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After more than three decades of division, Iraq’s Kurdistan Region has ended the separate status of Forces 70 and 80, historically linked to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and brought them under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs.
On 21 September 2026, Kurdistan Region President and Peshmerga commander-in-chief Nechirvan Barzani announced that the first and second regional commands had begun operating. He said all Peshmerga formations were now within the ministry, reorganised into two commands, divisions, brigades and battalions.
Barzani said the next phase must bring unity to leadership, decision-making, orders, training, promotions, doctrine and discipline. For the reform to succeed, he said, fighters must look to the ministry and military command rather than to a party or geographic area.
The reform has therefore moved beyond bringing units into one structure. Its next test is who exercises authority within that structure, and how it manages appointments, resources and orders after decades in which the two parties built separate military and financial networks.
The merger concludes a lengthy reform process that reached a decisive stage on 21 September 2022, when the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs and the US Department of Defence signed a four-year memorandum of understanding. It linked US assistance to measures to reorganise the forces, unify administration and salaries, and strengthen the ministry’s institutions.
With the memorandum and the US direct funding programme ending in September 2026, the depth of the change announced in Erbil will depend on how powers are distributed within the new structure, whether party influence persists and how the force is financed.
What does the Peshmerga look like after unification?
The Kurdistan Region’s military had consisted of formations under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs alongside two large forces with separate chains of command, administrations and budgets. Force 80 was linked to the KDP and Force 70 to the PUK.
The division in its current form dates from the period after the 1991 “Kurdistan Uprising”, when areas of the region slipped from Baghdad’s control. The KDP and PUK shared power after the 1992 elections, but each retained its own forces.
Their civil war in the 1990s entrenched the split. Successive attempts to bring the Peshmerga under one ministry followed.
In May 2026, Lt Gen Bakhtiar Mohammed Sadiq, secretary-general of the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, said about 100,000 personnel had been serving in the two forces. Force 80’s command had been dissolved, he said, and its personnel and heavy weapons transferred to the ministry. The transfer of Force 70 was awaiting final procedures.
The process accelerated over the following months. On 10 September, Minister of Peshmerga Affairs Shorish Ismail announced that the two forces had been reorganised within a unified command and control system. The regional presidency then announced the formal activation of the two regional commands on 21 September.
The new structure has 11 divisions. The National Context, a platform specialising in Iraqi and Kurdish affairs, reported that 33 brigades and 99 battalions are distributed between the two commands.
The first command is primarily responsible for Erbil and Duhok. It is led by Lt Gen Najat Ali Salih, who previously commanded Force 80. The second covers Sulaymaniyah and Halabja and is led by Lt Gen Omar Salih Hassan, the former commander of Force 70.
Much of the two forces’ organisation has carried over into the new structure. The first command consists mainly of formations from Force 80, while the second includes those from Force 70. Units and their leaders have been transferred while retaining much of their previous organisational makeup.
The Kurdistan Region’s president is the Peshmerga’s commander-in-chief and has the authority to grant military ranks and appoint or dismiss senior officials. Appointments begin with a nomination by the minister and require Cabinet approval. The Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, meanwhile, manages the institution, its budget and its personnel records.
The two regional commands have broad powers over day-to-day military administration. According to a detailed analysis by The National Context, each can appoint division commanders, their deputies, chiefs of staff, directorate directors and brigade commanders. They also manage other aspects of officer transfers, discipline and spending.
Those powers give the commands considerable influence within the new army. Choosing division and brigade commanders, managing officers’ careers and controlling day-to-day spending all affect the centres of influence established during the years of division.
Under the regional presidency law, the president has the authority to grant military ranks. Barzani has also made the unification of promotion procedures a task for the next phase. How promotions are handled after September will therefore provide an early test of the new system.
On finances, Law No 2 of 2020, which covers reforms to salaries, allowances, grants, benefits and pensions, requires Peshmerga formations’ accounts to come under the ministry’s General Directorate of Budget and Programs and be subject to financial oversight. Bakhtiar Sadiq said in May 2026 that Forces 70 and 80 and the ministry had historically operated with separate budgets.
Under the new system, he explained, the commands’ budgets are consolidated within the ministry’s financial administration. Each command submits its needs, the ministry distributes the funds and then consolidates the accounts before sending them to the Ministry of Finance.
Each command nevertheless retains an accounts directorate, a subaccount and authority to spend on fuel, rations, maintenance, missions and rents within specified limits. The model combines centralised budgeting at the ministry with substantial day-to-day control inside the commands.
It remains unclear who has final authority to transfer an entire formation between commands, distribute ammunition from depots or control some heavy weapons. Those powers would matter particularly if forces were moved between Erbil and Duhok on one side and Sulaymaniyah and Halabja on the other — areas long associated with the influence of the two parties.
How much influence do the two parties retain?
