COPENHAGEN, Denmark – More and more European countries are boosting military support to Iraq and its autonomous Kurdistan Region, sending in arms and hundreds of soldiers to do the training.
That comes as the United States began on Sunday its first air drops of medicines and arms to Kurdish fighters in the Syrian town of Kobane.
Spain has announced it is sending 300 military personnel to train Iraqi security forces and Italy is dispatching 280 soldiers to train Peshmerga troops. In addition, Italy will send a KC-767 in-flight refuelling plane and two Predator drones to Iraq.
"It deals in particular with ammunition for heavy machine guns and ammunition for anti-tank systems of the type used by Kurdish forces," Italy's Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti told parliament Thursday.
Ten Kurdish officers also are to arrive in Italy soon for training in weapons, and a separate team of Peshmergas will go to Germany to train on high-tech weapons.
Meanwhile, Britain announced on Thursday it was sending armed “Reaper” drones to Iraq to help it fight the ISIS. “As the UK's only armed remotely piloted aircraft, Reaper will add to the strike capability we are already providing,” said British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon in a written statement to his country’s parliament.
From Denmark, two F-16s have been on their first missions in Iraqi airspace, after the Danish parliament overwhelmingly voted to send seven F-16 fighter aircraft and a total of 280 Danes to Iraq. In addition, 120 Danes will train and advise Iraqi and Kurdish security forces in the region and in Iraq.
At the same time many in Denmark, which has a large immigrant population of Kurds, are dissatisfied that the Danish war effort does not cover Syria.
Shaho Pirani became famous in the small Scandinavian country as "the Danish Peshmerga" when last month he went to the Kurdistan Region for weapons training. He openly declared he was ready to take up arms against the militants.
"Right now, the situation is very bad in Kobane in Syrian Kurdistan. Denmark should also bomb IS there," he told Rudaw.
US jets have been carrying out bombing raids on ISIS in Kobane, a Kurdish town under siege for a month.
On Sunday, US planes made the first airdrops of medicines and weapons to Kurdish fighters in Kobane.
That came after weeks of hand-wringing because the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the main fighting force in Syrian Kurdistan, is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which the United States and European Union list as a terrorist organisation.
In Germany, a heated debate on military support to the PKK took place last week as Volker Kauder, senior ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, ruled out the possibility of arming the PKK. Germany has been sending weapons only to Kurds in Iraq.
“I know the problems that Turkey has with the PKK, but to sit back and watch as IS takes important border towns and develops increasingly into a threat for global security cannot be the solution,” Kauder, the leader of Merkel's Christian Democrats, told Spiegel Online.
But Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier rejected that idea in a local interview. “There is no question of that as long as the PKK threatens Turkey with fresh violence,” Steinmeier said.
The Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria, the YPG’s political wing, had confirmed direct talks with US officials about arming its military wing.
PYD spokesman Nawaf Xelil told the Arabic Asharq Al-Awsat daily that arms supplies for the YPG were discussed with US officials at a meeting in Duhok on Thursday.
"There is no other way around it but to cooperate with YPG," said Lars Erslev Andersen, an expert and author on the Middle East at the University of Southern Denmark.
"It is controversial for the West to deal with an entity that is a sister organization of PKK, which is labeled as terrorist. But after all, it is easier for the US to work directly or indirectly with the PKK than with Islamist organizations linked to al Qaeda," he told Rudaw.
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