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KURDS Great Powers, oil and the Kurds in Mosul: (Southern Kurdistan/Northern Iraq), 1910-1925, by Habibollah Atarodi. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003. xix + 216 pages. Bibl. to p. 225. Index to p. 233. Maps to p. 236. $666.
Iraqi Kurdistan: Political Development and Emergent Democracy, by Gareth R. V. Stansfield. London, UK and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. xvi + 185 pages. Append, to p. 208. Notes to p. 237. Bibl. to p. 255. index top. 261. $80.
The Kurds in general and the Iraqi Kurds in particular have become increasingly important in regional and international politics since the Iran -Iraq War (1980-88), when each side used the other side's Kurds as fifth columns and thus regionalized the Kurdish problem. The Gulf War and its aftermath in 9 1999 1 and now the war to remove Iraqi President Saddam Husayn from power in 2003, have greatly magnified this situation.
Habibollah Atarodi draws a useful historical survey of how the Iraqi Kurds were arbitrarily placed into their current situation in Northern Iraq, or what most Kurds refer to as Southern Kurdistan following World War I. he emphasizes the British role, but also discusses the contributions of France, the United States, Turkey, and the League of Nations. Gareth R.V. Stansfield analyzes the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that arose after the Gulf War in 1991, which played a major role as Iraq moved toward regaining its sovereignty on june 30, 2004. Thus, both of these well-written studies will prove extremely useful for understanding this volatile, still evolving situation.
Habibollah Atarodi argues passionately that since the world in general and the British navy in particular were converting from coal to oil, "the economic value of the Mosul oil and the British desire to...