Category Archives: ISIS

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

13,000 terrified Kurds trapped between ISIS and Turkish border receive little aid

The Telegraph reports: They are the forgotten people of the war for Kobane.

As the battle for control of the strategically vital border town creeps closer to a bloody denouement, between 10,000 and 13,000 terrified refugees cower on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey – trapped in a dangerous no-man’s-land between the murderous violence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [Isil] and official Turkish suspicion towards Kurds.

Many sleep inside family cars parked next to the chicken wire border fence. Some have brought livestock with them in the hope that they can soon return to the farmlands they hastily vacated, an increasingly forlorn aspiration.

Now many have started to suffer grievously in their state of limbo after Turkey finally sealed the border to stop the flood of refugees.

Up to 50 may have died in recent days, from various causes, including starvation and stepping on landmines, say Syrian Kurdish groups.

Some – including Kurdish fighters brought to the border from Kobane – are said to have bled to death from minor wounds after being denied access into Turkey.

The thousands of refugees stuck at three separate border points appear in less obvious danger from Isil atrocities than the 700 civilians still stuck inside Kobane itself, according to United Nations estimates.

Yet it is the former who have become the latest trigger for Kurdish anger over Turkey’s stance in the war between Isil jihadists and the Kurdish militias fighting to save Kobane.

While the stranded border refugees have run short of water and food, Turkish security forces have intervened aggressively to stop aid groups and relatives approaching the fence to render assistance. [Continue reading…]

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U.S.-led air war in Syria is off to a difficult start

The Washington Post reports: The U.S.-led air war in Syria has gotten off to a rocky start, with even the Syrian rebel groups closest to the United States turning against it, U.S. ally Turkey refusing to contribute and the plight of a beleaguered Kurdish town exposing the limitations of the strategy.

U.S. officials caution that the strikes are just the beginning of a broader strategy that could take years to carry out. But the anger that the attacks have stirred risks undermining the effort, analysts and rebels say.

The main beneficiary of the strikes so far appears to be President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces have taken advantage of the shift in the military balance to step up attacks against the moderate rebels designated by President Obama as partners of the United States in the war against extremists.

The U.S. targets have included oil facilities, a granary and an electricity plant under Islamic State control. The damage to those facilities has caused shortages and price hikes across the rebel-held north that are harming ordinary Syrians more than the well-funded militants, residents and activists say. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. is complicit as it blames Turkey for the catastrophe in Kobane

A Washington Post editorial says: The Obama administration seems to have settled on a blame-Turkey defense for a possible humanitarian catastrophe in the Syrian city of Kobane. It’s convenient and not entirely wrong. But it leaves out a big chunk of the story.

There’s nothing admirable in Turkey’s response to the fighting between the Islamic State and Syrian Kurds on the Syria-Turkey border. Set aside Turkey’s reluctance to put boots on the ground, something American politicians should understand. Turkey has blocked Kurdish reinforcements from crossing south to help in the desperate fight. Kurdish refugees from Kobane are not being made to feel welcome in Turkey, as the U.N. refu­gee agency has reported. If the Islamic State takes control of Kobane, the predictable result will be massacres of captured men and enslavement of captured women.

But the United States is poorly placed to pass judgment, having stood aside for more than three years while 200,000 Syrians died, most at the hands of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Another 3 million have become refugees, including 1 million who have alighted in Turkey — which, adjusting for population, would be the equivalent for the United States of more than 4 million Mexicans streaming across the border.

Unlike with the conflict in Kobane, there is little television footage of children being shredded by the “barrel bombs” that Mr. Assad’s forces drop on apartment buildings, schools and bakeries. It has become too dangerous for journalists to cover the war. But the horror of the carnage — these are bombs filled with screws, nails and metal shards intended to maim and painfully kill — is no less.

