Overview

In the year since Islamic State tore through Iraq and proclaimed a caliphate straddling the border with Syria, the Kurds have emerged as a lead actor in the global war against the extremist group and an important partner in the campaign to degrade and destroy it. However, the story of the Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga -- literally those who confront death -- is yet to be told. This book seeks to establish who these men are, and what has motivated them to lay down their lives in one abortive revolt after another over the past century. It will trace the peshmerga's ongoing and far from complete evolution from a rag-tag guerrilla force into a regular army. From their early beginnings in the short-lived Kurdish Republic of Mahabad to the current standoff with Islamic State, the peshmerga have come to embody the Kurdish nationalist struggle in Iraq and beyond.

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9781784538811

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Fazel Hawramy obtained his MSc in Middle East Politics at SOAS and is a journalist based in Erbil. He reports from all the front lines across Iraqi Kurdistan and has interviewed many of the peshmerga leaders, gaining first-hand experience of many of the events described in this book. His dispatches are published in the Guardian, Al-Monitor and Hawlati, an independent daily in Iraqi Kurdistan, among others.

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