Reclaiming Sinjar is one big step toward dividing the “caliphate” that ISIS claims it is establishing across the region.
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Sinjar lies on the main road between Islamic State’s capital in Syria, Raqqa, and its Iraqi stronghold Mosul.
But the road also carries badly needed supplies to the 1.5 million people who still live in Mosul, where prices are rising and activists report hunger. Air strikes have been very important to the operation getting to the point where it is now.
The autonomous Kurdish region’s security council said up to 7,500 of its peshmerga fighters would take part in the operation, which aims to retake Sinjar “and establish a significant buffer zone to protect the (town) and its inhabitants from incoming artillery”.
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 NY Times, which has a reporter in Sinjar, reports that Kurdish forces believe that the Islamic State has about 600 fighters in the city. The peshmerga are closing in on three sides of Sinjar, and airstrikes have already started against ISIS targets. The militants have been reinforcing their ranks in Sinjar recently in expectation of an assault, since “this operation has been building for a while”, Maj.
Retired Lt. Col. Rick Francona, a CNN military analyst, agreed that the fight in Sinjar would be slow going. “They’re going to have to slog through this house by house, street by street”. Thousands of Yazidi men were killed; the women were captured and used as sex slaves.
Kurdish officials estimate that a few 700 ISIS fighters could be entrenched in Sinjar and expect the militants to use improvised explosive devices and suicide auto bombs to try to halt the offensive.
That said, the official predicted it could take two to four days to secure the town and another week to finalize clearing operations.
Sinjar is a town located 120 kilometers west of Mosul with an Ezidi Kurdish majority.
The Yazidis are one of the world’s smallest and oldest monotheistic religious minorities.
Yazidis are ethnically Kurdish and their religion is influenced by Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism (an ancient Persian religion).
That they anticipate a quick victory in Sinjar could be a sign that ISIS is indeed close to ceding there – or else that they are overly optimistic of a signature victory in a grueling war that is often considered stalemated. Several thousand Yazidis have also joined the peshmerga.
The Kurds are Sunni Muslims, who have their own unique language and culture. They have staged attacks on IS fighters in the city’s suburbs over the past few months. “We want to get it back”, he told Reuters in a village on the northern outskirts of Sinjar town.
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The troops also managed to capture the cement factory, just east of Sinjar after fierce clashes with the IS militants who withdrew toward the town, leaving at least 11 bodies of their militants, the source added.
