Category Archives: PKK

In Syria, the weakness of ISIS and U.S. strategy on display

The Washington Post reports: The unexpected rout of Islamic State forces across a wide arc of territory in their northeastern Syria heartland has exposed vulnerabilities in the ranks of the militants — and also the limits of the U.S.-led strategy devised to confront them.

Islamic State fighters have been driven out of a third of their flagship province of Raqqa in recent weeks by a Kurdish-led force that has emerged as one of the most effective American partners in the war. The offensive, backed by U.S. airstrikes, has deprived the militants of control of their most important border crossing with Turkey and forced them onto the defensive in their self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa city, something that would have been unthinkable as recently as a month ago.

The advance has shifted the focus of the fight from Iraq to Syria for the first time in months. A blitz of 18 coalition airstrikes against Raqqa over the weekend took out bridges and roads used by the Islamic State to move supplies to battlefronts elsewhere. The air attack was one of the most intense in Syria, according to a Pentagon statement and activists in Raqqa.

On Monday, President Obama cited the recent gains in Syria as evidence of progress. “When we have an effective partner on the ground, ISIL can be pushed back,” he said in Washington after the Pentagon briefed him on the status of the war.

“ISIL’s strategic weaknesses are real,” he added, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

But the absence of reliable local forces to press the fight deeper into the Islamic State’s home turf has revealed the weakness of the U.S. strategy, analysts say. And rising tensions between Arabs in the area and their purported Kurdish liberators risk jeopardizing the gains.

The offensive is taking Kurdish forces far beyond traditionally Kurdish territory and into areas where Syrian Arabs are in the majority, drawing allegations from Syrians and also the Turkish government that the Kurds are taking advantage of the U.S.-led air war to carve out a Kurdish state.

The Syrian opposition has accused the Kurds of driving Arabs from their villages to consolidate their control. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey plans to invade Syria, but to stop the Kurds, not ISIS

The Daily Beast reports: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning a military intervention into northern Syria to prevent Syrian Kurds from forming their own state there, despite concerns among his own generals and possible criticism from Washington and other NATO allies, according to reports in both pro- and anti-government media.

In a speech last Friday, Erdogan vowed that Turkey would not accept a move by Syrian Kurds to set up their own state in Syria following gains by Kurdish fighters against the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, in recent weeks. “I am saying this to the whole world: We will never allow the establishment of a state on our southern border in the north of Syria,” Erdogan said. “We will continue our fight in that respect whatever the cost may be.” He accused Syrian Kurds of ethnic cleansing in Syrian areas under their control.

Following the speech, several news outlets reported that the president and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had decided to send the Turkish army into Syria, a hugely significant move by NATO’s second biggest fighting force after the U.S. military. Both the daily Yeni Safak, a mouthpiece of the government, and the newspaper Sozcu, which is among Erdogan’s fiercest critics, ran stories saying the Turkish Army had received orders to send soldiers over the border. Several other media had similar stories, all quoting unnamed sources in Ankara. There has been no official confirmation or denial by the government. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS strikes back

Michael Weiss writes: ISIS last week committed one of the worst massacre of civilians since its so-called “caliphate” was established a year ago. Around 30 jihadists infiltrated the Syrian border town of Kobani, set off car bombs and waged gunfire attacks, killing at least 206 civilians, including women, children and the elderly.

Kobani, you’ll recall, was the site of one of the most intense sieges of the coalition’s war against ISIS; it lasted six months, it required American warplanes dropping thousands of pounds of ordnance, and it transformed the town into a virtually uninhabitable pile of rubble and ruin by the time ISIS was routed.

The jihadists’ return was therefore as demoralizing as it was deadly. But it had another motive, too: the old military strategy of divide and conquer. The ISIS attack was at least partially designed to exacerbate lingering sectarian tensions between the Arabs and Kurds who have lately been on an unimpeded sweep across eastern Syria, delivering defeat after defeat to the army of terror. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey will ‘never allow’ Kurdish state in Syria warns Erdogan

AFP reports: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey will never allow the establishment of a Kurdish state in Syria after major gains by Kurdish fighters.

In a strong-worded warning late on Friday, Erdogan accused the Kurds of ethnically cleaning other communities from land they have taken after pushing back Islamic State forces from the Turkish border.

“I say to the international community that whatever price must be paid, we will never allow the establishment of a new state on our southern frontier in the north of Syria,” Erdogan was quoted by Turkish media as telling guests at a dinner to break the Ramadan fast. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian Kurds, on offensive, seize military base from ISIS

Reuters reports: Kurdish-led forces said on Monday that they had captured a military base from Islamic State in Syria’s Raqqa province, advancing deeper into territory held by the group and showing new momentum after they seized a border crossing from the jihadists last week.

