Abstract

For most Kurds in Iraq, including politicians, ISIS attacks on their cities were unexpected. Kurds were so confident of the new reality of Iraq that they put their biggest efforts toward independence, rather than concerning themselves with potential attacks from ISIS. However, suddenly, and shortly after they captured Mosul, ISIS launched a severe attack on Kurdish forces, the “Peshmerga,” and the territories under their control. Still, the main question for the majority of Kurds remained a puzzle: why has ISIS attacked us? This study tries to answer why ISIS launched an unexpected attack on Kurdish forces and territories in Iraq in 2005 by applying the security dilemma theory in the intrastate level, which is part of a realist paradigm in international relations. We argue that a security dilemma between the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds since 2003, as a result of the collapse of Iraqi sovereignty and the emergence of anarchy, pushed ISIS to attack the Kurds to eliminate the Kurdish threat We have used various methods to acquire substantive and reliable information to support our claim empirically, including interviews with Iraqi MPs and Kurdish journalists. Empirical evidence provides a supportive answer to our main hypotheses.