Republic of Dreams: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Struggles, and the Future of Iraqi Kurdistan

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq went through a breathtaking number of changes from 1988 to 2025. A short list of these includes the genocidal anfal campaign against the Kurds (where the story in this book begins), the Gulf War of 1990–91, the emergence of de facto Kurdish autonomy under the protection of Western powers following the Gulf War, the Iraq War of 2003, the insurgencies and civil wars following the 2003 ouster of Saddam’s regime, the signing of a new Iraqi constitution in 2005 that recognized Kurdish autonomy in the country, the rapid influx of oil investment and revenues from 2005 onwards, protests against the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in the spirit of the Arab Spring after 2011, the metamorphosis of Sunni Jihadi groups into the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) and the resulting ISIS war from 2014 onwards, the Kurds’ referendum on independence in 2017 and clashes with the government in Baghdad, and the struggle to build a better, more democratic Kurdistan Region throughout all of it.In academia, we tend to read scholarly analyses of all these events or news media accounts of them. Non-academics read the news media as well and perhaps some biographical accounts of refugees who barely escaped with their lives or important political figures involved in the events. Republic of Dreams occupies an uncommon place, not quite belonging to either of these genres. In a splendidly written narrative nonfiction style, the book follows an average but nonetheless remarkable young Kurdish man through all these events—from his 1988 birth under a tree in a refugee camp in Iran (shortly after his parents fled the chemical weapons attacks on Halabja) and his youth in a struggling poor family in Halabja to his participation in protests as a young man, his experience studying abroad in America, and finally the beginning of his professional and married life. At various points in his life, as he goes about pursuing his hopes and dreams, political events keep intruding to surprise him and change his course.As a political scientist focusing on Kurdish issues for a long time, author Nicole Watts is able to situate the protagonist’s story correctly within the larger political context but without lecturing the reader about the politics or history of the area and with an eye for the everyday details and imagery that would not normally appear in an academic work. What emerges from this, for both experts well versed in the region and laypeople not previously very familiar with it, is a much needed appreciation for how average people in Iraqi Kurdistan understood and lived through what was happening around them. Peshawa, the book’s protagonist, becomes a vehicle to help readers better understand Kurdish hopes, dreams, attitudes, contradictions, and complexities.No such vehicle can be comprehensive or complete, of course. In Peshawa’s case, he comes from a part of Iraqi Kurdistan (often referred to there as “green Kurdistan,” the color of that area’s leading party—the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK) that generally views the competing Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of “yellow Kurdistan” and its leading Barzani family with some measure of antipathy. This emerges in several parts of his story but is hardly surprising or representative of all Kurds. When we get to the part of his story about Kurdistan’s 2017 referendum on independence, however, an example of the book’s strengths and Watt’s gift for narrative comes forth: Peshawa, like most people in “green Kurdistan,” suspects that KDP leader and KRG President Masoud Barzani has called the referendum for self-serving political reasons, as a way to distract people from shortcomings of his administration and the extension of his presidential term beyond the normal legal limits. But as the weeks and months go by and Barzani refuses to cancel the referendum like everyone assumed he would, Peshawa begins to sympathize with what increasingly looks like a plucky Kurdish leader defying Baghdad, angry neighboring states, and the whole world. Although like the large majority of Kurds in Iraq, he and his friends supported Kurdish independence, they originally planned to abstain in the referendum so as not to show support for Barzani—but quickly came to feel that they must vote, and vote “yes,” in the first historical instance of having this question democratically put before them. So, in his best clothes and carrying his young son in his arms to the polls, he joined the more than ninety-two perhaps of Iraqi Kurdistan’s voters who checked “yes” in the voting booth that day—although two of his sisters, along with close to half of “green Kurdistan,” abstained. Following the referendum and the Kurds’ loss of Kirkuk and other disputed territories to the Iraqi army and Shiʿi militias a month later, he fell back to viewing the whole thing as a Barzani ploy to consolidate political control over the Kurdistan Region (perhaps ignoring that the KDP’s gains after 2017 probably had more to do with the rival PUK’s internal collapse and infighting). In any case, an event that much of the world followed in the news becomes suddenly much more intelligible to readers, thanks to Watt’s narrative nonfiction approach to the issue.This reviewer enjoyed what appeared to be a number of themes running through Peshawa’s story, besides the ones of ordinary lives interrupted by big political events or the complexities of Kurdistan’s referendum on independence. Through parts of the book that follow not only Peshawa but also his parents and some of his friends, the reader gets insight into how people deal with trauma, how one might see America through the eyes of a foreigner, how moderate but devout Muslims view Islam and their place in the modern world, how protests first start and how they can succeed or fail, the bittersweet taste of leaving your homeland for good