ISIS- SYRIA-THREAD

[Anthea]

CNN

Meet America's newest allies: Syria's Kurdish minority
By Ivan Watson and Gul Tuysuz

DERIK, Kurdish-controlled northern Syria (CNN) -- It wasn't until jihadist militants mounted a relentless siege of Kobani, a border town within sight of international television cameras, that much of the world realized ethnic Kurds were an effective fighting force within Syria.

But as much of the rest of Syria ripped itself apart in a vicious civil war, Syria's Kurdish minority spent three years quietly building a series of mini-states in the north of the country.

They refer to these three enclaves as Rojava. Until recently, some outside observers saw them as something of a success.

"They tried to run them as pretty autonomous statelets that were actually rather admirable in some ways. They included many different ethnic groups, faith groups, and they tried to be inclusive," said Hugh Pope, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, a conflict mediation organization.

Bulletins pasted on walls on the streets of one Kurdish-controlled town urge business owners to post signs in the three official languages of Rojava: Kurdish, Arabic, and Syriac -- an ancient Christian language spoken in the Middle East for nearly 2,000 years.

"The municipality will help in preparation and translation," the bulletins printed by the municipality of Derik. "Our language is our identity, our history, our existence and our dignity."

In some ways, the Kurdish-controlled zone feels a world away from many other battle-scarred towns in northern Syria.

These areas have barely been targeted by the Syrian government airstrikes and barrel bombs that pummel rebel-held cities and towns, killing at least 182 civilians last week alone, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Unlike the atmosphere in territory controlled by Islamist militias, women in Rojava walk freely on the streets, their hair and faces uncovered.

And everywhere, there are posters and graffiti celebrating the bravery and martyrdom of Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units, or YPG.

"Our martyrs do not die. They live on in memory!" a Kurdish commander announced at a memorial ceremony for slain fighters. The commander, a woman dressed in green camouflage wearing a pistol on her belt, stood in front of scores of uniformed female Kurdish militants who performed military parade drills with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

A pillar of the Kurdish movement's ideology rests on gender equality.

The fiercely secular YPG stands in sharp contrast to its bitter enemy the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In territories it controls, ISIS militants dramatically reduced freedoms of women and issued public statements justifying the kidnapping and enslavement of thousands of women from the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq.

"We as women defend and protect our people," said Hadiye Yusuf, the female co-president of the largest of the 3 Kurdish enclaves, in an address at the memorial ceremony.

"We carry weapons to protect our homes and avoid becoming slaves of ISIS," she added.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, female fighters as well as the mothers and widows of YPG members killed fighting ISIS, chanted "Biji sera Apo," or "Long Live Apo."

Apo is the nickname of Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. For 30 years, militants from this Marxist-inspired Kurdish separatist movement fought a guerilla war against the government in nearby Turkey. To this day, Turkey, as well as its NATO allies the United States and the European Union, officially label the PKK a terrorist organization.

YPG leaders insist the PKK is a fraternal, though distinctly separate organization.

The YPG's iconography and membership suggest otherwise.

PKK leader Ocalan's portrait sits at the center of many posters of slain YPG fighters. In addition, during two trips CNN journalists made to Rojava, CNN encountered at least a dozen armed Kurdish militants of Turkish origin.

In an interview with CNN, co-president Hadiye Yusuf said in her youth she had been a PKK fighter, before eventually becoming an activist in a women's association.

The Syrian Kurds' close links to the PKK put Rojava at odds with the Kurdish zone's neighbor to the north: Turkey.

That left the enclave of Kobani vulnerable when ISIS mounted its assault last month.

"When push came to shove in Kobani, the YPG fighters were terribly exposed and have been dealt very cruel blows," said the ICG's Hugh Pope.

More than 200,000 refugees fled across the border to Turkey to escape the ISIS advance. Meanwhile, Kobani's Kurdish defenders were pushed back almost to the border fence with Turkey in their grim struggle against the jihadi offensive.

American airstrikes, and a series of weapons and ammunition air drops, succeeded in loosening the ISIS siege. But the US move to help the Syrian Kurds strained relations with Turkey, whose president called the American aid drops "a mistake."

While the Syrian Kurds have become a point of tension between two NATO allies, they are also enjoying soaring popularity among Kurds scattered across different countries in the Middle East.

Last August, YPG fighters mounted a daring rescue operation across the border into neighboring Iraq. They evacuated thousands of of Iraqi Kurds from the Yazidi religious group, who were trapped by ISIS on a barren mountain.

Over the last month, the YPG's defense of Kobani have electrified and united Kurds often fractured by linguistic and political divisions.

But the popularity has come at great cost.

Hundreds of YPG members have been killed, and many more wounded, in the war against ISIS.

At the memorial ceremony for fallen fighters last weekend, a widow named Khalisa Gharzi sat with her daughter and son watching the speeches.

She was in the final month of her pregnancy with her daughter Zhanda last year, when her husband Ramadan was killed in a battle with ISIS.

Gharzi said her husband's body had been mutilated when it was recovered, with one of his ears severed.

