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Kobane completely encircled by Islamic State
You know, I almost didn't want to post this because of the rabid triumphalism regarding the "imminent" demise of the Islamic State at the hands of Shia militias, Kurds, and the new coalition of the willing, but it would be criminal not to report on this, so here it goes.
Back in July, the Islamic State launched an offensive directed at the Kurdish canton of Kobane in north-central Syria. This offensive made limited gains before the front stabilized, and one can easily see why. In August, the Islamic State made moves to liquidate the 3 isolated Syrian Army bases in the Area - Division 17 in Raqqa, Brigade 93 in Ayn Issa, and Tabqa airbase south of Raqqa. These bases were partially evacuated before being overrun.
With those 3 positions no longer blocking the Caliphate and diverting their attention, ISIS has been able to bring the full array of their forces to bear on Kobane.
Within 5 days, they have managed to seize all the villages surrounding Kobane and are now imposing a total siege.
West Kurdistan @WestKurdistan Kobani: 5 days ago and now.
Thousands of refugees are stopped at the border, waiting to get into Turkey
Really, the ball is just in Turkey's court now, and these next few days will be pivotal, though the cynic in me thinks that Erdogan won't be as eager to help the PYD as he did the Barzanites in Iraq, since the PYD is close to the PKK.
It takes a fool to take these guys seriously, but even more of a fool not to be serious with them.
Some 60,000 Kurdish refugees came into Turkey today, but I wouldn't say "safely."
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/600...&NewsCatID=352
There are reports coming in that ISIS executed 300 YPG/PKK captives in the Turkish town of Akcakale. This is according to statements by Turkish MP Muhammed Çetin
https://twitter.com/Mv_MCetin/status/513389539923361792
http://gundem.bugun.com.tr/isid-kurs...haberi/1265781
If confirmed, this will be the first open acknowledgement of ISIS conducting operations on Turkish soil.
I am surprised to see Turkey allowing the refugees to cross so easily. why have they changed their approach here? public relations?
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
The twitter rumor mill today says that parts of the border are being locked down again, citing security concerns. The mass execution near Akcakale has them spooked about possible infiltrators.
Updated map:
See that patch of green on the other bank of the Euphrates? Those are the "moderate" rebels who've been promising to send help for the past week. Turns out they've been chilling at their start positions, not even bothering to cross the river.
Confirmed multiple sources attest to the arrival of 350 PKK in Kobane since yesterday. Initial reports claimed 3000, but the number was revised down drastically overnight. According to some, these represent the most experienced units that the PKK has, though they are now badly stretched on both Iraqi and Kurdish fronts.
This is terrible. It's as if a time portal has opened and 14th century hordes are entering the 21st century with all their reactionary practices.
Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.
---- Mark Twain
Oh shit, I thought this was bout Kurt Kobane. Dodged a bullet on that one.(unintended pun)
Brospierre-Albanian baseball was played with a frozen ball of shit and tree branch
"History knows no greater display of courage than that shown by the people of the Soviet Union."
Henry L. Stimson: U.S. Secretary of War
Take the word “fear” and the phrase “for what, it’s not going to change anything” out of your minds and take control of your future.
[I]Juan Jose Fernandez, Asturias
"I want to give a really bad party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there's a brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the cabinet de toilette. You wait and see"
That's not what it says at all. Do you read turkish or are you just making it up?
Devrim
There are 843,779 Syrian refugees already in Turkey. That is the official number for this month. I'd imagine that there are actually more. You see them begging in the street everywhere these days. It's not as if Turkey has only just let refugees in.
Devrim
Could be a few things. They genuinely don't want people to be fucked over. They fear that treating the Kurds in Iraq/Syria poorly will make the Kurds in Turkey flip out and riot. They fear that treating the Kurds in Iraq/Syria poorly will endanger Turkish business interests. They don't want to be seen as evil for letting people like ISIS massacre refugees. They want the good reputation that comes from allowing large amounts of people to take refuge in their country. Some of the above, all of the above, most of the above and more, could be anything.
Yeah, but I thought I'd read that Turkey was going to try and limit that amount of new refugees coming in and potential close the border? Was this not the case?
