KIRKUK, Iraq — An unexpected shot rang out as a peshmerga officer pointed over sandbags at a black Islamic State flag in the distance.

“Just shooting at a bird,” he said, swiveling around to see what the other men were doing below, near a cluster of deserted mud and brick homes in the closed military zone on the wide, oil-rich plains of northern Iraq. He said that the other soldiers seen on the way to the front line wandering around abandoned, heavily damaged villages had been looking for firewood for warmth on that February night.

Soldiers warmed their hands at a small fire built below an earthen embankment as dusk fell. Others mulled around, smoking and chatting, Kalashnikovs slung across shoulders, while one tried to fix a heavy machine gun pointing toward IS-held territory.

This front line is near Kirkuk, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad and about 90 kilometers (56 miles) south of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) capital, Erbil, long a source of contention due to its proximity to some of the country’s most important oil wells. It's mostly quiet at the moment, one officer told Al-Monitor, other than occasional sniper fire. But the bombing of IS targets by the international coalition continues.