Courtesy of Mish.
Those looking for proof that massive US bombing missions in Syria cannot stop ISIS now have it. Highlighting the complete failure of US containment policy, Isis Set to Take Syrian Town of Kobani.
Warplanes dropped huge payloads on their positions and determined, battle-hardened Kurdish fighters fiercely stood their ground. But the fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) still managed to win territory and hoist their signature black flag atop buildings and hills in the battle for the town of Kobani.
The city, which once had a population of 200,000 and was surrounded by villages inhabited by perhaps the same number, was all but deserted by Tuesday morning, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“There’s no co-ordination between the US and the Kurdish forces on the ground. The US air strikes are not helping that much,” he [Wladimir Van Wilgenburg, an analyst at the Jamestown Foundation think-tank, based in Iraqi Kurdistan] said.
Political disputes that plague the anti-Isis coalition have hampered the war effort in Kobani. The US listing of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as a terrorist organisation has complicated communications between forces. Syrian Kurds affiliated with the PKK have pleaded with Turkey to allow them to move their military vehicles from their Rojava enclave through southern Turkey to Kobani but have been rebuffed.
“For us, the PKK is the same as Isil (Isis). It is wrong to consider them as different from each other,” Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week.
Kurds Fighting ISIS Same as ISIS
Supposedly, Kurds fighting ISIS are the same as ISIS. Meanwhile the US trains moderates that are ISIS or will hand their weapons over to ISIS.
Moreover, instead of bombing ISIS tanks or ISIS-held refineries the US Bombed the Wrong Syrian Refineries, owned by civilians.
US Strategy in Ruins
The Independent reports Isis on Verge of Victory in Kobani as US Strategy Lies in Ruins.
Kurdish militiamen are battling to stop Isis capturing Kobani, but a Kurdish spokesman in the city was quoted as saying that the town “will certainly fall soon”. Fighting has reached the eastern outskirts of Kobani where Isis fighters raised their black flag over one building at the entrance to the town.
The battle for Kobani has united Kurds across the region who see it as their version of the battle of Thermopylae, with their heroic soldiers fighting to the end against Isis forces superior in numbers and armed with heavier weapons….
