ISIS- SYRIA-THREAD

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Firat News

Asya Abdullah: Corridor is essential



PYD Co-President Asya Abdullah, who is in Kobanê with the resistance, said: "In order for the encirclement of Kobanê to be broken a corridor is essential”. Abdullah said the gangs, who have suffered serious casualties, had brought in heavy weaponry and reinforcements from the areas under their control, and were launching concerted attacks. She added that they were press ganging Arab youths and forcing them to fight.

Arab families living in these areas have begun to leave in order to protect them from the ISIS gangs. PYD Co-President Asya Abdullah said: ''Our Arab people should take a stand against this gang that is the enemy of humanity.”

She reacted to statements by the Turkish authorities to the effect that “there are no civilians left in Kobanê,'' saying there were still thousands of civilians in the town. Abdullah reiterated her appeal for a corridor, emphasising that their resistance against mounting attacks by ISIS would continue without limit. PYD Co-President Asya Abdullah has been in Kobanê since the attacks began. She answered our questions regarding the Arab youth being inveigled into fighting by ISIS, the situation of civilians and the question of a corridor being opened to Kobanê.

The gangs are trying to plug the gaps by deceiving Arab youths

-It has been reported in recent days that the ISIS gangs have forced, or deceived by promising booty, Arab youths in the Manbij, Jarablus and Tel Abyad areas under their control to fight in Kobanê. Could you comment on this?

-The ISIS gangs have suffered serious blows from the YPG forces. They are constantly bringing in reinforcements from places such as Manbij, Jarablus, Rakka, Tel Abyad and Ayn Issa. As the gangs have suffered serious casualties, we have heard that they are telling young people in these areas that, ‘You can come and take whatever you like from Kobanê. Go and gather booty. Kobanê is now in our hands.’ They have fooled hundreds in this way. Arabs living here tell us that many of those deceived in this way have died here. The ISIS gangs are trying to plug the gaps by tricking the Arab people.”

Arabs leaving the region

-What is the reaction of the Arab people living here to this situation?

“We are aware that the Arab people are strongly opposed to this attitude of ISIS. We have heard that many people have begun to leave because of the ISIS practice of press ganging their children. ISIS is the enemy of the Arab people, too. We know from local sources that announcements are made from the mosques asking families to send their children to war and to join the jihad. In reaction to this families have not given their children to ISIS, and after repression have begun to leave.

ISIS is attacking the fraternity of peoples

-Do you have an appeal to make to the Arab people in this regard?

“Our political project is clear. The democratic autonomy project encompasses all the peoples of the region and envisages them co-existing fraternally. In our cantons Arabs, Syriacs, Christians and Circassians all live together. The YPG protects all the communities that live in the cantons. It is not just the defence force of the Kurds. We call on the Arab people to oppose the divisive policy of the ISIS gangs, which wants to deceive their children into getting involved in internecine strife. We can say that the Arab people do not approve of ISIS, but because they are under the control of ISIS they cannot do anything. This murderous gang slaughters anyone who opposes their laws. And they do not stop at physical massacre, they are also trying to destroy the existing fraternity of peoples here and the culture of co-existence. We therefore call on all communities to oppose ISIS and not allow them to destroy the fraternity of peoples.”

There are thousands of civilians in Kobanê

-The Turkish authorities say there are no civilians left in Kobanê. What do you say to this?

“We are in Kobanê. The canton administration is here. There are thousands of civilians in Kobanê' at this moment. They are alongside the YPG. There are thousands of people waiting on the border at Tel Sheir. These people also have thousands of animals. There are families whose children are fighting in the ranks of the YPG and do not want to abandon them. There are families who have lost children and there are those who are defending their homes. They do not want to leave Kobanê. So far 15 civilians have died in Kobanê.”

‘Civilians being slaughtered'

-It is reported a young woman was murdered?

“On 9 October we are aware that a civilian was shot by an ISIS sniper in the Tel Sheir area as she made her way to Kobanê. We have also heard that the gangs have murdered many civilian Kurds in the villages. A 20-year-old woman and an elderly woman were murdered, and we know of two elderly men being brutally murdered with stones.”

They have civilians and children

-Have the ISIS gangs captured any civilians?

“There are hundreds of civilians. Some of them were captured in the villages during this war. There are hundreds who were captured previously as they travelled from Kobanê to other regions. Some children have been released, but there are still around 30 children from Kobanê in the hands of the ISIS gangs.”

A corridor is urgently needed

-You have requested that a corridor be opened to Kobanê. What can you say about this?

ISIS is attacking with heavy weaponry. We have said many times that in order for there to be a stronger and more effective resistance and for civilians to be defended there is a need for a corridor. The coalition has made some interventions, which is positive, but a corridor is needed to counteract these heavy weapons and for support. The corridor is needed not just for arms, but also for humanitarian needs. Water supplies and electricity centres are now under the control of ISIS, so there is an urgent need for a corridor to be opened. In order for the encirclement of Kobanê to be broken a corridor is essential”.

