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Default United Arab Emirates seeks to recruit 3000 Colombian soldiers

The United Arab Emirates is seeking to enlist 3,000 Colombian soldiers in the oil-rich Arab country’s armed forces, weekly Semana reported Sunday.


According to the weekly, 842 Colombian soldiers and retired soldiers have already joined the UAE army which is paying salaries up to ten times what the Colombian state pays the members of its armed forces.


The transfer of soldiers to the foreign army is causing unease among Colombia’s military commanders because the military fears the higher salaries abroad are draining the army of its best men and women.


“They have recruited soldiers with a lot of combat experience, valuable men with years of service in which the Army invested a lot in terms of training,” an anonymous general told Semana.


“Without a doubt, this is a loss for the army, but there isn’t much we can do because it is by no means illegal,” the military official added.
According to the weekly, the Colombians are making in between $2,800 and $18,000 in the UAE depending on the rank. In Colombia, a soldier earns $530 a month on average.


The New York Times reported in May 2011 that the UAE hired Colombian soldiers as mercenaries through a company led by Erik Prince, the founder of controversial private security company Blackwater.


According to a Colombian former colonel — now in charge of recruiting compatriots for the UAE Army — the 800 Colombians currently active in the Arab peninsula are not part of a mercenary army, but hired directly by the armed forces.


“What is happening now is different than before. We are no mercenaries. The contract of the people who travel is directly with the government of the [United] Arab Emirates,” the anonymous colonel said.


The Colombian ex-official said the UAE are investing in their military defense because the government “noticed that several threats have made them vulnerable.”


According to the former colonel, the Colombians’ responsibilities “range from urban defense against terrorist attacks to the control of civil uprisings and even be prepared for a possible border conflict with Iran.”


The United Arab Emirates is one of the few countries in the Middle East that has not been affected by the “Arab spring,” a wave of revolutionary social unrest that forced four rulers in the region from power.

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Army chief: We risk war with Syria

Britain has to be prepared to “go to war” if it wishes to restrain the Syrian regime by implementing no-fly zones and arming the rebels, the outgoing head of the armed forces warns today.

By Con Coughlin, Defence Editor and Robert Winnett, Political Editor10:08PM BST 17 Jul 2013
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, General Sir David Richards said that “if you want to have the material impact on the Syrian regime’s calculations that some people seek” then “ground targets” would have to be “hit”.
The Chief of the Defence Staff also warns that the Government needs to clarify its “political objective” in Syria before a coherent military plan for dealing with the Assad regime can be recommended.
Last month, David Cameron and Barack Obama indicated that they would look at military measures after evidence emerged showing that the Syrian regime was using chemical weapons against its citizens.
However, in recent days, the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for further intervention appears to have waned following private warnings from Sir David and Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, about the implications of being drawn further into the Syrian civil war.
Sir David today steps down as the country’s most senior military officer and in an interview with this newspaper he sets out his concerns about the complexity of the situation in Syria.
“There is a lack of international consensus on how to take this forward,” he said. “We are trying to cohere the opposition groups, but they are difficult to cohere because there are many different dimensions to them.
“So it is work in progress, so I am very clear in my military advice to the government that we need to understand what the political objective is before we can sensibly recommend what military effort and forces should be applied to it.”
He added: “That is something we debate a lot, from the Prime Minister downwards. We also need to do this with our allies. Allies have different views on the way ahead. Understandably there is a great reluctance to see Western boots on the ground in a place like Syria.”
The chief of the defence staff also warns that simply introducing a no-fly zone on its own would not prove effective and that other military measures would be required.
Sir David, 61, said: “If you wanted to have the material impact on the Syrian regime’s calculations that some people seek, a no fly zone per se is insufficient.
“You have to be able, as we did successfully in Libya, to hit ground targets.
“You have to establish a ground control zone. You have to take out their air defences. You also have to make sure they can’t manoeuvre – which means you have to take out their tanks, and their armoured personnel carriers and all the other things that are actually doing the damage.
“If you want to have the material effect that people seek you have to be able to hit ground targets and so you would be going to war if that is what you want to do.”
He added: “That is rightly a huge and important decision. There are many arguments for doing to but there are many arguments for not doing so too.”
The country’s most senior military officer described the situation as “highly complex” and suggested that the focus of Government action was also on ensuring the conflict did not “spread” to neighbouring countries.
“We are looking at Syria much more from a regional perspective and making sure that as awful as things are there it doesn’t spread materially to other countries like Lebanon and Jordan,” he said.
At the recent G8 summit in Northern Ireland, the Prime Minister won plaudits for appearing to persuade Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, to back a peace conference to resolve the Syrian crisis. Mr Cameron had previously warned that those who failed to stand up to the Assad regime were “stained” by the blood of children who had died.
However, he is facing increasing opposition within the Conservative Party over any move to arm the Syrian rebels amid fears that the equipment could fall into the hands of terrorists.
In today’s interview, Sir David, who today ends a military career spanning more than 40 years, also speaks of his pride of what has been achieved in Afghanistan ahead of the withdrawal of combat troops next year. He said it had been a “good war” and that members of the military who have died in the conflict “should be very proud of what they have achieved.”
“I see myself as a moral soldier,” he said. “I do not associate the military with wars and bloodshed in a narrow sense. I actually associate the military with doing good, with bringing down tyrants, with releasing people’s ambitions for their children.”
“Most people feel better as a result of what the British and their allies have done. Only history will determine the success or otherwise of some of these ventures. But it is military force that has enabled these things to happen - and we only do as our democratically-elected government asks of us.”
He also lauded the success of the mission in preventing any terrorist attacks being plotted from Afghan soil against Britain since 2001.
The chief of defence staff says that although combat troops will be removed from the country next year, the military will have a “residual” role in Afghanistan for many years to come. This will be decided by his successor and the National Security Council in the autumn.
“If we lost the confidence of the Afghan people because we reneged on the promises we have made then I think we would have cause to worry about that,” he said.
Sir David leaves the military following a bitter row over defence spending which has been heavily cut by the Coalition.
The recent Spending Round – which set expenditure for the 2015-16 financial year – was not as brutal as expected for the military with spending frozen. However, Sir David warns that any further cuts will undermine the country’s security strategy.

