At an event on post-Assad Syria organized by the Global Kurdish Initiative for Peace at the American University on Wednesday, Retired General Joseph L. Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command from March 2016 to March 2019, underlined the importance of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to the United States.

“I think Iraqi Kurdistan has been extraordinarily important for us. We’ve had a long term relationship with them. You know, it’s important to appreciate when President [Barack] Obama made the decision to go back into Iraq in 2013-2014 when ISIS was ravaging across the Levant, it fell to me and a few others here to get our forces back in there,” he said, on the Obama administration’s decision to return to Iraq after the rise of ISIS.

“The first place that we went to [was] Erbil because we knew we had relationships there that had transcended time. As soon as we arrived on the ground, we were able to secure space, security, what we needed to get on the ground and begin to organize ourselves for what would eventually be a three- or four-year campaign against ISIS, and which continues to support our operations there today,” General Votel added.

Moreover, he added that the U.S.-Kurdish relationship from a military standpoint has stood the test of time. “So, I have the highest regard for the Kurdish population throughout the region here, but certainly for the Kurds in Iraq that have played such a critical role for us,” he concluded.

There is a long history of U.S.-Kurdish cooperation in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. CIA–U.S. Special Forces teams working with peshmerga forces also operated in the Kurdistan Region before 2003, launching their first joint counter-terrorism operation Operation Viking Hammer in 2003 against Ansar al-Islam.

After 2003, Kurdish peshmerga forces supported U.S. troops against the Ba’ath regime and militant groups. The United States has also supported the Kurdish peshmerga forces with equipment and training in the fight against ISIS since 2014.

For instance, last year in August, the United States provided howitzer cannons to the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs (MoPA) during a ceremony.

Moreover, coalition advisors are working with the MoPA to implement a four-year reform plan established between the U.S. Department of Defense and the Kurdistan Region.