The map is not the territory

I’m a big fan of information presented visually, graphically. As you might know, my other blog is political, and I’ve been working on a column in part on the Kurdish social experiment in Western Kurdistan, or Rojava. I ran into these excellent maps detailing the balance of political/military forces in Syria and Iraq put together by Thomas van Linge. The two maps below are reproduced from Pieter Van Ostaeyen‘s website. These two maps are remarkable in what they reveal(Jabhat al-Akrad as combatants for instance), and when compared to previous maps, reveal the rapid change of events in the region.