Category Archives: PKK

Inside Kobane

Ersin Caksu reports: Kobane is imbued with a tremendous spirit of solidarity.

Travelling around the city by day is simple because the first vehicle you meet on the street will stop and the driver will offer you a lift.

Maybe that solidarity helps explain why Kobane has held out for so long.

Very few people are still living in their own houses. When necessary, the doors of empty properties are opened and needy people are relocated.

Those still in their homes share the cheese, pickles, jams and dried vegetables they have stocked for the winter with those in need.

Although people have few belongings left, they get by through sharing what they have.

For example, if a car is needed, the YPG unlock a garage, put the owner’s name and the car’s number plate on record so that they can be compensated, and the vehicle is used.

There is no commercial activity in the city. The only business still open is the bakery.

The bread produced here is distributed free among the people.

Other food, which is mainly canned food from the stocks and from the humanitarian aid sent to Kobane, is distributed on certain days of the week as equally as possible.

Water is distributed by tankers. The local administration also distributes flour once every three days. Five households share a 50kg (110lb) sack of flour.

Those civilians who can provide voluntary help behind the frontline.

They repair vehicles, guns and generators, in a city that has had no electricity for the past 18 months.

They help doctors tend to the wounded, carry arms and ammunition to the frontline, cook for fighters and repair their clothes. [Continue reading…]

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Kobane official calls for more outside help to defeat ISIS

Rudaw reports: Anwar Muslim, president of the Syrian Kurdish canton of Kobane, appealed for more international support and weapons to defeat Islamic State militants.

He thanked the United States, which has air dropped weapons, and the Iraqi Peshmerga, who crossed the Turkish border into Kobane last Friday and where they appear to have helped to halt ISIS attacks.

Muslim, who travelled from Kobane to Erbil for a conference, said the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian Kurdish militia, now considered itself part of the international coalition battling ISIS.

The town of Kobane and the surrounding canton had been under pressure from ISIS for months with no outside assistance to its defenders. Thanks to US air support and Peshmerga reinforcements, the town has now held out for more than 50 days.

Some 30 per cent of the canton was now out of the control of ISIS, Muslim told the second day of the Middle East Research Institute conference.

“ISIS is a disease just like cancer,” he said. “We acknowledge the help of all international forces and the giving of weapons in particular.”

ISIS had to be “killed” because of its savagery and opposition to humanitarian values and he hailed the YPG as “heroes”.

The co-operation between the US and Peshmerga with the YPG of recent weeks marks a significant shift in Washington’s attitude towards a group previously ostracised because of its links to the Turkish Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), considered a terrorist organisation by Washington and Ankara.

The apparent political settlement or “marriage of convenience” between the US and the YPG could prove a model as Washington sought to create partnerships with other Syrian opposition groups, Max Hoffman of the Centre for American Progress, told the forum. [Continue reading…]

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Think helping to fight ISIS will get you off terrorist list? Think again

McClatchy reports: The role of Syrian Kurds in the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State has prompted calls for the removal of an affiliated Kurdish guerrilla group from the U.S. blacklist, bringing fresh scrutiny to a terrorist-designation process that some critics call arbitrary and outdated.

So far, the U.S. government’s response to the fighters of the Kurdish Workers Party, the PKK, could be summed up as: Thanks for the help, but you’re staying on the list.

Shedding a U.S. foreign terrorist designation is a long and complicated undertaking – a feat accomplished by just a handful of the dozens of groups that have landed on the list since its inception in 1997. A designation means that a group has earned the dubious label – and economic sanctions – of being named a “tier-one” foreign terrorist organization. Tier-two members are banned from entry to the United States; tier-three groups are undesignated but closely monitored.

Several organizations have languished on the State Department’s tier-one list even though they’re essentially defunct, with their leaders killed, jailed or engaged in peace talks with the governments they once attacked. Others on the 59-member list have been weakened but are still considered threatening. And, of course, there are the active, high-profile groups that in American minds are synonymous with terrorism: the Islamic State, al Qaida and Hezbollah, for example.

Those three, as well as the PKK, are among a half-dozen U.S.-designated groups now involved in the conflict over the Islamic State’s cross-border fiefdom. The battle is stirring up an unprecedented soup of militants, with five tier-one terrorist groups – both Sunni and Shiite Muslim – on the same side as the United States against the Islamic State, itself a designee. The Obama administration’s unsavory de facto partners against the Islamic State include the Lebanese militants of Hezbollah and the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al Qaida. [Continue reading…]

Since the Nusra Front was also targeted in the series of cruise missile strikes that marked the expansion into Syria of the U.S. war on ISIS, I think both they and the administration would dispute this claim that they have become de facto partners.

