ISIS- SYRIA-THREAD

[Anthea]

US Centcom says 8 airstrikes in Kobane, 4 in Ayn al-Arab so far

Idiots do not even realise it is the same place

There really is no hope

[Anthea]

Reuters

Islamic State moves into south west of Syrian Kurdish town
By Daren Butler and Oliver Holmes

Islamic State fighters advanced into the south west of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani overnight, a monitoring group said on Tuesday, taking several buildings to gain attacking positions from two sides of the city.

From across the nearby Turkish border two Islamic State flags could be seen flying over the eastern side of Kobani. Two air strikes hit the area and sporadic gunfire could be heard.

Islamic State fighters were using heavy weapons and shells to hit Kobani, senior Kurdish official Asya Abdullah told Reuters from inside the town, which has been under siege for three weeks.

“Yesterday there was a violent clash. We have fought hard to keep them out of the town,” she said by telephone.

“The clashes are not in the whole of Kobani, but in specific areas, on the outskirts and towards the center.”

The al Qaeda offshoot has ramped up its offensive in recent days against the mainly Kurdish border town, despite being targeted by U.S.-led coalition led air strikes aimed at halting its progress.

The group wants to take Kobani to consolidate a dramatic sweep across northern Iraq and Syria, in the name of an absolutist version of Sunni Islam, that has sent shockwaves through the Middle East.

"There were clashes overnight. Not heavy but ISIS is going forward from the southwest. They have crossed into Kobani and control some buildings in the city there," said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that monitors the conflict with a network on the ground. ISIS is a former name for Islamic State.

"They are about 50 meters inside the southwest of the city," Abdulrahman said.

An estimated 180,000 people have fled into Turkey from the Kobani region following the Islamic State advance. More than 2,000 Syrian Kurds including women and children were evacuated from the town after the latest fighting, a member of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) said on Monday.

Before the offensive, Kobani, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, was home to refugees from the civil war which pits rebels against President Bashar al-Assad and has deteriorated into hundreds of localized battles between different factions.

The most powerful of the myriad militias fighting against Assad, Islamic State has boosted its forces with foreign fighters and defectors from other rebel groups. It gained additional heavy weaponry after its fighters swept through northern Iraq in June, seizing arms from the fleeing Iraqi army.

The group released a video showing dozens of men said to be from Ahrar al-Sham, a rival Islamist group which has clashed with it in the past, pledging allegiance to its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, SITE monitoring service said on Monday.

TURKEY'S ROLE

The United States has been bombing Islamic State positions in Iraq since August and extended the campaign to Syria in September. Arab states have joined both campaigns, while other Western countries are participating in Iraq but not Syria.

Turkey, a NATO member which shares a 900 kilometer (500 mile) border with Syria and has the most powerful military in the area, has so far refrained from joining the campaign.

Turkey says the scope of the campaign should be broadened to seek to remove Assad from power. It has sought a no-fly zone in northern Syria, which would require the coalition to take on Assad's air force as well as Islamic State, a move Washington has not agreed to.

“We are ready to do everything if there is a clear strategy and if we can be sure that our border can be protected after (Islamic State is gone)," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in an interview with CNN International.

"We don't want the regime anymore on our border pushing people towards Turkey. We don't want other terrorist organizations ... If Assad stays in Damascus with this brutal policy, if (Islamic State) goes another radical organization may come."

The brother of a British aid worker who was beheaded by Islamic State said Britain should put troops on the ground in the Middle East to fight against the militants.

"We need to send ground troops in or forces in to find out where these monsters are and bring them to justice," said Reg Henning, whose 47-year-old brother Alan was killed last week. "The sooner we do it, the sooner the killing stops." "Go and find them, bring them to justice, bring them over here, let us try them," he was quoted as saying on the BBC website.

Alan Henning's killing has been condemned by Western leaders and British Muslim groups alike. He was the fourth Western hostage executed by Islamic State fighters since the United States launched strikes on the group in Iraq in August.

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, William Maclean in Dubai and Costas Pitas in London; Editing by Peter Graff)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... =worldNews

[Anthea]

BBC News

Kobane: Islamic State fighters 'widen Kurdish town attack'

Fighting between Islamic State (IS) militants and Syrian Kurds is reported to have spread to a southern district of the town of Kobane on the Turkish border, as US-led air strikes continue.

But fighting in the town was less intense than on Monday, when IS took control of three districts in the east.

Witnesses report several loud explosions and plumes of smoke from probable air strikes.

More than 160,000 Syrians, mainly Kurds, have fled Kobane recently.

If Islamic State captured the town its jihadists would control of a long stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border.

In the latest clashes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) activist group said IS had crossed into a southern district of Kobane, taking over many buildings.

However, the group said heavy fighting had forced IS to pull back in eastern districts. It also suggested many IS fighters had been killed in an ambush by Syrian Kurdish fighters.

Kobane - under attack for several weeks - is now besieged on three sides.

