ISIS's Ignominious Defeat in Kobani
"ISIL's defeat in Kobane further shatters the organization's claims to invincibility, particularly as it coincides with the group's retreat from Kurdish and other Iraqi forces in northern and central Iraq."
Mohammed Salih, Al Jazeera
"IEDs cover a huge area, from Rabia in the northwest, to Jalawla and Sadia in the southeast. In between is a long line of 1,000 km contaminated with IDs, TNT, explosives."
"There have been many casualties from IDPs [internationally displaced people] returning to booby-trapped homes. We warn returning civilians that everything in the occupied area can be trapped."
"They [four deminers] had no special equipment or training in dealing with IEDs and booby traps. They were dealing with IEDs based on their experience with mines and UXO [unexploded ordnance'."
Ako Aziz, director, Mine Risk Education, Iraqi Kurdistan Mine Action Agency
A Kurdish fighter flashes a victory sign in Kobani. Osman Orsal/ReutersThe Islamic State was quick to use its slick propaganda to boast to the world that it was advancing in its goal to expand its territory within Syria and Iraq for its caliphate. The same propaganda that the world found so abhorrent, with its triumphalism over having routed the Iraqi military, taking the country's second largest city, Mosul, its slaughter of Yazidis, mass rapes, enslavement of women and children, captivated and enthralled foreign fighters from Australia, Canada, Europe and across the Middle East, 1,200 of whom were killed in Kobani under the Islamic State flag.
Islamic State isn't too likely to be boasting on propaganda videos that its conquest of Kobani was complete, nor that in the three-month assault it lost a significant number of fighters. That will remain, for the Islamic State, a silent no-go topic. Which hardly signifies that its zeal for conquest has been stifled to any degree. It will now simply continue to look elsewhere for other towns, villages and cities that look like easy capture; places where the peshmerga are not to be found.
"The entire notion of this organization [ISIS], that it is on the march and the inevitable expansion and inevitable momentum has been halted at Kobani", signals "Mission accomplished" a U.S. State Department warned would be premature. The fight against the Islamic State is in its initial stages, despite the Kurdish win with Kobani. The caution long ago was stated that this would be a prolonged push-back against viral Islamism; one victory does not end the war.
In the meanwhile, however, the tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees from Kobani who sought temporary shelter in Turkey at the border with Syria, are now returning to their homes, to find much of their city shattered, but determined to rebuild. They are, however, being cautioned to have a care in their return. Warned by the peshmerga that even the most innocuous items like televisions, light switches and flashlights have been rigged to explode when handled.
And the peshmerga itself, skilled at rendering some types of explosives harmless have suffered their own casualties, de-miners killed and wounded in attempting to clear houses in a northern Iraqi village. They are, therefore, approaching Kobani with the caution due its uncertain state when the retreating Islamic State fighters, true to their malevolent message and delivery, set traps in the hopes of achieving more deaths.
Improvised explosive devices are the cause of 70% of casualties to peshmerga, the Kurdish armed forces - according to the Kurdish Minister of Peshmerga Mustafa Sayid Qadir. On Tuesday he met with Canada's ambassador to Iraq, Bruno Saccomani, who formally handed over six remotely operated de-mining robots, at a blastproof compound outside Erbil.
"Thanks to these robots, we will be able to clear areas of IEDs much quicker. I'm sure these robots will save many many lives", Mr. Qadir said at a ceremonial hand-over. Peshmerga engineers have yet to be trained by the company in Canada that has supplied the robots, Med-Eng Holdings. There is no question but that de-mining is urgent, however.
Freeing Kobani from the aspirations of the Islamic State is fundamentally important to the people who call it home and who are now returning. Its release also has an important message, that the most stable ethnic group in the region, the Kurds, have benefited from the U.S.-led coalition's engagement against the Islamic State.
But ISIS commands 20,000 square miles of territory across Syria and Iraq. Despite the thousands of airstrikes by the coalition, ISIS remains well entrenched in its controlled area, with ample access to new recruits responding to its jihadist-enticing propaganda. "It's not the beginning of the end" for ISIS, not yet, stated Dlawer Ala'aldeen, president of the Middle East Research Institute in Erbil.
Labels: Islamic State, Kurds, Syria
posted by Pieface @ Friday, January 30, 2015
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