When it comes to ISIS, the average westerner wants to know one thing: "Are they in our country right now, planning to murder us? If not, when will they be here? Tomorrow? Thursday?" But, in some parts of the world, ISIS isn't this looming threat beyond the horizon -- it's the actual horde of screaming guys right in front of them, lobbing rockets. To find out what that's like, I went to the frontlines in Northern Iraq. No, really -- my photographer took this photo, that town on the horizon is ISIS territory: Magenta Vaughn And here I am about 90 minutes from the ISIS's regional capital of Mosul: Magenta Vaughn That's me drinking in a biergarden in the part of Iraq known as Kurdistan. The Kurds run their own separate pseudo-state inside of Iraq, where women are guaranteed 30% of the seats in parliament (our Congress is 20% female), the cell phone data coverage is exceptional, and a journalist like me can get drunk at mid-day without judgement. The only thing keeping this island of decency safe from ISIS are the Peshmerga, Kurdistan's native fighting force and the only standing army in Iraq to consistently beat back the suicide soldiers of the Islamic State. I sat down with a bunch of these guys to find out what it's like fighting the world's most notorious group of assholes, and they said ...


6 What ISIS Lacks In Equipment, They Make Up For In Fanaticism And Experience What ISIS Lacks In Equipment, They Make Up For In Fanaticism And Experience ISIS I visited a section of the frontline near a town called Bashik the day after a major ISIS offensive claimed the life of a Navy SEAL nearby. One of my guides was a Peshmerga intelligence specialist. He had a walkie-talkie with him, tuned into one of the frequencies used by ISIS. We heard them coordinating right before salvos of heavy machine-gun fire erupted from one of their positions, peppering a section of the Kurdish defenses. Soon we heard a rumbling, like thunder, and the intelligence officer explained that a coalition air strike was incoming. USMC/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Maybe send us a warning text next time, okay, F-18? While we waited, he noted that you could usually tell when an attack was imminent because ISIS soldiers, "Speak very slowly when they get close to the peshmerga line." He added that, "they have their different codes ... for example, a few weeks ago they were calling the jets Hider, it's an Arabic name." We kept hearing heavy machine gun fire chatter out at the Peshmerga positions, and the rumble of the airplane intensified. Then something exploded. The rifle fire stopped. But, my new friend explained, this didn't mean the air strike had killed anyone. ISIS has criss-crossed the area under their control with networks of tunnels. "When they hear the sound of the jets, they will just disappear." In a movie, the bad guys' cannon fodder just pours across the field to be mowed down by the heroes. In real life, the enemy is smart; they adapt. We're the bad guys in their heroic quest. ISIS

"We are ISIS! The lovable rogues who break all the rules!" Here was my first question, after "We're sure those bombs won't land over here, right?": Is there actually anything special about ISIS? Or, has my opinion been clouded by their nightmarish propaganda videos, horrific public executions and breathless media coverage in the west? I asked the Peshmerga officers, most of whom were older men who'd fought against Saddam's Iraqi army as well as Al-Qaeda and various other terrorist groups for decades. It seems like they could be considered the world's foremost experts on the subject. One major, speaking for a group of officers, said that what ISIS lacks in equipment, they more than make up for in murderous enthusiasm. "[Saddam's troops] were using tanks, airplanes everything, even chemical weapons but they didn't have the morale ISIS has ... they have the morale to never stop ... fighting ISIS is much more difficult. If they had all the weapons [Saddam's] army had before, it would be trouble for us. We couldn't stand for even a short period of time." US Marine Corp

So please, put ISIS-proof locks on all your tanks. There's something else that gets lost in the media coverage of ISIS, which tends to portray them as barbarians ... Google ... which is the fact that they owe much of their success to a trained core of former Iraqi-army officers: both ISIS's security and military ministries are run by officers who served under Saddam. And hey, that could be good news -- if we can just kill those guys, ISIS will crumble, right? Well, maybe not. ISIS paid a lot of attention to the fact that the U.S. spent roughly a decade killing Al Qaeda's "second in command" without stopping the organization. They've developed an organizational and leadership training structure robust enough to survive the death of any one military leader. While the air strikes around Mosul had killed an estimated 4,900 ISIS fighters in the last two years, the intelligence officer I spoke with didn't think targeted strikes against ISIS's leadership had been very useful: "When some of them are killed, especially leaders, it doesn't really affect them very much. Because they are trying to die. [Losing a leader] is not very important for them. They can make any one of them a leader. One goal is, for example, to attack this line, I think they don't need a very good leader. They need some of them just to die." "I think they don't need a very good leader. They need some of them just to die."

