Iraqi Kurds

Iraqi Kurdistan a world away from war

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4145110.stm

"Fly into Arbil, the regional capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and you feel that you have arrived in another country.
It is the Kurdish, not the Iraqi, flag that flutters from Arbil International Airport, Kurdistan's new, glass-fronted "gateway" to the world, which saw its first flights from Dubai, Beirut and Amman arrive last month."

And in the end, that's sadly the point.

Iraq was a country pulled together from three-disunited former Ottoman provinces, made up of three very different groups that have nothing really in common. The Kurds have been trying to cut loose forever and that is what we are going to see when the US military finally pulls out of Iraq, the Kurds jockeying for an independent Kurdistan while the Shiites and Sunnis go at it in the rest of Iraq.

This is why Jilal Talibani was made president in Iraq, because he is Kurdish and it was thought in doing so, the Kurds could be pursuaded to stick around. But inevitably, they are going to take a good hard look and decide that it is much better to have their own peaceful Kurdistan (assuming they can resolve their dispute with Turkey) rather than be forced to govern what is surely going to be an Iraq plagued by civil war and tribalsim.