As Iraqi Kurdistan fighting forces, collectively known as peshmerga, began their three-year battle against the Islamic State (IS) in 2014, members of the Iraqi Kurdish public came to perceive them as one nationalist force defending their land. Even the lower ranks of the force came to believe they were fighting IS for Kurdistan and not for any political party. There were high hopes that the peshmerga forces would finally become an apolitical force under one unified command.

But the recent electoral campaigning and related violence dashed these hopes and showed once again that the two ruling parties — the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) — see the peshmerga forces as nothing but militias protecting the parties' power and interests.

“If you don’t have shaq [kick] and para [money], you can’t achieve anything here” is a common saying in Iraqi Kurdistan, meaning no political force can change anything without the power of a militia and a pool of cash. This is often a veiled reference to the main opposition party, the Movement for Change (Gorran), which lacks its own militia.

After the polls closed May 12, a senior PUK commander ordered an attack on Gorran headquarters in Sulaimaniyah. Since then, many in Iraq's Kurdistan region are questioning whether the peshmerga fighters and other politicized security forces can be trusted with maintaining order.