Iraq's Kurds like to describe themselves as the orphans of history and geography. In the carve-up of the Ottoman empire after the first world war, they found themselves welded to a state in which they never felt at ease, stuck in the toughest of neighbourhoods. Nor has geology been the blessing that it might have been. Rather than benefit from the oil that swills under their northern homeland, Kurds argue that they have often been its victim.
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