"I am angry and sad about what happened to him, but I'm still proud because he was a fighter," Gharzi said. "If I didn't have these children, I myself would go and fight. Because this is a just war."

Not far away, her 3-and-a-half-year old son Hogur played next to rows of female fighters who sat on the parade ground clutching their rifles.

The boy was dressed in the green camouflage uniform of a future Kurdish fighter.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/29/world ... =allsearch

[Anthea]

Fox News

Iraqi Kurdish troops arrive in Turkey en route to fight Islamic State militants in Kobani

SURUC, Turkey – A group of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga troops arrived in Turkey early Wednesday on their way to Syria to help their Syrian Kurdish brethren fight Islamic State extremists in the embattled border town of Kobani.

The unprecedented mission by the 150 fighters came after Ankara agreed to allow the peshmerga troops to cross into Syria via Turkey — although the Turkish prime minister reiterated that his country would not be sending any ground forces of its own to Kobani, along the Syrian-Turkish border.

After a rousing send-off from thousands of cheering, flag-waving supporters in the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Irbil, the peshmerga forces landed early Wednesday at the Sanliurfa airport in southeastern Turkey. They left the airport in buses escorted by Turkish security forces and were expected to travel to Kobani through the Mursitpinar border crossing with Syria.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the BBC that sending the peshmerga was "the only way to help Kobani, since other countries don't want to use ground troops."

The Islamic State group launched its offensive on Kobani and nearby Syrian villages in mid-September, killing more than 800 people, according to activists. The Sunni extremists captured dozens of Kurdish villages around Kobani and control parts of the town. More than 200,000 people have fled across the border into Turkey.

The U.S. is leading a coalition that has carried out dozens of airstrikes targeting the militants in and around Kobani.

The deployment of the 150 peshmerga fighters, who were authorized by the Iraqi Kurdish government to go to Kobani, underscores the sensitive political tensions in the region.

Turkey's government views the Syrian Kurds defending Kobani as loyal to what Ankara regards as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. That group has waged a 30-year insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and NATO.

Under pressure to take greater action against the IS militants — from the West as well as from Kurds inside Turkey and Syria — the Turkish government agreed to let the fighters cross through its territory. But it only is allowing the peshmerga forces from Iraq, with whom it has a good relationship, and not those from the PKK.

A separate Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga convoy of Toyota Land Cruisers and trucks carrying cannons and machine guns crossed into Turkey early Wednesday at the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing at Zakho in northern Iraq.

The land convoy and the 150 fighters were expected to join up and cross jointly into Syria.

Peshmerga soldiers carrying Kurdish flags were atop some of the vehicles as they headed from Irbil to the Iraqi-Turkish border crossing. The troops made the victory sign for the cameras. An ambulance and government vehicles blaring their sirens accompanied the convoy.

Scores of people waited by the side of the road in villages for the troops to pass. Thousands of people awaited them at the border. The crowd sang and chanted traditional peshmerga songs and had to be pushed back by every vehicle that tried to make its way through the masses. Many people carried colorful Kurdish flags and portraits of the Iraqi Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani.

The Kurds of Syria and Iraq have become a major focus in the war against the Islamic State group, with Kurdish populations in both countries under significant threat by the militant group's lightning advance as it seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate in the region.

The Iraqi Kurdish parliament voted overwhelmingly to send fighters to Kobani, underscoring the growing cooperation among the Kurds in Iraq and Syria. The action marked the first mission for the peshmerga outside Iraq.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said U.S. officials "certainly encourage" the deployment of Iraqi peshmerga forces to Kobani.

It will provide much-needed support for the Syrian Kurds, although it is not clear whether Turkey will allow the peshmerga fighters to carry enough weaponry to make an impact.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Central Command said U.S. military forces carried out four airstrikes near Kobani in the past 24 hours, destroying four IS fighting positions and a small IS unit.

In Berlin on Tuesday, Syria's neighbors urged European countries at a conference of foreign ministers and representatives from 40 nations to open their doors to more refugees, and for immediate financial and technological help as their infrastructures buckle under the massive influx of civilians fleeing the conflict.

Turkey has agreed to train and equip moderate Syrian rebel forces that have for more than three years sought to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.

More than 3 million people have fled Syria because of the conflict, mostly to neighboring countries. Another 6 million are displaced within Syria.

The conflict began with largely peaceful protests in March 2011 calling for reform. It eventually spiraled into a civil war as people took up arms following a brutal military crackdown on the protest movement.

Islamic extremists, including foreign fighters, have joined the war, playing an increasingly prominent role in the conflict. Thousands have died in battles between opposing rebel groups since the beginning of the year.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/10/29 ... militants/

[Anthea]

Reuters

Iraqi Kurds to bring anti-tank weapons to Syria's Kobani

Iraqi Kurdish fighters are expected to bring anti-tank and anti-armor weapons when they enter the Syrian town of Kobani on Wednesday to aid fellow Kurds in their fight against Islamic State militants, a Syrian Kurdish official said.

Saleh Moslem, co-chair of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said the Iraqi "peshmerga" fighters were expected to enter Kobani - known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic - later on Wednesday.

