WORKING PAPER
Number 2, June 2009
Stability in Iraqi Kurdistan: Reality or Mirage?
Lydia Khalil has worked in the United States and abroad on a variety of international political and security issues. She specializes in Middle East politics and international terrorism. Khalil was recently appointed as an international affairs fellow in residence at the Council on Foreign Relations where she will focus on Iraq. She is also a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, an independent think tank based in Sydney Australia and a senior policy associate to the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) that examines the development of genuine democracies in the Middle East.
From 2003 to 2004, Khalil worked as a policy advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad, where she worked closely with Iraqi officials on Iraq’s political transition and constitutional drafting. She has traveled extensively in Iraq and within the Kurdish region.
In addition to her work on Iraq and governance issues, Khalil focuses on counterterrorism and counterinsurgencies.
She is a lecturer and fellow at the Centre on Policing, Intelligence and Counterterrorism (PICT) at Macquarie University, teaching classes in intelligence and terrorism. Prior to her appointment, she was a counterterrorism analyst at the New York Police Department focusing on international terrorism trends and terrorism cases in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. She also served as in the Office of Homeland Security as a White House intern. She has published extensively on issues of terrorism and insurgency.
Khalil holds a B.A. in International Relations from Boston College and a Masters in International Security from Georgetown University. She was born in Cairo, Egypt and is a native Arabic speaker. Table of Contents
Acknowledgements / iii
Executive Summary / iv
About the Author / ix
Introduction / 1
Good News, Bad News / 3
The Oil Law Controversy: Does Energy Independence Mean Territorial Independence? / 5
Kirkuk: The Powder Keg / 16
Internal Challenges: The Two Kurdistans / 21
Turkey and the KRG: Mending Fences / 30
KRG: Looking in a Different Direction / 35
Recommendations for U.S. Policy / 37 Acknowledgements
Thank you to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy for providing me the opportunity to publish this paper. Special thanks to Martin Indyk and Ken Pollack, who was an early mentor and patiently guided the paper’s drafting and publication. I would also like to thank Yinnie Tse, as well as Ariel Kastner who painstakingly reviewed this paper.
This paper has benefited from their assistance and advice. Any mistakes and misjudgments are my own.
My thanks also to the many Kurdish and Iraqi officials who took the time to speak candidly with me about the challenges that lay ahead. Because many of our conversations were off the record, they have my quiet thanks. I am also indebted to the many scholars who have dedicated their skills to Iraq and the Middle East.
A special thanks to my husband Peter Khalil for his support and keen intellect that has helped shape my thinking on many issues. W O R K I N G P A P E R
N u m b e r 2 , J u n e 2 0 0 9
Stability in Iraqi Kurdistan:
Reality or Mirage?
Lydia Khalil
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