Posted on 10/11/2014 11:51:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Western airstrikes and Kurdish resistance appear to have slowed the Islamic State’s takeover of Kobani, a Syrian town on the border with Turkey, for now. But the situation in the area, where Syrian Kurdish rebels have been steadily losing ground to the jihadists, demonstrates the inadequacy and incoherence of President Obama’s strategy.
The Obama administration has said that losing Kobani isn’t a big setback for the fight against the Islamic State. But if our goal is to degrade and destroy the group, it is.
The president has prioritized driving the jihadists out of Iraq, but this is senseless when the border between it and Syria has essentially ceased to exist. Regardless, even our air campaign in Iraq is too limited and poorly focused to have strategic significance.
The only real success of the campaign so far has been diplomatic: getting Arab states to join NATO in bombing missions. Unfortunately, this isn’t all that helpful on the ground, because when it comes to actual American priorities, our allies are often either ineffective or incorrigible.
This problem is clear in Kobani, where our two potential allies, the Syrian Kurdish rebels and the Turkish government, despise each other. The president has tried to lean on the much less malleable faction, the Turks, as part of his strategy to enlist local state allies. But for a number of reasons, the Turks aren’t interested, and the Kurds don’t really want their help anyway.
So we ourselves should be helping, to the extent possible, the Syrian Kurds. They represent the most effective non-Islamist fighting force in the country, and yet we have been reluctant to back them. Why? They have not joined the peace process between the rebels and the Assad regime in Geneva, because the rebel leadership is not open to the idea of a federal Syria, as the Kurds want. The rebels are likely wrong about that, and the Geneva process is at the moment essentially a hopeless endeavor among expats anyway. There are also concerns that the Kurds have not been determined enough in fighting the regime, but that’s no longer (if it ever was) our priority.
They have been fighting al-Qaeda and the Islamic State the best they can, and they deserve, to the extent possible, our help in doing it. That means getting small arms and supplies to Kobani and to Kurdish fighters elsewhere, however we can do it. (It will require securing some cooperation from the Kurdish regional government in Iraq, over which we could have plenty of leverage if the Obama administration were willing to use it.)
Even the airstrikes in the area have been at best half-hearted: Thursday, there were six strikes. Some days this week, there were just three or four. We could be launching dozens of such strikes a day. Of course, it is difficult to run a full air campaign without intelligence assets on the ground, which is why the Obama administration should not be ruling out a limited ground component.
Backing the Kurds, who have ties to insurgent groups in Turkey that only recently reached a ceasefire with the government, will upset Ataturk’s heirs. But right now, our NATO ally is not acting like an ally at all. President Obama ought to realize that and act accordingly. Stopping the Islamic State will require a more frank assessment of the abilities and motivations of our regional allies, and, above all, more American effort.
Kurdish forces, who are being helped by US-led coalition strikes against IS, say they urgently need more weapons and ammunition to push back the militants' advance in the town.
The US Central Command (Centcom) said that US fighter jets alongside UAE and Saudi Arabian military aircraft carried out fresh airstrikes on Thursday and Friday around the southeast of Kobane and in Deir al-Zour, in eastern Syria, destroying several IS vehicles and training facilities.
Kurdish sources inside Kobane told the BBC that four air strikes hit the western side of the town in one half-hour period.
'No Srebrenica'
Except for one narrow entry and exit point, Mr de Mistura said Kobane was "literally surrounded" by IS, with hundreds of mainly elderly civilians still inside the city centre and another 10-13,000 gathered nearby, AFP reports.
He said the civilians would "most likely be massacred'' if the town fell to IS, warning that the UN did not want to see another Srebrenica - where thousands of Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995 during the Bosnian conflict.
Why?
Why not?
It’s not time to start helping Syria’s Kurds, it’s time to stop calling them Syria’s Kurds. It’s also time for free and independent Kurdistan. Want to help the Kurds? Push for that.
Reason #1: Turkey doesn’t want Kurdish independence. One might argue that Turkey is behind ISIS, but the fact is, over the past three or four years, Turkey wasn’t able to recruit, equip, and advise ex-military men from Syria on how to overthrow Assad, so it’s obviously much more likely that Iran is behind ISIS.
Reason #2: Kurdistan will be carved out of Turkey (see Reason #1), the failed states of Iraq and Syria, and out of the enemy state Iran.
Reason #3: They’d make a much better ally for the US, and clearly are much better at fighting ISIS — the Iraqi army just shit its pants and turned its soiled tail and ran. They’d be much more reliable and much less Islamic than errant NATO member Turkey.
Reason #4: the Kurds have glimmerings of intelligence when it comes to relations with Israel.
Reason #5: the Kurdish area of Iraq has loads of oil, and a Kurdish member of OPEC (or better yet, non-member) would benefit the world’s oil consumers.
Reason #6: Kurdistan is almost uniquely well-watered in a mostly arid region.
Reason #7: landlocked, Kurdistan would be reliant on the US and happy to be so; it would be a nice buffer state between a number of other states which don’t get along so well.
Reason #8: Armenia has a Kurdish minority, and the Kurds recognize Turkey’s genocide perpetrated on the Armenians (at the same time, Turkey ethnically cleansed the Pontic Greeks, and to some extent the Assyrians).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia%E2%80%93Kurdistan_relations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_recognition_of_the_Armenian_genocide
waaaay past time
Definitely.
“..they urgently need more weapons and ammunition to push back the militants’ advance in the town. ..”
We need to to call our reps and U.S. senators to tell them to give the Kurds WHATEVER WEAPONS AND AMMUNITION THEY ASK FOR. It’s the least we can do for these brave Kurdish fighters.
Obama apparently wants them to lose, but the other politicians just might listen this close to the election.
Why don’t we just fly C5s over the ocean and toss about a trillion dollars in cash into the water.
It would be as effective as our Middle East policy.
Iran is behind ISIS?
You are probably correct. I think it’s genius how ISIS is hiding their Shiite roots. The way they act like Sunnis, killing Shiites and Christians would have you almost believe they WERE Sunni.
Absolute genius.
Big Bump!
Hitler was a super secret soviet agent.
No, but you regurgitate that same mean old Sunnis kill innocent Shia BS in a lot of threads.
Iran supports jihad, and is the number one supporter of jihad, and doesn’t care what sect is what. Muzzies kill muzzies, or anyone else they feel like, and don’t check. Nothing new about that.
Qatar is an ally of Iran, not Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis support ISIS so much, they’re actually flying sorties against ISIS and have been for some time, while Iran has sat back and done nothing. Weird coincidence.
Do you read the news? Are they not killing thousands of Shiite milita? Are they not destroying Shia holy sites?
I don’t thin you understand how much these two factions hate each other.
And the Saudis are flying one or two jets. Clearly a huge commitment.
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