November 14, 2018 Security and Governance in the Disputed Territories Under a Fractured GOI: The Case of Northern Diyala blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2018/11/14/security-and-governance-in-the-disputed-territories-under-a-fractured-goi-the-case-of- northern-diyala/ Tweet by Zmkan Ali Saleem, Mac Skelton and Christine M. van den Toorn A conversation between two Sons of Iraq. Photo: Herald Post, Flickr. In October 2017, the Kurdish Regional Government’s (KRG) political and military hold over large swaths of the disputed territories evaporated overnight. A mix of military forces and militias backed by the Government of Iraq (GOI) overwhelmed Kurdish Peshmerga forces, quickly taking over strategic areas of Diyala, Salahadin, Ninawa, and Kirkuk. While legally and constitutionally these territories remain disputed, in actuality the KRG’s political and military influence has declined dramatically in a short period of time, leaving the GOI and its affiliates in control. What are the implications of renewed GOI control? What does this shift in the security arrangement tell us about future KRG–GOI attempts to resolve the dispute over these territories? Preliminary interviews highlight the fact that the nature and form of GOI control varies considerably across the disputed territories. The campaign against ISIS has left the federal government with a fragmented military and administrative apparatus. While legally speaking the state-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMFs) have been incorporated into the federal government since 2016, in reality the different factions vary greatly in their command structures, priorities, and loyalty to the GOI. Thus, instead of solely a KRG–GOI conflict, the 1/7