Category Archives: YPG

The impact of airstrikes on the battle for Kobane

The Telegraph reports: The first signs that things could change came when planes appeared in the sky, circling for hours, but not attacking. The first strikes came on October 7 when US-made vehicles driven by Isil fighters to resupply the city were hit outside the town.

Scorched metal skeletons were all that remained of the jihadist’s prized Humvees.

“We had a walkie-talkie tuned on the Isil radio system, that we had taken from a jihadist that we killed,” said Mr Kharaba.

“When the first air strikes hit, we heard them on the radio screaming in panic.

“They were shouting ’Allah Akbhar’ (God is great) and listing the leaders who were killed: Abu Anas, Abu Hamza and many others.” Within a week, the air strikes had escalated from a few every day, to several every hour and by Tuesday the US and allies launched 21 air strikes on Isil positions in and around Kobane.

They bombed Tel Shair, a hill at the edge of Kobani, from which Isil had boastfully erected its black flag, and which it had used as a position to shell the town from.

Kurdish forces stormed the hill after the air strikes and cleaned it of their enemy.

“After we took the hill, I knew that Isil was on the back foot,” said Mr Kharaba.

“I knew it would be hard for them to keep Kobane.” The next day the strikes were hitting inside Kobane itself and the tide began to turn.

Pilots overhead grew in confidence and began to strike positions in the centre of Kobane, hitting Isil on their front lines.

Mr Kharaba described to the Telegraph being just metres from the air strike’s targets, and knowing he was safe: “They are incredibly accurate. If the Americans wanted to put a rocket in someone’s eye, even from hundreds of meters in the air, they could.”

The Syrian rebels and their Kurdish allies claimed they worked closely with the US planners to help set up the coordinates for the laser guided bombs.

Idris Nassan, 40, a senior spokesman for the Kurdish fighters told the Telegraph: “There is close co-ordination. We have a member of YPG who works directly with the Americans.”

Officially, the US government has shied away from directly admitting coordinating its attacks through the YPG, whose affiliate, the PKK, is on America’s terrorist list.

But John Allen, the US special envoy in charge of building the international coalition against Islamic State, admitted that Washington was open to receiving information on targets from all sources.

“Obviously, information comes in from all different sources associated with providing local information or potentially targeting information.

“And we’ll take it all when it comes in. It’s ultimately evaluated for its value,” Allen told reporters in Washington.

One fighter who asked not to be named recalled a battle on the eastern front of Kobane where his men were about to be forced into a retreat: “We called a Kurdish commander for help. He told us to move back a few meters. Then, minutes after, an air strike hit the men we had been fighting.”

The results have been increasingly effective. [Continue reading…]

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Fiercest fighting in days hits Kobane

Reuters reports: The fiercest fighting in days shook the Syrian border town of Kobani overnight as Islamic State fighters attacked Kurdish defenders with mortars and car bombs, sources in the town and a monitoring group said on Sunday.

Islamic State, which controls much of Syria and Iraq, fired 44 mortars at Kurdish parts of the town on Saturday and some of the shells fell inside nearby Turkey, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It said four more mortars were fired on Sunday. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian Kurds say U.S. discussing arms supplies in direct talks

Rudaw reports: US officials have been holding direct talks with leaders of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) about arming its fighters in the war against the Islamic State (ISIS).

PYD spokesman Nawaf Xelil told the Arabic Asharq Al-Awsat daily that arms supplies for the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the group’s military wing, were discussed at a meeting in Paris a week ago. He said that talks between the two sides continued in Duhok on Thursday.

“The subject of arming Syrian Kurds was discussed” the newspaper quoted Xelil as saying.

He added that at the Duhok meeting, a US delegation and PYD leaders had discussed Western and Arab support for the YPG.

“They spoke about sending military support to the Kurds in Kobane,” Xelil told Asharq Al-Awsat. He said the PYD and the US had started their talks two years ago but that Washington had kept the issue under the radar “in order not to upset Turkey.”

US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki confirmed Thursday that US officials had met with the PYD, but did not say where or what was discussed. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his country would not agree to any U.S. arms transfers to Kurdish fighters battling Islamic militants in Syria.

Turkey views the Kurdish fighters as an extension of the PKK, which has waged a 30-year insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terrorist group.

