Peshmerga Divisions "Hamper War Effort"

There are moves underway to bring the two peshmerga forces under one umbrella. The Iraqi Kurdistan parliament passed Law 19 on July 23 to place all peshmerga under one command, setting a fast-approaching deadline of six months to make it happen. While 12 out of 36 brigades have been unified under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, the PUK and the KDP have retained command over the overwhelming majority of their forces, which include peshmerga and thousands of personnel in counterterrorism units as well as the secret police, known as Asayish.

KRG President Massoud Barzani wrote to Peshmerga Minister Mustafa Said Qader on Dec. 14 urging him to speed up the process of bringing all the forces under one command. "Any force that exists outside the command of the [peshmerga] ministry will be considered illegal, and no one has the right to form a new force outside the ministry," said Barzani.

Both PUK and KDP peshmerga commanders have also called for the various Kurdish forces fighting IS to be brought under a single command structure so they can be institutionalized. “The peshmerga forces of various parties are defending Kurdistan side by side,” said Maj. Gen. Rasul Omar Latif, the PUK commander on the south Kirkuk front line, which has seen some of the fiercest fighting since June. “The institutionalization of the peshmerga should have been done before this war. You should ask the former peshmerga minister why they failed to do it.”

(Peshmerga image via Shutterstock)