What’s really stopping the U.S. from arming the Peshmerga?

In the pages of this column and those of my fellow Rudaw columnists, the issue of military support for the Kurdish peshmerga fighting the Islamic State (IS) comes up often. Along with a great many commentators in various American think tanks and publications, we have pointed out that the Obama administration is making a serious mistake by sending all its military support to Baghdad – after which a trickle of small arms and munitions makes it up to Kurdistan.

Claims that the United States is in fact providing significant quantities of weapons to the Kurds are simply not born out by the evidence. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, David Tafuir describes an October 2014 letter the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) sent to Washington that tabulates what they had received from the Americans two months after the IS attack on Kurdistan: “In addition to AK-47s, the U.S. has provided fewer than 100 mortars and just a few hundred rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs. The Peshmerga haven’t received a single tank or armored vehicle from coalition countries.” Even if IS Jihadis had been so obliging as to line up and offer to be shot, this might not have been enough ammunition for the Kurds to accomplish the task.

While the American air strikes in support of Kurdish and Iraqi forces have been invaluable since then, in March 2015 the Kurds still appear woefully unequipped on the ground. More than a few journalists on the front lines have noted, and photographed, the AK-47 toting peshmerga in their unarmored pick-up trucks, lacking night vision equipment, heavy weapons and even helmets or body armor. Meanwhile many of the same journalists have also photographed Shiite Arab militias in the south of Iraq – technically illegal – towing American-made main battle tanks to the front lines along with the latest military hardware.

Some claim that if the peshmerga were united, they would receive much more substantial American military assistance. While it is certainly true that the Kurds in Iraq need to get their house in order more and place all their fighting forces under a unified KRG command structure, such an excuse appears disingenuous. Are Baghdad’s fighting forces, which currently receive so much serious American military hardware, united? Are the Iranian-controlled Shiite militias a more reliable recipient of American weapons than the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, both secular and staunch American allies since 1991?

The other excuses frequently heard from the Obama administration relate to legal technicalities. First, Washington’s fantasy “one Iraq” policy necessitates respecting Baghdad’s sole authority in such matters. The Iraqi Ministry of Defense demands that all weapons sent to Kurdistan come through Baghdad first, after which apparently little gets to Kurdistan. Of course, this was not such an issue when General Petraeus was arming and paying Sunni Awakening Councils against Prime Minister Maliki’s preferences. The Americans simply forced Mr. Maliki to change his preferences. Although Washington does not wield the same level of influence in Iraq today, surely the provider of all those critical air strikes and other assistance still retains some leverage?

Second, we hear that the U.S. State Department cannot send or even sell the Kurds weapons without “end user certificates” signed by the government in Baghdad. If this is really what is holding up support to America’s most stalwart allies in the fight against the IS, Washington might as well surrender the whole region to Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Turkey, Russia and others – none of whom presumably rely on “end user certificates” to back their allies. U.S. Congressmen Ed Royce and Dana Rohrabacher have in fact been pushing multiple resolutions to directly arm the Kurds without such certificates from Baghdad, and they have significant support in both houses of the U.S. government. Mr. Obama could thus probably change this regulation, or draft an exception to it, tomorrow if he wished. Sunni fighters in Syria currently being armed and trained by Washington also presumably lack “end user certificates” signed by Damascus.

In financial terms, the Kurds by 2014 had received some $92 million to train eight peshmerga brigades, compared to $25 billion of U.S. taxpayer money spent on raising 109 Iraqi army brigades. All eight of the Kurdish brigades are still intact and fighting the IS Jihadis, while a large portion of the Iraqi army disintegrated overnight when IS attacked them last June.

The administration in Washington might therefore want to ask itself a few questions. If arming the Kurds directly ruffles feathers in Baghdad, surely this is not the end of the world? Could it even stir Baghdad to compromise with the Kurds on things like the oil issue, increasing the chances of Iraq remaining intact?  If the Iraqi government reacts really badly to direct military assistance to the Kurds, Washington could point out that the regime in Damascus seems to be holding on just fine without American assistance; if Baghdad would prefer to just rely on Iran as well, the Kurds could no doubt use the extra weapons Shiite militias are currently receiving.

David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.