During OIF III my team was augmented by a squad of Pesh and we ran missions from Dohuk across to Sinjar, Tal Afar, Feysh Khabur and dowm to Mosul and Erbil. They are good people who've been fucked over for generations but have their shit together and are making do with what they have. Our guys were fiercely loyal and the relationships we built with other Pesh and Asaish units were tested on a regular basis, especially when it seemed like all of our treasure was going to the Arabs who were smiling while trying to kill us. It was like pulling teeth to get MNF-I Ninevah to spend any money on the Kurds, and while you think they'd feel taken for granted, I never got that feeling from any of them.
We trained up a battalion of Pesh and brought them down to Mosul to help clear out that hornets nest in Nov 2004 and the regular Army dudes who were used to dealing with the Arab ING were floored every time our guys ran towards the gunfire and charged the objective. They earned massive respect from us and other US troops.
I feel so strongly about what's going on there now - watching what ISIS is doing in villages where we built strong information networks and where good people stuck their necks out for us. A part of me wishes I could drop everything and go help out, but having to fight cancer is keeping me here. So instead I've been organizing fundraising for NGOs working with my KRG contacts. IRC and Rise Foundation are at this moment helping to establish new IDP camps for the 1.5 million people who've fled north and inundated the KRG (the population north of the Green Line has swelled 30% in the last month) as well as provide, food, medicine, water, etc.
