Joining the coalition: Peshmerga’s big test against Islamic State

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The Kurdish peshmerga were said to be the fiercest, most tenacious fighting force in the Middle East. But recent defeats at the hands of Islamic State militants have shown that their prowess has withered, and that they are outgunned and outmanoeuvred by their newest adversary. As they now join forces with the U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State invaders, the fighters are looking to Canadian, Australian and other Western militaries to help them recover their mojo.

With their traditional baggy pantaloons and waist-cloths, the peshmerga (meaning "those who confront death") had established their reputation through decades of resistance to British and Iraqi rule. The term peshmerga was first used in the mid-1940s, when Iraqi Kurds formed a short-lived independent republic in what is now northwestern Iran. The Republic of Mahabad's fighters were led by Mustafa Barzani, father of Massoud, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq today.

For years, these swashbuckling fighters kept up a running battle against dictator Saddam Hussein, and nothing he could throw at them – not even chemical weapons – could pry them from their mountain strongholds or deter them from their goal of an independent Kurdish state.

In June, when the Sunni extremist Islamic State movement (also known as ISIL or ISIS) advanced from Syria and overran the Iraqi city of Mosul, the country's regular army turned and fled. The peshmerga would never do such a thing, people said, as they turned for help to the Kurdish autonomous zone in the north of Iraq.

In August, however, that's exactly what the peshmerga did do, deserting the towns of Zumar, Sinjar and Jalawla, and leaving people there, including hundreds of Yazidis, to the mercy of Islamic State militants.

"This was the first time we saw the peshmerga withdraw, and it had a deep impact on all the peshmerga and the whole of Kurdish society," said military spokesman General Halgurd Hikmat, speaking to reporters shortly after the unexpected defeats.

At first, they attributed the debacle to the element of surprise.

"ISIS in the beginning wanted to attack Baghdad, but changed their mind to Kurdistan," Gen. Hikmat said. "That caught us by surprise."

In time, it became clear there were deeper reasons for the defeat. A great many of the Kurdish fighters, for example, had never even been in a real fight.

"Whole generations of peshmerga had done nothing but sit at checkpoints and had no real operational experience," said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, "certainly nothing like the kind of counterterrorist operation that had been called for when ISIL attacked."

The Islamic State's method of combat is unusually fluid, taking advantage of an opponent's weak spots and moving troops around accordingly. One peshmerga veteran described it as neither a gang war nor highly organized. Only experience and extensive training can help the fighters overcome these tactics.

The Islamic State also is better armed. Its fighters have heavy modern weaponry and armoured vehicles that they've captured from Syrian and Iraqi depots, as well as more sophisticated light weapons and lots of ammunition.

Peshmerga forces, on the other hand, are mostly equipped with Soviet-era Russian weapons that they took from the Iraqi army during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. In the absence of modern armoured vehicles, the Kurdish fighters have fashioned their own, enshrouding some tractors and bulldozers with heavy steel sheeting. Even ammunition, until recently, was in very short supply.

The matter of arms and ammunition has been addressed in the past two months by several Western countries. Germany has provided 16,000 new assault rifles, 8,000 new pistols and the ammunition to go with them, as well as several portable anti-tank rocket launchers. Britain has supplied 40 heavy machine guns and the training to use them. As for other training, 200 Australian special ops troops now are working with Kurdish forces in Erbil, as are 26 Canadian special ops soldiers. As many as 69 may eventually be deployed.

One shortcoming that can't so easily be addressed, however, is the peshmerga's chaotic leadership and communications. Mohammed Salih, a Kurdish journalist in Erbil, notes that there are three different political movements in the command structure, and they often are at odds.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, is the largest and most powerful of the movements and commands the greatest number of fighters. They were the ones who had so much trouble in August.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), headed by former Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, has its own peshmerga forces, numbering in the tens of thousands, operating in different areas of the Kurdish north.

Then there is the Peshmerga Affairs Ministry, an organ of the regional government, whose minister hails from yet another Kurdish political movement that only recently was established. The ministry is officially responsible for integrating all Kurdish fighters, including those in regular Iraqi army units, and bringing them under the ministry's command.

"The chaos in managing these disparate forces was evident in some fronts such as Sinjar, Makhmour and Jalawla" in August, Mr. Salih said.

Indeed, the KDP peshmerga performed especially badly, Mr. Knights said. "They were poorly deployed and their heavy weapons were left back in the depots to the rear."

The situation with the PUK forces further south was better, he said, since they had been fighting since June to try to hold the Kirkuk oil fields.

"Once the KDP fixed its force's organization and mobilized, and once U.S. air power kicked in, the pesh have been solidly crunching forward," he said.

"The pesh are cautious," Mr. Knights explained. "No one wants to die to liberate non-Kurdish villages – but they are advancing, clearing the hundreds of IEDs [improvised explosive devices] in their way and rooting ISIL out of hamlets and villages."

"The pesh need air power and some heavy anti-tank weapons, and they are getting them," he concluded. "They also need IED disposal, special forces and communications training … which is where the Canadians come into the mix."

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While they have long dreamed of their own independent country, the estimated 20 million Kurds in the Middle East live across an area that straddles Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Armenia and Iran. They have fought, with varying degrees of success, to preserve their language and culture and gain a degree of autonomy in the countries where they live. In northern Iraq, a country where they once faced slaughter by dictator Saddam Hussein, Kurds have built a stable fledgling democracy. In Turkey the separatist movement, the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, has waged a 30-year guerrilla war against the state that has cost tens of thousands of lives.

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Canada has promised $10-million in non-lethal military equipment to the Kurds in northern Iraq to fight the group calling itself the Islamic State. Canadian military aircraft have also shuttled weapons and equipment provided by other allied countries in the U.S.-led coalition. The government has authorized the deployment of as many as 69 special forces soldiers to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Canadian military officials say they will help train Kurdish peshmerga fighters and members of the Iraqi military on battlefield communications, planning and intelligence gathering.