One of them is "Mike", who was trained to be an elite soldier at the Telemark Battalion in Norway. Now, "Mike" is fighting in northern Iraq alongside several other fellow Norwegians, facing desperate Daesh terrorists in suicide bombings and sneak attacks.
"Mike" is stationed in Duhok north of the Daesh-occupied Iraqi metropolis of Mosul (which in 2008 had a population of 1.8 million people and was Iraq's second largest city). "Mike" is part of the Duhok Anti-Terror Unit, where local volunteers fight under the leadership of the Kurdish general Wahid Kolve.
Commander Per Christian Gundersen of the National Defense College's Media Group, is not surprised that the hard-pressed Daesh are trying to fight back.
"Daesh is on the wane. In this case, attempts at a counter-attack are not unnatural," Commander Gundersen said.
"It is only a matter of time before Daesh relinquishes control of its two major cities, Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq," he said, citing the loss Daesh was inflicted at Kobani by the Kurdish forces.
The Kurdish Peshmerga, headquartered in Erbil and numbering up to 200,000 members, are considered to be the most effective ground-based force fighting against Daesh, and they have managed to win back significant swathes of territory in northern Iraq which were once controlled by the terrorists.
