Category Archives: Kurds

Kurdish fighters in Kobane have the advantage of local knowledge but need immediate military support

Newsweek reports: As the black flag of the Islamic State (ISIS) rose above the Syrian town of Kobane on Monday, the soldiers of NATO’s second largest army stood and watched only a few hundred metres away.

As gunfire and explosions echoed across the border, fears were voiced about the potentially devastating long-term price Turkey may pay for remaining ambivalent to the plight of the Kobane’s Kurdish defenders.

“We will do everything possible to help the people of Kobane because they are our brothers and sisters,” Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told CNN as the town was close to falling on Monday.

However, they would only do so, he added, if there was a broader military commitment by Turkey’s allies to create a no-fly-zone in northern Syria, a move the United States has so far refused to back.

The Telegraph reports: The Turkish leader [Recep Tayyip Erdogan] is strongly mistrusted by the Kurds of Turkey and Syria. Many accuse his government – anxious about Turkey’s own Kurdish separatist movement – of conniving with Isil and of failing to act to prevent it committing atrocities against the Kurds in northern Syria.

At least three dozen Turkish tanks parked in a circle on a hill overlooking Kobane – apparently ready for action but still not deployed – further fuelled Kurdish suspicions, which on Tuesday boiled over into angry protests in Istanbul and other cities and left one man dead.

Yet Mr Erdogan’s view on air strikes struck a chord.

In Kobane itself, the local knowledge of Kurdish guerrillas in the YPG [People’s Defence Units] militia was likely to be more effective in combating the invading jihadists than air strikes, according to Ahmed Shekho, 24, head of the Syrian Kurdish students union, who fled at the weekend as the Isil attacks became fiercer.

“Now that Isil are in the eastern side of the town, a street war has started. It’s like gang warfare,” he said. “The YPG fighters know every street. Most of them are sons of Kobane and they are famous for their street fighting.

“Isil are better armed but when it comes to street fighting, maybe the situation could be different. The fighting has been intense and 350 jihadist fighters have been killed on the eastern side of Kobane.”

On the air strikes, Mr Shekho – who, like thousands of other Syrian Kurds, has sought refuge in the Turkish border town of Sururc – shared Mr Erdogan’s scepticism.

“For the Kurds, the American air strikes were the only hope, but they seem to have been more effective in Iraq,” he said. “There’s a valley to the south-west of Kobane that had 2,000 Isil vehicles in it for 11 days, yet the Americans have never targeted them. It’s as if they only want to scare them or do a little damage. I was in the south-west of Kobane and I saw an American air strike hitting a water pump belonging to a local farmer.” [Continue reading…]

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Why did the U.S. help the Kurds in Iraq but leave ISIS to massacre them in Syria?

Cale Salih writes: The divergent US policy toward Kurds in Iraq and Syria is reflective of Washington’s general mistaken tendency to presume distinctions between the two countries that do not actually exist. According to US officials quoted this week in the Wall Street Journal, for instance, US airstrikes in Iraq are designed to help Iraqi forces beat back Isis, whereas in Syria, “We’re not trying to take ground away from them. We’re trying to take capability away from them.” A policy that decisively targets Isis in Iraq but half-heartedly in Syria is doomed to fail. It will, at best, only briefly postpone the immediate threat Isis poses to American interests in the region. And the new air strikes aren’t even really working.

A key difference between the new US war strategy in Kurdish-majority parts of the region was Washington’s decision to bolster its Kurdish partners on the ground in Iraq but not in Syria. In Iraq, the US not only carried out air strikes but also armed the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga and sent military “advisors”. As a result, the peshmerga were able to provide ground intelligence to guide US air strikes, and, in conjunction with Kurdish fighters from Turkey and Syria, they followed up on the ground to retake important territories lost to Isis.

In Syria, the US has been more hesitant to develop such a bold Kurdish partnership. At first glance, the Kurdish fighting force in Syria – the People’s Defence Units (YPG), linked to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which the US designates as a terrorist group due to its decades-long war with Turkey – is a less natural partner than the widely recognized Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. Yet it was YPG and PKK forces that provided the decisive support on the ground to the Iraqi Kurds, allowing KRG peshmerga to regain territory lost to Isis in Iraq. The US in great part owes the limited success of its airstrikes in north Iraq to the PKK and YPG.

