Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Islamic State at risk in Iraq

Part of jihadists' supply route from Mosul to Syria was seized, endangering legitimacy of "caliphate."

File: In this Oct. 22, 2014, file photo, thick smoke from an airstrike by the US-led coalition rises in Kobani, Syria, as seen from a hilltop on the outskirts of Suruc, at the Turkey-Syria border. The Islamic State group may be sprouting tentacles across the region but it is struggling in Syria, part of its heartland, where it has stalled or even lost ground in fighting with multiple enemies on multiple fronts. There are signs of tensions and powers struggles emerging among its ranks of foreign jihadis. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)
File: In this Oct. 22, 2014, file photo, thick smoke from an airstrike by the US-led coalition rises in Kobani, Syria, as seen from a hilltop on the outskirts of Suruc, at the Turkey-Syria border. The Islamic State group may be sprouting tentacles across the region but it is struggling in Syria, part of its heartland, where it has stalled or even lost ground in fighting with multiple enemies on multiple fronts. There are signs of tensions and powers struggles emerging among its ranks of foreign jihadis. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)Read more
    by Erin Cunningham, Washington Post, Inquirer
    Published 

BAGHDAD - For weeks, U.S.-backed forces have been fighting to oust the Islamic State from key areas of northern Iraq in a series of small-scale battles that could have an enormous impact on the group's "caliphate."

A major prize in the clashes is a highway that serves as a lifeline for the Islamic State. It runs from the group's Iraq stronghold in Mosul to its enclaves in northeastern Syria, including its self-styled capital, Raqqa, 300 miles away.

The battles are occurring as Islamic State is causing growing alarm internationally over its brutal actions, which have included the murder of a captured Jordanian pilot and the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians by Libya-based adherents.

But in late January, Islamic State fighters suffered a setback as Iraqi Kurdish forces seized a stretch of the key highway at the town of Kiske, west of Mosul.

The Islamic State is still using the highway, detouring onto back roads to get around Kiske. But if the Iraqi Kurdish fighters can maintain and expand their hold on the road, the Islamist extremists "will be under a kind of siege in the area. It will be very hard for them" logistically, said Hisham al-Hashemi, an Iraqi researcher who is an expert on the radical group.

Blocking the highway would pressure the Sunni fighters to rely on lengthier and potentially riskier routes to transport people, cash, and weapons, analysts say.

The road has been controlled by the jihadists since the summer. The peshmerga fighters from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq launched the series of battles in December. The operation initially targeted Sinjar - an Iraqi town bisected by the crucial highway. But after fighting there stalled, Kurdish forces broadened their offensive.

The Islamic State had seized Mosul in June, annexing the Iraqi territory to Syrian terrain already under the group's control. That month, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate over the thousands of square miles of land it had seized.

The loss of the highway between Mosul and Raqqa would be not just a logistical defeat for Islamic State, but also a psychological one, analysts say.

"The integrity of the caliphate - it's built on continuous military victory," said Jessica Lewis McFate, research director at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank.

The "caliphate" could lose legitimacy in the eyes of its supporters if it were unable to defend the land it has taken, she said.

The corridor from Mosul into Syria isn't the only Islamic State supply line that is under pressure. In Iraq, a separate route linking the western town of Haditha with the oil-producing town of Baiji and continuing north to Mosul could now also prove dangerous for the group as Iraqi security forces make gains.

If the fighters in Mosul can't stay connected to Islamic State territory in Syria, Hashemi said. "they will lose their claim that they have a state."