The administration strategy of targeting the Islamic State while giving Mr. Assad a pass has actually worsened the conditions for his victims in towns held by moderate rebels who, in theory, enjoy U.S. backing. As the New York Times reported Wednesday, the Assad regime, freed of the need to go after the Islamic State, has returned “with new intensity to its longstanding and systematic attacks on rebellious towns and neighborhoods.”

And the strategy is incoherent as well as morally questionable. The United States expects these same moderate rebels to become its foot soldiers in the war against the more extreme Islamic State. Yet it refuses to target the Assad regime, which the moderates see as their chief enemy — and which is doing everything it can to wipe them out while the United States calls for patience and restraint.

This lies at the heart of President Obama’s disagreement with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is urging the United States to create a no-fly zone over northern Syria. Such a move would not interfere with the campaign against the Islamic State, but it would give moderate rebels some respite from attacks and some territory in which to regroup. In other words, it would serve the interests of what Mr. Obama in the past has claimed as U.S. objectives: helping the moderates and unseating Mr. Assad. That may be why Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the proposal was “worth looking at very, very closely.”

But the White House seems as uninterested as ever in truly helping the moderates. Easier just to blame the Turks.

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Kobane’s fall would be symbolic setback for Obama Syria strategy

Reuters reports: It’s not a particularly strategic location, the United States and its allies never pledged to defend it, and few people outside the region had even heard of it before this month.

But the symbolism of U.S.-led airstrikes failing to stop Islamic State militants from overrunning the Syrian city of Kobani could provide an early setback to U.S. President Barack Obama’s three-week old Syria air campaign – far beyond its battlefield importance.

If Islamic State seizes full control of the city – which U.S. officials acknowledge is possible in coming days – it would be able to boast that it has withstood American air power. A U.S.-led coalition has launched 50 strikes against militant positions around the city, most of those in the last four days.

Islamic State also would be able to free up thousands of fighters to pursue territorial gains elsewhere in Syria and Iraq, analysts said.

Inevitable questions would arise over Obama’s pledge to keep U.S. ground troops out of the fight and the strength of his international coalition. Turkey, whose border abuts Kobani, has declined to join military action against Islamic State.

“Judging the overall coalition from a single town in northern Syria … is slightly unfair,” said Shashank Joshi of London’s Royal United Services Institute. “But I think it will dent overall confidence in the coalition and it will concern many people as to whether the U.S. can really stop this movement.”

A Kobani victory would also provide valuable propaganda for the Islamic State, which has proved adept at providing packaged video footage of its fighters in action, while the United States can only produce fuzzy pictures of air-launched bombs and missile blowing up often unidentifiable objects on the ground. [Continue reading…]

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A Kurdish Alamo: Five reasons the battle for Kobane matters

Katherine Wilkens writes: It is difficult to explain why U.S. airstrikes were so limited during the critical first two weeks leading up to the final siege of the Kurdish enclave. Washington has also resisted making direct contact with the PYD/YPG despite the fact that they represent the only moderate force in eastern Syria that can provide highly motivated and effective ‘boots on the ground’ in the fight against the Islamic State. The muted U.S. response, as the world watches Kobane succumb to the jihadist advances, sends a starkly different message about American priorities than the one U.S. President Barack Obama articulated this summer. If Turkey is permitted to derail the coalition’s priorities it sends a strong message to other partners and raises new questions about the [anti-ISIS] coalition’s viability.

Turkey’s attitude toward the battle for Kobane has eliminated any remaining doubts about what Ankara sees as its priorities in Syria. The prospect of a Kurdish entity run by the PYD along Turkey’s border with Syria is too much for Ankara to accept. Instead, Turkey wishes to create its own buffer zones inside the Syrian border area to accommodate new refugee flows and deny the Syrian Kurds territorial self-rule. Despite U.S. and European pressure, Ankara has stiffly refused to permit Kurdish fighters from other areas to cross the Turkish border to assist in the defense of Kobane—effectively blocking off the only channel for outside reinforcements to reach exhausted defenders in the enclave.

