A Kurdish soldier walks near the front line with the Islamic State in November 2015 in Sinjar, Iraq. (John Moore/Getty Images)For nearly a century now, the question of whether there should be an independent Kurdish state has loomed over the Middle East. But if the rise of the Islamic State brought the Kurds together, its impending fall now threatens to tear them apart. The collapse in global oil prices — and concomitant budget crisis — is destabilizing what was already a tenuous power-sharing arrangement among Kurdish political parties in Irbil. No one should doubt America’s military capacity to end the totalitarian regime established by the Islamic State on Iraqi and Syrian soil.

Source: Washington Post February 22, 2017 22:14 UTC