-Have there been any developments regarding the opening of such a corridor?

“There are bodies that have put this on their agenda following our appeals and as a result of actions. We believe that there will be a positive outcome and that a corridor will be opened.”

-What can you say regarding the latest situation in the fighting?

They have brought in heavy weaponry and reinforcements from Rakka, Miabij and Jarablus and have stepped up their attacks since yesterday. They are trying to advance, but are suffering heavy casualties and cannot do so. They have heavy weaponry, but the YPG will continue its resistance to these attacks. The resistance to finish off ISIS will continue for months until it is accomplished.”

http://en.firatajans.com/news/news/asya ... tial-1.htm

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Reuters

Kurdish leader threatens Turkish peace deal collapse



A senior Kurdish militant has threatened Turkey with a new Kurdish revolt if it sticks with its current policy of non-intervention in the battle for the Syrian town of Kobani.

Kurdish forces allied to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the People's Defence Units (YPG), are fighting against Islamic State insurgents attacking Kobani close to the Turkish border.

Turkey is reluctant to open its border to allow arms to reach the out-gunned Kurds.

Turkey passed a mandate for cross-border military operations in Syria and Iraq but has so far refused to join the military coalition against Islamic State or use force to protect Kobani and has resisted calls to allow the flow of weapons and volunteer fighters into the besieged town.

"We have warned Turkey. If they continue on this path, then the guerrillas will re-launch our defensive war to protect our people," Cemil Bayik, a founding member of the PKK who is also its most senior figure not in prison, told the German network ARD in Arbil in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.

"The AK party is responsible for what is happening right now in Kobani and in Turkey," he added. The AK party rules Turkey.

The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, waged a 30-year revolt for autonomy in Turkey's rugged southeast.

Last year Bayik accused Turkey of waging a proxy war against Kurds in Syria by backing Islamist rebels fighting them in the north, threatening an end to the ceasefire that was called in March 2012 when the PKK's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan ordered his rebel fighters to retreat from Turkey to Iraqi Kurdistan.

"Because Turkey has continued to pursue its policies without any changes, we have sent back all our fighters that were pulled out of Turkey," Bayik said.

Kurdish leaders in Syria have asked Ankara to establish a corridor through Turkey to allow aid and military supplies to reach Kobani where YPG is struggling against an Islamic State advance.

Bayik lambasted a Turkish mandate enabling the government to authorise cross-border military incursions into Iraq and Syria to battle Islamic State militants, saying it is designed to attack the PKK.

"This authorisation barely mentions IS militants, but the PKK is very much mentioned. The authorisation amounts to a declaration of war against the PKK. By approving this in parliament, Turkey has ended the peace process."

This past week more than 20 people died in riots in Turkey where Kurds rose up against the government for doing nothing to protect their kin in Syria.

(Reporting by Noah Barkin in Berlin and Humeyra Pamuk in Diyarbakir, Writing by Dasha Afanasieva,; Editing by Stephen Powell)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/10/1 ... LO20141011

[Anthea]

Not much is seen from inside Kobani

These show a glimpse of what it is like there:

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Links to latest CNN news videos

http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/v ... l.cnn.html

http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/v ... i.cnn.html

http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/v ... s.cnn.html

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The Independent

War against Isis: US strategy in tatters as militants march on



World View: American-led air attacks are failing. Jihadis are close to taking Kobani, in Syria – and in Iraq western Baghdad is now under serious threat
Patrick Cockburn

America's plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group's fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad.

The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama's plan to "degrade and destroy" Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting.

Isis reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish town's remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to the string of victories it has won in the four months since its forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June. Part of the strength of the fundamentalist movement is a sense that there is something inevitable and divinely inspired about its victories, whether it is against superior numbers in Mosul or US airpower at Kobani.

In the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in the town, probably Isis's toughest opponents in Syria. "Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself," said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. "The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight effectively."

Unfortunately for the US, Kobani isn't the only place air strikes are failing to stop Isis. In an offensive in Iraq launched on 2 October but little reported in the outside world, Isis has captured almost all the cities and towns it did not already hold in Anbar province, a vast area in western Iraq that makes up a quarter of the country. It has captured Hit, Kubaisa and Ramadi, the provincial capital, which it had long fought for. Other cities, towns and bases on or close to the Euphrates River west of Baghdad fell in a few days, often after little resistance by the Iraqi Army which showed itself to be as dysfunctional as in the past, even when backed by US air strikes.

