Monday, August 4, 2014

The Iraqi Kurds ask Washington for Arms to Battle Islamist Threat

Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region is pressing the Obama administration for sophisticated weapons it says Kurdish fighters need to push back Islamist militants threatening their region, Kurdish and American officials said.
A Kurdish official said the request was discussed during a Kurdish delegation’s visit to Washington in early July, and U.S. officials said Washington was considering ways to bolster the Kurdish defenses.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces take security measures against 
the armed Islamic State-led militants
The Kurds say U.S. help is critical to enable the Peshmerga, the Kurds’ paramilitary force, to repel fighters from ISIS, an Al-Qaeda splinter group that spearheaded an insurgent capture of a wide swath of Iraqi territory in the last few months.
The military supplies requested from the U.S. include tanks, sniper equipment, armored personnel carriers, artillery and ammunition, and also body armor, helmets, fuel trucks and ambulances.
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Kurdish officials say the Peshmerga need the weapons to guard the borders of the rugged mountainous region and to protect hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees sheltering there after fleeing the jihadists’ onslaught.
U.S. officials say they are considering ways to help the Kurds defend themselves, but direct provision of arms to the Kurdistan Regional Government, in the way Washington arms Iraq’s central government in Baghdad, appears highly unlikely.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has clashed repeatedly with Kurdish leaders over budgets, land and oil. U.S. weapons supplies could set a potentially troublesome precedent for circumventing an allied government to provide U.S. arms to a regional force.
[...]
In the weeks since the Islamist-led assault exposed the Iraqi army’s weakness and the effects of years of sectarian squabbles, U.S. officials have scrambled to bring Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds together to confront militants.
At the same time, the long-running Iraqi Kurdish ambition for independence has been strengthened by the Peshmerga’s stronger showing against militants, by Kurdish territorial gains, and by the fact that Maliki has fallen out of favor in Washington.
The Peshmerga soldiers of the Kurdistan regional government
are hardened fighters
The Peshmerga, whose name means “those who face death,” gained a reputation for toughness during years of fighting former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and, in recent years, occasional standoffs with soldiers loyal to Maliki.
While Iraq soldiers deserted their posts en masse in northern Iraq before the ISIS offensive last month, the Peshmerga kept Islamists at bay while also seizing the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which was previously under Iraqi army control.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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