Category Archives: Kurds

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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Four things the Left should learn from Kobane

Kerem Nisancioglu writes: The Kurdish town of Kobanê has recently become the centre of a geopolitical conflagration that may well change the course of Middle Eastern politics. After months of silence over the threat faced by Kurds from ISIS, the world is now finally watching, even if the ‘international community’ remains conspicuously quiet. However, many Western responses, be it from scholars, journos or activists, have somewhat predictably retracted into recycled critiques of US and UK imperialism, often at the expense of missing what is truly exceptional and noteworthy in recent developments. So, in the style of contemporary leftist listicles, here are four things we can and should learn from events in and around Kobanê.

1. It’s Time to Question the West’s Fixation on ISIS

If Barack Obama, David Cameron and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are to be believed, the ‘savagery’ of ‘fundamentalism’ is the primary focus of NATO involvement in Syria. Notably, many left critics have reproduced this very same fixation on ISIS when discussing Western interests. However, for an almighty imperialist organisation supposedly hell bent on stopping ‘Islamic extremism’, NATO have been curiously ineffective. In fact, the US has been indirectly responsible for arming ISIS and altogether incompetent and/or reluctant in arming the decidedly secular Kurdish resistance. US and UK air strikes have been fleeting, and at best symbolic, making little impact on the advance of ISIS. Moreover, Turkey has repeatedly turned a blind eye to ISIS’s use of its territories and borders for training activities and supply lines, respectively. More recently, as Kobanê teetered on the edge of conquest, Turkey insisted any military assistance was dependent on the Kurdish PYD abandoning self-determination and self-governing cantons, and agreeing to Turkish buffer zone in Kurdish controlled areas in Northern Syria (which amounts to little more than a colonial land grab). Now, considering the US and UK were keen to intervene long before ISIS was seen as a threat, and considering Turkey long-standing hostility to the PKK/PYD, we should be more demanding of any analysis of intervention that begins and ends with ISIS. In short, it is becoming increasingly clear that ISIS is little more than a pretext for NATO to pursue other geopolitical aims – namely removing Assad and destroying Kurdish autonomy.

2. Be Wary of Liberal Internationalism

Many anti-intervention critiques have argued that non-military options remain available through diplomatic channels and pressure on regional players such as Iran, the Gulf States and even Russia. This is to misread the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. Firstly, the US does not control every allied state with complete impunity. Despite historical relations of dependency, despite metaphors of ‘puppets’, most Gulf States are remarkably powerful actors in their own right, with interests and activities that are beyond US control. Any suggestion to ask the Saudis to end financial support is likely to be as effective as asking ISIS to calm down a bit. [Continue reading…]

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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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Turkey will pay for abandoning the Kurds

Bloomberg editorial (by David Shipley?): In blocking the resupply of the Kurdish fighters who are trying desperately to hold off a siege by Islamic State in Kobani, Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is making a decision that may haunt Turkey for years to come.

This is not just about Turkey’s failure to join the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State. It also threatens Turkey’s fragile truce with its Kurdish minority, many of whom are growing impatient with the sight of Turkish soldiers watching, from their side of the border, as Islamic State attacks Kobani.

On Tuesday, Kurdish protests across Turkey led to clashes with police, Turkish nationalists and supporters of Islamic State — killing as many as 15 people. In response, the Turkish military imposed curfews reminiscent of the bad old decades after 1984, when Turkey battled insurgents from the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK. Their year-old cease-fire is now in jeopardy.

When pressed to say why Turkey wasn’t helping the PKK-affiliated fighters in Kobani, Erdogan said: “For us, the PKK is the same as ISIL. It is wrong to consider them as different from each other.”

