Strategy Benchmarking of Challenges and Opportunities of Kurdistan Province in Defense of the Homeland

One of the main issues in the field of military geography is the ability to defend the homeland and maintain territorial integrity in times of crisis or war. The history of the country shows that it must always observe the defensive conditions of the country and prepare itself for defense of the country in the face of regional and global crises. Kurdistan province is one of the areas that has witnessed various crises over the past 40 years, and the counterrevolutionary terrorist parties and groups have tried to use various methods, including soft war, guerrilla attacks, running disputes among Kurdish tribes and so on, to turn the province into a tense region. In this regard, this research aims to identify the most important challenges and opportunities in Kurdistan province, provide appropriate strategies, and classify them to reduce the region's challenges in defense- security field. In this descriptive- analytic research in method and applied-developmental research in purpose, data collected in a library and via documents. Findings based on SWOT and QSPM indicate that Kurdistan province has offensive positioning. It means the desirable situation of the region and the domination of the power and opportunity points on its challenges. By utilizing the abundant abilities of the Kurdistan, it eliminates existing challenges. At the end of this research, strategies and solutions based on the status quo of the region are presented to eliminate the current challenges