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Kurdish soldiers bring own weapons to fight IS in Mosul

As the Kurdish peshmerga complain about the shortage of US support, some tend to buy weapons with their own money to attend the battle against the Islamic State.
A Syrian Kurdish fighter rides in a military vehicle in the town of Bashiqa, after it was recaptured from the Islamic State, east of Mosul, Iraq, November 12, 2016. Picture taken November 12, 2016.  REUTERS/Azad Lashkari - RTX2TLWW
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BASHIQA, Iraq — When the offensive began on Oct. 17 to retake Mosul from the Islamic State (IS), peshmerga infantryman Nechevan Goran grabbed his AK-47 and headed to a mountain base overlooking Bashiqa, then also held by IS. The AK-47, also known as a Kalashnikov, is not Goran's weapon of choice for taking on IS. “I have an M4 at home. It’s much better,” he told Al-Monitor en route to the front in the back of a pickup truck. “It has no recoil and can be freely fired.”

Across the front lines north of Mosul, peshmergas from Iraqi Kurdistan are using foreign, high-powered weapons that they bought themselves from private dealers. Such weapons had been left behind by the Iraqi army when they lost territory to IS in 2014.

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