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.