Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain are trying to find ways to arrange an emergency supplemental appropriations bill to provide Iraq's Kurds with much needed monetary assistance.
"I'm trying to find a way to get money to the Kurds," Graham said on Thursday according to the Washington Post.
McCain also hopes to convince Congress of the necessity of aiding the Kurds in their time of need. "They want direct aid. They want money right now, they need money to pay their military," McCain stated.
However the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Corker expressed skepticism over such an initiative. "In all of these things, one has to make a decision: are you doing something that's helping the cause, or are you doing something that's increasing the likelihood of Iraq breaking apart," he stated.
"It's the same issue I had with arming the Kurds [directly] some time ago," he continued. "When you begin doing that, you have to take into account you could be encouraging the breaking apart of the country."
Washington has strictly adhered to the One Iraq policy which has seen any arms or assistance provided to Erbil going through the central government in Baghdad. Critics of the policy say it's an unnecessary layer of cumbersome bureaucracy.
Iraq's Kurds have had to endure the fall in oil prices, the influx of nearly two million internal refugees and the threat posed by Islamic State (ISIS). Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers haven't been paid in months while continuously manning a front spanning over 1,000 kilometers against ISIS.
Graham chairs the Senate Appropriations' subcommittee on Foreign Operations while McCain is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
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