ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga forces on Thursday received the final installment of financial support from the US-led coalition, as a four-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Peshmerga Ministry and the coalition is set to expire on Friday, a senior ministry source said.

In 2022, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the US Department of Defense signed a four-year MoU to support the reform and integration of the Peshmerga forces into a unified army. The agreement entailed financial and military support to the Kurdish forces.

“All the clauses and points of that joint memorandum that existed between the Coalition forces and the Ministry of Peshmerga are coming to an end,” the Peshmerga ministry source said in remarks to The New Region, with the agreement set to expire on Friday.

The source added that “today [Thursday] the last installment of Coalition support for the Peshmerga was distributed.”

While it is not yet clear whether the two sides are set to make a similar agreement in the future, a BBC article from August asserted that US authorities have informed KRG leaders that the US administration “is not planning to renew an expiring agreement that provides security assistance to the Peshmerga.”

Ambassador Joey Hood, the former US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, told The New Region in early September that “the US Government's financial support to the Kurdistan Regional Government for the unification of the Peshmerga forces was always intended to be temporary.  It was intended to help the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs integrate and unify the different units.”

On September 10, the Peshmerga ministry announced the completion of the unification of the Peshmerga forces after years of effort. In the statement, the ministry called on international allies to “continue supporting the unified Peshmerga forces of Kurdistan” in the coming phase.

The Peshmerga unification and reform process, overseen by the global coalition, sought to incorporate the Peshmerga’s Unit 80 forces, affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and Unit 70 forces, affiliated with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), into the Peshmerga ministry.

The expiration of the MoU comes days before the coalition forces are set to fully withdraw from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region on September 30, ending the presence of the foreign troops which came to the country in 2014 upon Baghdad’s invitation to fight off the Islamic State (ISIS).