In a step that officials in the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) did not foresee, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense filed a lawsuit, through the Karkh Court of First Instance, against KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and Peshmerga Minister Jafar Mustafa, and called on them to appear before the courts. The lawsuit was filed on the grounds that the peshmerga were keeping large quantities of heavy weapons that they transferred to the region’s provinces after the fall of the former Iraqi regime in 2003.

The Peshmerga Ministry has admitted, more than once, that it possesses of light, medium and heavy weapons that it had obtained over two stages. The first stage took place after the 1991 uprising that broke out in Iraq and was referred to as the Shaaban Intifada among Iraqis, and as the National Uprising among Kurds. During this uprising, most Iraqi cities were liberated, but then the Iraqi regime managed to retighten its grip on all those regions, with the exception of the three Kurdish cities Erbil, Sulaimaniyah and Dahuk.

The second stage through which the Kurdish peshmerga obtained arms happened after the fall of the former Iraqi regime in 2003, following the US-led Iraq war in which Commonwealth and other countries participated.

The former Iraqi army’s 5th and 1st Legion forces, which were respectively in Mosul and Kirkuk at the time, left behind most of their weapons on April 9, 2003. Both legions possessed armored vehicles, tanks and even helicopters, which were completely plundered from the camps in both provinces a few weeks after the fall of Saddam.