Himanshu Gulati, a lawmaker for Norway from the country’s Progressive Party, has nominated the Kurdish Peshmerga forces to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. the nomination is attributed to the Peshmerga‘s efforts in fighting the Islamic State. In an interview with a local Norwegian newspaper, Gulati said, “The Peshmerga have been crucial to the fact we have been able to fight ISIS, which I believe is the greatest enemy of humanity.” He followed with, “Without the sacrifices of the Peshmerga victims on the frontline of the battle against ISIS, ISIS probably would be bigger and more powerful than they are today.”

Gulati is a Prime Minister for the Progress Part and secretary of State for the Ministry of Public Security and Justice. When asked if warfare should be attributed to the Nobel Peace Prize he responded by saying, “In this case we are faced with a terrorist organization that stands for a caliphate and a territory that beats people on the street, gays being thrown down from buildings and Yezidi women who are brutally being held captive as sex slaves.” He made his stance very clear that in this case “war” was the only response to the atrocities committed by the Islamic State and its followers. Gulati added that, “This kind of evil is the duty of all humanity to fight, and here the Peshmerga have been on the frontline on behalf of the rest of the world,” and, “it will be a big signal from the world to recognize this effort and the lives that have been lost.”

While a few splinter factions of the Islamic State exist today, after three years of conflict the organization was officially declared “militarily defeated” in December 2017 after the liberation of Raqqa, Syria. The Peshmerga forces are continuing to hunt down the last remnants of the caliphate under the guidance of the U.S.-led coalition, an entity that Norway is a part of. Over 1,700 Peshmerga have died or gone missing during the war and over 10,000 were injured since it started in 2014. When Islamic State militants overran the Iraqi Army and took over Mosul and Kirkuk the Peshmerga were the first ones to respond and fight, effectively halting their advance towards the Kurdish region.

Featured Image By Lars Åge Kamfjord – Own work, CC BY-SA 1.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18814330