Portland Kurds Closely Monitoring Clash with Islamic State

PORTLAND, Maine — A small group of Kurdish immigrants in Maine is closely monitoring violence and upheaval happening more than 5,000 miles away.

Fighters from the Kurdish Peshmerga are playing a frontline role in the fight against militants from the armed group Islamic State. Ethnic Kurds can be found mostly in four countries: Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, and it's in Iraq where they have the closest thing to their own country in the Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, in northern Iraq.

And it's the KRG that's at the forefront of the war against the Islamic State.