ISIS- SYRIA-THREAD

[Anthea]

The Guardian

Peshmerga forces delayed in Turkey en route to fight Isis in Kobani

Reports suggest attack by Islamic State militants on Free Syrian Army has halted convoy of Iraqi Kurdish fighters

Dozens of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been held up in Turkey en route to the Syrian border town of Kobani, where they will join the fight against Islamic State (Isis) militants.

The peshmerga command have not commented on the delay, but Turkish media cited an attack by Isis on Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters crossing into Kobani through the Mürsitpinar border gate as a reason for the delay. According to the newspaper Milliyet, three FSA members were wounded by Isis snipers on Wednesday. They are being treated at a Turkish hospital.

Syrian-Kurdish forces have been defending Kobani against Isis attack since mid-September.

Ten peshmerga officers crossed the Turkish border into Kobani on Wednesday to discuss a strategy for the safe transfer of peshmerga troops and artillery. They have since returned to the peshmerga army camp just south of the Turkish town of Suruç, just north of the Turkey-Syria border.

A convoy of armed peshmerga had arrived in Suruç earlier on Wednesday, meeting others who had flown in. The Kurdish troops have set up a temporary camp in a farming depot just outside of town. Turkish security forces have been deployed to stop local people approaching the depot.

The delay to Kurdish fighters in Suruç has given cause for complaint. A Kurdish medic who accompanied the peshmerga convoy told the Iraqi-Kurdish news agency Rudaw: “There are no facilities in the place we are staying,” Issettin Temo said. “We do not have a bar of soap or 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.”

In the meantime Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan regional government (KRG), pledged further support for Kobani.

“Whenever the situation on the ground necessitates [it] and more forces are requested from us and there is passage for them, we will send more forces to protect Kobani and defeat terrorists in western Kurdistan [Syria]”, he said.

Armed Syrian opposition groups were less enthusiastic about more support for the predominantly Kurdish town. Speaking at a press conference in Istanbul on Thursday, an FSA commander condemned the decision to send more rebel forces to Kobani.

“I am criticising this decision because we need these forces in the other fronts in Aleppo. The situation is critical in Aleppo right now, regime forces have been surrounding the city for some time,” Nizar al-Khatib said, adding that 200 FSA rebels have already been fighting alongside Kurdish troops since mid-September. Khatib also demanded more military support from coalition forces.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/o ... amic-state

[Anthea]

[Anthea]

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Reuters

Kurdish peshmerga forces enter Syria's Kobani after further air strikes
By Humeyra Pamuk and Raheem Salman

A convoy of Iraqi Kurdish forces in Turkey rolled late on Friday across the border into Syria to help Syrian Kurds defend the besieged town of Kobani that has become the focus of a Western-backed war against Islamic State insurgents.

U.S.-led air strikes hit Islamic State positions around Kobani earlier in the day in an apparent effort to pave the way for the heavily-armed Kurdish contingent to enter.

The Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga or "those who defy death", had set off cheering and making victory signs in more than a dozen trucks and jeeps, accompanied by armored vehicles and artillery. They headed from a holding point around 8 km (5 miles) from the frontier towards Kobani.

"We have crossed over," one of the peshmerga fighters in the group subsequently told Reuters by telephone.

The force numbers only around 150 but brings weapons and ammunition. Their arrival would mark the first time Turkey has allowed ground troops from outside Syria to reinforce Syrian Kurds, who have been defending Kobani for more than 40 days.

As the peshmerga headed towards the border, a loud blast was heard in the Kobani area, the latest in a rapid series of explosions, in an apparent intensification of the fighting.

Despite having limited strategic significance, Kobani has become a powerful international symbol in the battle against the hardline Sunni Muslim insurgents who have captured large expanses of Iraq and Syria and declared an Islamic "caliphate".

The Kobani battle has raged in full view of the Turkish frontier, testing whether a U.S.-led coalition can halt Islamic State's advance. The failure of Turkey to help defend the town sparked riots among Turkish Kurds in which 40 people died.

