The recent provincial elections in Iraq excluded the four provinces of Kurdistan but did include the mixed border province of Nineveh, which was won by Al Hadbaa, an Arab nationalist party. McClatchy’s Leila Fadel reports:
Along a 300-mile strip of disputed territory that stretches across northern Iraq [] the elections have rekindled the longstanding hostility between Sunni Muslim Arabs and Sunni Kurds, and there are growing fears that war could erupt.
….Because Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki ran on a strong central government platform and America’s restraining influence will wane as U.S. troops draw down during the next three years, there may be nothing to stop a Kurdish-Arab war.
“They will actually try to draw a new green line,” said Joost Hiltermann, the deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group. “Kurds have been strong since 2003, and now they’re not as strong and they’ve somewhat overreached. The question is: Are they going to concede some things or are they going to fight over this?”
“Violence could happen for sure,” Hiltermann said. “Eventually, the strongest is going to win. The question is, who is the strongest? The Kurds have pushed the bridge too far, and they don’t have the power to realize it.”
The good news, I suppose, is that a Kurdish-Arab war has been right around the corner for years, but it never happens. So maybe it won’t this time either. But this is still the soft underbelly of Iraqi federalism and worth keeping an eye on.
