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The West’s staunchest ally against ISIS is fighting on empty

The men of the Second Unit, Third Peshmerga Brigade, no longer fear the suicide truck bombs that a year ago might at any time come lurching through the fields toward their positions. From a concrete bunker atop a bulldozed mound southwest of Kirkuk, their French-donated heavy machine gun points skywards over the heads of Arab […]

Campbell MacDiarmid writes for Maclean's:

The men of the Second Unit, Third Peshmerga Brigade, no longer fear the suicide truck bombs that a year ago might at any time come lurching through the fields toward their positions. From a concrete bunker atop a bulldozed mound southwest of Kirkuk, their French-donated heavy machine gun points skywards over the heads of Arab farmers who have returned to till their land. A network of bunkers, berms, deep trenches and barbed-wire entanglements today protects much of Iraqi Kurdistan from Islamic State attacks. But the peshmerga fighters—the international coalition’s most stalwart ally in the fight against Islamic State, or ISIS—have other things to worry about, like paying rent.