The PKK’s status and authority in Sinjar is a threat to the KDP, which hoped to use its influence in Baghdad to remove PKK-affiliated groups through the Sinjar Agreement. The PKK sees the KDP as a strong ally of Türkiye, which is determined to defeat the PKK in Sinjar and across the Kurdish-inhabited areas of Iraq and Syria. Both sides compete to be the champion of the Kurdish cause and make pragmatic decisions on alliances and strategies.
Meanwhile, the PMF is an Iraqi government institution under the National Security Agency (NSA). However, most of its armed groups operate independently of that chain of command. Power in the Iraqi state is diffused, and the armed groups of the PMF are under the authority of their own political parties and leadership, such as the Badr Organization, Asaeb ahl al-Haq or Kataib Hezbollah.
At times, the strategies of the PMF are not compatible with those of the Iraqi government. After concluding the Sinjar Agreement in 2020, the central government attempted but failed to remove local allies of the PKK through negotiations. Two years later, in 2022, the Iraqi government tried again to remove PKK-aligned militias, this time with force, but again failed. In both instances, the PMF intervened and brokered a truce between the Iraqi security forces and the PKK-aligned groups. As a result, the PMF incorporated some of the PKK groups and fighters, even providing them with salaries and protection. The PMF has also used its influence inside the Iraqi government to block the appointment of a new mayor for Sinjar – a key requirement of the Sinjar Agreement. In these instances, the PMF has proven both independent and more influential than the central government.
While the PMF and PKK diverge both ideologically and politically, they have had a tactical alliance since 2016 and often share common goals and common enemies – such as the KDP. Both groups have established deep local roots in Sinjar, through their responses to the Yezidi genocide and by taking advantage of the district’s remote location and distance from central authorities in Baghdad. The PKK and PMF have also utilized the geographic location and mountainous terrain of Sinjar to serve their own strategic interests. The cross-border operations of the PKK and the PMF mean that the conflicts in Sinjar and Syria influence one another.
‘Outside in’ transnational authority in Sinjar
The authority of both the PKK and the PMF in Sinjar is based on strong security, as well as ideological and economic ties with the area’s remaining local population. Due to ISIS’s opposition to the Yezidis’ non-Islamic religious beliefs, militants killed and kidnapped thousands of members of the community during their offensive on Sinjar (around 500 men were killed, while 7,000 women and girls were forced into sexual slavery). ISIS’s attack also drove most of the Yezidi community out of Sinjar with many of them (estimated at 280,000 people) still living as internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Duhok governorate. ISIS’s depopulation of the district paved the way for the PKK and the PMF to establish power and influence in Sinjar.
Groups such as the PKK and the PMF are often considered non-state or hybrid actors because they do not conform to Westphalian notions of the state, in which state power is confined largely to formal government institutions. However, the lack of this formal status should not distract from the state authority that such groups maintain over populations and government institutions. Authors who write on rebel governance, for instance, argue that these groups use military, political, ideological and economic means to obtain and keep their authority. Looking at public authority is important because it reveals a critical lens through which to understand the motivations and power that such groups enjoy. As external actors, the PKK and the PMF rely on a mix of social and political authority to govern Sinjar with greater influence than any formal government or other state.
The PKK
The PKK announced in 2018 that it would withdraw from Sinjar following calls from the central Iraqi government, which was under pressure at the time from Türkiye. But the group still enjoys military, political, ideological and administrative authority in the area. Part of this comes through locally formed armed and political organizations that are largely made up of members from the Yezidi community. These PKK-affiliated organizations operate across the various towns and villages of the district and derive legitimacy from their role in protecting members of their community from ISIS.
Militarily, the PKK commands the loyalties of a number of influential armed groups. In 2014, the PKK sent fighters from both Iraq (from the PKK’s stronghold in Iraqi Kurdistan’s mountainous borders with Iran and Türkiye) and northern Syria (from the Kurdish dominated areas – known as Rojava – where the PKK’s allies among Syrian Kurds rule in the de facto Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) to the Sinjar mountains in order to protect Yezidis fleeing the ISIS offensive. The PKK fighters saved many Yezidis by opening a corridor in the Sinjar mountains through which Yezidis were escorted to Syria and then to Iraqi Kurdistan. Other Yezidis remained in Sinjar and were organized by the PKK into different armed groups including the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) and Yezidxan Security. These groups played a role in removing ISIS from Sinjar and continue to enjoy the support of many Yezidis in the district who have lost faith in the KDP and Iraqi security forces to protect them against future threats. According to a local official aligned with the PKK, ‘I don’t trust the Iraqi army and the PMF [due to its central government affiliation]. One day they will get a call from Baghdad to withdraw from Sinjar and will then leave us to terrorists. I only trust the YBS who are locals and will not run away when we are threatened again by ISIS.’
