They are questions that no politician can avoid in what the international lexicon calls the Kurdish Region of Iraq. Is Kurdistan going to be independent? And, if so, when? Virtually all Iraq's 6m Kurds would give an emphatic yes to the first question. But most would wobble and waffle on the second. Nor do they know exactly where the borders of the new state would run. Many nations have declared independence in the past century: after Africa was decolonised; as the Soviet Union splintered; and often after civil wars (witness the countries that once made up Yugoslavia). And the Kurds have several advantages: a well-defined identity and language (close to Persian); a lack of religious strife (most adhere non-fanatically to Sunni Islam).
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