Responding to instability in Iraq’s Sinjar district

Intense and violent competition to control the tiny border district of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq continues to have significant implications for Middle East security and stability. Recent escalation between the US and Iran-allied armed groups – including attacks carried out by both sides in Iraq, Syria and Jordan – demonstrates the danger posed by activities across these borders. Despite the territorial defeat of Islamic State (ISIS) in 2015, Sinjar remains trapped in a cycle of perpetual violence, and much of the local population has not returned home. Armed groups, such as the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which helped liberate the district from ISIS, now cooperate and compete for control over the area. This situation allows these transnational actors to provide military support to allies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Türkiye.The rise and fall of ISIS fundamentally transformed Sinjar: previously the object of a national territorial dispute between the government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), it has now become a transnational conflict hub. Part of this transnationalism has what can be described as an ‘outside in’ dynamic, in which Sinjar attracts external actors seeking to compete for authority. Sinjar’s mountainous topography and distance from national capitals also mean that armed groups seeking to access Syria to target the wider region have a secure military transit route available to them. As a consequence, transnationalism in Sinjar also has an ‘inside out’ dimension, with contestation for the district spilling over and perpetuating violence for populations not only in Sinjar itself but across the region.In response to the conflict in Sinjar, the Iraqi government and its international allies continue to pursue policy and programmatic responses that take a nationally focused approach, from brokering agreements between domestic actors to building physical walls that attempt to consolidate national boundaries. But the reality of the matter is that Sinjar has become an arena in which the formal boundaries of nation states mean little. Acknowledging this fact is critical to understanding the dynamics and drivers of armed violence in the district and the entire region, and in turn to enabling policymakers to respond more effectively to these conditions.This paper argues for a transnational approach to tackling instability in Sinjar. This should aim to include the PKK and the PMF, along with their local allies, in a renegotiation of the Sinjar Agreement – an accord between the Iraqi central government and the KRG to stabilize Sinjar and allow the district’s displaced residents to return home. In exchange for being part of a future political settlement, the PKK and the PMF need to be compelled to agree to the strengthening of local institutions and the development of accountability mechanisms that ensure the rule of law. Resolving the conflict in Sinjar has the potential to reduce regional instability.