"They're supposed to bring ... mainly anti-armor weapons, anti-tank," he said. "Of course, more than that they have some weapons ... to defend themselves also. But mostly it's mainly artillery, or anti-armor, anti-tank weapons."

He said the weapons should help the Syrian Kurdish fighters of the YPG armed group fend off Islamic State fighters who have used armored vehicles and tanks in their assault on the town.

"The YPG, they're just defending. They can do it. But these armored vehicles and tanks were making problems for them ... The YPG forces could not do it with the weapons they have. So now this will give support," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... PE20141029

[Anthea]

Reuters

Kurdish convoy heads to Syria to take on Islamic State
By Dasha Afanasieva and Alexander Dziadosz

A convoy of Iraqi peshmerga fighters and weaponry made its way across southeastern Turkey on Wednesday en route for the Syrian town of Kobani to try to help fellow Kurds break an Islamic State siege which has defied U.S.-led air strikes.

Kobani, on the border with Turkey, has been under assault from Islamic State militants for more than a month and its fate has become a test of the U.S.-led coalition's ability to combat the Sunni insurgents.

Weeks of air strikes on Islamic State positions around Kobani and the deaths of hundreds of their fighters have failed to break the siege. The Kurds and their international allies hope the arrival of the peshmerga, along with heavier weapons, can turn the tide.

Thousands of people took to the streets of the Turkish border town of Suruc, descending on its tree-lined main square and spilling into side streets, some with faces painted in the colors of the Kurdish flag, waiting to cheer on the convoy.

"All the Kurds are together. We want them to go and fight in Kobani and liberate it," said Issa Ahamd, an 18-year-old high school student among the almost 200,000 Syrian Kurds who have fled to Turkey since the assault on Kobani began.

An initial group of between 90 and 100 peshmerga fighters arrived by plane amid tight security in the southeastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa overnight, according to Adham Basho, a member of the Syrian Kurdish National Council from Kobani.

A Kurdish television channel meanwhile showed footage of what it said was the convoy of peshmerga vehicles laden with weapons. The trucks have been snaking their way through southern Turkey towards Kobani after crossing from northern Iraq.

Saleh Moslem, co-chair of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said the peshmerga were expected to bring heavy arms to Kobani -- known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic.

"It's mainly artillery, or anti-armor, anti-tank weapons," he said. The lightly armed Syrian Kurds have said such weaponry is crucial to driving back Islamic State insurgents, who have used armored vehicles and tanks in their assault.

Kurdistan's Minister of Peshmerga, Mustafa Sayyid Qader, told local media on Tuesday that no limits had been set to how long the forces would remain in Kobani. The Kurdistan Regional Government has said the fighters would not engage in direct combat in Kobani but rather provide artillery support.

RADICAL ISLAM

Islamic State has caused international alarm by capturing large expanses of Iraq and Syria, declaring an Islamic "caliphate" erasing borders between the two, and slaughtering or driving away Shi'ite Muslims, Christians and other communities who do not share their ultra-radical brand of Sunni Islam.

Fighters from the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's official affiliate in the Syrian civil war, have meanwhile seized territory from moderate rebels in recent days, expanding their control into one of the few areas of northern Syria not already held by hardline Islamists.

Nearly 10 million people have been displaced by Syria's war and close to 200,000 killed, according to the United Nations. A Syrian army helicopter dropped two barrel bombs on a displaced persons camp in the northern province of Idlib on Wednesday, killing many, camp residents said.

In Iraq, security forces said they had advanced to within 2 km (1.2 miles) of the city of Baiji on Wednesday in a new offensive to retake the country's biggest oil refinery that has been besieged since June by Islamic State.

Islamic State has threatened to massacre Kobani's defenders, triggering a call to arms from Kurds across the region.

The U.S. military conducted 14 air strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command, which said eight of the raids destroyed Islamic State targets near Kobani.

At least a dozen shells fired by Islamic State fighters fell on the town overnight as clashes with the main Syrian Kurdish armed group, the YPG, continued, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It said preparations were being made at a border gate which Islamic State fighters have repeatedly tried to capture for the arrival of the peshmerga, while YPG and Islamic State forces exchanged fire in gun battles on the southern edge of the town.

The Observatory also said 50 Syrian fighters had entered Kobani from Turkey with their weapons, though it was unclear which group they belonged to. Turkey has pushed for moderate Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad to join the battle against Islamic State in Kobani.

Rebel commander Abdul Jabbar al-Oqaidi said he had led 200 Free Syrian Army fighters into Kobani but there was no independent confirmation of this. The FSA describes dozens of armed groups fighting Assad but with little or no central command and widely outgunned by Islamist insurgents.

DELICATE PARTNERSHIP

The Iraqi Kurdish region's parliament voted last week to deploy some peshmerga to Syria and, under pressure from Western allies, Turkey agreed to let peshmerga forces from Iraq traverse its territory to reach Kobani.

"We've advocated and been discussing the importance of allowing the peshmerga across the border ... (it's) important to have a partner on the ground to work with," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in Washington on Tuesday.

