The Iraqi Kurds have their own autonomous region and their own armed forces, the Peshmerga. However, they are unable to purchase or import military hardware since they don’t have an independent state, and Baghdad hasn’t supplied the region with any modern armor. As a result, Iraqi Kurdistan has to make do with limited and mostly antiquated armored forces.
An example of a Peshmerga T-55 tank at a front-line during the war against the Islamic State. (Photo ... [+]
The Iraqi Kurds gained a lot from the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Their autonomy became officially enshrined in the Iraqi constitution, and their region not only remained mostly peaceful during the dark years of the Iraq War (2003-11) but even flourished.
During the invasion, the Peshmerga fought alongside the U.S. military against the Iraqi Army. That gave the Kurds the chance to snatch up some heavy weapons from Hussein’s collapsing army. As a result, the Kurdish fighters, who hitherto mostly fought in the mountains using guerilla tactics, gained their own tanks.
However, the equipment they captured was hardly cutting edge, mostly consisting of vintage Soviet-era armor such as T-55 and T-62 tanks.
When relations between Kurdistan and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki became strained in the early 2010s, the Iraqi government even made an issue over the fact that the Peshmerga had these old weapons, insisting they should all be in the possession of the federal state.
Maliki modernized Iraq’s armed forces during this period, taking delivery of 140 M1 Abrams main battle tanks from the United States and helicopter gunships from Russia, the most significant Iraqi military build-up since Saddam Hussein’s rule.
The Peshmerga’s armored forces, on the other hand, weren’t modernized at all during this period.
The Iraqi Kurds at that time even tried to convince the U.S. not to sell Iraq F-16 jet fighter-bombers, fearing Maliki might be tempted to invade their region if he possessed such aircraft, something he once hinted he might do.
Peshmerga T-55 and T-62 tanks saw combat during the war against the Islamic State (ISIS) group, including in offensives that pushed back the group from the region’s frontiers in the summer of 2016 during the lead-up to the lengthy Iraqi battle to liberate Mosul from ISIS rule.
However, those tanks clearly showed their age and lack any kind of active protection systems, which are of crucial importance for surviving attacks from anti-tank missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.
During this period, the U.S. also supplied the Peshmerga with armored vehicles, mostly Humvees and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs), but no tanks.
The U.S. insisted on upholding its one Iraq policy and supplied the vehicles and weapons for the Kurds through Baghdad rather than delivering them directly to the autonomous region.
Peshmerga MRAPs outside of Iraqi Kurdistan's capital Erbil on May 7, 2016.
The Iraqis apparently meddled with some of the MRAPs allocated to the Peshmerga since they arrived in Kurdistan without any side armor, essentially making them death traps if used in combat. One former U.S. Army Special Forces member went so far as to say that “riding in those MRAPs with all the amount of RPG 29s in the country is committing suicide.”
While the delivery of a few dozen MRAPs and several Humvees did help the Peshmerga’s war effort against ISIS, it was far from a major improvement or upgrade of the autonomous region’s armored forces.
U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith pinned the blame on former prime minister Maliki and his successor Haider al-Abadi for blocking any potential U.S. supply of Abrams tanks to the Peshmerga “even when the Kurds were the only ground force stopping ISIS from taking the entire north of Iraq.”
Such tanks would have been a massive upgrade for the Peshmerga’s antiquated armored forces and would undoubtedly have bolstered the defenses and security of the region substantially.
Ironically, rather than receiving any Abrams tanks, the Iraqi Kurds found themselves coming under attack from Iraqi M1s in October 2017.
Iraqi forces seized the disputed Kirkuk region from the Kurds that month.
Clashes subsequently ensued along the border demarcating the autonomous region from federal Iraq between the Iraqi Shiite-majority Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) paramilitaries and the Peshmerga. In one firefight, the Kurds successfully took an Iraqi Abrams tank those paramilitaries were using against them out of action with an anti-tank missile.
Then in December 2017, General Dynamics Land Systems withdrew maintenance and technical support for Iraq’s Abrams fleet since that support was conditioned on Iraq keeping all its Abrams tanks firmly under the control of the army. As a result, many of those tanks soon became inoperable.
Baghdad has since taken delivery of a new fleet of Russian-built T-90 tanks.
A picture taken on October 26, 2017 shows an Iraqi forces' M1 Abrams main battle tank advancing ... [+]
The Peshmerga, on the other hand, still mostly has to make do with the tanks it captured in 2003.
The Kurds have improvised and modified civilian vehicles for potential combat. One mechanic in the Kurdish city of Dohuk, for example, modified civilian vehicles by adding armor and making them more suitable for tough off-road terrain, for the Peshmerga.
Such improvised armored vehicles are often described as real-life versions of the kind of cars in the Mad Max movie franchise by the media, especially ones built by the Syrian Kurds — who have even more limited armored forces than their Iraqi Kurdish brethren.
In one dramatic use of an armored car, a Peshmerga named Ako Abdulrahman successfully used his bulletproof BMW to save several people from an ISIS siege on Kirkuk.
In October 2016, shortly after the U.S.-backed Iraqi operation to liberate Mosul from ISIS began, militants belonging to the group infiltrated the city of Kirkuk and occupied important buildings, killing several security forces and civilians alike.
Abdulrahman drove his BMW into ISIS’ line of fire countless times, using it to shield civilians and then drive them to safety. He saved the lives of dozens of people this way.
By the time the militants were ousted from the city and their takeover plot foiled, Abdulrahman’s BMW was riddled with 123 bullet holes but had proven itself the ideal rescue vehicle for those dramatic circumstances.
Such modified vehicles are certainly useful for transporting troops to and from the battlefield, evacuating wounded personnel and rescuing civilians besieged by small arms fire but not much else. They are certainly no substitute for tanks.
The fact remains that Iraqi Kurdistan’s armored forces are very old and of limited use for any future wars the region might find itself having to fight. And that’s not likely going to change anytime soon.