Many of the district’s Yezidis express deep appreciation for the role the PKK played in saving them at a time when they were abandoned by both the KDP and the Iraqi government. But the ties that bind the PKK to locals in Sinjar go beyond this recent history and can be seen by the adherence to PKK ideology in Yezidi communities. In addition to military training, the PKK organizes regular political and cultural activities in Sinjar aimed at proselytizing the political beliefs of the PKK’s jailed leader and main ideologue Abdullah Öcalan. Affinity with these ideas has enabled the PKK to mobilize locals for fighting and for popular gatherings and demonstrations. In February 2022, for instance, protests broke out in Sinjar against a decision by the Iraqi army to remove a poster of Öcalan on a main thoroughfare in the district’s centre.
The PKK’s involvement in Sinjar’s war economy has enabled the group to finance its local operations and activities. Members of PKK-aligned groups control parts of the border with Syria and have generated revenues through involvement in and taxing of illegal cross-border trade activities. According to locals, the PKK funded its locally aligned political and armed groups through profits made in cross-border smuggling. Only some of the PKK-aligned local fighters receive payments from the Iraqi government via the PMF.
The PKK’s influence in Sinjar is also institutional. The PKK continues to exert influence through the governing administration that the group’s local affiliates established in Sinjar in 2018. When the KDP withdrew from the district in 2017, it ordered its aligned local administrators and government officials to pull out of Sinjar. This left a power vacuum that was filled by the local allies of the PKK who, with the support of the PMF, established their own administration and appointed local officials across the district. While it has failed to gain the recognition of the Baghdad government, the local administration has been important for the PKK to assert authority over Sinjar.
The PMF
The PMF has also established authority in Sinjar through a system of local alliances. But the force’s regional authority is less rooted in ideology and largely built on military, economic and political ties. Militarily, the PMF is the most powerful actor in Sinjar. The force exerts considerable security influence through its existing brigades in the areas around Sinjar and via locally aligned armed and political factions. When it arrived in southern Sinjar in 2016, the PMF encountered Yezidi as well as Sunni and Shia Arab tribes that were threatened by ISIS and thus were looking for support to fight the Sunni militant group. The PMF provided both weapons and training to the members of these communities and helped them liberate their areas. The relationship between these allies lasted beyond the fight against ISIS, with the PMF continuing to arm and finance local factions in Sinjar.
Using its status as a force recognized by Baghdad, the PMF has established its own economic authority in Sinjar via patronage networks that provide employment and access to the Iraqi government. Many young Yezidis and Sunni Arabs have joined local PMF factions to access stable state salaries. According to a Yezidi fighter in the PMF’s newly established Brigade 74 (also called Sinjar Brigade), ‘In Sinjar, there are few job opportunities outside the security forces. In the PMF, we receive our salaries on a regular basis’. Reportedly, the Sinjar Brigade (formally approved by the Baghdad government) had plans to recruit 3,000 locals in 2023 – it remains unclear as to whether it achieved this goal.
The PMF’s local allies also include the leaders of Yezidi and Sunni Arab communities and tribes. Yezidis who have fallen outside the KDP’s patronage network and refused to subscribe to the PKK’s ideology have joined the PMF, in part due to the latter’s association with the central government in Baghdad. Yezidi affiliates of the PMF have established local influence and prestige through their access to key government institutions and resources in Baghdad. Likewise, the district’s Sunni Arab tribal leaders that rejected ISIS rule are now aligned with the PMF and receive both financial resources and protection from the PMF.
How military supply chains connect conflicts across and beyond Sinjar
Both the PKK and the PMF see Sinjar as a strategic military hub for their transnational operations, including the movement of fighters and weapons across country borders. In addition to its bases in the mountainous areas of Iraqi Kurdistan at the southern border of Türkiye, the PKK has also developed influence and authority in Syria’s Rojava, which shares borders with Sinjar and is where the PKK’s local Kurdish allies rule. Rojava’s main armed force (the People’s Protection Units – YPG), political party (Democratic Union Party – PYD) and governing body (Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) are all aligned with the PKK. The YPG constitutes the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a key US ally in the ongoing fight against ISIS in Syria.
