Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Mughdeed sits in a pickup truck equipped with an anti-aircraft weapon as he and his men wind through steep roads to their base in the rocky Zartik Mountains.
Mughdeed's Iraqi Kurdish forces are members of the Peshmerga, a key U.S. ally in the fight against the so-called Islamic State. Also known as ISIS, the Sunni extremists have taken control of about a third of Iraq. In October, Mughdeed's men retook this area east of Mosul from ISIS occupation.
The mountain road winds through villages that now look like a post-apocalyptic tableau, with homes reduced to knee-high rubble.
Mughdeed greets his men on the mountaintop that overlooks the Nineveh plains, where ISIS has occupied villages around Mosul. The peshmerga is in control here, but barely, and from the distance comes the sporadic sounds of gun and mortar fire.
The men are bitter about their treatment from Baghdad's central government. They are never paid on time, and when they do get paid, it's months late. On top of that, they're ill-equipped, using aging weapons with limited reach.
"We don't do this for money," Mughdeed says, looking out from the rugged mountaintop. "We do this to defend our land."
He blames the central government for their financial misery.
Baghdad hasn't sent the funds allocated in 2014 for the mostly autonomous Kurdish region. The Iraqi finance minister recently said the central government is close to broke, though salaries for the peshmerga are finally coming in this week, two months late.
"Unfortunately, Baghdad is behaving like these are not their citizens according to the law or to the constitution," says Nouri Othman Sinjari, chief of staff to the prime minister of the Kurdish region.Read the rest of the story HERE and listen to a related report 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