WASHINGTON DC – A senior Iraqi Kurdish politician reveals that the United States has supplied weapons to the Peshmerga forces battling the Islamic State (ISIS) in northern Iraq, a claim that appears to contradict America’s stated position.
“America has provided some weaponries directly to Kurdistan,” said Qubad Talabani, deputy prime minister of the autonomous Kurdistan Region, in an exclusive interview with Rudaw TV in the U.S. capital last week.
“One of the things, which I believe is not entirely clear, is that the United States has not only supplied weapons directly to us, it has also encouraged other nations to send us arms.”
Talabani’s statements, the first such a revelation made by a senior Kurdish official, raise fresh questions on the nature of the existing relationship between the world’s mightiest military power and Iraqi Kurds.
In response to a question raised by a Rudaw reporter on August 29, 2014, however, a Pentagon official rejected the claim outright that the US was a direct supplier of arms to the Kurdish forces.
“Right now, for the United States, our role is principally in helping transport, logistically get the stuff to the Kurdish forces. There's been no decision to directly arm the Kurds from American stockpiles,” said Rear Admiral John Kirby, the spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense.
As for the way in which nearly a dozen U.S. allies send military equipment to the Kurds, Kirby said, “I'll let those countries speak for how they're doing it and under what rubric.”
The U.S. stepped up its military assistance to the Kurds in early August after ISIS militants attacked the Kurdistan Region, almost reaching the outskirts of the capital Erbil.
With airstrikes the U.S. helped Kurdish forces on the ground halt the ISIS advance and recapture some lost territory.
U.S. military strategy, however, has not proven as effective against the radical group in Iraq and Syria.
As a result, the Obama Administration has been under increasing pressure to forge a more robust and direct military partnership with Iraqi Kurdistan, a more secular and pro-Western enclave in the largely mountainous north of Iraq.
US House Representative Ed Royce, the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, has proposed a bill to authorize President Obama to provided direct weapons and ammunition to Iraqi Kurds.
According to Talabani, as many as 32 members of the U.S. Congress have so far endorsed the bill.
Talabani adds that it is not only the military aspect of the relationship that has improved between the US and the Kurds.
“I believe US policy on Kurdistan’s oil [policy] has changed to some extent. I believe their previous understanding has changed,” said Talabani, without elaborating further on what the claimed change entailed.
The Kurds had long been in a bitter dispute with the government in Baghdad over the ownership and management of their natural resources until earlier this month when a temporary hydrocarbon deal was struck between the two sides.
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