Beyond front lines in Iraq, a forgotten force faces Islamic State

[Valin]

McClatchy:

Mitchell Prothero

January 28, 2015

 

JAR-ALLA, Iraq — Sheikh Mohammed jumped into his battered Toyota pickup and offered a visiting journalist his rusting Kalashnikov assault rifle for the three-mile ride to the front lines.

 

The offer rejected, he told his cousin Ali not to mention the journalist’s presence on the internal radio system because Islamic State fighters less than a mile away monitor the channel and they might mount an attack specifically to capture a journalist.

 

(Snip)

 

When Mosul fell in June, much was made of the complete collapse of the Iraqi army, which abandoned its posts across much of northern and central Iraq as disciplined Islamic State militants swept south. But that narrative ignores Sheikh Mohammed, Ali and perhaps 400 other Sunni Muslim soldiers who continue to fight.

 

Their position is a desolate, nearly abandoned farmhouse that lies more than a mile beyond what the other local anti-Islamic State force, the Kurdish peshmerga militia, describes as the front line. It consists of a deep ditch dug to stop any Islamic State tanks, reinforced by an 8-foot-tall earthen berm. In front of them the flat agricultural expanse of northern Iraq stretches into the distance. To the rear, it’s 30 minutes to the town of Mahmour.

 

(Snip)