Remember that Arab-Kurdish Feud?

It’s hard to say whether things are heat­ing up in Mosul between the Kurds and the Iraqi gov­ern­ment or whether it’s the lat­est out­break of a fes­ter­ing sore, but either way, it doesn’t look good:

The Shiite-led gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is squeez­ing out Kur­dish units of the Iraqi Army from Mosul, send­ing the national police and army from Bagh­dad and try­ing to forge alliances with Sunni Arab hard-liners in the province, who have deep-seated feuds with the Kur­dis­tan Regional Gov­ern­ment led by Mas­soud Barzani.

The Kurds are resist­ing, under­scor­ing yet again the depth of eth­nic and sec­tar­ian divi­sions here and the dif­fi­culty of cre­at­ing a united Iraq even when over­all vio­lence is down. Ten­sion has risen to the point that last week Amer­i­can com­man­ders held a series of emer­gency meet­ings with the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and Kur­dish offi­cials, seek­ing to head off vio­lence essen­tially between fac­tions of the Iraqi government.

“It’s the per­fect storm against the old fes­ter­ing back­ground,” warned Brig. Gen. Ray­mond A. Thomas III, who over­sees Nin­eveh and Kirkuk Provinces and the Kur­dish region.

Worry is so high that the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary has already set­tled on a pol­icy that may set a prece­dent, as the United States slowly with­draws to allow Iraqis to set­tle their own prob­lems. If the Kurds and Iraqi gov­ern­ment forces fight, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary will “step aside,” Gen­eral Thomas said, rather than “have United States ser­vice­men get killed try­ing to play peacemaker.”

Many observers have assumed the flash­point for an Arab-Kurdish war over Iraq’s north­ern regions would be sparked by unrest in Kirkurk. But per­haps Mosul is the real problem.

Actu­ally, it seems the entire bor­der zone of the Kur­dish region is a prob­lem, with intense per­sonal ani­mos­ity between Barzani and Maliki. There have been armed stand-offs between the Kur­dish pesh merga and Iraqi Army units in Diyala, and Barzani has referred to the Iraqi prime min­is­ter as a new Sad­dam Hus­sein. It doesn’t help that Maliki is ally­ing him­self with Arabs from Mosul who have deep ties to the for­mer regime, includ­ing the for­mer gen­eral who led the inva­sion of Kuwait. He’s also been try­ing to purge the Army up there of its Kur­dish lead­er­ship caus­ing some offi­cers to announce that their loy­alty is to Kur­dis­tan and not Iraq.

If ten­sions do erupt up north, things could get worse all over. First of all, it would renew ques­tions of why the Amer­i­cans are in Iraq if they’re not going to stop their two biggest allies from going at each other. Sec­ondly, it could cre­ate a secu­rity vac­uum that for­eign fight­ers could exploit to start enter­ing Iraq in larger num­bers again. The exo­dus of Chris­tians could worsen. And of course, the price of oil could start to creep up.

All in all, not a good sign and a reminder that Iraq ain’t over yet.

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