The United States and its allies in the coalition have made clear they do not plan to send troops to fight Islamic State in Syria or Iraq, but they need fighters on the ground to capitalize on their air strikes.

"What does Kobani show? That determined resistance on the ground with American air power can push ISIS back," Henri Barkey, a former State Department official who now teaches at Lehigh University, told Reuters.

"They want to carry this to Iraq so that the peshmerga and Iraqi army get their act together. They really need to win ... They realized this was an opportunity for them because you have a real fighting force on the ground ... That's the model."

Syrian Kurds have called for the international community to provide them with heavier weapons and munitions and they have received an air drop from the United States.

But Turkey accuses Kurdish groups in Kobani of links to the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state and is seen as a terrorist group by Ankara, Washington and the European Union.

That has complicated efforts to provide aid.

A Syrian Kurdish official in Paris said on Wednesday that France, which has taken part in air strikes in Iraq and given Iraqi peshmerga fighters weapons and training, had yet to fulfil a pledge to give support to Kurds in Syria.

"France has said it was ready to help the Kurds, but we haven't been received by the French authorities. There has been no direct or indirect contact," Khaled Eissa, representative in France of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said.

French officials confirmed there had been no meetings in large part due to concern about historic links to the PKK.

Ankara fears Syria's Kurds will exploit the chaos by following their brethren in Iraq and seeking to carve out an independent state in northern Syria, emboldening PKK militants in Turkey and derailing a fragile peace process.

The stance has enraged Turkey’s own Kurdish minority -- about a fifth of the population and half of all Kurds across the region. Kurds suspect Ankara, which has refused to send in its forces to relieve Kobani, would rather see Islamic State jihadists extend their territorial gains than allow Kurdish insurgents to consolidate local power.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... 9X20141029

Anthea: Below is one comment that I entirely agree with because I do not believe we are being told the truth - we at Roj Bash Kurdistan are a small forum with people such as Piling - Londoner - others and myself posting news and giving people a chance to share their thoughts

Yet WE have seen the advances the Islamic State have been making - WE have posted many news articles from reliable sources as to the growth of IS

If WE knew what was happening months ago then surely all the major powers must have known well before us

WHY did they do NOTHING to prevent IS from killing so many people and taking so much land ?

zac48 wrote:
Six weeks and counting……Something stinks about this whole Kobane defense. Over 60 of the most technological and militarily advanced countries on Earth. Some nuclear armed, some with the most sophisticated weapons ever built. With space age technology, able to read newspapers from space…..and they’re having a problem routing what is nothing more than a medieval, international gang of murderers. Simply unbelievable…What’s really going on? The world isn’t being told the whole truth here.

[Anthea]

Reuters

Car bomb wounds 37 in government-held area of Syria's Homs
(Reporting by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

A car bomb wounded 37 people including a child, now in a critical condition, in a government-held area of the central Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday, state media reported.

"Terrorists detonated a car bomb in the center of Zahra neighborhood in Homs city," state television said. It said the explosion caused major damage to nearby houses and shops.

Following bomb attacks this year, some Syrians loyal to President Bashar al-Assad say they are starting to feel abandoned by the government for whom they have sacrificed much.

Security forces cracked down on peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2011 which led to an armed uprising and civil war.

A double suicide bombing on Oct. 1 at a school in the heavily guarded loyalist neighborhood of Akramah, also in Homs, was followed by the resignation of two high-ranking security officials in the city, residents said earlier this month.

Residents also criticized state-run media for not acknowledging the high number of dead and missing among loyalists in other attacks.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... DD20141029

Anthea: Who remembers the name of the young singer who started the protests with his songs - shamefully I have to admit I have forgotten

Theirs was a peaceful protest until some army deserters and some armed militants (probably those same militants lead to the birth of IS) moved into Homs and turned a peaceful protest into an armed insurrection

[Anthea]

Mail Online

Syrian rebels enter Kurdish town from Turkey
Anthea: Trojan Horse has nothing on these people

For the first time since the Islamic State group launched an offensive on the Syrian border town of Kobani last month, a small group of Syrian rebels on Wednesday entered the embattled town from Turkey in a push to help Kurdish fighters there battle the militants, activists and Kurdish officials said.

The group of around 50 armed men is from the Free Syrian Army, and it's separate from Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters who were also en route Wednesday to Kobani, along the Syrian-Turkish border.

Idriss Nassan, a Kurdish official from Kobani, said the FSA group entered Kobani through the Mursitpinar border crossing in Turkey. Nassan, who spoke from the border region in Turkey, said they travelled in cars but did not have more details.

The FSA is an umbrella group of mainstream rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. The political leadership of the Western-backed FSA is based in Turkey, where fighters often seek respite from the fighting. Anthea: sounds very familiar to me - they probably holiday at the same hotels as the Islamic State

The 150 Iraqi peshmerga troops, along with cannons and heavy machine guns, arrived in Turkey from Iraq early Wednesday and were expected to cross into Syria later in the day. Their deployment came after Ankara agreed to allow the peshmerga troops to cross into Syria via Turkey.

Kurdish fighters in Syria, known as the People's Protection Units or YPG, have been struggling to defend Kobani — also known as Ayn Arab — against the Islamic State group since mid-September, despite dozens of coalition airstrikes against the extremists.

