Iraqi Kurdistan: Political Development and Emergent Democracy (Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies) [Hardcover]

Iraqi Kurds hold five of the Iraqi Governing Council's twenty-five seats. Masud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) not only control an area the size of New Jersey, but since the fall of Saddam Hussein, they have expanded their sphere of influence inside Iraq. In November 2003, Talabani assumed Iraq's interim rotating presidency while the KDP's Hoshyar Zebari crisscrossed the globe as Iraq's new foreign minister.

Don't expect any reference to Iraq's new reality in Stansfield's study, written before Iraq's liberation. However, the KDP and PUK remain dominant in northern Iraq, and so Iraqi Kurdistan remains relevant. The author spent three years in Iraqi Kurdistan, interviewing politicians and observing the workings of government. He describes the structure of the two major Iraqi Kurdish political parties, as well as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) umbrella under which they operate. His discussions of KDP and PUK decision-making distinguish between politicians who wield real influence and those who only hold a title.

Unfortunately, Stanfield's access contributes to Iraqi Kurdistan's main weakness. His analysis is often myopic, placing the Kurdish view front and center, but ignoring the reality of numerous other actors. It is curious, for example, how Stansfield can address the 1975 Algiers accords (which led to the collapse of the Kurdish uprising) without any mention of Henry Kissinger, who brokered the agreement that cut the Kurds off from their foreign patrons. Likewise, while chronicling the foundation of the PUK in Damascus, Stansfield mentions neither the Syrian government's role nor motivation. He breezes through Barzani's 1996 alliance with Saddam Hussein but fails to mention the Republican Guards' subsequent liquidation of Iraqi opposition forces. While corruption runs rampant, Stansfield prefers neat modeling and diagrams that confuse theoretical structure with on-the-ground reality. An accurate understanding of Kurdish politics simply is not possible without considering how Talabani and Barzani have compromised themselves for personal and political gain.

There are other gaps: with the exception of a single passing remark in the introduction, there is no mention of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) or the violent insurgency it waged against both major Iraqi Kurdish parties. There is only cursory mention of Barzani and Talabani's sophisticated intelligence networks and little mention of opposition tribal leaders Jowhar Sourchi or Karim Khan Bradosti, forced into exile as the Kurdish leaders consolidated their fiefdoms. Likewise, Stansfield ignores the Turkmen community, a small but active and politically complicated minority inside Iraqi Kurdistan.

Dry and detailed, Iraqi Kurdistan is well suited for a university library (and budget), but unless a reader wants to know who the minister of agriculture was in the second KRG cabinet, Stansfield's study should remain on the shelf.

Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2004

Michael Rubin's review above is unjust because it is misplaced -- essentially, Rubin condemns Dr. Stanfield's book for not being something that it was never intended to be; additionally, one is tempted to conclude Rubin disapproves of the work because it is not the book that he (Rubin) would have written -- instead of writing such a book himself, Rubin casts aspersions upon the work that Stansfield has produced in pursuing his own academic interests.

Based upon the litany of faults that Rubin enumerates, it would appear that what he demands of Stansfield is an expose' of the rampant corruption and interminable Kurd-on-Kurd factional fighting that has bedeviled the Kurds of Iraq for so much of their history -- problems that Rubin himself has done much to expose in his own writings. The problem with this, though, is that the world is awash with works that address these problems. Books upon books and articles upon articles have been published on Kurdish politics, culture, wars, heroism, corruption, repression, follies, and triumphs.

Almost nothing however has been written about the practical details of governance in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Out of the vast body of literature on Kurdish topics available in English, Stansfield's slim volume is the single work that attempts to document the organizational structure and administrative processes of the political institutions in Iraqi Kurdistan. Being the only work of its kind, Stansfield's book is valuable if for no other reason than that it preserves a record of what otherwise would be lost to history.

This last Rubin dismisses with the flip remark that "unless a reader wants to know who the minister of agriculture was in the second KRG cabinet, Stansfield's study should remain on the shelf." Such a cavalier dismissal is easy for Rubin, as an American, to make. Those of us blessed enough to have spent our lives here take for granted the thousands of libraries, halls of records, public archives, university departments, scholars, academics, and gadflies of every stripe that document, analyze and preserve for posterity every conceivable aspect of American life and culture. The Kurds, however, have no such resources. Little of what goes on in Kurdish life, beyond the grandest of events, is recorded or preserved; foreigners most often write what is captured. With a little elbow grease, I as an American can find out practically anything I want to know about the military service of my Civil War ancestor, from the great battles he fought right down to the food he ate, the clothes he wore, and the number of days he spent sick in the hospital. Regrettably, the Kurds have had neither the resources nor the inclination to preserve their own history in the way that we Americans have preserved ours; it is thanks almost wholly to the efforts of westerners such as Edgar O'Ballance, Dana Adams Schmidt, William Eagleton, Jr., David Adamson, and Archie Roosevelt that anything in the twentieth century was preserved at all. However, most of the work of these authors was devoted to Kurdish military struggles and most of it was written decades ago. Stansfield's work is much more up to date, and covers areas that his predecessors, for the most part, have overlooked.

Rubin takes Stansfield to task for the many "gaps" in his work. I have no doubt that much of Rubin's criticism is accurate. But what Rubin fails to acknowledge is that Stansfield's book constitutes truly original research, as compared to the derivative work or journalistic reporting produced by most other commentators on Kurdish issues. When one breaks new ground, it is to be expected that gaps and errors will exist, to be filled or corrected by those who build upon the original work.

Rubin takes Stansfield to task for not addressing the PKK wars against the KDP and PUK; for glossing over the sad fates of certain tribal leaders who opposed the two major parties; and for "ignoring" the Turkmen community. But he does so unfairly, for as important as all these topics are, none fall within the scope of Stansfield's work. Rubin might just as well take Mark Twain to task for failing to shoehorn a ringing denunciation of the three-fifths doctrine into Huckleberry Finn.

Rubin criticizes Stansfield for preferring "neat modeling and diagrams that confuse theoretical structure with on-the-ground reality." This criticism is fair as far as it goes -- but despite the large gap between the ideal and the real in Iraqi Kurdistan, theoretical models still provide the essential point of reference which places the gritty reality into context.

Rubin cites as a weakness Stansfield's "access" to Kurdish officials which made the book possible, having contributed to a "myopic" analysis biased in the Kurd's favor. However, the converse might be said to be true of Rubin: He taught briefly at universities in Iraqi Kurdistan, and apparently came away disillusioned with the many problems that he found there. If Stansfield is excessively biased in favor of the Kurds, then Rubin might be biased in the opposite direction.

Rubin makes valid criticisms, to be sure. He rightly points out that Stansfield says almost nothing about the KDP and PUK intelligence services, the Parastin and the Dezgay Zanyari, or for that matter, any of the other security services. Likewise, Stansfield's work would be much more complete if it examined the corruption endemic in Kurdish politics, as well as certain abuses of power, such as harassment of journalists and failure to accord due process to prisoners. Additionally, the book is dated, having been written prior to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq - much has changed since then.

Whatever the shortcomings of his work, however, Dr. Stansfield has literally written the book on the Kurdistan Regional Government.