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Halting Isis: Kurdish Military Resistance Against the Islamic State

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Halting Isis: Kurdish Military Resistance Against the Islamic State HALTING ISIS: KURDISH MILITARY RESISTANCE AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE A Thesis submitted to the faculty of A6 San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of 3fe the requirements for 2ol(, the Degree ? O L l Master of Arts •H3fe In Political Science by Garrison Sidney Cleophas Ham San Francisco, California August 2016 HALTING ISIS: KURDISH MILITARY RESISTANCE AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE Garrison Sidney Cleophas Ham San Francisco, California 2016 The Kurdish Peshmerga of Northern Iraq have been successful in their fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). This comes as a surprise due to an initial defeat suffered against ISIS at the onset of the war as well as the militant group’s military success against the Syrian and Iraqi armies. A general consensus in analytic and academic circles suggests the Peshmerga’s success came from foreign military assistance and combat air support from a western led coalition. Other militaries, however, have been ousted by foes despite the presence of the same type of support. This paper seeks to explain why the Kurds in Iraq were able to successfully use foreign military assistance by analyzing the implications of strong governance, ethno-political motivations, and the crossing of a psychological barrier that forced the Kurdistan Regional Government and its army to engage a foreign threat in a conflict that posed an existential threat to the very existence of a self-governing Kurdish zone of autonomy on the internal use and allocation of aid. I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis. Date CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read HALTING ISIS: KURDISH MILITARY RESISTANCE AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE by Garrison Sidney Cleophas Ham , and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree (Example) Master of Science in Biology: Conservation Biology at San Francisco State University. James(NJartcl, Ph.D Professor Aaron Belkin, Ph.D. Professor PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The topic of this thesis is complex and still quite new to the Political Science literature. It has been an immense undertaking trying to explain how governance relates to direct results on a battlefield. Unbeknownst to me, this paper really between the Winter of 2009 and the Fall of 210 while I was deployed to Kirkuk, Iraq with the United States Army. I was tasked with training a seemingly obscure militia group known as the Peshmerga with the intend of eventually combining their units with the Iraqi Army. During this time, I became increasingly interested in the Kurdish people and their relation to both Baghdad and the Greater Middle East. I would like to thank Dr. James Martel and Dr. Aaron Belkin for giving me the autonomy to conduct the research and find the answers that I was looking for. Furthermore, I would also like to thank Dr. Nicole Watts for her guidance and thought provoking course work throughout my Master’s Degree program. Her classes gave me the tools that I needed to bring a topic as technical and military performance into the political science literature. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 The Initial Defeat.................................................................................................... 3 Foreign Aid............................................................................................................. 6 Stronger Government...............................................................................................8 Ethno-Political Cohesion..................................................................................... 11 Layout of This Paper..............................................................................................13 Method................................................................................................................................. Literary Review.....................................................................................................15 Theory................................................................................................................... 39 Results.................................................................................................................................. The Defeat of the Iraqi Army.................................................................................58 The KRG’s Initial Defeat...................................................................................... 65 The KRG Rebounds.............................................................................................. 79 Discussion..........................................................................................................................89 References 95 1 Introduction In the summer of 2014, Syria’s civil war spilled into neighboring Iraq. Fearing the possible repercussions of a failed state to the west, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) closed its borders in June of that year (CNN, 2016) Despite the closings, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) invaded large swaths of Iraq and the Semi- Autonomous Region of Kurdistan. The Yezidi stronghold of Sinjar in northwest Iraq fell to ISIS in August of 2014. More than 500 Yezidi civilians (a Kurdish religious minority) were reported killed by ISIS fighters. (Jalabi, 2014) The Islamic State’s jihadi warriors continued their push and closed in on the contested Kurdish city of Kirkuk in the fall of 2014. Taking the city would have opened the Kurdish heartland to a devastating invasion. The KRG’s Peshmerga were underfunded, undertrained, and poorly equipped to stand up to an experienced ISIS force whose arsenal of modem weapons was rapidly growing. (Rojan, 2014) After suffering an initial defeat against ISIS, the Peshmerga were able to halt their enemy’s advance in the city of Kirkuk with a modem incarnation of trench warfare (Cancian & Cancian, 2016). In January of 2015, casualties included some 800 Peshmerga fighters that were reported killed in action while 3,500 were wounded. (Hawramy, 2015) At the time of this writing, the KRG is gearing up to retake Mosul in the Nineveh Plain Alongside Iraqi troops (lost to ISIS in January 2015). Some Kurds have openly admitted a desire to keep the territory for the Kurdistan. (Salih M. A., 2016) Although the Peshmerga hold a reputation as a skilled fighting force, it is nonetheless a union of fragmented militias that owe their allegiances to political parties 2 and not the KRG outright. Despite the Kurdish defense force’s loose organization and complicated structure, why has the Peshmerga been so successful against ISIS? Furthermore, what has influenced this success? The Peshmerga are more than an army or militia. Their existence bridges the gap between the technical skill of warfare and domestic politics. They are an armed political force focused on what they believe is the liberation of Kurdistan. (Chapman, 2009) Kurdistan’s warriors are regarded as both a political symbol and the defenders of their ethnic homeland. And despite having been woefully unprepared to stave off an invasion, the Ministry of Peshmerga (MOP) has successfully deployed its forces to fight a foreign threat, moving closer towards monopolizing the legitimate use of force within KRG territory. With the help of American air support, Sinjar was liberated from ISIS by Kurdish forces in November of 2014. At the time of this writing, Kirkuk is completely controlled by Kurds and the Iraqi Army needs the help of the Peshmerga to retake Mosul. (Natali, The Long Road to Mosul, 2016) Meanwhile, Kurdistan remains a safe and comparatively stable part Iraq. How is this possible that in the midst of an ongoing war challenging both Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan at an existential level? In this paper, I argue that the Ministry of the Peshmerga’s battlefield success against ISIS has been the result of a strong government, ethno-political cohesion generated from an existential threat, and a sense of urgency outlined in the Rubicon Theory that has enabled the Kurds to successfully use foreign aid. 3 The Initial Defeat The Peshmerga were known as a formidable guerilla force leading up to their fight against Islamic State militants. It came as a surprise that their preliminary confrontations with ISIS ended in a loss. Media outlets were quick to report that a weapons disparity was to blame for the Kurdish defeat (Shea 2016; McCoy 2014; Beck 2014), but that turned out to be only partially true. Peshmerga forces had mechanized equipment, armed vehicles, and fire support capabilities to complement their standard armament of battle rifles and crew-served machine guns. As far as small-armed groups in the region go, the KRG’s Peshmerga had a fairly respectable arsenal of weapons. According to Michael Knights, a military analyst and fellow with the Washington Institute: The Peshmerga have significant stocks of heavy weaponry, including tanks, rocket artillery, and howitzers, so any claim that ISIS can outgun them is simply untrue. But they may lack the ammunition required to sustain artillery barrages throughout the duration of offensive operations, as well as the spare parts and maintenance capabilities needed to keep armored vehicle fleets in service. In other words, the Peshmerga face a logistics shortfall, not an equipment shortfall per se. (Knights, 2014) Thus far, there have been no reports
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