Generally, situations of state fragility and conflict tend to go hand in hand with the presence of security organisations outside of the state’s formal institutions.‍[7] The absence of a monopoly on the use of force creates opportunities for alternative security organisations to exist and thrive in the same territory. While the dynamics in the development and nature of such organisations are explored elsewhere in greater detail, two insights about security organisations that exist outside of formal state institutions are particularly relevant for the discussion in this report.‍[8]

To start with, once security organisations exist that have a more ambiguous or adversarial relationship with the state and enjoy a measure of autonomy, mitigating the risk of conflict and progressing state development become more complex endeavours. This is due to the expanded range of political agendas and material interests that such security organisations manifest, as well as the attractiveness of maintaining a parallel coercive capacity as a hedge against political uncertainty, and as a vehicle for augmenting political and economic power.

In addition, it is inaccurate to treat all security organisations outside of formal state institutions as a single, broad category. Rather, a continuum of security organisations can be discerned that ranges from those that are close to the state to those with anti-state orientations. This continuum is depicted in the form of a rough typology in Table 1. Naturally, where security organisations fall along this continuum is not static and develops over time. For example, Hezbollah developed from an anti-regime security organisation during the Lebanese civil war into a hybrid security organisation with ambiguous relations with the Lebanese state that alternate between dominance (e.g. its occupation of West Beirut in 2008), competition (its efforts to subdue the militia of sheikh Al-Assir in Sidon in 2015) and cooperation (its joint offensive with the Lebanese army in Arsal against Jabhat al-Nusra in 2016). All security organisations on this continuum are the armed manifestation of a political project of one sort or another, but obviously vary in the degree of legitimacy, strength or currency of their political undertaking. The nature of a security organisation’s political project both shapes its relationship with the state and is shaped by its relations with local political actors or parties, regional actors and other non-state groups.‍[9]

What is interesting about the Peshmerga is that they simultaneously represent a number of the types listed in Table 1, with the prominence of primary, secondary and tertiary functions depending on time and circumstance. To begin with, the Peshmerga are a constitutionally mandated Iraqi security organisation, although they receive little financial or material support from the state. Moreover, the Peshmerga are also an anti-regime security organisation in relation to the Iraqi state because they are the armed manifestation of the Kurdish desire for greater independence from the government in Baghdad.‍[10] Finally, the Peshmerga are a hybrid security organisation in relation to the KRG, since they work for and compete with it as armed wings of the political parties that run the KRG, the KDP and PUK. Put plainly, a sizeable portion of the Peshmerga is loyal to their party first, to influential politburo leaders of both parties second, and to the KRG third. This results in cooperation, competition, chaos and further fragmentation within both parties along the lines of personal loyalties to individual leaders.‍[11]

Box 1 below illustrates these ‘three types of the Peshmerga’ through the use of micro-case descriptions at different points in time within a single year. It hints at the many pull-and-push factors that influence which type of organisation prevails and when. To make sense of the Peshmerga in relation to both the KRG and the Iraqi state, these factors need to be inventoried and analysed in the context of decades of Kurdish sociopolitical life in Iraq.