The lesson the US should learn from its experience in north Iraq is that you can’t win a war in the air alone. Iraq showed that air strikes against Isis can work – but only when combined with efforts to arm and advise a reliable local force capable of following up to actually retake and hold territory on the ground. The YPG is that force in Syria, and any air strikes without the kind of support sent to the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga will be futile. [Continue reading…]

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First ISIS destroys Kobane and then Turkey can save it?

AFP reports that Turkey’s President Erdogan says Kobane is “about to fall” and that a ground operation is needed to defeat ISIS.

Of course Kurdish forces are already in the midst of a valiant ground operation — they just haven’t received the support they need.

Thus far, Turkey has appeared resolute in its military inaction as its armored forces have quietly watched ISIS advance on Kobane. Likewise, until the last few hours, U.S. airstrikes have been minimal.

An explanation of U.S. objectives with ISIS was provided by an official who said: “We’re not trying to take ground away from them [in Syria]. We’re trying to take capability away from them.”

That’s an ambiguous statement when it’s widely recognized that the territory ISIS holds in Syria is the foundation for its capabilities. So the official explanation about why the U.S. has not been more forceful in preventing ISIS from capturing Kobane really makes little sense.

At the same time, it’s been said by many that it looks like Turkey would prefer to see ISIS rather than the PKK-aligned YPG controlling this part of the Syrian border. But even though the Turkish government feels threatened by the presence of an emerging Syrian Kurdish state, Rojava, ISIS is surely an unacceptable neighbor.

Maybe — and this is just speculation — there has been some cunning in American and Turkish inaction and neither power has any intention of allowing ISIS to gain full control of Kobane.

A Kurdish fighter tells Jenan Moussa: “ISIS brought in 1000s of fighters to Kobane. Seems whole of Raqqa is standing at our gates.”

Might this be what the U.S. and Turkey have been hoping to see as the prelude to a joint U.S.-Turkish operation? Turkish ground forces “rescue” Kobane as high concentrations of ISIS fighters approaching the city make themselves easy targets for air strikes.

At the end of the battle and after the self-congratulatory statements about the devastating impact this has had on ISIS, Turkey then establishes what it calls a “buffer zone” and what Kurds will see as the occupation of Rojava.

If a scenario along these lines is unfolding, it probably means that in the eyes of the U.S. and Turkey, the Kurdish men and women fighting on the front lines against ISIS are not engaged in a heroic struggle — they are simply bait.

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Protesters around the world stand up for Kobane

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ISIS enters city. ‘Everyone in Kobane is in danger’

Middle East Eye reports: Two flags of Islamic State (IS) militants seeking to take the Syrian town of Kobane were flying on the eastern side of the town on Monday afternoon, eyewitnesses reported.

The flags, black with the Arabic lettering of the group, were seen by an AFP photographer, from the Turkish side of the border as well as an Al Aan TV reporter from an unknown location.

One was flying on top of a building on the eastern side of Kobane. Another was seen being planted by a man on the crest of a hill on the eastern edge of the town.


Idris Nahsen, the deputy foreign minister of Kobane region, told reporters by telephone that he could not confirm if IS militants were inside parts of the town. [Continue reading…]

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Air strikes against ISIS are not working, say Syrian Kurds

The Guardian reports: Isis fighters have pushed to within little more than a mile of the centre of the city of Kobani, undeterred by western air strikes which are proving ineffective, a leading Kurdish official in the city has said.

Fighting between the Islamist militants and Syrian Kurds continued unabated despite another volley of coalition air strikes in and around the Kobani enclave, Idris Nassan, Kobani’s “foreign affairs minister”, told the Guardian.

“There are fierce clashes between Isis and YPG [People’s Defence Corps] fighters, at the moment mainly to the south-east of the city. Isis now stands at two kilometres from the city centre,” Nassan told the Guardian by phone. “I can hear the bombs and shells here.”

According to Nassan, the situation was “under control for now”, but he underlined that air strikes had not deterred a further Isis advance.

“Air strikes alone are really not enough to defeat Isis in Kobani,” he stressed. “They are besieging the city on three sides, and fighter jets simply cannot hit each and every Isis fighter on the ground.”

