ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said that joint military operations with the Peshmerga would be needed to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS) and that an expected battle to liberate Iraq’s second-largest city would likely come next fall.
“With air strikes you cannot destroy this organization for sure,” Barzani said in an interview with the Reuters news agency.
“To destroy this organization we need some special forces, not boots on the ground, but some joint military operations fighting alongside the Peshmerga,” the Kurdish premier said.
Kurdish forces have been pushing back ISIS from most of the territories they took over last August. But ISIS has retained human and military capabilities to launch multiple attacks, despite coalition airstrikes. Barzani said it was necessary to go beyond airpower to totally defeat the insurgent group.
“The question is: is the policy one of containment, or to dislodge and destroy them?” he asked. “In order to totally eradicate them, further action must be taken.”
As military preparations loom to retake Mosul – Iraq’s second-largest city that ISIS captured in June – Barzani rejected Kurdish forces retaking the Arab-dominated city to avoid ethnic conflict.
The Peshmerga have been fighting only in territories that officially belong to the Kurdistan Region or are that have large Kurdish populations.
"As Kurds, we don’t want to spearhead any attack to retake Mosul. We want to avoid further conflict,” he explained.
According to Barzani, it would take several more months to prepare military action to drive ISIS out of Mosul. “March definitely not. June, also I doubt it,” he said, referring to potential comprehensive attacks on Mosul. But he predicted, the military operation could be conducted by “end of September or October.”
The Kurdish prime minister lambasted the Iraqi army, saying: “There is no real Iraqi army that can do the job. It needs time. We have to be realistic.”
He repeated his call to equip Peshmerga forces with heavier weapons in order to be able to confront ISIS, which seized advanced US weapons worth billions of dollars last June from the crumbling Iraqi army.“This is not a war you can win with AK-47s and RPGs,” he said.
According to Barzani, Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s former prime minister and now vice president, still remains an obstacle in Iraq and has power. “The biggest problem for (prime minister Haider ) Abadi is Nuri al-Maliki,” Barzani assessed.
He said that Iraq has been divided over ethnic and sectarian fault lines, in which loyalty to the country is lost. He said that unless a mechanism is found for coexistence, it would be a “destabilising factor” in the region.
“There is no loyalty to a country called Iraq. It really is important to find a formula for how to live together within the boundaries of what is called Iraq. Unless a formula is found, there will be more bloodshed and the country will remain a destabilising factor in the region,” Barzani explained.
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