The Peshmerga and the Kurdish Regional Government are concerned about ISIS’s dramatic rise — and fear its tactics and ideology — but they also see opportunity in the instability. It has offered a unique opportunity for the Kurdistan Regional Government to consolidate its control over large swaths of land labeled by the Iraqi Constitution as “disputed territories” — land that Kurds have eyed for part of their future independent state.

Iraq’s 2005 constitution grants the KRG jurisdiction over the three northeastern provinces of Erbil, Sulaimaniya, and Dohuk. But Kurds also want to lay claim to four other provinces, Nineveh, Kirkuk, Salahaddin, and Diyala, which the government in Baghdad disputes. Most parts of the disputed territories are predominantly Kurdish while others are either dominated by Christians or have a mosaic of Kurds, Turkmens, Arabs, and Christians. But the territorial aspirations go beyond ethnic alignments: The stakes are especially high because those areas hold large reserves of natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas.

When thousands of Iraqi Army and police troops abandoned their posts in the face of ISIS’s oncoming, it paved the way for the KRG to swiftly expand and solidify its control over those areas.