A Kurdish official in Kobane, Idriss Nassan, told AFP news agency there were "lots of clashes" on Monday night and Kurdish fighters had halted the IS advance in the east of the town.

On Monday, IS took control of Mistenur, the strategic hill above Kobane after heavy shelling.

There was constant gunfire and a steady stream of Turkish ambulances racing to and from the border, with many wounded people being treated in hospitals close to the frontier.

A humanitarian mission to evacuate the few thousand civilians left in Kobane continued on Tuesday.

Turkish inaction

Karwan Zebari, a representative of the Kurdish regional government in the US, told the BBC it would be catastrophic if IS seized control of the town.

"If this continues, if there's no international aid, military aid arriving for the residents of Kobane and these Kurdish fighters that are fighting in Kobane, it could fall into the hands of IS," he said.

He urged Turkey to take action in support of the residents of Kobane.

In Turkey, clashes between police and Kurds, angered by what they see as Turkey's failure to intervene, were reported overnight in several cities.

Turkish Kurds and refugees have clashed with Turkish security forces on the border for the past two days.

Last week, Turkey pledged to prevent Kobane from falling to the militants and its parliament authorised military operations against militants in Iraq and Syria. But it appears to have taken no action so far.

Full Article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29517493

[Anthea]

News Week

As ISIS Take Kobane, NATO's Second Largest Army Sits on the Sidelines



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.

In Kobane itself, one of the town’s Kurdish fighters complained bitterly about their fate.

“We, the Kurds of Kobane, urged the international community including Turkey to help our resistance against ISIS by sending us weapons, logistics and ammunitions,” Delila Azad, a commander of the Women’s Protection Units, part of the Kurdish militia force defending the city, told Newsweek.

"We pleaded for help because ISIS threatens not only the Kurds but also the entire Middle East and the rest of the world… However, our call for solidarity has since fell on deaf ears in the international community and in Turkey.”

Analysts fear Turkey’s willingness to sit on the sidelines as the West’s ‘Public Enemy Number One’ moves in next door could badly damage a country that has been something of a bastion of stability in a troubled region.

Watching the fate of Kobane with horror and anger were Turkey’s own 15 million-strong Kurdish minority—nearly 20 per cent of the country—whose long history of insurrection against the Turkish state appeared until recently to be drawing to a close.

Many now fear the growing risk of blowback represented by the ISIS jihadist group, which thrives on instability and whose long term goal is to erect a Caliphate encompassing all the Muslim lands of the region.

“Turkey has helped create an environment in which it is in the first stage of ‘Pakistan-ization’,” says Halil Karaveli of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, a security think tank, referring to Turkey’s alleged past toleration of the Islamic State, which Ankara denies.

He fears the next step is for the Islamic State, regardless of whether it is able to maintain its hold of the territory in Syria and Iraq, will be to turn its attention to Turkey in the same way as jihadists fighting in Afghanistan went on to wreak havoc in Pakistan.

Newsweek reported last month on the Islamic State’s extensive recruiting activities in Turkey, and on the authorities’ apparent unwillingness or inability to combat them.

“In the second phase, these groups begin to come back into the country and cause mischief, and that the government will not be able to control.” says Karaveli.

Another faultline for potential strife is the future of Turkey’s 15 million Alevis, a heterodox Islamic sect regarded by ISIS as infidels, and who already complain of marginalization under the conservative Sunni-dominated leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Of more immediate concern is the anger among Turkey’s Kurds, many of whom are convinced that Ankara is aiding the Islamic State.

“Turkey’s Kurds have been given a front row seat to watch the destruction of their own people,” says Asli Aydintasbas, a columnist at the daily Milliyet newspaper.

“There will be serious repercussions. Strategically speaking Kobane is tiny, but it’s gained an enormous symbolic meaning for Turkey’s Kurds, and I don’t think the government realises that,” she added.

“Kurds are fighting ISIS tooth and nail with Turkey standing by. That’s the image abroad, and that’s the image for Kurds.”

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Turkish-Kurdish rebel group regarded as a terrorist organization by Europe and America, has for the past 18 months been involved in historic peace talks aimed at ending a three decade long insurgency that decimated Turkey’s southeast and cost 40,000 lives.

The strong conviction among many Turkish Kurds—and Syrian Kurds—is that Turkey has been actively assisting and arming the Islamic State, an assertion that is strenuously refuted by Ankara and which lacks substantiating evidence.

“The Turkish Government did not respond to our call because Turkey supports Islamic State against us Kurds,” said Azad, the commander in Kobane.

Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s imprisoned leader who is conducting the peace talks, warned they would be over if ‘this massacre in Kobane is allowed to continue’.

Ankara’s seeming ambivalence is in part explained by its long history of antagonism with the PKK—and the deep hatred of it harboured by much Turkey’s population.

Meanwhile, while opinion polls indicate that Turks almost universally abhor the atrocities of ISIS, there is a strong sympathy for the oppressed Sunni Muslim populations they purport to champion.

“The attitude in Ankara is extremely hostile towards ISIS,” says Hugh Pope, deputy programme director for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group.