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SPEAKING FREELY
The quicksand of self-deception
By Nicholas A Biniaris

Many well-informed and open-minded analysts in Asia Times Online and elsewhere have for several years described the conditions of Islam and of Muslim states. It goes without saying that these individuals had no agenda and were sincerely studying the social and political events triggered by the Iranian Revolution and the first Afghan war.

Up until now no clear sign of a coherent plan can be seen in the actions of the West, China and India, all of whom are willingly or unwillingly involved in this historic drama. To its credit, Russia kept a consistent real-politic attitude to all events happening in the Muslim world.

However, in this article I shall argue that a pattern of action or inaction, (inaction can be a policy also) emerges as what I shall call the West's policy of creative destruction and deception, internalized as self-deception (CDSD).

This pattern is mostly ad-hoc and formed as a sort of a spontaneous outcome of four causal factors: disruption of the West's economic order, fear of terrorism, fear of a nuclear war and finally fear of sectarian war which may spread in Muslim areas but also in West's own home ground. Moreover, Western policies are driven by the advent of democracy, the rule of law and human rights which also include minority rights. These policies intertwine and enmesh with the four pragmatic factors of insecurity and create an incongruous and contradictory set of policies which are at least ineffective and at most self-destructive.

At this juncture of a historical maelstrom in and around Islam, we reached the ludicrous point of naming meat as fish, so that the pious monks could consume the forbidden food during fasting. We cannot name the Egyptian's army coup as a "coup" for various reasons, one being the possible abrogation of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. Another reason could be the "meeting of minds" between Washington and the Egyptian Army about Morsi's acts and plans concerning his policies about Syria and Iran.

The view of this author is that the generals are as incompetent as Morsi was. They deposed him as the scapegoat for the looming bankruptcy of the country. Instead they secured a lifeline of US$12 billion from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which I shall call the untouchables. At the same time Syria's Bashar al-Assad has declared that political Islam is defeated and Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is lamenting the demise of democracy in Egypt. We definitely need an Aristophanes to write an Oscar winning comedy for the foolish West versus the unfathomable developments in the Moslem world.

Turkey, in particular, the model of "moderate" Islamic government was surprised to experience the first full scale attack against neo-Ottomanism. This was an assault on the "disposable idiots", as Burak Bekdil, the influential Turkish journalist, refers to the secularists who repeatedly voted for Erdogan. [1] The premier's holier than thou attitude has enraged the young and educated Turks who perceive that their way of life and choices for the future are diminished by his grand visions of world influence through a Muslim agenda.

