A Post-ISIS Iraq

As recently as 2016, the mood in Iraq and among its western partners in confronting ISIS was gloomy. Popular wisdom in both Washington and the Middle East was that Mosul probably could not be retaken—at least not without terrible sectarian repercussions and some version of the brutal methods used by the Assad regime and its allies in nearby Aleppo.¹

Yet today, national sentiment in Iraq is at an all-time high and the scent of victory is in the air, presenting a highly favorable moment for the valuable U.S.-Iraqi alliance.

After reclaiming Iraqi territory in Mosul, Kirkuk, and elsewhere this autumn, the Western-leaning government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is riding high. Now, all of ISIS’ Iraqi territory has been liberated.² But a key national election looms in May, and Iran is doing its best to put its own man—be this Nouri al-Maliki or someone else—back in the prime minister’s seat.

In Aleppo, the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian allies often deliberately targeted the civilian population, using barrel bombs, artillery fire, chemical weapons, denial of food and medical supplies, and jet strikes against hospitals, among other tactics, to take the city from the anti-Assad rebels. Had Iraq’s Shia-dominated government and its coalition allies used such tactics in largely Sunni Mosul, the campaign would have deepened the sectarian problems that gave ISIS fertile ground in the first place. Instead, despite inevitable collateral damage, the anti-ISIS campaign was conducted with remarkable sensitivity and restraint towards civilians.³ The victory in Mosul was won with a military efficiency—often thanks to U.S. help—extremely rare in the annals of emerging nations. Iraqis are justly proud of how they have handled a threat that, at some point or another, almost all of them considered existential.

The ISIS crisis was fundamentally sectarian in origin, mostly pitting elements of the Sunni north and west against a central government supported by the Shi’a center and south. That al-Abadi managed to win the war while avoiding the large-scale sectarian bloodshed so widely predicted has benefited him on the domestic political front.

Even before the victories of last year, al-Abadi was doing well among Iraq’s Sunnis. An April 2017 opinion poll commissioned by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) put al-Abadi’s favorability in the Sunni west of Iraq at a remarkable 68 percent. A common quip heard by one of this paper’s authors during a recent trip to Baghdad is that al-Abadi is more popular in Anbar than he is among his Shi’a base.⁴ Throughout the ISIS crisis, al-Abadi struck a far less sectarian posture than did his predecessor, the traditionally Tehran-backed Nouri al-Maliki.

Al-Abadi has also handled the thorny Kurdish question well. In 2014, the two ruling parties of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) took advantage of the ISIS crisis to seize broad swathes of Iraqi federal territory. From the Syrian border in the west to the Iranian frontier in the east, the Kurds occupied land in four Iraqi provinces. The jewel among these assets was the oil-rich and ethnically mixed northern city of Kirkuk. In October of 2017, al-Abadi’s forces reclaimed almost all of this territory, including Kirkuk.

Al-Abadi’s military moves to reclaim territory from the Kurds were relatively bloodless (Kurdish casualties in Kirkuk numbered fewer than 100)⁵ and the physical objectives were achieved swiftly. Enforcing certain constitutional prerogatives for the first time, Baghdad shut down international air access to the two KRI regional capitals of Erbil and Suleymaniya and demanded control of the principal land border crossings. Al-Abadi asserted Iraq’s federal integrity and secured his nationalist flank in the run-up to the vital election this May.

The Kurds enjoy a certain romance in Washington, and many of their factions do lean towards the United States. But among Iraqi Kurds and Arabs alike, al-Abadi benefits from the contrast between a resurgent Baghdad government enjoying democratic legitimacy and the struggling autocracies of the KRI.⁶

The eastern half of Iraqi Kurdistan generally did not want the September 2017 independence referendum and has long been comfortable with the federal relationship with Baghdad. The Iraqi national flag, for example, is more or less banned in the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP)-run west of the KRI, but flies in many places in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)-dominated east. Despite their nationalism, many Iraqi Kurds know that a future loosely linked to Iraq under Baghdad’s ultimate suzerainty, as during the long and relatively stable Ottoman centuries, makes them richer, safer, more free, and more connected to the world. Washington, backing al-Abadi and supporting Iraq’s traditional arrangements while calling for moderation on the ground, has so far handled the issue well.