After a recent meetings with Turkish officials in Ankara, Pope said he believes the administration feels cornered between the anger of its Kurdish minority and the potential misgivings of its Sunni population.

“If they go one way, they will have an eruption within one section of their constituency, if they go the other way, they will have an eruption within another section of it.”

He sympathises with Ankara’s wider misgivings regarding the lack of strategic vision behind the Western coalition against Islamic State.

“They don’t want to get involved in something when it’s not clear where it’s going,” he says. Turkish leaders have long demanded the overthrow of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, whom they see as the ultimate author of the country’s instability.

Their calls for a buffer zone, which would require the degrading of Assad’s airforce, is widely seen as a step towards railroading the West into direct confrontation with the Syrian regime.

In the meantime, Turks are becoming increasingly fearful of the longer term repercussions of having the world’s most feared terror group as their new neighbour.

“We don’t know the political winds that ISIS will bring about in Turkey,” says Aydintasbas. “What about Turkish Arab border towns? What about the 1.5 million Syrian refugees? We’re in for a deep and prolonged period of uncertainty.”

http://www.newsweek.com/isis-take-koban ... ?piano_t=1

[Anthea]

Mail Online

ISIS flag flies on Europe's doorstep: Jihadis are poised to seize key town...

while Nato's tanks hold their fire on Turkish border
By John Hall and Jack Crone



Islamic State terrorists raise the black flag of jihad in Kobane - where Kurdish forces have been resisting for weeks
Flag was seen being waved on hill on the outskirts of town, before being raised over four-storey building in suburbs
Brave Kurdish troops still desperately resisting and earlier said they will not let them take city 'for as long as we live'
But new reports say militants have entered city's eastern districts, engaging in street-to street fighting with defenders
If Kobani falls ISIS will control unbroken 125-mile stretch of frontier with Turkey - 1,000 miles from the EU
Heavily armed Turkish soldiers stationed on nearby Syrian border have been watching the fierce fighting take place
Mortar shells fired by ISIS militants have fallen inside Turkish territory in recent days damaging homes in Atmanek
NATO member Turkey has announced that alliance's 'joint defence mechanism' will be activated if ISIS breach border

Islamic State militants have entered the key strategic city of Kobane, which lies on the Syrian-Turkish border, and have taken control of its eastern districts after engaging in street-to-street fighting with Kurdish defenders.

ISIS raised their flag over a building in the outskirts of the town yesterday morning following an assault lasting almost three weeks, amid fears the town could fall to the jihadists within hours.

Kobane is just six miles from the Turkish border - the gateway into Europe - and the NATO member country has already called on the international alliance to provide military assistance in the event that ISIS fighters breach the border.

Despite the symbolic raising of the flag, the town's brave Kurdish defenders earlier claimed that the terrorists had not reached the city centre and would not be allowed to do so 'for as long as we live'.

But ISIS are believed to have now taken the town's industrial zone in the east - as hundreds of civilians flee to the Turkish border.

Meanwhile, Turkish tanks were massing across the hillsides just miles away, with soldiers standing atop ready to fire.

Turkey has announced that NATO has drawn up a strategy to defend the country if it is attacked along its border with Syria, ABC News reports.

Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz yesterday said that NATO had done this at Turkey's request, adding: 'If there is an attack, NATO's joint defence mechanism will be activated.'

NATO's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also spoke yesterday, claiming that the alliance had 'deployed Patriot missiles in Turkey to enhance and strengthen' the country's air defence.

He added: 'The main responsibility for NATO is to protect all allied countries. Turkey is a NATO ally and our main responsibility is to protect the integrity, the borders of Turkey,' NBC News reports.

Local sources inside Kobane confirmed the group had planted its flag but said that Kurdish forces had repelled their advances so far. At least 20 ISIS militants have so far been killed in their assault on the city yesterday - following the deaths of more than 45 fighters on each side on Sunday.


A Turkish soldier watches fighting between Kurdish forces and ISIS militants in Syria from a tank stationed on the Turkish side of the border

Charlie Cooper, a spokesman at the Quilliam Foundation, a British counter-extremism think tank, said: ‘The fall of Kobani is perilously close, if not inevitable. It is most likely there will be mass execution of those left fighting. Kobani is important symbolically because it is the last pocket of resistance in northern Syria for hundreds of miles.’

Jenan Moussa, a reporter for the Dubai-based network Al Aan, who is on the border, said there were fears in Kobani that ‘all will be killed’.

She posted a series of tweets, including: ‘Isis used booby trAlan Henning calls for David Cameron to send troops to ...apped cars to force their way through Kurdish defence lines in Kobani.’ Another read: ‘Isis entered #Kobani from both east & west. They are in the city. Street fights raging.’

Kobane is a town of key strategic importance to both ISIS and the Kurdish resistance due to its close proximity to the largely porous Turkish border.

While the city centre is roughly six miles from the barbed wire fence that separates Turkey from Syria, the city's northern suburbs are so close to Turkey that civilians in the Turkish town of Mursitpinar have been able to watch the fighting with binoculars.

