After ISIS: The Sinjar area remains key to securing Iraq

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After ISIS: The Sinjar area remains key to securing Iraq
Disputed between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Sinjar district in Nineveh province is still central to securing Iraq against an ISIS return.
By Seth J. Frantzman  August 29, 2019


Displaced Yazidis fleeing ISIS in Sinjar walk toward the Syrian border in August 2014. (photo credit: RODI SAID / REUTERS)

In December 2015, I drove toward the frontlines where Kurdish Peshmerga were in a desperate struggle with ISIS in northern Iraq.
In a largely deserted landscape, we entered the area around Mount Sinjar where 30 mass graves of victims of ISIS crimes would eventually be found.

Disputed between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Sinjar district in Nineveh province is still central to securing Iraq against an ISIS return.

Despite promises of a return to relative stability following ISIS’s territorial defeat, Duraid Hikmat, Nineveh’s director of agriculture, said in July that more than 30,000 hectares (75,000 acres) of crops had been destroyed in recent fires – about a third by criminals and terrorists and the rest “for natural reasons.”

Read more at: https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/After-ISIS-The-Sinjar-area-remains-key-to-securing-Iraq-600057