The Clashes Between the Sinjar Resistance Units and the Iraqi Army: Interview

From the middle of April until early May, there was an escalation in tension between the Iraqi army and the Sinjar Resistance Units (commonly known by the abbreviation of YBŞ deriving from the Kurdish name of the group). This escalation arose because the Iraqi army (embodied in the West Ninawa operations command) has sought to impose greater central government authority and security control over the area, through building a partial border wall between Iraq and Syria in the Sinjar area, setting up additional bases in the Sinjar area, and trying to take over checkpoints that have been run by the Asayish Izidkhan, which functions as the internal security wing of the ‘autonomous administration’ project in the Sinjar area (whereas the YBŞ is the military wing of that project), which seeks to create a special autonomous region in Sinjar. It was the Iraqi army’s attempted move against Asayish Izidkhan checkpoints in particular that sparked the recent clashes on repeated occasions between the Iraqi army and the YBŞ.