Shafaq News

In the early hours of Monday, three drones struck Azadi Camp in Koya, east of Erbil, a settlement that has housed families of the Iranian Kurdish opposition for more than two decades. Nobody was hurt. The attack came two days before the US-led coalition ends its military mission in Iraq, and it brought into focus the question now dominating Erbil: who will defend the skies over the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) once the Coalition's military mission ends?

The Kurdistan Region Security Agency said the drones struck between 1:40 and 2:10 a.m. No party claimed responsibility, and there has been no independent confirmation of who carried out the attack. The camp shelters families of fighters from the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), an exiled opposition group that has been a target all month. On September 2, Iran launched a series of drone strikes on KDPI bases, positions and camps, senior party official Karim Barwazi told Shafaq News. On September 15, an unidentified drone fell inside a KDPI camp north of Erbil, he said. The following night, coalition aircraft shot down a drone over the Soran Independent Administration in Erbil province, a local source said. Komala, another exiled Iranian Kurdish party, has faced similar drone attacks on its camps in recent months.

The KRI's Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs said that the Kurdistan Region has faced more than 1,000 drone and ballistic missile attacks since the US-Iran war began in February, some of them deadly. It called the timing of the withdrawal "sensitive" and said the departure of US forces without leaving an air-defense system behind was "a cause for concern." It also drew a constitutional line: the KRI's airspace is part of Iraq's, and protecting it is the federal government's job.

A US oversight body has documented the same gap. The 44th Lead Inspector General report to the US Congress on Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the US-led campaign against ISIS, found that the Peshmerga lack significant air-defense coverage of their own. American systems protected US facilities in Erbil, the report noted, but the KRI's security forces, civilians, and energy infrastructure remained exposed to aerial attack. The report, which covered January through March 2026, also recorded escalating strikes by Iran-aligned armed factions and a temporary drawdown of US advisory support to the Peshmerga.

Read more: Iraq's armed factions sit at the center of a Middle East war, experts say

The Deadline That Moved

Kurdish officials have not publicly tied their concerns to the disarmament of Iraq's armed factions, but the two are hard to separate. Erbil has been explicit about who is firing. On April 5, KRI Prime Minister Masrour Barzani condemned attacks on the US Consulate and civilian areas in Erbil by "terrorist militias" and urged Baghdad to act against the groups responsible. Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT), an independent monitoring group, documented 751 attacks on the Kurdistan Region between Feb. 28 and May 28, including strikes attributed to Iran and Iran-aligned Iraqi groups.

Baghdad originally linked disarmament to the same September 30 date as the coalition's exit. On September 22, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi replaced that deadline with a phased plan. It opens with a 90-day pause in which the factions halt attacks in exchange for not being struck by US forces, followed by a weapons handover due to end by June 30, 2027. As a result, the Coalition mission ends this week while the phased weapons-control process is scheduled to continue for another nine months.

The US withdrawal from the KRI is now complete, according to an Iraqi security source who spoke to Shafaq News. Equipment moved overland through Duhok province and across the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing into Turkiye, the source said. US equipment withdrawn from Erbil was transported to Incirlik Air Base near Adana, a US logistics hub in southern Turkiye that has supported American operations across the Middle East since the 1950s. Coalition forces had already left their other Iraqi bases in January. Washington said on September 23 that the drawdown was running on schedule under the plan agreed with Baghdad in 2024 to move to a bilateral security relationship.

Read more: The evolution of Kurdish power in Iraq: Governance, oil, and constitutional ambiguity

A Gap, Not A Vacuum

Ahmed al-Sharifi, an Iraqi strategic expert, told Shafaq News that the withdrawal will leave real gaps in Iraq's combat and technical capabilities. “Manpower alone does not win modern wars. They turn increasingly on technology, surveillance, electronic warfare and advanced systems,” he argued.

He separates the end of the coalition's mission from the end of American power in the Middle East. The coalition was formed in 2014 to fight ISIS and has been shrinking since 2017, he noted. “What matters is whether US support continues.”

US troops and aircraft stationed elsewhere in the Middle East can still back Iraq with surveillance, electronic warfare and air support if needed. For that reason, al-Sharifi rules out a complete vacuum.

Even so, he calls Erbil's fears justified. The KRI was attacked by both Turkiye and Iran while American troops were present. It will now depend more heavily on Iraqi institutions that, in his words, remain unable to deter every form of attack. “The Peshmerga cannot carry that burden alone,” he said, adding that the constitution defines them as a force for protecting the Kurdistan Region, while defending Iraq's airspace and sovereignty falls to the federal Ministry of Defense.