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U.S. backs Kurds on arms for Kobane, exposing more cracks in Turkey ties

Rudaw reports: In a clear sign of further cracks in US-Turkish ties, the US Department of State said Monday it backs Erbil’s move to send more arms to Kobane, the same day the Turkish president railed against too much international attention to the besieged Syrian-Kurdish town.

A group of 150 Peshmerga fighters from the Kurdistan Region are fighting alongside Syrian-Kurdish defenders who have resisted an overrun by the Islamic State, the jihadi group most commonly known as ISIS or ISIL.

“We support what they’re (Kurds) – their help in fighting back against ISIL in Kobane, yes,” said the US State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki, responding to a reporter’s question about whether the US supports the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) decision to resupply Kurdish fighters in Kobane.

Major general Karzan Shaqlawai of the Peshmerga Ministry told Rudaw that a new resupply convoy of arms was on its way to Kobane with weapons for the Peshmerga and Syrian People’s Protection Units (YPG). They said the convoy was going through Turkey.

Ajansa Nûçeyan a Firatê reports: YPG Commander Mahmud Berxwedan said after the peshmerga forces crossed into Kobanê they have acted like a single army, rather than in coordination. He added: “The peshmerga are endeavouring to carry out what is asked of them in a self-sacrificing way.” Mahmud Berxwedan said the peshmerga had carried out effective strikes against the ISIS gangs with the heavy weaponry they had brought with them.

Mahmud Berxwedan said that since the end of October the initiative had passed to the YPG forces and answered questions from the ANF regarding the arrival of the peshmerga, the situation of civilians and the latest state of the conflict. [Continue reading…]

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Kobanê resists ISIS — but Turkey still can’t get the Kurdish question right

By Cengiz Gunes, The Open University

The biggest new development in the ongoing conflict between the Kurds and Islamic State has been the growing co-operation between the Kurdish movements in Iraq and Syria – a phase change that forces to upend the whole question of Kurdish politics.

The link-up between Kurdish movements across borders has been a major security coup. It first paved the way for a US airdrop of weapons, ammunition and medical supplies on October 20, resources which were sent to defend the town of Kobanê, which has been under siege from IS for seven weeks. We’ve also seen the deployment of Iraqi-Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, armed with heavy weapons such as artillery and anti-tank missiles.

These events have run contrary to many analysts’ initial expectation that Kobanê’s fall to IS was a foregone conclusion – and the exemplary resistance of Kurdish forces has drawn the support of both the international coalition and the Peshmerga forces.

But winning the support of the international coalition is a major development for the Kurds’ entire political cause, not just for their fight against IS.

Previously, the US authorities rejected the idea of working with the Kurds in Syria at all, on the grounds that the main Kurdish political party in Syria – Democratic Union Party (PYD) – has links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is on the US’s list of terrorist organisations.

But the Kurds’ response was astute and effective – and has forced the US’s hand. The Syrian Kurdish political parties met in Duhok, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, to establish a joint administration for Syria’s Kurdish-controlled areas. The Kurds of Syria and Iraq knew that closer co-operation could make them an important force in the international fight against IS – which in turn is likely to increase their clout in regional politics in general.

But even with this new-found solidarity, any effort to properly integrate the Kurds into the existing regional power equation will have to clear significant hurdles.

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The Kurds’ lonely fight against ISIS

Der Spiegel reports: The headquarters of one the world’s mightiest terrorist organization is located in the mountains northeast of Erbil, Iraq. Or is it the nerve center of one of the Western world’s most crucial allies? It all depends on how one chooses to look at the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

All visits to the site in northern Iraq’s Qandil Mountains must first be authorized by PKK leaders, and the process is not immediate. But after days of waiting, our phone finally rings. “Get ready, we’re sending our driver,” the voice at the other end of the line says. He picks us up in the morning and silently drives us up the winding roads into the mountains. At one point, we pass the burned out remains of a car destroyed by Turkish bombs three years ago, killing the family inside. The wreckage has been left as a kind of memorial. The driver points to it and breaks his silence. “Erdogan has gone nuts,” he says.

