Recent political upheaval hampers joint Peshmerga-Iraqi brigades’ formation: Official

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The political instability Iraq has experienced recently is one of the factors hampering the formation of the joint Iraqi Army and Peshmerga forces, a military official said.

All the necessary work has been done from both Erbil and Baghdad sides to form the new force which will be deployed to the disputed areas between the Iraqi and Kurdish governments, Abdul Khaliq Tal’at, the Kurdistan Region representative at the Iraqi Joint Operations Command, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

“The undesirable situation in Baghdad,” is one of the reasons for the slowed progress in forming the forces, Tal’at said.

The fact that the current Iraqi government is a caretaker is another reason, he added.

The lack of security cooperation between the two governments in the disputed territories is cited by officials and experts as one of the reasons for increasing ISIS attacks against civilians and security forces in those areas.

In order to fill the “security vacuum”, Erbil and Baghdad agreed to form two brigades, consisting of Iraqi soldiers and Kurdish Peshmerga.

Minister of Peshmerga Affairs Shoresh Ismail in a presser recently expressed his disappointment with regard to the lack of progress in the formation of the forces.

“Iraqi officials repeatedly tell us that the brigade will soon be formed,” he said. “No one know really knows who decides in Iraq,” the minister added.

Peshmerga and Iraqi forces have launched a number of joint operations in those areas against the remnants of ISIS.

Once controlling a third of the country, the ISIS self-proclaimed caliphate was brought down by Kurdish and Iraqi forces with the support of the international Coalition to Defeat ISIS.