The state-run Anadolu news agency on Sunday quoted Erdogan as saying the fighters are “equal to the PKK” and that Turkey “would not say ‘yes’ to such a thing.”

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U.S. officials in contact with Syrian Kurds ‘for more than two years’ says PYD spokesman

Asharq Al-Awsat reports: Representatives from the main Syrian wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have been in contact with US officials “for more than two years,” an official spokesperson told Asharq Al-Awsat, adding that the talks had been kept secret by Washington to “avoid angering Turkey,” where the PKK is currently banned.

Despite the fact the PKK is also designated as a terrorist organization by the US and EU, Nawaf Khalil, the spokesperson for the PKK affiliate, the Kurdish–Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD), said this coordination had also included face-to-face meetings, some of which had involved former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford.

The most recent of such meetings, he said, took place on October 12 in Paris between PYD leader Salih Muslim Muhammad and US State Department Special Envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein to “discuss implementing military coordination between the People’s Protection Units [YPG, the armed wing of the PYD] and the joint Arab–international coalition against terrorism,” as well as supplying Kurdish fighters engaged in fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the Syrian border town of Kobani with weapons.

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The meaning of Kobane

Henri J Barkey writes: The Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani has been under a relentless siege by the Islamic State (IS) for the past few weeks. Surprisingly its defenders have endured, defying the long odds. Whether it falls or survives, Kobani is likely to become for Syrian and Turkish Kurds what Halabja became for Iraqi Kurds in 1988: a defining moment of nationhood and identity.

Halabja helped propel and shape the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq, now called the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). In 1988, in the midst of the genocidal Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on the sleepy Iraqi Kurdish town near the Iranian border, killing some 5,000, mostly civilians. Unnoticed at the time, Halabja became for much of the world a symbol of the larger campaign of mass extermination against the Kurds, as well as a quintessential example of a crime against humanity.

For the Kurds, it marked yet another time the world stood by and watched silently; theirs was an inconvenient predicament, a sacrifice at the altar of grander strategic purposes. Saddam Hussein enjoyed the support of the West precisely because he was locked in a duel with Iran, then a larger threat.

Fast forward to today: Until the U.S. Air Force began a systematic bombing campaign against IS positions around Kobani, the city had been left largely to fend for itself. Skittish and worried about Turkey’s reaction to support for Syrian Kurds, the Obama Administration initially hesitated but then committed itself to bombing the besieging IS forces after they had penetrated the city’s outer defenses.

Kobani will have two different effects on the region. First and foremost, it will be an important marker in the construction and consolidation of Kurdish nationhood. The exploits of Kobani’s defenders are quickly joining the lore of Kurdish fighting prowess. After all, the Iraqi Kurdish forces, not to mention the Iraqi army, folded in the face of a determined IS onslaught only a couple of months ago. The longer the city resists, the greater will be the reputational impact (although it is already assuming mythic proportions).

There is another, rather unique aspect of the resistance that is adding to its mythic character: the role of women in the fight. The juxtaposition of an Islamic State, which enslaves women or covers them from head to toe, with the Syrian Kurds’ Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has large numbers of women fighting and dying alongside men, is particularly striking. Social and other media outlets have brimmed with stories of the heroism and sacrifice of these women. The fighting in Kobani, and especially the emergence of women fighters, has now entered the Kurdish lore and imagination. [Continue reading…]

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‘Kobane battle far from over’ says defense chief

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U.S.-led coalition jets strike Kobane, ISIS shells hit Turkey

Reuters reports: U.S.-led coalition jets pounded suspected Islamic State targets at least six times in the besieged Syrian town of Kobani on Saturday after the fiercest shelling in days by the insurgents shook the town’s center and hit border areas within Turkey.

Shelling continued after the strikes hit the center of Kobani. Several mortars fell inside Turkey near the border gate, called Mursitpinar, according to witnesses.

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In policy shift, U.S. opens direct talks with Syrian Kurds linked to the PKK

McClatchy reports: The Obama administration acknowledged Thursday that a U.S. official for the first time met with a representative of a Syrian Kurdish political party that’s closely linked to a group on the U.S. terrorist list.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said a U.S. diplomat met with a counterpart from the main Kurdish political party in Syria – the Democratic Union Party, better known by its Kurdish acronym as the PYD – to discuss the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State. The PYD’s militia is engaged in fierce battles with the Islamist extremists, especially near the town of Kobani along the border with Turkey.