Today, only the city of Haditha and two bases, Al-Assad military base near Hit, and Camp Mazrah outside Fallujah, are still in Iraqi government hands. Joel Wing, in his study –"Iraq's Security Forces Collapse as The Islamic State Takes Control of Most of Anbar Province" – concludes: "This was a huge victory as it gives the insurgents virtual control over Anbar and poses a serious threat to western Baghdad".

The battle for Anbar, which was at the heart of the Sunni rebellion against the US occupation after 2003, is almost over and has ended with a decisive victory for Isis. It took large parts of Anbar in January and government counter-attacks failed dismally with some 5,000 casualties in the first six months of the year. About half the province's 1.5 million population has fled and become refugees. The next Isis target may be the Sunni enclaves in western Baghdad, starting with Abu Ghraib on the outskirts but leading right to the centre of the capital.

The Iraqi government and its foreign allies are drawing comfort, there having been some advances against Isis in the centre and north of the country. But north and north-east of Baghdad the successes have not been won by the Iraqi army but by highly sectarian Shia militias which do not distinguish between Isis and the rest of the Sunni population. They speak openly of getting rid of Sunni in mixed provinces such as Diyala where they have advanced. The result is that Sunni in Iraq have no alternative but to stick with Isis or flee, if they want to survive. The same is true north-west of Mosul on the border with Syria, where Iraqi Kurdish forces, aided by US air attacks, have retaken the important border crossing of Rabia, but only one Sunni Arab remained in the town. Ethnic and sectarian cleansing has become the norm in the war in both Iraq and Syria.

The US's failure to save Kobani, if it falls, will be a political as well as military disaster. Indeed, the circumstances surrounding the loss of the beleaguered town are even more significant than the inability so far of air strikes to stop Isis taking 40 per cent of it. At the start of the bombing in Syria, President Obama boasted of putting together a coalition of Sunni powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to oppose Isis, but these all have different agendas to the US in which destroying IS is not the first priority. The Sunni Arab monarchies may not like Isis, which threatens the political status quo, but, as one Iraqi observer put it, "they like the fact that Isis creates more problems for the Shia than it does for them".

Of the countries supposedly uniting against Isis, by the far most important is Turkey because it shares a 510-mile border with Syria across which rebels of all sorts, including Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, have previously passed with ease. This year the Turks have tightened border security, but since its successes in the summer Isis no longer needs sanctuary, supplies and volunteers from outside to the degree it once did.

In the course of the past week it has become clear that Turkey considers the Syrian Kurd political and military organisations, the PYD and YPG, as posing a greater threat to it than the Islamic fundamentalists. Moreover, the PYD is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey since 1984.

Ever since Syrian government forces withdrew from the Syrian Kurdish enclaves or cantons on the border with Turkey in July 2012, Ankara has feared the impact of self-governing Syrian Kurds on its own 15 million-strong Kurdish population.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would prefer Isis to control Kobani, not the PYD. When five PYD members, who had been fighting Isis at Kobani, were picked up by the Turkish army as they crossed the border last week they were denounced as "separatist terrorists".

Turkey is demanding a high price from the US for its co-operation in attacking Isis, such as a Turkish-controlled buffer zone inside Syria where Syrian refugees are to live and anti-Assad rebels are to be trained. Mr Erdogan would like a no-fly zone which will also be directed against the government in Damascus since Isis has no air force. If implemented the plan would mean Turkey, backed by the US, would enter the Syrian civil war on the side of the rebels, though the anti-Assad forces are dominated by Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate.

It is worth keeping in mind that Turkey's actions in Syria since 2011 have been a self-defeating blend of hubris and miscalculation. At the start of the uprising, it could have held the balance between the government and its opponents. Instead, it supported the militarisation of the crisis, backed the jihadis and assumed Assad would soon be defeated. This did not happen and what had been a popular uprising became dominated by sectarian warlords who flourished in conditions created by Turkey. Mr Erdogan is assuming he can disregard the rage of the Turkish Kurds at what they see as his complicity with Isis against the Syrian Kurds. This fury is already deep, with 33 dead, and is likely to get a great deal worse if Kobani falls.

Why doesn't Ankara worry more about the collapse of the peace process with the PKK that has maintained a ceasefire since 2013? It may believe that the PKK is too heavily involved in fighting Isis in Syria that it cannot go back to war with the government in Turkey. On the other hand, if Turkey does join the civil war in Syria against Assad, a crucial ally of Iran, then Iranian leaders have said that "Turkey will pay a price". This probably means that Iran will covertly support an armed Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. Saddam Hussein made a somewhat similar mistake to Mr Erdogan when he invaded Iran in 1980, thus leading Iran to reignite the Kurdish rebellion that Baghdad had crushed through an agreement with the Shah in 1975. Turkish military intervention in Syria might not end the war there, but it may well spread the fighting to Turkey.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 89230.html

[Anthea]

BBC News Middle East

Syria: Kobane situation remains 'dangerous' says US

The BBC's Quentin Sommerville: "They operate in broad daylight, seemingly undeterred by the threat of American air strikes"

Fighting between Islamic State militants and Kurdish defenders continues, with more than 500 people reported dead in a month of conflict.