It is not clear what impact this small but battle-hardened combined force of FSA and peshmerga fighters — and their combined weaponry and added arsenal — will have in the battle for Kobani. Kurdish fighters are already sharing information with the coalition to coordinate strikes against Islamic State militants there but the new force may help improve efforts and offer additional battlefield support.

Hundreds of people gathered in a square and along a main street in the Turkish town of Suruc, near the border with Syria, waiting for the peshmerga.

"We are waiting for the peshmerga. We want to see what weapons they have," said Nidal Attur, 30, from a small village near Kobani who arrived in Suruc two weeks ago. "I am very happy. We are hoping the peshmerga will do good things for us. ... We cannot win without the peshmerga because ISIS have big weapons, big guns and rockets."

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the BBC that sending the peshmerga and the FSA was "the only way to help Kobani, since other countries don't want to use ground troops."

A Kurdish journalist in Kobani and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that a group of about 50 FSA fighters entered Kobani on Wednesday.

After a rousing send-off from thousands of cheering, flag-waving supporters in the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Irbil, the peshmerga forces landed early Wednesday at the Sanliurfa airport in southeastern Turkey. They left the airport in buses escorted by Turkish security forces and were expected to travel to Kobani also through Mursitpinar crossing.

Nassan said the peshmerga force should be in Kobani "within hours." He said he was confident that the troops, although symbolic in number, would help change the balance of power in Kobani because of their advanced weapons.

The Islamic State group launched its offensive on Kobani and nearby Syrian villages in mid-September, killing more than 800 people, activists say. The Sunni extremists captured dozens of Kurdish villages around Kobani and control parts of the town. More than 200,000 people have fled across the border into Turkey.

The U.S. is leading a coalition that has carried out dozens of airstrikes targeting the militants in and around Kobani, helping stall their advances. U.S. Central Command said eight American-led airstrikes struck near Kobani on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The fighting in Kobani has deadlocked in recent days, with neither side able to get the upper hand in the battle.

Under pressure to take greater action against the IS militants — from the West as well as from Kurds inside Turkey and Syria — the Turkish government agreed to let the fighters cross through its territory. But it only is allowing the peshmerga forces from Iraq, with whom it has a good relationship, and not those from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

Turkey's government views the Syrian Kurds defending Kobani as loyal to what Ankara regards as an extension of the PKK. That group has waged a 30-year insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and NATO.

Kurdish fighters in Syria have repeatedly said they did not need more fighters, only weapons. Kurds in Syria are mistrustful of Turkey's intentions, accusing it of blocking assistance to the Kobani defenders for weeks before shifting its stance, apparently under pressure. Many suspect Ankara is trying to dilute YPG influence in the town by sending in the peshmerga and the Turkey-backed FSA.

The battle for Kobani is a small part in a larger war in Syria that has claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people since March 2011, according to activists. The conflict began with largely peaceful protests calling for reform. It eventually spiraled into a civil war as people took up arms following a brutal military crackdown on the protest movement.

Fighting continued Wednesday across many parts of Syria.

At least 10 civilians were killed when army helicopters dropped two barrel bombs that landed at a makeshift refugee camp in the northern Idlib province, opposition activists said.

A video posted online by activists showed bodies scattered among torn tents in a wooded area and civil defense workers gathering body parts and wrapping them in blankets.

Elsewhere, the Observatory said in a statement that more than 30 Syrian soldiers and allied militiamen and guards were killed in clashes with Islamic State militants who attacked the government-controlled Shaer gas field in the central Homs province. State-run news media reported "fierce clashes" in the area, saying troops killed and wounded dozens of "terrorists."

Both reports could not be independently confirmed.

Also Wednesday, a car bomb exploded in a government-held district of Homs city, killing at least one person and wounding 25 others, an official in the Homs governorate said.

Link to Article and Photos:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/art ... Syria.html

[Anthea]

Reuters

Islamic State releases 25 kidnapped Kurdish children

Islamic State insurgents freed 25 Kurdish school children on Wednesday, the last of more than 150 children kidnapped in May to be released, a Kurdish official and a rights group said.

The hardline Sunni Muslim group, which has fought Kurdish militia in Syria and Iraq, abducted the children aged 13 and 14 from the Syrian town of Kobani as they returned from taking exams in the city of Aleppo, rights groups said.

"It is true. They were released from (the Syrian town of) Minbij today. This is the last part of the releases," Idris Nassan, deputy foreign minister of Kobani district, told Reuters by telephone.

He said he did not know why the children had been released but suggested it could be part of a campaign of "propaganda."

New York-based Human Rights Watch said in July that 15 children were released in June as a hostage swap to free three Islamic State members held by Kurdish forces.

Two boys who escaped captivity told local media that Islamic State was forcing the children to undergo lessons in jihadist ideology, according to Human Rights Watch.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the civil war in Syria, also said the children were released. It said five others were allowed to leave over the past few days before the final 25 were freed.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... 6D20141029

[Anthea]

Peshmerga Crossing Turkey Mistreated by Turkish Authorities

Peshmerga doctor Izzettin Temo who is in the group crossing over from Turkey into Kobane has said that they are being treated badly by Turkish authorities.