In secret meetings last week between PYD leader Saleh Muslim and Turkish intelligence officials, Ankara reportedly demanded that the price for support to the YPG is that the PYD must dissolve its self-ruling local governments in northern Syria, join the Free Syrian Army—which has for the most part refused to recognize minority rights in Syria—distance itself from the PKK, and become part of Turkey’s ‘buffer zone project’ along the Syrian border. The Syrian Kurds were given a choice of full surrender to Ankara at the table or to the Islamic States on the battlefield. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS fighters are threatening to overrun Iraq’s Anbar province

The Washington Post reports: Islamic State militants are threatening to overrun a key province in western Iraq in what would be a major victory for the jihadists and an embarrassing setback for the U.S.-led coalition targeting the group.

A win for the Islamic State in Anbar province would give the militants control of one of the country’s most important dams and several large army installations, potentially adding to their abundant stockpile of weapons. It would also allow them to establish a supply line from Syria almost to Baghdad and give them a valuable position from which to launch attacks on the Iraqi capital.

The Islamic State’s offensive in Anbar has received less attention than its assault on the Syrian border city of Kobane, which has played out in view of news photographers standing on hills in nearby Turkey. But in recent weeks, Islamic State fighters have systematically invaded towns and villages in Anbar, besieged army posts and police stations, and mounted attacks on Iraqi troops in Ramadi, the provincial capital.

The Islamic State secured a major foothold in Anbar province in January when it seized the city of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi. It pushed farther into the province in June, but Iraq’s government was able to maintain small pockets of authority in the majority-Sunni region. [Continue reading…]

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UN envoy warns of Kobane ‘massacre’, urges Turkey to let Kurds fight

AFP reports: Kurdish residents in Kobane “will be most likely massacred” by advancing Islamic State jihadists, a UN envoy warned Friday, urging Turkey to stop blocking Kurds from crossing into Syria to defend the besieged town.

The plea to Ankara by Staffan de Mistura, a Swedish-Italian diplomat appointed as UN envoy on Syria in July, was a highly unusual one. Normally, the United Nations strives to be neutral in conflicts.

But de Mistura said he was speaking out because of the imminent danger confronting Kobane.

He drew parallels to the 1995 Bosnian war massacre of 300 men and boys in Srebrenica when UN peacekeepers failed to intervene, insisting the world never again could allow something like that to happen.

Reports say the IS jihadists have overrun the headquarters of the Kurdish forces in Kobane after a three-week offensive.

Showing a satellite image to reporters in Geneva, de Mistura said Kobane, which sits just a few kilometres (miles) from the Turkish border, was “literally surrounded” except for one narrow entry and exit point.

There were up to 700 mainly elderly civilians still inside the city centre and another 10,000-13,000 gathered nearby, all of whom were at risk, he said.

“If this falls the 700, plus perhaps if they move a little bit further, the 12,000 people … will be most likely massacred,” he warned.

“We would like to appeal to the Turkish authorities in order to allow the flow of volunteers at least, and their equipment to be able to enter the city to contribute to a self-defence operation,” de Mistura said.

He said the volunteers should be allowed to go “with sufficient equipment to be able to fight and defend Kobane”, but refused to say whether he thought Turkey should provide weapons. [Continue reading…]

The urgency of this appeal is underlined by the fact that ISIS is currently attempting to gain control of the border crossing. If they succeed, Kobane will be fully encircled and the Kurds remaining inside the city will almost certainly doomed.

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Kobane leader: ‘If we dont get help now, Kobane is indeed under threat of falling to ISIS’

Jenan Moussa, who reports for Arabic Al Aan TV and is arguably the best-informed journalist covering the ISIS assault on Kobane, has for the last week been speaking every day to Anwar Muslim, head of the Kobane canton in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), who remains in the city. She says that his tone is down today and he says “we’ll fight till death.”