Islamic State militants have killed or displaced Shi'ite Muslims, Christians and other communities deemed enemies of their ultra-radical brand of Sunni Islam. They executed at least 220 Iraqi Sunnis in retaliation for opposition to their takeover of territory west of Baghdad this week. [ID:nL5N0SP5O5]

Earlier on Friday, machinegun fire could be heard from the Turkish side of the border as Islamic State fighters pounded the area near where the peshmerga were expected to cross.

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 insurgents from advancing in Anbar, a vast western desert province straddling the Euphrates river valley from the Syrian border to Baghdad's outskirts.

This week's execution of tribesmen who resisted Islamic State's advance in the Euphrates basin appears to be the worst mass killing of fellow Sunnis by a group previously known for slaughtering 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. They had been shot at close range.

Many Iraqi Sunnis supported Islamic State as it advanced through the north and west of the country in the first half of the year, seeing the fighters as protectors from the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad.

With a new government under a Shi'ite prime minister seen as more conciliatory having taken office in September, Washington hopes that tribes can be coaxed to switch sides and help fight the militants, as they did in Anbar during the 2006-07 "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 tribesmen would be rounded up, shot and dumped in mass graves. He said his 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."

The U.S. State Department said it was deeply concerned by reports of the mass executions. Islamic State's "indiscriminate crimes prove, yet again, that it is targeting all Iraqis, regardless of faith or religion," it said.

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 across 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.

Erdogan, who has been a reluctant supporter of the U.S.-led coalition but has allowed the passage of the peshmerga from northern Iraq, said Washington 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 (in Syria) ... 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 Kurdish 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.

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.

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.

Assad's government 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

(Additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz in Beirut, John Irish in Paris, Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Peter Graff/Mark Heinrich)

[Anthea]

Peshmerga on the way to Kobani

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[Anthea]

I think this is in Kobani but cannot translate

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[Anthea]

Comedian Mark Thomas (left)

Over the years Mark Thomas has put in more effort to save
Hasankyf than any thousand Kurds together have put in

If there were a thousand Kurds as dedicated as Mark to saving Hasankyf
then Hasankyf would be safe for future generations of Kurd to enjoy

Peter Tatchell ‏(right)

[Anthea]

Syrian border crossings

Some crossings are now under the control of so-called moderate rebels

In it's early stages ISIS would have been classed as one of the groups of moderate rebels

In Syria there are NO moderate rebels

For the most part - the countless and ever expanding rebel groups are started by small people with big egos

Most of the rebel groups cause much more harm than good

[Anthea]

[Anthea]

Kurdish Question

Disillusioned Rudeboys: Jihadi Recruits And The Machine Of Capitalism
This talk was first given at:

'Rojava Revolution: Kobane, Resistance and Radical Democracy '

On the Nov 2nd 2014 at Halkevi Community Centre in Dalston, London.

Imagine a small village with an enormous factory making many different products and generating huge amounts of money for the owners. If you walked around the factory all you would see are big shiny bits of metal grinding along efficiently and of course people of the village mindlessly doing their bit in the production line, they don't even know what they are making. Then imagine that among the products being made in the factory were instruments of torture which are to be used on anyone who tries to damage the factory.
Well, that village is the global economy, that machine is capitalism, those factory workers are us, and those instruments of torture are ISIS.

My aim in this talk is to explain how ISIS recruits are manufactured then used as a tool not just of the West but of our global economic system, and how a combination of abjection and perversion is manipulated to serve its ultimate ends. ISIS are hench men of something far more subtle, pervasive and enduring than fundamentalist Islam.

The threat of the Jihadi recruit sitting on the bus beside us is now not just the territory of Daily Mail headlines. The ISIS recruiting figures in the West alone are staggering and point to a profound disfunction in our so called liberal democracy. It cannot be that religious ideology just crept in and poisoned these men, something far more complex is happening.