To begin with, this statement is simply untrue. While the PKK has carried out terrorist attacks in Turkey, it has never beheaded captives, engaged in genocide against civilians of different creeds or systematically raped women. The PKK doesn’t want to create a caliphate across the Middle East and convert or kill all non-Kurds within it. What the PKK wants most is greater political autonomy for Kurds in eastern Turkey — a negotiable demand. [Continue reading…]

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What’s at stake in Kobane? ISIS and Kobane calculations

Carl Drott writes: The situation currently looks grim for the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and others defending Kobani (Ayn al-Arab) from the Islamic State (IS). Still, it is conceivable that air strikes together with reinforcements and armaments could enable YPG to not only prevail, but go on the offensive again. While both IS and YPG would ideally want to see the other side utterly defeated, there are also more local goals. In the wider area around Kobani, the conflict dynamics and prospects for successful rule are also affected by the role of Arab civilians and anti-IS rebels.

IS’ decision to attack Kobani in mid-September appears rational in the light of its somewhat crippled capabilities in Iraq and recent defeats against YPG in the Jazira area. Not only was Kobani the low hanging fruit, but it could be plucked quickly. IS understood that time was short before the coalition air campaign was extended into Syria.

Before the attack started, YPG controlled some territory between Shiukh bridge and Qara Quzak bridge along the eastern shore of the Euphrates. Even more importantly, YPG controlled a stretch of the main motorway east of Qara Quzak bridge. This territory has now been captured, which means significantly improved communications within the northern parts of the “caliphate.” Kobani town itself is relatively insignificant, but the survival of a YPG-controlled enclave would tie up military resources and constitute a security problem for IS in the longer term.

If the tables are turned at some point in the future, YPG will certainly look east towards Tel Abyad. The capture of this town would enable the isolated Kobani enclave to be connected with the much larger Jazira area that also borders the Kurdistan Region in Iraq (a successful attack would most likely come from this side). For IS, on the other hand, getting expelled from this area would mean losing all access to Turkey east of Jarabulus.

Another goal for YPG would be to capture the eastern shore of the Euphrates. Not only would this mean a huge security improvement, but it would also give much-needed access to water. A station near Shiukh used to pump water to Kobani, but IS cut the supply completely when it took over the area early this year. The Kurdish administration then connected deep new-dug wells to the water treatment plant in Qaraqoy. These facilities have now also been captured by IS, which means that Kobani’s only water supply comes from smaller wells inside the town itself. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS vs the farmers. Who turned the field into a battlefield?

ISIS and its social media followers have been celebrating the death of a ten-year old boy with the nom de guerre Abu Ubaidah.


There are also Kurdish children fighting against ISIS.


Some observers in the West are perturbed by the idea that a double standard is being applied on the involvement of children in war based on whether they happen to be fighting with the “good guys.”

But this looks to me like one of those situations where allegiance to a particular principle (in this case, opposition to the use of child soldiers) is coming at the expense of common sense.

The difference between the armed jihadist father and son and the armed farmer and son is that it is the former who insisted on turning the latter’s field into a battlefield.

One was content to farm, while the other demanded to fight.

The farmer and his family could have fled, but they can hardly be faulted as they make a desperate effort to defend their land.

ISIS is an invading army on a ruthless campaign of conquest. Their actions are no more excusable than those of any imperial power.

Those who turn these combatants into equals just because both are using guns and arming their children are denying the fundamental inequality in this conflict.

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The ISIS stranglehold on Kobane

Thomas van Linge has created some maps that make clear how isolated the Kurds in Kobane have become in the last few weeks.

At the beginning of September, the YPG controlled an area around Kobane that ran from the Euphrates river about 50 miles eastward. In the map below, this is shown as the central yellow enclave.

The area now controlled by ISIS (shown in gray) has reduced the YPG foothold to less than the Kobane city limits.

To view either of these maps in greater detail just click on the images above.

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Obama administration not too concerned about the fate of Kobane

First the U.S. does almost nothing to impede the ISIS advance on Kobane. Countless opportunities to strike militants while they are exposed in open territory are passed up for no obvious reason.

Then, as soon as ISIS enters the city, the U.S. ramps up airstrikes, slowing ISIS while damaging the city’s infrastructure.