He added that Isis had adapted their tactics to military strikes from the air. “Each time a jet approaches they leave their open positions, they scatter and hide. What we really need is ground support. We need heavy weapons and ammunition in order to fend them off and defeat them.” [Continue reading…]

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Kurdish fighter Ceylan Özalp reported alive


“19-Year-Old Kurdish Woman Fighter ‘Kills Herself Rather Than Falling into Isis’ Hands'” is a headline appearing in International Business Times, October 3. I referred to the same story in this post, but it appears not to be true.

The first appearance of this story is thought to be this tweet on September 28 from @cansuipek21.

The tragic image of a nineteen-year-old woman fighter killing herself with her last bullet so that she would not be captured by ISIS, must have seemed iconic to many observers — a graphic representation of the plight Kurdish fighters in Kobane face, surrounded on three sides by ISIS while receiving no support from Turkey and very little from U.S. airstrikes. Sometimes a story conveys a powerful truth even when it turns out not to be true.

Müjgan Halis, a Kurdish journalist, has tweeted (as have others) that Özalp is alive. This was retweeted by the politician Ayla Akat Ata (who was a defense lawyer for Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK). At this point, I’m inclined to treat their word as authoritative.

This should be good news for everyone apart from ISIS.

In early September, Gabriel Gatehouse reported: Around a third of the Syrian Kurdish force is made up of women. On the front lines they fight alongside the men, taking the same risks and facing the same dangers.

“Women are the bravest fighters,” says Diren, taking refuge from the scorching heat in the cool of an underground bunker.

She and three comrades are having lunch: flatbread, cheese and watermelon. Many of the fighters, like Diren, 19, are still teenagers.

“We’re not scared of anything,” she says. “We’ll fight to the last. We’d rather blow ourselves up than be captured by IS.”

Like the followers of the Islamic State, most Kurds are Sunni Muslims. But that is where the similarities end. Diren says that, to the fanatics of IS, a female fighter is “haram”, anathema: a disturbing and scary sight.

“When they see a woman with a gun, they’re so afraid they begin to shake. They portray themselves as tough guys to the world. But when they see us with our guns they run away. They see a woman as just a small thing. But one of our women is worth a hundred of their men.”

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Syrian Kurdish leader visits Turkey as ISIS advances on Kobane

Rudaw reports: The leader of Syria’s largest Kurdish group, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), whose fighters are battling an advance by Islamic State militants in the north of the country, has held talks with officials in the Turkish capital, local media reported.

Friday’s visit by Salih Muslim was the first to Turkey in more than a year and could suggest a softening of Ankara’s stance as it comes under increasing pressure to intervene militarily against jihadist militants who have laid siege to the Syrian town of Kobane near the Turkish frontier.

Turkish media reported the PYD leader had not met directly with the Turkish government but had held talks with officials from the country’s intelligence agency.

Since Muslim’s last visit to Turkey in July 2013, tensions between Ankara and the PYD, which has close links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey, have flared.

Turkey views the PYD as an extension of the PKK, which for three decades has fought the Turkish state for more autonomy, and says it is allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who Ankara wants to see overthrown. It is also wary of territorial gains made by Kurdish groups in northern Syria, fearing this could lead to eventual self-rule, emboldening Turkey’s Kurds.

The PYD has accused Turkey of aiding Islamist militants inside Syria, a charge Ankara denies, and of obstructing efforts by Kurdish militias to defend towns along the Turkish border.

In an interview with Reuters last week, Muslim said he had called on Western states to provide weapons to his embattled fighters but that help had not arrived because, “Turkey and other countries are preventing this because they don’t want the Kurds to be able to defend themselves”. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. airstrikes back local forces in Iraq but not Syria — Kobane feels ‘deserted and furious’

Bloomberg reports: The U.S military is monitoring the threat to Kobani, and has conducted airstrikes “in and around” the town in the past several days, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters in Washington yesterday. U.S. Central Command said today the coalition had carried out 14 strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq yesterday and today. Vehicles, artillery positions and a building were destroyed near Kobani, said in an e-mailed statement.

Kirby said the U.S. operation in Syria targets areas Islamic State can use as a “sanctuary and a safe haven,” compared with strikes in Iraq that are being conducted to back local forces. That doesn’t mean “we are going to turn a blind eye to what’s going on at Kobani or anywhere else,” Kirby said.

While Turkey’s government has vowed to prevent an Islamic State takeover of Kobani, Kurds aren’t convinced, accusing authorities in Ankara of using the crisis to smother a largely autonomous Kurdish region that has evolved during Syria’s three-year civil war.

