Kurds seize military base in Syria once held by Islamic State group, nearing its stronghold

[TexasTowelie]

Source: AP

BEIRUT (AP) — Kurdish fighters and their allies have captured a Syrian military base once held by the Islamic State group, activists and officials said Tuesday, moving within some 50 kilometers (30 miles) of the extremists' de facto capital.

Taking the Brigade 93 base further squeezes the extremists, especially after they lost a major supply line when the Kurds captured the town of Tal Abyad on the Turkish border last week.

However, even with the aid of U.S.-led airstrikes, battling even closer to the Islamic State's stronghold of Raqqa could prove costly for the Kurds and allied rebel factions.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Kurdish activist Mustafa Bali said Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units, or YPG, captured the base Monday night. Both said YPG fighters and their allies later entered parts of the nearby town of Ein Issa, the last major residential area north of Raqqa, which the Islamic State group considers the capital of its self-declared "caliphate" across Syria and Iraq.

Read more: http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/06/23/kurds-capture-is-base-north-of-syrias-raqqa

[romanic]

1. Go Kurds go!

I hope they stomp every ISIS asshole into the ground.

[TexasProgresive]

2. I don't know if the Kurds

will be the "good"guys but they are certainly proving their worth on the battlefield. Maybe when all this shakes out there will be a new nation, Kurdistan; the uniting of the Kurdish lands in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

[DetlefK]

3. Kurdistan will be the next war.

I don't think, Iraq will give up the oil-fields of Kurdistan. That's how the whole iraqi civil-war started: The Shiites have the oil-rich South, the Kurds have the oil-rich North and the Sunnis have the worthless center of Iraq.

Turkey will be against the formation of a Kurdistan, afraid it could lose parts in the east with large kurdish minorities. (On the other hand, the Kurds might simply emigrate from Turkey to a new home, like the Donau-Germans who emigrated from Romania to Germany after the Cold War.)

Iran is critical. On the one hand, Kurdistan could be a brand-new ally for Iran. On the other hand, Iran is also ally with an Iraq that doesn't want to see Kurdistan formed.

[SteveG]

5. Unlikely that Kurdistan would ally with Iran

The Kurds are Sunni, not inclined to religious extremism, and generally favor a more secular state aligned with the West.

[Comrade Grumpy]

7. They have a common foe: Sunni Arab Islamic radicalism.

In fact, the Kurds and Iran are right now in an effective alliance against ISIS.

They have other differences, though.

[LanternWaste]

8. There's been a decades long Kurdish separatist movement in western Iran.

There's been a decades long Kurdish separatist movement in western Iran. The government of Iran has never employed the same level of brutality against its Kurds as did Turkey or Iraq, but it has always been implacably opposed to any suggestion of Kurdish separatism. And as long as they are under Iranian control, the Iraqi Kurds will fight against any alliance with Tehran.

[davepc]

4. Turkey will never allow that to happen.

There's a reason why they're looking the other way to arms going to ISIS.

[Marrah_G]

6. Fantastic

The Kurds know they are literally fighting for their lives and the lives of their children.