KOBANI
David Cameron’s vow that Britain and its allies would not allow Islamic State (IS) to form a caliphate on Europe’s doorstep is difficult for the besieged people of Kobani to accept.
Huge plumes of black smoke have billowed over the pivotal border town as jihadi fanatics – some of whom claim to be British – have launched a terrifying onslaught.
Kobani, which lies just inside Syria on the border with NATO member Turkey, has been described as the town the world “cannot afford to lose” to the terrorists.
If they succeed in taking it, IS will control an unbroken 125-mile stretch of frontier with our Turkish allies.
Kobani is barely more than 200 yards from Turkey, which wants to join the EU, and for the past two weeks it has been possible for observers to stand on a Turkish hillside and watch as the jihadis under their black-flag tighten their stranglehold on the Syrian town. A massacre beckons, and nobody seems capable of stopping it.
Inside Kobani, populated by Syrian Kurds, fires rage as artillery shells rein down and thump in to densely-packed neighbourhoods.
On Sunday, at least 25 mortar rounds rained down on a hopelessly outnumbered army of resistance, a Dad’s Army style force that has come to be symbolised by a band of gun-toting grandmothers intent on protecting what they have.
A picture of the women, brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles, was retweeted around the world by those anxious to raise awareness of the plight of the people of Kobani.
Outgunned, they respond only with occasional rocket-propelled grenades and bursts of rifle fire. They have also converted tractors and other farm equipment into armoured vehicles fitted with ageing Soviet-era guns.
Stopping towns like this falling was the reason the US launched a campaign of airstrikes – backed by the RAF in Iraq.
Yet, they have failed to stem IS’s brutal advance and a bloodbath seems horribly likely.
Seven men and three women from Kobani have already been beheaded by the jihadis, with the women’s heads placed on a macabre display in Jarabulus, a nearby IS stronghold. A gruesome and graphic photograph uploaded to Twitter purported to show a grinning IS fighter clutching the decapitated head of a girl. And there are sickening reports of women and girls being raped.
Over the weekend, too, a British jihadi taunted the people of Kobani by posting another image showing his terror gang was within sight of their homes.
The siege has forced some 160,000 people to flee across the frontier. Some sit weeping on hilltops on the Turkey side of the border, watching helplessly while their homes go up in smoke.
Fleeing families have told of unspeakable horrors. One young father, Mostafa Kader, who fled almost two weeks ago, revealed how the body of his sister-in-law and eight-year-old niece were found in a pool of blood. Mr Kader said that they had been raped and that their hearts had been cut out. He buried them with his own hands.
Islamic State is using captured US-made tanks and other military hardware which had been left in the hands of the Iraqi army, whole regiments of which have simply fled from IS.
The RAF cannot intervene because it has no mandate to bomb in Syria, despite British Tornados flying right overhead to conduct bombing raids in neighbouring Iraq. American warplanes have been bombing around Kobani, and 16 IS militants have been declared dead from airstrikes and ground attacks since Monday. But there are tens of thousands of IS fighters. These terrorist fatalities will hardly be enough.
The Turks have promised to ‘do whatever we can’ – a stray mortar even landed a mile inside Turkey wounding five people in a house near the town of Suruc. Convoys of lorries carrying Turkish tanks have been driven south to the border.
On social media, tech-savvy IS has been crowing that no one can stop it fulfilling its dream of carving out a medieval caliphate, in which anyone not adhering to its arbitrary strictures is beheaded or crucified, or has limbs chopped off.
It has been reported that some British jihadists have found it too much. Up to 100 are believed to have defected and are stranded in Turkey because they fear imprisonment if they return to the UK. Yet an estimated dozen or so would-be holy warriors from Britain are still joining the warped cause every month.
Mr Cameron warned last month of the ‘poisonous’ threat of jihadis returning to the UK, and said the world had to deal with IS.
He said: ‘If it succeeds, we would be facing a terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member.’
But the ease with which British and other fanatics slip between Turkey and Syria, under the noses of border guards, makes a mockery of claims Turkey is cracking down on its label as a ‘gateway to jihad’.
People living in the frontier town of Akcakale say they never see the recruits – they cross at night and are smuggled illegally under a fence – but they do see their bags, which the smugglers transport separately. Every two or three days, some 50 or 60 Western rucksacks come through the official border crossing, and their luggage tags are easily identifiable – British Airways, Air France, Turkish Airlines.
What appears to be happening is that the smugglers arrange for their rucksacks to follow them. A Turkish porter might be used to carry them through the Turkish border gate and leave them in ‘no-mans-land’. A Syrian porter then comes from the other side and picks them up. It means the jihadists are reunited with all their belongings.
There are dozens of border towns strung along the 560-mile frontier where potential recruits can simply melt away until it is time to cross into Syria.
In the next few days, if Kobani does fall, Downing Street and the White House will face plenty of questions about whether their strategy to deal with Islamic State is working.
For the people of Kobani, it seems certain it will be too late.
Map of affected region:
Terrorist group Islamic State (IS) have launched attacks against the strategic Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria, forcing thousands of civilians to flee north to Turkey.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for a ground offensive to prevent the Syrian border town of Kobani falling under the control of the Islamic State. Such a call implicitly highlights the limitations of the West’s reliance on air power alone to defeat a determined and resilient foe. While US warplanes have carried out several air attacks against IS positions in and around Kobani, IS fighters have nevertheless succeeded in flying their menacing black and white banner from the rooftops of captured buildings. IS’s continuing advance against Kurdish-held positions in Kobani has prompted Turkey to deploy large numbers of tanks to protect its side of the border.
But while Mr Erdogan, like General Lord Richards, a former head of the British Army, is right to argue that air strikes alone are unlikely to defeat IS, the use of ground forces – or ‘boots on the ground’ – remains contentious and deeply problematic. For example, any attempt by Turkey to move its forces into Syrian territory in support of those defending Kobani, would likely be firmly resisted by Damascus. Such a situation developing might even lead to a further escalation in hostilities. The prospect of Western troops being deployed against IS, on the other hand, remains only a remote possibility, as politicians on both sides of the Atlantic remain determined to avoid the use of their ground forces at all costs. The high cost of human sacrifice and enormous sums expended in two recent costly wars will be high on the minds of our politicians. That leaves, then, the poorly equipped Kurdish fighters and their allies to defend the town against the formidable might of IS forces.
Mr Erdogan’s attempts to persuade the West to adopt a more realistic approach to the conflict might carry more weight if Ankara was able to provide more clarity about its own objectives. Turkey’s long-standing refusal to tolerate Kurdish independence has led some to suspect that Ankara has turned a blind eye to IS fighters regularly crossing its open and porous border. Turkey’s recent hostage swap with IS, for instance, in which Ankara reportedly freed a number of IS fighters in return for the release of Turkish diplomats taken hostage during the summer, suggests Turkey’s approach is very different to that of its NATO allies, who refuse to negotiate with terrorists.
Rather than cutting deals with IS, Mr Erdogan would be better to concentrate his efforts on helping the beleaguered Kurds. The Kurds are in desperate need of arms and reinforcements, but these are being denied because Turkey refuses to open its border.
But in supporting the Kurds, the West also needs to raise its game in terms of supporting the Kurds’ ground effort. To date, all Britain has offered the Kurds is a paltry sum of £1.6 million in military aid – miniscule when compared to the vast resources at IS’s disposal. If the West really does want the Kurds to defeat IS, we must give them the proper means to do so.
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