Forces 70 and 80 entered the ministry with much of the personnel and organisational structure built during decades of division. Many of their officers, commanders and former units remain in the new army.
That continuity can be seen in the leadership of the two geographic areas, the distribution of divisions and brigades, and the joint brigades created during earlier reforms. Those 12 brigades include battalions with roots in each party’s forces. Command is shared, with the commander and deputy positions divided between the two sides.
Managing officers is therefore more sensitive than renaming units. Researcher Noor Omar made that point in a study published by the Kurdish research and policy platform Innov8, arguing that integrating the commands requires officers’ career paths, salaries, logistics and operational authority to be unified in practice.
Omar cited an interview with Bakhtiar Sadiq, who said the 2020 financial reform law had still not been fully implemented six years later, although an electronic salary system within the ministry was nearing completion.
For Omar, salaries and logistics are central to the test of unification. Bringing them under the ministry would limit the ability of any parallel network to manage personnel and resources outside it.
Retired Lt Gen Sarwar Sheikh Qadir takes a different view. In remarks following the September announcement, he said two geographic commands presented no military problem if both operated within one ministry and answered to a shared chain of command.
Kurdish researcher Pishtwan Faraj argued that completing unification depends on the new institution’s ability to separate political authority from military command. The ministry and military hierarchy, he said, must become the point of reference for officers and units, rather than the networks formed during the years of division.
Kurdish affairs researcher Sirwan Kajo offered a more sceptical assessment. He argued that the reform had moved much of the two forces’ existing structures into two newly named commands. Both the KDP and PUK, he noted, have a political interest in preserving the military networks that reinforce their influence in the region.
So far, no evidence has emerged that either party’s leadership has issued a direct operational order to a brigade or division since unification. The new structure has, however, retained many commanders, formations and administrative procedures from the two former forces.
The test is whether the ministry can appoint and transfer commanders, promote officers, move units and redistribute resources without bargaining between the parties. That is the standard Barzani set when he identified “decision-making, orders and promotions” as priorities for the next phase.
Why did unification happen now, and will it last?
Unification entered its decisive phase in 2026 as the September deadline in the US memorandum of understanding approached. In May, Bakhtiar Sadiq described that deadline as final for bringing all forces under the ministry.
US funding added weight to the timetable. US Department of Defence budget documents show allocations for the Kurdistan Security Forces falling from $135m in fiscal year 2024 to $60m in the 2025 request. That line item was discontinued in 2026 as the direct funding programme for the Peshmerga ended.
At the same time, the 2026 budget request allocated about $61m to train and equip Ministry of Peshmerga divisions, plus about $16.25m for sustainment, rations, fuel and oils. A growing share of assistance was thus directed towards ministry units and their institutional capacity.
Hamzeh Hadad, a fellow with the Middle East Security Program at the Centre for a New American Security, believes declining US assistance may push the regional government to take security sector reform more seriously.
It also makes closer coordination with Baghdad necessary. Some of the pressure on reform is shifting from direct US support to the region’s ability to manage and finance its forces through its relationship with the federal government.
Signing of the memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs and the US Department of Defence in Erbil, September 2022Bakhtiar Sadiq said the Peshmerga’s budget and salaries remain primarily part of the regional government’s budget. With the memorandum ending in September 2026, he said, a new formula for support must be sought in coordination with Baghdad.
He also explained that the Peshmerga needs approval from Iraqi federal institutions to obtain certain weapons, including drones. Relations between Erbil and the federal government will therefore directly affect the new army’s future, funding and armament.
Omar Al-Nidawi, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, warns that declining US assistance, alongside a reduced military presence, increases the region’s need for defence capabilities it cannot easily provide itself, particularly air defence. That further ties the unified Peshmerga’s future to security coordination with Washington and Baghdad.
US financial pressure coincided with a political decision within the region to settle the status of the two forces in 2026. The regional government issued arrangements for the two commands in February and completed the transfer of Force 70 in September.
At the unification ceremony, Barzani thanked the United States, the international coalition, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and France for supporting the reform. He also pointed to the KDP’s and PUK’s role in making the political decision that ended the forces’ separate military structures.
The end of US allocations makes the ministry’s financial system more consequential. Its ability to bring salaries, records, accounts and logistics together will determine how much authority it can exercise over the two commands.
The 2020 law provides a legal basis for doing so. But the commands retain broad administrative and financial powers, along with officer networks inherited from the former forces. How the new structure works in practice will matter more than its organisational chart.
The impact of unification will become clearer when the ministry must make decisions affecting the balance of power that governed the forces for years: whom to appoint as commanders, where to move units and how to distribute resources between the two areas.
If it can make and carry out those decisions through one military chain of command, applying the same standards in Erbil, Duhok, Sulaymaniyah and Halabja, that will be the clearest sign that the Peshmerga has moved beyond the legacy of Forces 70 and 80 to become a unified military institution.