Yesterday morning Kurdish fighters inside Kobane - which is also known as Ayn al-Arab and situated right on the Turkish border - declared that U.S.-led airstrikes against ISIS targets in northern Syria have had little impact on the militant group, who have continued to seize swathes of territory.

'ISIL have only planted a flag on one building on the eastern side of town,' said Ismail Eskin, a journalist in the town, using an alternative acronym for ISIS.

'That is not inside the city, it's on the eastern side. They are not inside the city. Intense clashes are continuing,' he added.

ISIS has been battling to seize the predominantly Kurdish town after taking over large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq in recent months.


Anthea: Surely someone could at least blow that flag up



Full Article and more Photos of Turkish solidiers doing NOTHING:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... worst.html

[Anthea]

New York Times

Coalition Warplanes Reportedly Strike ISIS in Support of Kurds

LONDON — Warplanes from the American-led coalition fighting militants of the Islamic State were reported on Tuesday to have struck targets in Syria near the Turkish border in support of Kurdish forces locked in street fighting with the militants.

If confirmed, the reports could indicate an escalation in American-led efforts to help the Kurds resist, if not repel, an onslaught by the Sunni militants whose forces control portions of Syria and Iraq.

The latest fighting has centered on the border town of Kobani and the region surrounding it, within full view of Turkish forces who have massed tanks with their cannons pointing toward Syria but who have not opened fire or otherwise intervened.

The United States Central Command did not immediately confirm the reports from reporters close to the border. Its most recent statement on Monday listed earlier strikes in the area surrounding the beleaguered town, where two black flags have been raised by the attacking militants.

News reports on Tuesday, however, said new attacks by allied warplanes hit militant positions west of Kobani. Reporters were said to have heard the sound of jet engines before two large plumes of smoke rose from the area.

Barwar Mohammad Ali, a coordinator with the Kurdish defenders inside Kobani, said street fighting continued Tuesday morning. While the new round of airstrikes appeared to make a difference, he said, they were still not enough to hold off a larger and better-armed Islamic State force.

Several airstrikes appeared to hit the southern and eastern outskirts of Kobani overnight and Tuesday morning, he said. “It is the first time that people have the impression that the airstrikes are effective,” he said, referring to Kurdish fighters on the front lines with whom he said he was in touch. “But they need more.”

Defenders had clashed with Islamic State militants on the eastern edge of Kobani, or Ayn al-Arab, as the town is called in Arabic, the main settlement in a farming district of the same name. Several dozen Islamic State fighters were killed and 20 were taken prisoner, including 10 foreigners, he said.

Around 200 Kurdish civilians trying to flee the area crossed into Turkey along with several journalists, Mr. Ali said, and there were reports that they had been detained by the Turkish authorities. Tens of thousands of people have already fled the fighting around Kobani.

One of the detainees, Mustafa Bali, was reached by phone in a basketball hall in a Turkish border village called Ali Kor. He said that he and about 200 other civilians crossed the border into Turkey on Monday after the Kurdish forces known as the Peoples Protection Committees, or Y.P.G., urged everyone but fighters to evacuate. Buses took them to the hall, where they are still locked in, he said.

Young men in the group, which also included women and children, were interrogated and asked about Y.P.G. leaders and their relations with them.

“I was locked alone in a room for four hours,” Mr. Bali, a Syrian Kurdish activist, said. “They checked my phone and text messages and asked me questions about specific names in the Y.P.G. in a very insulting way. They told us we will be released when they are done with our procedure, but I don’t know what kind of prodecure a refugee receives.”

The battle has coincided with deepening concerns about the impact of Western involvement on the fate of hostages held by the militants, who claimed to have beheaded four of them — two Americans and two Britons — and to have threatened a fifth, a 26-year-old American convert to Islam, Abdul-Rahman Kassig.

The most recent decapitation came last week when video images by the Islamic State purported to show the death of Alan Henning, a British cabdriver abducted last December.

Britain has committed warplanes to attack Islamic State targets in Iraq, but it has said it will not immediately join the United States in bombing targets in Syria.

The British authorities’ handling of the crisis drew criticism on Tuesday from both the Henning family and from a British former detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who was released in Britain last week from a pretrial detention lasting seven months. He had been held on suspicion of helping militants in Syria, but the authorities freed him after abruptly withdrawing terrorism-related charges days before he was to stand trial.

Reg Henning, the brother of Alan Henning, challenged Prime Minister David Cameron’s insistence that Britain, like the United States, would not commit ground forces to the fight against Islamic State.

In an interview with the BBC, he spoke of the need to “send ground forces in to find out where these monsters are,” referring to his brother’s captors. “The sooner we do it, the sooner the killing stops.”

Separately, Moazzam Begg, the former detainee, said he had offered to intervene with fighters in Syria to secure Mr. Henning’s release, but the authorities rejected the idea. He said he had played a role in the past to free captives.