Phoning Rudaw after having travelled to GAP Airport in Urfa last night (28 Nov) peshmerga doctor Izzettin Temo said, 'There are no facilities in the place we are staying. We do not have a bar of soap nor a washbasin to wash our hands. We feel like prisoners. We have no connection with the outside world. However we can do nothing but wait for our guns to reach us. Our journey is being delayed because of this.'

Temo also said that Turkish authorities in Hewler (Erbil) had not allowed the peshmerga to travel in their military uniforms and with their guns. He added, 'The Turkish soldiers are angry because the people came out onto the streets to greet the peshmerga. They are mistreating and insulting us because of this.'

Temo called on Kurdish authorities to come to their rescue and end the bad treatment.

A statement has not been made by the Peshmerga Ministry yet.

http://kurdishquestion.com/kurdistan/pe ... ities.html

[Anthea]

Link to CNN News video:

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

[Anthea]

[Anthea]

CNN Video

phpBB [video]

Once again there is painfully little information about exactly what is happeninginside Kobani

Let us hope that no news is good news

[Anthea]

What i believe to be the current situation inside Kobani

[Anthea]

Reuters

Kurds' battle for Kobani unites a people divided by borders
By Isabel Coles

Cloaked in Kurdish flags, thousands of people lined the roads to cheer on a military convoy headed for what was -- until recently -- an obscure Syrian border town, now the focus of a global war against the militants of Islamic State.

The Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga were on their way to help fellow Kurds defend Kobani in a battle that has assumed huge significance in the United States' campaign to "degrade and destroy" the hardline Islamist insurgency.

It is unclear whether the small but heavily armed contingent of peshmerga will be enough to swing the battle, but the deployment is a potent display of unity between Kurdish groups that more often seek to undermine each other.

The unified front is being forged as Kurds emerge as the West's most trusted and effective partner on the ground in both Iraq and Syria.

But preserving that unity be tricky, given the competing ambitions for leadership of the world's more than 30 million Kurds, the majority of whom are Sunni Muslim, but who tend to identify more strongly with their ethnicity than religion.

Governments in each of the four countries across which they are spread - Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran - have tended to exploit internal Kurdish divisions to thwart their aspirations for independence.

"We all want the Kurdish people to be united," said 33-year old Ayyoub Sheikho, who fled Kobani last month and is now living in a newly pitched row of tents at a refugee camp in Iraq's Kurdistan region. "If we don't unite we will be trampled on."

Fuad Hussein, the Kurdistan president's chief of staff, said Islamic State had "destroyed the borders".

"It is the same terrorist organization that attacks in (the Iraqi towns of) Khanaqin in Jalawla in Mosul in Kirkuk but also in (Syrian) Kobani, so this created a feeling of solidarity among the Kurds," he told Reuters.

NATIONAL IDENTITY

The deployment of peshmerga to Kobani illustrates the unprecedented degree of cooperation that has emerged between Kurdish groups across borders since Islamic State overran a third of Iraq this summer and proclaimed a caliphate straddling the frontier with Syria.

When Islamic State targeted Iraqi Kurdistan in August, fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) descended from mountain bases on the Turkey-Iraq border to help blunt the offensive.

Around the same time, fighters from a Syrian Kurd group that has surged to prominence during the civil war there -- the People's Protection Units (YPG) -- crossed into Iraq to save thousands of minority Yazidis from death at the hands of Islamic State militants who had torn through the peshmerga's defenses.

Kurds from Iran have also been fighting alongside peshmerga forces in Iraqi Kurdistan.

"Kurds today are more unified than ever before, and even if they were to take a few steps back, they will still be much further ahead than they were six months ago,” said Henri Barkey, a former State Department official who now teaches at Lehigh University in the United States. "The upshot of all of this is a consolidation of Kurdish national identity".

STRETCHED

If Kobani were to fall, officials in Iraqi Kurdistan say they fear a domino effect on Syria's two other Kurdish "cantons", precipitating a fresh wave of refugees into the autonomous region, already struggling to accommodate more than 1 million people displaced by violence within Iraq.

It would also boost the morale of Islamic State in Iraq, where the peshmerga have been regaining ground in the north since U.S. air strikes began in August.

Nevertheless, some question why Iraqi Kurds have deployed peshmerga abroad when they are still stretched at home, and have yet to win back all the territory they let slip.

The decision to reinforce Kobani was made under intense popular pressure from Kurds worldwide.

Barzani's efforts to extend his influence across the border into Syria have been repeatedly frustrated by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the political wing group of the YPG militia, which has emerged as the dominant Kurdish force there.

Rival Syrian Kurdish parties backed by Barzani have looked increasingly irrelevant by comparison. The U.S. government held its first publicly acknowledged meeting with the PYD in October and the YPG says it has been coordinating air strikes with the U.S. military during the Kobani campaign.

Relations between the Kurds in Iraq and Syria have been rocky.

