Kurds Claim to Have Turned Tide Against Islamic State in Kobane
By Liz Sly October 15 at 3:41 PM
Washington Post Blog
SANLIURFA, Turkey — Kurdish fighters have turned the tide against Islamic State militants in the battle for control of the Syrian border town of Kobane after two days of relentless bombardment by U.S. warplanes, Kurdish officials and activists said Wednesday.
By nightfall, the town’s Kurdish defenders had pushed the jihadists back more than four miles from the western edge of the town and were advancing into the eastern and southern neighborhoods of the city, said Ihsan Naasan, the deputy foreign minister of Kobane’s self-proclaimed government, speaking from the Kurdish-controlled town.
He claimed that Kurdish fighters with the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, now control 80 percent of the town, after losing more than half of it in heavy fighting over the previous days.
“The YPG now have the initiative,” he said, crediting heavy U.S. bombardments in recent days alongside resistance by the outgunned and outnumbered Kurdish militia. “They are on the counteroffensive against the Islamic State.”
If the Kurdish fighters manage to retain their momentum and retake the town, it would mark the first time that U.S. airstrikes have helped eject the Islamic State from territory in Syria since the war was expanded to include the northern and eastern parts of the country a little over three weeks ago.
The obscure border town, nestled amid rolling farmland in a remote part of north-central Syria, was not originally on the U.S. agenda when strikes were launched against the Islamic State, a heavily armed al-Qaeda offshoot also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Devoid of strategic significance and readily identifiable U.S. allies, the town, called Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, was thrust into the international spotlight after the news media showed up on the Turkish side of the border to film the battles taking place just across the frontier. Islamic State fighters in Syria had advanced unimpeded toward the town, capturing scores of tiny villages across a large swath of territory along the way and sending more than 200,000 people fleeing in panic into Turkish territory.
Only after the jihadists reached the town did the U.S. Air Force weigh in. Daily strikes on Kobane began 10 days ago. Then on Tuesday, as Islamic State reinforcements were reported to have reached the town, the sorties escalated sharply. On Wednesday, the U.S. Central Command said it had carried out 18 strikes in the previous 24 hours, on top of 21 reported the previous day.
Ground-shaking explosions reverberated repeatedly across the countryside spanning the Syrian-Turkish border, sending plumes of smoke billowing from the town. Kurdish activists said the bodies of “tens” of Islamic State fighters lay strewn around the streets of bombed neighborhoods subsequently retaken by the Kurdish militia.
The Islamic State, which typically boasts about its conquests in videos and statements on social media, has fallen silent on the Kobane battle, amid unconfirmed reports that some of its more senior commanders were among the dead. Among those mentioned were leaders known as Abu Khattab al-Kurdi and Abu Mohammed al-Amriki. Kurdi, from the town of Halabja in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, was among scores of Kurdish Islamists reported to be fighting alongside the Islamic State in Kobane. Amriki, a Chechen, was said to have lived in the United States for a decade before leaving to fight in Syria.
The Islamic State still controls some eastern neighborhoods of Kobane, cautioned Kurdish activist Mohammed Abdi, who is monitoring the fighting from the border. But, he said, “if the airstrikes continue at their current level, we can do it.”
The intensified effort has put the United States in the curious position of bombing to defend a Kurdish faction aligned in opposition to its usual regional allies. The Kurdish YPG militia fighting to defend the town is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which in the past has waged a bloody insurgency against Turkey and is designated as a terrorist organization by both Turkey and the United States.
The group is also at odds with Washington’s long-standing Kurdish allies in Iraq and its Syrian affiliates, who accuse the YPG faction of working on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The YPG and its political wing, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, deny the charge.
The effort to reclaim the town has been aided by coordination between the YPG and the United States, with the YPG delivering the coordinates of Islamic State positions to coalition officials in the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s capital of Irbil, Kurdish officials said. The collaboration builds on a tacit relationship forged in August when the YPG also played an important role in aiding the evacuation of trapped Yazidis from Iraq’s Mount Sinjar, through Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria.
Recapturing the rest of the rural Kurdish canton, which was overrun before the strikes began in earnest, will be harder, said Abdi, unless the effort to save Kobane is also extended to include supplies of arms and ammunition to the Syrian Kurds.
Turkey’s reluctance to aid a group it regards as a foe has prevented supplies from reaching the Kurdish militia in sufficient quantities to aid the fight against the jihadists.
Kurds are now pinning their hopes on peace talks underway in the Iraqi Kurdistan town of Dahuk between the rival Syrian Kurdish factions. Sponsored by the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, a close American ally who also has good relations with Turkey, the talks are aimed at forging an alliance between the Democratic Union Party and its YPG fighters and the Iraqi-aligned factions deemed more palatable by Turkey.
Liz Sly is the Post’s Beirut bureau chief. She has spent more than 15 years covering the Middle East, including the Iraq war. Other postings include Africa, China and Afghanistan.
