Since the beginning of this March, I have been receiving brief messages from a family member in Sulaymaniyah: “We are fine.” The message often arrives before local news alerts. First comes reassurance; then come reports of another drone, another missile, another long night of uncertainty in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). That sequence captures something essential about how this conflict is being experienced in Iraqi Kurdistan. The most important effects are not only those measured in fatalities or physical destruction, but the steady incorporation of war into everyday life.
Compared with families in places like Iran or Lebanon, my family may still be among the lucky ones. They have not lost their home. They can still send a message. They can still reassure each other. But war does not need to kill you to begin remaking your life around fear. In the KRI, especially in cities like Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, the conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran has not remained a distant geopolitical contest. It has spilled into daily life, energy supplies, markets, sleep, schools, and the nervous system of an entire population. Iraq has increasingly been caught in the crossfire of the war, and Kurdish territory has become one of the places where that pressure is now most visible.
The immediate security picture is serious enough. There were 474 drone, missile, and rocket attacks on the KRI in the first month of the war, killing 14 people and injuring 93 others. Some attacks have targeted sites associated with the United States or with Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in the region. Others have struck Kurdish Peshmerga bases, oil and gas facilities, airports, telecommunication towers, and areas close to civilian life. Even where casualties remain limited relative to larger regional war zones, the cumulative effect is considerable. Repeated attacks erode confidence in the government’s protective capacity and reinforce the perception that the KRI is exposed to threats it cannot meaningfully deter.
That exposure is especially consequential because it affects sectors central to the region’s economic and political resilience. The Khor Mor gas field, a critical part of the KRI’s electricity supply, was shut down as a precaution after the war began, and key oil infrastructure in the region has reportedly remained offline in recent days. The result is not simply a temporary inconvenience. Reduced electricity supply pushes households and businesses back toward costly private generators. In contrast, fuel price increases (Gas cylinders, which are essential for household cooking, have tripled in price) place additional strain on a population already living with delayed salaries, inflation, and prolonged economic uncertainty. In this sense, conflict reaches beyond sites of impact. It enters public services and the region’s already fragile development trajectory.
The civilian burden is not only material but psychological. In Sulaymaniyah, which lacks defensive systems comparable to the U.S. protection around Erbil airport, insecurity is experienced as repetition rather than a singular catastrophe: drones overhead, explosions, rumors spreading quickly through neighborhoods, and improvised local responses with AK-47 to shoot down drones that do little to reassure the public. Such conditions produce more than fear. They generate a durable sense of helplessness, particularly among children, who learn quickly when adults and institutions cannot reliably shield them from events unfolding above them. This is one of the least visible but most enduring costs of prolonged regional escalation.
The KRI’s political position compounds these vulnerabilities. The region sits at the intersection of several relationships it did not freely choose and cannot easily escape. Its post-1991 survival and post-2003 position within Iraq are closely tied to U.S. power. At the same time, it is deeply interconnected with Iran through geography, trade, social ties, and economic necessity. This creates a structural dilemma. The KRI cannot openly align itself with an American or Israeli campaign against Iran, but neither can it fully insulate itself from the consequences of U.S. military presence and strategic competition on Iraqi soil. Its margin for maneuver is narrow, and narrower still when escalation accelerates.
This is the context in which recent attacks on infrastructure should be understood. They are not merely tactical incidents. They signal that the KRI’s economic assets may increasingly be treated as instruments of coercion. Across the region, energy facilities are becoming part of the operational logic of war. For Iraqi Kurdistan, that is particularly dangerous. The region’s gas fields, oil installations, and electricity networks are among the few foundations of its fiscal viability and political autonomy. Damage to these assets would have effects well beyond the immediate military moment. It would weaken investor confidence, reduce state capacity, deepen public frustration, and further constrain the KRI’s ability to preserve autonomy within Iraq.
Still, the picture is not one of pure helplessness. The KRI retains some buffers that distinguish it from other exposed arenas. It benefits from a degree of international visibility, some internal security capacity, cross-border economic relevance, and the limited deterrent effect of the U.S. presence around Erbil. Those factors matter. They may reduce the likelihood that the region becomes the principal theater of a broader war. But they are only partial protections. The KRI does not possess robust air defenses, nor does it have the financial reserves of Gulf states that can repair damaged infrastructure rapidly and absorb sustained disruption. Its exposure remains significant.
For that reason, the most realistic policy objective for the KRI is not victory or strategic gain. It is containment. It is to avoid becoming a principal battlefield, to preserve core infrastructure, and to maintain enough internal stability to prevent regional escalation from translating into long-term institutional damage. In foreign ministries and military headquarters, this war is discussed in terms of deterrence, signaling, and escalation management. In places like Sulaymaniyah, it is experienced more simply: through disrupted services, broken sleep, rising prices, and the recurring need to reassure relatives that, for one more night, they remain safe.
And yet, despite everything, life goes on. Families celebrated Ramdan Eid, stadiums are packed with spectators, shops still open, and social media is full of jokes and memes about the war. In the Kurdistan Region, as in the wider region, fear and routine often coexist. This is not because people are untouched by what is happening, but because carrying on has become one of the ways they cope. In a part of the world where war, crisis, and uncertainty recur, ordinary life itself becomes a form of endurance.