The U.S. Must Fulfill Role of Negotiator Between Baghdad, Kurds

Posted: October 20th, 2017

By Michael Knights

Michael Knights is the Lafer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has worked in every Iraqi province and most of the hundred districts, including all the Kurdish areas.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi published an op-ed in the New York Times on Wednesday, denouncing the “illegal” referendum held by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq last month, but more importantly, making an impassioned case for Iraqi unity in the aftermath of ISIS’ defeat.

The potential break-up of Iraq has been a perennial issue ever since the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, but such a split has yet to happen fourteen years later – and six years since almost all U.S. forces left the country. There are good reasons why a country like Iraq is harder to break up than to keep together.

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The U.S. Must Fulfill Role of Negotiator Between Baghdad, Kurds

By Michael Knights

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