Kurdish troops seized an important crossing from ISIS on Tuesday on the border between Iraq and Syria, and an influential tribe of Sunnis in Iraq helped with the fighting — a big success against the campaign against the militants.
An Iraqi Kurdish political source told Reuters that Iraqi Kurdish fighters took control of the border crossing, at the town of Rabia, in a battle that began before dawn. Kurds across the border in Syria assisted, Reuters reported. The influential tribe of Sunnis, known as Shammar, is one of the largest in northwestern Iraq.
“Rabia is completely liberated,” Abdullah Yawar, a tribal leader, told Reuters. “All of the Shammar are with the Peshmerga, and there is full cooperation between us,” he said, using a name for Kurdish security forces.
The American strategy for defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria depends on success by the Iraqi army and by Kurdish forces in northern Iraq.
