As President Obama struggles to create strategy to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), Vice News went into the trenches with what may be the only effective boots currently on the ground: the Kurds.
Fresh off its series inside the bloodthirsty, barbaric terrorist group, Vice interviewed Kurds pushing back against the terrorists' advance on the other side of the battle lines. The Kurdish fighters they interviewed on the outskirts of Kirkuk in northern Iraq are defiant and confident.
"Our comrades are well trained; they're professional," a PKK district commander identified as Agid said. "That's why ISIL is afraid of us."
Civilians living in the frontline city remain concerned about ISIL, however.
"We are under threat from terrorist groups," a local Kurdish villager said. "They consider us infidels."
Like ISIL, the United States has declared the Kurdish PKK a terrorist group. Many of the fighters insisted they are nothing like ISIL.
"Unlike ISIL, our ideology views are not based on terror," a masked PKK fighter said. "We haven't slaughtered anyone, nor have we oppressed any other group."
"We consider Turkmen, Sunni Arabs, and Shiites as our people," Agid said.
Since President Obama has refused to commit any significant American ground force to fighting ISIL, the PKK and other Kurdish fighters may shoulder the burden of the fight against the most active terrorist group.