Who Is On The Front Line In The Battle To Take Manbij From The Islamic State

Al Jazeera

Wladimir Van Wilgenburg, Daily Beast: On the Front Line in the Bloody Fight to Take Manbij From ISIS

Who is really taking the lead in this battle? Arabs? Kurds? American Special Forces? The fog of war is complicated here by the fog of politics.

SAKAWIYA, Syria — The body of a dead, bearded ISIS fighter lay beside the road as we left the front-line village of Sakawiya on Saturday in a convoy guided by a senior Kurdish fighter. With the support of the United States, Arab and Kurdish troops launched this operation last week to cut the supply lines of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) near the Turkish border at a town called Manbij.

So far, ISIS is resisting with artillery, snipers and rocket fire, but it is slowly losing village by village under pressure from heavy coalition airstrikes. Local combatants say ISIS wants to hold this position at all costs. In the past, it has been able to smuggle in about 500 fighters a month across the Syrian-Turkish border in this area. “They use it for transferring weapons, bullets and fighters,” said Abdo Muslim, an Arab fighter from the town of Serrin. “They don’t want to lose it.”

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WNU Editor: I have always been fascinated on the role that politics plays in all conflicts .... but the war against the Islamic State .... with everyone involved .... is definitely one for the books for this century.