Mr Hagel said that US-led air strikes had made progress against the militants, but they still occupied areas on the town's outskirts.

The fight against IS in Syria and Iraq would be a long-term effort, he said.

US aircraft have bombed IS positions as Kurdish fighters cling on to the town's vital border crossing with Turkey.

Mr Hagel, speaking in Chile, said: "We are doing what we can do through our air strikes to help drive back Isil," as IS is also called.

"In fact there has been some progress made in that area,"

Need for arms

At least 553 people are said to have died in a month of fighting for Kobane.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based Syrian opposition body which monitors the conflict, counted 298 IS fighters among the total of the dead.

The town's Kurdish defenders say they are outgunned on the ground.

"The supply of fighters is very good..." Kobane official Idris Nassan told Reuters news agency. "But fighters coming without arms, without weaponry, is not going to make a critical difference."

Turkey, wary of its recent long conflict with its own large Kurdish population, has ruled out any unilateral ground intervention.

Mr Hagel said that the US had made "considerable progress" in talks with Turkish officials over plans for Turkey to train moderate Syrian rebels and provide them with equipment for their fight against IS militants.

He said US military teams would hold more talks in Turkey in the coming week.

But he declined to comment further, saying he was waiting for Turkey to make its own announcement.

Some 200,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees have crossed the border since the IS advance began nearly a month ago.

Meanwhile, fighting has continued in Iraq, where IS overran large parts of the north during the summer.

Kobane resounded to small-arms fire and explosions on Saturday following the failure of a pre-dawn IS offensive to take more ground.

According to the Pentagon, US air strikes on IS targets at Kobane since Friday have hit an IS fighting position; damaged a command and control facility; destroyed a staging building; struck two small units of fighters; and destroyed three lorries.

Mr Nassan said the air strikes had helped the Kurdish fighters regain some territory in the south of the city but they were not enough.

"A few days ago, [IS] attacked with a Humvee vehicle, they use mortars, cannons, tanks," he said. "We don't need just Kalashnikovs and bullets. We need something effective since they captured many tanks and military vehicles in Iraq."


Airstrikes have continued around Kobane, but their effectiveness is limited

In Europe, at least 20,000 Kurds living in Germany marched in the city of Duesseldorf on Saturday to highlight the threat to Kurds in Kobane.

At a smaller rally in the Austrian town of Bregenz, two people were stabbed and seriously wounded when Kurdish protesters clashed with a rival demonstration, said to involve Turks and Chechens.

Pro-Kurdish rallies were held in other European cities including Paris, Basel and Barcelona.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29586675

[Anthea]

The Guardian

The stateless Kurds are right about radical Islam, but the west is too meek to stop Isis’s fascism

It is time the international community answered a question it does not want to hear: for how many more years will it allow one of the world’s largest and most persecuted ethnic groups to live without a state of its own?
By Nick Cohen


Homeless: a Kurdish refugee camp in the Turkish town of Suruc yesterday. Around 300,000 people have fled Kobane following its assault by Islamic State jihadis.

Without knowing or caring, Kurds protesting against the world’s willingness to let Kobani fall to Islamic State have inflamed two acute causes of western discomfort. They had no hesitation in describing radical Islam as “fascism” and seeing Kobani as our generation’s Guernica. They were equally quick to ask the “international community” a question it does not want to hear: for how many more years will it allow one of the world’s largest and most persecuted ethnic groups to live without a state of its own?

“Flow in waves to Kobani,” demonstrators chanted as they mounted vain protests against Turkish inaction that amounts to collaboration. “Stop Isis fascism.”

To me, it seems obvious that militant religion is a radical reactionary force. In whatever form it comes, it grinds down on women’s rights and denies the basic freedoms of liberal society. It is equally clear that its Islamist variant relies to an extraordinary degree on fascist Europe’s Jewish conspiracy theories. If you doubt me, look at the declaration in Hamas’s founding covenants that Jews “were behind the French Revolution [and] the communist revolution”. It might have come from Hitler. (Although even Adolf would have hesitated to repeat Hamas’s claim that Jews also created “the Rotary Clubs [and] the Lions” to achieve “Zionist interests”.)

Radical Islam, like fascism before it, wallows in the cult of death: “Death to intelligence! Long live death!” cried Franco’s general José Millán Astray in 1936. “We love death more than you love life,” cry today’s Islamists fighters. There is the same support from the financiers and businessmen, from what we old leftists used to call the capitalist bourgeoisie, and the same shared belief that women can never aspire to be anything other than dutiful wives.

