A major battle to retake the strategic town of Sinjar started overnight, with approximately 7,000 Kurdish troops surrounding the town and cutting the main road between Mosul and the “Islamic State” capital of Raqqah in Syria. US warplanes have been providing air support. People may recall that in 2014, the Islamic State attacked and occupied Sinjar, which was largely populated by the Yezidi Kurdish minority, although Muslim Kurds and Arabs also lived in the city. The Yezidis are not Muslim and are not “people of the book”, and according to the “Caliph” Ibrahim al-Baghdadi’s theology, they are to be killed or enslaved if captured in battle, or forcibly converted if they are discovered living among the believers. Accordingly, all Yezidi men who were captured were killed, and several thousand women and girls were sold into slavery. Most of the town’s population escaped to Sinjar mountain and the resulting humanitarian catastrophe attracted media attention in the US and Europe. President Obama ordered an airlift of supplies to the surrounded refugees and then ordered airstrikes in response to the simultaneous Islamic State advance toward Iraqi Kurdistan. This event also prompted Germany to supply advanced anti-tank weaponry directly to the Kurds, and, along with the dramatic defense of Kobane, caused a re-set of US military policy, which had previously avoided direct training or support for Kurdish forces.
There are long-standing political differences between the different Kurdish parties, which appear to have been set aside for the time being in order to press this offensive against the Islamic State. The main actors are the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Iraqi Kurdistan, joined by about 1000 Yezidi fighters who have organized themselves over the last year. It is unknown how many ISIL fighters are in Sinjar, but many of them are foreign fighters recruited from Europe or elsewhere in the Arab World. The YPG from Syria cut the main road to the west of Sinjar and have reached the western edge of the city. The Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga and Yezidi militia entered Sinjar town from the north and east, and cut the main road to the south, surrounding the Islamic State fighters. The Kurds are reporting radio intercepts of IS commanders ordering their fighters not to retreat and threatening execution to any who do. Kurdish commander Zaim Ali claims that they cannot escape, and ominously says “they will all be killed”.
However one feels about the US involvement in this conflict, it is gratifying to see the Islamic State on the defensive, and hopefully for the town of Sinjar to be liberated. I have worked in Sinjar periodically over the years and know the area well, and am still involved as a technical advisor for NGO programs for displaced persons, so I cannot claim neutrality in this conflict. I want the Islamic State to be quickly and thoroughly defeated, with minimal loss of innocent life, and for them to be permanently evicted from Sinjar. I don’t mind the use of some taxpayer money to facilitate that process, and I’m glad to see the Kurds doing the fighting rather than US soldiers. The Kurdish media outlet Rudaw is live blogging the fight. Rudaw is not the most reliable of sources, but the New York Times is also reporting on the offensive.
In other related news, the New York Times is also reporting that European law enforcement officials in Italy, Germany, Norway and Finland arrested a network of 15 Islamic State recruiters, headed by the infamous Mullah Krekar, who has been a pain for the Norwegian authorities ever since 1991. Mullah Krekar founded Ansar al Islam, a homegrown Kurdish fundamentalist group, which later allied itself with Al Qaeda and eventually pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Ansar al Islam has staged a number of terrorist attacks in Iraqi Kurdistan and also participated in the killing of Shia’ civilians during the early stages of the Iraq War. The Norwegians convicted and jailed Mullah Krekar repeatedly over the years for threatening other Kurds, but they have never been able to convict him of murder or a serious enough crime to put him away for long. They will not deport him to Kurdistan, because the Kurdish government would hang him as a terrorist. So he has remained in Norway. The Norwegian government restricted his movement and placed him in a small ski chalet near the Arctic Circle, where they could monitor him, but it appears that he was indiscreet. He was convicted in October for making threats and for violating Norway’s hate crime laws for calling on copycat killings based on the Charlie Hebdo attack and he was jailed once again. Now it appears they finally have enough evidence to charge him for facilitating recruitment for the Islamic State, and they have rounded up his network. He is the most notorious supporter of the Islamic State among the Kurds, and his particular base of support in the Hawraman District presents a security risk as his followers could potentially infiltrate the Kurdish region. There might be a relationship between the decision to wrap up his network just as the Sinjar offensive gets started, as the Islamic State is probably interested in retaliating against the Kurdistan government. At any rate, Mullah Krekar’s arrest on charges that will put him out of circulation for a decade, and the end of his ring in Europe, is good news for myself and my colleagues. I’m glad that the Norwegians are humane enough not to deport him to his death, but realistic enough to investigate him and take action against him.
An amusing side note… About a decade ago, during one of the periods when Mullah Krekar was out of jail, he visited a nightclub in Norway where Shebana Rehman, a feminist comic of Pakistani origin was performing a stand-up routine. She knew exactly who he was, invited him up on stage, and then grabbed him and lifted him up, saying “If a small woman like me can lift him up, he can’t be dangerous!” She “tests” fundamentalists this way, to see if they can handle physical contact with a woman, and to tease them about their reaction. Mullah Krekar freaked out, filed a lawsuit against her (which was unsuccessful), and someone shot up the windows of the comedy club a few days later. Anyway, here is Mullah Krekar getting a little unwanted physical attention from a feminist Norwegian Muslim: