Iraqi Kurds: West Not Providing Enough Arms to Defeat Islamic State

The President of Iraqi Kudristan Massoud Barzani has released statements over the past several days saying that western powers are not providing enough heavy weapons, and other armaments that are necessary in defeating the Islamic State. Europe and the United States both see the Kurds and their military force (the peshmerga) as vital in the ground war against the Islamic State.

The Kurds’ Soviet-era weapons are no match for the more sophisticated American made weapons, which were captured by the Islamic State when the Iraqi Army retreated and abandoned their posts. Due to this, the Islamic State now occupies, in some estimates, up to more than a third of both Iraq and Syria.

France and Germany have been supplying the Kurds with machine guns and ammunition, but President Barzani says more sophisticated weapons and vehicles are needed in order to deal any kind of significant blow to the Islamic State. More specifically President Barzani said that,

“The heavy weapons systems that we need, especially in terms of quality and quantity, for example the APCs (armored personnel carriers), the helicopters, the artillery we need for a decisive war against them (IS) – we have not received these types of weapons”

The Unites States is also supplying the Kurds with small arms and ammunition. Yet, in recent weeks there have been reports that U.S. airdrops of these and other humanitarian supplies have been seized by the Islamic State, further setting back the Kurds in driving them out of the region.

As the Obama Administration takes a step back to re-evaluate their policy in Iraq and Syria in dealing with the Islamic State, President Obama must be advised to give full support to the Kurds, and have more significant transparency with the pro-American Iraqi Kurdish government. Otherwise, the battle against the Islamic State will continue, as it has since the beginning of the jihadist blitzkrieg, to be both a quagmire and U.S. foreign policy nightmare.