Iraq News Now

Kurdistan Region aims to regain posts in Iraq’s Ministry of Defense

Kurdistan Region aims to regain posts in Iraqs Ministry of Defense
Kurdistan Region aims to regain posts in Iraq’s Ministry of Defense

2019-07-23 00:00:00 - Source: kurdistan 24

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The autonomous Kurdistan Region intends to retake its share of Iraqi Defense Ministry posts, which were lost over the past years over political tensions between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the former federal governments of Iraq, Kurdish officials said on Monday.

A source from the KRG’s Peshmerga Ministry told Kurdistan 24 that, in their previous meetings with delegations from the federal government, officials have asked for the Kurd’s to receive their fair share of posts within the Defense Ministry. Baghdad has yet to respond.

A lawmaker linked the failure to secure military posts within the Iraqi government to Kurdish disunity in the past.

“If we [Kurds] are united in Kurdistan, the Iraqi government will have no choice but to take our demands seriously,” Jamal Hawez, a member of the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary committee of Peshmerga, Security and Internal Affairs, told Kurdistan 24 on Monday.

In the past, Baghdad has noticed that Kurds do not have a united voice in the Kurdistan Region and exploited those fractures, Hawez explained.

Following the fall of the former authoritarian regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the Kurds were able to secure representation at the federal level, close to 17 percent, including posts in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. In contrast, the actual share of posts they hold in the ministry has dropped to only two percent, according to Peshmerga officials.

Nasr Harki, a Kurdish lawmaker and member of the Iraqi parliamentary committee for Defense and Security, told Kurdistan 24 that regaining military posts within the Iraqi government is to be raised during upcoming meetings between Erbil and Baghdad.

Some of the key posts that Kurds previously held in Iraq’s Ministry of Defense were Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Army, Director-General of the Intelligence Services, and Director-General of Meera, a department responsible for military logistics and storing equipment.

With the number of Kurdish soldiers currently below five percent as a share of the Iraqi army, the only key post that Kurds hold in the ministry is Commander of the Iraqi Air Force, Anwar Hamad Amen.

(Additional reporting by Nawras Abdullah)

Editing by Nadia Riva 





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