Discussion about Peshmerga/YPG/Iraq army/and ISIS

Talked to a buddy of mine yesterday who was in military(marines). Although he fought some in Afghanistan, never went to Iraq, he has an in-law who was one of those advisers who assisted with training of Iraq troops several years ago and he has kept up with all this going on now in Iraq, I've also kept up with alot of it.

YPG is Syrian Kurds and Peshmerga is Iraqi Kurds and we talked the differences between the two. He mentioned Kobane and said YPG basically gave ISIS a taste of their own medicine, YPG was using IEDs and suicide bombings to kill ISIS and it kept Kobane in Kurds hands until U.S. airstrikes started to help out. He said Peshmerga is a more modern type military. Basically, if Peshmerga and YPG were to fight against each other, Peshmerga would win in an open field battle but YPG would win in street to street battle and they would resort to more terrorist tactics where Peshmerga wouldn't.

We were talking about Tikrit and how Iraqi military has it surrounded but wouldn't go in b/c of all the bombs planted by ISIS. He stated Peshmerga would probably do the same but YPG would have already taken it over( if they had the same amount of soldiers) and would be on their way to Mosul as we speak.

Another thing he mentioned is that the Iraqi army isn't just full of cowards but were in Sunni held areas(Iraqi army is mostly Shiite) and were dealing with daily suicide bombings, car bombings, and guerrilla warfare, while being outgunned in Sunni areas they really didn't care about to begin with. That was reason why eventually they all fled. He said most of training they had over years was to deal with conventional style warfare and not IEDs, and car bombers but now they are being trained for that also. Thought some of this may clear some things up (for those interested). Also, for military people on TD, is this pretty close to being correct? He stated Kurdish soldiers are not at all great compared to modern armies but as of now, they are alot better than Iraqi military. He mentioned also that Kurds have no interest in Tikrit and Mosul and that's why they aren't a big play in it.

Random arse thread


ETA: I think he fought in Afghanistan, I know he went over there but I never asked and he never mentioned what all he did.