Just behind the Kurdish autonomous government’s final checkpoint, the car rounds a bend in the road and suddenly Abdullah Öcalan’s iconic moustache appears, part of a giant mural made of colored stones on the opposite hillside. The machine-gun toting guards wear the same mustache. “Do you have a permit, colleagues?” they ask.

Officially, we’re in the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. Really, though, it is a PKK state. A region of 50 square kilometers (19 square miles) of rugged, mountainous territory, it provides a home for PKK leadership in addition to training camps for fighters. It also has its own police force and courts. The surrounding hillsides are idyllic with their pomegranate trees, flocks of sheep and small stone huts. But they are also dotted with Humvees, captured by the PKK from the Islamic State terrorist militia, which had stolen them from the Iraqi army.

It is here in the Qandil Mountains that PKK leaders coordinate their fight against Islamic State jihadists in the Syrian town of Kobani and in the Iraqi metropolis of Kirkuk in addition to the ongoing battle in the Sinjar Mountains. Turkey, some fear, could soon be added to the list. [Continue reading…]

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New Peshmerga convoy dispatched to Kobane today

Kurdish Question: The Kurdish forces have regained the control of four villages to the West of Kobane after an operation that lasted through the night.

Reports say that the YPG, Peshmerga and the FSA conducted the joint operation towards the early hours of this morning. The Peshmerga pummelled ISIS positions with mortar fire while the YPG and FSA forces clashed with ISIS.

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Iraq Peshmerga fighters arrive in Kobane

BBC News reports: Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have crossed the Turkish border to help defend the Syrian town of Kobane from Islamic State.

Sources inside the town told BBC Arabic the unit was heading to the frontline about 4km west of Kobane.

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Western fascination with ‘badass’ Kurdish women

Dilar Dirik writes: A young Kurdish woman called “Rehana” has garnered a great deal of media attention over the past few days, after reports emerged claiming that she had killed more than a hundred ISIL fighters – single-handedly. A picture of the smiling beauty, wearing combat gear and toting a rifle, is still making the rounds of social media. Even as Rehana’s circumstances remain uncorroborated, the overabundance of attention she has received raises several important questions. It adds to the plethora of reports out there glamorising the all-female Kurdish battalions taking on ISIL fighters, with little attention to the politics of these brave women.

Preoccupied with attempts to sensationalise the ways in which these women defy preconceived notions of eastern women as oppressed victims, these mainstream caricaturisations erroneously present Kurdish women fighters as a novel phenomenon. They cheapen a legitimate struggle by projecting their bizarre orientalist fantasies on it – and oversimplify the reasons motivating Kurdish women to join the fight. Nowadays, it seems to be appealing to portray women as sympathetic enemies of ISIL without raising questions about their ideologies and political aims.

At the same time, critics have accused the Kurdish leadership of exploiting these women for PR purposes – in an attempt to win over western public opinion. While there may be an element of truth to such charges in some cases, those same critics fail to appreciate the different political cultures that exist among the Kurdish people as a whole, scattered across Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. They also ignore the fact that Kurdish women have been engaging in armed resistance for decades without anyone’s notice. [Continue reading…]

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Peshmerga forces delayed in Turkey en route to fight ISIS in Kobane

The Guardian reports: Dozens of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been held up in Turkey en route to the Syrian border town of Kobani, where they will join the fight against Islamic State (Isis) militants.

The peshmerga command have not commented on the delay, but Turkish media cited an attack by Isis on Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters crossing into Kobani through the Mürsitpinar border gate as a reason for the delay. According to the newspaper Milliyet, three FSA members were wounded by Isis snipers on Wednesday. They are being treated at a Turkish hospital.

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Kobane gets reinforcements in fight against ISIS

Masoud Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, explains why they have only sent a small peshmerga force to Kobane:

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Turkish military blocks locals from joining Peshmerga mission to Kobane

Rudaw reports: The Turkish military is holding Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers seven kilometers from the Turkish border to Syria, delaying their mission in the besieged city of Kobane, Peshmerga officials told Rudaw.

A Peshmerga commander says his troops are in the town of Pirsus, guarded by Turkish military to prevent enthusiastic locals from joining the Iraqi Kurdish unit. The Iraqi Kurdish troops will provide artillery support to the Syrian Kurdish militia defending the city.

He declined to provide further details about the location and timing of their passage to Kobane, but confirmed that the Islamic State had intensified attacks in expectation of their arrival and the US-led coalition planned targeted airstrikes to facilitate a safe crossing.

