Kurdish independence vote damages U.S. efforts to preserve unified Iraq

WASHINGTON - 27 September 2017: A vote by Iraq's minority Kurds for independence is a blow to the United States, which has spent years, billions of dollars and the lives of thousands of troops trying to hold Iraq together, former U.S. officials and other policy experts said.

A diplomatic drive to forestall Monday's referendum failed to persuade Kurdish leaders, some of the United States' closest Middle Eastern allies, in what likely will be seen as fresh proof of diminishing American power, they said.

The Kurds, who have ruled over a semi-autonomous region within Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, consider the result an historic step in a generations-old quest for a state of their own.

"This is a major setback," said James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "It robs us of the argument that only the U.S. can keep Iraq united."

As a result, the United States could find it harder to stop predominantly Shi'ite Muslim Iran from filling the vacuum left by Islamic State's defeat through Shi'ite militias and other allies in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere, they said.

Moreover, the vote to give Kurdish leaders a mandate to negotiate independence for their region of more than 8.3 million threatens to ignite more strife. That could hinder U.S.-backed efforts to stabilize Iraq, eliminate the remnants of Islamic State, or ISIS, and similar groups.

"We see considerable risk," said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The gravest danger is a conflict over the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other ethnically mixedKurdish-held areas pitting Iraqi troops and Iran-backed Shi'ite militias against the Peshmerga, theKurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) U.S.-trained paramilitary force.

Such bloodletting could foreclose Trump administration hopes of promoting negotiations between Baghdad and the KRG and avert a Kurdish declaration of independence.

"We say keep your eye on the ball," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Tuesday. "This kind of division right now could potentially hurt Iraq."

A conflict also could halt U.S.-backed operations to return home Sunnis displaced by the battles that have reclaimed nearly all the "caliphate" Islamic State declared in 2014.