Iraq partition watch

via Spencer Ackerman, mass demonstrations by Kurds for an independent Kurdistan, and now this manifesto by Kemal Mirawdeli. Excerpt, which demolishes the idea that Iraqi nationalism has survived in the post-Saddam era:

What is Iraq for the Kurdish people?



Iraq is not a state that Kurds can identify with. Arabization of Kurdistan did not start with Saddam. It started as early as 1930s with the banning Kurdish language and education in Mosul and with Haweja project in Kirkuk in 1937. Iraq has from the very beginning a doubly colonial state: plundering Iraqi and Kurdistan oil on behalf of British imperialism and exercising internal Arab colonialism against Kurdistan through policies of underdevelopment, Arabization, imposition of the Arabic language, culture and religion, political oppression, cultural assimilation and then murder and genocide.

As one of Ackerman's readers notes, the concept of "Iraq" was created by the British in 1922, and it's been a failed state since then.