"ISIS Consolidates" But an Independent Kurdistan is Here to Stay

It appears that Maliki has a legitimate beef. Iraqi president, Fuad Masum, a Kurd, should have nominated Maliki, as head of the largest parliamentary bloc, prime minister and given him a shot at forming a new government. Instead, with the United States working diligently behind the scene to make sure Maliki was afforded no such opportunity, president Masum designated Haider al-Abadi, a member of Maliki's Dawa Party, prime minister. (There was a good OpEd yesterday by Zaid al-Ali, "Iraq’s Rot Starts at the Top," singling out Abadi as the best of a group of potential Maliki replacements because he is open to outside influence. Coincidence? Probably not.)

Maliki responded to his ouster by mustering troops in the Green Zone in Baghdad and promising legal action in the courts. But as noted in "Iraqis Nominate Maliki Successor, Causing Standoff," by Tim Arango, Alissa Rubin and Michael Gordon,

The question is whether Mr. Abadi, who like many of Iraq’s Shiite leaders led a life of exile until the American invasion in 2003 ousted Saddam Hussein, can forge a grand political bargain with meaningful roles for the two significant minority factions, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. Under the Constitution, he has a 30-day window to conclude the sort of back-room deals — promises of positions and ministries, which sustain Iraq’s system of patronage — that would be the backbone of a new government.

With 30 days to form a government Maliki can make a lot of mischief. He has an extensive security force at his disposal. But the reality is that he has all the big players lined up against him: Iran, the U.S. and the religious authority of Grand Ayatollah Sistani; plus, if things got hot in the Green Zone, it would be forces loyal to Maliki against Muqtada al-Sadr's militias and the Badr Corps of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. Baghdad would be weakened by such fighting and rendered easy prey for Islamic State.

No, Maliki is gone. The writing on the wall is clear. The U.S. is dangling more support upon formation of a new government by Abadi. It seems as if the Obama administration will get its wish, which is for a federalized Iraq, a nation composed of three states: Kurdistan, Sunnistan and Shiastan.

Already the U.S. is greasing the skids on arms shipments -- weapons of all kinds, both light and heavy -- to the Kurds. The CIA has taken the lead, but the Pentagon is not far behind. Kurdistan is here to stay. That appears to be fact now. Allow me to quote at length a good story, "Pentagon Says Airstrikes Have Slowed but Not Stopped Sunni Militants," by Helene Cooper and Alissa Rubin:

The Central Intelligence Agency has begun directly supplying weapons to pesh merga fighters, administration officials said, after weeks of pleas and demands from leaders in the country’s semiautonomous Kurdish region for help in fighting ISIS. But it remains unclear just how much weaponry the United States has funneled through to the Kurds so far; military officials said they would probably begin sending small-arms munitions soon, too.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.

“The pesh merga are composed of capable, disciplined forces who deserve their reputation as fierce mountain-war fighters,” a United States official said. “However, it’s been almost a decade since their mostly light infantry brigades have been tested in battle, so it’s not surprising that they’ve taken some knocks from ISIL.”

The Kurds, who say they need armor-piercing munitions to help penetrate heavily fortified tanks captured by ISIS fighters from both the Syrian and Iraqi militaries, will soon be getting long-range weapons as well. 

“Some of the ISIL forces have a longer-range weapons system, so we need to make sure that the government of Iraq and the Iraqi security forces are providing longer-range weapons themselves to the Kurdish forces,” General Mayville said. 

The Kurds have asked the United States to provide — or in some way help them obtain — sniper rifles, mortars, heavy machine guns, wire-guided antitank weapons and antitank guns, rocket-propelled grenades, Humvees and tanks, among other weapons, Kurdish officials said. They have also asked for body armor and helicopters for evacuations.

A senior military official said Monday that the Pentagon was concentrating on rifles and machine guns. He declined to say what kinds of weapons the C.I.A. had begun supplying the Kurds. 

A second Pentagon official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity as a matter of policy, said that the Defense Department had yet to decide whether it would supply the pesh merga with antitank guns, but that “whatever they are getting will be in line with meeting the proper requirements for the kind of defenses that they’re conducting.” 

In the past, American officials have been hesitant about directly supplying weapons to the Kurds, who differ with Iraq’s current prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, over the division of oil resources and how much territory should fall within the Kurdistan region’s borders. In addition, the Kurds initially took advantage of the conflict with ISIS to expand their own territory in northern Iraq. Many Obama administration officials say privately that they do not expect Kurdistan to remain part of Iraq once the fighting is over.

So even though the pesh merga were routed by Islamic State in Jalawla, a town in Diyala Province that borders Kurdistan, forcing the vaunted Kurdish fighters to stage another "tactical retreat," it is clear that with robust support from the United States the Kurds will hold on. What these means in terms of oil revenue and the status of Kirkuk is unclear; it also unclear at this point the extent to which the Obama administration is willing to roll back IS's gains in northern Iraq. Patrick Cockburn's article, "Isis Consolidates" in the London Review of Books, recommended Sunday by the Moon of Alabama blog, paints a picture of a caliphate that is going to be around for some time.

Cockburn is of the opinion that an attack on Baghdad is inevitable and that Iraq's Shia are in a state of denial, having drunk the Kool-Aid handed out by the U.S. that the problem is Maliki and that once Maliki goes all will right itself.

In the near term, Cockburn thinks that IS will turn its attention again to toppling Assad, starting with Aleppo. And that once the Syrian Arab Army crumbles the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East, the Israelis and the Gulf monarchies, not to mention Iran and Hezbollah, will have a real crisis to contend with.

Cockburn is of the school of thought that IS is a Frankenstein monster, a creation of the Saudis that has proven too powerful to control. Now it is pursuing its own agenda. I am skeptical of this.