As Iraqi Kurdistan fighting forces, collectively known as peshmerga, began their three-year battle against the Islamic State (IS) in 2014, members of the Iraqi Kurdish public came to perceive them as one nationalist force defending their land. Even the lower ranks of the force came to believe they were fighting IS for Kurdistan and not for any political party. There were high hopes that the peshmerga forces would finally become an apolitical force under one unified command.
But the recent electoral campaigning and related violence dashed these hopes and showed once again that the two ruling parties — the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) — see the peshmerga forces as nothing but militias protecting the parties' power and interests.
