But it is not just the jihadist fighters they will have to contend with: IS has had more than a year to build up networks of bombs, berms and other obstacles in Sinjar.
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CNN senior global correspondent Nick Paton Walsh is with one of the three fronts of fighters who launched their liberation operation early Thursday morning against a backdrop of airstrikes.
“If you take out this major road, that is going to slow down the movement of (IS’s quick reaction force) elements, ” Capt. Chance McCraw, a military intelligence officer with the US coalition, told journalists Wednesday.
“We have made our plans, but not everything goes according to plan”, Maj.
In the days leading up to the operation, Kurdish forces made clear they meant to attack, but delayed the start of the offensive. “It is war, we have a determined enemy and there are always surprises from” the Islamic State.
Hours after it began, a large Kurdish offensive has retaken from ISIS a section of a key highway in northwestern Iraq that has served as a main supply route between ISIS forces in Syria and Iraq.
The peshmerga now control about 20 per cent of the town. Speaking to CNN last week, they vowed to take back Sinjar and exact revenge on ISIS.
In conjunction with the Sinjar operation, fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces group are battling IS across the border in the al-Hol area.
Sinjar carries strategic as well as symbolic importance.
Hawrami added that the forces managed to seize control of a strategic road that connects Sinjar with Raqqa, Daesh’s stronghold in Syria.
“There is no reliable estimate as to how many civilians live still inside of Sinjar”, Paton Walsh said. One fighter noted that a auto used by comrades had been destroyed. “We know their tactics, but there will be surprises”.
The Kurds are clearly determined to win Sinjar back. Nor have armored Humvees or armored bulldozers been provided by the Americans. Human-rights monitors accused the militants of systematic rape and carrying out other acts of sexual violence against Yezidi women and girls. Kurdish officials said there could be as many as 700 ISIL fighters in and around Sinjar, including foreign extremists.
An Isis push to advance towards Erbil had been repelled by the Peshmerga later previous year, but not before the jihadis nearly succeeded in breaking the city’s defences, exposing chronic command and control issues in Peshmerga forces, which until then had acted as self contained and disparate forces. The attempted genocide helped to spark USA airstrikes – and laid the groundwork for the long fight against the militants to come for the US and its allies.
Kurdish forces have controlled part of the town since an attack months ago.
The artery that passes through the town links the Iraqi city of Mosul – ISIS’ prized possession – with cities it holds in Syria.
The offensive is being personally overseen by Kurdistan regional president Massoud Barzani.
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Most Yazidis have since been displaced to camps in the Kurdistan region, but several thousand remain in Islamic State captivity.
