{VOA News} – The Kurdish Peshmerga commander sat on a couch at his headquarters in Sulaymaniyah. On a nearby table there was a bowl of dried fruit and nuts. Two large sniper rifles lay on the floor by his desk.
“The longer ISIS stays, the more it becomes fashionable to youngsters with no hope, to all these youngsters who have been oppressed by the government here, in Syria, in other countries” he said in his British accent, using a common acronym for the Islamic State.
“They are not going to go away. ISIS is not going to be finished as soon as Mosul and Raqqa are taken,” he warned. “It’s going to be continuous. It’s not going to stop.”
The assessment just a few weeks ago from Polad Jangi, in charge of counterterrorism operations south of Mosul in the Kirkuk-Sulaymaniyah area, is far more grim than the latest public assessments by U.S. officials, including President Barack Obama. READ MORE OF THIS STORY
