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The Kurds, Mount Sinjar, and Highway 47: A Quick Guide
I’ve spent the morning reading conflicting reports from Mount Sinjar (also known as Shingal) and Highway 47. A lot of the reporting about this, it seems to me, would be impossible to understand without some background knowledge — or a glossary, at least — so I thought I’d be helpful and try to make what’s happening there easier to follow. Forgive me if I’ve only made it more confusing, but at least that’s in a sense more accurate, because the situation is anything but clear.
First, some maps. Sinjar, the city, is shown by the red arrow:
The Sinjar Mountains are a 100-kilometer long range in northwestern Iraq. The highest segment is in Nineveh Governorate, and partly administered by Iraqi Kurdistan; the western and lower segment is in Syria, and controlled by the de facto autonomous Syrian Kurdistan, Rojava. The city of Sinjar — marked with the red arrow — is just south of the range.
In 2014, some 40,000-50,000 Yazidis fled to the mountain when the Islamic State raided the city of Sinjar, which fell to ISIS on August 3. The Yazidi refugees on the mountain were stranded without water, food, shade, or medical supplies; they relied on small supplies of water and food airdropped by American, British, Australian, and Iraqi forces. By August 10, the PKK, the YPG, and Kurdish Peshmerga forces had smuggled about 30,000 Yezidis off the mountain by opening a corridor into nearby Rojava, and from there to Iraqi Kurdistan. Thousands more remained stranded on the mountain. Reportedly, 300 Yazidi women were taken as slaves and more than 500 men, women, and children were killed, some beheaded or buried alive.
All those acronyms will either be familiar to you already or you’ll be lost by now, so let me see if I can help. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, is a left-wing Kurdish nationalist militant organization. It’s based in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan. Since 1984, it’s been waging a particularly brutal armed struggle against the Turkish state. Turkey, the US, and the EU consider it a terrorist organization. It is a non-arbitrary designation.
The People’s Protection Units, or YPG, are the main armed service of the Kurdish Supreme Committee — the government of Syrian Kurdistan, aka Rojava. They’re close enough to the PKK as to be a great embarrassment to the US and Europe, given that we support them, but consider the PKK to be a terrorist organization. (Furthermore, the KDP insists that the PKK and YPG are “foreign forces” that need to leave Iraqi Kurdistan, but doesn’t do much to make this so, given that they receive quite a bit of popular support from Iraqi Kurds.)
The Peshmerga are the military forces of the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq. The formal head of the peshmerga is the President of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, but the peshmerga itself is divided and controlled separately by the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (usually abbreviated as KDP or PDK, but basically, they’re the Barzani clan) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (the PUK and basically, the Talabani clan). Both pledge allegiance to the Kurdistan Regional Government (the KRG). Turkey likes and works with the KDP, but not the PUK: It believes the PUK is unwilling to reign in the PKK, because the PUK is too dependent upon Iran. This is basically true, although it’s not because the PUK has any special ideological affinity for Iran; it’s just that the PUK is too weak and isolated to be anything but dependent on Iran.
The Yazidis lost faith in the KDP in August, 2014, when spooked peshmerga abandoned them to their fate on Sinjar. They were saved only by last-minute intervention by the PKK and the YPG. The PKK established a permanent base on Sinjar. In December, Peshmerga from northern Iraq launched an offensive to take over the mountain, freeing hundreds.
This morning, The New York Times’ Michael J. Gordon reports that:
A ground offensive backed by American air power to retake the western Iraqi town of Sinjar from Islamic State fighters began early Thursday, according to a Kurdish official. The objective was to cut a major jihadist supply line between Syria and the Iraqi city of Mosul.
A statement from the security council of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq said that up to 7,500 Kurdish pesh merga fighters were moving on “three fronts to cordon off Sinjar City, take control of ISIL’s strategic supply routes, and establish a significant buffer zone to protect the city and its inhabitants from incoming artillery.” ISIL is an acronym for the Islamic State.
“Coalition warplanes will provide close air support to pesh merga forces throughout the operation,” the statement said.
Kurdish officials said there could be as many as 700 ISIS fighters in and round Sinjar, including foreign fighters.
As the campaign got underway, long columns of pesh merga vehicles, including pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and a small number of armored vehicles snaked their way across Mount Sinjar as the airstrikes boomed in the distance.
Some of the fighters walked alongside the vehicles, headed for the front.
The pesh merga, to be joined by Yazidi forces, were prepared to sweep down from Mount Sinjar and attack fighters for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, on multiple fronts.
