The Pittsburgh Tribune Live quotes Rafik Hariri Center Nonresident Fellow Ramzy Mardini on Kurdish Peshmerga’s attempts to counter the threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham in northern Iraq:
“While the peshmerga are far more disciplined and professional fighters than their Iraqi counterparts, it’s been a while since they were really put to the test,” says Ramzy Mardini, a fellow at the nonpartisan Atlantic Council in Washington and expert on Iraq and Jordan.
The Kurds are “fierce fighters (who) have dealt with a history of battling one war after another, including a civil war among themselves,” he says.
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All of this has degraded “the status of the Kurdish security establishment,” says the Atlantic Council’s Mardini. “The ‘software’ may be professional and disciplined, but the hardware is inadequate. There’s no way the Kurds were going to be able to sustain a fight during an enduring conflict.”