Washington Kurdish Institute
After the fall of al Ba’ath party led by the former dictator Saddam Hussien in 2003, the Kurds of Iraq were the vital players in the establishment of the new Iraq. In 2005, alongside all the Shiite and some Sunni Arab parties, the Kurds voted in favor of the new Iraqi constitution. The new Iraqi constitution was the hope for the Kurds to live peacefully in a country that has committed genocides and ethnic cleansing against them. However, 15 years later, the articles of the constitution that would solve a century of the Kurdish struggle in Iraq, were never implemented by different Iraqi cabinets. The former Iraqi governments failed to deliver what the constitution calls for including solving the issue of the Arabization on the Kurdish lands, allocating federal budget to the Kurdistan region, the oil share revenues, and treating the Peshmerga forces as the rest of the forces in Iraq.
On May 7, 2020, a new Iraqi cabinet was formed headed by Prime Minister Mustafa al Kadhemi who was supported and voted for by the Kurdish factions in the Iraqi Parliament. Kadhemi vowed to solve the outstanding issues between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the central government.
The Kurdistan Region is also facing threats by the regional powers including from Turkey and Iran. Turkey has started a new invasion into the region using the fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as an excuse to establish a similar zone they did in Syria. From the east, Iran has mobilized troops inside the region to “fight” the Iranian Kurdish opposition groups.
The panel discussed how the KRG can overcome the economic and security challenges and how the new Prime Minister Kademi pursue the Kurds and establish trust between both sides. Furthermore, the speakers will also lay out recommendations for the Iraqi government and the KRG to work together and achieve common goals amid threats facing both sides.
Speakers:
Najmaldin Karim– President of the WKI & Former Governor of Kirkuk Province- Iraq. Click HERE for remarks by Dr. Kairm
Michael Gunter– Professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University. Click HERE for remarks by Prof. Gunter
Brendan O’Leary– Lauder Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania. Click HERE for remarks by Prof. O’leary
Peter Galbraith– Former US Ambassador to Croatia & Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations in Afghanistan. Click HERE for remarks by Amb. Galbraith
Dr. Najmaldin Karim is the President of the Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI) and former governor of Kirkuk province-Iraq. Dr. Karim was born in Kirkuk Iraq, where he finished his high school education, before attending Mosul Medical College. After medical school, Dr. Karim was elected to the leadership of the Kurdish Student Union. In 1972, he joined the peshmerga forces and served as a physician and peshmerga until March 1975. Dr. Karim immigrated to the United States in 1976, where he finished his residency at George Washington University specializing in neurosurgery where he also served as an associate clinical professor. In the U.S., Dr. Karim was a pioneer of Kurdish activism, and was a founding member of the Kurdish National Congress of North America, serving as its president from 1991 to 1999. Dr. Karim testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June 1990 on Saddam Hussein’s atrocities in Kurdistan, including the Anfal campaign of genocide and the use of chemical weapons, and testified before numerous other congressional committees relating to Iraq and Kurdistan. In April 1991, Dr. Karim was the first Kurd to be officially received by the U.S. State Department. Read more.
Dr. Michael M. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee. He also is the Secretary-General of the EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) headquartered in Brussels. In the past he taught courses for many years during the summer at the International University in Vienna, as well as courses on Kurdish and Middle Eastern politics, among others, for the U.S. Government Areas Studies Program and U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C. Dr. Gunter is the author of 10 critically praised scholarly books on the Kurdish question, and editor or co-editor of five more books on the Kurds, among others. He has also published numerous scholarly articles on the Kurds and many other issues in such leading scholarly periodicals as the Middle East Journal, Middle East Policy, Middle East Quarterly, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Orient, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Maghreb Review, American Journal of International Law, International Organization, World Affairs, Journal of International Affairs (Columbia University), Read more.
Brendan O’Leary is an Irish, European Union, and US citizen, and since 2003 the Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author, co-author, and co-editor of twenty eight books and collections, and the author or co-author of hundreds of articles or chapters in peer-reviewed journals, university presses, encyclopedia articles, and other forms of publication, including op-eds. His latest production is a three-volume study called A Treatise on Northern Ireland, published by Oxford University Press, which has been positively reviewed in the Dublin Review of Books, the Irish News, and the Irish Times. In April 2020 it received the James S. Donnelly Sr. best book prize in History and Social Science of the American Conference on Irish Studies. In 2018 O’Leary co-authored a research report, Northern Ireland and the UK’s Exit from the EU: What Do People Think? Evidence from Two Investigations: A Survey and a Deliberative Forum (PI: Garry, J., McNicholl, K., O’Leary, B., & Pow, J., Belfast, Queen’s University Belfast, 2018 sponsored by the UK’s Economic and Research Council, and together with John Garry is currently researching the UK’s secession from the EU, and possible models of Irish re-unification. Read more.
PETER W. GALBRAITH of Townshend, Windham County, Democrat, was elected to the Vermont Senate on November 2, 2010. He is an author and former US diplomat. From 1993 to 1998, he served as the fi rst US Ambassador to Croatia where he negotiated and signed the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the war in Croatia. From 2000 to 2001, he was the Director for Political, Constitutional and Electoral Affairs for the UN Mission in East Timor and a cabinet minister in East Timor’s fi rst transitional government. In 2009, he was an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations serving in Afghanistan. From 1979 to 1993, he was a staff member for the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations where he managed the State Department authorization legislation and wrote laws to protect the global environment, prevent nuclear proliferation and promote human rights. Read more.