Tarnishing a Reputation as Storied Warriors

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/world/middleeast/tarnishing-a-reputation-as-storied-warriors.html

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ERBIL, Iraq — For decades, the pesh merga have enjoyed a fearsome reputation as unconquered mountain warriors, a storied band of guerrilla fighters who became the official guardians of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. But when fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria rolled into Kurdistan in August, the pesh merga fled the front line, just a half-hour’s drive from the territorial capital, Erbil.

Their collapse left tens of thousands of defenseless residents in ISIS’ path. And it shattered widespread hopes that the Kurdish forces might succeed in checking the militants’ advance where the Iraqi Army had failed, further calling into question fundamental assumptions about Iraq’s security.

Though the Kurdish forces have reclaimed much of the lost ground in the past two weeks, rallied by a campaign of American airstrikes, the initial losses prompted hard questions about how the pesh merga could have failed their greatest test in more than 20 years.

It has also set Kurdish officials scrambling to try to overcome years of internal political and military divisions to answer the threat and to secure more military assistance from the United States and Iran.

“Pesh merga” means “those who face death,” but in some respects, the biggest threat the pesh merga faced in the past decade was tedium, according to a range of interviews with Kurdish officials and security commanders. The Iraqi security forces, their bitter enemy under Saddam Hussein’s rule, nominally became their allies after the American invasion in 2003.

Many of the pesh merga’s battle-hardened veterans quit to take advantage of new opportunities amid a wave of economic development.

Training became an afterthought, and there was little incentive to unify pesh merga units that remained mostly divided along political party lines. Rather than answer to a central command, units took orders from their party, an arrangement that in 1996 had devolved into the Kurdish civil war.

“What happened now is teaching us that we cannot be just sitting down as if we don’t have enemies,” said Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff to the Kurdish president, Massoud Barzani. “Still, we need this resistance culture to defend what we reached, to defend the quiet life, to defend what we are going to build.”

“Otherwise they will destroy what we have,” he added.

Central to that reckoning is a realignment of the pesh merga. Last Tuesday, Mr. Barzani signed an amendment to create a more national army. Rather than having a force largely divided between their allegiance to two major parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, officials will integrate the units under the banner of the Ministry of the Pesh Merga.

Officials said consistent training would become the focus. Young men and women, whether they join the military or not, will be given some measure of military training, he said.

“During this long period of time, we failed to create a nationalized pesh merga,” said Mustafa Sayid Qadir, the minister of pesh merga. “We are planning to create and establish a united, nationalized and systematic army.”

Still, many remain skeptical that the political will exists to upend a decades-old power structure. Some officials believe that to encourage the pesh merga restructuring, there should be conditions set on any aid given to the Kurdish government.

“As we know in this part of the world, it is not just about laws on paper, but about political commitment,” said one Kurdish official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “It can be done, but it could go either way.”

As it stands, experts believe that each of the two parties fields more than 60,000 soldiers, while the ministry can claim just 50,000 in its own ranks.

“The vast bulk of the pesh merga are under the control of the individual political parties,” said Michael Knights, a researcher at the Washington Institute, who has specialized in the Kurdish forces.

Exact numbers of pesh merga fighters are a closely held secret in Kurdistan, but experts like Mr. Knights figure the total has swelled to about 175,000 since the ISIS assault began. Young and old have rushed to the battlefront, dusting off old weapons to assist in the defense of the Kurdish enclave.

But the young fighters have no battle experience. Many of the older pesh merga moved on, starting businesses and embracing the changing face of Kurdistan. And for those who remained, the pesh merga was practically a pension — steady pay for little work.

“We all began to reconstruct our country,” said Sirwan Barzani, a prominent businessman and relative of the Kurdish president, who rejoined the pesh merga to help after the ISIS encroachment. “It was another way to fight — to improve your country and make it nice.”

Now, he lives on a base near the town of Gwer, which the pesh merga retook in the initial wave of American airstrikes. Mr. Barzani said the pesh merga had been starved of resources from Baghdad, forced to pay for their own salaries and maintenance. With his personal money, he has furnished the pesh merga with cars, weapons and food.

As for the losses, Mr. Barzani echoed explanations given by other Kurdish officials: No one expected such a quick and decisive assault by ISIS, and the Kurdish fighters were also facing better-armed militants, with heavy weapons and vehicles claimed from the Iraqi soldiers they had overrun.

Others say that while the ISIS fighters did possess advanced weaponry, the pesh merga had their own heavy weapons. They were simply out of position when ISIS struck.

Mr. Barzani, who owns the Korek cellphone company as well as one of the biggest shopping malls in Erbil, bemoaned the more than 600-mile border that Kurdistan must defend now. The climate, too, has changed. The fight is no longer in the mountains, where the Kurds burnished their reputation.

“We know how to fight in the mountains,” Mr. Barzani said, sipping a Starbucks Frappuccino. “But this is the desert, and it’s so hot. It’s completely different.”

Calls for munitions heard in every corner of Kurdistan now appear to have been partly answered, according to Masrour Barzani, the top intelligence official in Kurdistan. The pesh merga have started receiving shipments of ammunition, machine guns and mortars, mostly made in Eastern Europe and therefore compatible with the systems used by the Kurds, he said.

“They are not American-made weapons,” Mr. Barzani said. But “these are the shipments that the Americans are providing to us.”

Mr. Barzani said requests for heavy weapons had not been addressed, including Humvees and antitank weaponry.

Jumping in line to help arm the pesh merga are a battery of other nations, including Albania, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Italy and Britain. Last Tuesday, Mr. Barzani said that the Iranians had also been supplying weapons to the Kurds, and in fact were the first nation to do so after ISIS militants started their march across Iraq.

As in the past, though, what remains to be seen is how long the pesh merga will be able to rely on the support of outsiders. Coupled with that uncertainty is the lack of clarity on how coordination with the Iraqis will go. Some officials say that Baghdad, despite pressure from the United States, has not been forthcoming with weapons or other military help.

“Recently, in the last couple of days, Baghdad had been reluctant to allow the shipment of the weapons to Kurdistan,” Mr. Barzani said on Aug. 20.

Assuming the Sunni militants can be permanently driven out of Kurdistan, there is a looming question about what the pesh merga’s next step will be.

On a rocky hilltop overlooking a branch of the Tigris River one recent afternoon, Gen. Zrar Sayda of the pesh merga peered through binoculars at a patch of recently cleared land.

Along with four sons, four nephews, three cousins and one brother, General Zrar, as he is known among his peers and others, has been fighting ever since ISIS first stepped into Kurdish territory, suggesting the spirit of the pesh merga remains intact.

Only the day before, ISIS fighters had been holed up in the village of Tal Khaim. Now, the militants had been forced almost completely out of Kurdish lands.

In the distance, a car belonging to ISIS trundled down a dirt road, stopping periodically.

“They are laying mines along that road,” said General Zrar, pulling the binoculars away.

Asked why his men did not engage the ISIS fighters, he said: “Because they are on the Iraqi side. It’s not my problem.”