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Iraq’s future hinges on what happens next in Mosul

Iraqis might be more likely to look to Iran or Kurdistan to determine the future stability of their state.

Iraqis celebrate in Tahrir square while holding national flags as they wait for the final announcement of the defeat of the Islamic state, in Baghdad, Iraq, July 9, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/Hadi Mizban
Iraqis celebrate in Tahrir square while holding national flags as they wait for the final announcement of the defeat of the Islamic state, in Baghdad, Iraq, July 9, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/Hadi Mizban

While east and west celebrate the liberation of Mosul from the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), the city’s future, and, therefore, the future of Iraq, are far from certain, as is the U.S. role in rebuilding and stabilizing both.

Iraq’s second largest city and a major trading route, most of Mosul lies in dust, its western districts decimated after nearly nine months of fighting.

The United States has been playing a crucial military role in supporting the fight against ISIS, but the key players — the Iraqis, the Kurds to the north and neighboring Iran — will be the ones to duke it out for control of the region in the long run.

“As far as the Iranian and U.S. roles are concerned, all recent developments point to more confrontation rather than cooperation between the two in post-Islamic State Iraq,” said Ahmad Majidyar, director of the IranObserved Project at the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Institute.

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“Iran opposes the presence of US troops in post-Islamic [State] Iraq and sees it as a threat to its national security interests and regional ambitions. Indeed, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei bluntly conveyed that message to the Iraqi prime minister in a meeting in Tehran last month,” Majidyar told ThinkProgress over email.

The Trump administration’s increasingly hostile stance against Iran also points to a possibility of escalating violence in Iraq.

On Monday, President Trump recertified the Iranian nuclear agreement— despite a record of vocal criticism of the deal — but the next day, the State Department announced new sanctions on 18 Iranian individuals and organizations. In the last month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have also both made comments that the United States should work towards regime change in Iran, which were met with uproar in Iran. This hostility may play out in Iraq.

“As the Trump Administration is working with its allies to isolate Iran and is planning on keeping thousands of troops in Iraq for the long haul, Iranian-supported armed groups in Iraq may wage another violent campaign — as they did after the 2003 invasion — to pressure the U.S. to withdraw its troops,” said Majidyar.

An additional glitch in any future plan to rebuild Iraq (for which there are no solid estimates other than many billions of dollars) is the September 25 Kurdish referendum on independence, which neither the United States nor Iran supports.

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“Iran, similar to Turkey, fears the move could bolster separatism among its own Kurdish population, who live next to the Iraqi Kurdistan. The United States believes that a united Iraq will be in a stronger position to fight terrorism and push back against Iranian influence,” said Majidyar, adding that the vote will be “just the beginning of a very lengthy and messy tension between Erbil that will further complicate Iraq’s post-Islamic State stabilization efforts.”

In order to maintain whatever control it has in Iraq, Iran needs its neighbor to the west to remain stable (after all, there’s been nothing but instability at its eastern border with Afghanistan). And it doesn’t view Kurdish independence as providing that stability. On Monday, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said the Kurdish quest for independence would “in fact put pressure on and isolate Iraqi Kurds and weaken Kurdistan and eventually all of Iraq.”

UN envoy to Iraq Jan Kubis also pointed to the Kurdish independence referendum as a possible obstacle to stabilizing and rebuilding Mosul in his UN Security Council briefing on Monday. But buried in his calls for the need for rule of law and humanitarian assistance — which the UN estimates to be around $985 million, less than half of which has been pledged —was another subtle hint at trouble on the horizon. Iran, along with neighboring Arab states, had confirmed its support “to build on the existing cooperation and increase support, including for the much needed reconstruction of Iraq’s liberated areas,” Kubis said.

But where is this cooperation supposed to come from and how is it supposed to happen?

While the U.S.-backed campaign to reclaim Mosul officially kicked off in October 2016, the Kurds have been fighting ISIS in the area since 2014 with support from Iran. Because the Kurdish Peshmerga forces have been indispensable in the fight against ISIS, the best Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi has been able to do is point to an agreement with the Kurds that they will withdraw after the fight is over.

Massoud Barzani, the Iranian-born president of the Kurdish region, has made it clear that there are no plans to draw down. In November, he claimed that the Kurds are “in agreement with the United States on not withdrawing from the areas of Kurdistan.” These “areas” include a swatch of land in northern Iraq, stretching along its border from Syria to Iran, and includes oil fields and refineries.

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Plus, even as Mosul’s liberation is celebrated, things are far from settled. The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that military victory there has fueled extrajudicial killings of suspected ISIS fighters at the hands of Iraqi forces.

And while all this is going on, there still doesn’t seem to be a serious U.S. plan for post-ISIS reconstruction.

Kenneth Pollack, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former CIA military analyst on Iran and Iraq, has noted that things are still up in the air when it comes to the future of ISIS in Iraq. ISIS fighters, he wrote after returning from Iraq in April, might stay in Iraq if they have enough support from the Sunni community there.

“It is for that reason that it remains disconcerting that neither Iraq nor the U.S.-led Coalition appear to have developed concrete plans for the political reintegration or economic redevelopment of Mosul and Ninevah province,” Pollack wrote at the time.

Fast-forward to three months later, with a liberated Mosul in play, and how does Pollack now think things will shake out in Iraq?

“You just have too many variables at work,” Pollack told ThinkProgress. “You just have no idea how they’re going to interact over time.”

His short list of complications: There’s the Iraqi elections, currently slated for spring 2018, which can distract from the rebuilding process, economic reforms, and government reconciliation. There’s the ongoing presence of armed militia groups and the Kurdish independence vote, which will cause additional tensions between Baghdad and Erbil. And then there’s Iraq’s economic crisis, due in large part to low oil prices.

He dismisses Iran’s hard-line voices calling for the United States to leave Iraq.

“The [Supreme] Leader says all kinds of stuff. You might recall he was dead set making any compromises on the nuclear issue, until all of a sudden he was willing to do so,” said Pollack.

Iran, he said, is essentially balancing its need to “lay down a marker” that would let the Trump administration know it would not tolerate the United States using Iraq as a base against it, while realizing that U.S. military presence in Iraq can prevent further unrest.

“Iran’s minimal acceptable baseline in Iraq is stability — it does not want civil war in Iraq. That was very dangerous for Iran,” said Pollack, who believes that the United States is “in a good position to formulate a plan, we just haven’t so far.”

The danger, though, is that the United States just can’t or won’t learn from its mistakes in Iraq, he said. The Bush and Obama administrations played an uneven hand in the conflict, dealing in surges and draw-downs that left Iraq vulnerable to groups like al Qaeda and ISIS.

“If we did that again, it’s gonna be a disaster… My great fear is we will do that a third time.”