IS Advances, Peshmerga Retreats

"The Mosul Dam remains secure, the propaganda reports from the Baghdad television stations are just trying to cause panic."
"We are moving reinforcements into the area and will begin an operation to retake these lost villages and possibly confront the terrorists with an attack on Mosul in the coming days."
Kurdish intelligence official

"That dam is a nightmare. It's poorly maintained and while it doesn't control drinking water, it does put all of the irrigation water from here to Baghdad in the hands of Daash [Arabic acronym for Islamic State]."
"And if it failed, the flooding would be catastrophic."
Security consultant, western oil company in northern Iraq

The Islamic State jihadis are on a roll, once again. Word has it that they have control of Iraq's largest dam, along with another oil field and three more towns, in a very busy Sunday's work schedule. Sunday saw, as well, the first major defeat suffered by Kurdish forces since ISIS swept across northern Iraq back in June. An offensive of up to 24 hours succeeded for IS in the capture of the Mosul Dam and its electrical-generating capacity.

Should the Sunni terrorists wish to cause further grief to the Iraqi government they could very well decide to flood major Iraqi cities. Alternately they might withhold water from farms. The resulting chaos could be a huge assist in their determination to remove Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite government. "The terrorist gangs of the Islamic State have taken control of Mosul Dam after the withdrawal of Kurdish forces without a fight", announced Iraq's state television.

No doubt there is a little bit of fearful gloating implied in that statement, for it was the entire Iraqi military which chose to hurriedly withdraw in the face of the ISIS advance, while the Kurdish Peshmerga army presented the only opposition push-back to the invading terrorist forces. Is there then, satisfaction for Baghdad in the vision of the Peshmerga being similarly defeated by the presence of the Islamist horde?

After all, it is Baghdad that will suffer the consequences. The Kurds are sufficiently well ensconced in their geography to adequately defend their position.  Still, the initially robust Kurdish resistance appeared to melt away in the offensive by IS to take possession of the town of Zumar, leaving the Islamists to hoist their black flag, a sinister ritual that heralds mass executions of captured opponents and imposing a morbidly strict ideology on the captive population.

People flee Sinjar in Dohuk province in Iraqi Kurdistan on Sunday in the face of attacks by Isis. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Not only was IS involved in these battles but they deployed their members as well to venture into Lebanon where they fought in a border town to fulfill their larger ambitions of inflicting themselves upon a broader frontier of the entire Middle East. Now controlling cities in Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates valleys in the north and west of Baghdad, as well as a large area of Syria from the border with Iraq in the east to Aleppo in the northwest, their ambition only swells.

Iraqi Kurds have not sought direct confrontation with the Islamic State, but they did stand steadfast against their further incursions into territory that they themselves have taken the opportunity to expand within and to protect against IS incursion. The lost towns from the Sunday conflicts represented territory the Kurds had held for many years, however, a setback for that community and its fighters.

To feel that one of the two main lines of defence against the ever-advancing terrorist IS has suffered a signal defeat is demoralizing and problematical for the near future. On the other hand, seeing the Peshmerga falter in combat against the Islamic State may compel Iraqi leaders to finally form an integrated power sharing government whose unity may be capable of countering the Islamic State. Fond hope that, at this time....

Shia mosques and shrines have been destroyed by the Islamic State in territory it has taken command of, inspiring sectarian violence reminiscent of the worst excesses of atrocities in Iraq's 2006-2007 civil war. None of which inspires confidence for the future of Iraq.