WASHINGTON, DC – The International Crisis Group (ICG) has published a 39-page report slamming the United States and its allies over the way they have provided arms to Iraqi Kurdish Peshmarga forces battling the terror group known as the Islamic State (IS). “Delivered this way,” reads the report published by the Brussels-based non-governmental group on Tuesday, “military assistance risks prolonging the conflict with IS, worsening other longstanding, unresolved conflicts and creating new ones.” The report does not call for a complete halt to the supply of weapons to Iraqi Kurdistan, which it describes as a “non-state” actor. “A new approach is called for that revives and builds on past efforts to transform Kurdish forces into a professional institution,” says the report. The report’s findings have immediately come under criticism from military and diplomatic experts who have see the Peshmarga as a highly effective force to implement the US-led strategy to “degrade and ultimately destroy” IS. In the interview above, David Pollock, a prominent Middle East expert with the Washington Institute who frequently visits Kurdistan and closely follows the region’s developments, offers a strong, point-by-point rebuttal to the ICG’s findings. “In my opinion, the conditions they [ICG] are setting out might be desirable someday in the future, but right now I see them as very unrealistic and actually wrong because we are in a crisis situation. Right now, as I see it, the Peshmarga needs more weapons quickly to fight against the Islamic State.”
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