As US troops prepared to launch the invasion of Iraq there was one thing that foreign policy analysts at least were uncertain about - what would happen in Kurdistan? After years of being terrorised by Saddam Hussain and desperate to maintain a separate ethnic identity, the Kurds, some said, would take the opportunity to finally break free from Baghdad. Seven years later, Kurdistan is looking like a somewhat unlikely success story - stable, prosperous and violence free. But beneath the apparent calm, the same tensions still simmer - Kurdistan's legal status remains undetermined, the ethnic Kurds are still demanding a homeland and critics say the regional government is illegally helping itself to the nation's oil.