Showdown in Kirkuk
Kurds vs. Iraq forces, with U.S. in middle, as ever
Reports from Kirkuk in northern Iraq indicate that fighting has begun between forces of the Baghdad-based national government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and forces of the Kurdish regional government based in Erbil. A clash was likely after the Kurds’ recent referendum that favored independence. Also inevitable: the United States is right in the middle of it.
Until recently — probably ending with the July liberation of the Iraq’s third city, Mosul, from Islamic Forces’ control — the primarily Shiite forces of the Iraqi government, backed by Iran, had fought alongside Kurdish forces, who are Sunni Muslims, against the Sunni extremist forces of the Islamic State. The United States provided training, equipment and air support to both groups in their battle against ISIS in Mosul and elsewhere.
The United States strongly supports the al-Abadi government in its quest to produce order and even prosperity in Iraq as a whole. Put another way, the United States government does not support fragmentation of the country — which America invaded in 1991 and again in 2003 and then occupied — into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish enclaves.
On the other hand, the United States has protected the Kurds from the rest of the Iraqis, and used them as, in effect, mercenary forces not only in Iraq but also in Syria, pitted against IS forces in the former IS capital, Raqqa, since at least 1992. U.S. businesspersons have swarmed over the Kurdish area of Iraq, more hospitable to American involvement than the rest of the country, since the 2003 invasion.
Now, the chickens have come home to roost. The Kurds of northern Iraq voted massively for independence in the Sept. 25 referendum. The Kurds in neighboring Turkey, Iran and Syria supported the affirmative vote in Iraq and are thinking increasingly more actively of a Kurdish state, in effect, a transnational Kurdistan. Kirkuk, also the center of an oil-rich part of Iraq, was perhaps inevitably where the objectives of the Kurds and the Iraq central government would collide.
The United States maintains at least 5,000 forces in Iraq. They have been allied with and supported both the Baghdad government forces and the Kurdish forces, in Iraq and in Syria. The two military elements opposing each other in Kirkuk and elsewhere is a severe problem for the United States, and is likely to get worse. This is not our battle. Why are we in the middle of it? Why is now not the time to wrap up definitively 26 years of U.S. involvement in Iraq?