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| Refugees near the fighting in Kobane in Syria on the border with Turkey. |
Washington Post Blog
SANLIURFA, Turkey — Kurdish fighters have turned the tide against Islamic State militants in the battle for control of the Syrian border town of Kobane after two days of relentless bombardment by U.S. warplanes, Kurdish officials and activists said Wednesday.
By nightfall, the town’s Kurdish defenders had pushed the jihadists back more than four miles from the western edge of the town and were advancing into the eastern and southern neighborhoods of the city, said Ihsan Naasan, the deputy foreign minister of Kobane’s self-proclaimed government, speaking from the Kurdish-controlled town.
He claimed that Kurdish fighters with the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, now control 80 percent of the town, after losing more than half of it in heavy fighting over the previous days.
“The YPG now have the initiative,” he said, crediting heavy U.S. bombardments in recent days alongside resistance by the outgunned and outnumbered Kurdish militia. “They are on the counteroffensive against the Islamic State.”
If the Kurdish fighters manage to retain their momentum and retake the town, it would mark the first time that U.S. airstrikes have helped eject the Islamic State from territory in Syria since the war was expanded to include the northern and eastern parts of the country a little over three weeks ago.
The obscure border town, nestled amid rolling farmland in a remote part of north-central Syria, was not originally on the U.S. agenda when strikes were launched against the Islamic State, a heavily armed al-Qaeda offshoot also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Devoid of strategic significance and readily identifiable U.S. allies, the town, called Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, was thrust into the international spotlight after the news media showed up on the Turkish side of the border to film the battles taking place just across the frontier. Islamic State fighters in Syria had advanced unimpeded toward the town, capturing scores of tiny villages across a large swath of territory along the way and sending more than 200,000 people fleeing in panic into Turkish territory.
Only after the jihadists reached the town did the U.S. Air Force weigh in. Daily strikes on Kobane began 10 days ago. Then on Tuesday, as Islamic State reinforcements were reported to have reached the town, the sorties escalated sharply. On Wednesday, the U.S. Central Command said it had carried out 18 strikes in the previous 24 hours, on top of 21 reported the previous day.
Ground-shaking explosions reverberated repeatedly across the countryside spanning the Syrian-Turkish border, sending plumes of smoke billowing from the town. Kurdish activists said the bodies of “tens” of Islamic State fighters lay strewn around the streets of bombed neighborhoods subsequently retaken by the Kurdish militia.
The Islamic State, which typically boasts about its conquests in videos and statements on social media, has fallen silent on the Kobane battle, amid unconfirmed reports that some of its more senior commanders were among the dead. Among those mentioned were leaders known as Abu Khattab al-Kurdi and Abu Mohammed al-Amriki. Kurdi, from the town of Halabja in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, was among scores of Kurdish Islamists reported to be fighting alongside the Islamic State in Kobane. Amriki, a Chechen, was said to have lived in the United States for a decade before leaving to fight in Syria.
The Islamic State still controls some eastern neighborhoods of Kobane, cautioned Kurdish activist Mohammed Abdi, who is monitoring the fighting from the border. But, he said, “if the airstrikes continue at their current level, we can do it.”
The intensified effort has put the United States in the curious position of bombing to defend a Kurdish faction aligned in opposition to its usual regional allies. The Kurdish YPG militia fighting to defend the town is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which in the past has waged a bloody insurgency against Turkey and is designated as a terrorist organization by both Turkey and the United States.
The group is also at odds with Washington’s long-standing Kurdish allies in Iraq and its Syrian affiliates, who accuse the YPG faction of working on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The YPG and its political wing, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, deny the charge.
The effort to reclaim the town has been aided by coordination between the YPG and the United States, with the YPG delivering the coordinates of Islamic State positions to coalition officials in the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s capital of Irbil, Kurdish officials said. The collaboration builds on a tacit relationship forged in August when the YPG also played an important role in aiding the evacuation of trapped Yazidis from Iraq’s Mount Sinjar, through Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria.
Recapturing the rest of the rural Kurdish canton, which was overrun before the strikes began in earnest, will be harder, said Abdi, unless the effort to save Kobane is also extended to include supplies of arms and ammunition to the Syrian Kurds.
Turkey’s reluctance to aid a group it regards as a foe has prevented supplies from reaching the Kurdish militia in sufficient quantities to aid the fight against the jihadists.
Kurds are now pinning their hopes on peace talks underway in the Iraqi Kurdistan town of Dahuk between the rival Syrian Kurdish factions. Sponsored by the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, a close American ally who also has good relations with Turkey, the talks are aimed at forging an alliance between the Democratic Union Party and its YPG fighters and the Iraqi-aligned factions deemed more palatable by Turkey.
Liz Sly is the Post’s Beirut bureau chief. She has spent more than 15 years covering the Middle East, including the Iraq war. Other postings include Africa, China and Afghanistan.
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