In one respect, radical Islam trumps the fascists and, indeed, the communists. The old totalitarianisms could promise their followers that death would lead only to the greater glory of the Fatherland or the inevitable triumph of the working class. An Islamist can tell his willing executioners that death will not only further Islam’s global triumph but take the martyr to paradise too.

I cannot find good grounds for disagreeing with the Iranian leftists who call radical Islam the fascism of our time. No one says you cannot talk about the “Christian right” in America, or describe the messianic Jewish settlers in Israel’s occupied territories as “ultra rightists”. Talk of the Islamist right, however, or mention its links to the fascist tradition in the west, and you are met with angry incomprehension. I have lost count of the number of times opponents have told me that fascism was based on states, not religions. A few accepted that it was legitimate to describe Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as fascistic. It had all the trimmings: the great leader with his picture on every TV screen and the one-party state determined to exterminate the racially impure – the Kurds, in the case of Iraq. But, they continued in chiding tones, to use the same language about religious extremists was to play a dangerous linguistic game.

Many liberals fear that condemning radical Islam in clear leftwing language will allow the white far right to paint all Muslims as extremists. A principled liberal-left would, in truth, dismiss their concerns and oppose both white racism and religious prejudice with the same force and, as I am fond of saying, for the same reasons. It has all the more cause to do so now that radical Islam has a state, the Islamic State, with its own supreme caliph, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, and all the modern weaponry the Iraqi army left behind when it fled.

Like Saddam Hussein, Islamic State is determined to use its weapons to exterminate Kurds. If you live in Iraqi Kurdistan, the fine distinctions between fascist state-based totalitarianism and religious totalitarianism have vanished. All you know is that for decades, mass murderers have marched towards your homeland wanting to slaughter you because you are from the wrong race or worship your god in the wrong way.

Iraqi Kurdish friends describe the decade after the fall of Saddam Hussein as their “golden years”. In Iraq, if not in the Kurdish areas of Iran, Syria and Turkey, they had autonomy. The economy boomed and, despite the usual problems with corruption brought by the exploitation of oil, Kurds built a decent society with protections, albeit imperfect, for the rights of women and religious minorities. Even though the peace ended with the attacks of Islamic State, the outsider might think that the Kurds’ fortunes were still improving.

After two decades in which liberal westerners would champion the rights of stateless Palestinians but never mention stateless Kurds, there are heartening stirrings of camaraderie on the European left. More significantly, America and Europe need Kurds. Obama and Cameron assure their voters that there will be no “boots on the ground”. The Kurdish peshmerga will do our fighting for us. The Kurds have fought Saddam Hussein, once a western ally and then a western enemy. They are now fighting Islamic State, which our leaders condemn as the most barbaric movement on the planet. The normal rules of politics dictate that they should be rewarded for their sacrifices, particularly when a suitable reward is so easy to find.

Iraqi Kurds are organising an independence referendum, on the grounds that Iraq is a failed state whose borders were drawn by dead European colonialists and whose rulers have brought them only terror. Rather touchingly, they sent representatives to Scotland to learn how the civilised world arranged these affairs. They have also learned the bitter lesson that, however liberal their society or courageous their fighters, the civilised world will not accept their right to self-determination.

The west and the Arab states worry that a just settlement for Iraq’s Kurds would upset Turkey, even though the Iraqi Kurds are scrupulous in their support for an internal Turkish-Kurdish peace protest and make no territorial claims. Allied to that is the wider fear that freedom for the Kurds, even after all they have suffered and will suffer in the struggles against modern fascism in all its forms, would upset the “stability of the Middle East”.

I have known Bayan Abdul Rahman, Iraqi Kurdistan’s wonderful ambassador to Britain, for years. She is a model diplomat: soft-spoken, polite and discreet. But when she hears lectures about Middle Eastern “stability”, she lets out a most undiplomatic snort.

“Stability?” she shouts. “What stability? How long must we be punished for a stability that doesn’t exist?”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ht-fascism

[Anthea]

The Conversation

Everything’s at stake for the Kurds in the battle for Kobanê


Turkish police use tear gas on Kurdish protesters

In recent weeks, the Kurdish town of Kobanê on the Turkey-Syria border has become centre stage in the struggle against IS (Islamic State). The latest round of attacks on the town and its surrounding areas began in July 2014 – but IS has been intensifying its attacks on Kobanê since September 15.

It has been so far met with fierce Kurdish resistance. However, the main Kurdish military force – the People’s Protection Units, or YPG in its Kurdish acronym – has been unable to prevent IS entering the town. The subsequent intensification of US air strikes against IS positions around Kobanê seems to have helped in slowing IS advances, but without immediate support in the form of heavy weapons and ammunition for the YPG, as well as continuing air strikes, it could be just a matter of time before the town falls to IS control.

To escape the IS onslaught, thousands of Kurds have taken refuge in Turkey – but according to Kurdish sources, the lives of an estimated 10,000 civilians who remain in Kobanê are still in danger.