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Air Force pilots lack ISIS targets to bomb because the U.S. refuses to use actionable intelligence

The Daily Beast reports: Within the U.S. Air Force, there’s mounting frustration that the air campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq is moving far more slowly than expected. Instead of the fast-moving operation with hundreds of sorties flown in a single day — the kind favored by many in the air service — American warplanes are hitting small numbers of targets after a painstaking and cumbersome process.

The single biggest problem, current and former Air Force officers say, is the so-called “kill-chain” of properly identifying and making sure the right target is being attacked. At the moment, that process is very complicated and painfully slow.

“The kill-chain is very convoluted,” one combat-experienced Air Force A-10 Warthog pilot told The Daily Beast. “Nobody really has the control in the tactical environment.”

A major reason why: the lack of U.S. ground forces to direct American air power against ISIS positions. Air power, when it is applied in an area where the enemy is blended in with the civilian population, works best when there are troops on the ground are able to call in strikes. From the sky, it can be hard to tell friend from foe. And by themselves, the GPS coordinates used to guide bombs aren’t nearly precise enough; landscape and weather can throw the coordinates off by as much as 500 feet. The planes need additional information from the guys on the ground. The only other option is to use laser-guided bombs, but even then the target has to be correctly indentified before hand.

But putting the specialized troops the Pentagon calls “Joint Terminal Air Controllers” or JTACs into combat comes with a cost. “The problem with putting JTACs on the ground is that once you get American boots on the ground, and one of those guys gets captured and beheaded on national TV or media,” the A-10 pilot said.

The Pentagon has compensated for this, in part, by easing back in Syria on the restrictive rules used minimizing civilian casualties like it is in Afghanistan. But in many other aspects, current and former Air Force personnel say, U.S. Central Command is fighting the war against ISIS in largely the same way it operates against the Taliban in Afghanistan. “The strategic problem posed by [ISIS] is different than that in Afghanistan,” one former senior Air Force official said. “So the similarity of the minimal application of airpower, along with excessive micromanagement by the CENTCOM bureaucracy is a symptom of not recognizing that this is a different strategic problem.”

After all, ISIS isn’t simply a collection of terrorists. The group holds territory, and manages an inventory of heavy military and civilian equipment. There’s a reason they call themselves the Islamic State. So instead of worrying about individual air strikes, this former official said, the CENTCOM needs to run a wider more free-ranging air war where more targets are hit much more quickly. “Very few in the military today have experience in planning and executing a comprehensive air campaign—their experience is only in the control of individual strikes against individual targets,” the official added. “There needs to be constant 24/7 overwatch, and immediate attack of any [ISIS] artillery, people, vehicles, or facilities that they are occupying.”

But that is a view shared mainly by those within the Air Force — which has, for decades, argued that it has the ability to win wars though strategic bombing.

Even in the case of the campaign against ISIS, there are many officers from the Army, Navy and even the Air Force who told The Daily Beast that they agree with the restraint shown by CENTCOM leadership — noting it is pointless to bomb the wrong target and antagonize the local population.

Further, the challenge for CENTCOM is further compounded by the lack of workable intelligence in Syria.

This claim about a “lack of workable intelligence” is bullshit — as a BBC News report made clear yesterday:

Asya Abdullah, a co-leader of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) representing Syrian Kurds, told the BBC that they were ready to work with US-led coalition forces.

“We have provided coalition forces with the coordinates of IS targets on the ground and are willing to continue providing any help they will request,” she said.

Kurdish commanders on the ground say that some of the latest air strikes have been more effective than previously and that this has helped their fighters to push back IS on several fronts.

A senior female Kurdish commander on Kobane’s defence council, Meysa Abdo, told the BBC: “If the coalition is serious about degrading IS, then Kobane is where they should target IS because they have an effective partner on the ground which has successfully fought back against IS alone.”

CENTCOM might plead that it cannot reliably select targets without Joint Terminal Air Controllers on the ground, but these specialized troops don’t have supernatural powers. The vetted intelligence they provide must depend more than anything else on what they are being told by locals who themselves know much more about the terrain and their adversaries than any American could, having only just arrived on the scene.

