Baghdad extends outreach to the Peshmerga to confront a grave peril

Shafaq News / The issue of activating security coordination between Baghdad and Erbil as well as the files of the so-called disputed areas can no longer be delayed, as repeated warnings from Kurdish political and military officials have proved righteous; The remnants of ISIS gangs have exploited the security gaps between the two sides to enhance their activity and attacks.

The attack on the Peshmerga and Iraqi security forces at the beginning of May was a new reminder of the danger lurking since 2017, as a militarily shattered ISIS has been, sporadically, jerking a limb through similar attacks here and there.

This prompted Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, to hold a meeting that gathered the commands of the federal security departments and the Peshmerga in the presence of the ministers of interior, defense, and finance. The meeting’s main agenda was to address security breaches, formulate effective coordination between the various federal security forces and the Peshmerga, especially in areas of joint responsibility.

This means that every delay in establishing the security coordination between the federal and the Peshmerga forces contributes to giving ISIS enough time to turn into more organized, effective, and bloody gangs, taking advantage of areas devoid of any military presence, which extend 10 kilometers in some areas within the border between Kurdistan, Diyala, Kirkuk, and Nineveh.

The day after the security meeting, Kurdistan's Deputy President, Sheikh Jaafar Sheikh Mustafa, visited Kirkuk and the village of Qabashi at the border of Altun Kupri after being attacked by ISIS. According to a statement issued by Kurdistan’s presidency, President Nechirvan Barzani mandated Sheikh Jaafar to visit the Peshmerga forces and reiterated, "ISIS remains a constant threat as it is constantly trying to reorganize itself to destabilize those areas - particularly those covered by Article 140 - which are suffering from a massive security gap due to the lack of full military coordination between the Iraqi and the Peshmerga forces."

Barzani said that Kurdistan will work on forming a joint force between the Iraqi army and the Peshmerga to protect these areas because ISIS is a threat to Iraqi security in general.

It was not the first time That Nechirvan Barzani had sounded the alarm about the growing threat of terrorism in those areas; he repeatedly warned over the past years, as many Kurdish political and security leaders have done.

It became clear that the Peshmerga forces’ withdrawal in October 2017 from the disputed areas following the independence referendum provided an opportunity for ISIS to reactivate its remnants. Especially given its geographically large expansion, stretching from Diyala to Saladin, Kirkuk, and Nineveh.

Security data indicated that 84 villages in Khanaqin’s outskirts are prone to infiltration of terrorists from Hamrin Mountains, Kirkuk, and Saladin.

Information Officer of the National Union of Kurdistan in Khanaqin, Ibrahim Hassan, told Shafaq News agency,  "ISIS’s attacks have evacuated 23 Kurdish villages on the outskirts of Khanaqin in the past two years. The causes of the security deterioration in Khanaqin’s outskirts are the security gaps left by the Peshmerga forces after their withdrawal in October 2017."

He called for “Reviving and implementing joint operations center in Khanaqin and the disputed areas to end the sporadic attacks carried out by ISIS." 

"The implementation of Article 140 represents a comprehensive solution to the problems of the disputed areas. Even with its accession to Kurdistan, it will remain within the borders of the Iraqi state, not outside it, for Kurdistan is part of Iraq", Hassan said.

Observers agree that ISIS has found a foothold in many disputed areas, despite repeated warnings from Kurdish leaders, numerous dialogue sessions, and attempts to coordinate between Erbil and Baghdad.

It has become clear that ISIS is benefiting from security-vulnerable areas to boost its resources and that it is taking advantage of all the differences that may emerge between Baghdad and Erbil to expand its movement, as it did in its first ascent in 2014.

Both sides do not have the luxury of time, while Al-Kadhimi needs to address the issue based on his first pledges to his Kurdish "allies" when they voted for him in parliament to take over the presidency of the Iraqi government a year ago, to address the issue of disputed areas within Kirkuk, Saladin, Nineveh, and Diyala.

Bashar al-Kiki, deputy head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) bloc in the Iraqi parliament, told Shafaq News agency that "security normalization" between the federal and the Peshmerga forces is crucial to abort the threat of ISIS, and that the issue of those territories should be settled pursuant to Article 140 of the constitution.

However, ISIS’s resurgent attacks, and the UN and U.S. confirmations about the presence of thousands of ISIS militants in both Iraq and Syria, provides, at this political moment, a vital opportunity to re-establish direct and joint fieldwork between the governments of Baghdad and Erbil, with two political leaderships aware of the need for such an indispensable move.

Many observers are aware that the delay in implementing Article 140 contributes to the destabilization of the security situation. It was lengthly discussed by Iraqi and Kurdish leaders before it was settled in 2005, during which they agreed to follow a three-stage mechanism; The first stage was resolving the issue of demographic changes imposed over the past decades. Then, reorganize the census in these areas before staging a referendum. All these stages were supposed to take place before the end of 2007, but that did not happen.

In July 2020, much optimism was raised when the mutual political openness between Erbil and Baghdad produced effective military coordination for the first time in years between the Iraqi army and the Peshmerga forces to confront ISIS, which penetrated some border areas with Kurdistan, exploiting the political estrangement between the two capitals prior to the formation of al-Kadhimi’s government. The Peshmerga forces participated in a joint military operation with the federal forces after the Iraqi army's counter-terrorism service on July 13th reported high-level security and intelligence coordination between its forces and the Peshmerga forces during the fourth phase of the "Iraq Heroes" campaign to pursue ISIS in Diyala. 

That operation was a model of what the governments of Erbil and Baghdad could do together. Kurdistan is still waiting for the first real step by the successive Baghdad governments to resolve article 140 properly and fill the security gaps that have widened in the past years, allowing ISIS to move through it and discover safe shelters to strike the stability of Both Iraq and Kurdistan.