There are many worthy markers that the US’ Iraq wars have been a terrible, terrible waste, but as history loves a signature event, let it be Monday’s Kurdish independence referendum.
While the referendum is non-binding and the final vote tally might not be known for several days (though it will certainly be “yes” to independence), the true results of the US’ decades of war in Iraq are already clear.
Along with the ongoing decimation of Iraq’s Sunni population, the referendum means that in practice “Iraq” no longer exists. In its place is a Shiite state dominated by Iran, the de facto new nation of Kurdistan and a shrinking population of Sunnis tottering between annihilation or reservation-like existence, depending on whether the US uses the last of its influence to sketch out red lines or abandons the people to fate.
The waste comes in that a better version of a de facto tri-state Iraq was available in 2006. Every life lost (about 1 million, including 4,424 Americans), every US dollar spent (trillions) and every unanticipated outcome suffered since (the rise of the Islamic State group, the conflict in Syria, the loss of a democratic Turkey) has been unnecessary.
The post-World War I failure to create a Kurdish state resulted in 30 million Kurds scattered across modern Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.
The 2003 US invasion of Iraq destroyed civil order in much of the area populated by those Kurds and opened the door to Iranian influence. Iran and its Iraqi-Shiite allies directed political violence against Iraqi Sunnis, paving the way for a Sunni protector, the Islamic State group, to move in.
When the US-trained (cost: US$25 billion) Iraqi national army dropped its weapons and ran in 2014, and Shiite militias proved too weak to fill the breach, then-US president Barack Obama reinserted the US military into Iraq, saving the Kurds, by then also under threat from the Islamic State group.
The US subsequently turned those Kurdish fighters loose in Iraq and later in Syria against the Islamic State group. It was expediency over strategy — there was no force otherwise available in bulk — and it kind of worked. In the short run.
The Kurds, with US help, blunted the Islamic State group’s progress. The problem was that while US diplomacy, the carrot-and-stick of aid and the difficulty of maintaining long-distance logistics saw the Kurdish forces replaced by Shiite militias in some locations, the Kurds held on to their gains in the north, having in most instances displaced Iraqi Sunnis.
Victorious and bloodied, the Kurds were not about to renounce their hard-earned gains.
The need for US arms did force Kurdish leaders to postpone an independence referendum, opposed by Washington, in 2014. Three years later, with the Islamic State group mortally weakened, Washington no longer holds sway over Kurdish ambitions and although Monday’s referendum has no legal force, Kurdish leaders will use the vote to push Baghdad for full autonomy.
US President Donald Trump, the fifth consecutive president to wage war in Iraq, might be the last — simply for the lack of an Iraq to fight over.
The ground truth of autumn — a Kurdistan in the north, a Shiite state in the south, a marginalized Sunni population out west — is pretty much the deal that could have been had in 2006 when then-US senator Joe Biden proposed dividing Iraq into statelets.
Biden wanted the US to leave a “residual force to combat terrorists and keep the neighbors honest.”
The US Senate actually passed a resolution supporting Biden’s idea.
It probably would have stabilized the region. The Middle East in 2006 was a very different place.
In 2006, Iran faced a US military as yet undamaged by an additional decade of grinding war. That military sat on both Iran’s western border with Iraq and its eastern border with Afghanistan.
The Iranian nuclear program was years behind where it is today. Syria was a relatively stable place under not-then-yet-enemy of the free world Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — indeed, British-educated al-Assad was initially seen as a minor reformer. Turkey was stable. Russia was not a major player in the Middle East.
With many of this year’s regional Pandoras still in the box, by Middle Eastern standards security in a divided Iraq would have been manageable via a modest US military presence.
Instead, events of the past decade mean the chance of Kurdish independence adding to regional stability is near zero.
Iran, fearing that an independent Kurdish state could threaten its own sectarian balance, is already conducting maneuvers on the border, has canceled flights to and from Kurdistan and will push its proxies in Baghdad to take action.
Will Turkey, now politically distant from NATO, move to open war over disputed borderlands with Kurdistan?
The Turkish parliament just extended its authorization for cross-border incursions for another year.
Will Kurdish minorities in Turkey and Iran see this all as their moment to rise? Will Israel, which backs Kurdish independence in its search for regional allies, supply weapons?
In a best-case scenario, where everyone tacitly acknowledges Kurdistan while maintaining the “status quo” (as with Taiwan), there might be a measure of stability in the near term.
Baghdad will talk tough even as it allows the Kurds a surprising amount of free reign — for example, Baghdad has withdrawn its police from contested Kirkuk, leaving Kurdish forces fully in charge of the oil-rich city.
Kurdistan already has full control over its own education, security, military, taxes and diplomatic representation. Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani has experimented with diplomatically vague language, saying “self-determination wouldn’t mean a direct separation from Iraq.”
Darker predictions involve Syrian-Russian forces contesting Kurdish occupiers inside Syria.
Iranian-backed Shiite militias have signaled plans to re-enter Kirkuk and Turkey already has a running war with Kurdish fighters — tank maneuvers are ongoing with new threats gushing out of Ankara.
US policy has been a blurry gray for some time, calling for the referendum to be postponed without actually supporting or opposing independence. Traditionally the US Department of State favored a united Iraq somehow, while the Pentagon, with its history of in-the-dirt cooperation with Kurdish fighters stretching back to the 1991 no-fly zone and Operation Provide Comfort that essentially established the preliminary borders of Kurdistan, has been more sympathetic toward independence.
The wording of the US’ reaction (there has been no post-election statement issued as this is written) to the referendum could signal which part of government is making foreign policy in Iraq these days.
What seems clear is the US role going forward will be mostly limited to diplomacy and that, regardless of who is carrying out the task, is not the nation’s strong suit these days.
There seems no appetite in Washington for large-scale troop redeployments, the kind of boots-on-the-ground necessary to decisively shape events.
The US military, which once could have played a role similar to its help in bringing peace to former Yugoslavia, instead will exist as a crumple zone among its own warring semi-allies. Such a scenario exposes what might have been in 2006, when the US could have managed events, and this year, when the US can do little more than witness them.
Peter van Buren is a 24-year US Department of State veteran and the author of books on foreign policy.
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