The problem is not a lack of military intelligence, but a lack of ordinary intelligence — the kind that would liberate itself from a bureaucratic straightjacket and say, “To hell with senseless directives from Washington about who we can and cannot talk to.”

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FSA fighting alongside Kobane Kurds

Michael Weiss reports: The following is an interview NOW conducted with Abu Saif, the field commander of Raqqa’s Revolutionaries Brigades, which is now stationed in Kobane, fighting alongside the People’s Protection Units (YPG) militias of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) of Syrian Kurdistan. Although not much-discussed in the international press coverage of Kobane, the FSA’s participation in this anti-ISIS campaign illuminates just how isolated indigenous Syrian forces are in combating a transnational terrorist army.

(Note: ISIS is referred to throughout this interview by its widely used epithet, Daesh.)

NOW: In the past, the FSA has fought the YPG, often alongside Daesh. Is this cooperation with the Kurds just a tactical maneuver, or can you envision a long-term strategic partnership?

Abu Saif: Initially, we started out actually fighting against the YPG or the PYD, and then when Daesh moved on Raqqa, we stopped fighting against the YPG and shifted into fighting Daesh. Then Daesh pushed us out of Raqqa and we had to withdraw from the city and into the northern suburbs of Raqqa, which are close to Kobane. There was a sort of cease-fire or truce between the FSA and the YPG. Ahrar al-Sham played a role in that cease-fire. And so we were on board with the cease-fire. It was for six months. We reached out to the Kurds and we became friends. Then we withdrew even further into Kobane itself. The YPG were fighting Daesh, so we were forced into an alliance with the YPG. We had nowhere else to go. Daesh were surrounding us on all sides, except of course behind us was the YPG. As the Arabic proverb goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

NOW: Can you see the YPG joining the FSA, as both Turkey and the United States seem to want?

Abu Saif: I don’t think the PYD will give up its identity and bundle itself into the FSA. However, in Kobane, our brigade received an offer from the Kurds to have the PYD to join with them and fight under the FSA banner. This might make it more amenable for the Turks to come to Kobane’s rescue. This is still in the negotiations phase, no final decisions have been made.

NOW: You’re in Kobane now. Can you describe conditions in the city? What part is invaded by Daesh, what part is being held by the YPG/FSA?

Abu Saif: The situation right now is quite miserable. Unfortunately, we had to withdraw at least half of our men. In fact, the situation was quite bad even months ago when we were still fighting Daesh in the suburbs of Rae. No one gave us anti-tank weapons. We had RPGs, but Daesh relied on heavily armored vehicles, after the capture of Mosul.

When Daesh pushed against Kobane, the situation became even worse. We asked for assistance, but no one gave us anything. There were no anti-tank weapons. When Daesh breached the defenses and made their way into the city, the fighting became street-to-street. We decided we had to withdraw at least half of our forces to save their lives. [Continue reading…]

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If Obama is serious about democracy he should be doing more to help Kobane

David Romano writes: Writing in the Guardian this week, columnist David Graeber compares the plight of Syria’s Kurds and the besieged town of Kobane to the Spanish Civil War: “Amid the Syrian war zone a democratic experiment is being stamped into the ground by ISIS. That the wider world is unaware is a scandal.”

