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Ok, I can't resist.
The thing about the Kurds and Arabs can be framed thusly:
Two schools of thought in the post-Ottoman years trying to decide what direction the newly formed states, mandates and territories, especially post-WWI.
Basically: pan-Arabism vis-a-vis pan-Islamism. So Iraq faced somewhat of an identity crisis in its nascent years. Are they Arabs? Muslims? or Iraqis?
Trying to reduce often complex idenity compositions into singular labels proved to be the disunifier. For example: Kurds are sunni muslim but do not consider themselves Iraqi nor Arab. Sunnis are Arab (or Kurds), muslim, and the traditional elites in Iraq though they are a numerical minority. Shia are Arab but not sunni, but are also Iraqi but feared to ally with Iranian shias which turned out to be an unfounded fear (because shia in Iran are not Arab, they are Persian).
The British (and League of Nations) faced this very problem back in the day; trying to "classify and label" the denizens of an Iraqi state artificially created from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.
Secondly, the dynamic changed from empire to nation-states. Previously, the people of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra were imperial Ottoman subjects, part of a diverse empire.
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