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
That's been reported to have happened in Kurdish villages in Syria, not in Turkey. It's been reported only by one media group and hasn't been verified yet. It might be true but if it is I think it will be verified by the PKK. They may have hesitated because it might bring demoralization to their front but if it is true, it's too big to hide and will likely mobilze many young Kurds in Turkey who are already attempting to cross the border to join the PYD militia.
In any case, they've claimed that so far 53 ISIS members and 27 PYD members were killed in the Kobane offensive.
I assure you, that's not and has never been the case with the Turkish or any other state.
The first sentence is true for Syria and the second for Iraq. The PKK has already declared that it will break the peace process if Kobane falls.
I think it's a bit too late for that. Their alleged sponsorship of the ISIS has been on the Western media, and they've openly admitted that they've negotiated and traded with the ISIS for the Turkish refugees in the Mosul consulate.
After scandals about some of the refuges they've been allowing turning out to be ISIS members going to training camps in Turkey, I think it's a bit too late for that as well.
"Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." - Karl Marx
Pale Blue Jadal
Turkey really didn't do anything in Iraq short of its continued oil operations and sales, which in of themselves are meant to service loans the KRG took out when the national government froze the budget meant for the region back in January.
Government authorities there say that the first country they turned to was Turkey during their August defeats and Turkey did not respond with any sort of military aid or assistance (officially, because of the hostage issue in Mosul but we know there were other issues). Iran was actually the country that responded first if the statements of the government officials are to be believed. Turkey hasn't really done much in the way of weapons and military aid to Iraqi Kurdistan in spite of their influence and significant investments there, and that has been a source of consternation among the political groups there who have close ties to Turkey. There does not even seem to be any indication of clandestine assistance in the same way Turkey has done for Syrian opposition elements.
Turkish relations to PYD due PKK is always going to be frayed regardless of who is in power there. No political figure in Turkey is going to be caught dead being accused of supporting the PKK, especially those in the higher echelons. The attempts at peace with the group by the government were subject to a large amount of scrutiny and criticism.
The crux of the matter is that Turkey is pursuing a strategy in Syria that calls for the end of the Syrian government, and regardless of the extent of its relationship with IS, the Turkish government is not going to endanger its strategy there by weakning the IS to such an extent that Assad benefits (seeing they are among the major anti-government forces there), and that holds for its position on the conflict in Iraq too.
A bit of background I wasn't aware of until now: Back only a week ago, Western policy wonks were touting this new Euphrates Volcano command as the latest thing for a so-called "moderate" opposition. This ISIS offensive actually came days after this new command announced its own ambitious plan to reconquer Raqqa.
The offensive was announced on September 10. The ISIS counteroffensive offensive began on September 15.
http://iswsyria.blogspot.fr/2014/09/...e-isis-in.html
+ YouTube Video
After all that hullabaloo over the new YPG+(moderate)Islamist joint operations room in Raqqa, guess who's the first non-Kurdish force to respond?
Syrian Air Force hitting targets south of Kobane.
+ YouTube Video
Also reports indicating air strikes to the West
FSACrimes @FSACrimes2 8m Syrian Air Force destroy the Kara Qozak Bridge which link #Manbij to #Kobane. Cutting off #ISIS supply & reinforcement line to Kobane front.
Pro-ISIS source 1h ago:
@YazeedMu3awiyaa 1h @green_lemonnn Assad wage an aisrtike in Qarah Qawzaq bridge, Sarrin and some area under IS today.
Sarrin is another river crossing/town to the south of Kobane.
Bizarre line coming out of the official KRG mouthpiece, Rudaw. Claims that Peshmerga need official "permission" to join Kobane defense. I don't think the PKK or Iranian PJAK fighters filed their paperwork with KRG authorities before arriving in Iraq.
http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/200920142
They did not need permission because they were already there. Ignoring the fact that their major base, Qandil, is in northern Iraq, Makhmour hosts a major refugee camp for Kurdish refugees from Turkey and is an outpost of sorts for them. They were already there and didn't need permission from anyone to do what they needed to do once fighting started occurring in Makhmour in August- it's a different case here when they have no presence in Syria and will need cooperation from the major political authority there.
