It was my last night in Kurdistan before catching a 4 a.m. flight back home. That morning, the commander of German coalition forces in Kurdistan, Colonel Stephan Spoettel, had been found dead in his room at the Crystal Hotel in Erbil. After kebab and beers with former 22SAS operator Phil Campion , I decided to head over to the Crystal Hotel and see if I could find out more about what had happened. The Germans had been doing great work in Kurdistan, and the weapons they had been providing were making a tangible difference on the battlefield as the Peshmerga continued to beat back the ISIS hordes. The loss of Colonel Spoettel was no doubt a serious loss to the German troops.

Taking a taxi across Erbil, I found the Crystal Hotel surrounded by concrete barriers. The Germans took their for

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