US to Supply Kurds with Russian Arms via CIA

The story in Iraq gets more bizarre by the day. Kurdish territory in Iraq are the only pro-American territory left. Yet the US worries it will splinter off into Kuridistan. Apparently it's better to have a raging civil war as long as the country stays together in one theoretical piece.

This is where the story gets really bizarre. To avoid the appearance of the US giving arms to the Kurds, instead the US will give the Kurds Russian-made arms via the CIA.

Excuse me for asking, but what about sanctions on Russia?

While pondering that question, please consider US to directly arm Kurdish peshmerga forces in bid to thwart Isis offensive.

The Obama administration has announced it will arm the militia forces of Iraqi Kurdistan, to prevent the fall of the final bastion of pro-US territory in Iraq.

The weaponry is said to be light arms and ammunition, brokered not through the department of defense – which supplies Baghdad and its security forces with heavy weaponry – but the Central Intelligence Agency, which is better positioned to supply the Kurdish peshmerga with Russian-made guns like AK-47s that the US military does not use.

The CIA declined to comment.

The idea of arming the Kurds has been the subject of weeks of internal deliberation and official silence by Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers. It is a fateful step in Iraq’s current crisis, one that risks facilitating the long-term disintegration of Iraq. Several administrations over decades have refrained from arming the peshmerga due to concerns about reprisals from Saddam Hussein and his successors. US officials have demurred for days when asked about the deliberations.

The danger is that arming the peshmerga will facilitate a permanent fragmentation of Iraq, something the Kurds consider a national aspiration. Several disputed and multi-ethnic cities in northern Iraq complicate any peaceful cleavage, as do major oil holdings in both Kurdish and contested territory. The Peshmerga used the June disintegration of Iraqi Army forces running from Isis as an opportunity to seize disputed areas like oil-rich Kirkuk.

Heaven forbid a stable pro-US country with oil reserves might come out of this. Who could possibly want that?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com