As ISIS Nears Defeat, Old Rivalries Flare Up With Oil at Stake

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Baghdad and the Kurds go at it, figuring the enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

In 2014, when Islamic State rushed into northern Iraq, the region’s rival factions and their international backers turned their attention to defeating the extremists despite old rivalries, sectarian divisions, and differing agendas. Three years later, as Islamic State nears defeat, having been expelled from its stronghold of Mosul and its self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, many of those old rivalries and unaddressed grievances have burst back to the fore, threatening to further destabilize an already fractious region.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the disputed city of Kirkuk, where Iraqi federal forces loyal to the central government in Baghdad faced down Kurdish fighters for control over Iraq’s oldest producing oil field, named Baba Gurgur, or Father of Fire, by the Kurds in 1927. The long-standing struggle between the government in Baghdad and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) reignited on Oct. 16 as Iraqi tanks entered the outskirts of the city of more than 1 million people.

The Iraqi army and federal police, along with Shiite Arab militiamen, encountered little resistance, seizing oil fields, a refinery, and a military base as the Kurds retreated. The town of Sinjar near the Syrian border fell a day later. “The war against the Islamic State is almost over, but that does not mean that the vacuum has been filled,” says Ayham Kamel, head of the Middle East and North Africa department at Eurasia Group Ltd. “This is a complex process where local forces and the central governments will also have a role. It’s a messy affair, and it will invariably be unstable in some areas.” – READ MORE

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