Beyond any attempt to lighten up the ambiance of the recent events, what is emerging is a bleak and dangerous future for all. The stable, ironically speaking, the untouchables, are major suppliers of gas and oil worldwide with Saudi Arabia exporting about three million bbl/day to China. For that matter, plus the fact of their investments in Western bourses and corporations and the lavish procurement of weapons from the West, the two pillars of a make-believe stability are untouchables by Western, Chinese and other governments and world media.

Actually, the untouchables are the attested sources of instability and strife. These are the bankers of Islam's extremist views. They propagate and disseminate Salafism and Wahhabism which steer Islam to its most incongruous path with modernity that is science, technology and political and individual rights.

They profess an Islam in direct conflict with freedom and human dignity. In addition, they propagate hatred and intolerance for other Muslim traditions, as the Shi'ites, the Sufis, and the Ahmadiyya of Pakistan supporting a religiously inspired apartheid. Christians are targeted: Copts, Orthodox, Catholics and other denominations. Most of them are abandoning the war torn areas. This is a total abrogation not of Koranic Verses preaching peace but of the West's professed belief in minority rights.

Never before in human history, so few held in captivity so many, with such an obscurant credo and way of life. This unholy alliance of the West and the untouchables is practiced through deception. We deceive ourselves by aligning with the perpetrators of all we consider to be unacceptable: terrorism, bondage, laws of the desert and the tribe, cultural exclusion and intolerance of the other.

Fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, in Mali, blacklisting Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda as terrorist organizations - embargoing Iran - is just deceptions. All these acts deceive the citizens and planners themselves into believing that we fight terrorism and we propagate democracy and human rights.

What the West actually practiced was primarily reactive creative destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq and very lately in Libya. We fought asymmetrical wars, which we were bound to loose anticipating the creative part to emerge in due time if and when societies attain the consciousness of a working democracy according to our standards.

Foreign policy and its implementation has one purpose: to protect its vital interests and safeguard the well-being or the actor. We, and for that matter China and India are faced with the stark reality of a protracted conflict of all against all where the two paragons of stability will be sucked in one way or another. The Untouchables are fighting for their survival paying huge amounts of their easy gained money to support Sunni jihadists, paying for the overthrow of Gaddafi, the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Egyptian Army against the Brotherhood, keeping American bases and mercenary armies for their protection.

Saudi Arabia is paying huge subsidies bribing its idle population, student stipends and social handouts to keep its people quiet and uses a heavy hand against the Shi'ites who sit upon the main oil sources of the kingdom. In the south, Yemen is in total chaos, with secessionist movements and subject to drone attacks against jihadists. This situation is inherently unstable. Tribal affiliations and family alliances rule with Sharia as the legitimization of their rule.

This deceptive stability is threatened by the selfsame jihadists and Taliban (students of the Koran) who are educated and subsidized by the Untouchables. These jihadists hold them hostage to their pathological views about an Islamic Caliphate, a return to the days of the Prophet, an ossified society where girls seeking education are shot and schools (carriers of western ideas) are destroyed. [2] World history is replete with examples of groups of mercenaries or fanatics who were used by states and political systems to defend and support them. The end result was the overturning of the masters by their guards. Whoever has the resolve to fight and die is far ahead in the game of power grabbing. The future of these Satrapies is bleak and so is ours.

What will happen when and if the flow of oil is disrupted by acts of terrorism or by acts of inter-state wars or civil strife in these areas? We have already put in place an embargo for Iranian oil. Iraq is in a "low intensity" civil war with 1000 people blown up only in May this year and most of the fabulous oil riches some 7.5 million bbl/day are still lying in the desert.

If the feared but fully expected -it is a matter of time- upheaval reaches the sands and shores of the sanctum sanctorum of Islamic orthodoxy and the supply of oil, then the West shall be forced to take extreme and painful military and economic measures at a period where its economy is still shaken by the mindless banking collapse of 2008. Europe in particular, with an austerity program and several countries virtually bankrupt, will collapse as a house of cards. The cost of energy, mostly a deficit of current accounts, will skyrocket; industrial production will be cut with millions of unemployed joining the ranks of the already army of millions in Europe's south.

