THEY may not frame it quite so bluntly, but the dominant sentiment in the Kurds’ autonomous region of northern Iraq is a gleeful “We told you so”. The Kurds have long accused the central government in Baghdad of shoving them to the margin. More recently they have taken to criticising Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, for excluding Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, too. Senior people in Erbil, the Kurds’ regional capital, say they contacted their counterparts in Baghdad on June 8th, two days before Mosul was conquered, to share concerns about the horrors of an ISIS takeover. To no effect. At crack of dawn on June 10th ministers in Baghdad called to beg for help, say the Kurds. By then it was too late.

As the rebels streak across Iraq towards Baghdad, life in the Kurdish region continues as normal. Indeed, in many respects it has improved. Whether Iraq fragments along ethnic and sectarian lines or remains a federation with its capital in Baghdad, the Kurds have strengthened their hand. As the Iraqi army abandoned its posts along the “green line”, more than 1,000km (621 miles) long, that separates the Kurdish-run areas from Arab Iraq, the Peshmerga, the Kurds’ armed forces, leapt forward. They now control the entire disputed area, notably including the city of Kirkuk, which they call their Jerusalem, the Bai Hassan oilfield and Rabia, a key border crossing into Syria.

The Kurds now control around a fifth of Iraq’s territory, including land they have long claimed is theirs but which was Arabised under Saddam Hussein. Though Iraq’s army commanders and Arabs in the area criticise what they see as the Kurds’ grabbing of Kirkuk, there is little they can do about it. “We simply filled the security vacuum,” explains a Peshmerga. Falah Mustafa, who heads Kurdistan’s foreign relations, is more strident. “We righted the wrong of Kirkuk and Article 140 has been de facto decided on the ground,” he says. He is referring to a clause in Iraq’s federal constitution, endorsed in a nationwide referendum in 2005, that provides for a census followed by a referendum to decide whether the people of Kirkuk and other disputed areas want to stay in the Arab-governed part of Iraq or join Kurdistan. It has never happened.

The Kurds’ reputation has surely been enhanced. The Peshmerga have held together, whereas the Iraqi army has fallen apart. The Kurdish region has welcomed over 300,000 refugees from Mosul and other places overrun by ISIS. While Baghdad has for years been beset by bombs, foreign businessmen have been flying in and out of Erbil. Christians have fled from other parts of Iraq to live in peace in Kurdistan. Democracy in the Kurds’ region, though imperfect and tainted with corruption, functions far better than elsewhere in Iraq.

Though Mr Maliki may need the Kurds, they have less reason to need him. Relations between Erbil and Baghdad remain patchy. Communication between the two cities during this crisis has been limited. Since ISIS began sweeping south, Mr Maliki has not asked the Kurds for help. Nor would they be keen to oblige. “Why should we?” asks Mr Mustafa. Their priority is to defend Kurdistan and its people.

Never again

Moreover, amid the turmoil, old grievances towards their Arab compatriots still fester. The attack by Saddam Hussein’s air force on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, when 5,000 or so Kurds were gassed to death, still outrages them. Some Kurds reckon the Sunnis, led by ISIS, may yet turn on Kurdistan. “You can’t trust them,” says a Peshmerga officer in Dohuk province, close to ISIS-held territory.

As the balance of power has tipped in favour of the Kurds, they are sure to press forcefully for three big concessions from Baghdad. They want a law to legitimise the export of oil from the Kurdish region and to allow them to benefit directly from contracts with foreign companies for managing and extracting new finds. They want Mr Maliki to hand over their full share of the federal budget. And they want the Peshmerga to be paid from central government coffers. Mr Maliki has been reluctant to agree to such demands, but his bargaining position is now weak.

The leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan, with its population of 6.5m, say their region increasingly makes sense as an economic unit. If it were now to enjoy the proceeds of the oilfields around Kirkuk, the number of barrels at its disposal could double, just as the price has risen to a nine-month high of nearly $113. Besides, the Kurds have recently completed their own pipeline. Last week over 1m barrels of Kurdish oil were sold on the international market, through Turkey, and several more shipments are in the offing. A lot of Kurdish oil is also trucked out, to Iran as well as to Turkey.

If international buyers become less concerned by the government in Baghdad’s veto on dealing with the Kurds, exports through Kurdistan’s new pipeline could speed up to 250,000-400,000 barrels a day by the end of the year, up from 165,000 today. The old pipeline through northern Iraq to the Turkish port of Ceyhan has been closed since March because of attacks. But if the Kurds complete another pipeline between Kirkuk and their own new network, they could funnel that field’s output to Turkey, too.

The Kurds’ prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani, a nephew of the region’s president, Masoud Barzani, says Iraq can no longer hold together. But the Kurds, though united for the moment, habitually debate the degree of independence they hope to achieve and the tactics they should pursue. The Barzanis’ Kurdish Democratic Party, which is enjoying increasingly warm relations with Turkey, is bidding for an ever-greater degree of autonomy. But the weaker Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, run by the ailing Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s federal president, is closer both to Baghdad and to Iran. To complicate matters, most of the land taken by the Kurds this month has been on the Patriotic Union’s side of Kurdistan.

America, which the Kurds regard as a crucial ally, does not support the full independence of Kurdistan from Iraq, seeing that as a bad precedent and as a destabilising force in the region. The governments of Iran, Turkey and Syria also dislike the idea of an independent Kurdistan breaking away from Iraq, since another 21m or so Kurds spread across their three lands may get ideas of their own. Iraq’s Kurdish leaders have been particularly careful of late not to antagonise Turkey’s government.

The Iraqi Kurds’ cheery red, white and green flag, with its image of the sun in the centre, flies everywhere in their region, whereas the Iraqi standard is absent. Few Kurds now speak Arabic. Many laugh derisively when asked if they feel Iraqi as well as Kurdish. For the moment, however, their leaders are biding their time, saying they are in no hurry to rush for independence. But in the past few days they have plainly got closer to achieving it.