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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 ISILs 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.
Describing the unfolding battle, Kurdish officials said that pesh merga forces had
taken the village of Gabara, west of Sinjar, and cut the highway between the city
and Syria.
Kurdish officials said there could be as many as 700 Islamic State fighters in and
around 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.
Continue reading the main story

Qamishli
Dohuk
Hasaka
Mosul

SINJAR MTN.
47
to Raqqa
Tal Afar
Approx. section of road
targeted by the operation
ISIS
CONTROL
ISIS currently
moves freely through
eastern Syria
IRAQ
Area of
Detail
Syria
Iraq
25 MILES
OPEN GRAPHIC

By The New York Times

Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE

Scrambling Down an Iraqi Mountain, Yazidi Families Search for MissingAUG. 10, 2014

Militants Siege on Mountain in Iraq Is Over, Pentagon SaysAUG. 13, 2014

Persecuted Yazidis Again Caught in Larger StruggleAUG. 11, 2014

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.
The pesh merga also plan to cut Highway 47, the major east-west road that runs
past Sinjar and connects Syria to Mosul, which the Islamic Statecaptured last year.
That would hamper the easy movement of fighters, fuel and supplies within the
Islamic States self-declared caliphate and force the militants to resort to less
efficient smuggling routes.
Still, the operation faces several important military and political challenges.
Even if the Sinjar campaign succeeds, ISIS still has a stranglehold on vital areas in
the region, including the city of Mosul Iraqs second-largest and large swaths of
eastern Syria and western Iraq. That includes most of the Sunni Arab heartland of
Anbar Province, where a government-led military push has advanced toward
Ramadi, but has not moved to retake it from ISIS yet.
Tactically, preparations for the Sinjar offensive have been underway for weeks, and
the Islamic State appears to have anticipated the assault and has been sending
reinforcements, General Waisi said.

With more than a year to dig in, the militants are also believed to have fortified their
positions and made plans for a counterstrike.
Throughout the conflict, 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.
Photo

Columns of pesh merga vehicles snaked their way across Mount Sinjar.CreditBryan
Denton for The New York Times
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 operation on Thursday was timed to coincide with forecasts of several days of
clear weather. That would enable the United States to provide more air power,
including A-10 attack jets based in Turkey.

Still, coping with the Islamic States improvised explosive devices will not be easy
for the pesh merga, who suffered losses of more than two dozen killed, virtually all
from I.E.D.s, in a recent operation near Kirkuk, according to allied officials.
Unlike the Iraqi Army forces surrounding Ramadi, the pesh merga have not been
provided with special breaching equipment, in which a cable festooned with
explosives is used to blast a path through a minefield.
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.
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.
Continue reading the main story
GRAPHIC
Why Cutting a Crucial ISIS Route May Not Stop Flow of Fighters and
Supplies
The ease of creating roads through the desert could limit the effectiveness of the
offensive to cut off a key ISIS supply route.

OPEN GRAPHIC

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.
After a year of occupation by the Islamic State, as well as American airstrikes and
constant skirmishes, Sinjar is a wreck. Kurdish officials do not plan to immediately
return civilians there or to quickly rebuild the town, which could remain vulnerable
to occasional artillery and mortar attacks from Islamic State militants to the south.
Still, there have been tensions in recent weeks between the pesh merga and the
main Syrian Kurdish militia, which is also operating on the Iraqi side of the border.
The friction concerns who will participate in the operation and, perhaps more
important, who will control the area if the Islamic State were to be pushed out.
Fifteen months after his pesh merga fighters retreated from Sinjar, President
Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, is overseeing
the operation from a command post in northwest Iraq. Before the Islamic State

swept across northern Iraq, the area was a political stronghold for Mr. Barzanis
Kurdistan Democratic Party, known by the abbreviation K.D.P.
But many Yazidis a tiny religious minority that was almost entirely based around
Mount Sinjar before the Islamic States advance blame the pesh merga for failing
to prevent Sinjars fall in the first place. That calamity led to the flight of hundreds
of thousands of Yazidis, the killing of many Yazidi men and the sexual enslavement
of thousands of women.
While a Yazidi regiment is to participate in part of the pesh merga offensive, other
Yazidi fighters have been operating independently or are sympathetic to the Syrian
Kurdish militia fighters.
Yazidi support has shifted away from the K.D.P., said Christine van den Toorn, who
directs the Institute for Regional and International Studies at the American
University of Iraq, Sulaimaniya. If Sinjar is to be retaken from ISIS, repopulated and
rebuilt, the K.D.P. cannot be the only liberator and ruler.
Even if Sinjar is retaken and the highway is cut, more military steps will need to be
taken if the American-led coalition wants to cut off supplies from Syria to Mosul, said
Michael Knights, a military expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
It will slow down the flow of Islamic State traffic to and from Mosul, Mr. Knights
said. That traffic will be forced to move on desert tracks and local roads to the
south of Sinjar, which will greatly reduce the flow.
And if winter rain floods the wadis, he said, those secondary routes could be
unavailable.