opportunities abroad, choices that one must make at different points in life that open some doors but close others, and even the very human dynamics that can emerge between an arrested protestor and the security forces detaining them.One theme in the book that could have used a bit more exploration was that of political corruption and good governance. Because Watt avoids injecting her own views into the telling of Peshawa’s story, perhaps it simply did not prove possible to fully explore this theme—perhaps as he got older, it was something that the protagonist did not want to talk about more or had not reexamined. Nonetheless, this reader could not avoid noticing certain ironies in the story: Especially as a young high school and then university student, Peshawa rails against the corruption in Iraqi Kurdistan. He laments that the KDP and PUK (which he hardly seems to have more regard for than the KDP) control much of the economy, the police, the judiciary, and the armed forces; that people need connections (called wasta in Iraq) to get ahead in life; that politicians enrich themselves and their kin and friends; and that the democratic process in Kurdistan always seems to end with the same families and leaders in charge. These are the very understandable frustrations of not just a boy from a poor family in Halabja but of a great many people in the region. As we follow Peshawa’s story, however, we find a boy who went from being a poor student and getting into trouble often to one who developed a passion for books and became a top student. As a top student who scored well on the national exams, he received full scholarships to the University of Suleimani (with board and a monthly stipend), a full scholarship to the new established American University of Iraq in Suleimani, additional prestigious scholarships to study in the United States, and jobs in both the private and public sector of the Kurdistan Region and even a job with Facebook at their headquarters in Ireland.This reviewer also came from a poor family (neither of whose parents went to university) that moved from Canada to the United States when he was ten years old. Upon finishing high school with very good grades and good national exam scores (albeit perhaps not at the very top of his cohort like the book’s protagonist), there was simply no way to go to university in America, even with partial scholarships, without taking on crippling levels of student loans. So as a young man who would have loved the sorts of opportunities Peshawa earned in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, this reviewer returned to his native Canada at eighteen years old—where one could still work and pay much more modest university tuition simultaneously, without student loans that might never get repaid.The point here is that yes, corruption and lack of opportunities or upward mobility in places like the Kurdistan Region of Iraq are serious problems (as they are to lesser degrees in the United States and elsewhere)—but clearly efforts are being made to improve society there for everyone. Kurdish politicians established the scholarship programs the book’s protagonist benefitted from. The American University of Iraq in Suleimani was itself, like several other similar universities in the region, a pet project and dream of political leaders there. That university opened the doors of the world to students like Peshawa (for free in his case—something he does mention that he is very grateful for in the book). Eventually, Peshawa even ends up taking a public sector job, presumably earned on merit and without wasta just like his scholarships, as the head of the community unit of the KRG’s Office of Initiative and Communications. In this role he works out of Erbil and travels around the region “helping develop young people’s skills” (300). The Kurdistan Region and the KRG should thus not be viewed as some sort of Mobutu-style kleptocracy that could not care less about ordinary people, as Peshawa’s own life trajectory demonstrates (or as many frustrated people in the region describe it to foreigners). Rather, it seems to me a lot like many places—rife with problems (including corruption and party control of various institutions) but also filled with well-meaning and hard-working people, including many elected and public officials, trying to do right by their people.This is the complexity of the real world, and as someone who thoroughly enjoyed Peshawa’s story, I wonder if his views on the KRG shifted or moderated as he got older. Early in the book, Peshawa’s first introduction to politics comes as a young high school student joining his friends in Halabja to protest against KRG leaders who only visit the city once a year for the commemoration of Saddam’s chemical attacks of March 16, 1988. The politicians would come in their fancy suits with their foreign dignitary visitors, take photos by the monument, and leave. In the meantime, by 2006, the KRG had still not paved any streets in Halabja, built a university there, properly outfitted the city’s medical facilities, or really done much at all for the city. The protest turned violent and one boy was killed by KRG security forces, and the Halabja monument was set ablaze by locals. The protest galvanized the KRG into moving faster to implement public projects in Halabja. By the end of the book, however, Peshawa is almost twenty years older. This reader thus wonders if after he too became a public official in the KRG, did he come to better appreciate all the competing priorities that bedevil a new, young, and divided government, and the difficulties of getting anything done in a bureaucracy?Whatever the case, Watt’s stated goal in writing this in “narrative nonfiction” style was “to write an accessible book that humanized Muslim Kurdish protagonists and personalized events in parts of the world seemingly remote to many Americans, but where the United States has nonetheless been intimately involved” (300). In this she has succeeded admirably.

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