It must become clear that the West and the rest of the rising world powers had not planned to stem or channel the Muslim conundrum to a less self and world-wide destructive path. Preventive diplomacy and intervention, creative destruction and the doctrine of democracy and human rights were applied haphazardly and incoherently.

Human rights and democracy are part of the Western narrative about the telos, the inevitable moral purpose of history. Messiahs and Paradises are the telos of Abrahamic religions. Can the two world views be reconciled? The Western narrative is an advancement of our humanity towards our fellow man. We strive for compassion and solidarity for the victims of inhumanity and humiliation. The three religious traditions profess that they also espouse the same program. Why do we have such a difficulty communicating with each other the same humanistic ideals?

In this context we have reached the point of bitter debate about Syria's civil war. Our option to support the democratically inspired opponents of Assad was blocked by the rise of the Brotherhood, jihadist and the Sunni-Shiite divide. The Syria terrain is a war of all against all, and recently the latest incident is a war between the FSA and the local or the Iraqi Al-Qaeda. At the same time Pakistani Taliban are setting up camps in Syria to fight against Assad and forge ties with local Al-Qaeda. [3]

Turkey feels threatened by this new development. [4] Centuries after the great Ottoman, Arab, and the Mogul Empires, the Muslims should be responsible for their own future.

All the same the issue of a nuclear Iran and the sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shi'ites brings forth two nightmare scenarios: a nuclear war and a possible nuclear terrorist threat and a war among states. The Saudis can purchase a couple of nuclear bombs from Pakistan or elsewhere as a move against a nuclear Iran, if Israel doesn't act first.

Up to now the turmoil is limited to civil wars and uprisings. However, on May 31 the highly influential Imam Yusuf Al-Qaradawi in a Friday rally in Doha declared that: "anyone who has the ability, who is trained to fight . . . has to go; I call on Muslims to go and support their brothers in Syria". Presently there are 5,000 foreign Mujahedeen in Syria. There were 10000 after ten years of war in Afghanistan.[5]

The heart of the matter is that Syria is becoming the battle ground of Sunni jihadists against the Shiites. The pernicious doctrine of "Shiites are worse than naked women" proclaimed in Egypt's Sura by a Salafist cleric is characteristic of the mentality surrounding the issue. All around the Muslim world. Shiites are blown up in Egypt, Pakistan, in Iraq, in Indonesia, in Yemen.

Concomitant to this is the relationship between Islamic utopian absolutism and the West as they cohabitate the same area, Europe. Recently, an article was written about 1,000 jihadists fighting in Syria from 14 different European countries. The crucial question is what will happen when they return home. The problem of future conduct of people influenced by extreme interpretations of Islam and hatred for the West, people who were born, live and work amongst us is dreadful. [6]

The inertia imposed by stark necessity for oil, the delusional beliefs about the West's invincibility and mastery of the political game world-wide, has produced an inchoate ad hoc policy. The West has painted itself into a corner.

Notes: 1. Hurriyet, April 5 2013
2. Young Malala speaking at the UN. Also, Reuters: July 14, about Boko Haram and terrorism in Nigeria.
3. Reuters: July 14, 2013
4. Zaman: Taliban involvement may further drag Turkey into Syria's quagmire, July 15, 2013
5. Foreign Affairs: How Syria's civil war became a Holy Crusade, July 7, 2013
6. Foreign Policy: "Europe's new time bomb is ticking in Syria", July 9, 2013


Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

Nicholas A Biniaris has taught philosophy and political theory at NYC in Athens. His historical novel The Call of the Desert was recently published in Hellas and shall be published shorty in English. He is a columnist and an economic and foreign policy analyst.

(Copyright 2013 Nicholas A Biniaris)

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Israel cries ‘wolf’, Iran shrugs off

To be sure, there is a change of style in Tehran — and probably, substance. President-elect Hassan Rouhani simply shrugged off Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat last week to attack Iran, which is “getting closer and closer to the bomb.”

