This week my two Diigo posts were about the Iraq-IS conflict. The first one was an interactive map showing the movement of IS, Iraqi, Kurdish, and American forces in Northern Iraq. It surprised me how quickly IS captured border crossings and dams, in addition to other key strategic assets, like oil and gas fields. My second article was about the strategic importance of the Mosul dam to both IS and Kurdish and Iraqi forces. The dam supplies both food and water to over 1.8 million people. During the time it was captured by IS, the group threatened to flood the area surrounding the dam. Both of these articles are news reports, so they attempt to not have a bias, but both seem to have the perspective that states are the most important players in this conflict. If anything, both these articles take the political realist approach.