Kurdish forces are asking the US-led coalition for new and better weapons as they are fighting the Islamic State on the front line using only their ingenuity and relying mainly on weapons at least three decades-old.
The Peshmerga—who have given ISIS their worst defeat ever in Syria by taking Tel Abyad at the Turkish border—are using mostly aging munitions from the Iran-Iraq war 30 years ago. ISIS militants, on the other hand, use US weaponry seized from defeated Iraqi forces.
"The weapons of [ISIS] are 10 times that of the Peshmerga, said Maj. Gen. Sirwan Barzani, a Kurdish commander.
"What America has given to Iraq in the past, what Iraq borrowed from Russia and US, ISIS has," said another commander, Kemal Kerkuki. "They are using many, many mines, C4, TNT, snipers, mortars; they have Humvees, they have tanks, they have different kinds of weapons."
Barzani pleaded for Western countries to equip them with good weaponry as it is they who are battling the ISIS face-to-face.
"We ask all the Canadians, and the Americans and the whole coalition and NATO, please send good weapons to us to fight against this biggest terrorist group in the world," said Barzani.
"We are fighting for all the world, for all civilisation," he said.
Improvisation is the other weapon being used by the semi-autonomous Kurds, who won a string of victories against ISIS despite being prohibited by the Iraqi government from acquiring weapons for fear that directly equipping them will boost their separatist movement.
Lacking an anti-mine vehicle to enable Kurdish forces to enter ISIS-controlled areas, Barzani had a tank seized from the extremist group redesigned to detonate improvised explosive devices as it passes through mined areas.
Such a vehicle is crucial in making lands retaken from ISIS safe again for the residents.
Falah Mustafa, Iraqi Kurdistan's foreign minister, said they need more than British admiration for their efforts against ISIS to actually defeat the extremist group.
"American, British and other airstrikes have been vital. But we urgently need much more than the 40 heavy machine guns supplied so far by the British. We need tanks, armoured cars and heavy artillery and guns to defend ourselves and work with the Iraqi army to dislodge ISIS," he wrote in The Guardian in March.
"We Kurds are fighting the barbarians of ISIS every single day, for our interests and those of the free world. We share a 650-mile border with ISIS militants, and a thousand of our Peshmerga fighters have paid the ultimate price. Almost 5,000 have been injured, some very seriously," Mustafa said.
"We are not asking for foreign combat troops. We will provide the boots on the ground. We are already doing most of the fighting, while the Iraqi army does the rest. But Baghdad is getting most of the foreign military supplies and we are getting the smaller portion. This cannot go on."