“We have made our plans, but not everything goes according to plan,” Maj. Gen. Aziz Waisi, the commander of the Zeravani Force, which is leading one of the prongs of the Kurdish offensive, said earlier. “It is war, we have a determined enemy, and there are always surprises from ISIS.”
The operation, which comes as the American-led coalition is trying to regain the initiative in the struggle with the Islamic State, holds out the possibility of progress along a new front in northern Iraq against the militants.
The aim is to add pressure on Islamic State fighters who are being pressed militarily in northeast Syria; are partly encircled in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province in Iraq; and were recently evicted from Baiji in northern Iraq.
Here’s the Times’ graphic depiction of the operation, via the IHS Conflict Monitor:
So the goal, basically, is to take out Highway 47, and cut off one of ISIS’s most active supply lines. It passes by Sinjar and indirectly links ISIS’s two biggest strongholds, Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in northern Iraq. ISIS uses it as a route for goods, weapons and fighters. Mosul is ISIS’ prized possession, so cutting off the artery linking Iraq with the cities ISIS holds in Syria, and reclaiming Sinjar, would obviously be a huge step toward dividing the so-called caliphate — and thus this is a battle of huge psychological importance. Coalition-backed Kurdish fighters on both sides of the border are now, apparently, fighting to retake parts of that corridor.
According to AP sources,
“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 U.S. coalition, told journalists Wednesday. “If they’re trying to move from Raqqa over to Mosul, they’re going to have to take these back roads and go through the desert, and it’s going take hours, maybe days longer to get across.”
Warplanes in the U.S.-led coalition have been striking around Sinjar ahead of the offensive and strikes grew more intense at dawn Thursday as bombs pounded targets outside the town. But Sinjar, located at the foot of Sinjar Mountain about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the Syrian border, is not an easy target. One attempt by the Kurds to retake it stalled in December. 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. Michael Filanowski, operations officer for the U.S.-led coalition, said Wednesday, though he could not give specifics on the size of the IS forces there.
Kurdish forces and the U.S. military said the number of Islamic State fighters in the town had increased to nearly 600 after reinforcements arrived in the run-up to the offensive, which has been expected for weeks but delayed by weather and friction between various Kurdish and Yazidi forces in Sinjar.
The offensive is being personally overseen by Kurdistan regional president Massoud Barzani, who is also head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which other groups in the area accuse of seeking to monopolise power.
So: These “Kurdish factions” include the PKK, which is mostly based in Turkey; the Syria-based People’s Protection Units (YPG); and Yazidi-led forces who call themselves the Sinjar Resistance. Iraqi Kurdish fighters have held positions further outside the town. The Barzani-dominated KDP controls all of Iraq’s borders with Turkey. (In a sense, since 1992, the Turkey-Iraq border has really been a Turkey-KDP border.) The KDP’s main political rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), controls a large chunk of the Kurdish-controlled region’s frontier with Iran.
“The offensive had been expected for weeks,” according to Reuters,
but was delayed by weather and conflict among the Kurdish and Yazidi forces in Sinjar. In principle, the offensive is being overseen personally by KRG regional president Massoud Barzani, who is also head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Other groups in the area accuse him (credibly) of seeking to monopolise power.
Rudaw is a Kurdish media network based in Erbil and run by Nechirvan Barzani — the prime minister of the KRG, the president’s nephew and son-in-law, and one of Ankara’s biggest cheerleaders, although Rudaw is often banned in Turkey. Here’s what they’re reporting today:
12:51pm – Kurdish Yezidis at a displacement camp in Zakho had praise for the Peshmerga’s Thursday assault on Shingal.
“It has been one year since we became refugees and fled our homes. ISIS abducted our women and children. We want them to be rescued and Shingal to be liberated,” a Yezidi from Shingal told Rudaw.
Another refugee said: “Today is our Eid. We thank God, the Peshmerga fighters and the president.”
12:33pm – Sheikh Alo, commander of Peshmerga forces in Dohuk, tells Rudaw that the Shingal offensive has been aided by the most effective use of coalition airstrikes in support and cooperate with Kurdish forces.
12:14pm – Arina Moradi, Rudaw correspondent, reports that ISIS propaganda has increased on its radio station broadcasting from inside the city of Mosul. One ISIS radio message said: “Thank God our families are back in Tal Afar and the situation is secure.”
Earlier news from Rudaw contradict the ISIS message, reporting the advance of Peshmerga and the capture of at least three villages on the outskirts of Shingal.
