Sunni and Kurd alliance shows ties of region

The ISIL threat has highlighted how interlinked the region is, both across countries and within them

The involvement of Sunnis, especially in Iraq, where they have recently been alienated from the Shia-led government in Baghdad, is a significant development. Hadi Mizban / AP Photo

The alliance between Sunnis and Kurds against ISIL on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border could be a major milestone in the coalition against the extremist group. Backed by UK fighter jets, both Iraqi and Syrian Kurds joined forces with Sunni fighters to take back a strategic border crossing.

The involvement of Sunnis, especially in Iraq, where they have recently been alienated from the Shia-led government in Baghdad, is a significant development, comparable to the Awakening movement among Sunnis in Iraq in 2005, which led to the calming of the post-Saddam civil war.

In particular, this joining of forces against ISIL has highlighted what should already have been clear. That in a region as tied together as the Middle East, problems in one area will inevitably bleed across borders. The wide spaces between Syria and Iraq have for years been crisscrossed by farmers, who do not recognise the colonial-era borders. Large families, too, extend across the borders of the map.

That interdependence is true even within countries. Nothing illustrates this so clearly as the situation in Iraq, with regard to the three major communties of Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. The ISIL threat was bred in the discontent of Sunnis in the west of Iraq over their treatment by the Shia-led government in Baghdad. Shias, after years of repression under Saddam Hussein, were willing to turn a blind eye to the sectarianism of Nouri Al Maliki, feeling that they were merely redressing a historic imbalance of power. But the problem that started in the Sunni area spread rapidly, until ISIL threatened the Shia communties in Baghdad itself.

The same occurred with the Kurds in northern Iraq, who have, for similar historic reasons, tried to carve out a de facto state in Iraqi Kurdistan. Even as the ISIL problem developed, Kurds felt it was something for “Iraq” – the Arab parts of the country to the south. But then ISIL routed the Kurdish peshmerga, and the Kurds had to appeal to the central government in Baghdad for assistance.

Such interdependence works both ways. The Sunni-Kurdish alliance is essential to drive ISIL out. But for the long-term security of Iraq, the Sunnis and the Kurds must be given true and fair representation in the government in Baghdad. Such representation is not a reward; it is a right.