Last week I was fifty miles from Mosul in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq where life was fairly normal and safe although its calm was occasionally pierced by the sirens of ambulances speeding wounded soldiers to hospital and American helicopters clattering above.
Government officials turned up each day to my course at the European Technology and Training Centre on public media strategies and the rule of law. This clearly illustrates the chasm between the Hobbesian brutality in Mosul and the democratic aspirations of the Kurds.
Reliable public information is imperative. Two years ago, the so-called Islamic State launched a surprise attack on Erbil and came within twenty miles. Many panicked and took social media messages at face value although IS has been adept in spreading fear and disinformation via social media.
The sudden flight of Kurds from Erbil could have hampered military operations but Erbil was swiftly saved by Western airstrikes and Western countries have since given the Peshmerga rigorous training to defend their 650 mile border with IS. The reinvigorated and tighter Peshmerga are now an essential component of the forces that began an offensive against Mosul last week. Thanks to good co-operation between the central government and Kurdistan, which have been in dispute for many years, and Western support, significant progress is being made.
But those who have visited the frontline say the Peshmerga are still underequipped albeit with an enthusiastic hatred of those who attacked their precious religious pluralism and who would exterminate them in the blink of an eye.
IS will surely be defeated but they have had two years to prepare their defences. A journalist told me that they pop up left and right from tunnels where they hide for weeks. One British television crew was attacked several times by suicide car bombs. The Iraqis and Kurds are capturing or besieging village after village on their way to Mosul. Many villages will be destroyed because buildings, bricks, and bodies have all been booby-trapped. Some villages are not worth trying to preserve although this means a huge cost in reconstruction but that beats dead soldiers and civilians.
Mosul itself is chock-a-block with traps, tunnels, and snipers as well as a hostage populace but will be liberated. IS fighters will either die, surrender or flee to Syria, and the full magnitude of IS repression will stun the world. But taking Mosul does not seal the deal because the virus of extremism has taken hold and it will take years to dampen and reverse.
Furthermore, the future governance of Mosul and Sunni lands is part of the wider Sunni-Shia schism and competing strategic goals. Unless widespread Sunni estrangement from Baghdad’s Shia-dominated government is assuaged by either regionalisation or even partition, some Sunnis will be prey to new forms of IS extremism, which could take new form.
It may also take years before Sunni Arabs, Christians and the Yazidis feel able to return home. Many of the nearly two million people who have taken refuge in the normally five million strong Kurdistan Region will stay in its camps and cities, although this is massively straining the once dynamic Kurdistani economy and basic public services.
The map of the whole region has been eroded in practice and adjustments to the theory could follow. It seems improbable that Iraq can remain intact and the Kurds are keen, at some point, on independence because they have been constantly let down by Baghdad but greater internal unity is essential to that popular aspiration.
The Mosul military offensive clearly overlaps the American electoral cycle but the politics and economics need a much longer time span. The worst thing would be to declare mission accomplished when the Iraqi flag is hoist over Mosul or the IS death cult leader faces charges of war crimes and genocide.
My hope is that the Kurdistan Region can kick-start vital political and economic reform and again be a beacon of pluralism and dynamism. The Kurds in Iraq are reliable and essential allies in a long global fight for decency.
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Gary Kent was in Kurdistan for about the 25th time. He is Director of the APPG on the Kurdistan Region but writes in a personal capacity. He tweets at @garykent
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