ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga soldiers, who have been fighting the Islamic State (ISIS) for more than two years, are struggling to make ends meet, despite receiving some of their overdue salaries last week.
“We are still missing four months of pay for work,” Ali Khatab Rasul, a Peshmerga infantryman, told Rudaw English. “It’s already gone to pay my bills,” he explained.
The Peshmerga – and civil servants in Kurdistan – have been suffering financial hardships due to a severe economic crisis in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which has been facing a cash crunch.
The war with ISIS, some 1.8 million refugees and internally displaced being sheltered in the Kurdish enclave, a drop in oil prices and money rows with the central government in Baghdad have put a severe strain on the KRG.
“We’ve had no money to pay for food or to pay bills on time,” Rasul said.
In Erbil, where temperatures last week hovered around 50 degrees Celsius, Rasul complained he did not even have money for an air conditioner and was forced to rely on a “desert cooler,” which cools using water and is cheaper to run, but is no match for Kurdistan’s summer heat.
According to Ekurd News, last week’s salaries for the Peshmerga came out of a $415 million US assistance package to the KRG.
As Pakshan Zangana, Secretary General of the High Council of Women’s Affairs at the KRG told Rudaw, “We must do everything we can to support our Peshmerga fighters.”
Although the financial assistance from the international community has been a tremendous asset, allowing the KRG to provide the Peshmerga with most of the military equipment they require in the fight against ISIS and pay for their expenses, the soldiers have still had to go out of pocket to pay for additional medical expenses.
Rasul was wounded in his thigh from an explosion caused by an enemy rocket propelled grenade (RPG). Although the KRG gave Ali 1 million Iraqi dinars (IQD), he had to pay an additional 500,000 IQD for anesthetics while recovering, putting him in further debt.
Harsho Rasul Ahmed, another Peshmerga infantryman wounded in the line of duty, told a similar story to Rasul’s. He suffered from damaged hearing caused by an explosion and was compensated 1 million IQD after his injury. But he, too, had to pay 300,000 IQD out of his own pocket for the surgery required to repair his hearing.
Both fighters said that they never know when salaries will be paid, and that because of the war and the financial strain on the government, it is inappropriate to ask. “It is an unwritten rule,” Ahmed explained.
According to Ahmed and Rasul, the salary deficit has caused anxiety and a general depression among fellow soldiers. However, they also claim that no one is abandoning the fight against ISIS.
The fellow soldiers both said they are not forced to fight and that there would be no consequences if they decided to stop. But they believe it is their duty to press on.
“We will still fight because of the looming threat, whether we are forced or not,” Ahmed said.
