StatisQuo: British Use of Statistics in the Iraqi Kurdish Question (1919–1932)
Fuat Dundar
Brandeis University
Crown Center for Middle East Studies
2012

n post-2003 Iraq, the Kurds have continuously appealed for territorial rights in the regions where they claim to be the majority and have demanded a quota in the Iraqi State apparatus.
They have also passionately demanded a new census, which would include questions intended to assess inhabitants’ ethnicity and define their mother tongue and nationality. The Kurds believe that determining the exact size of the Kurdish population would have repercussions for issues such as defining the exact borders of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), ascertaining the proper portion to be allotted to them from the national budget, and maybe even establishing the proper quota of Kurds in a future Baghdad government, to ensure that they would not once again be underrepresented in a future Parliament.
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