What came next


GW: Something else that you have mentioned previously is sleeper terrorist cells, which will only emerge after the other cities have been taken. It is impossible to define when this threat might be over, so how long is the future of CBRN in the peshmerga? Do you plan for the next two, five, 10 years… or forever? HI: As you mentioned ISIS will be a major threat in the future. We are close to defeating them militarily but it is the ideology that is the threat. Some of the Sunni population and former Baath party members support them and they also have a large number of foreign fighters. Even after they are defeated in Mosul they will remain a threat with their sleeper cells in some Iraqi cities. They will try and perform terrorist activities, and these could involve chlorine and other chemical agents. It may well be that we face a different


ISIS. We previously faced Al Qaeda in Iraqi, now it’s ISIS and in the future there will be another name for a terrorist group in the region. Extremists always want to take advantage of unstable countries, and Iraq has become unstable: there have been tensions between Shia and Shia, Shia and Sunni and political issues between the Iraqi government and KRG. As the KRG we try and solve these issues peacefully, but maybe ISIS will take advantage of them much as they took advantage of the civil war in Syria. Step by step they are getting outside


Syria and Iraq, they have a group in Sinai and one in Libya; step by step they are becoming an international threat. They ask their fighters to go outside the Middle East, to go to Europe and say they are refugees and perform terrorist acts. Don’t forget, they have 1,000s of foreign fighters from France, Germany and other countries who left to join ISIS and fight. If they return to Europe it will be a big problem.


GW: Going back to the need for a CBRN defence capability within peshmerga. will this remain a military role, or as you shift from warfighting to peace support, will it be migrated to the civilian forces? HI: The police already fulfil CBRN defence roles within Kurdistan, we have


the unit I mentioned previously. We want a bigger unit within the Ministry of Interior that will be police, but we also plan to have CBRN defence with the Ministry of Peshmerga as the chemical threat will remain in the future.


GW: Will the army mainly do CBRN, whether it is terrorist or warfighting, or will the civilians take the terrorist attack role away from the army, leaving it with the CBRN survive to operate capability?


Mosul has areas that have been thoroughly devastated, could chemical munitions be next? ©DoD


CBRNe Convergence, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indiana, USA, 6 - 8 Nov 2017 www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2017 20 CBRNe WORLD June 2017 www.cbrneworld.com


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