Meanwhile, as part of Tehran’s regional strategy, Iran-allied PMF groups operate in Syria in support of the Assad regime. Although the PMF and PKK are aligned with opposing groups in Syria, they have continued to maintain their tactical alliance in Sinjar. The activities of PMF groups in Syria have primarily relied on crossing the border at al-Qaem, which is a desert crossing that is increasingly exposed to US airstrikes and disruptions. In comparison, the secluded and mountainous Sinjar hub is an attractive alternative for a more sustainable ‘land bridge’ that can connect Iran to the groups it supports in and across the Levant.
The PKK’s cross-border supply chains
The PKK and its local allies in Iraq and Syria continue to challenge and fight Türkiye in a stretch of land that extends from northern Syria to the mountainous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. To maintain this level of fighting requires access to areas that offer relative safety and transport routes across international borders for weapons and fighters. In this respect, Sinjar’s mountains and its location at the border with Syria are particularly beneficial for PKK transnational military activities. Sinjar’s strategic significance helps the PKK to circumvent restrictions imposed by Türkiye and the KDP on the insurgent group’s access to weapons, transit routes and areas of sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Tunnels are a key means through which the PKK moves weapons across borders. The PKK transports small arms and light weapons between Iraq and Syria, via Sinjar, through a network comprising PKK fighters and local smugglers. The Sinjar mountain range that extends across the Syrian border has facilitated the movement of PKK fighters. Since the group’s emergence in Sinjar in 2014, the PKK has constructed tunnels in and around the district that serve not only as conduits for moving weapons across the border to Syria but also function as storage areas and military bases. According to an Iraq-based observer of the PKK, ‘These PKK tunnels are on an entirely different scale compared to the small smuggling tunnels often seen in the media or movies. Some of these tunnels can even accommodate vehicles.’ Most interviewees emphasized that the tunnels were used for transporting light weapons – such as sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), automatic guns, TNT explosives, ammunition and night vision equipment – rather than heavy weaponry. Sources highlighted that the PKK reserved the use of the tunnels for strategic purposes, including the transportation of weapons and high-profile figures and commanders. Other cross-border operations, such as the movement of fighters between Sinjar and Syria, tend to use the more traditional informal smuggling routes.
There is a constant flow of PKK fighters and weapons via Sinjar across the border. An Iraq-based analyst stated:
The PKK also uses Sinjar as a safe haven for its commanders. As Tomáš Kaválek stated, ‘The impassable mountains have numerous caves and complex morphology, rendering many areas inaccessible by vehicle, making them a defendable stronghold which could easily serve as a (back-up) safe haven for the PKK in proximity to its territories in northern Syria.’ Sinjar is also used by the PKK as a hideout for commanders to lay low, particularly those pursued and targeted by Türkiye.
To boost its standing in Syria, the PKK has agreements with local leaders and tribes that inhabit the border regions. For instance, the Shammar tribe and its armed wing, Al-Sanadid, have become strong local allies of the PKK on the Syrian side of the border.
The PMF’s cross-border operations
Sinjar has the potential to be part of a land bridge that enables Tehran and its PMF allies to directly support the Assad regime in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, by moving weapons and fighters from Iran and Iraq. In Tehran’s regional military strategy, PMF groups with influence and authority play a major role. Analysts focusing on Iran’s land bridge passing through different Iraqi territories claimed that Tehran’s utilization of the Sinjar route was temporary and was compromised by the ‘growing partnership between U.S. troops and Syrian Kurdish forces in northeast Syria’. However, these analysts overlooked two key factors.
One factor is the potential of the Sinjar mountains to serve Iran’s regional strategy. Access to the mountainous area has become a significant priority for the PMF and their allies in Tehran as it provides them with access to Syria and potentially the scope to attack Israel. An Iraqi military expert has argued that Iran is now in a position to target Israel through its al-Shahab missiles, which have a range of 1,600 kilometres, from Iraqi soil. In a research interview for this paper, a local journalist from Sinjar said, ‘The top of Sinjar mountain is called Chilmiran, which Saddam [Hussein] used to attack Israel through missiles. Many people in Sinjar say that Iran and the PMF want to use the mountain for attacking Israel when they deem this necessary.’