5 The Kurds Are Holding Back ISIS Without Money, Or New Weapons The Kurds Are Holding Back ISIS Without Money, Or New Weapons John Moore/Getty Images News/Getty Images The best explanation I got for how the Peshmerga has managed to beat back ISIS came from General Hamid Afandi, an 84-year-old man who has been fighting with the Peshmerga since he was a teenager. "[The word] Peshmerga, it means 'before death'. There's no excuses. You must stop them anyway." Magenta Vaughn (click for larger pic)

This man has seen more war than the average platoon of U.S. Marines combined. And hey, a guy in Hamid's position would say that to an American journalist asking him on-the-record questions. Here are the facts: In 2014 the roughly 30,000 Iraqi Army soldiers garrisoning Mosul fled in the face of just 1,500 ISIS fighters. Despite a 15:1 numeric advantage and a whole pile of American weaponry, Mosul fell in six days. The vast majority of the Iraqi soldiers ran screaming into the distance rather than risk a beheading. ISIS then seized several thousand humvees and tanks and turned their eyes to Kurdistan ... where they were stopped cold by this bunch of dudes with Kalashnikovs and not much else. Magenta Vaughn (click for larger pic)

Not pictured: Body armor. Magenta Vaughn (click for larger pic)

Not pictured: An actual armored vehicle. Don't get me wrong -- they're not using shitty weapons to try to make it fair, it's all they've got. They were very eager to let me know that. "We need heavy weapons, like the Iraqi army," says Najad Ali, commander of the Makhmur section of the frontline (where a U.S. Marine was killed by rocket attack in March). "If we [are going to] join with the Iraqi army to liberate mosul, we need the heavy weapons." Now, the Kurds did retreat at several points during the initial ISIS attack. And American airstrikes were crucial in helping the Peshmerga hold during the dark days of 2014. Commander Ali said he was extremely grateful for that, but he also really wants us to consider giving his men some new guns. Or, as another Peshmerga officer pleaded to me, "The weapons we are using now are the same weapons we used against Ba'ath [Saddam's] armies ... Kalashnikovs mostly. They [the Peshmerga] need vests, body armor. Vehicles. And they need good weapons they can fight with. Once they have these weapons, they can go anywhere they want. Because they have the morale to push ISIS out of Iraq." John Moore/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Balls of steel are great, but so are suits of Kevlar. Now it's reeeeeally worth noting that the U.S. does not have a great history of handing over piles of weapons to our allies in the Middle East, hence the 40 Abrams tanks captured by ISIS. It's also worth noting that, since 2011, arms imports to the Middle East have increased 61%. Shockingly, this has not made the Middle East 61% safer. VisualCapitalist.com

But it has made charts 61% more confusing. If boatloads of Apache helicopters aren't on the table, they made it clear they would accept cash, too. Thanks to the low gas prices we're all currently enjoying over here, the Kurdish economy is in crisis -- the Peshmerga holding back ISIS are being paid on a two month delay. Fixing that isn't as simple as working out a foreign aid deal; because Kurdistan is a regional government in Iraq and not an independent nation, all of their international aid has to come through Baghdad first. In other words, any aid money we give the Peshmerga has to pass through one of the most corrupt governments on earth before they see a dime. So, for now, the Peshmerga continue to repulse ISIS attacks on frontlines that look like this: Magenta Vaughn (click for larger pic)

Sandbags, rifles, and a big ol' hole in the ground. Vehicle-based IEDs (giant armored trucks filled with explosives) were the main threat to this section of the front. The Peshmerga only possess one weapon capable of stopping the heaviest VBIEDs -- a German anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) called a MILAN. Sonaz/Wiki Commons

You can watch one blow up an ISIS vehicle-bomb here. American airstrikes are great at blowing up VBIEDs, but those positions are so close to the enemy there that an armored killdozer would make it across much faster than a jet could even get airborne. So, the Peshmerga's best strategy right now is those aforementioned holes in the ground. Their frontline is criss-crossed by deep trenches, filled with razor-wire, that most vehicles can't cross without, say, the help of attached rockets and a ramp. "They took a Russian-made SBG-9 rocket launcher (made in 1962) and attempted to make it mobile by bracing it in the back of a new Toyota truck via a lattice of what looked uncomfortably like the bondage rope I keep by my bed." At a different section of the front, we watched the Peshmerga try to cobble together another solution. They took a Russian-made SBG-9 rocket launcher (made in 1962) and attempted to make it mobile by bracing it in the back of a new Toyota truck via a lattice of what looked uncomfortably like the bondage rope I keep by my bed. Magenta Vaughn (click for larger pic) Magenta Vaughn (click for larger pic)

You may be cool, but you'll never be "chain-smoking while manning a rocket launcher" cool. We watched them fire it at a concrete factory held by ISIS militants on the outskirts of Mosul. It was the absolute loudest thing I've ever heard in my life -- imagine sound waves forming a giant hand and angrily smacking you in the face. The Toyota proved a relatively stable firing platform, but there was one minor issue: It turns out standard automotive glass isn't made to withstand the blow back from a cartoonishly large gun -- one shot shattered the windows. Magenta Vaughn (click for larger pic)

Luckily, it's a one-time issue.