11:45 – Ahmed Shawqi, a Kurdish military expert, tells Rudaw that Shingal is extremely strategic and the Peshmerga will achieve victory with their precise tactics. He explained that Shingal is the critical link between the ISIS stronghold cities of Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul.
11:40am – Rudaw’s Arina Moradi reports seeing hundreds of Peshmerga fighters lining roads to the Shingal battlefield armed with AK47s waiting to join the Kurdish forces already in the fight.
11:30am – Iraqi media war office releases statement on Shingal operation, reporting that Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have managed to control five villages and they are on the advance.
11:27 – Nichirvan Hussein, Rudaw correspondent near Shingal, says said at least four ISIS car bombs have been destroyed, one by US coalition airstrikes and three by Peshmerga forces.11:20am – Intense fighting in the western parts of Shingal town where Rudaw correspondent Obed Rashavayi reports that Peshmerga engineer and de-mining squads are working ahead of the Peshmerga advance in order to save lives from ISIS explosives.
Throughout the conflict, according to The Times,
the Islamic State has used improvised explosive devices to create dense minefields. The aim is to slow down attacking forces and channel them into “kill zones” so they can be targeted with sniper fire, mortars or machine-gun fire. Many of the houses in Sinjar are believed to be rigged with explosives.
Using suicide car bombs, the militants are also poised to mount counterattacks from Tal Afar to the east, from the towns of Blij and Baaj to the south and from Syria to the west.
“They try to identify a weak point in the defense and then send everything possible to that single point,” General Waisi said. “It starts with suicide bombers and then heavy machine guns. We know their tactics, but there will be surprises.” …
The pesh merga have received 40 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs, from the United States, 15 of which have special rollers attached to clear mines, although Kurdish officials say the vehicles are not nearly enough given the 600-mile front the Kurds share with the Islamic State. Nor have armored Humvees or armored bulldozers been provided by the Americans.
American officials say that more MRAPs and armored Humvees will be provided if the pesh merga follow through with plans to establish two new brigades that will integrate fighters from the Kurds’ two dominant political parties: the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. But action to establish those brigades has yet to be taken, and the process of equipping and training them would take several months.
I note this because it’s often said that we don’t arm the Kurds (see: Carly Fiorina, Republican debate.) In fact, we do. But it seems we’re trying to make the provision of the weapons conditional on the KDP and PUK working together, and ensuring that they’re sufficiently trained and committed to working within these brigade structures that the weapons don’t end up in ISIS’ hands. This may not be stupid.
The pesh merga have received hundreds of Milan antitank missiles from Germany and 1,000 AT4 antitank weapons from the United States, officials say. Kurds say the Milan missiles have proved to be the most useful in defending against suicide vehicle attacks, but pesh merga commanders say they need more of them.
The American-led coalition has also provided the pesh merga with a large number of small arms, including machine guns, rifles, mortar tubes and mortar rounds. As the Sinjar offensive has approached, Kurdish officials say, the coalition has been rushing in new supplies of ammunition, as well.
An Italian colonel has been leading a multinational effort to train the Kurdish forces at three bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. American, Canadian and other foreign Special Operations forces have also been advising the pesh merga at their defensive positions in the Kurdish region, although officials said they would not be accompanying the Kurdish forces to Sinjar.
According to the basically pro-Barzani Bas news, which belongs to President Barzani’s son, the PKK is annoying and impeding the Kurdish Peshmerga. His saying this would not be surprising, because the groups have always been highly wary of each other:
A source … said that the ministry will not allow the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) to take part in the operation as they have links to the PKK and are “disorganised armed groups”.
Yazidi Peshmerga Commander Qasim Shasho told BasNews, “The Peshmerga would have liberated Sinjar long ago if the PKK hadn’t intervened in the process.”
BasNews has previously quoted Peshmerga commanders who claim PKK military movements in the area have caused the delay in the launch of a Sinjar operation because Islamic State (IS) militants rigged a vast area with mines and explosive devices after PKK incursions.
Shasho also accused PKK media of overstating their role in Sinjar “while they are not able to liberate an inch without Peshmerga forces.”
The PKK’s battlefield is not in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and they must return and focus on their own area, mayor of Sinjar Mahma Khali said.
Bas news is now reporting on Twitter that the Peshmerga have regained Highway 47:
#BREAKING: #Peshmerga Controls the International Main road between Mosul and Raqqa known as highway 47 #FreeSinjar
Other sources of unknown trustworthiness are confirming:
Conflict News @Conflicts Reports from the front line that #ISIS defensive positions have collapses in #Sinjar, Kurds and Ezidis advancing rapidly
This story is — obviously — ongoing. And very significant. So I hope those tweets are accurate. (Who knows: It’s a war).