Flashpoint

Kobanê’s strategic importance for IS is supposedly the main motive behind its attacks, but underlying ideological reasons and antagonisms based on ethnic difference are also playing a part.

IS’s goal of establishing a state run according to Islamist fundamentalist ideology is in stark contrast with the Kurds’ vision of a democratic, secular, gender-egalitarian and plural Syria, and the rise of IS and its attacks against the Kurds are dragging the Kurds into a much larger regional sectarian conflict.

In recent months, the Kurdish movements in Iraq, Turkey and Syria have begun to co-operate more closely against IS. This sort of pan-Kurdish mobilisation is not new; ever since the early 1980s, the Kurds in Syria have been active in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its insurgency against Turkey, which began in August 1984.

But the current wave of Kurdish protests in Turkey, a release of tension that has been building for years, shows how serious things have become. The government has failed to deliver a comprehensive plan to end the conflict through peaceful means and to broaden Kurdish rights; with that failure, it has left millions of Kurds deeply frustrated.

The disaster in Kobanê was the last straw. The unrest in towns and cities across Turkey is continuing, especially in the majority Kurdish regions, despite a curfew and a harsh police response. The death toll in the protests has already passed 30.

The Kurds are enraged at Turkey’s reluctance to allow help and supplies to cross the border to Kobanê to reach Kurdish fighters, who have been encircled by IS for more than three weeks now. They suspect that Turkey’s intended buffer zone in Northern Syria would simply serve what they see as Ankara’s broader objective: an attempt to stifle the Kurdish movement in both Syria and Turkey.

New Steps Needed

Despite the peace talks between Turkey and the PKK that have been rumbling along since March 2012, Turkey continues to view the Kurdish movement – both in Syria and Turkey – with suspicion. Consequently Turkey has been alarmed by the rising influence of the PYD (Democratic Union Party) since July 2012, which is seen by Turkey as the PKK’s extension in Syria.

The dialogue only came about in the first place because of positive developments in the conflict, in particular a significant decrease in violence on both sides. But these positive developments have so far failed to bring about a notable shift in Turkish public debate, or a coherent new policy – which will be essential if the deep-rooted conflict is ever to be resolved.

Things were already moving fast before Kobanê came under attack. Earlier this year, the PYD has taken a key role in establishing three Kurdish Cantons in Syria, which are now managing their own affairs. Turkey has long opposed the idea of any Kurdish self-rule in Syria on the grounds that it could fuel demands for similar structures in Turkey. That is now translating into a lack of Turkish assistance in the face of the IS attacks and very harsh measures to quell Kurdish protests.

And the sudden escalation in anti-Kurd violence within Turkey, which has been exacerbated by nationalist lynching attempts targeting Kurds, shows how fragile the situation is and how it is ready to spiral into a major social conflict, torpedoing the fragile negotiations and erupting into a full-blown ethnic battle.

Decisive Turkish action, including facilitating military assistance, is urgently needed not just to stop IS, but to safeguard what few positive gains have been made in recent years. Without it, a resolution to Turkey and Syria’s Kurdish crisis could be set back decades.

http://theconversation.com/everythings- ... bane-32646

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Smoke rises after strike on Kobani

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Dempsey: ‘Challenging Task’ Against ISIS Without Sunni Support for Iraq Government

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said today that the fight against ISIS would remain a “very challenging task” until the Iraqi government is able to win over the substantial Sunni population living between the capital cities of Iraq and Syria.

“The government of Iraq, which is moving but has not yet achieved a narrative that would cause the 20 million Sunnis who live between Damascus and Baghdad to believe that their future is with the government of Iraq, in the case of Iraqis, and certainly the Syrian regime is not reaching out to the Sunni population in Syria,” Dempsey told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz for “This Week.”

“Until those facts change, this is going to be a very challenging task. In other words, until ISIL [ISIS] doesn’t have, you know, freedom of movement in and among the populations of Al Anbar Province and Nineveh Province, and in Eastern Syria, this is going to be a challenge,” Dempsey said of ISIS, the extremist Islamist group also referred to as ISIL or the Islamic State.

During the interview for “This Week,” the general discussed an incident this week when ISIS fighters were within 20 to 25 kilometers of the strategically important Baghdad airport, where Apache helicopters were called in to assist Iraqi forces.

“Had they overrun the Iraqi unit, it was a straight shot to the airport. So we’re not going to allow that to happen. We need that airport,” Dempsey said.

Dempsey also highlighted the difficulty of targeting ISIS forces as they make efforts to conceal their presence, including blending into local population centers.

“The enemy adapts and they will be harder to target,” Dempsey said. “They know how to maneuver and how to use populations and concealment. So when we get a target, we’ll take it.”

