Battered and in retreat over much of northern Iraq, Islamic State has launched a surprise counterattack far from its last redoubt of Mosul, taking over three districts of Kirkuk, killing dozens and holding perhaps hundreds hostage.
Friday’s pre-dawn assault on the northern oil city, which is contested byArabs and Kurds, was designed to show the terrorist group’s enemies that it was still able to launch spectacular assaults at will and that it remained far from defeated despite a five-day push to oust it from Iraq’s second city and nearby areas that it seized two years ago.
By the end of Friday, at least 30 Isis members remained holed up in various parts of Kirkuk, some in a hotel and others in three districts that the group claimed to control. An Iranian-run power plant was among the first sites that the extremists seized, shortly after 3am. The attack left at least 16 workers dead.
Kurdish forces rushed to Kirkuk to defend the city and, in doing so, at least partly fulfilled another of the group’s goals: relieving pressure on it in the main battlefield, where Iraqi and peshmerga forces continue to face intense resistance as they grind towards Mosul.
Iraqi police said on Saturday morning that the assault was over. Brigadier General Khattab Omer said that all the attackers were killed or blew themselves up.
The past five days have seen clashes on a larger scale and intensity than at any time in the 28 months since Isis seized Mosul. While both the Iraqi and Kurdish military said ahead of the battle that it would not be easy, the willingness of Isis to stand its ground has surprised senior officers, among them an Iraqi commander stationed 10 kilometres from Hamdaniya, once the largest Christian town in Iraq.
“Falluja took five weeks and Ramadi took five months [to reclaim],” said Col Hamid Samariae. “This will be somewhere in between, maybe two months. “They shoot mortars at us and send suicide bombers, but they don’t often stand and shoot.”
The colonel sat alongside peshmerga officers in traditional dress and was insistent that relations between both sides remained warm as the jointly conducted war neared its second week.
Down the hill, giant Shia flags fluttered from artillery pieces. Smaller versions flew above buildings commandeered by the Iraqi army. The national flags were smaller again. Kurdish leaders had tried to ban the religious banners earlier in the week, claiming that they could incite tensions with the predominantly Sunni refugees fleeing the war zone, and that they introduced a sectarian element to what had been billed by both sides as a nationalist cause.
“Yes, it’s true that the Kurds have complained, and some of the flags have been taken down,” said Samaraie. “Only the odd ones remain on Humvees now.”
Asked about the giant banners flying from all three Iraqi Humvees that had returned to the checkpoint only minutes before, he laughed and replied: “Yes, it’s true.”
The Iraqis had edged towards Hamdaniya all week and claimed on Friday to have surrounded the city. Its recapture would mark a significant moment for the state military, which fractured as Isis surged towards them in June 2014. Since then, it has regrouped and been recast as a nation-building institution, which can reincorporate minorities and build bridges with Sunnis, who have lost political status in Iraq since the 2003 US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Why is the battle for Mosul significant?
Mosul is Islamic State's last urban stronghold in Iraq, and the assault is the most critical challenge yet to the group's caliphate.
Since Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the establishment of a caliphate from the city in June 2014, Mosul has been central to the group’s ambitions to spread its ruthless interpretation of Islamic law throughout the Arab world and beyond.
Victory over Isis appears very likely, but there are concerns about what comes next: how to provide for up to 1.3 million refugees and how to re-establish governance in a city brutalised by tyranny.
New arrivals at a Kurdish-run checkpoint only metres away said they had joined the waves of Iraq’s newest refugees when Isis returned to their village, Zirboun, a day after leaving as the Iraqi army approached.
“Today it was the other way,” said Hisham, 20, sitting on the ground with his mother and sisters. “They were nasty all the time. We couldn’t even look at them.”
Umm Jassem, a mother of nine, sat alongside him, her face uncovered for the first time since August 2014. “If they saw any skin at all exposed it was a fine,” she said. “They would even punish us if we went to visit our neighbours.
“These were miserable years. They were hell. At least as a man you could perhaps negotiate something, but as a woman I did not have a voice. My concerns were never heard,” she said.
A sign above the refugees said “Kirkuk 103km”, and none of them knew that their tormentors had opened another front that far away.
“They were mostly Iraqis[in Zirboun],” said Hisham. “Although there were Syrians too and some foreigners. They didn’t care about the people at all. We never met their leaders.”
A large US military convoy snaked along the road to the checkpoint, turning off about three kilometres earlier and disappearing into the hills. Asked about the presence of the Americans, Samariae said: “They’re not doing anything. They’ve only just arrived and they are staying a long way off. The only ones fighting them are us and our friends, the Kurds.”
The US has an air campaign in support of both Iraqi and Kurdish forces that has played a pivotal role in battles elsewhere in Iraq earlier this year. Jets have also been active in the Mosul attack, however Kurdish officials complained on Thursday that they had not been as decisive. The remarks, made by the General Command of Peshmerga Forces, came after at least 15 Peshmerga were killed as they advanced on to the Nineveh plains on Thursday.
Oil fires lit by Isis regularly cover the towns and villages they occupy – and smoke seeps across the entire Mosul battlefield, hindering the warplanes’ ability to find targets. Such a tactic has been used more widely – and effectively – than at earlier times in the war against Isis.
“The planes are good,” said an Iraqi lieutenant, Haidar Mousawi. “But they can’t win the war for us. We will have to do it ourselves. Not with the Americans, or anyone else. We alone can rebuild this country.”
Asked if he was confident of reuniting Iraq after two fraught years, he added: “We have to have a discussion about this. This is not for a military man to decide. People talk [among themselves] about different parts of the country and different agendas. But there need to be real discussions, or else we might find ourselves fighting forever.”
