Mosul

It promises to be the biggest and perhaps last major battle against the Islamic State in Iraq.

Iraqi government forces on Saturday recaptured an air base in northern Iraq from the Islamic State, a victory hailed by the prime minister as a key step ahead of the long-awaited operation to push the militants from the northern city of Mosul.

The Kurds say they’re fighting for Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence, and to defend the outside world from ISIS. For some soldiers, the fight is personal.

The scene of hundreds of protesters storming Baghdad’s U.S. installed “Green Zone” and parliament building this past weekend underscored the political challenges facing Iraq, and how the country’s internal turmoil must be resolved in order to defeat the Islamic State, or ISIS, terrorist group.

It will take many more months to prepare Iraq’s still struggling military for a long-anticipated assault on the Islamic State’s biggest stronghold in the country, the city of Mosul, U.S. and Iraqi officials say—and it may not even be possible to retake it this year, despite repeated vows by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

While global attention focuses on Islamic State (ISIS), recent mass protests throughout Iraq have prompted Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to promise what many long believed impossible: tackling the systemic corruption endemic to the Iraqi political system.

Militants from the Islamic State group blocked all mobile phone networks in the largest Iraqi city they control, Mosul, accusing informants in the city of tipping off coalition forces to their whereabouts, residents told The Associated Press on Thursday.

America’s top military leader arrived in Iraq on Saturday on a previously unannounced visit, his first since a U.S.-led coalition began launching airstrikes against the extremist Islamic State group.

Iraqi Shiite militias have abducted and killed scores of Sunni civilians with the tacit support of the government in retaliation for Islamic State group attacks, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

One hundred and sixty-three years before the Islamic State’s band of thugs rolled into Mosul terrorizing the city’s minorities, my Protestant missionary ancestor, his wife, and two children settled in Mosul, a long way from the home they left behind in Utica, New York.