Crucial Mosul campaign looms with Obama set to leave behind unfinished war on terror

[Geee]

Washington Times:

BA’ASHIQA, Iraq — The uncertain fate of this war-ravaged land finds a small echo in the uncertain fate of Sahar’s unresponsive 18-month-old son.

Fleeing the sadistic rule of Islamic State in nearby Mosul just as Iraqi and Kurdish forces here prepare for a final assault, Sahar and her extended family risk a perilous six-hour trek across the treacherous no-man’s land separating Iraq’s second-largest city from the lines manned by Kurdish peshmerga forces.

To keep her infant son from crying out and revealing the group’s position in the darkness, Sahar — who declined to give her last name — injects the boy with 5 milligrams of Valium dissolved in water, then spoon-feeds him antihistamine syrup during the journey in a desperate bid to keep him quiet.

But finally safe behind Kurdish lines, the baby remains eerily quiet, unresponsive and limp in his mother’s arms as a peshmerga medic tries to examine him. The panicked look on Sahar’s face says it all: In a desperate gamble to give her family a new life, she now can’t tell whether the baby is alive or dead.