The second factor is that the route to Syria via Sinjar is an important alternative to the al-Qaem crossing in Anbar governorate, which has increasingly come under US attack. Furthermore, the al-Qaem crossing is also vulnerable because of the area’s recent history of violent Salafi Jihadism. In contrast, the mountainous terrain of Sinjar and the district’s diverse population make it a more secure military transit route. Sources indicate that Iran and its allies among the PMF have been involved in moving weapons, including missiles, to Syria from Iraq via Sinjar. According to a local politician from Sinjar, ‘The Iraqi government is present at the border between Sinjar and Syria. But the Iraqi security forces and border guards are incapable of stopping the PMF crossing to Syria.’
Sinjar’s ‘inside out’ transnational dynamics
The PKK and PMF strategies for turning Sinjar into a military corridor have generated cross-border conflict with implications for the stability and security of the district and the wider region. This shows the ‘inside out’ dynamics of Sinjar’s conflict and its spillover across the region.
For those citizens who have returned to Sinjar, instability is a constant feature of life in the district. The IDPs interviewed for this research stated that those who returned to the district were either fighters or relatives of fighters associated with the PMF and PKK. A Yezidi IDP stated, ‘If I return to Sinjar, I will have to join one of the militia groups to secure a job and support. But this not what I want to do.’ He added, ‘There is little support for us here [in refugee camps]. But there is safety.’ Some IDPs refuse to return to Sinjar out of fear of Turkish air attacks on PKK-aligned groups in the district.
Policy responses to instability in Sinjar have also impacted the livelihoods of its remaining residents. In seeking to weaken the PKK’s influence in the district, the KDP and the Iraqi government have restricted the movement of goods to Sinjar by introducing stringent security measures at checkpoints on major routes from the Kurdish region and the rest of Iraq. These measures, which were intended to target the PKK, have had severe consequences for people’s livelihoods and access to basic services and products. One local trader stated, ‘Drivers must unload the goods from their trucks many times for screening at several checkpoints and they get delayed. It takes considerably more time to move goods to Sinjar and as a result truck and lorry drivers ask for greater fees. And that adds to the prices of the food products and goods we import to Sinjar.’
The restrictions have also limited access to crucial medicines in Sinjar.
The district has poor healthcare and limited access to medicines for chronic illnesses. Local pharmacists stated that there were deliberate KDP, KRG and Baghdad policies to restrict medical goods going to Sinjar from the rest of Iraq to prevent the smuggling of those pharmaceuticals into Syria. One local pharmacist stated:
In Sinjar, the conflict is further exacerbated by the responses of Türkiye, which has carried out numerous air attacks against the local allies of the PKK in the district. The air attacks have caused severe damage in Sinjar (including the destruction of hospitals) and deepened insecurities for the people living there. A Yezidi IDP stated, ‘Sinjar is under constant Turkish attack. How can you live in a place always bombarded by Türkiye? With each Turkish air attack on Sinjar tens of families are re-displaced.’
Ultimately, these varying forms of conflict have prevented the return of Yezidi IDPs to their homes in Sinjar years after the liberation of the district from ISIS. IDPs in a camp in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Duhok governorate told the authors that the presence of ‘multiple parties’ fighting for control over their lands was a key impediment preventing them from returning to Sinjar. One Yezidi IDP from Sinjar stated, ‘The condition in Sinjar is not stable. There is no security. I do not take my family back because I fear the many parties and militias in Sinjar. I fear tensions and war. This might happen. Who knows? There is no guarantee another disaster is not going to happen.’
At times, the conflict in Sinjar has spilled over to neighbouring Syria, demonstrating the district’s ‘inside out’ transnational dynamics. The intra-Kurdish conflict between the PKK and KDP is a case in point. While attempting to re-establish influence in Sinjar, the KDP has also sought to challenge the PKK’s dominance in Rojava. Like the PKK, the KDP formed its own aligned militia group – Roj Peshmerga – and a political wing – the Kurdish National Council (KNC) – in Rojava, Syria. The PKK–KDP struggle for control in Sinjar has negatively affected security and political stability in Rojava. The 2017 violent clashes between the PKK’s local allies and the KDP-affiliated Roj Peshmerga, near the town of Khansour in Sinjar, resulted in causalities on both sides and quickly led to unrest in Rojava. In response to the clashes in Sinjar, PKK supporters in Rojava took to the streets, demonstrated against the Roj Peshmerga and attacked the offices and supporters of the KDP-aligned KNC in Qamishli and Hassakeh (the main cities in Rojava).
