BAGHDAD: The US-led coalition has made Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish forces primary allies against the Islamic State Jihadist group, but over-reliance on the Kurds carries risks, analysts warn. As the world seeks to turn up the heat on IS, some of the West’s main partners on the ground are the peshmerga forces from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria. The first soldiers officially deployed by the United States in Syria arrived last week in the north to train the YPG, a group which has close ties to Turkey’s terror-listed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels but which has also notched up significant military successes against IS. In the aftermath of the deadly November 13 attacks claimed by IS in Paris, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls emphasised the need to support Kurdish forces on the ground. After IS took over swathes of Iraq in 2014, Washington launched air strikes alongside a programme to train and equip local forces. The US "picked the Iraqi Kurds because they were strategic partners during the 2003 invasion and were, at least in their eyes, the most trustworthy," said Maria Fantappie, Iraq senior analyst with International Crisis Group. More than a year on, multi-million-dollar attempts to groom Arab forces in both Iraq and Syria have yielded limited results at best and failed to sabotage IS’ self-proclaimed "caliphate". Attacks in France, elections in the US and a migrant crisis across Europe converge to up public pressure for swift and decisive action against the increasingly global threat of IS. Kurdish forces are among the most skilled, organised and determined to battle IS in the region. But analysts warn military action should be matched with political planning for the post-IS era in Iraq and Syria, and that relying too heavily on the Kurds could backfire. The lack of a roadmap addressing Kurdish statehood aspirations is an incentive for groups to secure as many future bargaining chips as possible by winning military brownie points now. Fantappie said that explains why the YPG might be prepared to push beyond Kurdish areas and take part in an offensive to recapture the IS hub of Raqa, an almost entirely Arab city. "Definitely this is on their mind, especially for the YPG, which strives to gain international recognition," she said. In neighbouring Iraq, forces loyal to the regional Kurdish president Massud Barzani last month retook the town of Sinjar, the main hub of Iraq’s Yazidi minority. Before IS swept across Iraq last year, it was under Baghdad’s authority, not part of the autonomous Kurdish region, but Barzani is now pushing plans to maintain control of the area. Barzani "effectively announced Sinjar’s annexation into the Iraqi Kurdistan region," Patrick Martin, Iraq researcher at the Institute for the Study of War, said. "There have been no indications that Kurdish fighters are prepared to hand control of the district to the Iraqi federal government," he said. Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute, which focuses on US policy in the Near East, said any operation to free Iraq’s second city Mosul from IS would be headquartered on Kurdish real estate.