Even though the fighters tried to pass themselves off as self-sufficient once they engaged in fighting they were joined up into the logistic trains. If that is not present in Syria then all is going to happen is sending a bunch of bodies with little ammo, and the Iraqi Kurds already learned the hard way what happens when you do that.
There's an additional problem here too. In August the PKK were able to get to the lines but did not have to cross through enemy territory to do so- going from Qandil you cross through the heart of KRG-held land (which they do regularly going between Qandil and Makhmour), and those in Makhmour didn't have to go anywhere. Peshmerga would have to do one of three things
A. Go through Turkey
B. Planes
C. Go through Qamishli
A is probably never going to happen, B is a pipe dream, so that leaves C. Of course, there is a stretch of IS held territory between Qamishli and Kobane Cantons, and Peshmerga would need support and coordination with YPG to ensure a supply route, since it is a territory they are obviously unfamiliar with and are unlikely to get any support from local populace especially areas without Kurds. This is if they ever resolve their political differences which is a different fight altogether.
You're ignoring the very obvious option of an attack from Serekani (the westernmost city of Qamishli canton), diverting ISIS attention on the Tel Abyad front. I don't understand why this is so puzzling - you can take pressure off of Kobane by attacking the forces besieging it.
Which would still require one to traverse virtually the whole of the Qamishli region going west. You would still have a mess maintaining supply lines, the Rabia border crossing by road was built as part of a highway system that involved going through Mosul. Without Mosul it requires one to either go south past the dam and through Zumar, which is still unstable, or cross north, which have older roads that aren't conductive to moving large amounts of men and materiel. When the refugees who had left Shingal crossed into Syria under escort of PYD and PKK, those that wanted to return back to Iraq did not do so through Rabia but a crossing further northeast along the border because they did not feel confident they could move a stream of people back and forth there. That border crossing northeast of Rabia is over a river and used to be done completely by small boats until a small makeshift bridge was laid over it.
The result is still the same- if one wants to engage in that you would need the cooperation from who ever is controlling that territory. Otherwise it just comes off as an invasion and it will be difficult to move supplies- supplying the several thousand peshmerga that would be there is a different feat from several hundred fighters. PYD would be able to paint the peshmerga doing a land grab when they were the most vulnerable.
The last time the KRG authorities, or at least Barzani, said they'd send peshmerga into the area it led to the PYD saying that they'd rather not have men, but supplies that were being withheld due to Turkish pressure. And they acquiesced on keeping troops out but continued to keep the supplies out.
If these peshmerga just run over the border and do their thing, PYD can turn around when this is over and blame them for trying to impose their agenda on the region. That's not something they could do with a straight face if they were given permission to come in.
Really the issue is that both of these factions are too pigheaded to do anything without wanting to be the one who is running the show. They don't want to be partners, much less be in a position where they appear subservient or dependent on the other.
The SAA-YPG alliance in Al-Hasakah province is advancing on Dawla villages in western Hasakah from the direction of Ras al-Ayn. Dawla feels threatened enough to redeploy from Tall Abyad in that direction, possibly halting their advance towards Ain al-Arab/Kobane, at least from that one direction, and perhaps from the Jarablus and Serrin directions as well. IS have never shied from retreating to regroup even if it means losing face, because they know they'll be back in the future anyway.
Anyways Obama launched 14 airstrikes(and some Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched) on Dawla positions in Raqqah(which were abandoned a couple of weeks ago because Obama basically announced the bombing beforehand), al-Hasakah, Deir Ezzor, and Abu Kamal, and 8 on Nusra positions in Idlib, which were hit by Syrian ballistic missiles at the same time. Large amounts of civilians were killed in Raqqah(and almost nobody else - this is why you don't give the people you want to bomb 2 weeks notice so they can hide all their assets and abandon their public HQs) and at least 10 civilians including 6 children in Idlib. Nusra jackasses unlike the Islamic State were caught unaware and already have suffered over 50 casualties, including foreign fighters from the UK and the Netherlands.
