I CAME across a photograph on Twitter the other day. It had been posted by an Iraqi soldier and was a triumphalist selfie of him with his mates sitting in the office of the Kurdish Governor of Kirkuk. The picture had been taken shortly after Iraqi forces and Shi’ite militias had taken the oil rich city forcing Kurdish forces to withdraw. Looking at the image, it was strange to think that only three weeks earlier on the day of the Kurdish independence referendum, I had been in that very same room interviewing the governor, Najm al-Din Karim, during which he told me it was the happiest day of his life. Right now Mr Karim, like many Kurds, has had to flee his home city. The photograph was a salutary reminder of how quickly political fortunes can change and the turbulent circumstances that often surround such shifts. Just a month or so ago, who for example, would have thought the Madrid government would move to suspend Catalonian autonomy and that the streets of the region might now see even greater unrest?

There is absolutely no doubt that those influential political players who might have made a positive difference, have been found seriously wanting in both the Kurdish and Catalan crises. Indeed it’s arguable that they bear a great deal of the blame for the instability, violence and political uncertainty that has marked the lives of both Kurds and Catalans of late.

In the case of Catalonia the EU has quite clearly failed to step up to the plate. The idea that the crisis there is simply an internal one to be dealt with by the Spanish Government has long since ceased to be credible. As Mireia Borrell Porta of the London School of Economics European Institute recently pointed out, an issue will not remain “internal” just because the word is repeated whenever the topic is raised.

There’s no doubt the EU has the capacity to bring substantial pressure to bear on Spain, even regarding the thorny issue of the constitution. It’s done so in the past when it felt it necessary. One need only think back to 2011 when it leant on Spain’s main political parties to change the constitution in order to help cap budget deficits. The move came at a time when Spain’s sovereign debt was under severe pressure in the markets, and amid fears that it might need a bailout similar to those of fellow Eurozone nations Greece, Portugal or Ireland.

In terms of Iraqi Kurdistan’s recent experience, it was not just the EU, but also virtually the entire international community that turned its back on the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) decision to hold its own independence referendum last month. Whether one agrees or not with the wisdom of the KRG’s insistence on running the ballot precisely at the moment when the battle to rout Islamic State (IS) group jihadists was entering a critical phase, there were serious failings by influential players.

This time it was not only the EU’s diplomatic shortcomings that were exposed, but also those of the main influencer, the United States, along with the UK and the United Nations. All failed abysmally to help steer events away from the new layer of conflict and sectarian division that currently threatens Iraq. Indeed if anything, the whole affair has only served to once again expose the short-sightedness of US and Western foreign policy in the Middle East. Right now in Iraq we have a situation where American armed and trained Iraqi forces are in a volatile stand-off with American-armed and trained Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. How is it possible for Washington and other Western coalition partners in the fight against IS in the region, to allow the situation to come to this?

Barely a few months ago the Iraqi Army and Kurdish Peshmerga were effective allies in the fight to remove IS from its strongholds in Iraqi cities like Mosul, Tal Afar and Hawija. Now Iraqi Kurds and Arabs are all but at each other’s throats. The only real winners in all of this are the jihadists. As Iraq’s new war within a war absorbs political attention and resources IS must be rubbing its hands with glee at such a diversion giving them time to think again and even regroup.

Making an even further mockery of US foreign policy in Iraq, Washington’s handling of the situation has effectively resulted in putting the US and Iran on the same side. While President Trump has insisted that the US was not taking sides in the stand off between Iraq’s central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional administration in Erbil, evidence is growing that Washington approved the Iraqi plan to enter Kurdish-held areas along with Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias.

Astonishingly, not only did the US give the green light, but stood back while Iran helped broker an agreement with a Kurdish faction to withdraw its fighters from Kirkuk, leaving the main Kurdish force vulnerable and allowing Iraqi forces to take over the city largely unopposed.

In one fell swoop, the US not only turned its back on the Kurds, but also was actively involved in a process that divided them, while helping consolidate Iranian influence over the Iraqi government. Is this the reward we get, ask many astonished Iraqi Kurds, for being such a staunch US ally in the fight against the terrorists of IS?

“I don’t want to use the word betrayal,” said Vahal Ali, the communications director for the Kurdish region’s president earlier this week, “but we definitely feel the United States has been negligent.”

In the cynical circus of events that has gripped Iraq lately, Mr Ali’s measured remarks stand in stark diplomatic contrast. But there is no denying that many Iraqi Kurds will see Washington’s role for the betrayal that it really was. Like the Kurds, the Catalans too will doubtless now be wary of whom they regard as allies in their own campaign for self - determination.

From Barcelona to Erbil there is a palpable sense of betrayal right now. With every day that passes the challenges posed in rectifying that distrust or making reassurances to the contrary increases. Once again the big influential political players have not led by example but by shameful inadequacy.