The peshmergas, or those who are willing to face death for their cause, were the Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas who first fought under Mulla Mustafa Barzani. The term came to have a very patriotic connotation to it as opposed to the term josh, or "little donkeys," Kurds who fight on the side of the Iraqi government. The Kurdish term peshmergas is similar in meaning to the Arabic word fedayeen, or fighters willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause. Originally, peshmergas referred to Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas, but later the term came to be used sometimes for Kurdish guerrillas elsewhere too.
With the institutionalization of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq after 1992, the peshmergas increasingly 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 of Saddam Hussein, the perhmergas have 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 the peshmergas also came perilously close to clashing with the Iraqi military in the dispute over Kirkuk.
Historical Dictionary of the Kurds. Michael M. Gunter.