HOW WILSON LOST WWI:

The Kurds' quest for independence is partly the product of geography: their ancestral homeland around the Taurus mountains occupies a peripheral border region at the intersection of the historic empires of the Turks, Persians and Arabs.

Under these empires the Kurdish tribes attempted to carve out high levels of autonomy and were often in conflict with the central authority and other rival tribes. Following the demise of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, they found themselves divided between three successor states: Iraq, Syria and Turkey where they became regionally concentrated 'non-assimilating minorities'. This underlying sense of malaise finds conceptual framing in the 'syndrome of post-colonial sequestration', a term coined by the late Professor Fred Halliday in a succinct and incisive openDemocracy article in 2008 to explain the experience of peoples such as the Kurds and Palestinians.

This underlying sense of malaise finds conceptual framing in the 'syndrome of post-colonial sequestration', a term coined by the late Professor Fred Halliday.

Halliday noted that various peoples have found, during moments of momentous historic change (the end of WW1, WW2, colonial withdraw) that if they were not able (due to bad luck, poor leadership or other circumstances) to obtain a state, then they may remain trapped until the next moment of opportunity. To understand their plight, he argued, it is important to be aware that the division of the world into today's 'nation states' does not correspond to any fundamental principles of natural justice or historic entitlement. It is rather arbitrary and haphazard - the result of power politics, accidents, wars, state crises and hegemonic or colonial intervention.

By way of moving beyond post-colonial sequestration, Halliday recommended these peoples to seek to establish democratic forms including federalism, which once consolidated could lead to discussion of all issues, including independence. Halliday focussed on the Palestinians and the Tibetans, making only passing reference to the Kurds, which I expand here with my primary focus on the Kurds in Iraq.

The imposition of  European-style 'nation-states' on the Middle East led to deeply divided societies due to the straight lines drawn across tribal lands on the map enclosed with the 1916 Asia Minor Agreement signed between Britain and France - otherwise known as the Sykes-Picot agreement.

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