It has its roots in the socialising of young men into a society where their basic instincts are frustrated and their conception of masculinity is forged in an environment of despair. How do we come to any useful psychosocial analysis of the ISIS mentality and not just disappear into academic obscurity while real people are chopping real heads off, raping and murdering thousands in the name of religious ideology?

It’s not enough to do a theological critique of Islamic fundamentalism. As we have seen, this polarised debate between the “rational, enlightened, scientific” mind as spearheaded by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and provocative pundits such as Bill Maher has done nothing to improve the situation. Instead it has further cemented the deadlocked orientalist paradigm of the Western “progressive liberal” mind-set versus “antiquated religious” Middle - Eastern culture, leaving us with a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the genuine and complex causes of the problem.

Surely an understanding of the socio-political conditions and therefore a psychoanalytic grasp of the Jihadi mind-set, that is clearly not just a temporary anomalous aberration, is necessary if we are to come close to facing the issue.

Watching any of the countless ISIS recruitment videos available online, the first impression is of incredulity; this is a young disillusioned teenager who doesn’t really know what he’s saying. Then the realization comes; the murderous claims to ruthless and brutal domination of all who stand in their way are not just empty threats borne of teenage rebellion, but a manifesto of despair.

Listening to the familiar London “street” inflections of the British recruits gives a chilling uncanny feeling. We know these young men, they are from our streets. How did they come to this? It’s not a case of a remote “foreigner” whose culture and mentality we could never possibly grasp.

No, this is our culture. This is our problem.

What is the appeal of The Islamic State for these young men? How did they become so detached from any sense of identification with what we would call modern humanistic conceptions of personhood? How are they capable of de-humanizing women to such a degree that they can be sold as sex-slaves chained together in a cage like animals? Unfortunately there is a connection between the cultural environment even here in Britain and their extremist actions far too important to ignore.

When youth culture abounds with slogans and pop songs that deify money -baseball caps emblazoned with CASH IS KING, music celebrating and glorifying pure greed and excess, and of course sexual exploitation of women- is it a surprise that the more nuanced facets of young men’s personalities are not being developed? When young men are growing up without any sense of purpose outside of a strictly patriarchal, profit driven environment, what can they aspire to be other than rich, aggressively powerful and sexually potent? Young women too become complicit in the sexualisation and monetization of their worth when that’s all they are offered.

Of course the problem with the capitalist model is, apart from being fundamentally corrupting, it’s a impossible pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Those ideals that that we are compelled to pursue personal happiness, wealth, and individual freedom are unattainable to the 99%. Only the 1% can actually reap the benefits of this mindless striving for neo liberal self-fulfilment, whilst watching the rest of us scrabble about in the dream of one day “making it”. Making what is the question?

It seems now even feminism has been co-opted to the capitalist project; if you are not a ruthless moneymaking, ball-breaking, sex-bomb a la Beyoncé, you’re not a feminist!

So what parallel is to be drawn here? If we are to boil it down to its most essential ideological grains, as philosopher Catherine Mackinnon says ;

“Sexuality is to feminism, what work is to Marxism, that which is most one’s own, yet most taken away.”

The colonization of women’s sexuality that brutally misogynist culture enacts is the ultimate and mortifying expression of the alienation of the fruits of the work from the worker that capitalism engenders.

In order to better understand the link between the misogyny and indeed misanthropy of both fundamentalist Islam and Western hedonistic individualist capitalism, it’s necessary to look at the reflexive relationship between the cultural ideology at work and the formation of the unconscious in the male psyche at both ends of the spectrum.

First let’s ask; what is the implicit status of women in the Western symbolic order?

In the midst of a femicide and mass rape by ISIS as we saw inflicted on the Kurdish Yezidi community of Iraq in September, the Western reaction to this found its expression in the supplications of a young, rich, famous and beautiful actress appearing in the UN to ask men politely to join in the fight for “equality”. Emma Watson’s impassioned speech for the HE4SHE campaign barely made reference to the atrocities against women that were going on outside of her cosseted world, rather the emphasis was on not scaring men off with the dirty “F” word. Feminism, that is.

