How Some Wars Are Fought in The Age of Cell Phones, With The Us Military Getting Real-Time Battlefield Information From Unlikely Sources ... In Sinjar, Author Susan Shand Relates The Tragic events of August 2014 that compelled United States President Barack Obama to redeploy the US military to Iraq. Confronted with the potential collapse of the country as well as the unfolding genocide of the Yazidi people, the United States military undertook operations to rout the Islamic State. Simultaneously, it commenced a humanitarian operation, air-dropping aid to the fifty thousand starving Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar. United States Army helicopters flew daily aid missions out of Erbil Airport in Iraq, dropping pallets of water and dehydrated food for the Yazidis on Mount Sinjar who were dying in the devastating heat. After having withdrawn US troops from Iraq three years earlier, President Obama was loath to commit ground troops to Iraq. Rather, using aerial tracking anti precision bombing, US military pilots destroyed Islamic State staging points, allowing the Kurdish and other local militias to create a safety corridor through which the Yazidis could escape. US military advisors, meanwhile, scrambled to furnish Peshmerga units with ammunition and additional supplies. A group of former US Army translators, Yazidis who had been relocated to the United States, set up a command post in a local motel near Washington. Using cell phone VOIP apps, they were able to speak to Yazidis, including members of their own families, around the mountain area and send precise coordinators of Islamic State positions to the Pentagon. Book jacket.