The PUK, a major ruling party in Iraqi Kurdistan, has started its fifth conference amidst significant internal disagreements, creating a turbulent political atmosphere.
Efforts to reform the Iraqi Kurdish security forces known as the Peshmerga are at serious risk of failing. Tensions between the ruling parties of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region are not new, but the working relationship between the leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan has collapsed over the past year. As a result, officials within the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs are no longer capable of preventing the politics of partisan self-interest from consuming the reform project. The prospects for the depoliticization and unification of the Peshmerga have rarely seemed more remote.
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The aftermath of the US airstrike, Jan 3, 2020. (Photo: Archive)
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region Directorate General of Counter Terrorism (CTD) on Sunday rejected any affiliation with Sulaimani-based counterterrorism units that an investigative report a day earlier claimed had aided US forces to kill Iranian top general Qasim Soleimani in Iraq in 2020.
The CTD operates under the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC), which was established in 2011 under Law 4 of 2011 passed by the Kurdistan Parliament, and is the official counter-terrorism agency of the region.
The Counterterrorism Group (CTG), affiliated with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), on Sunday denied any involvement in the US assassination of Soleimani, who, it noted, was a “close friend” of the PUK’s late leader Mam Jalal Talabani.