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/20 ... overnment/

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Reuters

Kurds hold off Islamic State in Kobani; fighters strike in Iraq
By Ayla Jean Yackley and Saif Sameer

Kurdish defenders held off Islamic State militants in Syria's border town of Kobani on Sunday, but the fighters struck with deadly bombings in Iraq, killing dozens of Kurds in the north and assassinating a provincial police commander in the west.

The top U.S. military officer suggested that Washington, which has ruled out joining ground combat in either Iraq or Syria, could nevertheless increase its role "advising and assisting" Iraqi troops on the ground in future.

A U.S.-led military coalition has been bombing Islamic State fighters who hold swathes of territory in both Iraq and Syria, countries involved in complex multi-sided civil wars in which nearly every country in the Middle East has a stake.

In Syria, the main focus in recent days has been on the mainly Kurdish town of Kobani near the Turkish border, where Kurdish defenders have been trying to halt an advance by fighters who have driven 200,000 refugees across the border.

The jihadists have laid siege to the town for nearly four weeks and fought their way into it in recent days, taking control of almost half of the town. A U.N. envoy has said thousands of people could be massacred if Kobani falls.

As night fell on Sunday, the town center was under heavy artillery and mortar fire, Ocalan Iso, deputy head of the Kobani defense council, said by Skype from inside the town. Heavy clashes were underway in the east and southeast, he said, with neither side gaining ground.

Idris Nassan, deputy foreign minister in the Kurdish administration for the Kobani district, said heavy fighting had begun around nightfall in the streets. Kurdish fighters had caught attackers in an ambush, he said from the town.

After days of Islamic State advances, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Kobani's Kurdish defenders had managed to hold their ground. The Observatory said 36 Islamic State fighters, all foreigners, were killed the previous day, while eight Kurdish fighters had died. The figures could not be independently verified.

Gunbattles were taking place on Sunday near administrative buildings the jihadists had seized two days before, it said.

The fighting in Kobani has taken place within view of Turkish tanks at the frontier, but Turkey has refused to intervene to help defend the city, infuriating its own 15 million-strong Kurdish minority, which rose up in the past week in days of rioting in which 38 people were killed.

Turkish Kurdish leaders have said their government's failure to aid the defense of Kobani could destroy Turkey's own peace process to end decades of insurgency which killed 40,000 people.

Kobani's heavily outgunned Kurdish defenders say they want Turkey to let them bring in reinforcements and weapons to fend off the Islamic State fighters, who seized heavy artillery and tanks seized from the fleeing Iraqi army in June.

"We want them to open the corridor so that our people can come and help us. We need many things," Esmat Al-Sheikh, head of the Kobani defense authority, told Reuters by telephone.

"We are in need of fighters, in need of everything."

"ADVISING AND ASSISTING"

The White House says it will not allow U.S. troops to be dragged into another ground war in Iraq, where President Barack Obama withdrew forces in 2011 after an eight year occupation.

Nevertheless, the highest ranking U.S. military officer, General Martin Dempsey, suggested in an interview broadcast on Sunday that U.S. troops would probably need to play a bigger role alongside Iraqi forces on the ground in future.

"Mosul will likely be the decisive battle in the ground campaign at some point in the future," Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told ABC's This Week. Mosul is the main city in northern Iraq, which Islamic State overran in June and the government has pledged to recapture.

"My instinct at this point is that that will require a different kind of advising and assisting, because of the complexity of that fight," he said.

Dempsey raised the possibility last month that he could in future advise that a U.S. ground presence is needed in Iraq, although the White House says this is ruled out.

The biggest army in the area belongs to Turkey, a NATO member which so far has refused to join the U.S.-led coalition striking Islamic State. Its reluctance has frustrated Washington as well as Turkey's own angry Kurdish minority.

Turkey says it will only join a military campaign against Islamic State if the coalition also confronts Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But Washington, which opposes Assad but has been flying its bombing missions over Syria without any objection from Assad's government, has made clear it has no intention of widening the campaign to join a war against Assad.

On the Turkish side of the frontier, Kurds have kept vigil over Kobani, watching the fighting from hillsides. Mizgin Polat, 22, climbed to the top of a hill with her mother as they have each Sunday since the battle began. Her cousin left to join the fight in Syria two months ago and hasn't been heard from since.

"I think about him all of the time. I feel closer to him when I'm here. Every time I hear the gunfire, it makes me want to join the fight. But my mother won't let me go. She says there is already too much sorrow in our family," Polat said.

ATTACKS KILL DOZENS IN IRAQ

In neighboring Iraq, Sunday saw a second straight day of bomb attacks that killed dozens of people.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on a security headquarters in a Kurdish-controlled town in the north that killed at least 28 people and wounded 90.

The police chief of Anbar, the mainly Sunni Muslim province that includes the entire Euphrates Valley from the western outskirts of Baghdad to the Syrian border, was killed in a bomb attack on his convoy in an area that had seen clashes between government forces and Islamic State.

