irbil, iraq -- Unshackled from Arab domination and the yoke of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi Kurdistan has grown into a powerful incubator of Kurdish ambitions and nationalism. But the enclave in northern Iraq also has the potential to destabilize the Middle East, with recent tensions raising the specter of a regional war.
For months, neighbors Iran and Turkey have been engaged in battles against Kurdish separatists who have established camps in Iraq's Kurdistan region. This week, lawmakers in Ankara raised the stakes, threatening to authorize an invasion of Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels blamed for attacks in Turkey.
From their autonomous enclave carved out after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraqi Kurds have for years quietly undermined attempts by Syria, Iraq and Iran to halt their community's cultural and political aspirations, throwing open the doors to their brethren in neighboring countries. In doing so, they have also provided shelter to the separatist groups fighting the Turkish and Iranian governments.
"We can't help them," a Kurdish official in this city said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But we can't hand them over, either."
Turkey, Iran and Syria, which have long histories of suppressing Kurdish separatist movements, eye the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq warily, even though all have an economic stake in the enclave and maintain cordial ties with its leaders.
In the last five years, hundreds of foreign Kurds have come here to study at universities. Kurdish filmmakers from Iran make movies here that would be forbidden by the Islamic Republic. Linguists have reinvigorated efforts to unify the populace by bridging the gaps between Kurdish dialects that have bedeviled the struggle for a pan-Kurdish movement.
In addition, Kurdish exile groups and political parties, along with Kurdish refugees from neighboring countries, have found protection from political persecution.
"They're us," said Mohammed Qader, a leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of Iraq's two main Kurdish political groups. "We take care of them."
Leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan argue that their regional government, which covers three of Iraq's 18 provinces, provides an attractive blueprint for Kurdish autonomy that would not require a formal redrawing of the Middle East's borders. Turkish authorities, however, fear that Kurdish separatists are determined to break off part of Turkish territory for their own state.
