MAINZ, Germany – Germany has expanded its military training for Peshmerga forces to include instruction on defending against weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), following poison gas attacks on the Kurdistan Region’s forces last month.
The German army, or Bundeswehr, released a statement Thursday confirming the expansion of the training to include tactics on protecting against WMDs and fighting with protective gear.
“From putting the masks on properly to caring for wounded comrades under WMD protection, they (Peshmerga soldiers) practice again and again what they have learned. Even targeting will be practiced, due to the restricted view with a mask on,” the Bundeswehr said.
“The entire training team is satisfied,” it added, quoting a German staff sergeant who said: “The (Peshmerga) group is very motivated and eager to learn. They reflect exactly what we tell them in training and make even more suggestions.”
Following a suspected poison gas attack by the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) on Kurdish forces on the Makhmour front in August, samples were taken by German military experts, who early this month confirmed the use of mustard gas by the terrorists.
“We have knowledge of ISIS using mustard gas against Kurds in North Iraq,” German Federal Intelligence Service chief Gerhard Schindler said at the time.
Since ISIS overran huge parts of Iraq and reportedly seized an old chemical weapons facility late last year, Kurdish officials had warned about possible chemical weapons attacks by the jihadists.
Erbil had requested allies for special protective equipment against possible poison gas attacks and training in anti-WMD warfare.
According to the German intelligence chief, the combat agent used by ISIS, which is prohibited by the international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), originates either from old stocks of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein “or the Islamists have managed to produce the toxic gas themselves, after they took the University of Mosul with its chemistry laboratories.”
Although Germany is not an active partner of the US-led coalition against ISIS, it is among countries arming the Kurdish forces directly, providing military supplies and training.
For a year now, about 90 German soldiers have been stationed in the Kurdistan Region to train Peshmerga forces in military tactics, especially in urban warfare. The Peshmerga forces are traditionally used to guerrilla warfare in the mountainous Kurdish regions of the Middle East.
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