France to Arm Kurds

Despite facing near zero economic growth at home (FT), France will spend money arming the Kurds.

In a surprise announcement, France said  this morning that it will send arms "in the coming hours" to Kurdish forces in Iraq to aid in their fight against ISIS (AP). The announcement comes a day after the European Union failed to establish a common policy on the issue, agreeing only that individual states could—in agreement with Baghdad—send weapons to Kurdish forces (NYT). Meanwhile, the Obama administration deployed another 130 military advisers (FT) to the Kurdish capital of Erbil in what the Pentagon described as a "temporary mission" to assess the humanitarian crisis and help trapped Yazidi civilians on Sinjar mountain.

(Via CFR email briefing)