ERBIL, Iraq — Amid fierce fighting pitting Iraqi forces against the Islamic State (IS) over Mosul, in Ninevah province, tensions have risen between the predominantly Shiite Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) and Kurdish peshmerga. On May 23, the Committee on Kurdish Areas Outside the Region, an official entity in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), called PMU activity in Sinjar suspicious, based on the force not coordinating with the peshmerga in the area, which is close to Iraqi Kurdistan and among the territory over which Baghdad and Erbil have had disputes about control.

The PMU on May 13 had launched an operation to liberate the district of Sinjar and surrounding villages from IS. On May 23, PMU fighters took Qayrawan, which is administratively part of Sinjar but not far from Iraqi Kurdistan. After the battle for Qayrawan, dozens of members of the Yazidi peshmerga, including military officers, deserted ranks to join the Baghdad-supported PMU.

Serbest Leskin, a peshmerga official in Sinjar, told Rudaw Net on May 14, “We told the PMU that they were not allowed to enter the Yazidi areas, but here they are today surrounding the Yazidi-affiliated Tal al-Qasab and Tal al-Banat. When we learned that they had changed their plans, we immediately informed President [Massoud] Barzani.” That same day, Barzani had instructed peshmerga leaders not to allow the PMU to enter Yazidi areas in Sinjar.

According to press statements by a Kurdish source reported on by Rudaw News, Baghdad and Erbil had agreed that the Iraqi army and the PMU would not enter Kurdish areas. Leskin stressed that the agreement bars the PMU from areas populated by Yazidis, whom the KRG argues are ethnically Kurdish. Regardless, the PMU took and continue to control Tal al-Qasab and Tal al-Banat and argues that it must be able to operate anywhere in Baghdad-controlled areas, which would include Qayrawan and other Yazidi areas outside Iraqi Kurdistan.