Deadly frontier

Rabia lies on the Iraqi side of the Iraq-Syria border, right across from Al Yarubiyah. Islamic State captured both towns in August.

The road through Al Yarubiyah and Rabia could have been a useful supply route for the militants as they pushed deeper into Iraq. The road skirts Mount Sinjar and leads directly to Mosul, the militants’ main stronghold in northern Iraq.

But the Syrian-Kurdish YPG—Yekîneyên Parastina Gel in Kurdish, meaning “People’s Protection Units”—retook Al Yarubiyah and successfully defended the road.

Now the democratic militia, which has battled the Islamists and the brutal regime of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad, is fighting its way across the border into Rabia. The YPG has managed to push two kilometers into the town.

The fighting has been bitter.

B’sher, a local journalist and my fixer, takes us from the Syrian Kurdish town of Derike to a YPG base just outside Al Yarubiyah. We want permission to enter the town itself.

This is the first time I have come in contact with the YPG and the affiliated YPJ, the all-women wing of the YPG.

Straightaway I’m struck by how professional the Kurdish fighters are. Their weapons are clean. The fighters look battle-ready. Scanning the base, I catch glimpses of the improvised weapons that the YPG and their allies in the Free Syrian Army are famous for.

In the beginning these weapons were pretty rudimentary—vehicles with steel plates welded to their sides, for instance. Sometimes the Western media poke fun at their crudeness. But the large mortar I spot at the Al Yarubiyah base looks pretty sophisticated.

The YPG’s weaponry has gotten better with trial and error. B’sher tells me that the YPG now even produces its own tanks in a dedicated factory.

Our driver takes us to a nearby tower block. We grab our body armor and helmets and run inside. There are Islamic State snipers out there. We weave past ammunition boxes piled high in the hallway.

We ascend the stairs, passing various YPG and YPJ fighters on the way. Our destination is the rooftop sniper position. At the top of the stairwell, next to a door that opens onto the roof, a homemade 12.7-millimeter sniper rifle leans against the wall.