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FOR RELEASE
Professor Publishes Book Focusing on Kurdistan-Iraq
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 17, 2006) − Robert Olson, professor of Middle East politics at the University of Kentucky, has published“The Goat and the Butcher: Nationalism and State-formation in Kurdistan-Iraq since the Iraqi War” (2005). Olson’s book analyzes the competition and struggle between nationalism (the goat), capitalism (the butcher) and enthonationalism (the Kurds), and the processesof state formation using Kurdistan-Iraq as a case study. He will hold a book signing at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 20, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers.
In order to have coherence and add lucidity to theoretical models, Olson’s study focuses on the processes and development in Kurdistan-Iraq and how they were affected and implemented as a result of the U.S. war against and occupation of Iraq from March 2003 to Feb. 1, 2005. It analyzes the processes of state formation in Kurdistan-Iraq within the context of Arab (both Sunni and Shi’a), Turkish and Iranian nationalism. A third focus of the book demonstrates how Turkey, Syria and Iran, all with large Kurdish populations of their own, cooperated, however unsuccessfully, to limit the development of Kurdish state formation in Iraq on their own Kurdish populations and Kurds’ desire for a state independent of Arab Iraq. Olson concludes that by the time of the national assembly elections in Iraq on Jan. 30, 2005, Kurdistan was well on its way to becoming independent—a development aided greatly by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
“I had book signings at the Middle East Institute and the Middle East Studies Meeting in November in Washington, DC. I was gratified by the turn-out. It indicates the increasing public interest in the consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, and what it augurs for American domestic politics,” Olson said.
The second printing, scheduled for early 2006, will be in paperback in order to increase its appeal to a wider audience. Olson is considered to be a leading international authority on aspects of trans-national Kurdish nationalism. He is the author of eight books, five of which have been translated nine times into five languages: Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Kurdish and French, as well as 80 scholarly articles. Olson is one of only seven Albert B. and Elizabeth H. Kirwan University Professors at UK.
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