Just as Spanish revolutionaries empowered women and fielded female combatants, so too do the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the Syrian Kurds. The lightly armed YPG partisans now fight house to house against much more heavily armed fascists of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS). They fight to protect their land and an attempt at local democratic governance – an attempt that provided refuge to and empowered not just Kurds, but Turkmen, Christians, Arabs and others. The main political party directing the YPG forces in Syrian Kurdistan is the Democratic Union Party (PYD). Like the Spanish and many other revolutionaries, the PYD are of course not angels, and they stand accused of shutting out rival Kurdish parties promoted by Turkey, the United States and the Iraqi Kurds. They have strong organic links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Nonetheless, the Syrian Kurds have not attacked anyone but the Islamists trying to take over their lands. They have not even asked for a Kurdish state or secession from Syria. Rather, they proclaimed local self-government in the three cantons of Kobane, Cizre and Afrin. The three cantons emerged as tolerant, somewhat democratic islands amidst the grim maelstrom that is the Syrian civil war. By the PYD’s own rules, all the administrations must have male and female leaders and include all the ethnic and religious groups of the area within their decision making structures.

Yet since they established their autonomous cantons in 2012, the United States, Europe and even most independent “progressives” of the world seem to have studiously ignored the Syrian Kurds. [Continue reading…]

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Iran says it’s under attack by ISIS

The Daily Beast reports: On May 13, 2014, a pickup truck approached a caravan of white vans moving on a road near Baqubah, east of Baghdad, in Iraq. Within few meters of the caravan, the pickup exploded, leaving five Iranian engineers and several of their Iraqi guards dead, according to local news reports. The attack came less than 24 hours after a threat by ISIS spokesperson, Abu Mohammad al Adnani.

ISIS could — and very much wanted to — “transform Iran into pools of blood,” Adnani said. After all, Iran was the “bitterest enemy” of the Islamic State.

But al Qaeda long has been known to have deep, complex relations with Iran. And so ISIS, which grew out of a branch of al Qaeda in Iraq, “held back its soldiers and repressed its rage over the years to preserve the unity” of al Qaeda’s ranks.

“So let history record that Iran owes an invaluable debt to al Qaeda,” he added.

But in May, Adnani announced a change of plans: ISIS would not respect al Qaeda requests any more. And while Adnani did not overtly threaten Iran, the May 13th attack turned out to be one in a string of purported terror attacks against Iran and Iranians. These attacks have been pinned by local media and Iranian officials to ISIS and other Sunni extremist groups.

The American intelligence community has heard the claims. But they’re not sure whether the violence can be blamed on the Islamic State — or some other Sunni militants. “While no one is ruling out the possibility of an ISIL presence in Iran,” a U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast, using the government’s preferred acronym for ISIS, “at this time we are not able to validate reports of any activity there.”

ISIS’s rampage through Iraq has produced collateral damage that’s been largely unnoticed in the West. Iran, on the other hand, has been paying close attention. When ISIS took over the city of Jalawlah near the Iranian border, several Iranian media outlets reported a heavy attack on a border guard post near the city of Qasr-e-Shirin—on Iranian soil. The initial toll was reported four guardsmen killed in the incident. Qasr-e-Shirin’s representative in the Iranian parliament, a hardliner conservative named Fathollah Husseini, denied any casualties. But less than two days later, Iranian media outlets reported on funerals held for privates killed in the incident. Later reports suggested at least 11 Iranian border guards were killed in the incident.

Iranian political and military leaders tend to censor terrorist threats inside Iran, to bolster their reign over the country. But the ISIS threat is so bold inside Iran that even the highest officials have publicly acknowledged it. [Continue reading…]

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Kobane fighting: ISIS meets its match in Syrian Kurdish forces

For BBC News, Guney Yildiz reports: Several thousand Kurdish fighters are still in control of Syrian border town of Kobane despite an all-out attack by a much better-equipped and numerically superior İslamic State army since mid-September.

However, their resistance has failed to impress US military planners, whose aim is to “degrade” IS by air strikes in Syria as well as Iraq.

Echoing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s words, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Martin Dempsey, predicted two days ago that the town would fall to IS.

But as his views were aired, Kurdish fighters on the ground launched a counter-attack against IS before the jihadists were able to get reinforcements from Raqqa, Jarablus and Tal Abyad to carry out a renewed offensive.

The US military has predicted that not only Kobane, but other towns could also fall to IS.

