The wreckage of a car belonging to Islamic State militants lies along a road after it was targeted by a U.S. air strike at the entrance to the Mosul Dam, northern Iraq August 21, 2014. REUTERS/YOUSSEF BOUDLAL
Luke Mogelson, New Yorker: The Front Lines
On the border of ISIS territory, Iraqi civilians fight for their survival.
Two months ago, Masoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdish regional government, held a press conference on a hill overlooking Sinjar, a town in the northwestern corner of Iraq. The day before, following an intense bombardment by American warplanes, Kurdish forces had taken control of Sinjar for the first time since they were routed from it by the Islamic State, or ISIS, in August of 2014. As smoke plumes and helicopters ascended behind him, Barzani, standing at a podium of sandbags, declared the town “liberated.”
After a retinue of bodyguards spirited the President away in a sport-utility vehicle, the foreign correspondents and local journalists headed down the hill to view the damage. On the outskirts of Sinjar the road became impassable: damaged, clogged with military trucks, and littered with debris. My interpreter and I parked and continued on foot. The town, once home to a hundred thousand people, was devastated. ISIS had killed or displaced nearly all the inhabitants, most of whom belonged to Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority. It had burned down their houses, looted their shops, and blown up their shrines. Whatever remained the American air strikes had destroyed.
WNU Editor: Everyone wants to storm and recapture Mosul .... they while it appears that many are motivated to end this war, they do not understand why are they still holed-up in static positions looking at the enemy from afar.