The Kurds, aided by U.S.-led air strikes and smaller Syrian rebel groups, pushed on Monday to within 7 km (4 miles) of Ain Issa, a town 50 km (30 miles) north of Islamic State’s de facto capital Raqqa city, said Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the Kurdish forces.

“They have been defeated,” YPG spokesman Redur Xelil told Reuters.

Islamic State had held the military base, Liwa 93, southwest of Ain Issa, since capturing it from the Syrian military last year. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS routed from stronghold

The Washington Post reports: The Islamic State was routed Monday from one of its key strongholds on Syria’s border with Turkey after its defenses crumbled and its fighters either defected or fled, raising new questions about the group’s vaunted military capabilities.

The fall of the town of Tal Abyad to a Kurdish-Syrian rebel force backed by U.S. airstrikes came after just two days of fighting during which the militants appeared to put up little resistance, focusing instead on escaping to their nearby self-styled capital of Raqqa or fleeing across the border to Turkey.

The force — led by Kurdish units of the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, and including local battalions of the rebel Free Syrian Army — pulled the Islamic State flag down from the border crossing with Turkey on Monday and by nightfall said it was in control of the town center.

There were reports of scattered fighting on the western outskirts of Tal Abyad, but the advancing force had already severed the militants’ escape route, closing in on the town Sunday in a pincer movement from the east, south and west.

It appeared the Islamic State had suffered a stunning defeat, its first major reversal since it was driven out of the Iraqi city of Tikrit in April, and one that could prove far more consequential. Tal Abyad commands the major trade and smuggling routes on which the Islamic State has relied for its supplies from the outside world and, most significant, the flow of foreign fighters to Raqqa, the first major city it conquered. [Continue reading…]

Cale Salih writes: The capture of the strategic northern border town of Tal Abyad from Islamic State (IS) is the latest in a string of gains by the dominant Kurdish militia in Syria, the YPG, and its political branch, the PYD, across the north of the country since 2011.

Last October, their fighters grabbed world attention when they drove IS out of Kobane, another border town further east.

Now, the YPG, working with some Free Syrian Army-aligned rebels, and backed by US-led coalition air strikes, have taken control of Tal Abyad, with its ethnically mixed population, that had been held by IS since last year.

The YPG’s victory in Kobane was symbolically significant, but Tal Abyad offers far more strategic value.

Long-term control of Tal Abyad would further the YPG’s goal of connecting the non-contiguous zones of territory it holds across northern Syria, which it organises into three “cantons”: Afrin (north-west of Aleppo); Kobane (west of Tal Abyad); and al-Jazira (north-east Hasakeh province). [Continue reading…]

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ISIS’s scorched earth policy in Kobane

Massoud Hamed reports: Massive fires broke out In early June in the agricultural areas of this Kurdish-majority city, affecting wheat and barley crops and fruit trees. The Islamic State (IS) used heavy weaponry to target these areas following its late January defeat in Kobani at the hands of Kurdish forces and the international coalition.

Setting these fertile lands ablaze is one of the attempts by IS to intimidate the citizens who returned to Kobani after the group’s departure from the city.

“IS emptied the Kobani countryside and Tell Abyad of its original Kurdish residents through a systematic policy that has been applied since the beginning of the attack on these Kurdish cities in 2013,” Zara Misto, editor-in-chief of Welati Net and its office director in Kobani, told Al-Monitor. “This was done either through military tactics that converted the countryside into a military zone or through burning crops. Six thousand Kurdish families have been displaced from these areas. After the defeat of IS in Kobani and until now, the group’s bomb attacks and fires in many villages have hindered the return of residents to their towns. IS is even rigging children’s toys with explosives, resulting in only a very small number of residents returning — about 10% [of those who left]. This is because the return of residents and life to Kobani is akin to a monumental defeat to this terrorist organization.” [Continue reading…]

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Kurds advance against ISIS in northeastern Syria

Reuters: Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-led air strikes are pressing an attack on Islamic State in northeastern Syria that has killed at least 170 members of the jihadist group this week, a Kurdish official and a monitoring group said on Wednesday.

The official said Kurdish YPG fighters and allied militia have encircled Islamic State militants in a dozen villages near the town of Tel Tamr in Hasaka province. The region is important in the battle against Islamic State because it borders land controlled by the jihadists in Iraq.

