Kurdish leader MASUD BARZANI [file]“We are quite close to a declaration of independence. The main obstacle for now is the US,” Prof. Ofra Bengio, editor of the forthcoming book Kurdish Awakening: Nation-Building in a Fragmented Homeland told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
“There are three scenarios for such a declaration: When the American administration changes; before [Iraqi Kurdistan] President Masoud Barzani leaves office in less than two years’ time, as he might like to be remembered as the builder of Kurdistan; and finally if relations with Baghdad deteriorate further,” explained Bengio, a senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.