Peshmerga blocks main supply route to Daesh Islamic State ‘caliphate’ in Mosul

It also looks like they may get their Supply route into Turkey east of Kobane cut off soon. - Ian Bach - map from Wash Post

By Erin Cunningham February 19 Original Full Article click here
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.

[Related: The Islamic State is failing at being a state}

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 last summer. The Peshmerga fighters 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. But in truth they really were mostly concentrated on towns that these main highways run through.

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

“The integrity of the caliphate is at stake, it is built on continuous military victory,”      said Jessica Lewis McFate, research director at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. (One of my favorite places for maps & Studies - IB)

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

Without their vital supply line, Islamic State operatives would be vulnerable in Mosul, which is increasingly isolated as Kurdish forces close in. They would also have to use alternative supply routes to Raqqa that meander through the harsh desert or expose them to dangers such as airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition or confrontations with Iraqi security forces, analysts say.

If Islamic State convoys can no longer follow the main highway to Raqqa, which crosses the border at the al-Hasakah district in Syria, they could be forced to travel to the next-closest crossing they control, located at al-Qaim, 260 miles away.

But coalition warplanes have been raiding the al-Qaim area.

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 in these areas.