Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


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.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate