Iraqi Kurdish men sit outside the central square near the citadel in Irbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous northern Kurdish region, on Oct. 29, 2017. Massud Barzani, the president of the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, told a closed-door session of parliament he was stepping down amid the fallout from a controversial independence referendum. (Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images)
Iraq's Kurds are suffering an existential crisis: Their independence referendum backfired, their longtime president resigned and Iraq has reclaimed territory. How do they pick up the pieces?
