ABSTRACT
The international system is not going to permit the formation of a unified Kurdish state, the dream of some Kurdish leaders. But it can fairly be said that Kurds are a group that benefited from the war in 2003 and subsequent occupation. The Kurdish people are united by geography and a common history that is believed to go back more than two millennia and can certainly be dated to the time of the founding of Islam. But there appears to have been little, if any, common sense of Kurdish identity until the declining years of the Ottoman Empire. As that Empire was divided up in the wake of World War I, the formation of a state of Kurdistan was a promise that was made and then quickly lost. Alliance of Kurdish parties come second in Iraqi national election Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leader Talabani elected interim President. Kurdish Democratic Party's Massoud Barzani is President of Kurdish autonomous region.
