By Arkan Ali and Saman Basharati SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region — Thousands of Kurdish volunteers have been rushing to the frontlines to aid the embattled Peshmerga forces in the wake of an ongoing Sunni jihadist assault. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) commands more than 200,000 combat troops who are well trained but poorly equipped against Islamic State (IS/formerly ISIS) militants, who seized state-of-the-art artillery when the Iraqi military fled Mosul in June. As the Islamic State advances into mixed Sunni-Kurdish areas and threatens Yezidi Kurds and other minorities, bitter political rivals in Kurdistan are willing to come together to battle the extremists. Jamal Muhammad, who is a prominent member of the Change Movement, a leading opposition party and an offshoot from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said their supporters and members are ready to be deployed to the frontlines. “This is a voluntary action,” Muhammad said. “We organize our supporters and deploy them to the borderlines.” Muhammad says his party has already urged its members and devotees to rally behind the Peshmerga forces “in any way they can.” “I’m sure many of our supporters will take up arms when necessary.” Nearly all Kurdish political parties have roots in the armed liberation movements that battled Iraq’s ruthless army from the 1960s to the early 1990s, when Iraqi Kurdistan finally gained semi-autonomy. The parties’ armed wings later fought each other in a bloody civil war in the mid-1990s. The PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) have had strong Peshmerga forces for more than half a century, but other Kurdish groups ranging from Communists to Islamists have also had militias. The Kurdistan Social Democratic Party was among the first groups to deploy its forces against IS. Their leader, the well-known veteran Peshmarga fighter Muhammad Haji Mahmoud, along with a group of fighters entered the disputed Kirkuk city in the first days of the turmoil. Despite the readiness to take up arms against IS, some are urging caution. “While we fully support our troops against the enemy, we should be careful not to militarize our own Kurdish parties,” said Muhammad Hakim, a Kurdistan Islamic Union official. Even smaller Kurdish factions like the Kurdistan Future Party and The Kurdistan Toilers’ Party have managed to assemble armed fighters. Peshmerga fighters from other parts of Kurdistan have also joined the battle. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and one of its offshoots, the YPG, which includes many women fighters, are also battling IS in both Syria and Iraq. The United States, Turkey and other nations consider both terrorist groups. In addition the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran was deployed to Makhmour area under the KRG’s defense ministry command.