The direct talks are a sign of the shifting alliances created by the rise of the Islamic State. In Iraq, for example, the U.S. is providing air cover for Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim militias that once targeted American forces. And now in Syria, it appears the United States is willing to work with a group that’s tied to the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, which has waged a guerrilla war for Kurdish rights in Turkey for 30 years and which has been on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations for nearly two decades. Turkey and the European Union also have blacklisted the PKK.

Psaki provided no details of the meeting beyond saying that it took place over the past weekend and outside of the Middle East. Kurdish and other media reports say Charles Rivkin, the undersecretary of state for economic affairs, and PYD leader Salih Muslim met in Paris.

The new face-to-face U.S. channel to the PYD is likely to rankle Turkey, which on Monday bombed PKK locations in Turkey and has battled Kurdish civilians near Kobani protesting the international response to the Islamic State assault on the town. [Continue reading…]

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YPG spokesman: ‘If the West wants to defeat ISIS it will have to help us’

Deutsche Welle reports: Redur Xelil is the spokesman of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, YPG.

DW: What is the current situation like in Kobani?

Redur Xelil: Clashes are still very heavy but we’ve made a significant step forward. Now we are not only resisting the assault but also striking back against enemy positions. However, we still rely on our light weapons against the heavy ones used by the “Islamic State” (IS) forces against us. We need supplies of all sorts as we are not facing just one armed group but the army of a whole state.

But you do have US air cover. What is the degree of coordination between the YPG and Washington?

Airstrikes are important but not enough to get rid of the enemy. Regarding coordination with Washington, it is obvious that we have to give them our exact position so that their bombs don’t fall on us. I cannot give you any further details about it. All I can say is that we’re looking forward to improve cooperation between us.

If airstrikes are not enough, will it be possible to defeat IS without the presence of international troops on the ground?

Mosul – Iraq’s second city – fell in three days while a town like Kobani has already endured a whole month of fighting, and that’s only thanks to our highly motivated fighters who are defending their land. So far, the YPG has proved to be the only armed force that has successfully fought IS. However, we’re not in a position to go beyond our borders, we cannot fight them outside our boundaries unless we coordinate with local Arabs in those areas, as we’ve done on previous occasions. International support is doubtless necessary but I think the different communities in the Middle East could defeat IS if they were properly armed, trained and coordinated. If the West wants to defeat the Islamists it will have to help us. [Continue reading…]

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Kobane key to U.S. strategy against ISIS

The Associated Press reports: The U.S. isn’t sure why IS is fighting so hard for control of Kobani, a city with few resources and far removed from any capital. But like the U.S. with Kobani, a loss to a ragtag group of Kurdish fighters would be a propaganda loss for IS.

Much of the daily fighting in Kobani is caught on camera, where TV crews and photographers on the Turkish side of the border have captivated the world’s attention with searing pictures of refugees, black plumes of smoke from explosions, and the sounds of firefights on the city’s streets. In video after video, refugees just across the border can be seen and heard cheering as U.S. airstrikes pound the extremists.

Last week, in pictures and Tweets, the militants’ supporters declared Kobani as theirs, and changed the city’s name to Ayn al-Islam, or Spring of Islam. The online jeering has quieted considerably after the airstrikes of the last several days.

The Islamic State relies on its global online propaganda machine, run largely by supporters far from the battle, to entice fighters, funding and other aid to the front. If the militants’ victories begin to ebb in such a public forum, U.S. officials believe, so too will their lines of support. That alone makes the battle for Kobani a must-win fight for the U.S. strategy.

And that is not lost on Washington. “What makes Kobani significant is the fact that ISIL wants it,” Kirby said. [Continue reading…]

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Fleeing Kobane: Taking only the things they could carry

Middle East Eye reports: When Islamic State militants began to close in on Kobane, the town erupted into chaos.

Most fled with just the clothes they were wearing, and any money stashed away in the house they could grab quickly.

Taking the time to pack bags was a gamble, especially for families living on the outskirts of the town, who had long heard about the notoriety of the advancing militants that have captured world attention for the particular brand of cruelty they unleash on their opponents.

