Sinjar clashes (2017)

fighter in 2016. YBŞ and YJÊ were organised and trained by the PKK, resulting in their conflict with the Kurdistan Democratic Party. When ISIL invaded the Sinjar Mountains in 2014 and began to massacre its Yezidi population, the PKK intervened with hundreds of fighters in order to save the locals from the Islamic State militants. Since then, the PKK set up two local Yezidi self-defense groups, namely the Sinjar Resistance Units and the Êzîdxan Women's Units. In late 2015, anti-ISIL forces finally succeeded in driving the Islamic State mostly from the Sinjar area, but the PKK fighters have since refused to leave and continue to train and equip the local PKK-affiliated militias. This has caused resentment among the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which regards Sinjar as part of Iraqi Kurdistan and sees the PKK as local political rival. The KDP believes that the presence of the PKK in Sinjar is illegal, and that their own Peshmerga forces are the only legitimate security force of the area. The Rojava Peshmerga are Syrian Kurdish fighters affiliated with the KNC, which in turn was set up by the KDP, and effectively operate as part of the KDP's regular armed forces. == History ==

On 2 March, the Rojava Peshmerga stated that they would relocate to the Syrian border near al-Hawl in order to stop smuggling operations, and several civilians also became casualties. == Reactions ==

Pro-PKK media claimed that the fighting was the result of a Turkish attempt to "turn the Southern Kurdistan territory into a battle field, starting from Shingal, and thus to invade this territory". In Rojava, the Kurdish youth group Ciwanen Soresger, which is close to the PKK-allied Democratic Union Party, attacked KNC offices in Al-Darbasiyah and Qamishli in protest of the Sinjar clashes. The Peshmerga, on the other side, blamed the pro-PKK fighters for the escalation. They argued that they wanted to avoid further clashes, but were also the legitimate security force of Sinjar and because of that, "Peshmerga forces are free to move whenever and wherever they want in Kurdistan's soil. We will not ask permission from anyone". Osman Baydemir, the spokesperson of the HDP, called the conflict between the pro-PKK and pro-KDP forces a "civil war" that "has to stop". The Ministry of Defence of Germany expressed concern that German weapons supplied to the Peshmerga were used in the clashes. "The government of the Kurdistan-Iraq region has committed itself, by final declaration, to use the delivered weapons only for the fight against the so-called Islamic State and in accordance with international humanitarian law", a defence ministry spokesman told Der Spiegel on 6 March. ==References==