VICE News

A year after the Islamic State's lightning conquest of Iraq's second largest city of Mosul, the poorly-trained and equipped Kurdish peshmerga forces are the international coalition's only reliable boots on the ground in northern Iraq. The Pentagon's hopes of recapturing the city by spring 2015 have been dashed by the military failures of the Iraqi Army further south, leaving the peshmerga to defend a 600-mile long frontline almost encircling Mosul, fending off constant Islamic State (IS) assaults with insufficient supplies of ammunition and modern weapons. For one month, VICE News embedded with the peshmerga fighters on the Mosul frontline, gaining an insight into the coalition's faltering war against IS through the eyes of the Kurdish volunteers bearing the brunt of the fighting. In this excerpt from 'The Road to Mosul,' VICE News follows peshmerga commander Abu Rish as his men stand guard on a rooftop at night, watching for Islamic State infiltrators.

In September 2015, veteran left-winger Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader of the British Labour Party. After 33 years as a back bench member of parliament, the 66-year-old became one of the most important politicians in Britain. Jeremy was propelled to leadership by a generation of voters who had been turned off by traditional politics. He attracted 200,000 new members to the party who wanted someone who presented an alternative to the slick, executive politicians who cared more about corporate elites than the people on the street. But many Labour members of parliament don't share the new membership's enthusiasm for Jeremy's socialist agenda. As well as facing challenges from his own colleagues, since becoming leader Jeremy has been the subject of a hostile media that he believes seeks to undermine his leadership. Over the course of eight weeks, VICE News gained unique access to Jeremy Corbyn, through the Panama Papers and Iain Duncan Smith's resignation to the local elections and accusations of anti-Semitism within the party, offering a rare insight into the man and the team around him.