A top Kurdish representative to the U.S. claims that the Obama administration is not doing enough to supply vital advanced weapons to Kurdish peshmerga security forces in their fight against Islamic State militants – amid signs that other nations may be eclipsing the U.S. in their level of support.
 |
Kurdish Peshmerga, Soldiers make their way to the front
line to fight ISIS. |
"To this point, we have only received light arms, nothing effective against ISIS militants,” Karwan Zebari, director of U.S. congressional affairs for the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), told Fox News.
“We need effective equipment to go on the offensive. We need to be going after them,” he said, adding: “There are two heads to this snake that need to be cut off. The one in Iraq is Mosul and the other in Syria is Raqqa.”
Kurdistan Regional Government Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani told Fox News' Bret Baier on "Special Report" that the caliber of the weapons that the Islamic State fighters have is far greater than that of the Kurdish forces. He noted that the militants are actually fighting with U.S.-supplied weapons, which they seized from Iraqi troops.
"There is a great imbalance in the weaponry because ISIS have state of-the-art, U.S.-supplied weaponry that they were able to take with ease from the Iraq armed forces," he said.
Currently, the U.S. is providing only ammunition for small arms and mortars and has stopped short of arming the Kurds directly. When asked Wednesday if the White House was planning any changes to its policy, a Defense official told Fox News, “The Department of Defense has not provided direct arms to the Kurds and has no plans to do so in the future."
Zebari cautioned the Pentagon against working with the Iraqi government in Baghdad to facilitate the transfer of arms. "They always slow things down," he said.
Read the rest of the story
HERE and view a related video below:
If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either
here or
here. Please follow us on Twitter
here.
No comments:
Post a Comment