The Kurdish YPG appear to be trying to drive Islamic State from a stronghold in the mountainous Jabal Abdul Aziz area to the southwest of Tel Tamr, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

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U.S. strike in Syria blamed for scores of deaths linked to Arab-Kurd rivalry

McClatchy reports: Scores of Arab villagers died in airstrikes Thursday in northeast Syria, and local media activists charged Saturday that the U.S.-led coalition was responsible.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britian-based group that monitors violence in Syria, said 55 villagers died in what it condemned as a “massacre committed by the U.S.-led coalition under the pretext of targeting the Islamic State.”

McClatchy obtained a list with the names of 10 families that reportedly had lost 64 members in the strike.

And the Syrian Opposition Coalition, the Istanbul-based group once recognized by the United States as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, said the information it had received lent “credence to reports that it was a U.S.-led coalition strike that caused the civilian casualties.”

The U.S. Central Command could not immediately confirm that Bir Mahalli, which lies about 33 miles south of Kobani, had been targeted for airstrikes Thursday. A statement from Centcom said U.S. aircraft struck six targets between 8 a.m. Thursday and 8 a.m. Friday “near Kobani” – a description that previous reporting has shown could include a location 30 miles or more distant.

The reported deaths of the villagers also embroiled the United States in Syria’s fierce ethnic rivalries, with activists pointing out that the fishing and farming village of about 4,000 Arabs has had tense relations with Kurds living nearby – especially with the Kurdish “People’s Protection Units” or YPG.

The Obama administration cooperated with the YPG in defense of Kobani, which Arabs call Ein al Arab, and there have been reports that the U.S.-led coalition continues to work with the YPG in the fight against the Islamic State.

But the activists said the YPG also is capturing villages inhabited by Arabs in an effort to pressure them to flee the area and has falsely accused Arabs in the area of supporting the Islamic State.

An activist from the area said local villagers were certain that the attack was by coalition aircraft because of the sound of the planes and the kind of bombs deployed. The activist, who spoke to McClatchy by Skype on condition of anonymity out of fear of both the YPG and the Islamic State, said the coalition may have received flawed intelligence about the target from its allies on the ground, a reference to YPG forces. [Continue reading…]

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Kobane still a ghost town, months after liberation from ISIS

The Associated Press reports: The battle for the Syrian border town of Kobani was a watershed in the war against the Islamic State group – Syrian Kurdish forces fought the militants in rubble-strewn streets for months as U.S. aircraft pounded the extremists from the skies until ultimately expelling them from the town earlier this year.

It was the Islamic State’s bloodiest defeat to date in Syria. But now, three months since Kobani was liberated, tens of thousands of its residents are still stranded in Turkey, reluctant to return to a wasteland of collapsed buildings and at a loss as to how and where to rebuild their lives.

The Kurdish town on the Turkish-Syrian border is still a haunting, apocalyptic vista of hollowed out facades and streets littered with unexploded ordnance – a testimony to the massive price that came with the victory over IS.

There is no electricity or clean water, nor any immediate plans to restore basic services and start rebuilding.

While grateful for the U.S. airstrikes that helped turn the tide in favor of the Kobani fighters and drive out IS militants, residents say their wretched situation underscores the lack of any serious follow-up by the international community in its war against IS. [Continue reading…]

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Turkish army clashes with PKK

Fehim Taştekin writes: Guns had fallen silent thanks to a de facto cease-fire and the peace process had been moving along, if not at desired pace. The country was preparing for general elections when clashes broke out between the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) at Agri, a province near the border with Iran. Suddenly, Turkey found itself experiencing terror and chaos. The clashes in Agri followed warnings that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) might resort to provocation as it tries to set up a presidential system and ensure that the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP) does not cross the 10% electoral threshold.

Mayhem ensued. Even before the clashes ended, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the HDP of politicking under the shadow of guns. HDP Co-chair Selahattin Demirtas accused the AKP of panicking over unfavorable opinion polls, saying, “What happened at Agri was a pre-planned provocation.”

What was the incident that amplified political tensions so much?

According to the government version, in the village of Yukaritufek of Diyadin township in Agri province, PKK members organized a spring festival. The government received intelligence that the terror outfit would use the occasion to spread propaganda and pressure people to vote for the HDP in coming elections. The governor of Agri instructed the provincial gendarmerie command to send a special forces detachment of 15 soldiers to the location. It was reported that terrorists opened rifle fire on soldiers deployed near the village. After 12 hours of combat, the TSK announced that four soldiers had been wounded, five PKK members had been killed and one had been captured. [Continue reading…]

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Kurdish fighter, Viyan Peyman, killed fighting ISIS


(Click “CC” for English subtitles.)