Hundreds of Syrian Kurds trained under Barzani's auspices in northern Iraq, but the PYD refused to let them back in, saying its own YPG militia was the only legitimate armed force.

In turn, PYD leaders were denied entry to Iraqi Kurdistan, and, earlier this year, the regional government dug a trench along its frontier with Syria, citing concerns about Islamic State infiltration.

The PYD said that was a clear attempt to throttle its nascent administration, which the Iraqi Kurds did not officially recognize until this month.

But, in another sudden sign of unity, the Syrian PYD -- which some say has been tarnished by its association the Turkish militant group PKK -- struck a power-sharing deal with other Syrian factions last week, a move aimed at least in part to improve its image abroad.

COMMANDER IN CHIEF

As the peshmerga convoy departed Iraqi Kurdistan for Turkey, en route to Kobani, Kurds held aloft framed portraits of Barzani and his father, Mullah Mustafa, revered as a pillar of Kurdish nationalism. Some prostrated themselves in the road.

By deploying the peshmerga -- of which he is commander in chief -- to Kobani now, Barzani is boosting his credentials as a transnational leader of the Kurds and their interlocutor with the West.

A senior member of a rival party in Iraqi Kurdistan said the move would also help boost Barzani's popularity after setbacks on the battlefield this summer, and mend some of the political damage inflicted by his perceived over-reliance on Turkey, which failed the Kurds in their time of need.

Turkey is one of Iraqi Kurdistan's closest political and economic allies, yet Ankara fears that if Syria's Kurds follow the example set by their brethren in Iraq and seek an independent state in northern Syria, it could embolden Kurdish militants in Turkey and derail a fragile peace process.

Turkey's reluctance to support the fight against Islamic State over the border in Syria enraged its own Kurdish minority, complicated efforts to provide aid to Kobani and meant negotiations to enable the passage of the peshmerga through Turkish territory were delicate and complex.

Rival groups' links to different regional powers, remain a threat to Kurdish unity, according to Maria Fantappie, Iraq analyst with International Crisis Group.

"I see this as a temporary convergence of interest more than lasting realignment," she said. "Beside ideological differences dividing KDP (Barzani's party) and PYD, these two parties' regional ties, with Turkey and Iran respectively, remain the largest impediment to the formation of a united Kurdish front."

[Anthea]

While all eyes have been on Kobani the Islamic State has been getting stronger in other parts of Syria

The ancient and once wonderful city of Aleppo may well be the next to fall under the Islamic States control

or rather the rubble that is now mostly all that is left of the once wonderful city of Aleppo

The art of prestidigitation - a magicians trick - slight of hand

We all look in one direction and do not notice what is happening in the other direction

We see Kobani

Or do we

Have we been pushed into noticing Kobani

Logically and realistically

We should be focusing all our efforts on the supporting the Yazidis

The Yazidis are the living history of the Kurds

Yet for the most part they are being ignored

Kurds are being manipulated AGAIN

In reality - if Kobani was deemed to be so important

Why was so little done to prevent the Islamic State's advance on the town

It was known for several MONTHS that the Islamic State was heading towards Kobani

They left behind them little clues such as thousands of refugees running away from the advancing force

Also clues such as dozens of burnt out villages in their wake

and dead bodies of those who had not run fast enough

Why did everyone wait until the Islamic State had sized or destroyed almost all

of the entire Kobani canton and were knocking on the door of the town itself

Were the lives and homes of all the other Kurds in the Kobani canton

deemed to be of far less value than those inside Kobani town itself

Prestidigitation

What are we not noticing ?

[Anthea]

Reuters

Air strikes hit Kobani as Kurdish peshmerga prepare to enter
By Humeyra Pamuk and Raheem Salman

U.S.-led air strikes hit Islamic State positions around the Syrian border town of Kobani on Friday in an apparent bid to pave the way for heavily-armed Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces to enter from neighboring Turkey.

The predominantly Kurdish town, besieged for more than 40 days, has become the focus of a global war against the Sunni Muslim insurgents, who have captured expanses of Iraq and Syria and declared an Islamic "caliphate" straddling the two.

Its fighters have killed or driven away Shi'ite Muslims, Christians and other communities who do not share their ultra-radical brand of Sunni Islam. They executed at least 220 Iraqis in retaliation against opposition to their takeover of territory west of Baghdad this week.

The siege of Kobani, known in Arabic as Ayn al-Arab, has turned into a test of the U.S.-led coalition's ability to stop Islamic State's advance, with weeks of air strikes so far failing to break the insurgents' stranglehold.

The arrival of the Iraqi Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, would be the first time Turkey has allowed ground troops from outside Syria to reach the border town to reinforce Syrian Kurds who have been defending it for weeks.

Kobani's defenders, outgunned by the militants, are hoping the arrival of peshmerga from Iraq's Kurdistan region, with badly-needed weapons including cannon and truck-mounted machine-guns, will help them turn the tide.

An advance guard of 10 peshmerga briefly entered Kobani on Thursday to discuss a joint strategy with leaders of the YPG, the main Syrian Kurdish armed group defending the town.

