With ISIS on the Run, New Wars Could Erupt in Iraq
With ISIS on the Run, New Wars Could Erupt in Iraq by Liz Sly, Washington Post
The front line south of this bleak and dusty town looks much as it did two years ago, when the Islamic State was the enemy and controlled a village less than a mile away.
Now, however, the Kurdish peshmerga fighters holed up behind sandbags and barbed wire are peering across the line at Shiite militias, ostensibly their allies in the fight against the Islamic State.
Whether their alliance will outlast the Islamic State is in question. The militants’ defenses have been crumbling fast across Iraq. An offensive for the city of Mosul, the Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq, is likely by the end of the year, U.S. commanders and Iraqi officials say.
If the battle goes well, the defeat of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq, at least in terms of the territory it controls, is on the horizon.
And so too are new problems — and potentially new conflicts. For the past two years, Kurdish peshmerga, Iraqi Army forces, Shiite militias and some Sunni ones have largely overlooked long-standing differences to confront the menace posed to them. But their feuds and grievances — over vital issues such as the distribution of power, land, money and oil — have not been resolved…