Then officials from the Pentagon and the State Department fan out across the media suggesting it doesn’t really matter that much whether ISIS takes control of the Kurdish city.

CNN: The key Syrian border city of Kobani will soon fall to ISIS, but that’s not a major U.S. concern, several senior U.S. administration officials said.

If Kobani falls, ISIS would control a complete swath of land between its self-declared capital of Raqqa, Syria, and Turkey — a stretch of more than 100 kilometers (62 miles).

The U.S. officials said the primary goals are not to save Syrian cities and towns, but to go after ISIS’ senior leadership, oil refineries and other infrastructure that would curb the terror group’s ability to operate — particularly in Iraq.

Reuters: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry suggested on Wednesday that preventing the fall of the Syrian town of Kobani to Islamic State fighters was not a strategic U.S. objective and said the idea of a buffer zone should be thoroughly studied.

“As horrific as it is to watch in real time what is happening in Kobani … you have to step back and understand the strategic objective,” Kerry told reporters at a news conference with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.

“Notwithstanding the crisis in Kobani, the original targets of our efforts have been the command and control centers, the infrastructure,” he said. “We are trying to deprive the (Islamic State) of the overall ability to wage this, not just in Kobani but throughout Syria and into Iraq.”

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Flurry of U.S. airstrikes as ISIS ‘in control of large parts of Kobane’


Karam Shoumali is reporting for the New York Times.

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Kobane and the Kurds: Clueless at the New York Times

“Turkish Inaction on ISIS Advance Dismays the U.S.,” a report in today’s New York Times identifies three reporters in the byline: Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt in Washington, and Anne Barnard in Beirut.

It sometimes seems like the more names there are in the byline, the worse the reporting and the less the accountability.

Even though international journalists are offered a grandstand view of the battle in Kobane from the relative safety of Turkey, the Times does not appear to currently have a staff reporter there. No disrespect to “news assistant” Karam Shoumali, but it’s hard to understand why they have no one else there right now.

Today’s report makes vague references to “Kurdish fighters” in Kobane but doesn’t identify them as belonging to the People’s Protection Committees, the YPG, until the penultimate paragraph.

As the headline suggests, the general narrative is of American “frustration” and “dismay” at Turkey’s unwillingness to defend Kobane.

The Kurds are crying for help, the Turks aren’t listening, and the Americans are wringing their hands (“the United States took pains to emphasize its support for the embattled Kurds in Kobani”).

Kurdish fighters in Kobani said they were running out of ammunition and could not prevail without infusions of troops and arms from Turkey.

The Guardian reports more accurately: “the US, reluctant to commit ground troops itself, wants Turkey to send in soldiers to confront Isis.”

But the point is this: unlike the U.S., the Kurds have no desire to see Turkish troops enter Kobane. Their arrival would be seen as having more to do with Turkey’s desire to suppress Kurdish autonomy than an effort to thwart ISIS.

As Jenan Moussa in the tweet above says, the appeal the Kurds are making is for their own fighters to be allowed to cross the border and for their dwindling supplies of ammunition to be replenished. Additional weapons, such as American TOW anti-tank missiles would help too.

As much as American officials may want to cast themselves as willing defenders of the Kurds as they face an ISIS onslaught, both the U.S. and the Kurds frustrated by a lack of support from Turkey, the lack of support has come just as much from Washington, hamstrung by its own anti-terrorism fundamentalism.

The New York Times peddles the administration’s excuses:

“We have anticipated that it will be easier to protect population centers and to support offensives on the ground in Iraq, where we have partners” in the Kurdish pesh merga fighters and the Iraqi Army, said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “Clearly, in Syria, it will take more time to develop the type of partners on the ground with whom we can coordinate.”

For this reason, the official said, the military strategy in Syria so far has focused on “denying ISIL safe haven and degrading critical infrastructure — like command and control and mobile oil refineries — that they use to support their operations in Iraq.”