She asked with perfectly poised indignation, why she should be paid less than her male counterparts for her next multi million pound movie deal. The reference to her distress at being sexualised by the media from a young age, was particularly significant, since sexualisation of young actresses is the life blood of her profession and her industry at large. We are forced to ask; who consented to this? Her parents? Her agent? Can she really regret all those half naked photos that catapulted her to fame ? Or is her image now more profitable if it ascribes to the buttoned up “thinking man’s totty” trope? Furthermore, perhaps most pitifully, much was made of the fact that men too suffer from the effects of gender inequality, hence for this reason, Miss Watson explains to us, it must be in their interest to care.

Obviously the bitter pill of feminism isn’t palatable unless administered in capitalist friendly doses that don’t upset the digestive tract of the machine. Emma Watson may give the illusion of waking women up to gender inequality, but all she really serves to do is reinforce the accepted norms of who can speak out about what, and how they are permitted to do so. I’m afraid she speaks not for equality but for the maintenance of hegemony. She is white, educated, rich and famous. She must at all costs protect the interests of those like her and the industries that thrive off the permutation of her image.

Of course It’s not Emma Watson’s “fault”, and you may ask why she is relevant, but the meta-narrative functioning here is crucial. We must examine the relation between the symbolic histories at work (the set of explicit, mythical narratives and ideologico- ethical prescriptions that constitute the traditions of a community) and what philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Ẑiẑek would call its “obscene underside”;

“the un-acknowledgeable “spectral” fantasmatic secret history that actually sustains the explicit symbolic tradition but has to remain foreclosed if it is to be operative”.2

In other words; what are our cultural codes of accepted behaviour reliant upon in order for their transgressions to be measured? How does the socio-sexual world maintain its distinctions between the explicitly forbidden and the implicitly foreclosed? What are the presuppositions that we have made about female sexuality that give rise to both its excessive exploitation and its fervent denial?

Whilst on the surface of society, we attempt to maintain ideas of “family values” and the healthy normative institution of marital sex, porn culture is at an all -time high. Studies are being carried out on the neurological changes happening in young men’s brains who’ve had excessive exposure to pornographic material, and there is a clear and deeply sad crisis of teenage sexuality happening due to the pornification of the female image. The legacy of such easy access to instant gratification we are yet to see in the coming generations. But what we can see so far is the effect this proliferation of porn and vice culture has been having on the economy; and guess what, it’s a good one.

For the first time the Office of National Statistics are measuring the value to the UK economy of sex work and drug dealing – and have discovered prostitution and drugs trade make roughly the same contribution as farming – and only slightly less than book and newspaper publishers added together. They found in 2009, illegal drugs and prostitution boosted the economy by £9.7bn – equal to 0.7% of gross domestic product.

Clearly the cycle of sexual exploitation and the horrors of drug addiction are highly beneficial to the capitalist agenda even though the government would have you believe otherwise.

Unfortunately though, this deception is not something merely imposed on us from outside, there is a much more fundamental internal process going on.

So how do we sustain this contradiction? Surely the appearance of normative values are only possible through a shared agreement of self - deception? We agree to hide the true nature of our desires in order not only to maintain the social order but, in the act of their foreclosure, to give life to these desires themselves. What would sex be if it were not forbidden? This is almost a truism too obvious to mention but by examining the mechanics of such a fundamental feature of human life we can begin to understand how the engine of ideology is run, and what happens when the presuppositions of certain ideologies become so imbedded as to be invisible.

Every woman knows that even in today’s liberal society to lay claim to a sexual appetite let alone to admit to indulgence in recreational sex with multiple partners is still a transgressive act. Those that do freely profess such liberation do so in the knowledge that they are making a political statement for feminism, whether explicitly saying so or not.

