right down to baquba, eastern iraq. you have to look at this as part of a broader front between i.s. and the kurds. what is important is, although it is not in the media so much, is the battle going on around al hasaka between islamic militants and syrian kurds. you have militants allied with bashar al-assad, there is territorial continuity between kurds in syria and kurds in iraq. the light green buffer going all the way down into iraq. it is very important for i.s. to put pressure here on that territorial continuity. one other thing i want to show you, the syrian regime controlling these parts in red. that whole part of western syria. you can see from this, for bashar al-assad, the important thing is to keep control of the areas it can hold onto. that means the regime can survive. more important than trying to regain these areas in the north. the fact that the syrian regime has made a fairly realistic population further south of what it can do and where it can hold on, that opens up the space up here in the north for

meanwhile, in baquba, there were two bombs. one was a suicide bomber and one a detonated car bomb killing 20 people, wounding more than 30. so, yes, baghdad seems to be relatively safe and i underscore relative. but the situation in anbar and other parts around the capital is definitely not very good. victor? >> ben, if isis takes control of anbar and the reporting up to this point has been 80% is under the control of isis and they start to control the water ways and the roads in, would that not then be a defactor control of the capital if you control what is in and out and what is the impact there? >> well, what we see is that isis has a presence to the west, to the north, to the south of baghdad but not to the east. so it's not that baghdad will be completely surrounded and cut off. the problem is, of course, that baghdad international airport to the west of the capitol abuts anbar province and essentially there are ice sis forces within eight miles of the airport. at the moment, we understand there are good electronic counte