, and threatened by Iraqi assassination teams and Islamic extremists, Faddis’s team, working with Kurdish peshmerga, miraculously paved the way for a brilliant and largely bloodless victory in the North and the fall of Saddam’s Iraq. That victory, handed over to Washington and the Department of Defense on a silver platter, was then squandered. The decisions that followed would lead to catastrophic consequences that continue to this day. This is the story of the brave and effective team of men and women who overcame massive odds to help end the nightmare of Saddam’s rule. It is also the story of how incompetence, bureaucracy, and ignorance threw that success away and condemned Iraq and the surrounding region to chaos

This unique and comprehensive book covers the whole history of the Kurds over the past seventy years. The Gulf crisis, its aftermath and its impact on the Kurds are thoroughly analyzed in newly added sections.

The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq appraises the consequences of the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq for its most neglected region.

Media and Politics in Kurdistan studies the relationship between the media and politics in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). KRI is approached as a case study, as an example of the struggle between authoritarian and democratization efforts at the same time. The book contributes towards understanding the dynamics of the media systems in the KRI and attempts to participate in the theoretical discussion of media and politics in this region. The research outcomes show which parts of the press, how many of them and for what length of time the press in the KRI has been owned/controlled by political parties. This book also studies the system of political parties and particularly as related to the press.

A concise history of the idea of Kurdistan

"Over ninety years since their absorption into the modern Iraqi state, the Kurdish people of Iraq still remain an apparent anomaly in the modern world - a nation without a state. In 'The Kurds of Iraq', Mahir Aziz explores this incongruity, and asks the pertinent questions, who are the Kurds today? What is their relationship to the Iraqi state? How do they perceive themselves and their prospective political future? And in what way are they crucial for the stability of the Iraqi state? In the wake of the Gulf War of 1991 in the face of the Iraqi state, the Kurds endeavoured to create a de facto state and to concretise and stabilise the institutions that would enable this. 'The Kurds of Iraq' thus examines the creation, evolution and development of Kurdish nationalism despite the suppression of its political and cultural manifestations. Through extensive interviews in the field, Aziz assesses the impact of recent history on the complex process of identity formation amongst Kurdish students at three of the nation's leading universities. He provides an in depth examination of students' socio-economic backgrounds, and their thoughts on and experiences of what it means to be Kurdish in the modern Iraqi state, and the impact this has on their perception of their language, culture and religion. Aziz's invaluable and extensive field research furthermore serves as a point of departure for an investigation into the relationship between national identity and historical memory in Iraqi Kurdistan and beyond. He thus analyses wider issues of the intersection and interdependency of national, regional, ethnic, tribal and local identities. He thus constructs an intimate portrait of the Kurds of Iraq, which will provide an important insight for students and researchers of the Middle East and for those interested the important issues of nationalism and ethnic identity in the modern nation state, and the impact these issues have on the stability of Iraq itself."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Originally published in Armenian in 1972.