SINJAR, Iraq (AP) – Kurdish forces in recent weeks have retaken parts of the strategic Iraqi town of Sinjar, whose Yazidi population was driven out in a humanitarian disaster last year that triggered U.S. intervention. But sniping among Kurdish factions makes the hold on the town seem shaky and is threatening the wider fight against Islamic state militants.
Overlooking the strategic northern Iraq town of Sinjar, peshmerga fighters representing the recognized authorities of Iraqi Kurdistan fume against what they see as the recklessness of their supposed allies in militias drawn from neighboring Syria and Turkey.
Within the bomb-scarred warrens of the town below, foot soldiers in those militias complain that the much more heavily armed peshmerga have done too little during the fight against Islamic State fighters holed up within easy range of a sniper’s bullet.
The immediate issue is ownership of Sinjar, the town that once was home to many of Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority. Tens of thousands fled to the nearby mountains, creating a humanitarian disaster, when IS militants seized the town in August and unleashed a wave of terror involving killings, imposed conversions and forced marriage.
But there is a wider concern as well: The Kurds, in their various forces, have provided the most effective ground resistance to date against the jihadis who have taken large swaths of Iraq and Syria – and so the outside world has a stake in their ability to continue that struggle.