Kurds: Peshmerga eye Mosul in advance on ISIS territory

CNN ^ | 30 May 2016 | Euan Mckirdy

[Cronos]

Thousands of Kurdish Peshmerga troops are involved in an offensive to regain formerly Kurdish villages near the ISIS-held town of Mosul, Kurdish officials say.

The Peshmerga-led ground offensive, backed by international coalition air support, was launched early Sunday to retake several villages near Khazir, east of Mosul.

The operation includes approximately 5,500 Peshmerga fighters.

The move comes ahead of a joint offensive by Kurdish forces and Iraqi troops to retake Mosul, Kurdish media says.

Kurdish media outlet Rudaw reported that the Peshmerga troops, accompanied by Zeravani Special Forces -- a Kurdish paramilitary outfit -- picked their way across ISIS-held territory, retaking abandoned villages it says were once populated by Kurds.

"I am very happy to help liberate these villages today, because they are Kurds like us," First Lt. Hemin Rashid, a Zeravani Peshmerga fighter from Halabja told the media outlet.

"After we liberate the village they can return and we will guard them too," he said.

.."ISIS is seeing our forces but we cannot see them because they hide inside civilian homes and in tunnels," Zeravani spokesman Dilshad Mawlood said.

[Cronos]

The Kurds, secular forces, abandoned by the West, are winning

[BigEdLB]

And the women fight too..

[BeauBo]

I think that the Kurdish Peshmerga in Northern Iraq are also driven by a desire to consolidate more (formerly) Kurdish territory under their control mow, while the getting is good.

It is needed for the eventual assault to retake Mosul, and it does keep ISIS pinned down, so they can’t send reinforcements to Fallujah - so the Government in Baghdad can’t really object.

It makes sense for the Peshmerga (for their desired end state, reclaiming Kurdish areas that were ethnically cleansed by Saddam), and it helps the US and Iraqi government in their fight against ISIS, but it is not the big push into Mosul yet. They are still shaping the battlefield around Mosul ahead of time - pulling the front up closer to the city, so it is shorter and requires less troops to man it. This also allows the artillery to move in closer in support of the future urban warfare.

[Cronos]

What is interesting is that the Peshmerga are co-operating with an Assyrian Christian militia -- and Mosul-Nineveh is the Assyrian heartland.

If I were in the Kurd's shoes I would look to create a buffer Christian state in northern Iraq to north-eastern Syria. These would be related to the Arabs and would keep a nice separation between the Kurds and Arabs.