Arm the Kurds, says Chairman Royce

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - Chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, called on the Obama administration to directly arm the Kurdish forces who are battling the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria.

Speaking about the US foreign policy on Friday, Royce insisted that the Kurds should get more weapons and closer air support. The American Enterprise Institute, a Washington D.C.-based conservative think tank had held an event, covered live by Kurdistan24 TV, where Royce spoke.

The Chairman reminded the audience that he drafted and helped pass a bipartisan legislation last month at his committee and urged the U.S. President Barack Obama to provide equipment, weapons, and military training directly to Kurdish Peshmerga forces for a period of three years, in the ongoing fight against the IS.

In June 2015, the US Congress rejected a bipartisan Senate bill that urged the US to directly arm Iraqi Kurdistan's Peshmerga forces.

Royce, a Republican representative, criticized Obama administration's insistence on giving weapons to Kurds through the Iraqi government and stated that such approach only bolsters the Iran-influenced Baghdad and sectarian Shia militias, of whom he said, "they have a problem with our [US] army and the Kurds."

Baghdad government and Iran are strongly opposed to direct shipment of American weapons to Kurdistan, saying it undermines the Iraqi sovereignty.

The Chairman recounted that a former female Yazidi captive of the IS testified before the US Congress and retold how the militants killed all the men and enslaved the women and girls in her village.

A young Yazidi Kurdish woman, unidentified for security reasons, testified in September 2015, before the Congress about the plight she and other non-Muslim women suffered at the hands of the IS militants.

Royce quoted the ex-captive asking "Why won't you arm the Yazidi men? Why won't you arm the Kurdish men and women?"

Royce went on reminding the audience that 30 percent of the Kurdish battalions [in Syria] fighting IS are female.

Stating his belief that the American administration "needed a changing calculus," the Chairman insisted that the strategy should be "not to contain but to destroy IS."

"So that young Muslim women and men hear the message that "it is not their destiny to go join IS and expand the Caliphate. That [IS] is a losing cause."

"Not morally responsible to let Kurds fight ISIS w[ith] 40-year-old equi[pment]. No doubt they'd be victorious if given adequate equipment," Royce tweeted after the event.