The Kurdistan Region No Longer Can Treat National Security Policy as Ad Hoc and Personality Driven
By: Frzand Sherko
The Kurdistan Region has fighters, intelligence officers, and security agencies. What it lacks is a single national-security system able to tie them all together.
That weakness matters. The Middle East is volatile, with Iran, Turkey, Israel, the Gulf Arab states, and outside powers all competing, often violently. Kurdistan cannot afford a security structure shaped by party rivalry, overlapping commands, and institutions that carry national names but often operate through partisan logic.
The timing is also important. The Kurdistan Region has been unable to form a government after October 2024 parliamentary elections. As talks between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan resume, U.S. policymakers should urge both leaderships to treat national security reform not as a bargaining chip, but as a necessary foundation for strategic decision-making.
In 2011, the Kurdistan Parliament passed Law No. 4 establishing the Kurdistan Region Security Council and Law No. 5 governing the Asayish intelligence service. While in theory, the laws sought to place the Zanyari, Parastin, Asayish, and Peshmerga Intelligence under one umbrella under the control of the presidency, in practice, political fiefdoms prevented that umbrella from working. The problem was also structural. The Kurdistan Region Security Council’s design was closer to a security-intelligence umbrella than a full national security council. It did not include the ministerial, military, diplomatic, economic, and energy architecture necessary for strategic decision-making. It could supervise parts of the security sector, but it could not integrate the machinery of state power.
The consequences have been visible during crises. The Islamic State’s 2014 offensive exposed gaps in warning, intelligence fusion, command coordination, and readiness. The 2017 independence referendum exposed another weakness: Kurdistan took a decision without any mechanism to assess regional reaction, coordinate agencies, and prepare for pressure from Baghdad, Tehran, and Ankara.
The problem deepened after 2019. Masrour Barzani, who had served as chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council, became prime minister. Since then, the Council has lacked its legal anchoring in the presidency, and it did not maintain the independent leadership its original design required.
This matters against the backdrop of efforts to unify Iraqi Kurdistan amidst its continued partisan and family divisions. The Peshmerga reform process has sought to bring party-linked units under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, but the Asayish and other security bodies remain partisan, rather than national organizations. Absent a functioning national security council, any unification risks becoming administrative, temporary, or externally driven.
The answer is not to revive the old council with a new name. Kurdistan needs a real National Security Council that is nonpartisan and has a legal mandate to coordinate not only intelligence, but also military, security, diplomacy, economic security, energy, cyber defense, and crisis management.
Such a council should not replace ministries or agencies. It should force them to operate inside one national strategy. The president should chair it. The vice president, prime minister, deputy prime minister, and key ministers should sit as statutory members. Interior, Peshmerga, Foreign Affairs, Finance and Economy, Energy, and relevant technical ministries should attend when needed. This structure would reflect Kurdistan’s two-party reality while preventing either side from treating national security as private political property.
The council also should have a professional center: a national security advisor, deputy advisor, executive secretariat, and National Security Operations Center. The Operations Center should fuse intelligence, monitor crises, track early-warning indicators, and coordinate agencies in real time. Specialized directorates should cover intelligence coordination, strategic planning, cyber and infrastructure protection, counterterrorism, crisis management, strategic communications, legal affairs, parliamentary liaison, and professional training.
Kurdistan no longer can treat national security policy as ad hoc and personality driven. A militia threat, energy dispute, border incident, cyberattack, ballistic missile and drone attacks, disinformation campaigns, and diplomatic crises create a perfect storm that Kurdistan’s current fragmented system is unable to address.
The reform should include oversight. A new Kurdistan Region National Security law should define the council’s authority, require a regularly reviewed national security strategy, establish a National Security Operations Center, clarify agency responsibilities, and create parliamentary oversight. Oversight prevents security institutions from becoming instruments of factional power.
Kurdistan’s allies should care. A coherent Kurdish national security architecture would strengthen one of the few reliable pro-Western partners in a region where regional-backed militias, jihadist networks, and authoritarian pressures continue to expand.
