MOSCOW, August 15 (RIA Novosti) - In order to prevent the ISIS extremists from further spreading in Iraq, the US government will arm Kurdish military forces with a model of machine gun similar to the Russian AK-47.
"The United States and the Iraqi government have stepped up our military assistance to Kurdish forces as they wage their fight," Obama said, as cited by the Associated Press.
ISIS extremists are equipped with heavy weapons and armored vehicles captured from Iraqi military forces, while the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters use only light assault rifles.
Karwan Zebari, Washington spokesman for the Iraqi Kurdistan region, complained that "they [ISIS insurgents] are coming at us with armored Humvees and we're throwing these AK-47 bullets at them. It doesn't do anything. At some point you run out of bullets," the Associated Press reports.
Currently, the CIA is handling arms distribution, but the US Defense Department claims it will soon begin direct arms supply to Kurdish militants. However, the officials have not yet specified what kinds of weaponry the Pentagon's supply will include, Reuters notes.
Experts warn that arming Kurdish Peshmerga may pose a potential threat to the integrity of the Iraqi state. According to the Guardian, the Kurdish forces have already seized the city of Kirkuk and its rich oil-reserves in June 2014, amid the increasing havoc in Iraq.
Kurds have always been in confrontation with the Iraqi government. The Kurdistan Independence referendum, held in 2005, indicated that more than 98 percent of respondents voted for independence from Iraq. In July, 2014, Massoud Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader called his government to organize a repeat independence referendum, Al Jazeera reported. "It will strengthen our position and will be a powerful weapon in our hands," said the president of the semiautonomous Kurdish region. In its turn Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, accused Barzani of "exploiting current events in order to impose a reality" and qualified the moves of the Kurdish leadership as "unacceptable."
Further strengthening of Kurdish positions will inevitably lead to the Iraqi state's fragmentation, experts claim.
"If you arm the Kurds now, and I think you have to, I don't think there's any other way around it, you're putting a finger on the scales of Iraq's internal political disputes," said Michael Hanna, an Egyptian-American scholar at the Century Foundation, as cited by the Guardian. "They're going to be retaking territory that's part of the disputed territory. You're basically shoring up one side of that political divide.
Still Washington and its European allies are planning to provide Kurds with more military aid as the Peshmerga has demonstrated its ability to impede ISIS offensive in Iraqi Kurdistan.