The report correctly notes that the Kurds have been left feeling abandoned: “even though they are the sort of vulnerable minority group that Mr. Obama has made a priority of protecting — political moderates who have women fighting alongside men and have provided refuge for internally displaced Syrians of many ethnicities.”

So when U.S. officials talk about the time needed to develop “partners on the ground,” they are trying to obscure the fact that the YPG is already qualified to serve as such a partner. In its gender equality, it’s even more progressive than the U.S. military itself!

Moreover, President Obama owes a personal debt of gratitude to the YPG because after he promised “to prevent a potential act of genocide” when in early August thousands of Yazidis stranded on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq were in peril from ISIS, it was the Syrian Kurdish fighters who enabled their escape by creating a safe corridor for their evacuation.

As Global Post reported:

Despite a widely publicized US bombing campaign to save them, family after family tells the same story of escape: While the Western media narrative has emphasized the US role and that of the Iraqi Kurds’ peshmerga fighters battling IS in recent weeks, it was instead the Kurds coming in from Syria and Turkey who saved the Yazidis’ lives. A limited number were airlifted off the mountain, but the mass exodus took place on foot. The much-vaunted peshmerga [in Iraq], meanwhile, initially ran.

“The PKK [a political and militant Kurdish party based in Turkey] saved us. They cleared a path for us so we could escape the Sinjar Mountains into Syria.”

“Thank God for the PKK and YPG [a Syrian branch of the PKK].”

“If it wasn’t for the Kurdish fighters, we would have died up there.”

For the U.S., the problem with the YPG is its affiliation with the PKK which has been designated as a terrorist organization. This has resulted in calls from some quarters that the PKK be delisted. Were that to happen, it would antagonize Turkey but also highlight the arbitrariness with which the U.S. labels terrorists.

The real problem is not that the YPG or the PKK can be linked to terrorism; it is that criminalizing membership of organizations is itself incompatible with the basic principles of democracy.

How can the United States on the one hand recognize the constitutional right of Americans to join anti-democratic extremist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, while at the same time refusing to partner with a group like the YPG that is genuinely and literally fighting for democracy?

The United States does not lack a partner on the ground in Kobane with which it could currently be coordinating its air strikes on ISIS. It lacks the willingness to discard a counterproductive security doctrine.

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Kurds getting killed by both ISIS and Turkey

Reuters reports: At least nine people were killed and dozens wounded in demonstrations across Turkey on Tuesday, local media reported, as Kurds demanded the government do more to protect the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani from Islamic State militants.

Police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters who burnt cars and tires as they took to the streets mainly in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish eastern and southeastern provinces. Clashes also erupted in the biggest city Istanbul and in the capital Ankara.

Five people were killed in Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish city in the southeast, which saw clashes between protesters and police.

A 25-year-old man died in Varto, a town in the eastern province of Mus, and at least half a dozen people were wounded there in clashes between police and protesters, local media reported.

Two people died in southeastern Siirt province, the governor was quoted as saying by CNN Turk Television, and another died in neighboring Batman. Curfews were imposed in five predominantly Kurdish southeastern provinces after the protests, in which shops and banks were damaged.

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Kurds occupy the European Parliament in Brussels

Vice News reports: Around 100 Kurdish protesters overwhelmed security to demonstrate inside the European Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday, demanding military action to protect the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane from Islamic State fighters.

As demonstrations spread across Europe, the Kurdistan National Congress told VICE News a 25-year-old protester had been shot and killed during a Kobane solidarity protest in Varto, Turkey. He was named as Hakan Buksur.

Peaceful protesters in the European Parliament occupied the VoxBox multimedia stage, carrying banners and flags, some of them showing Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The PKK called for its supporters to take to the streets to urge European military action to defend Kobane, which is on the brink of falling to IS militants.

The demonstrators left the European Parliament after representatives spoke to President Martin Schulz. [Continue reading…]

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