The Kurds fighting Islamic State in Syria are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, whose separatist ambition has long been considered Turkey’s top security threat.

“The people of Kobani feel deserted and furious,” Faysal Sariyildiz, another pro-Kurdish legislator, said yesterday.

The Washington Post adds: The real reason [for the limited number of airstrikes on ISIS near Kobane] appears to be that the main focus of the U.S.-led air war remains on Iraq, with any strikes conducted in Syria intended primarily to degrade the Islamic State’s capacity to operate there, according to Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“This is about stabilizing Iraq, not about minorities,” he said. “It appears Syria is secondary and strikes are not being carried out with a discernible political or humanitarian strategy.”

U.S. officials asked to explain the inaction in Kobane cast the answer in similar, if less explicit, terms.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, noted to reporters Friday that airstrikes had been conducted in the vicinity of the town, adding that if they could be conducted “in such a way that we’re not going to cause any greater damage or civilian casualties, then . . . we’re going to do it,” he said.

But, he added, “we’re broadly focused, not just on one city and one town. We have to stay broadly focused on the whole region.”

“The focus in Syria has really been about the safe haven they enjoy,” he said of Islamic State fighters. “In Iraq, it’s really been much more focused on supporting Iraqi security forces and Kurdish forces on the ground.”

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ISIS pushes forward on Kobane

Al Jazeera reports: The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is continuing to push its attempts to control a key Syrian border town despite resistance from local fighters and US-led air attacks.

Fighting raged on Saturday between ISIL and Kurdish fighters in Kobane, with artillery fire pounding the southwestern areas, a day after ISIL fired at least 80 mortar rounds into the town and advanced to its outskirts.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent Bernard Smith said he could hear artillery bursts and gunfire from his position in Suruc in Turkey, about 6km from Kobane.

An Al Jazeera correspondent reported that ISIL on Friday night attempted four times to storm the town from the east side, but US-led air attacks stopped the advances and killed dozens of its fighters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group, said the attacks hit at least four areas, killing 35 ISIL fighters and destroying some materiel. Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the report.

Juan Cole adds: Ismat Sheikh, commander of the Kurdish forces at the border town of Kobane (Ain al-Arab) that is besieged by ISIL tanks and artillery, says that he expects massacres of its inhabitants if it falls to the Sunni Arab extremists.

He warned that ISIL fighters are less than a mile from his front line.

Despite US air strikes, ISIL has drawn up some 25 tanks and a number of artillery pieces to pound Kobane repeatedly.

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Turkey pretends to challenge ISIS but attacks Kurds instead

The BBC’s Paul Adams reports that Kobane is still under attack while a squadron of Turkish tanks sits idle a few hundred metres away.

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Kurdish women soldiers cherish their freedom — Updated

When I posted this four hours ago, I included a video below which is a BBC News report broadcast in early September. It features an interview with a nineteen-year-old Kurdish woman fighter who I just learned has since died.

President Obama claims he has launched an operation to “destroy” ISIS, yet there have been far too few airstrikes to prevent the assault on Kobane. Turkish forces stand idle.

If the international forces which claimed they were going to stop ISIS prefer at this point to do virtually nothing, can they not at the very least provide the Kurdish fighters — men and women who are willing to sacrifice their own lives in defense of their own people and land — enough ammunition to continue their struggle?

General Zelal, 33. Photographed at a YPJ checkpoint-base, on the outskirts of Rabia, Kurdistan, on Aug. 7, 2014.

Photographer Erin Trieb recently spent a week documenting members of the Kurdish Women’s Protection Unit (YPJ) at several military posts in Northeastern Syria and along the Syrian-Kurdish border: “There is a sense among the women,” says Trieb, “that the YPJ is in itself a feminist movement, even if it is not their main mission. They want ‘equality’ between women and men, and a part of why they joined was to develop and advance the perceptions about women in their culture — they can be strong and be leaders.”

Sa-el Morad, 20, shared with Trieb that she enlisted in order to prove that, “we can do all the same things that men can do; that women can do everything; that there’s nothing impossible for us. When I was at home,” she recalled, “all the men just thought that the women are just cleaning the house and not going outside. But when I joined the YPJ everything changed. I showed all of them that I can hold a weapon, that I can fight in the clashes, that I can do everything that they thought was impossible for women. Now, the men back home changed their opinions about me and other women. Now they see that we are their equals, and that we have the same abilities, maybe sometimes more than them. They understand we are strong and that we can do everything they can.”

