If American policy wants to be truly effective, it should do more than just give a few weapons and limited training. Instead, the United States must help Kurdistan to organize, train and equip a nonpolitical Kurdish army. The United States can do this by greatly increasing its support to the Ministry of Pesh Merga Affairs’ program dedicated to building nonpartisan units. The program requires that new recruits join the nonpolitical units as individuals, not party members. The ministry has managed to raise one nonparty brigade, and needs additional support to increase the number of units.
The United States can turn these nonparty brigades into the nucleus of a new Kurdish army by providing the necessary weapons and training to make them effective, which will in turn encourage further recruitment. An American-assisted Kurdish army could make Kurdistan more stable by depriving politicians of control over military units. And a politically independent army reduces the risk of the K.D.P. and P.U.K. turning their guns against each other again. Furthermore, American involvement in the Kurdish army would keep the Kurds focused on the Islamic State rather than any domestic agenda.
Nonpolitical! This is an excellent idea, and I hope to subscribe to their newsletter when it is published by NoLabels.
A politically independent army. Now there's any idea that has been tried with great success many times around the world!
Okay, I get that you don't want the army to effectively be an arm of a single political party, but someone other than the generals needs to be in charge of the army. And as is the case with NoLabels, such desires just mean something like "an army which would implement my nonpartisan nonpolitical nonparty nonideological agenda, not the agenda of those nasty partisan political party ideologues."