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ISIS Threatens Kobane on Turkish Border
by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700
Copyright
October 3, 2014
All Rights Reserved.
Showing
limitations to President Barack Obama’s bombing campaign against ISIS militants
in Iraq and Syria, the heavily armed Islamic terror group breached the strategic
Turkish border town. Voting to
approve military action against ISIS Oct. 2, the Turkish parliament gave the
green light for Turkey’s military to enter the fight. Threatening the desecrate the
800-year tomb of Suleyman Shah just inside the Syrian border, Turkey decided to
join the fight against ISIS.
Suleyman is considered the grandfather of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman
Empire. With thousands of Syrian
and Kurdish refugees streaming into Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees
ISIS as destabilizing Turkey’s national security. Bashar al-Assad’s Syria reacted
harshly to Ankara’s decision to enter the fight against ISIS inside Syria,
despite the help it gives the Damascus regime.
Obama expanded the Aug. 8 bombing campaign against ISIS, getting British
Prime Minister David Cameron, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Canadian
Prime Minister Stephen Harper to join the fight. Broadening the air campaign won’t stop ISIS from marching on Kobane or other border towns
now controlled by 44-year-old Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria. Started by notorious
Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi who fiercely battled U.S. forces in
Iraq during the massacres of U.S. marines and contractors in the battles of
Fallujah. While killed by a
500-pound U.S. smart bomb June 7, 2006, al-Baghdadi took al-Zarqawi’s violence
to a new level. Deciding to join
the fight against ISIS, it’s questionable whether Turkey will commit ground
forces to the battle. So far, U.S. and coalition forces have engaged only in air strikes.
Badly outgunned Kurdish forces defending Kobane and other Kurdish towns
in Northern Iraq and Syria desperately need U.S. and foreign ground forces. Hitting ISIS positions and equipment
from the air hasn’t stopped the terror group from seizing more territory in Iraq
and Syria. Beheading 47-year-old
British aid worker Alan Henning today, ISIS ignored coalition air strikes. Kurdish fighters face a massacre in
Kobane defending the Turkish border town against a more forceful ISIS assault. Promising to help stop ISIS assault
on Kobane, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davatoglu insisted help was on the way. Whether or not it’s too little, too
late is anyone’s guess. “We
wouldn’t want Kobane to fall. We’ll
to whatever we can to prevent this from happening,” Davatoglu told Turkish
journalists. U.S. and coalition air
strikes haven’t done enough to stop ISIS.
With a long history of hostility with the Kurds, Turkey has a vested
interest in prevent ISIS from driving more Syrian and Iraqi refugees into
Turkey. Turkey has more assets in
place to help defend Kobane assuming they can react quickly enough before ISIS
overruns the strategic border town.
“No other country has the capacity to affect the developments in Syria and Iraq. No other country will be affected
like us either,” said Davatoglu. No
matter how much the White House complains about the incompetence of Iraq’s
military, U.S. and foreign ground troops are needed to stop ISIS’s eventual push
toward Baghdad. Turkey understands
firsthand the necessity of ground troops to stop ISIS from massacring more
Kurds. Whatever problems Turkey had
with the Kurds in the past, joining forces against ISIS is the only way out to
save another potential Kurdish massacre.
U.S. officials have heard from multiple sources that the air war against
ISIS isn’t stopping the assault on the Kurds.
It’s too late for the White House to supply enough weapons to an already
beaten down military force. Kurdish
Peshmerga fighters need all the help they can get from the U.S. and other
coalition forces. “We are
desperately watching what the murder IS is doing,” said 48-year-old Turkish Kurd
Cafer Steven coming to the Mursipinara border crossing from the Turkish city of
Van. Watching Kurds wiped out by
ISIS’s superior armed forces shows how badly needed U.S. and coalition ground
troops. “We are in deep
sorrow . . .Our brethren are under difficult conditions. This is brutality,” said Steven
watching the heavy smoke from ISIS mortar fire engulf Kobane. With the U.S. unable to respond
quickly enough, only Turkey has the resources to battle ISIS.
U.S. and coalition officials need to urgently revise their
air-strike-only campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. White House officials need to stop
blaming the incompetence of Iraq’s military and recognize the need for ground
force regardless of the costs. If
ISIS is really a threat to U.S. national security—as Obama insists—then all
measures must be considered to deal with the threat. Watching the outgunned and
beleaguered Kurds get massacred while they try to defend their territory doesn’t
help the U.S. global military image.
“There is a massacre be committed before the eyes of the world. The world remains silent when there
are Kurds are being massacred,” said 54-year-old Burhan Atmac who came to Kobane
to help the Kurd’s Peshmerga fighters.
If the current air campaign isn’t enough, Obama must do more to stop the
ISIS massacre on the ground.
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