Territory, State and Nationalism: Anglo-Iraqi Policy towards the Kurdish National Movement, 1918-1932

The Sykes-Picot Agreement map, signed in May 1916 by the Imperial powers of Great Britain and France, constituted the blueprint for redrawing the map of the Middle East after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, in 1918, by the victorious Allies, thus dividing the Arab territories as well as Kurdistan into its current form. In this book, the author makes an ambitious attempt to provide a comprehensive new insight into the Kurdish national movement and its struggle against the mandatory power (the British) and the Iraqi government for achievement of national selfdetermination from 1918 to 1932. The book explores both Kurdish and Arab nationalism within the context of power relations in international politics at the time on the one hand, and in relation to domestic political development in Iraq on the other. Thereby, salient issues are explained, inter alia, the reasons for Britain's failure to create a modern national state in Iraq, Anglo-Iraqi authorities' reluctance to accommodate Kurdish rights and their policy to incorporate Kurdistan into the nascent Iraqi state, the U.S. interests and implication in the region, along with President Wilson's principle of self-determination and its impact on Kurdish and Arab nationalism.