Playing Iraq's Game of Thrones

The past few weeks of events in Iraq have been both personally and professionally depressing. The fall of Tal Afar was personally depressing because I spent a year in that area back in 2006-2007 living with and serving alongside an Iraqi battalion as an army reservist on a military transition team in a base along the Mosul-Sinjar highway. I got to know many Iraqi soldiers, particularly Shiite Arabs from the southern part of the country and Kurds from the northeast.

Professionally, the situation is depressing because things have fallen apart in the country and the consequences of any particular number of courses of action portend poorly for the multiethnic peoples of Iraq and numerous other countries in the region. George R.R. Martin could not write a more complicated “game of thrones” than what is unfolding now.

The current state of play looks something like the following. The takfiri radicals of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as ISIL or ISIS, have been methodically expanding their areas of control. (Takfir is the practice of excommunicating other Muslims who do not follow their own particular notions of Islam.) Shiites and Sufis are not considered Muslims by them, but they also apply this doctrine to Sunnis who do not accept their beliefs.

To be sure, they have been aided by a coalition of former Baathists and angry Sunni Arabs, who are upset at poor treatment from the Shiite dominated regime in Baghdad’s actions. The men under the black banners have stated that the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 (this French and British arrangement gave us the borders of the modern Middle East) is dead, that there is now a caliphate and that the Syrian-Iraq border no longer exists. They seized the western side of the city of Mosul (a city split by the Tigris River and ethnic divides) and hundreds of millions of dollars of funds from the Iraqi bank there, as well as Iraqi Army and security forces equipment, including a lot of equipment provided under American military assistance programs. They advanced and are currently pushing toward Baghdad, a divided city due to the sectarian cleansing that occurred there during the darkest days of the war.

[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on the Conflict in Iraq]

Wealthy donors in the Gulf have been happy to fund the bloodletting in both Syria and Iraq because they see this as an existential struggle within Islam between Sunnis and Shiite – and these fights are also seen in geopolitical terms as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. ISIS has been ascending in popularity and has largely displaced al-Qaida as the key mover and shaker in the international jihadi struggle. ISIL is the inheritor of the legacy of Abu Musab Zarqawi and the implications of a sustained victory of these forces, if they can consolidate and hold terrain and not alienate the less zealous populace, which is by no means assured at this time, foreshadow many bad things to come for the region. The jihadists will try to spread conflict to Jordan. Conflict between Arab Sunni and Shiite populaces in the Gulf States (particularly in the eastern oilfields of Saudi Arabia) could be inevitable. The problem with the doctrine of takfir is that it is like a wildfire and once it is let out it is difficult to reel back in.

In reaction to recent events, the Kurds have seized their prime geopolitical objective: the city of Kirkuk and its vast oil fields. They did so in the vacuum created when Iraqi security forces evaporated at the sign of the strength and fervor of the ISIL coalition. The problem, however, is that the main pipeline that carries oil from Kirkuk runs to the southwest toward the ISIL captured town of Bayji and then runs north through “Takfiristan” through the ethnically blended (Arab, Turkomen, Kurd and some Yazidi) sections of territory up to Rafiah, across the (once?) Syrian border, and up into Turkey. (The area of operations of the Iraqi Army battalion that I served with had a large sector of this pipeline running through it.) The Kurds however might be able to patch this into its other pipeline system in time.

The Kurds therefore need to strike a modus vivendi with Baghdad or ISIL in order to get the oil out until they can build a pipeline through their own territory. Either they can make their state de jure or leverage any assistance for greater autonomy. Kurdistan is now basically the east side of the Tigris River (to include East Mosul) from Kirkuk up.

Nouri al-Maliki’s government now basically controls the Shia majority sections surrounding the capital and to the south. Shia Arab and Turkomen militias have formed to back the government – knowing that defeat could lead to their extermination at the hands of the extremists. Baghdad had requested American air strikes to assist them in holding the line against the Sunni drive, but that has been rebuffed thus far. Iran meanwhile has sent Quds force military advisers to help the Iraqi government fight back.

Baghdad must decide whether to try to recover all of its territory or cut deals with various factions such as the Kurds. As Maliki’s policies helped to exacerbate the current situation he can either decide to try to build some sort of genuine consensus across various sectarian factions (which is easier said than done at the moment) or else fight fire with fire and resort to the same type of brutality that ISIL has to try to wrestle control of the country into Baghdad’s hands.

[READ: Iraq Falls Apart to ISIL After Obama Withdrawal]

What, if anything, should the U.S. do about the situation? Some counsel that nothing should be done and the fire needs to burn. Others claim that we must do something. Still others wish to make this about politics and blame this on either former President George W. Bush’s invasion or President Barack Obama’s withdrawal in 2011. Regardless of one’s views and political proclivities, such narratives and back and forth are no substitute for sensible and sober policymaking. Airpower will not solve the situation on the ground especially considering that such force is only effective when we have the type of targeting data necessary to put the right ordnance on the right people. Nor will large numbers of American troops even if there was one scintilla of support for sending them, which there is not. The U.S. must try to use diplomacy to work across all of these actors to leverage formal and informal relationships and to try to balance the different geopolitical appetites or else decrease the negative consequences of any parties’ actions. Consider these motivations:

*Maliki and the Iraqi Shi’a desire to ensure another Sunni strong man (or worse a Takfiri) doesn’t take power and suppress them;

*moderate Sunnis' desires not to live under a Shia theocracy nor live in a Sunni extremist state where smoking can get one lashed;

*Kurdish desires for eventual independence; and

*Iranian desires for the maintenance of a pliable government in Iraq and Assad to remain in power in Syria.

Undeniably this is a tall order. Many parties will try to draw us in to advance their agendas. Any assistance to any party must be given with many strings attached. Any support on the ground must be of a covert nature otherwise we will be blamed, rightly or wrongly, when things go wrong. Such diplomacy may not work. After all, diplomacy only works when backed up with the credible threat of the use of military force which does not seem likely at the moment and in many ways may be why ISIL has been emboldened to try to expand its “Caliphate” after we failed to act in any tangible way in Syria. In the end, if Iraq is to be anything more than a geographical expression then either Maliki must make an inclusive Iraqi government or else the fissiparous tendencies of Iraq must give way to a three state solution and the extremism of ISIL must be dealt with through local parties.

We may not even have the necessary diplomatic skills to be able to carry out all that is necessary. Indeed, Tywin Lannister himself might not be able to cajole, maneuver and orchestrate all of the moving parts. But we must realize that while we can’t do everything there are serious consequences for doing nothing, too. ISIL is in competition with al-Qaida for funds, followers and leadership of the global jihadi movement. As my colleague Clint Watts pointed out last month the successes of ISIL may drive al-Qaida to try to carry out a spectacular attack to try to reassert its relevance. This doesn’t mean that we should open the coffers of American blood and treasure to tame the situation on the ground, but we must recognize that we have some hand in what transpires and we must do so as indirectly as possible while trying to reassert some measure of strength in the region.