In its single-minded pursuit of an anti-ISIL agenda in Syria and Iraq, the United States risks creating a situation as bad, if not worse than, what we have today. Washington may precipitate a breakdown of state structures in both countries that leaves Sunni communities there more vulnerable to extremist groups.
That is not to say that the focus on ISIL is mistaken. However, it was always apparent that a necessary component in the fight was to put in place post-conflict environments that would ensure that ISIL, or similar groups, do not return.
The situations in Syria and Iraq differ, but have similar implications. In Syria, the United States is supporting an offensive by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to recapture the ISIL “capital” of Raqqa. The SDF is a mixed Kurdish-Arab group dominated by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People’s Protection Units (YPG).
To Arab Sunnis in Raqqa, who have watched the Kurds creating the contours of a Kurdish entity in north-eastern Syria by expelling Arabs from certain areas, the picture is not reassuring. Their fear is that if ISIL is defeated in Raqqa, the Kurds will seek to maintain their control over the city by ethnically cleansing the Arab population. This has led some anti-ISIL groups, such as Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, to call on its inhabitants to fight the Kurds.
From the Kurdish perspective things are different. The Kurds do not regard Raqqa as part of an eventual Kurdish entity. They are not particularly pleased to have been pushed into the battle for the city by America, as it will be costly in terms of manpower. However, the PYD knows that this is an American priority and cannot afford to say no to its main international sponsor.
At the same time, Turkey is watching the progress of the Kurds in Syria with anxiety. Ankara has warned against Kurdish expansion, but this has not greatly altered the behaviour of the United States, which believes, correctly, that Turkey played a double game in Syria by supporting ISIL to contain the Kurds.
Nevertheless, the real dream of the PYD is linking the Kurds’ eastern enclave (which it calls Rojava) with its western enclave around Afrin. The united Kurdish areas would effectively be a proto-state along a sizeable share of the border between Turkey and Syria, adjoining Kurdish areas in southern Turkey.
This would represent a red line for Ankara, and the Obama administration has tried to reassure the Turks on this front. However, at some point the Americans will have to be clearer about what it is the Kurds are entitled to expect. The Kurds won’t serve as cannon fodder on behalf of the Americans against ISIL for nothing in exchange.
In Iraq the situation is somewhat different. Iraq’s Kurds, joined in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), have long been close allies of the United States, and maintain good relations with Turkey. They are preparing for the time when ISIL will be expelled from Mosul, and their objective is to shape the aftermath in such a way as to protect Kurdish interests.
As Renad Mansour, an analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Centre, recently wrote, the KRG realises that Mosul is an Arab city, and will not seek to enter it.
Rather its priority is putting in place an Arab leadership that is friendly to the Kurds, and, above all, that will keep out the authority of the Iraqi central government, as well as Shia militias.
As Mr Mansour wrote, what happens in Mosul “will be about much more than Mosul. For the Kurds in particular, it may serve as the final test of whether Iraq can effectively manage its diverse communities and function as a single federal state.”
The Kurds of Iraq, like those of Syria, share a desire to consolidate their autonomy at the expense of their respective states, or what remains of them.
That may be reasonable, given the failures of the state in post-Saddam Iraq and Bashar Al Assad’s Syria. However, in collaborating with them, the United States must know it could be facilitating the disintegration of these states, which was never its stated intention.
Take, for example, the US Defence Department’s payment in April of $415 million (Dh1.56bn) directly to the Kurdish peshmerga to fight ISIL.
The transfer circumvented the Iraqi central government, which was unprecedented. The fight against ISIL is also turning into much more than the fight against ISIL. It will have a defining impact on the future of Iraq and Syria, and Washington cannot hide behind “political realism” to defend itself.
That is why Barack Obama’s insistence that not getting involved in Syria was the right choice sounds foolish.
The US is involved in Syria, and Iraq, in ways that could be far-reaching if Washington does not think beyond ISIL. What America helps break it may have to own. But Mr Obama could be calculating that by then he will be safely out of office.
Michael Young is a writer and editor in Beirut
On Twitter: @BeirutCalling