Viyan Peyman, a Kurdish woman fighter with the YPG/YPJ featured in an NBC News report from Kobane in November. This week she was killed in a battle with ISIS near Serekaniye, a town also known as Ras al-Ayn, in northern Syria.

Richard Engel writes: When I saw her lying on her stomach firing through a small hole in a wall in a snipers nest in the town of Kobani in northern Syria, I remember thinking she was one of the strongest and most dynamic women I’d ever met in the Middle East. Sitting among sandbags, the smell of spent rounds hanging in the room, Viyan Peyman told us she was fighting ISIS, but also for women’s rights in the Middle East.

“We stand and fight, especially here in the Middle East where women are treated as inferiors,” Peyman told us. “We stand here as symbols of strength for all the women of the region.”

Peyman wasn’t just a fighter. She was a poet and a singer, a voice of her movement. She sang a song for us about her fallen comrades from the YPG/YPJ, secular Kurdish groups battling ISIS in Syria and demanding greater rights for the Kurdish people.

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U.S. military sidesteps red tape to coordinate with PKK

The Daily Beast reports: On the volatile front lines facing the so-called Islamic State outside the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, American military personnel have been coordinating with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), according to a local commander from the left-wing guerrilla group that is still on the U.S. State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Ageed Kalary commands a unit of about 30 PKK fighters positioned some 500 meters from the front. He claims that he has met with U.S. military personnel accompanying commanders from Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government, whose soldiers are known as the Peshmerga, and which has strong, open American support. The last direct encounter, he said, was in December. But the coordination does not have to be face to face.

“The Americans tell us what they need and share information but there is no formal agreement,” he says about the U.S. military’s interaction with a group that earned its “terrorist” label for the tactics it employed in its 29-year armed struggle against Turkish rule. [Continue reading…]

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Öcalan calls on PKK to convene conference on laying down arms

Today’s Zaman reports: The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (pkk) calls on the outlawed group to convene a conference in spring on laying down its arms, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (hdp) announced on Saturday, in a landmark step towards ending the PKK’s 30-year-old armed campaign.

“I invite the PKK to convene an extraordinary congress in spring months to make the strategic and historic decision on the basis of ending the armed struggle,” HDP’s Sırrı Süreyya Önder quoted Öcalan as saying at a joint news conference with Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan and Interior Minister Efkan Ala in İstanbul. Two other HDP lawmakers, Pervin Buldan and İdris Balüken, also attended the conference, which followed a 45-minute meeting between the HDP delegation and Akdoğan and Ala.

“We call on all democratic parties to support this democratic solution,” Önder said, asserting that Turkey is “closer than ever to peace.”

“We have reached an important point in the settlement process,” Akdoğan told the same conference. He said the democratic progression will gather momentum once arms are left aside. [Continue reading…]

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The implications of Turkey’s withdrawal from Suleyman Shah in Syria

Aaron Stein and Michael Stephens write: Just days after finalizing an agreement to train a new rebel force inside Turkey to attack the Islamic State, Turkish forces moved into Syria to evacuate some 40 soldiers protecting the Suleyman Shah Tomb: a small Turkish enclave on the eastern bank of the Euphrates river, 30 kilometers from the Turkish border town of Karkamis. The operation included 39 tanks, 57 armored vehicles, and an estimated 572 military personnel. The soldiers removed the body of Suleyman Shah and transported his remains to an area just opposite the Turkish town of Esmeler.

In their analysis of the operation, Stein and Stephens come to these conclusions:

It is important to put this operation into perspective: Ankara launched a limited incursion to evacuate a tomb that had come under threat. The coalition, the Kurds, and the FSA did much of the heavy lifting. Turkey, however, has proven yet again that its role in the Syrian conflict must not be overlooked. It has links to all the main actors operating in northern Syria and is able to generally get its way with most of them, albeit with the occasional disagreement.

The biggest change appears to be Ankara’s approach to ISIS. Since 2013, Turkey had treated ISIS as an irritant, rather than a major security threat, but the Suleyman Shah operation is the clearest sign to date that this approach is changing. However, it is far too early to determine whether this will result in Turkey changing its approach to the coalition’s military operations. All signs indicate that Turkey will not agree to increase its role in the coalition by opening up Incirlik Air Force base for armed strikes, or by allowing its planes to bomb ISIS directly.

