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Though a coalition of Western countries is training Kurdish forces in northern Iraq to more effectively fight Islamic State militants, Kurdish commanders and officers say the effort is moving slowly and not keeping up with the military strength and speed of their enemy.

When U.S.-led airstrikes on Islamic State targets began in early August, they were followed by shipments of advanced weapons and an offer to train the Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, who had suffered a series of surprising defeats at the hands of the extremist Sunni Muslim militants.

The aim was to transform the peshmerga, with their vaunted reputation as mountain warriors, into a force better prepared to face the brutal and battle-hardened militants in the largely desert terrain and urban areas they had seized.

On a recent Sunday, at a training camp high in the mountains of northern Iraq, 17 soldiers began their training on American-made 12.7-millimeter M2HB machine guns. A month before, peshmerga officers had received lessons from French military officers on the use of the guns, at a special-forces training center on the outskirts of Irbil, where much of the Western training is done.

The M2HBs had been sent to the training camp without ammunition, so the Kurdish soldiers sat on short concrete risers in front of a 125-pound weapon, balancing notebooks on their knees as the instructors drew on a dry-erase board.

Though planeloads of rifles and ammunition are regularly shipped to Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq, advanced weapons like the M2HB have been in short supply, and have not yet been deployed on the front line, Kurdish commanders said. Even then, the M2HB will not be effective against the tanks and armored vehicles that Islamic State fighters pilfered from the Iraqi army, Brig. Gen. Salah Salih said.

"All the military aid that is coming, even when we're getting 10 million or 20 million bullets, that might only last a few days in battle, because the battles are ongoing," said Salih, who oversees training at the camp in Atrosh.

Saying the Kurds' fighting has been on behalf of Western allies as well as to protect their own region, Salih said, "They have to give us better weapons so we can battle them."

In August, after making swift advances through Sunni Arab areas of western and northern Iraq and facing little resistance from residents and tribes, Islamic State, an Al Qaeda breakaway group, began overrunning towns and villages in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region. The peshmerga, estimated to number about 150,000 fighters, proved no match for the militants, some of whom had fought in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Islamic State reached Makhmour, about 35 miles southwest of Irbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, before the U.S. and its allies decided to intervene with airstrikes and weapons.

Originally posted here:
Are Iraq's renowned peshmerga fighters any match for Islamic State?