Dr. Najmaldin Karim
One bridgate of Peshmerga defend Kirkuk from ISIS
I will start with the time when ISIS appeared after over running places in Syria and then about six to 800 of them marched towards Mosul, which was supposed to have been defended by three divisions of the Iraqi army, 39,000 local and federal police officers and rank, but it fell very quickly. The first two days it was just the Western part of the city. And then on the third day they took over the whole thing and the first thing they did after that was to release terrorists from Badosh prison.
Actually the people of Mosul at the time welcomed them. And then they [ISIS]marched towards Tikrit then they crossed the bridge to come to Haweja. I was told by the administrator of Abbasi, which is a sub-district in Haweja, only three people in a taxi Came. They went to the police station, they took over and a lot of them joined them. And then the rest of Haweja fell. That was how the center of haweja and all the sub districts around it, which is Abbasi, Zab, Riyad, of course south of that was al Rashad. These were places where Al Qaeda was very active at and the Rashad Valley was very well known to counter terrorist units from the US and others who were working with intelligence services of Kurdistan. And of course the next thing they did after they had the cities taking care of a lot of the local population joined them.
Most zf the 12th army division that was supposed to be protecting the area, actually joined them. And so did many police. After that they came to Kirkuk to attack Kirkuk. Kirkuk was always their prize during all of this. At the time in Kirkuk, we had only one brigade that was stationed in Qara Hanjeer which is about 25 kilometers NorthEast of the city of Kirkuk. So there were no vast numbers of Peshmergas at that time. We also had our local police and Asayesh forces. The attack was intense. Actually, they thought that Kirkuk would fall just like Tikrit and other cities on the way to Kirkuk. But this brigade that we had there, which was commanded by a very brave commander who later lost his life in a fight against ISIS in January of 2015. He was a very close friend of mine. His name was Sherko Fateh Shwani, together with the local police and the Asayesh forces they were able actually to repel ISIS and ISIS was unable to come forward towards the city of Kirkuk.
I want to bring one thing after October 16, 2017, when Kirkuk was attacked by Shia militias, the first thing they did was to attack the Peshmerga before and blame the Peshmerga for everything and actually in Kirkuk we were able to shelter close to a million Sunni Arabs from Kirkuk itself, from Diyala province, from Salahdin, from Mosul, from Anbar, with their universities, all their civil servants were in Kirkuk. And Turkmens, they were targets, especially the Shittee Turkmens. We sheltered some of those from Talaafar, but others from Tuz Khurmatu and those places.
The division of the Peshmerga forces and the conscription idea
In theory, we have unified Peshmerga units from 70th and 80th forces but in reality that hasn’t materialized on the ground. It did when we were fighting ISIS, but even then you could see competition, but that competition was not towards bad things, but competition to be better than the other unit which may actually exist even in a lot of countries. The Army here wants to get more credit than the Air force and the Marine and this and that. But unfortunately over there, the ultimate decision is by the political party, not by the Peshmerga leadership and there were attempts to actually unify the Peshmerga, not to have 80 unit, 70 unit Zeravani etc. Or Bargari forces (Emergency) within the PUK [Patriotic Union of Kurdistan]. Because we saw on October 16, 2017 they followed their political leadership. It wasn’t Kurdistan. It wasn’t defending the land. It wasn’t any of that. So I still think that conscription is the way to go. That doesn’t mean discard the Peshmergas. You have a lot of young people in the Peshmerga forces. And for those of you who have seen the Peshmerga leadership, some of them have been fighting since 1970. Actually some of them were in before 1970, during Mullah Mustafa Barzani’s time they were fighting. In a way, even in the United States, if we look at it from the civil war. Two years ago, three years ago, nobody called Robert E Leeor or Stonewall Jackson a traitor. Now they do! But over there everybody has their weapons, they are together and they have been fighting each other. That’s why conscription is the way to go and involve their younger guys in and gradually get rid of the commanders.
The US policy in Syria
“On the other hand, when it comes to the US we really don’t know what’s going to happen, particularly with this administration, in 2018 and 2019 with a phone call, everybody was abandoned. 10,000 people paid their lives as if it was for nothing. And we have also to remember one thing, it was the bravery of the YPG in 2014 that prevented ISIS from taking Kobani. And it was that regularly that led to the US and Obama administration to come to the aid of Kurds in Syria. If it wasn’t for that, probably nothing would have happened because ISIS was pretty much almost at the border with Turkey and Turkey was supporting it.”
“We all know the story of Turkish council staff that was captured in Mosul and what a big lie that was. And then when they came out, they all looked like they were in a five star hotel.”
Roj Peshmerga integration into the SDF
“If they are well willing to go back and engage in all sorts of lives, like the SDF are living the same way, like Wladimir mentioned, 60% of SDF Arabs. Other groups, different groups can integrate into the SDF and Roj Peshmergas have more incentive actually to do that because it’s their land, their people, they all have families there to defend them. And this should not be about having another military structure with different commands and everything, and then start competing with each other.”
The biggest threat to Sinjar are the Iranian-backed militias
“With regard to Sinjar, of course, we all remember when ISIS attacked and took over Sinjar, the massacre and the genocide of Yazidis. The forces that actually were able to protect whatever remains of the people of Sinjar, whether in the mountains or in the Westwoods, are Yazidis. They have formed a unit for themselves. They claimed [non-Yazidis] that this unit is under PKK. I don’t know how much of that is true, but the Yazidis felt that they needed a force of their own. And I think they should be helped to defend themselves just like people Kirkuk had Peshmergas from Kirkuk. They were defending it when they were attacked by ISIS. I think that’s important. But the biggest threat really to Sinjar are the Shittee militais. You have different Shittee militias there, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Badr organization, all kinds. And and we know of the same groups, what they are doing in Kirkuk: extortion, kidnapping imprisonment of the people they are trying to divide the Yazidi community, some of them to be with Badr, some of them be with Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, the others with al Nujabaa, whoever is there. I think that those who are supposed to be the Yazidi force, to defend the Yazidis, should not fall into this trap and then have their allegiance towards somebody because they are there today and only temporarily, they pretend to protect them and support them. But eventually they want to probably have them dissolve to be a hundred percent under their control and use them against major interest of Kurdistan.”
“it’s very important to have Kurdish unity inside Syria itself inside Iraqi Kurdistan and everywhere. I know there are some constraints about open relationship, open cooperation on certain areas, but there are ways to do this”
“We have hundreds of thousands of fish on paper that has to be cleaned out, cleaned up. If we have 120,000, you can give them better salary, better training, better weapons, and also get rid of those who are sitting at home and have nothing to do, and maybe working in somebody’s ranch or whatever.”