President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would have paid back with matching rhetoric, but all Rouhani had to say was that a “miserable country” like Israel simply lacks the capability to attack Iran and Netanyahu’s tantrums make him laugh. ”Who are the Zionists to attack us?” Good question.
In actuality, Israel knows even if it has any desire to attack iran, it lacks the capabilities to do so and will only invite big trouble for itself. But Netanyahu’s inflammatory rhetoric had another agenda, namely, to deflect attention from the US pressure to resume the Middle East peace talks.
The Israeli ploy to ward off the US pressure has always been to raise dust in Washington over the Iran nuclear issue and insist that is the number one regional problem. Besides, right now there is much anticipation in the western opinion, as never before in the recent years, regarding Iran’s new leadership.
Symptomatic of it is the latest petition to President Barack Obama by a group of prominent ex-officials (including Ambassador Thomas Pickering) suggesting that the US should “seize the moment” to engage Iran.
Indeed, the six “world powers” met in Brussels on Tuesday to urge Iran to resume the talks “as soon as possible.” However, the most hopeful indication of new stirrings in the air comes from British Foreign Secretary William Hague who expects UK’s ties with Iran to improve under Rouhani’s watch.
Britain understands it needs to quickly restore diplomatic ties with Iran and Hague has made an overture to convey to Tehran ‘Barkis is willing.’ Britain, of course, can’t afford to be left behind once Obama has decided to engage Iran as the latter’s integration with the international community augurs nothing less than a tectonic shift in the regional and global security.
Tehran has held out the assurance that talks will resume once the cabinet formation is over in Rouhani’s government, which can be expected through the coming few weeks following his formal assumption of office on August 3. There is animated talk in the tehran bazaar regarding Rouhani’s team. One speculation is that his own office may handle the nuclear issue rather than the security council, as has been the practice previously.
Tehran has made a thoughtful adjustment in its outlook toward the new set-up in Egypt and one consideration would have been to remove any potential for friction with Saudi Arabia. The coup in Egypt has prompted a regional realignment in the Muslim Middle East, which, generally speaking, favours Iran. The presence of Mohamed ElBaradei as the foreign policy czar in the interim government in Cairo raises Iran’s comfort level.
It will be a long while before the turmoil in Egypt begins to subside and calm is restored. At the very least, the focus on the sectarian Sunni-Shi’ite divide as the prevailing narrative in regional politics takes a back seat as the future of the Arab Spring hangs in balance.
Again, even any residual likelihood that might have existed for a Turkish-Iranian rapprochement now ceases to be. Overall, a “coolness” has developed in Turkish-American ties also and a new phase of upswing in Turkish-Iranian relations is appearing. The fallouts of all this on the Syrian situation also works to Iran’s advantage. All things taken into account, the sage advice by Hashemi Rafsanjani, the grey eminence in Iranian politics, to Rouhani to follow “a proper foreign policy” in the pursuit of the country’s national interests is very much to the point. In Persian idiom, Rafasanjani has urged a new pragmatism.
Posted in Diplomacy, Politics.

Tagged with Egypt coup, Iran nuclear issue.

By M K Bhadrakumar – July 18, 2013

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If you're looking for a cut-rate F-16 or a Merkava tank

Published: July 15, 2013 at 1:17 PM

TEL AVIV, Israel, July 15 (UPI) -- Israel's military is planning to hold a bargain basement sale of aircraft, tanks and navy missile ships that are being made redundant under a revolutionary, multiyear program to restructure the Jewish state's armed forces to meet new challenges.

And if there are no takers for the weapons systems, including old-model Israeli-built Merkava main battle tanks and U.S. Lockheed Martin F-16 combat jets, they may be sold as scrap metal.

The program -- tagged "Teuza," Hebrew for boldness -- that was developed by the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, "will turn bases into sales lots for tanks, armored personnel carriers, warships, combat flight equipment, vehicle logistics accessories, cannons and air force ballistic systems," military writer Yoav Zitun reported on Ynet, the online outlet for the Yediot Ahronot newspaper.

"These items and others will are expected to be on the sales block over the coming two years as part of the cutback program."

The program involves retiring a wide range of aging equipment that has no place in the smaller, more agile high-tech military Israel's generals believe is needed now that the Jewish state's traditional Arab foes are no longer deemed to pose a conventional threat as they did in 1967 and 1973.

These included an unspecified number of early-model F-16A/B Fighting Falcons, which the Israeli air force first acquired in 1979. It had ordered the jets in 1978, but got an early delivery of aircraft that has been earmarked for Iran before Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Israel currently has 77 F-16As in its inventory, along with 16 F-16Bs. These could be the jets that are slated for auction.

Israel is the second largest user of F-16s after the U.S. Air Force. The jet won its first air-to-air kills with the Israeli air force -- a Syrian Mu-8 helicopter in April 1981 and a Syrian MuG-21 three months later.

