Sinjar, Iraq // After more than a year of tense stalemate, the battle for Sinjar was over in a matter of hours.
The town, which became synonymous with the barbarity of ISIL, was retaken in little over a day, as Kurdish and Yazidi forces exacted revenge for a humiliating and traumatic defeat in August last year, when the extremist group took Sinjar with little fight.
A broad coalition of Kurdish units launched their attack on Thursday morning, thrusting into Sinjar and launching pincer moves to encircle the town and cut off Highway 47, the strategic supply route that connects ISIL’s de facto capital Raqqa in Syria with Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and the biggest under the group’s control. By Friday noon, only sporadic gunfire echoed through streets lined with rubble and marked by bomb craters, and any effective resistance had been snuffed out.
The Kurds had also fortified a wide cordon around the city, digging trenches and manning positions in villages captured from the enemy on Thursday. But by Friday afternoon, the long military convoys that had moved south into the plains stretching out from the mountain range behind the town were moving in the other direction, snaking up the winding road to be deployed elsewhere.
One unit of Iraqi Kurdish troops, known as the peshmerga, which had been stationed in Sinjar since the Kurds regained a foothold after ISIL’s August offensive, drove out of the town in the evening, reaching Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital Erbil at night.
“We didn’t fire a shot when we advanced. There can’t have been more than 20 Daesh left in the town,” said a fighter from the unit attached to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two main political parties in the autonomous Kurdish region.
ISIL had been pounded mercilessly from the sky by a coalition air campaign which intensified in the run-up to the offensive, reaching a crescendo the night before the attack. Decimated and demoralised by the bombing, some extremists fled the city before the Kurds advanced.
The capture of Sinjar once again demonstrated the effectiveness of coalition air strikes when combined with a reliable ground force. Once again, it was the Kurds who provided the boots on the ground, after the Syrian Kurds were successful in expelling ISIL from the strategic border town of Tel Abyad in June, cutting a key access point for recruits and supplies from Turkey to Raqqa.
Then as now, ISIL resistance withered in the face of a combined air and ground assault, a change in strategy after the siege of Kobani, which the group had to abandon last year after suffering staggering casualties from the US-led air attacks.
It also indicates that ISIL may be weaker than many assume, and that much of its strength is derived from the divisions amongst its opponents. Its estimated 60,000 fighters are stretched across an area that covers roughly a third of Iraq and vast swathes of Syria.
But disunity ranging from a lack of cooperation to infighting among a kaleidoscope of Kurdish factions, Iraqi security forces, Shiite militia, Syrian rebels and the Assad regime has largely prevented a concerted effort to take advantage of superior numbers.
A renewed push on Ramadi, which Iraqi forces have tried to retake since June, hints at better coordination between ISIL’s enemies, while the loss of the Raqqa-Mosul main supply line will hamper the group’s ability to shift its fighters from one front to another.
Intra-Kurdish divisions were also evident prior to the battle for Sinjar. The offensive was delayed by more than a week, reportedly due to disagreements between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which rules Iraqi Kurdistan in coalition with the PUK, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a neo-Marxist guerilla force with origins in Turkey that has been fighting in Sinjar since last August.
KDP peshmerga retreated unexpectedly last August, leaving the Yazidi population exposed to the ISIL onslaught. Thousands of Yazidis were captured by the extremists as they advanced rapidly. Hundreds of men were later massacred, while the women were forced into sexual slavery. About 2,000 Yazidi women remain in captivity.
A mass grave believed to hold the bodies of dozens of women executed by ISIL was found on Saturday, town officials said.
The PKK and its Syrian affiliate the YPG were part of the desperate defence of Mount Sinjar, as the plateau behind the town is known, and later advanced to create a corridor that allowed tens of thousands of Yazidis trapped on the mountain to escape via Syria. The PKK has maintained a strong military presence in the area, and were in the most forward positions in the town before the offensive.
The KPD has played down the role of the PKK in the liberation of Sinjar, and its affiliated media portrayed the battle as a KDP victory only.
“They didn’t take part in the fighting. They moved forward once the battle was over,” claims Dilgash Zebari, a KDP peshmerga officer in Sinjar.
This version of events is disputed by the other Kurdish factions.
“The PKK and the YPG were fighting alongside us. They are good fighters, and the coordination between us was good,” said the PUK peshmerga fighter in Erbil.
“They didn’t see us advancing because we moved forward in the town when they were still up in the mountain,” scoffed Agid Kelary, a PKK commander in Sinjar. The PKK had more than doubled its troop numbers in the area to 1,500 fighters, he said, and took sections of the town while also advancing to cut of the highway. About 7,500 KDP and PUK peshmerga had been massed in the area for the offensive. Some Iraqi government police units also took part in operations.
With ISIL expelled from the town, the PKK will find it more difficult to justify its presence in the area, which is traditionally a KDP stronghold. But ISIL still holds the nearby towns of Baaj and Tel Afar, and Mr Kelary says its too early to leave.
“We will stay here until Sinjar is completely safe,” he said.
Yazidi loyalties are divided. Many men joined the KDP and PUK peshmerga, who formed a number of Yazidi units. Others, grateful for the PKK’s role in defending Mount Sinjar, have joined a Yazidi militia created by the PKK.
With ISIL driven from the town, Sinjar’s inhabitants are eyeing a return, some of whom lived only a few kilometres from the fighting. Around 8,000 Yazidis remain on Mount Sinjar, a site of religious importance for the sect, living in primitive conditions and with scant access to basic services. Most of the others are in refugee camps scattered throughout Iraqi Kurdistan, with only a few able to afford accommodation in cities.
“We are so happy that Sinjar has been liberated,” said Bohu, a mother of four who lives with her extended family of 19 in small cluster of tents on the mountain. “We would go back today if we could. But we can’t go back until Baaj and Tel Afar have been taken.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
