Since January’s attack, the peshmerga forces have destroyed all but one of the bridges crossing the canal to hinder any future attack. Lack of weaponry and communication equipment has also made Kurdish forces vulnerable to IS attacks. "In this unit, we only have two old rocket-propelled grenades and the rest is old light arms," Ahmad said. "We are fighting this group on behalf of the world, but we have no weapons to do so."
The force also suffers from internal weaknesses. Several peshmerga fighters on the front line speak scathingly of their commanders, many of whom they accuse of running away in the heat of battle.
Mala Ali, who retired due to injuries in 2005, has more than 20 years of experience as a peshmerga fighter and returned to duty when IS advanced on Kurdish areas in June 2014. He has fought IS as a sniper volunteer from Jalawla in Diyala province to Tuz Khormato in Salahuddin province and now across the Kirkuk front line. He told Al-Monitor that when IS attacked on the night of Jan. 29, he saw commanders run from the battlefield, leaving their men behind, saying, “It was by the grace of God that we were not caught.”
He added, "When I saw them that night, I shouted at the commanders and called them cowards for leaving their men behind."
As the two adversaries face off across the canal, bewildered Sunni residents caught in between try to make sense of the mayhem around them in Mula Abdula. Farmer and father of three Ahmad Salim told Al-Monitor, "Our problems started when IS emerged. We came back to the village because no one wants us. The residents of other villages don't let us in and Kurdish security forces don't allow us to enter the Kurdish areas.”
Across the canal, the IS militants have more pressing issues at hand as the roar of warplanes reverberates overhead. "Watch out, a warplane is approaching," an IS militant can be heard saying through the major’s walkie-talkie.
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