The research in the UK and the meeting at the LSE raised the question if the KR-I is, or has ever been existing in its form of an autonomous region. Lacking territorial and economical sovereignty, it is certainly not in its current – post referendum – state. As a result the conflict of the recent past pulls the region rather away from a possible independence and back in the struggle of many emerging subnational competitors within the framework of a power retrieving Iraqi central government.