Over ninety years since their absorption into the modern Iraqi state, the Kurdish people of Iraq still remain an apparent anomaly in the modern world - a nation without a state. In 'The Kurds of Iraq', Mahir Aziz explores this incongruity, and asks the pertinent questions, who are the Kurds today? What is their relationship to the Iraqi state? How do they perceive themselves and their prospective political future? And in what way are they crucial for the stability of the Iraqi state? Through extensive field research, examining the complex process of identity formation amongst Kurdish students, Aziz analyses wider issues of the intersection and interdependency of national, regional, ethnic, tribal and local identities. He thus constructs an intimate portrait of the Kurds of Iraq, which will provide an important insight for students and researchers of the Middle East and for those interested in the vital issues of nationalism and ethnic identity in the modern nation state, and the impact these issues have on the stability of Iraq itself.

Mahir A. Aziz was educated at the University of Salahaddin, the University of Baghdad and Birkbeck College, London, and holds a PhD in Kurdish Studies from the University of Exeter. He previously taught at the University of Salahaddin, Erbil and the Kurdistan University, Hawler, and is currently the Deputy Director General of Scholarships and Cultural Relations at the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research for the Kurdistan Regional Government.