The United States, along with leaders in the Middle East, wasted the opportunity to build on the temporary anti-ISIS wartime alliance to address deeper conflicts. They did not begin laying the foundations for reunified states that elicited loyalty from disenfranchised populations, like Kurds and Sunnis. Instead, they ignored all the festering divisions, and, in many cases, made them worse. In Iraq, the United States emboldened a corrupt and ineffectual Kurdish leadership, which had let its peshmerga fighters fall into an alarming state of disarray. It rearmed the Iraqi military as well, aware that both the Kurds and Baghdad were likely, at a later stage, to aim at one other the weapons they were given to fight ISIS. Kirkuk is just one harbinger of the post-ISIS struggle, which is likely to break out with renewed fury like a cancer surging back after remission.