Armored vehicles came and went from a former cotton processing warehouse near the Turkish border town of Suruc on Friday, where the wider contingent of around 150 peshmerga fighters were preparing for their deployment.

Tankers from the convoy emerged from the compound, guarded by Turkish security forces, to fill up at a local fuel station.

MASSACRE

In Iraq, government forces and Kurds have made gains against Islamic State in the north in recent weeks, but the U.S. air strikes have failed to stop the militants from advancing in Anbar province, a vast western region including the Euphrates river valley from the Syrian border to Baghdad's outskirts.

This week's execution of more than 220 tribesmen who resisted the group's advance in the Euphrates valley appears to be the worst mass killing of fellow Sunnis by a group previously known for massacring Shi'ites and non-Muslims.

At least 220 bodies of men from the Albu Nimr tribe, seized by Islamic State days earlier, were found in mass graves in recent days. They had been shot at close range.

Many of Iraq's Sunnis supported Islamic State as it advanced through the country, seeing the fighters as protectors from the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad. Washington hopes that tribes can be persuaded to switch sides and help the Baghdad government fight against the militants, as they did in Anbar during the 2006-2007 "surge" campaign, the bloodiest phase of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. But so far, tribes that resist Islamic State have faced harsh retribution while complaining of scant support from Baghdad.

Iraq's most senior Shi'ite cleric called on the government on Friday to rush to their aid.

“What is required from the Iraqi government ... is to offer quick support to the sons of this tribe and other tribes that are fighting Daesh (Islamic State) terrorists," Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said, in an address read out by an aide in the holy city of Kerbala after Friday prayers.

"This will offer the opportunity to the other tribes to join the fighters against Daesh," said the message from the reclusive 84-year-old cleric, whose pronouncements are seen by Shi'ites in Iraq and beyond as having the force of law.

Sheikh Naeem al-Ga'oud, a leader of the Albu Nimr, told Reuters he feared many more members of the tribe would be rounded up, shot at close range and dumped in mass graves. He said the tribe had pleaded to the government for help in the days before its village fell to an Islamic State onslaught. "A day before the attack we told them (the government) that we will be targeted by the Islamic State. I talked to the commander of the air force, with several commanders," he told Reuters in an interview. "We gave them the coordinates of the places where they were, but nobody listened to us."

TURKISH KURDS ANGRY

The arrival of Iraqi Kurds through Turkey to help protect Kobani in Syria is a major political event in a conflict that has spread violence in the region.

Turkey has absorbed some 200,000 refugees from the Kobani area in recent weeks, but its failure to act to help protect the border town infuriated members of its own Kurdish minority, leading to riots in October in which around 40 people died.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who has been a reluctant supporter of the coalition but has allowed the passage of the peshmerga from northern Iraq, said the U.S. and its allies were too focused on Kobani and should also turn attention elsewhere. "Why Kobani and not other towns like Idlib, Hama or Homs ... while Iraqi territory is 40 percent controlled by the Islamic State?" Erdogan told a news conference in Paris after talks with President Francois Hollande. Erdogan said a peace process with Kurds in Turkey would continue despite the riots.

The U.S. military said it continued to target Islamic State militants near Kobani on Thursday and Friday. It said four air strikes damaged four fighting positions used by the militant group as well as one of its buildings.

"For the past 15 days, Islamic State has been attacking to try to take control of the border gate, including with car bombs. But we are resisting," said Enver Muslim, the top administrative official in the Kobani district.

"While the peshmerga convoy passes, U.S. jets will be overhead and warplanes from the coalition ... will be flying over Kobani to ensure their security," he told Reuters by phone.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday preliminary information indicated that at least 21 Islamic State members were killed in coalition air strikes around Kobani, including a Danish jihadist.

A local journalist in the town said there had been several air strikes overnight. A Reuters correspondent watching from across the border in Turkey saw one early on Friday to the east of Kobani.

Around 200 fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an umbrella term for dozens of armed groups fighting against both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Islamic State, have also entered Kobani from Turkey to help defend the town.

Turkey, which wants the U.S.-led coalition's strategy in Syria to include Assad's removal from power, has been a staunch supporter of the Syrian rebels, a policy which Hollande said France also endorsed.

"We are conscious that in Syria there are two enemies. That's why we are ... supporting the FSA, which was what we discussed, because we are sure that there will only be victory on the ground with the FSA," he said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel acknowledged on Thursday that Assad may be benefiting from U.S. attacks on Islamic State fighters in his country, although he added that U.S. policy still supported Assad's removal from power.

The peshmerga were given a heroes' welcome as their convoy of jeeps and flatbed trucks crossed Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast this week, making their way towards Kobani from their base in northern Iraq's Kurdistan region.

It is unclear whether the small but heavily armed contingent will be enough to swing the battle, but the deployment is a potent display of unity between Kurdish groups that often seek to undermine each other.

Syria responded to the arrival of the Iraqi peshmerga by condemning Turkey for allowing foreign fighters and "terrorists" to enter Syria in a violation of its sovereignty. Its foreign ministry described the move as a "disgraceful act".

Turkey, which has made clear it will not send its own troops into Syria, dismissed the comments.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... 5M20141031