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The forgotten front

Outside the zone of American air strikes, Kurdish forces are reeling as insurgents advance in Jalawla, extending their control into a key pocket of land between Kirkuk, Sulaimaniya, Baghdad and Iran.
Kurdish Peshmerga pray at an outpost in Jalawla on July 9, 2014, one month into the fight against ISIS. (FERIQ FEREC/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

SULAIMANIYA/ERBIL - Peshmerga forces are continuing to lose ground to extremist militants in northeastern Iraq, highlighting critical vulnerabilities of Kurdish defenses outside the limited zone of U.S. air strikes.

The five-day American bombing campaign has blunted the momentum of insurgents on the western half of Kurdistan's 1,000-kilometer border with the so-called Islamic State (formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS).

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