Shafaq News

On September 21, 2026, the Kurdistan Region (KRI) publicly marked the completion of a long-running effort to bring the KDP- and PUK-aligned Peshmerga forces under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs.

The ministry had announced the formal completion of the unification on September 10. The restructured force is organized under two regional commands containing 11 divisions, 33 brigades, and 99 battalions, but the persistence of two geographically distinct commands means that formal institutional unification does not by itself prove that political influence has disappeared.

For most of the Kurdistan Region's autonomous history, the Peshmerga —Kurdish for "those who face death," and the KRI’s legally recognized armed force— operated as two armies with separate command structures, even after some formations had earlier been transferred into ministry structures. Unit 80 answered to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by the Barzani family from its stronghold across Erbil and Duhok. Unit 70 belonged to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the rival party rooted in the Talabani family's base around al-Sulaymaniyah.

Each retained its own commanders, payrolls, and deployments. Cooperation between them rose and fell with the political weather between the parties. What the September ceremony formally ended was the separate party headquarters, not necessarily the party influence that grew up around them.

The public marking came nine days before September 30, the scheduled end of the remaining Global Coalition military mission in Iraq. Separately, the four-year memorandum of understanding between the US Department of Defense and the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, renewed in September 2022, also reaches the end of its current term this month.

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The Kurdish leadership was careful to keep the two matters apart, yet the convergence of dates places both Baghdad and Erbil before a sharper set of obligations than the language of unity conveys.

Inside a hall at the Kurdistan Region Presidency, decrees appointed Lt. Gen. Nijat Ali Saleh to command the First Military Zone, covering Erbil, Duhok, and their surrounding districts, and Lt. Gen. Omar Saleh Hassan to command the Second, spanning al-Sulaymaniyah, Halabja, and their environs. President Nechirvan Barzani, who serves as general commander of the Peshmerga, oversaw the proceedings. He was joined by Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani, Peshmerga Affairs Minister Shoresh Ismail, and representatives of the International Coalition and foreign missions.

The presence of Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir al-Shammari, who directs the office of the commander-in-chief of Iraq's armed forces, signaled the federal dimension of a force whose status is layered: the constitution recognizes the Kurdistan Region and its authorities, the Peshmerga holds legal standing, and it is broadly regarded as part of Iraq's wider defense architecture, without falling under Baghdad's operational command.

Two zone commands survive the merger, and that has drawn a natural objection: one army with two headquarters could preserve the old split under new names. Retired Lt. Gen. Sarwar Sheikh Qader, a security and military analyst, rejected that reading in an interview with Shafaq News, describing the change as an organizational and tactical shift from party-based administration to institutional military management, and framed the neutral designations, First Zone and Second Zone, as a deliberate move to strip out partisan identity.

“Two commands pose no problem, as long as both report to the ministry through a single line of command rather than to rival party headquarters,” he said.

President Barzani addressed the Unit 70 and Unit 80 legacy directly, casting the change as a national undertaking with more at stake than a bureaucratic reshuffle. He set a demanding measure of success: each fighter coming to see the ministry as his institution and his comrade-in-arms as a partner regardless of party or region, rather than any count of units absorbed into the new structure.

The military, he said, is no arena for party competition. Parties contest elections; the Peshmerga is Kurdistan's force, and belongs to no single party. He also cautioned that the announcement opens reform rather than completing it, with command, training, promotions, and doctrine still to be reworked.

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The path here ran along two overlapping timelines. The first began in 2016, when the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs launched a reform program with the Global Coalition backing, led principally by the United States, the UK, and Germany, alongside the Netherlands, Italy, France, and other partners. The effort sought to consolidate command and control, audit personnel rolls and payrolls, and build a more centralized military and financial administration.

The second milestone came on September 21, 2022, when the ministry and the US Department of Defense renewed their memorandum of understanding, first signed in 2016, setting a four-year framework for continued US support and further institutional reforms. The September 21, 2026 ceremony fell on the fourth anniversary of that renewal.

The obstacles were rarely just technical. The decisive variable throughout was the readiness of the KDP and PUK to hand real control of their forces to the state. Presidency spokesman Dilshad Shahab conceded on the eve of the ceremony that political disputes had complicated the process for years.

PM Masrour Barzani called it a historic day and said the unified structure now covers operations, training, command and control, communications, and financial management, with the next phase focused on advanced weaponry and air defense. He then turned the conversation to Baghdad, urging the federal government to guarantee the Peshmerga's constitutional entitlements and bring its salaries and benefits in line with those of the Iraqi army. That plea for institutional unity in Erbil, while clear, does not settle the fiscal relationship with the center.

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In Baghdad, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi welcomed the completion of the merger, describing the consolidation of forces within constitutional and legal frameworks as a step toward national security and unified defense decision-making.

Iraqi media outlets reported that the transition formally integrated more than 100,000 party-affiliated fighters into the unified structure. Even so, officials published no final tally from the payroll audit that has anchored the reform since 2016, and no detailed timetable for transferring authority over appointments, promotions, armament, and deployment to the ministry.

The breakdown of how the divisions are distributed between the two commands went unpublished, as did the degree to which former Unit 70 and Unit 80 personnel are actually intermixed. As Sheikh Qader noted, that blending will determine whether the KRI has produced a genuinely unified army or rearranged old formations beneath a single roof.

Kurdish officials said unification had been a condition for continued coalition support, presenting the merger's completion as timed to that requirement. By their account, Erbil met the condition at the very moment the international presence that underwrote it began to recede, shifting the burden of funding, equipping, and sustaining the new structure onto Baghdad and Erbil themselves. That burden, and the slow work of making two zones feel like one force, is where the harder phase of reform now begins.

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Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.