Whereas, of course for men, the expected norm is sexual promiscuity and an unquenchable libido. We don’t have to burrow very deep into the female psyche to find that this reticence is built on a myth about the inherent chastity of female sexuality. However, the ideologically brain washed among us need only understand the dynamics of porn to see the truth behind the lie. Women in porn are un-tameable, voraciously sexual beings who are in a constant state of arousal and will find any opportunity to perform sex acts for man, woman, or beast.

Whilst I’m not suggesting this is literally the case, the truth of the matter resides not in the actual representations of the women on film but in their indelible place in the male psyche. The obsession with the overtly sexual woman, is not an invention of men, rather it is a manifestation of what the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan would term the “Real”; the truth too awful and threatening to face in the symbolic order that therefore is converted into a foreclosed fantasy to enable male sexual and economic domination to continue.

Once we recognise the dynamics of sexuality as represented in the unconscious symbolic order we can begin to get a picture of the systems of thought that are “erected” on their foundation. Since it is around this fundamental power relation of the sexual drama that cultures are formed. So we have to ask; if fundamentalist Islam works so hard at supressing female sexuality and Western neo liberal culture works so hard to exploit it, are they not just two sides of the same coin?

I’m afraid to say my reaction to a women in a full burqa in the height of summer is the same as when I see a clearly uncomfortable woman hobbling around in stiletto- stripper shoes and a mini skirt in mid-winter; my first thought is- you are oppressed.

As we know fundamentalist Islam (like all monotheistic religions) is built on the subjugation of women, and the manipulation of their sexuality to maintain the patriarchal order. But if you asked the faithful why they adhere to this, they don’t need to explain it; women are designated this role simply because Allah wills it so. Likewise the Western woman sees her choice of provocative and restrictive clothing as the ultimate expression of her liberty, nothing to do with the satisfaction of a male fantasy or the commodification of her body.

Let us now draw on Lacan’s formulation of perversion to explain this in psychoanalytic terms:

"Strictly speaking, perversion is an inverted effect of the phantasy. It is the subject who determines himself as an object, in his encounter with the division of subjectivity…It is in so far as the subject makes himself the object of another will that the sado-masochistic drive not only closes up, but constitutes itself…the sadist himself occupies the place of the object, but without knowing it, to the benefit of the another, for whose jouissance he exercises his action as sadistic pervert."3

So as Slavoj Ẑiẑek points out, a pervert is not simply someone who likes to indulge in sickening or transgressive acts, rather he is someone for whom his will is given over to what would be called in Lacanian terms that of the “big Other”.
The extreme effects of such perversion we are witnessing now in Syria. The ISIS member gives over his will to that of the will of Allah, in a sense he is not responsible for his actions rather he merely follows the injunctions of his master. His acts of vile brutality become not free acts of malicious intent but the fulfilling of a duty to a will infinitely wiser and more powerful than his own. He has in effect, no choice and is thus exonerated.

Again where is the Western corollary to this behaviour? Surely in the murderous military actions and (inactions), first of president Bush in the “holy” war with Iraq, and now continued with the Obama administration which purports to act in the interests of the victims of the massacre in Iraq and now Syria, but in fact whose military interdictions have been purely in order to serve the “big Other” of capitalism. If this were not the case how could their inaction in the face of a genocide in the region been legitimised by the words of John Kerry as follows:

“Kobane does not define the strategy for the coalition in respect to Daesh (ISIS) Kobane is one community and it is a tragedy what is happening there. And we do not diminish that….. where we ought to be focusing first…is in Iraq.” 4

So what do we understand from this? What could be the higher purpose than to save thousands from massacre? It’s obviousness has become its justification; the corporate multinational agenda of finance capital is the most decisive factor in all acts of contemporary war. This is what removes the ethical obligation from the shoulders of John Kerry and the Obama administration. The unflinching obedience of this greater force has become ingrained in the national consciousness to such an extent that we in the Western “enlightened” world can watch the most horrific torment of a community of people and put it down to collateral damage in the pursuit of the higher goal; the will of the “big Other”; capitalism. This is perversion at work.