According to Trieb, the women are indeed seen as just as strong, disciplined, and committed as their male counterparts. They endure many months and levels of rigorous training in weaponry and tactical maneuvers before they are even allowed to fight. They are also wholly celebrated by their community, which Trieb notes is unexpected in a part of the world where women are often seen as inferior to men.

To some in the region, they are seen as potentially more of a threat to ISIS than male soldiers. As Trieb recalls, “The saying among many Syrian Kurds is that ISIS is more terrified of being killed by women because if they are, they will not go to heaven.” [Continue reading…]

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ISIS assault on Kobane: Turkey’s inaction speaks louder than its prime minister’s words

The Guardian reports: The Turkish prime minister has said the country will do “whatever we can” to stop the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani falling to Islamic State (Isis) as MPs voted to authorise military action against the militants.

Ahmet Davutoğlu spoke hours after the vote in the Turkish parliament, which authorises cross-border raids and allows coalition forces to launch operations from Turkish territory. Isis fighters are within a few miles of the town centre on three sides.

“We wouldn’t want Kobani to fall. We’ll do whatever we can to prevent this from happening,” Davutoğlu said in a discussion with journalists broadcast on the A Haber television channel.

“No other country has the capacity to affect the developments in Syria and Iraq. No other country will be affected like us either,” he said. His comments were in contrast to the Turkish defence minister, Ismet Yilmaz, who earlier said operations should not be expected immediately. [Continue reading…]

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Kurds warn of massacre by ISIS, Turkey stops short of action

Reuters reports: Kurdish fighters defending a Syrian border town warned on Friday of a likely massacre by Islamic State insurgents as the Islamists encircled the town with tanks and bombarded its outskirts with artillery fire.

Turkey said it would do what it could to prevent Kobani, a predominantly Kurdish town just over its southern border, from falling into Islamic State hands but stopped short of committing to any direct military intervention.

U.S.-led forces have been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq but the action has done little to stop their advance in northern Syria towards the Turkish border, piling pressure on Ankara to intervene.

Esmat al-Sheikh, head of the Kurdish forces defending Kobani, said the distance between his fighters and the insurgents was now less than one km (half a mile).

“We are in a small, besieged area. No reinforcements reached us and the borders are closed,” he told Reuters by phone. “My expectation is for general killing, massacres and destruction … There is bombardment with tanks, artillery, rockets and mortars.” [Continue reading…]

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Turkey must save the Kurds

Asli Aydintasbas writes: My generation of Turks grew up hating Kurdish separatists. Instead of questioning why Kurds weren’t allowed to speak their own language, live in their own villages or sing their own songs, we blamed the Kurdistan Workers Party, or P.K.K., which had been waging a guerrilla war against Turkey since 1984, for all of Turkey’s woes. Kurds were responsible for the death of our soldiers, we said. They were guilty of tearing up the country, draining our resources and siding with our enemies. In the mainstream press, they were simply “baby killers.”

Over the past few decades, that view started to soften as the history of human rights abuses committed in Turkey’s Kurdish regions was revealed. An ongoing peace process with the P.K.K., and the Turkish government’s post-2010 rapprochement with Iraq’s Kurdish region has begun to heal the rift between Turks and Kurds. And Iraqi Kurds, landlocked and alienated in an unstable country, started seeing Turkey as a key ally — reciprocated thanks to Turkey’s commercial appetite in the oil-rich region.

When secular Turks staged mass protests against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan last year, Kurds came out in support of the demonstrators. They camped out in Istanbul’s Gezi Park alongside leftists, students and artists — ostensibly to save a bunch of trees from an ugly development project, but in reality to protest Mr. Erdogan’s repressive style of governance.

Today, the Kurds are showing even greater courage. In Iraq and Syria, they are fighting Islamic State terrorists on our borders. Together with Iraqi Kurdish forces, the P.K.K. and its Syrian offshoots, our Kurdish compatriots have effectively formed a buffer zone between modern Turkey and the medieval radicalism propagated by the Islamic State. They are protecting not only our physical well-being but our entire way of life — and for this we must be grateful.[Continue reading…]

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