Despite US officials patting themselves on the back for their military intervention, the situation in northern Iraq remains largely the same as last week, with ISIS continuing to broaden its offensive against Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
The latest target is Qara Tappa, a small Kurdish-held town just outside of Mosul, in Nineveh Province. The town itself is relatively unimportant, but reflects a growing effort to open more fronts in the ISIS-Peshmerga fight.
ISIS has been remarkably effective at doing this, apparently able to coordinate its fighters across a much wider front than the Peshmerga are able to, and keeping the Kurds off-balance and on the defensive.
The US airstrikes have aimed to keep ISIS out of the immediate vicinity of the Kurdish capital of Irbil, though ISIS seems to have simply shifted their tactics and continued to push the offensive anywhere and everywhere else.
Help Jordan capture Ar Rutbah,Help the Kurds free Mosul—help them conquer territory to meet in the EuphratesKurds then pus up the Syrian Euphrates and the Jordanianson the Euphrates toward a point near Bagdad then the Kurds could push along the Tigris and the Kurds could push from dohuk to afrin and over to Syrian held territory—-