Kurdish future depends on slow political ratchet

Violence is once again tearing Iraq apart. The fall of Mosul did not just mark the terrifying rise of jihadists from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL – now calling itself the Islamic State), but also the beginning of a wider Sunni insurgency which has been long in the making: GSN has been writing about Baathists and Salafis pooling resources to fight the government in Baghdad since 2009, in a series of sadly prescient analyses which even anticipated co-operation with Sunni insurgents in Syria.