Kurdish Fighters Retake Parts of Islamic State Held Town of Sinjar

 

 Kurdish fighters watch in the early morning as they fight against the Islamic State group in Sinjar, Iraq, Friday, Nov. 13, 2015.

Kurdish fighters backed by U.S. airstrikes say they have entered and retaken parts of the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, as they continue a large-scale offensive to wrest the strategic city from Islamic State militants.
Peshmerga forces entered the city "from all directions to clear the area of remaining" Islamic State fighters, according to a Twitter post early Friday by the Kurdistan Region Security Council. The Kurdish fighters are now in control of a silo, cement factory, hospital and several public buildings in Sinjar, the group said, noting that IS is "defeated and on the run."
President Masoud Barzani, who heads the Iraqi Kurdish regional government, will hold a press conference later Friday "to announce the success of Operation," the Twitter feed said.
The U.S.-backed coalition had not yet provided an update on the operation that would confirm its success, but witnesses quoted by the Associated Press said Peshmerga fighters were in control of the center of Sinjar.

Key supply route seized
On Thursday, the first day of the offensive, Kurdish officials said they took control of villages on either side of Sinjar and had taken over a key road on a major supply route between Islamic State-held Mosul to the east and the group's self-proclaimed capital to the west in Raqqa, Syria.
The route, known as Highway 47, is used by Islamic State to transport weapons, fighters, illicit oil and other commodities that fund the militant group's operations, according to the U.S. Central Command. It says the U.S.-led coalition intends to increase pressure on Islamic State fighters and isolate their components from each other.
U.S. Defense Department spokesman Peter Cook described the operation Thursday as a collaborative effort between U.S. advisers and Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces.  He said it is a specific effort to target the supply route and, if successful, will have a "significant" impact on IS operations in that part of northern Iraq.
"This is strategically an important area in Iraq in terms of taking the fight to ISIL," Cook said.
Warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition bombed the area Thursday after carrying out daily airstrikes for more than a week.

But so far, Islamic State is showing no signs of any sort of retreat.
"They’re trying to hold [Sinjar],” a U.S. military official told VOA on the condition of anonymity. "They’re fighting to the death. They know how important Sinjar is.”
The Islamic State group seized Sinjar in August 2014 as it terrorized the Yazidi minorities living there and besieged thousands of them in the mountains.  It was that offensive that drew the first of more than 5,000 coalition airstrikes in Iraq.

 

IS outnumbered
Some 7,500 fighters are taking part in the effort.  In addition to retaking Sinjar, they want to establish a buffer zone in the area to protect civilians.
U.S. and Kurdish officials estimate there were 500 to 600 Islamic State fighters in and around Sinjar at the start of the Peshmerga operation, including foreign fighters recently sent in as reinforcements.
U.S. officials say 60-70 IS fighters have been killed in airstrikes so far. The Kurdistan Regional Security Council estimated that 100 Islamic State fighters were killed during the first day of the offensive.
That the Islamic State is using just a few hundred fighters to fend off thousands of Peshmerga soldiers comes as no surprise to those who have studied the group’s tactics.
"They do not expect to hold Sinjar city and will relinquish it after a tough fight,” said Michael Knights, Lafer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Knights points to numerous examples over the past year in which Islamic State staged a preemptive withdrawal from key cities and towns, especially in Iraq.  And he notes the group seems to routinely put more of an emphasis on holding rural or unpopulated areas on the outskirts.
"Sinjar city is a political prize for the liberator, but it doesn't matter much in terms of cutting the routes between Mosul and Raqqa,” he said. "To cut the Caliphate in half you need to control the desert south of Sinjar between Sinjar and Baaj.”
A U.S. official tells VOA the hope is Peshmerga forces, backed by U.S. and coalition air power, will be able to continue the southward push with the goal of cutting off Islamic State in Syria from its key holdings in Iraq.

Unlikely to stop IS
Former military officials doubt the ability of this latest push by Kurdish forces to put a dent in Islamic State’s operations.
"I think in the short term, this will be tactically spectacular, but strategically irrelevant,” said former U.S. Navy commander Christopher Harmer, now a senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.
Harmer warns Islamic State is simply “retrenching” after spreading its forces too thin by expanding into what had traditionally been Yazidi or Kurdish territory.
"When they lose peripheral territory, like Sinjar, or Kobani, or even Hasakah, that is important but does not reduce the ability of ISIS to function as a significant destabilizing force in Syria or Iraq," Harmer said.