Jash (term)

The National Defense Battalions, the Village Guards, and the Muslim Peshmerga are considered "jash" by some Kurds.

The Light regiments were first established in the 1940s, during the 1943 Barzani revolt in northern Iraq, then it flourished and start to take an important role in the 1960s during the First Iraqi–Kurdish War, when General Khaleel Jassim was in the command of these regiments and associated them with many Iraqi Army operations against the Kurd rebels, specially in Amadiya[5] in 1965 and Rawandiz 1966.

[6] During the al-Anfal campaign, the military campaign of genocide and looting commanded by Ali Hassan al-Majid, al-Majid's orders informed jash units that taking cattle, sheep, goats, money, weapons and even Kurdish women was legal.

[8] In the latter half of the 20th century, Kurds who became collaborators with the Iraqi government were referred to as jash.

[4] The number of jash increased to "as many as 150,000 by 1986" as a method of avoiding military participation in the Iran–Iraq War.