EXCLUSIVE: A day on the front line with the

Peshmerga in Iraq
After months of stalemate, a large-scale Peshmerga offensive has driven IS out of 10 villages assisted
by US volunteers and airstrikes

General Wasta Rasul, coordinating the attack on the field (MEE/Baram Maaruf)

Pieter Stockmans-Friday 28 August 2015

KIRKUK, Iraq - The frontline between

Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the Islamic State (IS) group in northern Iraq has
hardly budged for months, but that all changed on Wednesday morning.
At dawn, thousands of Kurdish Peshmerga forces belonging mainly to the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK), backed by special counterterrorism units, volunteer
fighters, and supporting medical teams gathered by the highway that passes
through the village of Haftagar, southeast of Daquq in the Kirkuk province.

Their mission was to launch one of the largest offensives of the last few months
and retake 10 villages in one day in hopes of eventually gaining control of the
entire province.
Various leading Iraqi-Kurdish generals showed up to lead the amassed troops,
with US military staff also present, seemingly there to help and coordinate the
anti-IS coalition airstrikes.
On the previous night, the streets of Kirkuk city had been unusually quiet and
empty. The inhabitants knew of the offensive and largely stayed indoors as
thousands of security personnel deployed across the city to prevent any IS suicide
attacks aimed a thwarting the advance.
Ultimately, IS launched a pre-emptive attack at the front line at 4am (2:00 GMT)
while the convoy of Peshmerga forces was still speeding down the highway,
hoping to reach the front line 50 kilometres away.
Only the flames of Kirkuks famous burning oil wells lighted up the horizon. As the
sun started to rise over the desert, more Peshmerga fighters continued to stream
in. Some walked, others drove, a few even took selfies. Villagers gathered on
heaps of dirt or on roofs to try and catch a glimpse of the action.

Pesh

merga fighters wait for orders to move into Albu Najem village, as it is attacked by
Kurdish forces and coalition airstrikes (MEE/Baram Maaruf)
The fight begins
Though unable to push ahead with the troops to the fighting line, Middle East Eye
watched at the front line (1km behind the fighting line), as explosions sounded in
the distance.
First came the sound of Russian-made Katyusha rockets launched by the
Peshmerga forces, followed by US airstrikes that left a dull bang at the horizon.
The occasional exchange of gunfire rattled on from far away. After some 30
minutes, the announcement that the first village had been taken rang through the
waiting ranks.
At the front line, officials from the US army stood on top of the dirt hills dug to
overview the fighting line, while US army veterans volunteering for the Peshmerga
stood at the bottom. There was no contact between the official US army and the
volunteers.
I was in Kobani [in Syria] with the YPG [Peoples Protection Units] and now Im
here with the Peshmerga in Kirkuk. I served in Afghanistan, said an American
volunteer, who wore a pin of the Kurdish PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan on his
uniform.
Another American volunteer fighting with the Peshmerga proudly donned a
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) uniform, despite his country considering the group
a terrorist organisation.
Iraq doesnt exist anymore, he told MEE. I served in Iraq after 2003. We went in,
f**ked up this country and look at it now: IS is using American weaponry, raping
women, burning villages. Im ashamed. I am here to finish what we started, but we
are no longer American boots on the ground. We are with the Kurds now.
I feel a kind of energy that I never felt before when I was serving the US army in
Iraq. I am here against the will of my government, but I am fighting for what is
right, he added.
There are believed to be at least 100 Americans fighting alongside Kurdish forces
in Syria, and possibly even more in Iraq, although accurate numbers are hard to
tally. Most have either a military background or troubled lives back home.
After I returned from [active service in] Iraq, my wife left me. I put a gun to my
head and almost killed myself, until I found a new purpose here, he said.