Ynet said the 44 of the Israeli air force's venerable and much-loved Douglas A-4 Skyhawks, highly agile Vietnam-era delta-winged light attack bombers that, would be on the block.

The A-4s were withdrawn from front line services some years ago but have been used for advanced jet pilot training.

Early model Merkava Mark 1 battle tanks, assembled by state-owned Israel Military Industries and which entered service in 1979, are expected to be up for sale as well.

The Military Balance 2012, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, says Israel, which these days relies on the more advanced Mk IV, currently has an estimated 440 Mk 1s and 290 MkIIs in storage.

It's expected the army will finally relinquish its remaining M60 Patton tanks built by Chrysler and the Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant from 1966 to 1987.

Israel first acquired the M60A1 models in 1971. These saw action on the Golan and Sinai fronts against Syrian and Egyptian armor in the 1973 Middle East war.

They played a vital role in preventing the Syrians from recapturing the strategic Golan Heights captured by Israel in 1967.

Israel up-armored the M60 and dubbed that the Magach. The IISS says the Israeli army has 111 Magach-7s and 711 M60A1/A3 models in mothballs.

Ynet said the main buyers are likely to be Latin American, Asian or African militaries, which still keep in service aging systems like these.

Some, such as Sri Lanka, Chile and Ecuador have already purchased second-hand Israeli aircraft and helicopters, including some of the 200 Skyhawks the Israelis once had in their inventory, as well as Kfirs, the Israeli-built version of the Mirage 5 built by Dassault Aviation of France.

The Kfir, or Lion Cub, was an all-weather, multirole jet built in the 1970s by what is state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and equipped with Israeli avionics and an Israeli version of General Electric's J79 turbojet engine.

The financial cuts envisaged in the Tueza plan are expected to save $1.9 billion in defense spending in the next five years as the military concentrates on fighting missile wars and cyberattacks.

"Heavy equipment is expected to remain at bases until it's sold, which can take years," Zitun reported.

"If the military decides it's not worth waiting for a sale, the equipment can be welded down by an external contractor ... and sold as blocks of steel."

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Pointblank said:

The Israeli's are selling off loads of tanks and aircraft:

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BREAKING: Thousands of Kurdish Peshmerga from South-Kurdistan (Iraqi Part) crossed the border to fight Jihadists!
Part of channel(s): Iraq (current event), Syria (current event)

This news just came through!

More than 2,000 Kurdish Peshmerga from South-Kurdistan (Iraqi Kurdistan), crossed the border with West-Kurdistan (Syrian Kurdistan) and joined the Kurdish YPG forces in their fight against the Al-Nusra Jihadists / Islamists and dogs of Turkey.

The Kurdish Leaders in South-Kurdistan (Kurdistan Democratic Party headed by the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), decided to send help after receiving disturbing reports about massacres committed against Kurdish civilians by the Al-Nusra Front / FSA / Jihadists.
The Peshmerga is an organized army that protects the Kurdistan Region from the Arab part of Iraq. The KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government) is ruled and governed by the Kurds. The KRG has its own capital, flag, borders, army, foreign relations, official language, anthem, economy, administration and everything else an independent country has. The Kurdish Peshmerga army is more powerful than the central Iraqi Arab army in Baghdad. They are currently in a conflict about disputed cities which are rich of natural resources (Kirkuk, which is a historical Kurdish city). Baghdad refuses to hold a referendum to decide about the fate of the city (joining the KRG, or joining Iraq), as they know they will lose the city when such a referendum is held.

The Peshmerga separated the Arab part of Kirkuk and are currently working on an 80 KM trench to separate the Arabs from the Kurds, in order to avoid terrorists attacks on the city. The central army is afraid to make any counter move and has agreed to pay $6,000,000,000 USD (outstanding payments).

Peshmerga literally stands for 'those who face death'. The Kurdish Peshmerga are a professional army with decades of experience (guerilla warfare against the former Ba'ath regime). Their numbers used to be small during the Saddam era, and they didn't possess advanced weapons. Now the Peshmerga army is trained by foreign military experts/advisors (some sources claim Israeli), the army consists of more than 250,000 troops, and they own many heavy weaponry - including thousands of tanks, heavy artillery and multiple rocket launchers.
Read more at

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