Kurdish PM: IS recruited 15,000 last year

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (K24) - Nechirvan Barzani, Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, revealed Tuesday that the Islamic State (IS) group recruited 15,000 new militants in 2015. According to Kurdish intelligence, the total number of IS fighters reached 35,000, he said.

There was a significant rise in the number of IS militants last year despite a year-and-a-half-long air campaign by the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition, as well as Kurdish territorial gains in several offensives including Kobani, Tishrin, Tel Abyad, southern Hasaka in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) and Sinjar, Makhmour and Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan.

In a live TV interview from Erbil with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, the Kurdish PM said that the American strategy against IS has so far been to contain it and that a more comprehensive military strategy to destroy the group is needed.

Barzani’s remarks were reminiscent of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce's last week where Royce insisted that his country's administration "needed a changing calculus" in the fight against the IS.

Furthermore, Barzani said it would be a disaster for the IS-controlled city of Mosul and all of Iraq if the Mosul Dam in northern Iraq were to break. However, he added that it was safe especially now that Kurdish Peshmerga forces, soon-to-be-supported by 450 Italian soldiers, secure it. Barzani also said that the work to strengthen the dam would start, according to what his government has been told by the Federal Iraqi Government in Baghdad.

Barzani said the city of Mosul was not only important to the IS, as the group's leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi declared his caliphate there, but also to the Kurds. Mosul needs to be liberated, but it would take more than six months for the Iraqi Army to prepare for an eventual offensive to the city, added Barzani.

Barzani expressed his government's gratefulness to the U.S. and the European members of the coalition for their commitment to the Kurdistan Region. He thanked them for the military aid and training provided to the Kurdish forces but insisted that the Kurds needed more military and financial help.

The Kurdistan Region has been going through an economic crisis since 2014 mainly due to budget cuts by Baghdad and falling oil prices in the international markets.

PM Barzani also mentioned the Kurdish region's need for humanitarian aid, as close to 2 million refugees from Syria and internally displaced Iraqis are living in camps in Kurdistan.

He also said that the Kurds have so far rescued 2,400 captives from the hands of the IS. "With our limited capacity, we established rehabilitation centers. We need more help from the international community and experts," he said, adding that half of them were children who needed psychological aid.

The IS massacred thousands of Yezidi Kurdish men and took as many as 4,000 women and children as "spoils of war" when it took control of the town of Shingal (Sinjar) from outgunned Kurdish forces in mid-2014.