A push to take back the Iraqi town of Sinjar from ISIS by Peshmerga forces has begun, the Kurdistan Region Security Council said Thursday.
“Operation Free Sinjar will include up to 7,500 Peshmerga from three fronts to cordon off Sinjar city, take control of ISIL’s strategic supply routes and establish a significant buffer zone to protect the city and its inhabitants from incoming artillery,” the council statement said.
Coalition warplanes will provide close air support to Peshmerga forces throughout the operation, it said.
The world watched in horror last year as some 50,000 Yazidis scrambled up Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq to escape the ISIS onslaught. About 5,000 men and boys in Sinjar and nearby villages were massacred, according to U.N. estimates, while teenage girls and women were sold into slavery.
Since then, Sinjar has become a chaotic jumble of demolished buildings whose only inhabitants are a few hundred ISIS fighters facing off against small detachments of Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
But an operation to retake the town has been looming.
Now, some 5,000 Yazidi fighters have been mobilized under the command of the Kurdish Peshmerga to take the battle to ISIS. Most are farmers; a very few have military experience.
In Snuny, Iraq, a village that sits in the shadow of Mount Sinjar, Peshmerga forces have set up camp and Yazidi civilians have started to return home. Speaking to CNN last week, they vowed to take back Sinjar and exact revenge on ISIS.
And this month, the tempo of airstrikes against ISIS positions in and around the town has picked up.
Sinjar matters existentially to the Yazidis, but it’s also important in the wider effort to defeat ISIS.
The artery that passes through the town links Mosul — ISIS’ prized possession — with cities it holds in Syria. Cutting this route is big one step toward dividing the “caliphate” that ISIS claims it is establishing.
But the road also carries badly needed supplies to the 1.5 million people who still live in Mosul, where prices are rising and activists report hunger.
Before the push to retake Sinjar began, Kurdish fighters said they knew it wouldn’t be easy.
Peshmerga commanders have estimated some 300 ISIS fighters are still inside Sinjar and likely plan to die there. They believe they will encounter hundreds of landmines and booby traps.