Yet, even amid the chaos, a few individuals managed to take an object of sentimental value, an item that in their mind could not be left behind and could not be replaced. In disarray and terror, a small piece of comfort was nonetheless carried over the Syrian border to safety.

As mortars rained down on their hometown, and the fighting between the Peoples Protection Unit (YPG) Kurdish forces and Islamic State militants descended from the rural outskirts into the city, Khaled Khalil Bisiki and his family made the decision to flee Kobane.

Two weeks ago in the middle of the night, as they hurryingly packed their lives into the family’s small battered car, Bisiki ran back inside to grab the deeds to his lands in Kobane. His wife, Maram, quickly followed, grabbing precious family photos.

“We left so fast we couldn’t bring anything with us really, it was all so fast, so you just grab the things you think you can bring with you,” Khaled told Middle East Eye.

“When you remember something is important, it becomes so important. I remembered our land deeds, I want to always have proof that this is my family’s place – to never lose that – and my wife grabbed the family photos.” [Continue reading…]

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Kurds claim to have turned tide against ISIS in Kobane

The Washington Post reports: Kurdish fighters have turned the tide against Islamic State militants in the battle for control of the Syrian border town of Kobane after two days of relentless bombardment by U.S. warplanes, Kurdish officials and activists said Wednesday.

By nightfall, the town’s Kurdish defenders had pushed the jihadists back more than four miles from the western edge of the town and were advancing into the eastern and southern neighborhoods of the city, said Ihsan Naasan, the deputy foreign minister of Kobane’s self-proclaimed government, speaking from the Kurdish-controlled town.

He claimed that Kurdish fighters with the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, now control 80 percent of the town, after losing more than half of it in heavy fighting over the previous days.

“The YPG now have the initiative,” he said, crediting heavy U.S. bombardments in recent days alongside resistance by the outgunned and outnumbered Kurdish militia. “They are on the counteroffensive against the Islamic State.”

If the Kurdish fighters manage to retain their momentum and retake the town, it would mark the first time that U.S. airstrikes have helped eject the Islamic State from territory in Syria since the war was expanded to include the northern and eastern parts of the country a little over three weeks ago. [Continue reading…]

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Who remains in Kobane?

Fehim Tastekin writes: I called Idris Nassan, the Kobani canton’s deputy foreign relations minister, to ask how many civilians remain in Kobani. “Don’t ask me for a number because it could be misleading,” he said frankly. Then he went on: “There are many civilians who have not fled the city. Thousands of other people are waiting in the area between the Turkish border and Kobani. Some families who have sons and daughters fighting in the People’s Protection Units (YPG) ranks have stayed in their homes. Others are [physically] unable to leave. Some people, on the other hand, stay along the border but return home periodically to feed their livestock. IS controls 25% of the city, but life is still going on in a way. The administrative units remain largely operational. Only the Asaish [security forces] building has been seized by IS, while all other public buildings remain open.”

According to the UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, about 500-700 mostly elderly people remain in Kobani, while 10,000-13,000 are stuck in a nearby area close to the Syrian-Turkish border.

Is the YPG alone? Is there any other group fighting alongside them? Has the Euphrates volcano, the joint operation room the YPG set up with the Free Syrian Army and some elements of the Islamic Front, broken up? Isn’t there anyone backing the YPG?

According to Nassan, the following groups side with the YPG: Suwar al-Raqqa (Raqqa Revolutionaries), Suwar Umnaa al-Raqqa, Jabhat al-Akrad (Kurdish Front), Shams al-Shimal (Northern Sun), Ahrar al-Suriya and Shukr al-Sefira. He did not provide any figures for [the fighters of] those groups. [Continue reading…]

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160 detained Kobane Kurds continue hunger strike in Turkey

Middle East Eye reports: Scores of Kurds from the besieged Syrian town of Kobane are still on hunger strike after being detained by Turkish authorities in border town Suruc when they fled the advance of IS militants, an MP said on Wednesday.

The 160 Syrian Kurds, members of the main Syrian Kurdish party the Democratic Union Party (PYD), have been held for the last nine days in a sports hall in Suruc. The mostly middle class professionals and their families were taken into custody after crossing into Turkey on 5 October as IS threatened to overrun Kobane.

