Short answers, pulled from the story.
A group of people with a collective identity forms the core of what scholars call a polity. This entity must possess organized political or institutional social relations to function as a unit.
Black's Law Dictionary published in 1968 defines these variations clearly. The term country may refer to sovereign states or dependent territories depending on context.
Thomas Hobbes considered notions of the state and the body politic in his work Leviathan published in 1651. The frontispiece of Leviathan from 1690 visually represents these complex theories.
Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan form their own separate and distinct polity while remaining members of Iraq. These groups do not require broad jurisdiction over citizens or lands to exist politically.
The government exists at both the federal level and within subdivided regions like provinces. These structures demonstrate that governance does not require a single fixed territory.