ISIS’s terrible miscalculation

Peshmargas

By Arian Mufid:

During the Second World War the Polish nation displayed a most impressive resistance against the Nazis. History shows that you need to be ruthless in dealing with brutal forces. There was a lower level of collaboration in Poland than in any other occupied country in Europe.  The main reason for this is that the Poles had already experienced a long history of oppression and national resistance and they also suffered terribly under Nazism. The Kurds have suffered greatly at the hands of Turkish and Arab chauvinism over the past century. Since ISIS first attacked Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) territory last summer there has been a strengthening of the resolve and nationalist feeling among Kurds who have become more united against a brutal enemy.

Since August 2014 there have been hundreds of stories about so many families that have sacrificed their sons and fathers in this war. ISIS miscalculated in their aggression against the Kurds: firstly, because they have not studied the history of Kurds and evaluated how Kurds have got to where they are today; and, secondly, they wrongly thought their inhuman beheadings and raping of women and children would terrify Kurds into submission.

There are so many stories of bravery and sacrifice that might not surprise any Kurds but might surprise outside observers.  One family, for example, lost three sons on the front line in August. The president of Kurdistan visited the mum of these three brave peshmargas and she told Masud Barzani that he ought not to be upset because she considered the entire peshmarga forces as her sons and she was willing to sacrifice everything for the defence of Kurds and Kurdistan.

Another story is about two brothers and their father, all on the frontline. When the oldest son phoned his brother to tell him that their father had been killed, the younger brother asked him to handle all the burial arrangements because both of them should not take time away from the fighting. Another family lost two sons and, immediately after their burial, the only surviving third son joined the peshmargas. There is also the tale of General Sherko Shwani who was hospitalised but returned to the Kirkuk frontline before he had fully recovered and then was killed in the ISIS attack on the city on 30th January.

In Kobani the Kurdish women fighters stayed in their trenches for several days without any food and kept continuously observing and resisting their enemies. Kurdish fighters have transformed that city in the west of Kurdistan into a cemetery for the ISIS barbarians. Their corpses are everywhere and people tell me they can identify many different nationalities among them, such as Saudis, Syrians, Iraqis, Chechnians and so on. Today, depite its psychological warfare, ISIS is on the run everywhere in southern and western Kurdistan.