KRG: Congress Legislated Air Defenses for Kurdistan Region—Pentagon Must Act
WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) – In passing the 2024 defense budget, the U.S. Congress “required that the Defense Department submit a plan for providing the Kurdistan Region with air defenses,” Treefa Aziz, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Representative to the United States, wrote in Monday’s edition of The Hill, a major Washington newspaper focused on Congressional issues.
The legislation on the defense budget, formally known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), called for the Pentagon to submit an air defense plan for the Kurdistan Region by Feb. 1 and “fully implement” it by July 1, “including the full installation of air defense systems and training against threats, such as missiles, rockets, and unmanned systems,” Aziz explained.
“Yet, nearly six months after the bill’s passage, no plan has materialized,” she continued, “and the Kurdish people and U.S. personnel continue to face mounting threats with little to defend ourselves,” as she called on the Pentagon to finalize and implement its plan “right away.”
Long-Time Kurdish Support for the U.S.
The KRG, including its Peshmerga forces, have long been important partners to the U.S. In 2002, following the 9/11 attacks, as the Bush administration prepared for the 2003 war that would oust Saddam Hussein and his regime, one of its first actions was to send a CIA team to work with the Peshmerga and prepare the battlefield in advance of the war’s formal start.
Those events are detailed in a book, “Operation Hotel California: The Clandestine War inside Iraq,” written by the head of that CIA team.
A decade later, when ISIS emerged in the midst of Syria’s civil war and burst across the border into Iraq, seizing one-third of the country, the U.S. again turned to the Peshmerga.
The Iraqi army had collapsed in the north. But working with Kurdish forces, the U.S. succeeded in halting the ISIS offensive. Over the following years, at the head of a large coalition, the U.S. worked in concert with the Peshmerga and a reconstituted Iraqi military, ultimately rolling back and defeating the terrorist group.
Not only have the Kurds been reliable military partners, the Kurdistan Region has proven itself a successful political enterprise—far more successful than the rest of Iraq.
That is what Joey Hood, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, told the U.S Congress in late 2019: “The Kurdistan Region could serve as a model for the rest of Iraq.”
In that statement, Hood echoed Lt. Gen. Jay Garner (US Army, Retired), who oversaw Operation Provide Comfort in 1991 and then led the US reconstruction effort in the first stage of the 2003 war. As Garner told Kurdistan 24, “Kurdish Iraq is the Iraq we wanted to have. Kurdistan is what we wanted Iraq to be.”
Read More: US: Kurdistan Region can be model for rest of Iraq
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D, Ill.) spoke similarly following her return to Iraq in 2019. She had been grievously wounded during the 2003 war, in which she had served as a helicopter pilot.
Duckworth was amazed at the changes she saw in the Kurdistan Region in the intervening years. “I think what the Kurds have been able to do sets an example” for the rest of Iraq, Duckworth said.
Read More: Sen. Duckworth: Kurdistan is model for Iraq; ISIS not defeated
The Kurds are also known for their religious tolerance, a quality all too rare in the Middle East. Indeed, Sam Brownback, formerly Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, had high praise for the Kurds in that regard, as he hailed the Kurdistan Region as “an island of civility” in a very troubled part of the world.
But all this is jeopardized by the Kurdistan Region’s lack of a basic air defense system—a vulnerability that the Congressional legislation sought to address.
Attacks on the Kurdistan Region
Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 cross-border assault on Israel has triggered an intensified instability in a region that was already unstable and violence-prone. Among other things, Iran has used the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas to mobilize its own proxies, including for attacks on Americans and their allies.
The Kurdistan Region has been targeted in the course of that conflict. In December, as Aziz noted, a drone attack targeted a U.S. base near Erbil airport.
In January, an Iranian ballistic missile struck the home of one of the Region’s most prominent businessmen, Peshraw Dizayee. Iran claimed—quite falsely—that it had struck a site belonging to Israeli intelligence.
Read More: Four civilians killed in missile attack on Erbil
Last month, a major gas field in Sulaimani Province, operated by the UAE’s Dana Gas, was temporarily knocked out by a drone strike. Four Yemeni workers were killed.
Senior Kurdish officials understood the attack as an Iranian assault on the Kurdish economy, carried out by Iraqi proxies.
Read More: Khor Mor attack a systematic targeting of KRG's economy, former Iraqi Foreign Minister
Nor do the dangers come only from Iran and its proxies. ISIS is “working feverishly to reconstitute itself in Iraq and Syria,” Aziz noted, even as the terrorist group may already be making a comeback in Afghanistan.
On March 22, ISIS-K launched an attack on a Moscow music hall, killing 145 people, and on Jan. 3, it carried out an attack in Iran that killed over 100 people.
Thus, “the requirements laid out in last year’s NDAA are crucial for the future of the Kurdistan Region,” Aziz concluded. “We urgently need those requirements to be met as swiftly as possible.”
“The Defense Department must immediately deploy a comprehensive, integrated air defense system that protects the entire Kurdistan Region,” she continued.
“The effect of such a deployment would be threefold: to serve as a force protection measure for U.S. troops and their partners, shield innocent civilians from harm, and provide a robust deterrent against continued escalation.”