“We don’t have a willing, capable, effective partner on the ground inside Syria right now,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm John Kirby said on Wednesday.

But Kurdish officials inside Kobane have challenged Rear Adm Kirby’s claim, saying that effective airstrikes will save Kobane because there is an effective fighting force on the ground.

Asya Abdullah, a co-leader of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) representing Syrian Kurds, told the BBC that they were ready to work with US-led coalition forces.

“We have provided coalition forces with the coordinates of IS targets on the ground and are willing to continue providing any help they will request,” she said.

Kurdish commanders on the ground say that some of the latest air strikes have been more effective than previously and that this has helped their fighters to push back IS on several fronts.

A senior female Kurdish commander on Kobane’s defence council, Meysa Abdo, told the BBC: “If the coalition is serious about degrading IS, then Kobane is where they should target IS because they have an effective partner on the ground which has successfully fought back against IS alone.” [Continue reading…]


Gen Dempsey and America’s other military leaders could learn a lot for the YPJ — the women heroically defending Kobane. Not only do they give the lie to the idea that men are innately more suited to combat, but they also seem to expose a fallacy around which martial culture has generally been built: that the warrior requires psychic armor, deadening his capacity to feel.

Once the YPJ put on uniforms and pick up AK-47s, they apparently see no need to also assume faces of steel. They seem to have learned how to fight without forgetting how to smile. And I wouldn’t simply put this down to the cheerful disposition of young women. It seems more than that — an expression of humanity.

In contrast, their adversaries in ISIS in the name of their ruthless ideology, have sacrificed their own humanity, thereby turning themselves into heartless instruments of brutality.

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Anger grows as Turkey prevents Kurds from aiding militias in Kobane

The Guardian reports: In the past two years, [Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan has attracted much international condemnation for his increasingly erratic and personalised authoritarianism. The exception has been the seeming promise of sealing a historic peace pact with the PKK and its jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan. That prospect now appears to hinge on Kobani and on how Erdoğan chooses to react.

“It is wrong to say that the peace process is over,” said Vahap Coskun, an assistant professor at Dicle University, in Diyarbakir. “But one must understand that it is now at its most vulnerable, the most endangered it has ever been.”

Others are less lenient. The PKK harshly criticised Ankara’s stance on the Isis siege last month and warned that the government had violated the terms of an 18-month mutually observed ceasefire. The PKK’s statement said that because of the Justice and Development party’s “war against [Kurdish] people,” the PKK leadership would “step up its struggle in every area and by all possible means”.

“Does Ankara truly believe it can keep on negotiating with the PKK as if nothing has happened in Kobani?” Joost Lagendijk, a former Dutch MEP and expert on Turkey, said this week. “The pictures of the Turkish army as a spectator and bystander, doing nothing while Kurds are being killed in front of their eyes, has created a worldwide perception of Turkey as a cynical and calculating player.”

Demir Çelik, MP for the Kurdish People’s Democracy party (HDP) in Mus province, has accused the government of fraudulent double-dealing. “We have been very patient for a long time, but the government in Ankara did very little. They raised our hopes, but never fulfilled them.”

In Çelik’s home province on Tuesday evening, Hakan Buksur, 25, was reportedly shot by the police during anti-Isis protests. Kurdish protesters then torched several government buildings. Ankara imposed a curfew on Mus and five other cities, including Diyarbakir.

“This state of emergency will not produce a solution,” said Çelik. “It did not work in the past and it will not work now.”

The key request of the Kurdish fighters in Kobani is that arms, equipment, and PKK reinforcements be allowed across the Turkish border to help relieve the plight of the encircled town.

But the Kurdish fighters of the PYG are a satellite of the PKK and Erdoğan shows no inclination to arm guerrillas whom the Turks have been fighting for 30 years.

The outcome is a collapse in Kurds’ trust of Erdoğan and his ruling AK (the Justice and Development party), which has been mirrored in recent days in intra-Kurdish clashes recalling the dark times of the 1990s.

