Isis in Kobani: Turkey ignores Kurdish fury as militants close in on capturing the town

[Jefferson23]

10/9/2014

If Kobani falls to the fighters of Isis there will be a surge of violence across Turkey. The 15 million Turkish Kurds will blame the Turkish government for enabling Isis to capture the Kurdish enclave by denying its defenders reinforcements, weapons and ammunition.

The faltering peace process between the Turkish Kurd militants and Ankara may finally collapse. A Kurdish politician was quoted as saying that “you can’t expect to break the backs of the Kurds in Syria and win their hearts in Turkey”.

All this week there have been protests and riots in every Turkish city where there are a significant number of Kurds. Twenty-two people have been killed in the fiercest street clashes that Turkey has seen for years.

Smoke rises from bonfires in the streets with the police generally relying on pepper spray and water cannon while angry Kurds hurl stones and Molotov cocktails.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-in-kobani-turkey-ignores-kurdish-fury-as-militants-close-in-on-capturing-the-town-9785903.html

[samsingh]

1. i'm very worried for the Kurds in Kobani

[CJCRANE]

2. This whole Syria debacle

highlights the question: what do we really stand for?

The Assad regime is no threat to us, and yet we and our allies supported religious fundies to topple him.

Now they have gone berzerk we've decided we need to train more islamists to fight them.

Where does it end?



.

[Jefferson23]

3. I wish I knew. n/t

[Curtis]

5. It ends with the American empire in ruin

With all the money we've spent on killing brown people, we could build alternative forms of energy like solar roadways that have inductive charging for electric vehicles, which would give unlimited range to these vehicles. But no. We have to kill people in order to make the right people richer. I'm seriously beginning to wonder if we even deserve to be a nation any longer.

[geek tragedy]

6. The Turks are trying to pressure us into doing more to overthrow Assad.

They're using the Kurds in Syria as a hostage.

Not much daylight between Erdrogan and ISIL at the end of the day.

[GitRDun]

4. This is why we do NOT need to be there

We manufacture more terrorists with every bomb dropped over there, and to what end.

The people that LIVE THERE in that region let ISIS move ahead unchecked.

[Skeowes28]

7. We should help

We should do enough to make sure they don't lose

[Jefferson23]

8. Updated for Sunday, 10/12. War against Isis: US strategy in tatters as militants march on

America's plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group's fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad.

The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama's plan to "degrade and destroy" Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting.

Isis reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish town's remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to the string of victories it has won in the four months since its forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June. Part of the strength of the fundamentalist movement is a sense that there is something inevitable and divinely inspired about its victories, whether it is against superior numbers in Mosul or US airpower at Kobani.

In the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in the town, probably Isis's toughest opponents in Syria. "Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself," said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. "The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight effectively."

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/war-against-isis-us-strategy-in-tatters-as-militants-march-on-9789230.html