Iraq, Syria, and the Islamic State: A war that crosses national boundaries

The Economist writes:

TEN days after America carried out its first air strike on August 8th against the Islamic State (IS) on Iraqi territory, government forces regained control of the biggest dam in the country, near Mosul, the country’s second city. A ferocious al-Qaeda-inspired jihadist group that controls swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq and wants to turn the entire region into a caliphate, IS looks as if it is at last on the defensive in northern Iraq.

Thanks to a series of American air raids, Kurdish and Iraqi forces scattered IS fighters who had hoisted their black flags on the walls of the great dam. The Iraqi government in Baghdad hailed the event. The Iraqi Kurds in their capital, Erbil, posted photographs of their Peshmerga forces lording it over the turquoise lake. Barack Obama cited the recovery of the dam as “important progress”.