The previous day, bombs killed 45 people in Baghdad and its Western outskirts near Anbar.

The United States used army Apache attack helicopters for the first time this past week to provide close air support to Iraqi forces in Anbar west of Baghdad. Use of low-flying helicopters is far riskier than bombing from jets but allows closer cooperation with troops engaged in combat on the ground.

Dempsey said the decision was taken to halt fighters who might otherwise have been able to attack Baghdad's airport, which is on the capital's western outskirts.

"They overrun the Iraqi unit, it was a straight shot to the airport. So, we're not going to allow that to happen. We need that airport," he said.

National Security Adviser Susan Rice told NBC's Meet the Press that ground combat by U.S. troops was still ruled out.

“We'll do our part from the air and in many other respects in terms of building up the capacity of the Iraqis and the Syrian opposition, the moderates. But we are not going to be in a ground war again in Iraq,” she said.

Republican Senator John McCain, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, said Obama's strategy was failing. He did not think Islamic State could take Baghdad but fighters could take the airport and hit the capital with suicide bombers.

“They’re winning and we’re not," McCain said on CNN. "Pinprick bombing is not working."

(The story was refiled to correct in the first paragraph to show police chief was killed in the west, not east, of Iraq
Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut, Dasha Afanasieva in Istanbul and Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Jon Boyle)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... SR20141012

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The Telegraph

Islamic State 'eagerly awaits' boots on ground


Barbara Henning, wife of Alan Henning with their children Adam and Lucy, sits in the front row at the British Muslim Heritage Centre in Manchester before the start of memorial service for the murdered British hostage
By Nick Collins and agencies

Islamic State (Isil) “eagerly awaits” western boots on the ground in the Middle East, the British hostage John Cantlie has said in a video released by his captors.

In a video entitled “Lend Me Your Ears”, Mr Cantlie says it will be impossible for the west to conduct a war against Isil without getting their “hands dirty”, as he talks of the group’s strength.

The professionally-produced video was released as hundreds of people gathered at a Muslim heritage centre on Sunday night in memory of Alan Henning, a British hostage murdered by Isil.

In the film Mr Cantlie, a photojournalist, says: “One month ago Obama pressed the button on air strikes. Now we have to wonder how long his policy of no boots on the ground has left to live.

“As for [Isil], they eagerly await to see those boots”.

Mr Cantlie, who spoke as if reading a script, has appeared in four videos released by Isil in recent weeks. He was kidnapped in November 2012.

He accuses David Cameron of wanting to use the deaths of former hostages James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines and Alan Henning “to fan the flames of war”.

In an article purportedly written by Mr Cantlie in the online magazine of Isil, he reveals how he was captured by a “Sheikh” and is kept in a cell on his own, with only a mattress.

He said he had been with other Western hostages but was separated while he was allowed to look at the Internet for his appearance in his series of broadcasts.

Mr Cantlie first appeared in an Isil video last month, claiming he had been “abandoned” by the Government and asking for ministers to negotiate his release.

The film was markedly different in style and quality to previous Isil footage, which depicted the beheading of hostages.

Two more videos featuring Mr Cantlie have since emerged, in which he criticised US intervention in Iraq and Syria.

The family of Mr Henning gathered at the British Muslim Heritage Centre in Manchester on Sunday night to remember the 47-year-old taxi driver, who was recently executed by Isil.

His widow Barbara, children Adam and Lucy, and other family members heard him described as a “local, national and world hero”.

The tribute, which was entitled “His Life and Legacy Remembered”, included speeches from friends and faith and political leaders.

Opening the service at the British Muslim Heritage Centre Dr Usman Choudhry said: "In short we are here to remember a hero. A local hero, a national hero and we will also say a world hero.

"A hero who left the comfort of his own home for no other reason than to help the destitute and needy refugees of Syria.

"A hero who put the needs of others before his own and that hero is Alan Henning."

He added that the service, organised by friends and humanitarian aid colleagues of Mr Henning, also served to support "those willing to stand up for the rights of humanity and the poor and the repressed, and are prepared to work and not just talk about what they believe in".

A video tribute was played to the audience in which several Syrian children who Mr Henning helped spoke of how much they missed "Uncle Gadget" – the aid worker's nickname.

Last Sunday, Mrs Henning and her family joined hundreds of well-wishers at a service of "reflection and solidarity" at Eccles Parish Church in Salford.

A video showing the brutal murder of Mr Henning – who was kidnapped last December in Syria by Islamic State (IS) militants – was posted on the Internet by the group last week.

Mr Henning, from Eccles, was captured while delivering food and supplies on an aid convoy to refugees.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... round.html

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Fighting Between YPG and ISIS in Kobane

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The fearsome female fighters who put men to shame

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