Vantage Point North

Kurdish Peshmerga The autonomous Kurdistan Region votes enthusiastically for independence. A perfect world would welcome a new member into the family of nations, but the local powers in the Middle East are preparing to extinguish the flame of freedom before it even has a change to light up properly. Iraq, Turkey and Iran all strongly oppose the creation of a Kurdish state, as they fear that the Kurdish minorities within their borders would seek to follow the lead of the Kurds in Iraq. While USA and many of the western countries are supportive to the Kurdish cause and have sent both arms and trainers to help the Kurdish Peshmerga’s to fight the Islamic State, it’s doubtful that they are willing to or even able to protect Kurdistan with either sufficient diplomatic pressure or military action. The Iraqi parliament has ordered the government to seize all border crossings from Kurdistan to Iraq and to the neighboring countries. The Iraqi prime minister ordered the I...

Tactical Lessons From Mosul — Infantry Skills Matter Fight against ISIS has proceeded to the city of Mosul. Advance of the combined forces of Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmergas and Shiite militias has grinded down to a near standstill as ISIS has fallen back and into the streets of Mosul. Why the coalition is unable to decisively crush the numerically inferior ISIS units defending the city? ISIS tactics outside Mosul While ISIS is often described as an insurgency, its tactics are actually a mix of conventional warfare and guerrilla tactics with a splash of extreme brutality and suicide attacks. When ISIS attacked Iraq, it used guerrilla cells set up in advance to cause chaos among the Iraqi security apparatus and then took over the territory with fast moving motorized units. Now that the Islamic State has been pushed on the defense, it continues to use a very deadly mix of tactics. Some units continue to operate as terrorists cells, fading into the population and h...