When the Levies didn't break

The #Kurds DID fight on the Allied side in WW2.
They helped break the siege after the 1941 pro-Nazi Coup d'état in Iraq & were part of the (pro-Allied) Iraq Levies.
In 1942 Kurds made up 25% of the force. By 1943, 10 of the 44 companies of Iraq Levies were Kurdish.@Akil_N_Awan pic.twitter.com/wZwgKwHy37

— Ric Cole (@ric_cole) October 10, 2019

I was intrigued by the Tweet above especially in light of my earlier post about Iraqi war graves (passim).

Wikipedia

The Anglo–Iraqi War (2–31 May 1941) was a British-led Allied military campaign against Iraq under Rashid Ali, who had seized power during the Second World War with assistance from Germany and Italy. The campaign resulted in the downfall of Ali's government, the re-occupation of Iraq by the British Empire, and the return to power of the Regent of Iraq, Prince 'Abd al-Ilah, an ally to imperial Britain.

I didn't have a clue about this.

Read all about the Iraq Levies here in Wikipedia.

The Levies distinguished themselves in May 1941 during the Anglo-Iraqi War and were also used in other theatres of the Second World War after 1942. The force thereafter grew and survived until it was disbanded in May 1955.

It seems to me that the force mostly consisted if Iraqi minority ethnic groups, that we mostly abandoned to ISIS a scant sixty years later. Shame on us.