Gulf Wars drag on: Walt's guide to who's fighting who

Even though it's the longest-running continuous military engagement in US history, some time has passed since the Gulf Wars (aka Oil Wars) was front page news in the Paranoid States of America. That may be about to change as the fighting enters a new phase.

Now that the ISIS (the Sunni Muslim terrorist "state") has been more or less defeated, at least in Iraq, the "victors" -- Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north -- are starting to fight each other. Western armed forces, mostly American, are caught in the middle, "training and advising" both sides.

The last noteworthy battle in Iraq, which dragged on through most of this summer, was in Mosul, the heart of the Kurdish part of Iraq, also in the middle of large oil fields. The area is also home to millions of Arabs, Turkmen, Yazidis and a few thousand persecuted Christians. Mainly Kurdish forces, led into battle by American and Canadian "trainers" succeeded in driving out the ISIS jihadis.

Last month, flush with success and swimming in oil money, the Kurdish government of the semi-autonomous region held a referendum on independence, in defiance of Iraq's central government in Baghdad. To no-one's surprise, the Kurds voted overwhelmingly in favour of declaring the own republic. They already had a flag, so figured a state would make the set complete. The Iraqi government immediately called on foreign countries to stop importing oil from the Kurdish region and to deal with them instead.

This weekend the Iraqi government dropped the other shoe. The so-called Iraqi National Army and state-backed Shia militias launched a major, multi-pronged attack aimed at retaking Kirkuk. Kurdish forces appeared to be pulling back, abandoning fortified positions around the airport as large numbers of civilians fled the northern city ahead of a feared assault.

This latest phase in what is essentially a Muslim civil war pits two close US allies against each other, potentially undermining the unfinished war against ISIS. There is a very real possibility, right now, of American "trainers" and "special forces" being killed by Canadians, or (more likely) vice versa. Walt says it's folly to take sides in this conflict -- a waste of money and of the precious lives of our troops. Let the Muslims duke it out! We can buy oil from any of them... hell, all of them!

Further reading: Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks (Penguin Press 2006).