“I intervened by getting some other groups who could pressurize them to release those individuals and I got them released,” he told the BBC. “The problem is that the government in its attempts to demonize and criminalize me simply refused to look at anything to do with what I was about.”

Alan Cowell reported from London, Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon, and Karam Shoumali from Sanliurfa, Turkey

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/08/world ... rikes.html

[Anthea]

CNN

Self-funded and deep-rooted: How ISIS makes its millions
By Scott Bronstein and Drew Griffin

Besaslan, Turkey -- On the southern edge of Turkey, rolling brown pastoral hills slope gently to the Syrian border, with small towns like this one dotting the horizon. The calm on this side of the border, however, belies the scene on the other side.

Just across the border in northern Syria, the Islamic extremist group known as ISIS is fighting a full-tilt battle in its effort to capture and control new territory, part of its push to create a sprawling Islamic caliphate, or separate Islamic state, modeled on the first caliphate that spread across the region in the centuries following the death of the Prophet Muhammad around 640 AD.

As ISIS fighters expand their control, it is in the border region, in villages like Besaslan, where the Islamic State group can make some of the money it needs to finance its wars. Oil-smuggling operations involving millions of barrels have recently been uncovered.

The oil comes from wells and refineries that ISIS has taken over inside northern Iraq and northern Syria, and until very recently it was easy to smuggle it into this quiet part of southern Turkey. One reason is that cheap, smuggled oil is a much-prized commodity in Turkey, where oil is so expensive that it almost doesn't matter who is selling it, even if it's your enemy.

In Hatay, Turkey, just a half hour's drive away, gasoline costs roughly $7.50 per gallon.

Growing international alarm over ISIS expansion and the group's increasingly visible atrocities -- such as beheadings of Western journalists and aid workers, the videos of which are disseminated online -- have brought renewed pressure on ISIS and its funding methods on the borders.

U.S.-led coalition forces just a week ago attacked and destroyed many ISIS oil facilities, precisely to cut off the group's funding.

But the border smuggling is only one way that ISIS generates money.

The U.S. Treasury Department admits it does not have hard figures on the group's wealth but believes ISIS reaps millions of dollars a month.

"And you have to remember their 'burn' rate -- how much they spend -- is huge, with salaries and weapons and everything," a Treasury official said. "But on how much they have -- there's a very wide range of estimates out there. We think probably they make around $1 million per day."

Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, D.C., calls ISIS "the best-financed group we've ever seen."

Levitt is a national expert on terrorism and its financing, working previously on intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Treasury and the FBI.

ISIS, Levitt says, is funded like no other traditional terrorist group in the past. Besides revenue from oil smuggling, the group receives money through donations from wealthy sympathizers in countries including Qatar and Kuwait.

But the group has another method of funding itself: through organized crime within the territories it has vanquished and now controls. The group, says Levitt, was born among crooks and thugs from a broken Iraq, and at its root it is a criminal enterprise.

"We shouldn't be surprised," says Levitt. "Remember, the Islamic State called ISIS is what used to be called the Islamic State of Iraq, and al Qaeda in Iraq, the Tawhid Network, the Zarqawi Network; it's all the same. And they were always primarily financed through domestic criminal activity within the borders of Iraq."

Levitt says ISIS operates as a massive organized crime group with virtually no law enforcement to rein it in -- and its long history has allowed it to set roots and develop over many years.

It means ISIS can demand money from people wherever it has established control. Want to do business in ISIS-controlled territory? You pay a tax. Want to move a truck down an ISIS-controlled highway? You pay a toll. Villagers in ISIS territory reportedly are charged and pay for just about everything.

"There are reports that people in Mosul (Iraq) who want to take money out of their own bank accounts need to make a 'voluntary' -- not so voluntary -- donation to the Islamic State, to ISIS," Levitt says. "So controlling territory has given them opportunities that other groups like al Qaeda, who haven't controlled real territory, haven't had."

It is the centuries-honored tradition of conquest and control: What you take is what you have.

In Mosul, ISIS looted the central bank and other smaller provincial banks, resulting in a financial windfall of tens and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars.

ISIS formed in the void created by the pullout of U.S. troops and the retreating Iraqi army, says Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force in Washington. In the lawlessness that followed, he says, ISIS took over, robbed banks, began taxing and extorting the population, and now funds its war and expansion across Iraq and Syria almost independently.

Moustafa lobbies U.S. lawmakers for more support of moderate Syrian rebels who are now fighting both ISIS and the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. He recently helped bring together several Congressional delegations to meet with moderate rebel groups on the border as part of that effort.

Coalition airstrikes, he says, aren't enough to destroy the kind of self-financing mob that ISIS has become. Instead, you need to take back the territory and restore civil order.

"They're taxing the people; that's a huge revenue," he says of ISIS. "But not only that. They also control sort of the breadbasket of Syria, in terms of Raqqa (their defacto capital). They've got the cotton and the wheat and all these other things. All of these serve as sort of economic and powerhouse or funding for ISIS."

