Advancing militias open corridor from Iran to Syria

ISIL loses villages to Hashed forces in Yazidi homeland

ERBIL, IRAQ // Iran-backed Shiite militias advancing on ISIL in northern Iraq are set to complete a land corridor from Iran to regime territory in Syria.

The Hashed Al Shaabi yesterday attacked the extremists in the village of Sheba in the Sinjar area, less than 30 kilometres from the Syrian border. Hashed commander, Sheikh Sami Al Masoudi said that one brigade reached the border for the first time in the afternoon, taking Umm Jrais village.

The Hashed launched an offensive to flush ISIL out of the area on May 12, advancing westward from the town of Tal Afar, which they have besieged for months.

The militias have since taken a string of villages in Sinjar, home to the Yazidi minority.

“There is fighting every day, every minute,” said a Yazidi militiaman aligned with the Kurdish peshmerga.

The Kurdish fighters helped to liberate a part of Sinjar but stopped short of pushing ISIL out of the southern plains, where the Hashed are advancing.

The peshmerga were expected to sweep into southern Sinjar soon but for now they are waiting as the Hashed move forward.

ISIL swept into Sinjar on August 3, 2014, soon after taking the nearby city of Mosul.

Regarding the Yazidis as devil worshippers, the extremists massacred more than 3,000 men and took about 6,000 women and children. Thousands of women and young girls remain in captivity as sex slaves. Many of the boys have been brainwashed to join the ranks of the insurgents.

In November 2015, the peshmerga and Kurdish PKK guerrillas drove ISIL out of the town of Sinjar, which is nestled at the foot of the southern slope of Sinjar Mountain in a long plateau stretching from east to west.

The Kurdish advance cut the motorway that runs through the town, connecting Mosul to Raqqa in Syria, but left ISIL in the towns and villages straddling the motorway to the south.

The Hashed advanced steadily over two weeks, taking the village of Kocho, site of the worst atrocities against the Yazidis, and now have their sights on the town of Baaj just to the south of Sinjar.

The Shiite militias are preparing for an assault on Baaj, the last major ISIL stronghold on their way to the Syrian border.

The inhabitants of Baaj are believed to have strong sympathies for the terror group, and the battle for the dusty town on the plains will be a tough one.

“ISIL is very strong there because it is the gate to Raqqa,” said the Yazidi fighter.

The Hashed are already firing rockets into the town.

They are sanctioned by Baghdad but have close ties with Tehran. In the past two years of fighting ISIL, they have carved out an area stretching from the Iranian border to Sinjar.

Should they reach the border, they can link their gains in Iraq with the Kurdish enclave in Syria.

The Kurdish leadership there is in an informal truce with the Assad regime, making travel to regime areas possible.

“The area will be part of the corridor from Iran to Syria,” said Naser Pasha Khalaf, a Yazidi who works for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the main parties in the autonomous Kurdish region.

The Kurdish Regional Government regards Sinjar as part of its territory, a claim rejected by the central government in Baghdad. When ISIL attacked in August 2014, tens of thousands of Yazidis who had taken refuge on Mount Sinjar were rescued by the Syrian affiliate of the PKK, the Kurdish guerrilla group that has been fighting a decades-long insurgency in Turkey.

Since then, the PKK and its Yazidi affiliate, the YBS, have had a strong presence in northern Sinjar. Baghdad has had the YBS on its payroll for a long time to stifle the regional government’s territorial ambitions.

The KRG’s claim to the southern part of Sinjar is undermined by the presence of the Hashed.

In recent days, up to 500 Yazidi men joined the Shiite militias, sources said, indicating that the Hashed have some support within the Yazidi population.

With ISIL still in Sinjar, most Yazidis live in displacement camps in the Kurdish region.

When the extremist group is expelled, Yazidi land and allegiances will be split between the KRG, the PKK and the Hashed.

The tense stand-off could prevent peace, and the population, from returning to Sinjar for a long time. foreign.desk@thenational.ae