HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— The United States has plans to arm two additional Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga brigades in 2017 as part of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS), Chief of Staff of the Peshmerga Ministry Jabbar Yawar said on Saturday.

“The US is expected to fully arm two more brigades this year, the same way the first and second brigades were armed,” Yawar said, speaking to reporters.

According to the Chief of Staff of the Peshmerga Ministry, Canada has also pledged to provide the Peshmerga with military assistance in the fight against IS.

The coalition’s assistance by providing air support, military training and armament will continue in 2017, Yawar added.

In 2015, the United States had promised to provide the weapons and equipment for two new combat brigades on conditions that the Kurds followed through with plans to establish units that would integrate fighters from the Kurds’ two main political parties of the Kurdistan Democratic Party KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan PUK.

The Kurdish Peshmerga of Iraqi Kurdistan are not unified forces, and considered as militias loyal and taking orders from the ruling parties of KDP led by Massoud Barzani and PUK.

It is not clear which party forces will be armed in 2017.

“We have already planned how the military training will be in 2017 along with the coalition. There is a training center in the Kurdistan Region where Peshmerga forces are receiving training from German, British and Canadian advisors,” Yawar said.

Yawar also said that a plan had been prepared along with the Iraqi army, and backed by the coalition, for an offensive to liberate the IS-held town of Hawija before the Mosul battle, but that idea was sidelined as the Iraqi government wanted the Mosul offensive to be launched first.

Hawija, located some 50 km southwest of Kirkuk city, became an IS stronghold when the ultra-hardline Sunni militants swept across northern and western Iraq in 2014.

Kurdish and Iraqi forces began the much-anticipated offensive to regain control of Mosul on October 17 after an official decree by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

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