Fighters who are willing to do battle against ISIS are frustrated that the United States has not helped them more, Moustafa says, pointing out that it is largely a decision for the U.S. president.

"It is a White House decision," Moustafa said. "And it always has been. And I think the White House is slowly moving in the right direction. I can tell you that the policy that the White House has right now -- if it had this policy three years ago, there would have never been an ISIS, and we probably would have gotten rid of the Assad regime."

The Obama administration has heard this criticism before and counters that the President has been calculating in his response to the situation in Syria.

"It's not difficult to contemplate or imagine a scenario where if the United States had put -- dumped a bunch of arms into that country three years ago, that members of ISIL or other extremist groups would be toting American arms as they wage their campaign of violence throughout that region," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said last month, referring to ISIS by another acronym. "So the President has been very deliberate about this."

U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have recently begun targeting ISIS locations, attacking ISIS-controlled oil facilities and even grain silos. But as long as ISIS controls any ground where civilians can be taxed, extorted and robbed, say experts, ISIS will remain self-financing.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/06/world ... ar_twitter

[Anthea]

Al Jazeera

Bomb run Aleppo

Behind the scenes with medics who struggle to cope with the deadly effects of barrel bombs dropped by the Syrian regime.

Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, is split between government and opposition forces. For more than a year now, rebel-held districts have been under siege, battered and bombarded from the ground and the air.

Many if not most aerial attacks come in the form of barrel bombs; crude canisters - often just oil barrels or garbage cans - packed full of high explosives, that President Bashar al-Assad’s men roll out of helicopters and transport planes onto the city below.

The impact on Aleppo’s densely packed civilian neighbourhoods has been devastating. Homes, business and schools have been obliterated and many thousands of people wounded or killed.

International human rights groups have categorised the use of these weapons as indiscriminate and unlawful, yet the attacks show no signs of slackening. Indeed, recently they seem to be intensifying, with growing numbers of government troops stepping up their efforts to capture this iconic location.

Few know better what the barrel bomb attacks mean in terms of shattered lives, pain and despair, than the makeshift medical teams struggling against impossible odds and great danger to bring help to the victims.

As likely to fall victim to an unannounced attack from the air as any other civilian - and working out of Aleppo’s bombed-out hospitals and clinics with the bare minimum of equipment and vehicles - the medics nevertheless perform daily miracles in rescuing and treating the wounded, be they opposition or government supporters.

Earlier this summer journalist and filmmaker Nagieb Khaja spent time with one group of medics as they struggled to do their jobs. He brought back a remarkable report.

Visceral and sometimes raw, it nevertheless paints a harrowing portrait of city and its people struggling to survive.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peo ... 78205.html

[Anthea]

Al-Qaeda-linked rebels seize priest in Syria: Franciscan Order

A Franciscan priest and several other Christians have been seized by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front from a town in Syria

A Franciscan priest and several other Christians have been seized by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front in a village in northwestern Syria, the Franciscan mission to the Holy Land said on Tuesday.

"On the night of October 5th, Father Hanna Jallouf of the Custody of the Holy Land, parish priest at Qunyeh, Syria, was taken by some brigades linked to Jabhat Al-Nusra," a statement from the Custody of the Holy Land said.

Qunyeh is a village of several hundred people in Idlib province, and lies some eight kilometres from the Turkish border.



"Along with Father Hanna, several men of the Christian village were also taken," the statement said, indicating that an unspecified number of Franciscan nuns who were at St Joseph's Convent in Qunyeh had taken refuge with the villagers.

"We are not able to say where Father Hanna and his parishioners are now and, at this time, we have no possibility of contact with him or his captors," it said.

"Let us pray for him and for the other victims of this tragic and senseless war."

"Along with Father Hanna, several men of the Christian village were also taken," the statement said, indicating that an unspecified number of Franciscan nuns who were at St Joseph's Convent in Qunyeh had taken refuge with the villagers.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/alqaedal ... 0rm9x.html

[Anthea]

YPG fight against ISIS is now in the Kobane town center

Info via multiple sources

German reporter claims that the Kurds are only in control of the northern part. Rest has probably fallen

[Anthea]

Hundreds of kurds from Cizire are tearing down the border fence to cross to Kobanê to join the YPG.

[Piling]

French FM ready to mobilize for Kobanî :

France said on Tuesday it was vital to act in order to stop Islamic State's advance on the northern Syria border town of Kobani, and was discussing with Turkey what could be done.
"A lot is at stake in Kobani and everything must be done so that the Daesh terrorists are stopped and pushed back," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told the French parliament.
"A tragedy is unfolding, and we must all react."
Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan said Kobani, or Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, was about to fall after Islamic State advanced into the south west of the besieged town, pressing home a three-week assault that has cost a reported 400 lives.
Fabius said he had spoken to his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu and that President Francois Hollande would speak to Erdogan later on Tuesday "to see how to react in face of the urgent situation."
He gave no details on what help France would actually offer and officials declined to comment on specifics.
Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that has taken control of large parts of neighbouring Syria and Iraq, has ramped up its offensive in recent days against the mainly Kurdish border town, despite being targeted by U.S.-led coalition air strikes aimed at halting its progress.
France was the first country after the United States to strike insurgents in Iraq. It has so far carried out two air strikes and armed Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
But it has ruled out strikes in Syria and says it will only reinforce and train moderate rebels on the ground, although no details of those efforts have been given.
Fabius, who will meet his Cavusoglu in Paris on Friday, repeated France would increase its support for the ramshackle Free Syrian Army.
"We are also reinforcing our own cooperation with the forces that on the ground are fighting Islamic State," he said.