Mohammed Zangana, a political analyst based in Erbil, is less reassured. The withdrawal should have come with a defense system able to protect Iraq's airspace, borders, and territory, insulated from political rivalries, he told Shafaq News, tracing Erbil's anxiety to three things: Baghdad has offered no clear guarantees for the KRI, the political process remains fragile, and power and weapons are spread across too many hands.

He points to 2011, when US forces left. Three years later, ISIS swept across a third of Iraq. The Inspector General report separately warned of the risk of an ISIS resurgence following mass prison escapes in neighboring Syria.

The Barzanis' Warning

Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which leads the KRI government, made the same comparison on Al Sharqiya television on Sunday. He recalled the debate in 2011 over whether Iraqi forces could take full responsibility for security. The Americans left, ISIS emerged three years later, and Baghdad had to seek international help again, he said, while acknowledging that conditions today differ.

PM Masrour Barzani told the Financial Times that the withdrawal comes at a highly sensitive time and warned against leaving the KRI without adequate air defenses. His office later accused the newspaper of misrepresenting his remarks. It said his core concern was the lack of defensive means and repeated that the attacks had come from Iran and from "militias" inside Iraq.

Ali al-Bidar, an Iraqi political analyst, told Shafaq News that Kurdish fears are well founded, and that parts of the Sunni public and political class share them, given the turbulence across the Middle East and Iraq's own security record. “The Barzanis' warnings deserve serious study,” he said, calling Monday's attack in Erbil province proof that the threat has not passed, and Iraq may need American support again if its forces fall short of full readiness.

Read more: Kurdistan Region unifies Peshmerga, folding rival KDP and PUK forces into one army

Beyond The Withdrawal

Haitham Numaan, a public relations assistant professor at the University of Exeter, sees Erbil's calculations shaped by Syria. He singles out the dissolution of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led force that controlled much of northeast Syria, and its integration into the new Syrian state. “Relations with Baghdad also hinge on divisions inside Kurdish politics,” he told Shafaq News, where the KDP and its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), take different approaches to the federal government.

The withdrawal has exposed that divide. While KDP leaders have issued public warnings, the PUK has not officially voiced similar concern. Party members, speaking to the press, have instead described a different strategy. The PUK, they say, prefers balanced and less confrontational relations with Iran and its allies in Baghdad, to keep the KRI from becoming a battleground for regional score-settling. In their view, the KRI's real guarantee after the withdrawal lies not in a lasting American military presence but in resolving outstanding disputes with Baghdad over public-sector salaries, the budget and the administration of disputed territories such as Kirkuk, alongside reliable security coordination between the Iraqi army and the Peshmerga.

Geography helps explain the gap. The American military presence was concentrated in Erbil province, the KDP's heartland, at Harir Air Base and Erbil airport, near the US Consulate. The PUK's base in al-Sulaymaniyah hosted no comparable US presence, so the withdrawal is felt most directly in Erbil. Al-Sulaymaniyah has not escaped the drones, however. Komala's camps in the province have been among the targets.

Numan also links the American debate over Iraq's "Balkanization" to disarmament. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned last week that Iraq must disarm its factions to avoid that outcome. Numan reads the warning not as a call for partition but as a warning against fragmented state institutions and competing centers of security and political power, and as pressure to bring weapons held outside official institutions under state control.

Read more: Rubio's "Balkanization" warning links Iraq's armed factions to the country's unity

Baghdad's Answer

Political forces in Baghdad reject the idea of a security vacuum. Fahad al-Jubouri, a leader in the al-Hikma Movement, a member of the Coordination Framework, the principal Shiite political alliance and a central force in government formation, told Shafaq News that the timetable for ending the coalition mission was debated and agreed within the State Administration Coalition, the cross-sectarian alliance that formed the government. “The government is working to strengthen control of Iraq's airspace and is buying air-defense systems. Iraq's security, intelligence and logistics institutions can handle internal threats, and concerns will fade once the deadline passes.”

Both capitals point to signs of consolidation. Last week, Baghdad reached an agreement with Turkiye to take gradual control of the Zilkan base in Bashiqa, a Turkish military installation northeast of Mosul. In Erbil, a Sept. 21 ceremony formally placed Peshmerga units under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, marking a major step in a years-long effort to unify forces historically divided between KDP- and PUK-aligned commands.

Neither step fully answers Erbil's central question. Al-Zaidi's initial 90-day phase runs until late December, followed by a weapons-control process scheduled to conclude by June 30, 2027. In the meantime, the Kurdistan Region will depend increasingly on federal institutions for air defense while negotiations continue over weapons held by factions that Kurdish officials have blamed for repeated attacks on the Region.

Read more: Experts doubt Baghdad can stop Kurdistan Region attacks

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.