The violence in Diyarbakir was notable for the fighting between PKK loyalists and Islamist Kurds, with five of eight people killed being from the Free Cause party, or Hüda Par, according to local police.

Very conservative religiously, Hüda Par has emerged as a rival to the more secular PKK in the Kurdish south-east. The party originates in Hizbullah, a Sunni militant group from Turkey that has no connection to its namesake in Lebanon but shares that party’s sympathy for Iran.

Hizbullah gained notoriety in the 1990s when it was recruited by the Turkish “deep state” to murder and torture hundreds of PKK members and supporters in the region. For many, Hüda Par represents a Turkish government fifth column sowing intra-Kurdish conflict. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey intervenes to prevent ‘national security’ threat from ‘provocative tweets’

Hurriyet Daily News: Twitter quickly withheld “provocative tweets against Turkey’s national security” during the recent violent protests, Transportation Minister Lütfi Elvan has announced.

“We faced tweets that threatened our national security, unfortunately provoking some of our citizens and even inviting others, like terrorist groups, to armed struggle. We did what was necessary and a considerable portion of those tweets were blocked by Twitter,” Doğan News Agency quoted Elvan as saying during a ceremony at Bahçeşehir University on Oct. 9.

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Kobane leader: ‘We stopped ISIS advance’

Stephanie Hegarty, BBC News: We’re standing on a hill in Mursitpinar, Turkey, overlooking Kobane. The east of the city is shrouded in smoke.

We’ve heard reports that IS are setting fire to buildings to create a screen from the aeroplanes we hear almost constantly overhead. Those planes continue to strike to the west of the city.

Towers of black smoke have been burning for the past few hours on the top of Mistanour hill, which is under IS control.

Our Kurdish sources inside Kobane tell us that the Syrian Kurdish YPG have advanced in the east and that a group of Free Syrian Army fighters moved behind IS lines causing heavy losses. But the big black IS flag still flies on a small hill and a building in the far east of Kobane.

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Official: Iraqi Kurdistan has sent weapons to Kobane defenders

Rudaw reports: The Kurdistan Region has sent weapons to the besieged Syrian Kurdish forces in Kobane, a top Kurdish official announced Wednesday.

In a late night interview with Rudaw TV Mala Bakhtiar, who is a leading figure in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said that both his party and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) have shipped military equipment to the embattled Syrian Kurdish troops known as the People’s Protection Units or YPG in Kobane.

“Both we and the KDP have done everything in our power to arm the YPG forces. We even planned to deploy Peshmarga forces but couldn’t carry it out because we have to cross 70 to 80 kilometers of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS) territory to reach Kobane, and at the moment it’s militarily impossible,” Bakhtiar said.

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Syrians fleeing Kobane detained by Turkey on suspicion of being militia

The Guardian reports: Syrians fleeing the city of Kobani have been detained at the Turkish border and held without charge on suspicion of being part of the Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG), or People’s Protection Units, the main Syrian-Kurdish militia.

As the battle for Kobani between YPG fighters and Islamic State developed into street battles in the town, the Kurdish militia defending the city told civilians in the town to leave.

“The YPG asked us all to leave. They said it was no longer safe for us,” said Khalid, one of those who tried to cross the border into Turkey.

But once Khalid (not his real name) crossed, he was detained along with at least 231 others, including 10 children, and taken to a small village called Aligor, north of Suruc.

“We are being asked, why did you leave Kobani so late?” Khalid said. “They are accusing some of us as belonging to the YPG.”

On their third day of detention, Khalid said they were in a school auditorium with the windows and doors kept closed most of the day, and only blankets given to them for sleeping on. Those detained were considering burning the blankets in protest, he said.

An earlier attempt at protesting by a hunger strike ended after less than two days because the Turkish security forces guarding them refused to give food to the children, aged between two and 10.

“They said, ‘either you all eat or none of you eat’,” Khalid said. [Continue reading…]

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