PESHMERGAS

Thepeshmergas, or those who are willing to face death for their cause, were theIraqiKurdish guerrillas who first fought underMulla Mustafa Barzani. The term came to have a very patriotic connotation to it as opposed to the termjosh, or "little donkeys," Kurds who fight on the side of the Iraqi government. The Kurdish termpeshmergasis similar in meaning to the Arabic wordfedayeen, or fighters willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause. Originally,peshmergasreferred to Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas, but later the term came to be used sometimes for Kurdish guerrillas elsewhere too.

With the institutionalization of theKurdistan Regional Government(KRG) in northern Iraq after 1992, thepeshmergasincreasingly became the more regularized militia of the KRG. The term has come to be used synonymously with "defense," as in "the ministry of peshmerga affairs." Following the overthrow ofSaddam Hussein, theperhmergashave come to be officially called the Kurdistan Army and financially supported by the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. Occasionally, they even helped the government in the civil war that wracked Iraq. However, in the summer of 2008 thepeshmergasalso came perilously close to clashing with the Iraqi military in the dispute overKirkuk.