MESOP NEWS INSIGHT : TRUMP NOT AGAINST KURDISH INDEPENDENCE – “The Trump White House appears less anguished about Kurdish independence”

Donald Trump’s silver lining in Iraq, Kurdistan – By Peter Van Buren | Reuters

13 June 2017 – Will the defeat of Islamic State in Iraq be a foreign policy victory for Donald Trump? With the fall of Mosul imminent, what happens next?

There will be winners, like the Kurds. There will be losers, like Iraq’s Sunni minority. There will be gains for Iran, which backs the Shi’ite militias drafted to fight Sunni-dominated IS. And there may be a silver lining for the Trump administration – specifically in the form of Kurdish independence and permanent American bases in a Shi’ite-ruled Iraq. But any declaration of “victory” on the part of the United States depends on how the measure of those results is taken.Start with the Kurds.

Their military forces currently control a swath of northern territory, including the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. The area has been a functional confederacy since soon after the American invasion of 2003 and, in spite of likely opposition from Baghdad, a fully-realized nation-state of Kurdistan seems inevitable. The Kurds certainly think so; they’ll hold an independence referendum on September 25.

Previous U.S. administrations restrained Kurdish ambitions, trying to keep “Iraq” more or less as it was within its 2003 borders. George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent Barack Obama, wished for a unified Iraq as a symbol, the conclusion of the invasion narrative of eliminating Saddam Hussein and establishing a new semi-secular ally in the heart of the Middle East. A unified Iraq that enveloped the Kurds was also sought by NATO ally Turkey, which feared an independent Kurdish state on its disputed eastern border.

The Trump White House appears less anguished about Kurdish independence; Trump is for the first time, for example, overtly arming pro-Kurdish independence militias, whom the Turks call terrorists, to take on Islamic State. Washington doesn’t seem to have a plan for disarming the militias before they start fighting for control of disputed ancestral Kurdish lands held by Turkey.

So the key question has become not if the Kurds will announce some sort of statehood, but whether the Kurds will go to war with Turkey to round out their territorial claims in the process. The United States, with the ties that previously bound Washington and Ankara weakened following Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian crackdown, might just be ready to stand aside and allow Kurdish ambitions to play out. The Kurds are respected in American conservative circles important to Trump, and the Turks have fewer friends than ever there. Kurdish oil will be welcome to Washington, and the Kurds have always championed close security ties with the U.S. A strong U.S.-Kurd alliance will also help Trump keep Iran in check.

Meanwhile, an Obama-era marriage of practicality which brought Shi’ite militias into the fight against Islamic State will not play out as well for Trump.  Any reluctance on the part of the United States to act as a restraining force on the Iraqi central government’s empowering of Shi’ite militias disappeared in 2014. As the Iraqi National Army collapsed in front of Islamic State, the crisis demanded battle-ready forces, and the militias were the only option available outside of Kurdish-controlled areas. www.mesop.de