Things are also looking much better on the economic front. Since the ISIS invasion, Iraqi oil production (ex-Kurdistan) has risen from an average of 3.6 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2014 to over 4.4 million bpd by the end of 2017.⁷ This represents, after the U.S. shale surge, probably the largest production increase in the world during the period. These authors estimate that over 90 percent of Iraq’s production increase over this period has come from the south.

The 70 percent collapse of global crude prices in 2014-16 (from about $110/barrel in early 2014 to a low of $30/barrel in early 2016)⁸ meant that, when coupled with the ISIS invasion, Iraq faced, until quite recently, a genuine perfect storm. Just as ISIS took nearly a third of Iraq’s national territory, Iraqi government revenues, almost entirely dependent on oil exports, suffered a corresponding cut. With humanitarian and military needs surging just as revenues collapsed, the moment presented a severe test for the Iraqi financial system. Throughout the crisis, Iraq continued service on its external debt while the domestic treasury bill market also traded normally. That the country survived with its credit and currency intact is another highly unusual achievement in the annals of emerging economies.

With the critical May election looming, what all this means on the domestic political front is that Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is riding a wave of support. He is, along with Tunisia’s President Beji Caid Essebsi, the sole genuine elected leader in the Arab world. It is in the U.S. interest that he remains so.

An inevitable consequence of Iraq’s achievements over the last two years has been a surge in national sentiment. In the experience of these authors, the Iraqi sense of nationhood has never been higher. As Iraqis look around the region and see mostly some combination of repression, chaos, or dysfunction, theirs is a country of which they are justly proud. There are few nations that have weathered such a storm so well, and Iraqis, in the experience of these authors, know it.

Non-oil GDP is forecast to grow 3-4 percent per annum over the coming four years.⁹ Meanwhile there is every reason to believe that the scheduled 2018 national parliamentary elections will be as free and fair as their four predecessors of the post-Saddam era. Across a wide range of indicators, Iraq is doing remarkably well.

U.S. prestige in Iraq is also at an all-time high. The ISIS crisis made it clear just how essential U.S. involvement is to the country’s medium-term stability. The United States can provide—and in 2017 did provide—a full spectrum of support: airpower, military trainers, diplomatic assistance, and help navigating the international capital markets while shepherding required IMF reforms and bringing the World Bank to the table. Meanwhile the appalling counterexample in next-door Syria, where Russia and Iran are the regime’s chief supporters, has demonstrated the advantage of partnering with a liberal and democratic superpower. Iraqis, like most people who want to be free, appreciate the unique positive global role of a U.S. that believes in itself.

Iraq has managed to forge warm relations with the Trump administration. Prime Minister al-Abadi’s March 2017 visit to the White House was a successful one, and the follow-on visit of the president’s son-in-law to Baghdad the following month appears to have sealed a new relationship between the prime minister’s office and the White House. The current senior national security and foreign policy leadership in Washington (Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, National Security Advisor John Bolton, CIA Director and Secretary of State-nominee Mike Pompeo, and Chief of Staff John Kelly) has one thing in common on their resumes: Whether through service in America’s two Gulf Wars, or strenuous public advocacy, have all personally committed a great deal to Iraq over many years. The observation also applied to previous team members – Generals Flynn and McMaster and Secretary Tillerson. Not since World War II, if ever, has it been the case that work in a single foreign country has been so formative for the top tier of a U.S. national-security team. The resulting familiarity, trust, relationships, and reserves of personal goodwill were important in the removal of Iraq from the travel ban list. Iraq is a working ally in the War on Terror and this closeness is a major asset in the Muslim world.

As a result, the United States is at a moment of extraordinary potential in its relations with Iraq. This comes just as Iraq prepares to take its place on the world stage as a regional democratic leader and global energy powerhouse. These positive “stars aligned” moments in foreign affairs never last forever. The United States needs to start showing the same urgency and seriousness about the peace in Iraq as was shown during the war against ISIS in 2017.

The strategic U.S. goal in Iraq is to have as healthy and friendly as possible an ally in this key location, enjoying potentially the second-largest oil reserves on earth.¹⁰ America’s ideal Iraq will provide a positive regional example through its freedom and prosperity. The main strategic challenge for the United States in Iraq is to minimize the influence there of the Iranian regime.