Reuters

The French Foreign Minister has said, "Neither the American led coalition or the Kurdish forces have been able to halt the progression of ISIS. France, by arming the Kurds and conducting airstrikes, has openly chosen to intercept militarily. We will now mobilise for Kobane. We will enhance our special collaboration with forces that are struggling against ISIS".

The French Foreign Minister has also called on the international community to do whatever it can for Kobane, and must deploy all means possible in support for Kobane. Fabius stated that they have met with officials from the Turkish Foreign Ministry regarding Kobane, and they will mobilise for Kobane as soon as possible.

http://kurdishquestion.com/kurdistan/we ... obane.html

Another plot of these 'dirty and spiteful French' against the Caliph…

[Anthea]

A father and son in Kobani

Let us hope and prey that they both survive

[Anthea]

Mail Online

Terror of the families trapped in ISIS’ crosshairs:

Women and children take up arms in last, desperate stand in key border town

Tensions rise across Turkey while government does nothing
By Larisa Brown for the Daily Mail and John Hall and Jennifer Newton

New ISIS footage shows militants in control of a hill overlooking Kobane
They say they will stop at nothing as they advance towards the town
Questions raised over effectiveness of airstrikes in defeating ISIS militants
Group has continued to gain territory despite weeks of Western bombing
U.S. airstrikes took place in besieged Syrian city of Kobane this morning
Strikes came one day after terrorists raised flag over a building in suburbs
Turkish prime minister says hitting ISIS from air will not stop fall of Kobane
Despite promising not to let it happen days ago Recep Tayyip Erdogan said fall of city is now imminent
His words come amid increasing anger across Turkey over lack of action

Children armed with AK-47s fought to defend the Syrian town of Kobane to the death today after a wave of U.S.-led airstrikes failed to stop Islamic State advances.

Thousands of stricken civilians were told to ‘flee from their villages’ as Kurdish officials warned they could not protect them against the onslaught as anger mounted across the border in Turkey over the government's seeming willingness to stand by and do nothing. Protests erupted in cities across the country including Istanbul and Ankara

Jihadists using tanks and advanced weaponry engaged in heavy street battles against outgunned Kurds in the key town on Syria’s border.



Whole families - including elderly women and children – stayed behind in a desperate attempt to stop fanatics gaining a major strategic victory.

The ISIS advance led to renewed calls for ground troops to support the Kurds as it became clear that airstrikes were not enough to stop the fall of the pivotal border town.

Six US-led airstrikes overnight Monday and yesterday appeared to slow the group’s shelling on the centre, destroying four armed vehicles, damaging a tank and killing fighters.

Kurdish forces pushed militants out of the eastern part of the town and managed to destroy a tank, six IS cars mounted with machines guns and kill scores of fighters in the south and east of the town.

But while a flag belonging to the Kurdish militias was still seen waving in the centre of Kobane today, government officials said the town was about to fall.

One resident described seeing ISIS fighters in the streets looking relaxed and casually walking around – but said they were soon killed by Kurdish fighters with superior knowledge of sites throughout the city.





It came as pictures emerged of entire families joining in the fight, including a boy barely aged 10 sat beside his father carrying an AK-47.

Another picture showed a teenage girl wearing a hoodie, jeans and ballet pumps while carrying a gun, and an elderly woman in a headscarf beside a girl young enough to be her daughter.

The three photographs were posted on social networking site Twitter yesterday, alongside the comment: ‘Kurdish family vs Isis terorist (sic) in Kobane. Kurds in Kobane need help!’

The pictures emerged after ISIS posted a chilling on social media, allegedly showing ISIS fighters in control of the strategic Mashta Nour hill, which overlooks the town of Kobane.

The video comes after questions have been raised over whether airstrikes will be enough to defeat Islamic State militants after Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the town will fall within hours without extra ground support.

In the footage, one ISIS fighter says that with the help of god, they have taken over the hill, which overlooks the city.

He adds that the 'soldiers of Islam' are now 'crawling towards the city' and that they will destroy the infidels and take the city, despite the airstrikes.

He finishes by declaring the airstrikes will not stop them and that they will 'take the city.'

The new footage comes amid growing evidence that Western efforts are having little impact on ISIS - who have continued to take vast swathes of territory in since American airstrikes started in Iraq in August and a U.S./Arab coalition began bombing targets in Syria two weeks ago.

