US airstrikes helped, but Kurds from Syria turned tide against Islamic State
GWER, Iraq — Victory, they say, has many fathers, and as Kurdish peshmerga militia pushed Islamic State forces from a string of towns near Irbil Sunday and Monday, it was easy to cite two: accurate airstrikes by U.S. aircraft that eliminated artillery positions and convoys and timely deliveries of light arms and ammunition from the CIA.
But a third may have been just as important, though less publicized: the addition of hundreds of fighters from a Turkish group designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization
Visits to front-line positions Monday made it clear that an influx of fighters with links to the Kurdish Workers Party, known by its Kurdish initials PKK, had played a major role in driving the Islamic State from key areas within a 30-minute drive of Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government. It was Irbil’s possible fall last week that ended weeks of Obama administration inaction on Iraq.
“The PKK took Mahmour,” a peshmerga fighter at a checkpoint outside Mahmour acknowledged, shaking his head in admiration. Then, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, he offered an explanation: “They’re very experienced from fighting Daash in Syria and are true guerrilla fighters from their time in Turkey. They have more experience and training than we do.”
The entry of PKK forces into the fighting in northern Iraq, particularly so close to Irbil, which the Obama administration has declared particularly sensitive because of the large American consulate and the joint operations center based there, could prove somewhat embarrassing.
The PKK has been operating under the designation “Local Self Defense Forces,” or YPG in Kurdish, in northern Syria in intense battles with the Islamic State for control of key areas along the Turkish border. The YPG designation, according to PKK members, was designed to, at least superficially, obscure the role of the PKK, which has been designated by the United States, the European Union and Turkey as a terrorist group. Iraq, Turkey and the United States, however, appear to have accepted the need to allow one terrorist group — the PKK — to combat a much worse designated group, the Islamic State.
read more: http://www.stripes.com/us-airstrikes-helped-but-kurds-from-syria-turned-tide-against-islamic-state-1.298037
. . . how much of earlier and current U.S. opposition to Syria is responsible for the worsened security situation with ISIL?
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