They will be the first foreign soldiers to be dispatched to the Syrian Kurdish border town, which has been under siege by ISIS for more than 40 days. Local Kurdish fighters have held out with backing from US-led airstrikes.

This comes a day after the Free Syrian Army (FSA) said 200 its fighters had entered Kobane at the request of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian-Kurdish force that has been defending the city against an ISIS takeover. [Continue reading…]

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Iraqi Kurdish fighters cross Turkish border into Syria in battle against ISIS

The Guardian reports: Dozens of Iraqi Kurdish fighters have crossed the Turkish border to join fighters in Syria pushing back the attack by Islamic State (Isis) militants on the border town of Kobani.

More than 80 peshmerga fighters who arrived at the Sanliurfa airport in the early hours of the morning have reached Kobani.

The remaining 70 – who set off from Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, on Tuesday – are still on the road in Turkey, driving in a convoy carrying heavy artillery and weapons along with armoured vehicles and ambulances. They crossed from Iraq into Turkey at Habur on Wednesday morning where they were met by enthusiastic crowds and Turkish security forces. The convoy is expected to arrive in Syria later on Wednesday. [Continue reading…]

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Kurdish women in Kobane are fighting for the rights of women everywhere

Meysa Abdo, the commander of the YPG Kurdish resistance in Kobane (she is also known by the nom de guerre Narin Afrin) writes: Since Sept. 15, we, the people of the Syrian town of Kobani, have been fighting, outnumbered and outgunned, against an all-out assault by the army of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Yet despite a campaign that has intensified in the past month, including the deployment of United States-made tanks and armored vehicles, the Islamic State has not been able to break the resistance of Kobani’s fighters.

We are defending a democratic, secular society of Kurds, Arabs, Muslims and Christians who all face an imminent massacre.

Kobani’s resistance has mobilized our entire society, and many of its leaders, including myself, are women. Those of us on the front lines are well aware of the Islamic State’s treatment of women. We expect women around the world to help us, because we are fighting for the rights of women everywhere. We do not expect them to come to join our fight here (though we would be proud if any did). But we do ask women to promote our case and to raise awareness of our situation in their own countries, and to pressure their governments to help us.

We are thankful to the coalition for its intensified airstrikes against Islamic State positions, which have been instrumental in limiting the ability of our enemies to use tanks and heavy artillery. But we had been fighting without any logistical assistance from the outside world until the limited coalition airdrops of weapons and supplies on Oct. 20. Airdrops of supplies should continue, so that we do not run out of ammunition.

None of that changes the reality that our weapons still cannot match those of the Islamic State. [Continue reading…]

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How the Left abandoned the Kurds by getting stuck up its anti-imperialist cul-de-sac

Yasin Sunca writes: One can simply put hundreds of reasons as to why the left has to oppose and react against the ISIS and what they have been doing to innocent people throughout last two years. However, those who are supposed to speak out against the ISIS, primarily the left wing parties and organisations, have simply failed to come up with a comprehensive approach, are even devoid of understanding what is going on exactly and, unfortunately for them, are stuck in the orthodox interpretation of socialism against imperialism. They have once again stuck to the marginal track to blame their respective governments as imperialist, which in fact, means almost nothing, either for the government or for the society.

In the specific case of the ongoing resistance of the Kurds in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) the Popular Protection Units (YPG) have been resisting against both the brutal attacks of the jihadists and the military aggressions of the Syrian regime. The Kurds have not opted for cooperation either with the regime or the mainstream opposition groups due to very convincing and understandable reasons. The regime has been oppressing the Kurds, among others, for a very long time and therefore, it was impossible for the Kurds to go along with the regime politically. However, facing political and military difficulties in the context of the ongoing war, the regime decided to focus on the strategic areas in their war with the opposition groups and intelligibly, have not carried out heavy military offensives against the Kurdish self-declared cantons, compared to other regions of the country. Furthermore, the declaration of the Kurdish cantons in Rojava would pose certain problems to Turkey which has been amongst the most vocally critical countries of the Syrian regime. Thus, we can talk about a political convergence between the regime and the Kurds rather than a strategically motivated agreement. Besides, the Kurds could not have cooperated with the mainline Syrian opposition because of two core issues. The first, the Arab opposition have not recognised any collective rights of the Kurds and postponed all Kurdish demands to a probable post-Assad period. The second, the Arab opposition did not have a clear agenda for the future of Syria. The question such as whether it would be a new dictatorship or a democracy has not a clear and convincing answer and the Kurds remained sceptical about the will of the opposition in relation to democratisation.