I hope this guide helps you a bit to make sense of it.
Upper-right photo credit: Smoke has been rising from the town of Sinjar from US-led coalition air strikes and Kurdish shelling against IS positions, Reuters
Published in Foreign Policy, General
Well, I have a hard time expressing what I think about this without getting all worked up. The next time somebody wants an intervention in the Middle East, let it be done with ICBMs.
Americans die abroad and the government betrays them. Americans die at home, and the government helps the bad guys.
America created ISIS. Europe is creating the flow. Russia is closer to Syria than Germany is. They have an interest in fighting this. The opportunity for Putin to give Obama a wedgie is an incidental joy for them.
Let the ham-fisted, weak-hearted, platitude-spewing Americans step out of the way, and let men fight this out. We just cause trouble, because we don’t have the stomach to do what’s required — we won’t even let victories stand.
Just let it go. It will be better without the sickly shadow we’ve become. We’re only fooling ourselves.
I think that’s true, because I can’t imagine you mean what you wrote below literally. I’d like to know what you think, though, so I’ll ask the dumb questions.
Since these are designed for nuclear delivery, I think the only way to understand this comment is that you think dropping a nuclear weapon on the Middle East would be a better course of action — morally and strategically — than any other we could pursue save complete non-intervention. Do you really mean that? Or do you mean, “I’m furious at our failures and incompetence?” Because I’ll go with the latter, but not the former.
Of course Americans die — all of us — in the end. Do you mean Americans are killed and the government helps the people who killed them? If so, yes, this has happened, but I don’t think it’s our deliberate policy. I don’t think, in other words, that my government is trying to kill me. It’s proved a little more indifferent to whether I live or die than I expected it to be, granted, but I don’t ask my government to care about that: That’s why I have a family.
No, we emphatically did not. We created conditions that allowed ISIS to grow, but we certainly didn’t create ISIS. That’s nonsense. We also helped to create the conditions that brought the Khmer Rouge to power. That doesn’t mean we created the Khmer Rouge.
Not sure what you mean, but if you mean that Europe has made itself attractive to refugees, yes, it has. But what does this have to do with anything?
It’s 5,421 km from Russia to Syria and 3,710.6 km from Germany to Syria. Or do you mean culturally?
The Russians? Sure.
Agree.
Agree. Get the ham-fisted, weak-hearted, platitude-spewing Americans out of the way — but that’s not all Americans. Please.
This is a mirror image of leftist-guilt. We are not a bad nation. A pathologically guilty nation that thinks it’s good for nothing and therefore does nothing is … well, it’s postwar Germany. I like postwar Germany, but the world doesn’t need two.
We’re much better off figuring out how we screwed up, un-screwing it, and getting on with things when it makes sense to do so. The world still needs a benevolent superpower.
If you’re arguing that the Middle East will be better without the United States’ involvement, I’d say the recent record suggests otherwise.
If you’re saying that the Middle East makes you weep with despair and frustration, though, and that you feel anger sufficient to destroy the world about all of our blunders there — and shame sufficient to vomit about friends abandoned to their fate — I’m with you.
No problem, and thank you for the thoughtful response. I’ll take these one at a time, which will be stilted and lengthy, but won’t give me conniptions about quoting and comment length. So please pardon the multiple responses to come.
Hmmm. Even trivially nested comments are difficult. Well, on we go.
We held off the Soviets with a credible threat of nuclear annihilation. That deterrent would not fail against these folks. it’s not that it no longer works — it is no longer present. Our nuclear arsenal is worse than useless because it emboldens us to swagger down a street where everybody knows we won’t fight.
If the United States were well-known to nuke the center of gravity of a nation *or other force* causing us undue trouble, there would be a whole lot less trouble. This is the same reason I favor shooting people at the borders. Cross-border traffic will dry up, and the rapacious “coyote” human traffickers will be out of business. As I said a while ago, all it takes is a pistol and the will to use it.
The way I see it, nukes are our last opportunity to draw a line that will matter.
…contd
The thing about “other force” is that neither Afghanistan, nor Somalia, nor Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya or any other place will harbor something like ISIS, the Taliban, Ansar-al-kebab, Ba’al-Shabab or eny of the rest of it.
You clean your house or we’ll do it for you.
Naturally, I am talking about those killed in combat and so forth. God forbid the government takes an active concern for my welfare — I’ll be dead in a week.
