O'leary, Brendan, John McGarry, and Khaled Salih. (Eds). The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq.

O'leary, Brendan, John McGarry, and Khaled Salih. (Eds). The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq. Philadelphia, PN: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Hardcover $45.00.

Reengineering Iraq is built on illusions. All twelve authors agree that Kurdistan must exist as a political entity and that there is a bleak future awaiting all Iraqis. In a 350-page volume the authors believe that the current occupation of Iraq by coalition forces were at fault as "the idiot wind reaped its harvest." The focus of the war is unjustified because the problem is not of weapons of mass destruction. Coalition leaders got the facts wrong as they held distorted images of their own constituents and of Iraqis and Kurds and missed the important big ideas. They did not conform to the standards of international law. They needed to understand and recognize Iraq's deep diversity and that the problem was of mass human destruction.

Since the book provides debates over the future of Kurdistan within a renewed Iraq, the first section focused on federation, federacy and power sharing. The bi-national, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious federation is offered by O'leary as he contends that this is the only way to stabilize Iraq's experiment in democracy. Complementing him, John McGarry shows how the Canadian bi-national federation (as well as Belgium and Switzerland) worked successfully and can be used as a lesson for Iraq. Molly McNulty concludes the discussions of federative possibilities as she focuses on the rights and needs of children in the constitutional design.

In the section discussing the legacies of the past; Ofra Bengio provides a detailed historical analysis of previous scenarios for the development of Kurdistan. Sophia Wanche captures the mixed emotions of fear and anticipation among the Kurds just before the March 2003 invasion, and Gareth Stansfield highlights the divisions between Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which adversely affected the politics of free Kurdistan between 1991-2003. Michael Gunter studied the way Turkey, the most powerful neighboring state, perceived the emergence of Kurdistan and an Iraqi federation that recognizes Kurdistan. More immediate issues both inside and outside Kurdistan were the focus of the last section. Those Ranged from the planning of the US occupation (Peter W. Galbraith) to state-building in the post-Saddam period (Karin Von Hippel). This is followed by a postscript (O'leary) that brings the readers up to date with the fast pace of developments and the failure of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in constitutional reconstruction.

Iraq does not have analogous cultural unity; therefore, a single Iraq that is "just Iraq" is naive, they believe. Therefore, the authors of The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq may have varied in viewing autonomy, and its forms, but did not disagree on the most important thesis of the book, which is the fact that the invasion of Iraq was conducted on false premises. In fact, they think the inefficient intervention made Kurdish communities even more vulnerable. The authors were able to distance themselves from the thought patterns and agenda of certain neo-conservatives in Washington but were not able to deal with Kurds in all three regions, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran at once, as Denise Natalie has done. In certain parts of the book, the authors point out that they must be read by Congress so it can be informed about what is missing in the reengineering efforts of Iraq.