Turkey’s role will remain limited to the train and equip, intelligence sharing, and border enforcement, rather than engaging ISIS from the air. In fact one must consider that now that the potential embarrassment of an ISIS takeover of the Tomb has been avoided, Turkey will take a more relaxed stance to events south of its border, and it is unlikely that another Turkish military incursion will be repeated. It is more likely that Turkey will continue with the policy it has pursued thus far: border defense at airports, increased military deployments along certain areas of the border, and the training of the new rebel brigade with US assistance. This signals one key change: Turkey is now attacking ISIS through the use of proxies, which Ankara had previously rejected, in favor of focusing on Assad.

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Anti-ISIS forces advance towards Raqqa stronghold

Reuters: Kurdish forces backed by Syrian insurgent groups took control of a hill inside the provincial stronghold of the militant Islamic State group on Sunday after deadly clashes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Kurdish forces, supported by U.S.-led air strikes, drove Islamic State fighters from the town of Kobani last month near the Turkish border and have pushed them back from surrounding villages in northern Syria. Islamic State still holds tracts of land across northern and eastern Syria and into Iraq.

Now the Kurds and other local fighters who oppose Islamic State have taken a hill south of Kobani which lies within Raqqa province – the stronghold of the al Qaeda offshoot in Syria, said the Observatory, which tracks the conflict through sources on the ground.

“It is the first time they get into Raqqa,” the Observatory’s founder Rami Abdulrahman said. He added that at least 35 Islamic State fighters and four members of the Kurdish forces had been killed on Sunday in battles near Kobani, which were the heaviest since the Kurds took back the town.

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Why the victory in Kobane matters

Aron Lund writes: It is true that Kobane has been turned into a city of ruins. And enemies of the Islamic State should not get carried away by what happened there, because the success in Kobane will not be easy to repeat elsewhere.

Even though the YPG has proven itself a strong fighting force and a useful on-the-ground partner for the U.S. Air Force, it is at heart an ethnic self-defense militia — not an all-purpose tool for Western intervention in the Syrian war. The YPG’s effectiveness as an offensive force beyond Kobane will be sharply limited by Turkey’s hostility and refusal to provide aid across the border.

In addition, the secular-leftist YPG’s poor relations with most of the surrounding Arab countryside and the Sunni-Islamist mainstream of the Arab opposition make it singularly ill-suited to lead an advance deeper into Syria.

Even as Kurdish refugees are beginning to trickle back into Kobane, there are reports of Arab civilians fleeing the YPG’s advance further south. Many are just trying to get out of the way of the war, but some surely fear that the victorious Kurds will now avenge themselves on Arab villages and families suspected of harboring pro-jihadi sympathies. That’s exactly what is now happening in northern Iraq, where the Islamic State had recruited local Sunni forces in a campaign of genocidal violence against the Yazidi religious minority. Having beaten back the jihadis, some Yazidis are now returning to loot and burn Sunni villages.

The Islamic State is of course exploiting Arab-Kurdish tension around Kobane as well, in the hope of rallying Arab locals to its side. The jihadis are said to have ordered military-age Arab males in the area to stay and help them defend their villages against the YPG, while allowing women and children to flee south to Raqqa. The deeper the YPG pushes into Arab territory, the uglier the ethnic warfare is likely to get.

Well aware of these limitations, the YPG leaders will certainly want to reclaim the rest of the Kurdish territory lost in September. If they succeed, they will perhaps also try to carve out a bit of a buffer zone to further fortify the enclave. But then, they’re in all likelihood just going to dig down and seek to rebuild Kobane. [Continue reading…]

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Syria’s Kurds celebrate after winning Kobane, but self-rule far off

Reuters reports: Kurds are celebrating after flushing Islamic State militants out of the town of Kobani, but victory is not yet certain in their campaign to cement hard-won autonomy in northern Syria.

Hundreds of U.S.-led coalition air strikes have devastated the town, which is adrift in an Islamic State-controlled sea. Objections to autonomy from neighboring Turkey and the United States could also make it hard for them to sustain their gains.

The retaking by People’s Protection Units (YPG) last week of predominantly Kurdish Kobani after a four-month siege by Islamic State was a major defeat for the Sunni fundamentalist group that controls a 20,000-square mile arc of Syria and Iraq.

For the Kurds, it is a bittersweet victory, as almost 200,000 people, almost the entire population of Kobani province, are still sheltering in Turkey.

But many were still exuberant. Dozens of men waiting at the Turkish crossing to return to Kobani late last week shouted and danced for joy, unfazed by the wrecked city looming behind them.

Most of Kobani is destroyed, with unexploded shells and twisted hunks of cars strewn along the streets. [Continue reading…]

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