The peshmerga are no newcomers to fighting Sunni militants. Prior to the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, Kurdish fighters helped American Special Forces evict the fanatical Ansar al-Islam group from a stronghold near the Iranian border. And in 2004, the peshmerga fought alongside US troops when Iraqi police and National Guard units in Mosul failed to contain a Sunni insurgency.
Are they likely to try a repeat of 2004 and assist Iraqi security forces to take back Mosul? “We are fighting a defensive war; not an offensive one,” says a peshmerga commander, who declined to be named for this article. And ordinary fighters don’t seem overwhelmed at the idea of going on the offensive outside Iraqi Kurdistan.
They see the ISIS uprising as part of a general Sunni revolt. Sunni tribes to the south of Kirkuk rebuffed a peshmerga offer of anti-ISIS assistance and were warned to confine themselves to the northern half of Kirkuk province, says Askari.
But he holds out the possibility of a Kurdish offensive outside their territory.
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