The mechanism that sustains this process is the same ideological technique at work in the Western neo- liberals as in the Fundamentalist Islamic State.

So ISIS is evil, this we know, but it is evil legitimised by the willingness to let it flourish providing it does not upset the hegemonic order of capitalism. Of course this makes the conflict of East and West, not a battle but a dialectic. Both sides are slaves to a greater power.

So the ISIS recruits in the videos, who are they? Are they really that remote from the West? Or do they just show us how fragile the human mind is when put under certain conditions. We live in a system that interpellates young men into an ideology that rewards its most ruthless, avaricious and bellicose qualities. Is it not a foregone conclusion that on the periphery of society, the most disenfranchised and disillusioned members will be swept up by the allure of something which promises to repay them most handsomely for such talents, whilst co-opting them to the greater capitalist project? That’s the genius of capitalism, it’s so called enemies do all it’s dirty work freely and willingly.

http://kurdishquestion.com/insight-rese ... alism.html

Anthea: Glad I did not bother to go

[Anthea]

Reuters

Peshmerga, Syrian rebels battle Islamic State in besieged Kobani
By Omer Berberoglu (Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Jonny Hogg in Ankara and Alexander Dziadosz in Beirut; Writing by Jonny Hogg; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Dominic Evans)

Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters and moderate Syrian rebels bombarded Islamic State positions in Kobani on Monday, but it remained unclear if their arrival would definitively turn the tide in the battle for the besieged Syrian border town.

Kobani has become a symbolic test of the U.S.-led coalition's ability to halt the advance of Islamic State, which has poured weapons and fighters into its bid to take the town in an assault that has lasted more than a month.

The battle has also deflected attention from significant gains elsewhere in Syria by Islamic State, which has seized two gas fields within a week from President Bashar al-Assad's forces in the center of the country.

The arrival in Kobani of the peshmerga and additional Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters in recent days marks an escalation in efforts to defend the town after weeks of U.S.-led air strikes slowed but did not reverse the Islamists' advance.

White smoke billowed into the sky as peshmerga and FSA fighters appeared to combine forces, raining cannon and mortar fire down on Islamic State positions to the west of Kobani, a Reuters witness said.

An estimated 150 Iraqi Kurdish fighters crossed into Kobani with arms and ammunition from Turkey late on Friday, the first time Ankara has allowed reinforcements to reach the town.

"(Their) heavy weapons have been a key reinforcement for us. At the moment they're mostly fighting on the western front, there's also FSA there too," said Meryem Kobane, a commander with the YPG, the main Syrian Kurdish armed group in Kobani.

She said fierce fighting was also continuing in eastern and southern parts of the city.

The peshmerga - formally part of the Iraqi army - have deployed behind Syrian Kurdish forces and are supporting them with artillery and mortar fire, according to Ersin Caksu, a journalist inside Kobani. The fiercest fighting was taking place in the south and east, areas where the newly arrived reinforcements were not deployed, he said.

Despite weeks of air strikes, the radical Sunni group has continued to inflict heavy losses on Kobani's defenders. Late last week hospital sources in neighboring Turkey reported a jump in the number of Kurdish fighters being brought across the border for treatment, many of them already dead.

"PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR"

The fight for Kobani within sight of the Turkish frontier has heaped pressure on Ankara, which has been reluctant to intervene, accusing the town's defenders of links with Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants, who have fought a decades long insurgency against the Turkish state.

President Tayyip Erdogan on Monday decried what he called the "psychological war" being waged by the international media against Ankara, rebuffing criticism of its Syria policy.

"Turkey is not a country that will bow either to domestic treason networks or to perception operations abroad," the Hurryiet Daily News reported Erdogan as saying during a speech at an Istanbul university.

