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Feminist Fighters: Kurdish Women Battling ISIS In Kobani

Feminist Fighters: Kurdish Women Battling ISIS In Kobani

Encouraging news from the Mideast is so rare as to deserve focused attention whenever it arrives. The first good news in a long time from Syria comes courtesy of the brave Kurdish peshmerga forces pushing back against Islamic State fighters in Kobani, a tiny place in the country’s northeastern corner, near the border with Turkey.

With the support of the U.S. Air Force, dispatched by President Obama, the Kurds have fought ISIS to a standstill there – and now the United States is airdropping weapons and supplies into Kobani, while the Turkish government has now reversed its policy, letting peshmerga cross their border into Syria to reinforce the town.

It is clear what Kobani represents to the West — an opportunity to inflict a damaging defeat on ISIS — and to the Kurds, whose national aspirations would get a deserved lift from victory (which isn’t at all assured yet). But Henri J. Barkey, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University, points out that Kobani is also becoming an important battlefield for women – both symbolically and literally:

 There is another, rather unique aspect of the resistance that is adding to its mythic character: the role of women in the fight. The juxtaposition of an Islamic State, which enslaves women or covers them from head to toe, with the Syrian Kurds’ Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has large numbers of women fighting and dying alongside men, is particularly striking. Social and other media outlets have brimmed with stories of the heroism and sacrifice of these women. The fighting in Kobani, and especially the emergence of women fighters, has now entered the Kurdish lore and imagination.

And their courage should earn the admiration of all who abhor women’s subjugation.

 

Obama’s Decision To Aid Kobani Puts Him Squarely At Odds With Turkey’s Erdogan

Obama’s Decision To Aid Kobani Puts Him Squarely At Odds With Turkey’s Erdogan

By Roy Gutman, McClatchy Washington Bureau

ISTANBUL — In air-dropping weapons and ammunition to Kurdish defenders of a Syrian town, President Barack Obama has embroiled the United States all the more deeply in two very different confrontations — one with the Islamic State extremists and the other with NATO ally Turkey.
That combination complicates Obama’s prospect for success at Kobani, even with a coalition of more than 60 countries behind him.
The main clash is with the Islamic State, which has been pouring reinforcements into the Kobani area and shows no sign of letting up. The U.S. response, 135 airstrikes through Sunday, hasn’t secured the nearly-empty town, and indeed on Sunday, the Islamic extremists stepped up their battle, raining rockets and mortars on the Kurdish defenders.
Kobani desperately needs troop reinforcements, but because the Islamic State controls the Syrian territory between Iraqi Kurdistan, which might be willing to provide them, and Kobani, there’s almost no way to send in additional forces except via Turkey.
And this is where Obama’s second confrontation comes in–with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The two now are in flat disagreement over the fate of the enclave, which lies directly on the Syrian-Turkish border. Ankara is willing to let it fall, and Washington clearly isn’t.
The rulers of Kobani, the Democratic Union Party or PYD, are affiliated with the separatist Kurdistan Worker’s Party or PKK, which has waged a 30-year guerrilla war against the Turkish state. Turkey, the United States and the European Union all have labeled the PKK as a terrorist organization.
So Erdogan has strong domestic political reasons for not coming to Kobani’s rescue.
“As far as we are concerned the PKK is the equivalent of ISIS. Therefore it is wrong to consider them separately,” Erdogan said early this month, referring to the Islamic State by one of its alternative names. His remarks made clear that so long as the PKK affiliate controls Kobani, Turkey would provide no military assistance.
Ten days ago, Erdogan said it was likely to fall, a statement that enraged Turkey’s Kurdish population and may have given the signal to the Islamic State to go for the kill by sending more fighters and heavy weaponry. U.S.-led airstrikes stepped up dramatically, turning Kobani into the single biggest battle of the U.S.-led war with the Islamic State.
Shortly before the U.S. began its weapons drops from C-130 cargo aircraft, Erdogan said he would have no part of it.
“At the moment, the PYD is equal with the PKK for us. It is also a terrorist organization. It would be very wrong for America — with whom we are allies and who we are together with in NATO–to expect us to say ‘yes’ after openly announcing such support for a terrorist organization,” Erdogan told reporters on board his plane returning from a visit to Afghanistan.
The United States, he said, “cannot expect such a thing from us and we cannot say ‘yes’ to such a thing either.”
Erdogan, a self-confident leader, is unlikely to back down, and now that Obama has doubled his bets by air-dropping weapons to Kobani, seems equally unlikely to retreat.
Erdogan has been a reluctant partner in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, charging that the U.S. has no strategy in Syria for removing President Bashar Assad, whom it views as the major reason for the rise of the Islamic State.
Bordering Iraq and Syria and with a major U.S. air base at Incirlik, Turkey is ideally located to provide military facilities and every other sort of assistance in the battle against the Islamic State.
But on Sunday, Erdogan made it clear that he still is holding out on the use of Incirlik in the air war against the Islamic State — the Obama administration’s foremost request.
“The Incirlik issue is a separate issue,” he told reporters on his plane. “What are they asking for with regard to Incirlik? That’s not clear yet. If there is something we deem appropriate, we would discuss it with our security forces, and we would say ‘yes.’ But if it is not appropriate, then saying ‘yes’ is not possible for us either.”
Erdogan’s defiance of his U.S. ally may have a limit. Obama’s move to save Kobani is bound to be welcomed by Kurds, who comprise at least 12 million of Turkey’s 78 million population.
Erdogan has to be careful not to touch off another round of demonstrations that could turn into riots as they did two weeks ago, when at least 35 people died in protests against his failure to help save Kobani.

