ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - An Islamic leader in the Kurdistan Region on Monday said he would exhaust all communication channels with rebel groups currently in power in Syria to help return a Peshmerga soldier to the Kurdistan Region who was discovered in a prison in Syria following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
“We will capitalize on our contacts to discover and help return the Peshmerga. God willing, it will have good results,” Irfan Abdulaziz, leader of the Kurdistan Islamic Movement, told The New Region, adding they have “contacts and associates within Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.”
Issa Abdullah, a Peshmerga from Akre, was taken by ISIS militants in Nineveh’s Zummar subdistrict in 2014. Ever since, he had been missing.
Anti-government groups spearheaded by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on Sunday took over the Syrian capital city of Damascus, after nearly a two-week offensive, sending Assad fleeing and ending over two decades of his rule and half a century of the Baath party rule in the country.
As the rebels in 10 days brought an end to the Assad family’s over half a century rule, they broke into prisons to free political prisoners and tens of thousands of people who disappeared soon after the conflict began in the country in 2011.
Abdulla was one of the thousands freed from the Assad prisons. It has remained unclear how he ended up in a government-held prison.
An official from the Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they have not yet established any contacts with HTS since they are “new” in power.
“Since HTS and Abu Mohammed al-Julani [the rebel group’s leader] have just taken power and are new, we do not have any relations with them, but we will use personal contacts to discover the Peshmerga,” Bakhtyar Omer, chief of staff of the Peshmerga forces, told The New Region.
Omer added: “I believe, a personality like Mr. Irfan Abdulaziz should have good relations with the Syrian groups such as Tahrir al-Sham. Therefore, we could make use of that.”
During the three-year-long battle against ISIS from 2014 to 2017, the Peshmerga forces defended a front line of nearly 650 miles against the extremist group.
More than 2,000 Peshmerga soldiers were killed, over 10,000 wounded, and at least 70 were taken hostage in the fight, according to data from the KRG’s Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces played a pivotal role in shattering the myth of ISIS, decisively contributing to the lasting defeat of the extremist group in 2017, three years after they occupied a significant swathe of territory.
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