I mean those who died fighting in Iraq only to see the project sabotaged, as well as folks like those in Benghazi. And now, after Obama pooped on the sacrifice of the former and left the latter to die, all for his political goals, in a dishonorable abrogation of his responsibilities, we should line up to do it again? “JayVee. No boots on ground.” Why would anybody expect the slightest benefit to come from this man’s deployment of troops? Bloodbath, quagmire, debacle… all too kind.
As an unintended but well-predicted linear consequence of abandoning Iraq — close enough. We didn’t recruit, train, equip, them etc — no, that was the Iraqi army, which we abandoned, and the wonder twins we sent in to battle ISIS. Or whomever. We should be so lucky to have directly created ISIS. But our miserable performance over there is the one big sine qua non for ISIS’ existence.
No Obama, no ISIS. That’s a fact.
You won’t wonder in twenty years. It will be obvious once it’s too late.
An update: Hard to tell in all the propaganda, but it’s pretty clear Sinjar has been freed — for now — from ISIS. The PDK are already furious that the PKK has their flag up:
And furiously denouncing the PUK as Iranian and/or American tools.
This made me smile:
Agree that it’s fantastic news, if they manage to hold it. I hope he decides soon which Kurds we should all support, though.
I mean to Ossetia, which is in Russia. It’s less than 400 miles, as the crow flies, while Germany is over 1,000. For something over 1200 road miles, they could literally walk from Damascus to Sochi, Russia.
Damascus to Sochi, walking, 1800 km.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Damascus,+Syria/Sochi,+Krasnodar+Krai,+Russia/@38.4810476,34.5935654,6z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x1518e6dc413cc6a7:0x6b9f66ebd1e394f2!2m2!1d36.2765279!2d33.5138073!1m5!1m1!1s0x40f5d4e111834423:0x6e6f61866a5d5df8!2m2!1d39.7341543!2d43.6028079!3e2
Damascus to Munich, walking, 3300 km.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Syria/Germany/@42.649972,15.7348125,5z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x1518e6dc413cc6a7:0x877546f4882af620!2m2!1d38.996815!2d34.802075!1m5!1m1!1s0x479a721ec2b1be6b:0x75e85d6b8e91e55b!2m2!1d10.451526!2d51.165691!3e2
If you go to Europe first and turn right, Russia is farther. Also, if you Google for distance and get centroid distances, that might do it.
You know why this human wave isn’t marching on Russia? They’ll get a boot in the face.
It’s a critical mass. Even America at our wounded, most indignant, furious, verge-of-nuking-somebody height of the will to use military power abroad — bipartisan blank check and all — winds up abandoning all the gains made and like incomplete antibiotics, just breeds a stronger enemy.
I agree with you completely, but your solution is just belling the cat. Sorry, but that’s a platitude. Until w are willing to face the domestic enemy, we cannot effectively fight any foreign enemies. We are losing the war at home — all wars.
good stuff, thanks.
Frog. Scorpion. Middle East.
One of the best and non-firebrand breakdowns I’ve seen of the rival factions in the war. Thanks, Claire. When I first began following it all in depth a year ago, I had no sense of just how contentious the fragile anti-ISIS coalition was on the ground, especially with the Kurds. It was jarring to realize how much they hate each other.
I have Kurdish, Yezidi, and Assyrian friends, and I’ve learned to watch what I say around each of them. Say something complimentary about the Peshmerga and you’ll get heat from a Yezidi. And whatever you do, don’t refer to Shingali Yezidis as Kurds. Yikes. They take great offense. And to be fair, the KDP treatment of the Sinjar Defense Forces has been abysmal; arresting Haider Sesho (the SDF commander), insisting the Yezidis not use the Yezidi flag, and now insisting it was an all-Peshmerga operation to retake Sinjar. I can see why there’s little love between the Yezidis and Barzani.
“Arm the Kurds,” as I have been guilty of saying in the past is not so simple as it seems to the barely educated Republican candidates. There’s a cornucopia of factions who hate each other as much as ISIS and sometimes more so. I would still reckon though that the immediate benefits of arming the KDP and YPG directly outweigh the potential costs; being reasonably certain that unlike certain other vetted moderates, neither faction will turn these weapons on us.
I remember that, and I remember telling you, but it sounds as if you found out direct from the source — which is much better than my trying to explain it. Good for you for doing that. I’m surprised more people don’t, given how easy it is to talk to people around the globe now.
So, who is the domestic enemy? Leftists?