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U.S. Plans To Arm Iraq's Sunni Tribesmen With AK-47s, RPGs, Mortars
[Rooters] The United States plans to buy arms for Sunni rustics in Iraq including AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds to help bolster the battle against Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
snuffies in Anbar province, according to a Pentagon document prepared for Congress.

The plan to spend $24.1 million represents a small fraction of the larger, $1.6 billion spending request to Congress focusing on training and arming Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

But the document underscored the importance the Pentagon places on the Sunni rustics to its overall strategy to diminish Islamic State, and cautioned Congress about the consequences of failing to assist them.

"Not arming tribal fighters will continue to leave anti-ISIL tribes reluctant to actively counter ISIL," the document said, using another acronym for the group which has seized control of large parts of Syrian and Iraq and is gaining territory in Anbar despite three months of U.S.-led air strikes.

A U.S. official said on Saturday that the document was posted this week. Click 1.usa.gov/11nsTuN to read it.

It said all U.S. support was directed "with, by and through" Iraq's government, suggesting any weapons would be supplied through Baghdad, in line with existing policy.

It noted Iraqi security forces were not "not particularly welcome in Anbar and other majority Sunni areas," citing their poor combat performance and sectarian divisions.
Posted by: trailing wife 2014-11-23
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=404854