Taking all this background into account, the Kurds opted for a third line policy and started to build their cantons with a new democratic understanding, inclusive of all the different factions of the population. The Kurdish cantons have never carried out any offensives against any group unless a military attack was the case. The current resistance of the Kobane canton is due to the brutal attack of the jihadist ISIS and it is a war of self-defence. The Kurds are carrying out a socialist experiment in the Middle-East, one of the most challenging regions of the world, and the international left is equally responsible for the protection of this emerging socialist hope. This experiment needs the unconditional support of the socialists of the world and internationalist solidarity. (For those who are interested in the new model in Rojava here is an article, available online: http://roarmag.org/2014/07/rojava-autonomy-syrian-kurds/)

However, the left wing parties and groups in Europe are far from understanding what is going on exactly in Kurdistan and in Kobane, nor do they have any plans to understand the ideological background of the Rojava Cantons. They have to admit that they were unable to understand the third line policy and, just like the mainstream media have been doing, positioned the Kurds together with the Assad regime despite the fact that the Kurds clearly declaring and practically manifesting a billion times that they are an opposition group. They kept on blaming the Kurds to be the proxy of the regime. Besides, some other groups adopted a restrictive approach and claimed that if the Kurds are not with Bashar al-Assad then they have to be with the opposition. Yet one should remind people of the fact that being against the regime doesn’t automatically mean accepting all analyses and projections of the mainline opposition in Syria. Moreover, the mainline opposition in Syria is also supported by “imperialists” against the regime. So, the Kurds clearly understood the right place to stand was a third line. [Continue reading…]

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‘Rehana is alive and well… ISIS fanatics have NOT beheaded her’

The Daily Mail reports: The female Kurdish fighter who became a poster girl for the Kobane resistance before allegedly being beheaded by Islamic State militants is actually alive and well, it was claimed today.

The woman, known by the pseudonym Rehana, was celebrated as a symbol of hope for the besieged Syrian border city after an image of her making a peace sign was retweeted over 5,000 times.

That picture was followed days later by a gruesome photograph of an ISIS terrorist holding the severed head of a young woman, sparking rumours that Rehana had been savagely murdered.

This is one of those moments when it remains to be seen whether the collective intelligence of the users of social media will be able to rise to the occasion.

That Rehana is alive — if this is true — is of course good news. But the photos of an ISIS fighter holding aloft the head of a Kurdish young woman fighter were most likely authentic — that young woman simply happened not to be one who had previously been turned into a “poster girl.”

Let’s not forget that the life as the unknown soldier is worth no less than that of the social-media celebrity.

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Peshmerga on route to Kobane

Rudaw reports: Peshmerga from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq will arrive in Kobane in the early hours of Wednesday to help defenders of the Syrian border town fight off an Islamic State assault that has lasted more than 40 days, according to informed sources.

Part of the 150-strong Peshmerga artillery force were flying from Erbil to Turkey, from where they will cross to Kobane. Others will travel by road, accompanying trucks, guns, and other heavy weapons with which they hope to help defeat the ISIS siege.

The deployment of the Kurdish soldiers comes after being delayed for two days of negotiations with Turkey, through whose territory they must pass to reach Kobane, which lies just across the Turkish frontier.

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ISIS promotes hostage John Cantlie as its embedded reporter in Kobane

The Washington Post reports: In a remarkable new video released by the Islamic State militants, British hostage John Cantlie gives a tour of the Syrian city of Kobane and denounces Western coverage of the fighting in the city.

(Note: Our video team believes the first segment of may have been doctored.)

Cantlie, a photographer and journalist who was taken hostage in late 2012, has appeared in a number of propaganda videos for the Islamic State in recent months, usually in an orange jumpsuit in front of a plain black screen. However, the new video, released Monday via social media accounts linked to the Islamic State, appears markedly more professional than the previous ones. Notably, it appears to show Cantlie walking outside and animatedly discussing recent events.

The video also takes aim at a different target: Although previous videos appeared designed to criticize Western military action against the Islamic State, this time the main target appears to be Western media and their coverage of the situation in Kobane, where the Islamic State has battled for control against Kurdish militias. [Continue reading…]

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