Can the Kurds Hold Out Against ISIS?

[Sally]

Interesting piece about the Kurds.

Can the Kurds Hold Out Against ISIS?

August 5, 2014, 4:10 pm ET by Priyanka Boghani
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Kurdish forces faced their first major defeat in Iraq over the weekend, when militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seized the towns of Sinjar, Zumar and Wana. The United Nations, citing local reports, estimated as many as 200,000 civilians fled Sinjar alone.

Until this weekend, Kurdish armed forces, known as the peshmerga, were viewed as a bulwark against ISIS’ advance. When ISIS captured Mosul in June, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled the city and many headed toward Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.

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Can the Kurds Hold Out Against ISIS? | Losing Iraq | FRONTLINE | PBS

 

[waltky]

Mosul dam partially retaken by Kurds...

Kurdish forces retake parts of Iraq's largest dam
Aug 17,`14 -- Aided by U.S. and Iraqi airstrikes, Kurdish forces Sunday wrested back part of Iraq's largest dam from Islamic militants who had captured it less than two weeks ago, security officials said.

The U.S. began targeting fighters from the Islamic State with airstrikes Aug. 8, allowing Kurdish forces to fend off an advance on their regional capital of Irbil and to help tens of thousands of members of religious minorities escape the extremists' onslaught. Recapturing the entire Mosul Dam and the territory surrounding its reservoir would be a significant victory against the Islamic State group, which has seized swaths of northern and western Iraq and northeastern Syria. The dam on the Tigris supplies electricity and water to a large part of the country. The Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, launched the operation early Sunday to retake the Mosul Dam, said Gen. Tawfik Desty, a Kurdish commander, after a day of U.S. and Iraqi airstrikes pushed back Islamic State fighters.

A spokesman for the peshmerga said the clashes were moving eastward. "The west is in control of peshmerga. But there are some battles taking place in the (east) right now," said Halgurd Hekmat, peshmerga spokesman. Another commander confirmed the information, saying that by Sunday evening, peshmerga forces had crossed the Tigris to the broad plains held by the Islamic State. The U.S. military conducted 14 airstrikes Sunday, damaging or destroying 10 armed vehicles, seven Humvees, two armored personnel carriers and one checkpoint, according to a statement by the Central Command. On Saturday, it carried out nine airstrikes near the dam, destroying four armored personnel carriers, seven armed vehicles, two Humvees and another armored vehicle, the command said.

Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, stand guard near Mosul Dam at the town of Chamibarakat outside Mosul, Iraq, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2014. Kurdish forces took over parts of the largest dam in Iraq on Sunday less than two weeks after it was captured by the Islamic State extremist group, Kurdish security officials said, as U.S. and Iraqi planes aided their advance by bombing militant targets near the facility.

The peshmerga, the fighting force of the largely autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, surrounded the Islamic State-held city of Tel Kayf after taking the nearby town of Tel Kasouf, said the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations. The advance of Kurdish forces was hindered by roadside bombs and buildings rigged with explosives, planted by retreating Islamic State fighters, he said. "They have reached inside the dam. There is no fighting, just the (roadside) bombs, and the abandoned buildings are all rigged with explosives," he said. "We will continue to advance and advance until we are given further instruction." The commander said the evening advance occurred after the Iraqi government delivered 16 military Humvees, at least one with a mechanized bomb-disposal unit that was dismantling the roadside explosives.

Even as they advanced around the dam in northern Iraq, the commander said fighting forces were so poorly armed that he did not believe they could hold onto captured territory without a fast infusion of weapons - or continued U.S. airstrikes. "We don't have the right weapons," he said. Troubled relations between the Kurds and the central government in Baghdad have hindered the supply of arms to the force, leaving them overstretched and outgunned as the Islamic State group advanced. Earlier this month, the militants swooped into Kurdish-held territory, seizing a border crossing and the Mosul dam. They also took control of villages around a northern mountain chain dominated by the Yazidis - adherents of an ancient faith seen as heretical by the militants. The militants also took over villages near Irbil inhabited by Christians, and two Kurdish towns, Makhmour and Gweir.

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Christians and Yazidis in Iraq Subjected to ‘Savage Rapes,' Sexual Slavery
August 15, 2014 – As the U.N. scrambles to help tens of thousands of religious minority Iraqis displaced by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL), experts are warning that jihadists may have forced 1,500 Christians and Yazidis into sexual slavery.

“Atrocious accounts on the abduction and detention of Yazidi, Christian, as well as Turkomen and Shabak women, girls and boys, and reports of savage rapes, are reaching us in an alarming manner,” two U.N. experts said in a statement released in Baghdad. “We condemn, in the strongest terms, the explicit targeting of women and children and the barbaric acts [ISIS] has perpetrated on minorities in areas under its control,” said U.N. special representative for Iraq Nickolay Mladenov and special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Zainab Bangura. “We remind all armed groups that acts of sexual violence are grave human rights violations that can be considered as war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Mladenov urged regional governments and the international community to help secure the release of the women and girls captured by the jihadists. Shortly after President Obama announced Thursday that U.S. military airstrikes and humanitarian airdrops had enabled large numbers of Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar to reach safety, a State Department spokeswoman said the potential for genocide in that specific location had lessened, but that it remained a concern in the broader region. “Broadly speaking, there is still a potential here for genocide when you have a terrorist group that has said they want to find people just because of their religion and kill them, I think they’ve been pretty clear about what they want to do here,” said Marie Harf.

In his announcement, Obama stated that “we broke the ISIL siege of Mount Sinjar” but acknowledged that “the situation remains dire for Iraqis subjected to ISIL’s terror throughout the country.” Last January the al-Qaeda-inspired jihadist group, which also controls territory in Syria, captured the city of Fallujah in Anbar province. Since early June it made significant gains north and west of Baghdad, capturing cities and towns including those in the historical heartland of Iraq’s Christian and Yazidi communities, the Ninevah plains near the Kurdish autonomous region. Non-Muslims were told to convert to Islam or face death. Harf said Thursday 1.4 million Iraqis had been internally displaced by the violence since January. She said the U.S. was working with the U.N. “to help those people, to get them food, water, shelter, urgent medical care. Obviously, we want them to be safe, and so the goal at the end of the day may be for some of them to return to their homes, but these places have to be safe. And in the meantime, we want to help them get what they need, the care they need.” The humanitarian situation across northern Iraq is so dire that the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has begun transporting Yazidis to a refugee camp inside war-torn Syria.

Apart from tens of thousands of Yazidis sheltering in the Kurdish region, UNHCR said Thursday an estimated 15,000 were now seeking refuge in Syria, where they were being assisted by U.N. and non-governmental agencies. “The refugees arrive exhausted and deeply traumatized, their feet covered in blisters, having spent days on Mt. Sinjar in searing temperatures without food, water or shelter after fleeing for their lives, then walking many hours – in some cases days – to find safety,” it said. “They are extremely weak, thirsty, and hungry, especially the women and children, and many have untreated wounds.” UNHCR said many children were with relatives, their own parents having been “killed, kidnapped or disappeared in the chaos.” “Many refugees report they had to leave behind their elderly whom they could not carry, anxious to know if they were still alive,” it said. “Others who made it safely to the camp gave reports of young girls and women forced to stay behind and being sold. Families say that their young men were killed.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article...is-iraq-subjected-savage-rapes-sexual-slavery

 

[Mr. H.]

A hold-out by the Kurds? No whey, man.