Ninewa Operational Command

The Ninewa Operational Command (NOC) is a interagency command of the Iraqi Armed Forces and Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. Up until 2014 it had its headquarters in Mosul.^[1] It holds responsibility for all anti-ISIS operations in Ninewa Governorate.^[2]

In January 2008, during the Ninewa Province Campaign, Iraq established the Ninewa Operational Command, to coordinate the various Iraqi Armed Forces and police operating in the region, as well as to liaise with U.S. and allied forces there. A Sunni Arab, Major General Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, previously commander of the 9th Armoured Division, was selected to command the NOC.^[3]

There had been long-running and significant disputes about the integration of Kurdish forces into the Iraqi Army. There were publicly revealed plans to establish two Iraqi Army divisions with Peshmerga, Kurdish Regional Guards, manpower. In autumn 2007 Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the establishment of two divisions with Peshmerga manpower. The 15th Division was to be established in the Kurdish Democratic Party areas of Erbil and Dohuk, and the 16th Division in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan area in Sulaymaniyah.^[4] Each was to have a strength of 14,700 (and transferring soldiers to the main Iraqi Army was planned to shield the remaining Peshmerga from painful personnel cuts.) Recruiting began in 2008 but neither division was active by 2009 (or mid-2014). The two divisions were not established and the Kurdish Peshmerga remained under their own commanders and in their own party-divided command structure.