Ibrahim Ayhan, an MP from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), said the detainees were continuing the hunger strike they launched after their arrest.

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The gains Turkey may hope to make from the defeats of the Kurds

Christopher de Bellaigue writes: Whatever the fate of Kobani, Turkey’s complicity in its human miseries has already had fearsome effects beyond this parched, benighted bit of land, where, ninety-nine years ago, some of the survivors of the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians slogged into Mesopotamia. Last month, from his headquarters in northern Iraq, the PKK’s operational commander, Cemil Bayık, presented more evidence that Turkey had been arming ISIS, and threatened to end its twenty-month-old ceasefire if Turkey did not stop its “war” against the Kurds of Syria.

Then, on October 7, the PKK demonstrated its undimmed ability to bring chaos to metropolitan Turkey, organizing violent protests not only across the country’s Kurdish-majority region in the southeast, but also in several cities further west. These were met — again, violently — by the security forces and by members of a Kurdish Islamist group that has been useful to the state in the past. More than twenty people were killed before the PKK’s incarcerated leader, Abdullah Öcalan, reportedly sent word that the unrest should stop.

One might wonder why the Turkish government would risk endangering a peace process with the PKK that has greatly contributed to Turkish stability, improved human rights and the rule of law, and facilitated economic development. The Turks may be calculating that the PKK cannot easily abandon a process that has brought its members new political power in some Kurdish areas and allowed Kurdish nationalist MP back into the national parliament. They also seem to believe that the Kurds are due a sharp reality check as to the impossibility of replicating Syria-style autonomy in Turkey. The ISIS advance on Kobani could serve that purpose, while the contraction of the Kurdish fief pushes the nationalists onto the tender mercies of the Turkish state — as Kobani has demonstrated. Weakened by the defeats suffered by its affiliate in Syria, the PKK may be less able to resist political demands made by the Turkish government if serious negotiations are renewed toward a final settlement. [Continue reading…]

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Hollande urges Turkey to open up its border to help Kobane

AFP reports: France’s president Tuesday urged Turkey to open its border to allow reinforcements to reach the besieged city of Kobani and called for more help to those fighting the advance of ISIS.

Francois Hollande stressed that “all countries concerned,” including those not in the coalition fighting the ISIS, should provide weapons to those battling the jihadists.

“I think about what is happening today in Kobani, a martyred town, a symbolic town. If we have to intervene, as we decided for France in Iraq, we also have to give the moderate Syrian opposition … all the support, all the help necessary,” he said.

“I am launching an appeal here, beyond the coalition, to all countries concerned to give this opposition the support they expect from us, the means they need to fight against terrorism,” Hollande said. [Continue reading…]

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Anger as wounded Kurdish fighters die stranded at Turkish border

Reuters reports: With medical supplies depleted in the war-ravaged north Syrian town of Kobani, Kurdish activist Blesa Omar rushed three comrades wounded in battle against Islamic State fighters straight to the border to dispatch them to a Turkish hospital.

He said he spent the next four hours watching them die, one by one, from what he thinks were treatable shrapnel wounds as Turkish border guards refused to let them through the frontier.

“To me it is clear they died because they waited so long. If they had received help, even up to one hour before their deaths, they could have lived,” said Omar, 34, an ethnic Kurd originally from Iraq who holds Swedish nationality.

“Once the soldiers realized they were dead, they said, ‘Now you can cross with the bodies.’ I cannot forget that. It was total chaos, it was a catastrophe,” he said, choking back tears. [Continue reading…]

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Arming the Kurds who are fighting ISIS

A petition to the Obama administration:

“We are calling for the United States to provide better weapons to the People’s Protection Unit (YPG) of northern Syria. YPG is solely a defensive unit that protects the Kurdish inhabited areas of Syria from any aggression, and in this case, the atrocities committed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Kobane. It has been noted that airstrikes from the West are not enough to stop ISIS from their goal to establish a new Islamic rule across the Middle East through an extremely violent and deadly process. Evidently, ISIS is a threat to humanity. Due to the fact that YPG is highly outgunned by ISIS with looted weapons, YPG is unable to stop the Jihadists. It is undoubted that with better and more modern weapons, YPG would efficiently halt ISIS’ motives to gain control of Kobane.”

Click here to visit the White House website where you can sign the petition.

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