Kurdistan Region (; ), abbr. KRI, is an autonomous region in Iraq comprising the four Kurdish-majority governorates of Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Duhok, and Halabja, and bordering Iran, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurdistan Region encompasses most of Iraqi Kurdistan but excludes the disputed territories of Northern Iraq, contested between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central Iraqi government in Baghdad since 1992 when autonomy was realized. The Kurdistan Region Parliament is situated in Erbil, but the constitution of the Kurdistan Region declares the disputed city of Kirkuk to be the capital of the Kurdistan Region. When the Iraqi Army withdrew from most of the disputed areas in mid-2014 following the Islamic State’s invasion of Iraq, Kurdish Forces entered the areas and held control there until Iraq retook the areas in October 2017. Throughout the 20th century, Kurds in Iraq oscillated between fighting for autonomy and for independence. Kurds experienced Arabization and genocide at the hands of Ba'athist Iraq. Protection afforded by the Iraqi no-fly zones over most of Iraqi Kurdistan after March 1991 gave Iraqi Kurds a chance to experiment with self-governance and the autonomous region was de facto established. The Iraqi government only recognized the autonomy of the Kurdistan Region after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, through a new Iraqi constitution adopted in 2005. A non-binding independence referendum was passed in September 2017, to mixed reactions internationally. The Kurdistan Region largely escaped the privations of the last years of Saddam Hussein's rule and the chaos that followed his ousting in 2003, and built a parliamentary democracy with a growing economy. History Early struggle for autonomy (1923–1975) Before Iraq became an independent state in 1923, the Iraqi Kurds had already begun their independence struggle from the British Mandatory Iraq with the Mahmud Barzanji revolts, which were subsequently crushed by the United Kingdom after a bombing campaign against Kurdish civilians by the Royal Air Force. Nonetheless, the Kurdish struggle persisted and the Barzani tribe had by the early 1920s gained momentum for the Kurdish nationalist cause and would become pivotal in the Kurdish-Iraqi wars throughout the 20th century. In 1943, the Barzani chief Mustafa Barzani began raiding Iraqi police stations in Kurdistan, which led the Baghdad government to deploy 30,000 troops to the region. The Iraqi Kurdish leadership fled to Iran in 1945. There, Mustafa Barzani founded the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Iran and the Soviet Union began assisting the Kurdish rebels