From Reuters:

Iraq has abandoned plans to hold its first census in two decades this year because of fears the survey could inflame tensions in northern areas disputed by Arabs and Kurds, officials said on Sunday.

People arguing that Iraq’s Shia and Sunni Arabs can eventually give precedence to an Iraqi national identity might be right; I don’t think so, but at least it’s possible. But it is not possible for the Kurds to be part of an Iraqi nation in any sense but on paper. They already have their own independent nation-state, and it won’t be taken from them without Saddamite levels of violence and repression, which the current Iraqi state couldn’t muster if it wanted to. The only thing a census would do is kick off the Kurdish-Arab war that’s been put off for years and end the legal fiction of “Iraqi” Kurdistan. (Lebanon hasn’t conducted a census since 1932 for similar reasons.) But the war is going to come at some point because the Kurds mean to have Kirkuk (and I’ll bet they’ve already cut a deal to secure Turkey’s tacit approval), and the Iraqi Arabs mean to keep it.

All the more reason to get out while the getting is good.