Will Congress arm Iraqi Kurds?
The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs panel is lining up support for his bid to bypass Baghdad.
The top House Republican in charge of foreign policy is lining up allies in his bid to directly arm the Iraqi Kurds in their fight against the Islamic State (IS).
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., is circulating a Dear Colleague letter asking colleagues of both parties to sign on to legislation that would allow the Obama administration to bypass Baghdad, Al-Monitor has learned. The pending legislation will largely mirror a bill that Royce filed late last year with ranking member Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.
"We invite you to help speed the flow of U.S. weapons to our Kurdish partners," the letter says, "by cosponsoring a bipartisan bill that would provide temporary authority for the President to provide military assistance directly to Kurdish 'Peshmerga' forces fighting ISIL [IS] in Iraq."
The push follows repeated requests by the Kurdistan Regional Government for heavy weapons, including helicopters, artillery and Humvees. The Kurds say they're not getting the equipment they need, while the State Department says its hands are tied because it must first get Baghdad, which has tense relations with Iraq's Kurdish region, to sign off before sending heavy equipment to Erbil.
