Kurdistan Region Announces Official Completion of Peshmerga Forces Unification

The presidency of Iraq's Kurdistan Region announced that all Peshmerga forces will become, starting Monday, formally placed under the framework of the Peshmerga Ministry, in a move the presidency described as representing the culmination of a long unification process for these forces.

The regional presidency did not provide additional details about the mechanism for integrating the forces or the full implementation timeline, according to reports from Sky News Arabia, though the announcement comes as part of previously announced efforts to unify Kurdish military forces under a single authority.

Peshmerga forces are the official military force of Iraq's Kurdistan Region and have long been distributed among multiple brigades and commands reporting primarily to the two main Kurdish parties—the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan—a situation that previously sparked repeated calls to unify their structure within a single military institution under government control.

It remained unclear from the announcement issued by the regional presidency whether the move would include a complete restructuring of current commands or changes to the existing command hierarchy, and no statement has been issued so far from the federal government in Baghdad or from Kurdish political parties regarding this announcement.