Sources on the ground say the terrorists have been able to easily avoid the airstrikes by operating from bases inside civilian buildings, and also by simply melting away into small groups whenever aircraft are overhead before re-emerging as a fighting force once the planes leave.

With ISIS continuing to take ground in both Iraq and Syria - including the possible capture of the strategically and symbolically important city of Kobane - Western airstrikes appear to be doing little to bring the militant group's reign of terror to an end.

Kurdish fighters in Kobane were among the first to suggest airstrikes would not be enough, with Idris Nassan, a senior spokesman, telling the Guardian: 'They are besieging the city on three sides, and fighter jets simply cannot hit each and every ISIS fighter on the ground.'

And Britain's former Chief of the Defence Staff General Lord David Richards has also warned that political leaders appear to have underestimated the scale of the task they face, and that the crisis is likely to require Western boots on the ground to make any real headway.

'Air power alone will not win a campaign like this. It isn't actually a counter-terrorist operation. This is a conventional enemy in that it has armour, tanks, artillery, it is quite wealthy, it holds ground and it is going to fight. So therefore you have to view it as a conventional military campaign,' he told the BBC.

'You either have to put your own boots on the ground at some point, or else you have to very energetically and aggressively train up those who will do that with us and for us. My worry at the moment is that the scale of the challenge isn't being met by the right scale of response,' he added.

Erdogan's suggestion that Kobane is 'about to fall' comes after Kurdish resistance forces vowed to fight ISIS to the death, saying they will do their utmost to prevent the Islamist 'monsters' massacring the city's 40,000 civilians.

The news comes as it was claimed up to 800 people may have been killed in fighting in Kobane over the past three weeks, as ISIS battled the brave Kurdish resistance and advanced in the city suburbs.

Smoke was seen coming from positions immediately behind the four-storey building this morning, with reporters stationed across the border in Turkey saying heavily armed police there had ordered people to stay indoors while the strikes take place.

Street fighting raged between Kurdish forces and ISIS fanatics yesterday, after the terror group advanced into the suburbs of Kobane.

The head of the Kurdish forces defending Kobane said late yesterday that ISIS forces were 300 metres inside the eastern district and were shelling the remaining neighbourhoods.

'We either die or win. No fighter is leaving,' Esmat al-Sheikh, leader of the Kobane Defence Authority, said.

'The world is watching, just watching and leaving these monsters to kill everyone, even children...but we will fight to the end with what weapons we have.'

ISIS wants to take Kobane to consolidate a dramatic sweep across northern Iraq and Syria, in the name of an absolutist version of Sunni Islam, that has sent shockwaves through the Middle East.

At least 400 people are known to have died in ISIS' three-week bombardment of Kobane, according the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights - a group monitoring violence in Syria.

The organisation explained it had documented 412 deaths from sources on the ground - including fighters on both sides of the conflict - but said the real figure was likely to be more than 800 dead.

Full Article Photos Videos:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... mailonline

[Anthea]

Mail Online

Kobane: Civilians flee IS street-to-street fighting

Islamic State (IS) militants have entered the key Syria-Turkey border town of Kobane and taken control of three districts after street-to-street fighting with Syrian Kurd defenders.

IS fighters entered the eastern districts on Monday, raising their black flag on buildings and hills.

Local officials said about 2,000 civilians fled to the Turkish border.

Taking Kobane, besieged for three weeks, would give IS control of a long stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border.

More than 160,000 Syrians, mainly Kurds, have fled the town.

Earlier a local official in Kobane, Idriss Nassan, told the BBC that the town would "certainly fall soon".

He confirmed IS was now in control of Mistenur, the strategic hill above the town and that there was heavy shelling. Kobane is now besieged on three sides.

Aircraft from the US-led coalition are reported to have conducted further strikes on Tuesday morning, though the targets were unclear.

Large explosions were heard by reporters monitoring from the Turkish side of the border and plumes of smoke could be seen.

There are also reports that IS fighters entered parts of the south-west of the town overnight. Clashes, including sniper fire, were reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group.

'Limited weapons'

Karwan Zebari, a representative of the Kurdish regional government in the US, told the BBC it would be catastrophic if IS seized control of the town.

"If this continues, if there's no international aid, military aid arriving for the residents of Kobane and these Kurdish fighters that are fighting in Kobane, it could fall into the hands of IS," he said.

He urged Turkey to take action in support of the residents of Kobane.

"I think Turkey's interests, national security, is at stake here as well. It's important that Turkey steps up and assists these Kurdish fighters in repelling this IS momentum."

Speaking on Monday, Asya Abdullah, a co-leader of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party representing Syrian Kurds in Kobane, described the fighting to the BBC's Newshour programme.

She said: "There are still thousands of civilians in the city and IS is using heavy weapons. If they are not stopped now, there will be a big massacre.

"They have surrounded us almost from every side with their tanks. They have been shelling the city with heavy weapons. Kurdish fighters are resisting as much as they can with the limited weapons they have."

Full Article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29515431