AFP Photo/Bulent Kilic

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U.S. Intensifies Airstrikes Near Syrian City Of Kobani, But Is Not Working With Militia

U.S. Intensifies Airstrikes Near Syrian City Of Kobani, But Is Not Working With Militia

By W.J. Hennigan, Tribune Washington Bureau

For a second day, U.S. and Arab allies pounded Islamic State strongholds near Kobani, a Syrian border city on the brink of falling to the militants.
Warplanes belonging to the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates carried out six strikes Tuesday and Wednesday near the besieged town. The attacks were in addition to five strikes that took place the day before.
But U.S. officials cautioned that airstrikes were of limited effectiveness in defending the town.
The Islamic State militants are “not going to go away tomorrow, and Kobani may fall,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said Wednesday on CNN. “We can’t predict whether it will or it won’t. There will be other towns that they will threaten and there will be other towns that they take. It’s going to take a little bit of time.”
Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, has been facing an onslaught from three sides since last month, forcing some 130,000 mostly Kurdish Syrians to flee to neighboring Turkey.
The area has been one of the most active fronts in Syria in recent days. The secular Kurdish militia, known as the Popular Protection Units, are defending the town against militants of the Islamic State, a radical Sunni militia.
Kirby said that although the U.S. military carried out 11 airstrikes in the region over the last two days, it is not in communication with the Kurdish militia in Kobani.
“We don’t have a willing, capable, effective partner on the ground inside Syria,” he said. “It’s just a fact. I can’t change that.”
Despite the lack of communication, the military is confident that airstrikes are hitting Islamic State strongholds in the region, Kirby said.
“We’re very careful and very discriminate about what we hit from the air, and again, we believe we have been effective,” he said. “We know we’re hitting what we’re aiming at.”
Taking Kobani would mark a symbolic victory for the Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS or ISIL, who control a vast swath of land across northern Syria and northern and western Iraq from its declared capital of Raqqa in Syria.
Turkish lawmakers recently authorized the country’s army, one of the region’s strongest, to push into neighboring Syria and Iraq to fight the militants. But the army has not moved in on Kobani, whose Kurdish defenders are allied with Turkey’s longtime nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
Islamic State militants, advancing along several fronts in northern Syria, have reportedly overrun more than two dozen mostly Kurdish villages, prompting terrified Kobani residents to abandon their homes out of fear of ethnic cleansing.
Pro-Kurdish protests broke out Monday throughout Turkey in response to the militants’ advance on Kobani. The events turned deadly Wednesday as four people died in demonstrations, bringing to the total death toll to 18, according to Turkey’s Anatolian News Agency.
“Many people died at these incidents,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus was quoted as saying to press during a visit to Macedonia, referring to the protests. “Those who pushed Turkey into such chaos, what problem do they plan to solve with that method?”
At the United Nations, the world body’s special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, called on the international community to defend Kobani.
“The world, all of us, will regret deeply if ISIS is able to take over a city which has defended itself with courage but is close to not being able to do so,” de Mistura said in a statement. “We need to act now.”
The U.S. began bombing Islamic State targets near the city on Sept. 27, but carried out only eight airstrikes before this week.
The six strikes near Kobani that took place Tuesday and Wednesday destroyed four Islamic State armed vehicles, two artillery pieces and an armored personnel carrier, according to U.S. Central Command. There were three other strikes against the militants elsewhere in Syria.
Separately, officials said that American, British and Dutch forces used fighter jets and armed drones to conduct five airstrikes against the Islamic State in neighboring Iraq, where the U.S.-led campaign against the militants began on Aug. 8.

AFP Photo/Aris Messinis

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