A survey by pollster Metropoll appeared to show sympathy for Erdogan's stance, with a majority of respondents saying the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Europe and the United States, posed a greater threat to Turkey than Islamic State.

A peace process aimed at disarming the PKK has appeared increasingly troubled in recent weeks, rocked by deadly Kurdish pro-Kobani protests, Turkish air strikes on PKK positions in northern Iraq and attacks on Turkish security forces.

With the world's attention on Kobani, Islamist forces have continued to gain ground elsewhere in Syria.

The Islamic State seized a gas field in the central province of Homs, according to the SITE jihadist website monitoring service, the second gas field reported captured in a week from Assad's forces.

On Monday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a Western-backed Syrian opposition group, the Hazzm movement, had lost positions and equipment including heavy weapons after being overrun by al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front fighters in Idlib province, near the Turkish border.

On Saturday, Nusra fighters seized the bastion of another western-backed group, also in Idlib.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/ ... 5M20141103

[Anthea]

[Anthea]

BBC News

Inside a Turkish village hosting Kobane's refugees

As heavy fighting continues in the Syrian city of Kobane, many of its residents have fled.

The BBC's Jiyar Gol visited a Turkish border village which is hosting some refugees in its school.

He spoke to both villagers and the displaced people themselves.

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[Anthea]

BAS NEWS

Islamic State Stops Attacks in Kobani

Islamic State (IS) militants have stopped attacks on the besieged city of Kobani in Syrian Kurdistan.

Brigadier Abdul-Qahar Majid Hajji, the Peshmerga force commander in Kobani, told BasNews that the situation inside Kobani is calm and there are no longer clashes between the extremists and the Peshmerga and fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

“IS has suffered heavy causalities in recent days and right now they have stopped all their operations in the city,” said Hajji.

He said Peshmerga forces and YPG fighters are counter-attacking the Jihadi group and the balance of power has shifted in the city since the arrival of Peshmerga to aid the Kurdish fighters, who battled IS militants alone for more than a month.

“We have very good coordination with YPG fighters in the battle against the IS militants in Kobani,” added the Peshmerga commander.

He said that with the new weapons they have, they can defeat IS in Syrian Kurdistan, an assertion seemingly confirmed by the change in circumstances claimed by the Brigadier.

About 150 Iraqi Peshmerga officers crossed into Kobani with arms and ammunition from Turkey late on Friday and since then have participated in the fight against IS in the city.

http://basnews.com/en/News/Details/Isla ... bani/41168

[Anthea]

Silly me for taking any notice of Bas News

EURO NEWS

Syria: Islamic extremists pledge to press ahead with battle for Kobani

Vowing to pursue their fight for Kobani, Islamic extremists have released footage purported to show what is left of the Syrian border town.

US-led airstrikes have failed to reverse ISIL’s advance and it is still far from sure whether newly-arrived Iraqi Kurdish fighters can turn the tide and help defeat the jihadists.

The images show rubble and badly damaged buildings, with black smoke billowing in the background.

The video also features a militant pledging that the battle for Kobani will go on.

Human Rights Watch says children from the predominantly Kurdish town who were abducted by ISIL were forced to watch videos of beheadings and beaten with cables during six months of captivity.

Other youngsters from Kobani who have managed to flee across the frontier into Turkey are coping as best they can.

Makeshift classrooms in tents for a few refugees in the Turkish border town of Suruc offer some semblance of normality in the difficult conditions they are living in.

But Kobani is not the end of the story.

France has warned that the coalition fighting ISIL must now save Syria’s second city Aleppo as moderate rebels face destruction by attacks from forces loyal to President Assad as well as jihadi militants.

In a column in French daily Le Figaro, the Washington Post and pan-Arab Al-Hayat, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the city, the “bastion” of the opposition, was almost encircled and abandoning it would end hopes of a political solution in Syria’s three-year civil war.

http://www.euronews.com/2014/11/04/syri ... or-kobani/