QAMISHLI, Syria — When the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, Massoud Barzani, called on world leaders to “acknowledge that the Sykes-Picot agreement that led to the boundaries of the modern Middle East has failed,” the Syrian Kurds hoped it signaled a step closer to federalism and that they would achieve what their counterparts in Iraq were able to.
Barzani said in a Jan. 22 interview with The Guardian from his office in Erbil that the international community is realizing that Iraq and Syria will never be one entity and urged the world to draw a new map that makes room for an independent Kurdish state.