Return to Kurdistan: Part Two

During the last Iraq War, reporter Michael Goldfarb spent a lot of time in the Kurdish autonomous region in Northern Iraq.

Five years on, he returns to Erbil, Mosul and Kirkuk to visit the people of Kurdistan and in particular the Shawkat family, who he became close to during his time there.

Part two

For all the chaos and tragedy that Iraq has known in the last five years one part of the country has more or less avoided the worst: Kurdistan.

In fact, for Iraqi Kurds these are the best times they have ever known.

They live in relative autonomy and their economy is stronger than it has ever been.

But can the desire for full independence be contained, particularly among young people who have known only good times and stability, and not the endless violence and fear and poverty that marked so much of Iraqi Kurdish history?

And what about the minority sects and ethnicities living in northern Iraq who are not part of the Kurdish nation, such as the Yezidis and Chaldeans?

In this programme, Michael Goldfarb, who made his first visit to Kurdistan in 1996, looks at the physical changes in what was once the poorest region of the country and is now the richest.

He gauges the effect on the next generation of Kurdish leaders, visits minority sects and finally, goes to Kirkuk, disputed heart of northern Iraq's oil industry, and the future source of wealth, against which today's Kurds are borrowing.