generalspeaking

That Inequitable Challenge....

"We're facing a very serious threat. Without necessary weapons, this basic defensive line won't be enough."
"Right now, the only weapons we really have is this and the high morale of our Peshmerga."
Lt. Jamal Derwish, Peshmerga commander, Hawija front line, Iraq

"If ISIS combines its forces and pushes into one area with multiple vehicles, they will break through -- and then the whole line breaks."
Wladimir van Wilgenburg, analyst, Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, Kurdistan

"Our enemy is very well-armed. The better weapons we get, the fewer sacrifices in lives we will have to make to resist it."
"They target us with weapons that were abandoned in Ramadi. Wouldn't it have been better if the Iraqi army had given them to us instead of giving them to ISIS?
Mustafa Sayid Qadir, Kurdish minister for Peshmerga affairs

Lt. Jamal Derwish, pointing in center, commands the last outpost of Kurdish Peshmerga forces before Islamic-State controlled territory in Dabbis, Kirkuk province in Iraq. Photo: Yaroslav Trofimov/The Wall Street Journal

A berm for defensive purposes? It's been done before, and it might have worked in ages past, but in the present context all it represents is the desperation of an under-armed defensive force struggling to maintain its position against the threat of an inexorable advance by an enemy better armed and seasoned by its offensive actions that have brought it victory by conquest. It is as though Islamic State has fashioned itself after the original Islamic conquest of the Middle East and beyond.

And, in fact, this is precisely what the Islamic State 'Caliph' al-Baghdadi has done, portraying himself as a figure of the Islamist renaissance, the reincarnation of The Prophet himself; conquest for pure Islam by the scimitar and beheadings as much a symbol of that return to the purity of original Islam as anything else; along with the indomitable martyrdom-wish of its jihadi fedayeen.

The Peshmerga face a classic of the new era, however -- armoured trucks packed with explosives, driven by suicide bombers anxious to join the ranks of the blessed martyrs, taking with them as many hapless others as divinely possible. Lt. Derwish, commanding the outpost he has been tasked with defending and whose fighters built a dirt wall to hope to prevent those trucks from reaching them, has seen three such armoured vehicles since Ramadi was taken last month.

And where Islamic State took possession of yet another arsenal of American-manufactured-and-equipped heavy weapons from the fleeing Iraqi military. Islamic State fighters, claimed Lt. Derwish, have filled trenches with oil they can light to create a smokescreen protecting them from U.S.-led airstrikes. What the outpost has in its defence is a rocket-propelled grenade, incapable of stopping such an assault as a massively-explosives-laden armoured truck.

It was estimated that the Islamic State group can call upon 30,000 fighters. The U.S. claims to have taken out ten thousand of those fighters through effective air strikes. The Peshmerga is comprised of 160,000 fighters in the troops of the autonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq. Under-armed, they still represent the most dedicated and combat-ready units facing the Islamic State in Iraq.

In contrast, the Iranian-backed Shiite militias and the U.S.-weapons-supplied Iraqi military with its penchant for flight, is well armed, but largely dysfunctional. The heavy weapons in possession of the Peshmerga date from the Saddam Hussein era, and even their basic ammunition stocks have run perilously low. The U.S. administration, in supplying weapons to Iraq, does it directly to the regime, depending on it to turn around and share it with the Kurds.

The Peshmerga managed to take back most of the territory they had initially lost to Islamic State in its rapid offensive. Their focus now is to hold fast to what they have retaken.   And to protect the areas of Kirkuk province with its burning gas wells representing a large portion of Iraq's oil wealth  The Islamic State stronghold of nearby Hawija make this a daunting task.

Iraq's Shiite majority central government is loathe to supply the Peshmerga with effective weaponry in fears that Kurdistan will insist on Independence from Baghdad, so weapons transfers are few and far between. Budget disagreements with Baghdad which in theory should share 17% of its oil income with the Kurdish government means the Peshmerga also have not received their latest two months' salaries.

Still, the current Iraqi government led by Haider al-Abadi has authorized some American weapons to be shipped to the Peshmerga; among them 49 MRAP armoured vehicles and 1,000 AT-4 anti-tank systems, says the Pentagon. "Our policy remains that all arms transfers must be coordinated via the central sovereign government of Iraq" Pentagon spokeswoman  U.S. Navy Cmdr. Elissa Smith stated.

On the other hand, Germany and France have supplied the Peshmerga with the most useful weapons. They are hoping to receive the German-supplied Milan-guided antitank missiles with their range of 2,000 meters representing a choice tool capable of resisting the suicide truck bombs created out of armoured Humvees and MRAPS. The U.S.-supplied AT-4 has an effective range of a mere 300 meters by contrast.

"ISIS has very advanced weapons. If we do not receive help from our international partners, we may not be able to confront it", Lt. Col. Keifi Majid Abdulrahman, operations chief for the 108th Peshmerga brigade at the Hawija front line explained.

Labels: Conflict, Iraq, Islamic State, Kurds, Peshmerga, Weapons

posted by Pieface @ Monday, June 15, 2015