The conditions the US fighters find here are far from easy. Despite the US
assembling an anti-IS coalition last summer, progress has been slow.
Even once IS militants retreat, they tend to leave improvised explosive devices
(IEDs) behind. Sweep teams that pushed on ahead of the main fighters incurred
casualties. Within hours of the offensive, two Peshmerga fighters were killed
instantly while trying to dismantle a device. The loud explosion roared back to the
front line, slowly souring the mood. An hour later, General Wasta Rasul
announced another casualty when he returned from the front line.
The sweep teams just called me to move my troops into the first village, he told
MEE. These villages are at a strategic location to encircle IS and cut their supply
routes. This area, if not liberated, poses a danger to the main road from Kirkuk to
Baghdad and the Kurdish and other villages adjacent to the areas occupied by IS.
Political representatives from all the major Iraqi Kurdish factions soon began to
arrive at the scene. Aso Mamend, a member of the PUK politbureau, and
Mohamed Haji Mahmoud, a veteran Peshmerga fighter and socialist leader, drew
large crowds.
'ISIS Hunting Club' in force
As the offensive progressed, machines were rolled in to help three Kurdish
divisions dig around the main road and attack the enemy on different fronts.
Supplies of katyusha rockets soon rushed in, carried through by fighters wearing
the insignia of ISIS Hunting Club, an American paramilitary organisation.
By 9am local time, the Kurdish forces had managed to take four villages from IS.
[The Peshmerga] could overrun IS easily, but the central Iraqi government in
Baghdad doesnt want to see us gain ground because we are taking back our
lands ethnically cleansed during Saddams Arabisation campaigns, said Sirwan
Maaruf, a representative of the PUK at the European Parliament.
The tensions in Iraq between the Kurds and Arabs run deep. The so-called
Arabisation campaigns began in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein enacted a
forced mass movement of both Kurds and Arabs in an attempt to dilute Kurdish
dominance in parts of the country.
While the contested city of Kirkuk was due to have a referendum on its future in
2007, this has long been delayed. Kurdish forces seized the city last year from the
Iraqi army. Allegations of Kurdish abuses, carried out against Arab villagers in

recaptured areas, are unlikely to have warmed sentiments.

But despite reservations from Baghdad, General Wasta Rasul told MEE that US air
support was becoming more frequent.
American warplanes are arriving faster than they used to, he said. We started
with nothing and now I have modern weaponry. This fills me with hope.
He also stressed that his forces could defeat IS in months if they were given
control of the Iraqi armys weapons stockpile and said that allegations of abuses
were untrue.
Behind my front line, there are 50 Arab villages. I am making sure they live in
peace. Driving them out is not our aim, he said.
Smouldering rubble, shady rest
The once-busy front line, where so many had gathered a few hours earlier, began
to empty. MEE joined fighters rolling out to villages taken from IS. The calm
contrasted strikingly with the mayhem in the villages after the fighting. Buildings
used by IS were destroyed by coalition airstrikes, abandoned mud houses were
smouldering after rockets had hit them. Rubble, tin roofs, glass and bent iron
were spread out over the entire village.
In Albu Najem, the first village that was taken, Peshmerga forces were taking a
rest in the shade. Their faces, smiling, bore the marks of exhaustion, sweat, sand
and the thin pieces of ash filling the air. The smell of kerosene, oil, smoke and
dust, and the roaring sound of passing tanks, digging machines and huge
armoured vehicles could not bother them. One Peshmerga fighter even started
praying in the midst of this madness. Kurdish digging machines started
demolishing the village to clear the IEDs and mines IS had planted.
While Albu Najem was still smouldering, the Peshmerga fighters rushed to grab
the sandwiches Sirwan Maaruf had brought them. They shared stories from the
fighting.

Phot
o shows a room in a house IS was using as a base in Albu Najem village, with a
dismantled IED (MEE/Baram Maaruf)
They [IS] were hiding in a house of the village of Tal Bassal, one of the fighters
from the special units told MEE upon his return.
I returned when we reached the fifth village. Others pushed on until the tenth.
Nearby me, an IED exploded, killing our captain.
It was not the first casualty he had witnessed in the last year. His brother had died
fighting IS and many of his family members had been killed in suicide attacks in
Kirkuk.
According to General Rasul, by the close of operations the Peshmerga had taken
about 250 square kilometres from IS. He says that only four fighters were killed on
his side, exclusively by IEDs left by IS. He later told MEE that he saw IS take the
dead bodies of at least 40 militants with them to Hawijah.
The coalition airstrikes also killed a lot of IS fighters and nobody could find their
remains, said Rasul.
We achieved our goals. I ordered 19 digging machines to construct a new line of
defence in front of the tenth village. This was a good example of cooperation
between Peshmerga, counterterrorism units and coalition airstrikes.

The PUKs EU representative Maaruf was also quick to praise the offensive.
This was only the beginning, he told MEE. "The operation will continue until we
reach the borders of historical Kurdistan. Then we will focus on defence. We will
not push further into predominantly Sunni Muslim Arab towns and villages. That
will be up to the Iraqi army. We are fighting for Kurdistan, not for Iraq, he added.
Such objectives, however, are likely to fall foul of both Sunni and Shia Arab Iraqis
and they bode badly for the prospects of a united Iraq emerging from the current
chaos.
At the beginning of 2015, 2,000 IS-fighters stood ready to attack us and take
Kirkuk, but we want to pin down democracy here, through a secular political
system that protects every citizen, regardless of his or her ethnicity or religion,
General Rasul said ahead of the offensive.
If the central Iraqi government thinks that we are giving our martyrs for nothing,
then they are wrong. We will never give up Kirkuk, he added.
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