Description
Dissent, nationalism and the International in Iraqi Kurdistan
This paper seeks to explore how international processes, norms and rationalities are affecting the ways in which young people relate to nationalism and independence in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), a political entity that has been self-ruling for over forty years in the absence of international recognition. Since its emergence as a distinct territorial entity in 1992, international actors, aid and processes have significantly permeated Iraqi Kurdistan’s political space. The region gained self-rule after the US-led humanitarian intervention in 1991. In 2005, after another military intervention in Iraq by the US, the new constitution recognised KRI as a federal region of Iraq.. International organisations, NGOs and foreign consultants have since eagerly promoted the frameworks of good governance, free markets, development, democracy and citizenship.
Drawing on critical IR, including Foucauldian governmentality, this paper provides a novel perspective on subject formation, nationalism and dissent in the Kurdistan region in Iraq. It analyses how international humanitarian and development organisations promote a new orientation among young people, what I call "micropolitics," a form of moral action based on “doing good” at the local level. The paper then discusses how the moral subject of micropolitics relates to fellow Kurds, politics and independence, and experiences citizenship under conditions of statelessness.
