NEW YORK - A high-ranking Iraqi Kurdish official confirmed that several Arab countries are closely cooperating with the Kurds to counter the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) group, as the region loses faith in the US-led campaign against the militants.
Hemen Hawrami, a close advisor to Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani, refused to name the Arab countries that are "directly coordinating" with the Kurds.
"Based on their wish, we will not reveal their names. But yes, several Arab countries are in close coordination with us to counter ISIS" he said, speaking to Rudaw at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Last week, Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper quoted a senior official from an Arab country that is part of the US-led coalition against ISIS as saying that regional countries are ready to take the war against the militants into their own hands.
“If the Americans and the West are not prepared to do anything serious about defeating ISIL, then we will have to find new ways of dealing with the threat,”the newspaper quoted the unidentified official as saying.
He said that the "new way of dealing with the ISIL threat" is directly arming the Kurds in Iraq.
Directly arming the Kurds contravenes official US policy, which insists that all arms to the autonomous Kurds should go through the central government in Baghdad.
Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria have been the only bulwarks on the ground against further ISIS expansion in those countries.
Hawrami did not deny that the US had tried to block direct arms supplies to the Iraqi Kurds by Arab allies.
The Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga forces, locked in war with ISIS for nearly a year, complain of delays in US-supplied arms reaching them via Baghdad, and that they remain seriously outgunned by the militants.
The US strategy of air strikes against ISIS, without any US or Western troops on the ground, has come under serious scrutiny, especially since the militants captured the city of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria in late May.
