Defending New Kurdish Borders with the PKK: The Battle For Iraq (Dispatch 8)

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VICE


Published on Aug 29, 2014
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After conquering large swathes of Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State is now tearing up the near century-old map of the region and drawing new boundaries.

The ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq was captured by the Kurds in mid-June, in the first days of the Islamic State's advance. Outside the city, VICE NEWS interviewed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighters from Turkey, Iran, and northern Iraq, who are defending the new frontier of Kurdish villages from fighters from the Islamic State-held Sunni Arab villages only a few hundred meters away.