Briyar Kamal, a 24-year-old Kurdish student, had good grades in college, but instead of relaxing during his summer vacation, he is fighting jihadists who have overrun swathes of Iraq.

"If the nation needs me here, I will continue to fight. Only when the situation improves will I return to class," said Kamal, who is deployed with Kurdish peshmerga forces fighting to retake the town of Jalawla from the Islamic State jihadist group.

Kamal said he got "very good grades" in his third year at Sulaimaniyah University and only has one year to go to finish his degree in economics.

But "fighting (the Islamic State) is more important," said the young man, who is armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and previously received weapons training at a military academy.

"I can study anytime, but by fighting (the Islamic State), I am helping secure freedom and security" for Iraq's Kurds.

Kamal is from the town of Halabja, which was hit in 1988 with chemical weapons during Saddam Hussein's genocidal Anfal campaign, killing an estimated 5,000 people.

"The day has come for us to obtain our rights," Kamal said in Wadi Osaj, an eerily empty village near Jalawla.

1,000 Kurdish fighters

The Islamic State-led offensive, launched in June, was a major moment for Iraq's Kurds, forcing federal troops to flee and clearing the way for Kurdish forces to take control of disputed territory they have long wanted to incorporate into their autonomous region over Baghdad's strong objections.

But Islamic State fighters have since turned their sights on the Kurds, threatening their regional capital of Arbil itself, which sparked a campaign of US airstrikes.

Resting a few hundred meters from the front line, Kamal said he gets only three to four hours of sleep a night.

"But our food is great," he said, sharing a watermelon with other fighters.

Peshmerga Lieutenant Colonel Mubarak Ali says more than 1,000 Kurdish troops are deployed around Jalawla.

Ali, in his 40s, said his fighters are armed with rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and mortars, as well as light and heavy machine guns.

"We have received some new weapons from the peshmerga ministry, and more are on their way," he said.

Fighting mainly takes place at night, except for sniper and mortar fire.

At a peshmerga hilltop position nearby, 25-year-old fighter Saif Abdulrahman said that one area of Jalawla, Hay al-Shuhada, never fell from peshmerga hands.

Major danger

"The fighting there rages 24/7," Abdulrahman said, adding that the peshmerga offensive in the Jalawla area launched this week is going well. "Our morale is very high."

According to Captain Shakhawan Omar, deployed at a crossroads leading to Jalawla, a key reason why the peshmerga are managing to turn the tide is because they have learned the Islamic State's tactics.

But explosives left by retreating jihadists are a major danger.

Shirko Merwais, a senior Kurdish political party official in Khanaqin, said seven fighters were killed by blasts in the area on Sunday and Monday.

Back in Wadi Osaj, Ali, whose fighters came from all over Iraq's Kurdish areas, studied a map as he and his troops drank ice-cold water.

Islamic State fighters withdrew from Wadi Osaj after a two-hour exchange of heavy fire, he said. "We captured two of their corpses," Ali said, adding they were probably Iraqi.

"I doubt they can try to launch a new offensive, but they do try to sabotage our advance," he says, adding that the Islamic State blew up a bridge as they withdrew from villages around Jalawla into the town itself.

"That has just delayed our advance a little."

(China Daily 08/29/2014 page11)