IRBIL, Iraq—U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter held talks Friday with Iraqi Kurdish leaders in their regional capital of Irbil, seeking insights to their military successes against the ISIS.
Afterward he told U.S. and coalition troops that the Kurdish armed forces, known as the peshmerga, are “the model of what we are trying to achieve” with a strategy of enabling capable and motivated local forces in northern and western Iraq to take the ground combat lead.
He said U.S. ground and air forces could defeat ISIS on their own, but the success would not last.
