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Kurds claim to have turned tide against Islamic State in Kobane U.S. pounds Islamic State in Kobane, seeking a propaganda and a military win
(about 5 hours later)
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. For the moment, at least, the once-obscure Syrian town of Kobane, along the Turkish border, has become the epicenter of the overall U.S. and coalition fight to degrade and demoralize Islamic State militants.
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. Airstrikes in and around the town have sharply increased, to nearly 40 in a 48-hour period this week. At the same time, strikes elsewhere in Syria have virtually stopped. Air attacks in neighboring Iraq have slowed significantly in recent days, in part because of bad weather and poor visibility.
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. U.S. officials said their objective is less Kobane itself — which they said still may fall to the militants — than the opportunity it presents to hit massed Islamic State forces.
“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.” “One of the reasons why you’re seeing more strikes there is because there’s more ISIL there,” Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said Wednesday, using an acronym for the Islamic State. He said that “hundreds” of militants have been killed.
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. But Kobane also has come to represent a potential propaganda victory the Obama administration is eager to deny the militants.
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. “Part of the dynamic we want to show is that these guys aren’t ten feet tall,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the motivation for target selection beyond purely military objectives. “A lot of their edge has been psychological.”
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. “They’re like a shark; if they’re not swimming, they’re sinking. That’s how they recruit foreign fighters and establish themselves as the vanguard of global jihad,” the official said.
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. The militant siege of Kobane, the official acknowledged, has become the subject of “acute media attention,” with news cameras just across the border in Turkey transmitting live images of combat. The United Nations last week warned of a “genocide” if the militants are allowed to take over. French President François Hollande — whose government is participating in coalition activities in Iraq but not in Syria — this week called on all nations to do their utmost to help save the town.
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. This week, the dominant image has been of U.S. airstrikes. “I don’t want to suggest that our military actions are driven by the simple fact that this is a town that can be seen by cameras,” the senior official said. “I do think it’s fair to say that we have an interest in blunting their momentum to show that they are not this inevitably advancing force that they have portrayed themselves as being.”
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. A senior Defense Department official acknowledged the town’s propaganda value to the Islamic State but insisted that “we are not dropping bombs on them to make them look weak. We are dropping bombs on them to make them weak.”
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.” There were sharply differing assessments Wednesday of the effect of the airstrikes. “Right now, we believe it’s still being defended and still in their hands,” Kirby said of the Syrian Kurdish fighters in the town. But Kobane, he said, “could very well still fall.”
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. Other U.S. military officials, with access to real-time intelligence assessments, said the militants have continued to pour in resources and remain in control of a significant portion of the town.
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. Kurdish fighters and activists on the ground said that two days of relentless attacks have turned the tide in their favor.
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. Ihsan Naasan, the deputy foreign minister of Kobane’s self-proclaimed government, said Kurdish defenders had pushed the jihadists back more than four miles from the western edge of the town by nightfall Wednesday and were advancing into the eastern and southern neighborhoods of the city.
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. He claimed that Kurdish fighters with the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, now control 80 percent of Kobane after losing more than half of it in heavy fighting in past days.
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. “The YPG now have the initiative,” Naasan said, speaking from inside the town. “They are on the counteroffensive against the Islamic State.”
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. If the Kurdish fighters manage to retake Kobane, it would be the first time that U.S. strikes have helped eject the Islamic State from territory in Syria since the air war was expanded to include the northern and eastern parts of the country a little over three weeks ago.
The border town, nestled amid rolling farmland in a remote part of north-central Syria, has limited strategic significance. Islamic State fighters had advanced toward it unimpeded, 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.
Although daily U.S. airstrikes had begun in Kobane over a week earlier, it was only on Tuesday, as militant reinforcements were said to have arrived, that coalition sorties sharply escalated. 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 Syria-Turkey border Wednesday, sending plumes of smoke billowing from the town. Kurdish activists said that the bodies of “tens” of Islamic State fighters lay strewn around the streets of bombed neighborhoods that they said were subsequently retaken by defenders.
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 have been killed. Among those mentioned are leaders known as Abu Khattab al-Kurdi, from the town of Halabja in Iraq’s Kurdish region, and Abu Mohammed al-Amriki, a Chechen who was said to have lived in the United States for a decade before leaving to fight in Syria.
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 defending 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, which accuse the Syrian Kurdish faction of working on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a charge the group denies.
Kurdish officials say the YPG has been unofficially cooperating with the United States, delivering the coordinates of Islamic State positions to coalition officials in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Irbil. Kirby, at the Pentagon, declined to comment on the reports.
Turkey has refused to allow supplies across the border to the YPG, a situation the Obama administration would like to reverse. U.S. diplomats, and a Pentagon planning team coordinating Turkey’s contribution to the anti-Islamic State coalition, have asked the Turks to put aside their antipathy toward the Kurds and allow the fighters free access to regroup and resupply themselves on the other side of the border.
Retired Gen. John Allen, the administration’s coordinator for the coalition who last week visited Turkey, said Wednesday that the goal of the airstrikes was to provide “white space” for the defenders and to “give some time to the fighters to organize on the ground.”
Sly reported from Sanliurfa, Turkey.