For once, there appears to be some positive news coming out of Iraq. The Iraqi Army and the armed forces of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region, the Peshmerga, are coordinating against the Islamic State (ISIS) group, which is still terrorizing the civilians who live in the disputed territories between Iraq and the autonomous Kurdish north.
Growing cooperation
For years now, ISIS remnants have operated in the large security vacuums that exist across large swathes of northern Iraq in the disputed regions between Iraq and the northern Kurdish region, such as Kirkuk. These vacuums have existed since a brief war between the Peshmerga and Iraqi militia forces in October 2017, one month after Iraqi Kurdistan held a referendum on independence, created deep rifts and distrust between the two sides. ISIS ultimately had the most to gain from these tensions. Remnants of the group, which had lost control over Iraq’s second city Mosul after months of bloody fighting with Iraqi forces, regrouped inside those uncontrolled and ungoverned security vacuums, which in some parts are 40 kilometres wide. There it has extorted, kidnapped, and even murdered locals and launched increasingly deadly hit-and-run attacks against the separate Iraqi and Peshmerga positions.
This April, possibly feeling the inevitable squeeze from growing Iraqi-Peshmerga cooperation, the group stepped up its attacks, killing at least 21 and wounding several more. Jabar Yawar, the spokesperson for the Peshmerga ministry, said ISIS has shifted tactics “from large-scale attacks to smaller and targeted ones that have left casualties among the Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army.”
However, close Iraqi-Peshmerga coordination and cooperation could prove much more decisive for winning such a conflict. Peshmerga officers have returned to the K1 military base in Kirkuk as the two sides increase security and intelligence sharing on ISIS movements in the security vacuums between them. The establishment of these Joint Coordination Centres will, in the words of the spokesperson for the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS, Col. Wayne Marotto, “close that gap” ISIS has exploited for so long.
In another significant step toward coordination, the Iraqi Army and Peshmerga are even establishing two joint brigades that will work together to “close that gap” and “fill the security vacuum.”
While this won’t ultimately resolve the status of the disputed territories, which under the Iraqi Constitution was supposed to be conclusively determined by a referendum among the locals that would ask them whether they want to be part of Iraq or Iraqi Kurdistan by the end of 2007, it is still progress.
From war to a ‘golden age’ in relations
On the diplomatic front, this cooperation shows how much relations between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital Erbil have improved in recent months, especially under the government of the incumbent Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. Kadhimi has even gone so far as to describe relations as presently enjoying “a golden age,” despite the many unresolved outstanding issues between the two. Such a statement is a far cry from the disastrous two-week war the two fought in late 2017.
It is also a far cry from the general distrust and tensions that have existed between Baghdad and Erbil over the past decade. Not long after the US withdrew the last of its troops from the country in December 2011, tensions between KRG President Masoud Barzani and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki increased. Maliki sent the Iraqi Army into the disputed territories and threatened to march it into Kurdistan itself. Tense standoffs ensued.
When ISIS swept across northern Iraq in June 2014, seizing Mosul as the Iraqi Army melted away, the Peshmerga took complete control over Kirkuk and much of the disputed territories. The Kurds held the northern front against ISIS for three years. Initial relations between Maliki’s successor, Haider al-Abadi, and Barzani were good. The Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army briefly coordinated their advances on Mosul as the battle for the strategically-important city in October 2016, a move that Barzani hailed as “historical.” The Peshmerga did not enter the city but did secure numerous surrounding villages and key routes into it.
Less than a year later, Barzani pushed ahead with his referendum on independence that he had been advocating since the fall of Mosul in June 2014 but postponed until after the Iraqis forced ISIS out of Mosul. Despite Baghdad’s objections, Barzani finally went ahead with the long-promised referendum on September 25, 2017. Abadi responded bitterly and furiously by shutting the autonomous region’s airspace to civil aviation and demanding the complete dismantlement of its constitutional autonomy. In October 2017, Iraqi forces captured Kirkuk and most of the other disputed regions in mere days from the retreating Peshmerga. Skirmishes erupted along the Kurdistan Region’s borders between the Peshmerga and state-sanctioned Iraqi militias that left scores dead on each side, marking the lowest point in Iraqi-Kurdish relations since the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein.
Cautious optimism
Things have steadily improved since that dark month. Baghdad lifted the flight ban on Kurdistan a few months later and Abadi lost power in the May 2018 Iraqi elections. Today we have a prime minister in Baghdad who, while albeit very weak, advocates improved and productive Baghdad-Erbil relations. And there are these tangible in the direction of constructive counter-terror cooperation in the disputed territories.
All of these developments are positive and should be welcomed. For once, one may have some reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the future of this troubled region.
Image credit: The Media Office of the Prime Minister of Iraq
