Struggle Over #Kirkuk Puts the U.S. and #Iran on the Same Side

BAGHDAD — When the Iraqi military battled Kurdish forces this week to reclaim the contested city of Kirkuk, the spectacle of one American-backed ally fighting another with American-supplied weapons was not the only incongruous sight.
Another was the United States turning its back on a crucial ally in the fight against Islamic State, the Kurds, as Washington's goals aligned with those of a regional nemesis, Iran.
While the military action in Kirkuk on Monday and Tuesday was carried out under the banner of the Iraqi military, the ground forces included Iranian-backed Shiite militias.
American officials, including President Trump, insisted that the United States was not taking sides in the dispute, but some analysts say the United States approved the Iraqi plan to enter Kurdish-held areas and that Iran helped broker the agreement with a Kurdish faction to withdraw its fighters from Kirkuk, allowing the Iraqi forces to take over largely unopposed.
"Abadi would not have attacked without informing the U.S.," said David L. Phillips, a former State Department adviser who worked on Iraq for 30 years. "At a minimum, the U.S. knew that the attack was coming."
Maria Fantappie, senior analyst for Iraq at the International Crisis Group, said, "The United States gave a green light, and that was essential."
Iran's goal, she said, was to insert Shiite militias into contested areas, and to divide the Kurds while solidifying Iranian influence over the Iraqi government.
Intentionally or not, the United States seems to have abetted that goal as it pursued its own aim of restoring Iraqi government authority to the disputed Kirkuk region. The United States, officials said, also declined to defend the Kurds to show its displeasure with them for rejecting an American request to cancel a referendum on independence from Iraq.
Supporters of the Kurdish Regional Government, the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, said they expected better from the United States after 1,700 Kurdish fighters died helping the Americans fight the Islamic State.
"I don't want to use the word betrayal," Vahal Ali, the communications director for the region's president, said Wednesday, "but we definitely feel the United States has been negligent."
He said the Kurds were "disappointed at how the United States looked at this."
"Now they are giving Iraq to Iran as a present," he added. "That's as diplomatic as I can be."
Joshua A. Geltzer, the former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, noted the irony of helping Iran just as Mr. Trump was assailing that country for sponsoring terrorism and threatening to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement.
"It seems like we just got out of the way as Baghdad rolled the Kurds, and that doesn't feel right," he said. "Plus, it makes little sense for an administration interested in getting tougher on Iran."
The turn of events stems from the referendum the Kurds held three weeks ago, in which they voted overwhelmingly for independence from Iraq. Although the vote did not lead to a declaration of independence, it was vigorously opposed by nearly every power in the region.
Iran, which wields considerable influence in Baghdad, feared any move toward independence by the Kurds in Iraq would inflame separatist sentiments among its own Kurdish minority. The United States opposed the vote for, among other reasons, concern that it would rupture the coalition of Iraqi and Kurdish forces battling the Islamic State in Iraq.
The Kurdish Regional Government's determination to go ahead with the referendum, chasing the dream of an independent Kurdish homeland, has backfired spectacularly.
In just two days this week, Iraqi troops took Kirkuk and most other contested areas that Kurdish forces have held since 2014, including oil fields that have provided the bulk of revenues for the Kurdish region.
The assault crushed Kurdish dreams of independence and raised serious questions about the political judgment and ultimate survival of the Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani.

In retrospect, the depth of Mr. Barzani's miscalculations are clear if still surprising. He badly overestimated his bargaining position with Iraq and underestimated the animosity his referendum engendered among his neighbors and allies, including the United States. After the referendum, American officials told Mr. Barzani that he had forfeited the good will of the United States.
For the last three years, the Kurdish militia known as the pesh merga was a crucial ally for the United States and Baghdad in the battle against the Islamic State, often proving more effective than the Iraqi army.
But less than two weeks after the Sept. 25 referendum, Iraqi forces drove Islamic State militants out of Hawija, their last major urban stronghold in Iraq and the last battle in which the pesh merga played a role. The fight has shifted to the western desert of Anbar Province, far from pesh merga positions in northern Iraq.
Original Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/world/middleeast/iraq-kurds-kirkuk-iran.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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