Peshmerga unity depends on healing political divisions - 0 views
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The Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) peshmerga forces are lacking a unified command. Rather, the peshmerga, which played a key role in defeating the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq alongside the US-led global coalition, is receiving commands from the Kurdish ruling parties: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). This raises concerns that the peshmerga will be exploited in political disputes.
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The two main Kurdish ruling parties, the KDP and the PUK, have their own peshmerga forces. The KDP has 80 units, and the PUK has 70 units. Both parties jointly have nearly 240,000 peshmerga troops. The parties engaged in an internal armed conflict against each other from 1994 to 1998. Moreover, they frequently use the peshmerga to attack rival political parties and forcefully suppress civilian protests.
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In the town of Bardarash, 70 kilometers (43 miles) north of Erbil, a verbal quarrel between peshmerga officers led to the killing of a major and a first lieutenant, according to a senior peshmerga commander. The commander told Al-Monitor that the quarrel was related to who should hold military posts within the newly unified brigade.
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