ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The leader of Syria’s Islamic Front rebels says he intends to “liberate” the besieged border town of Kobane from its occupiers, including the Syrian Kurdish fighters currently defending it. In a videoed press conference, Zahran Alloush, who heads an alliance of rebel forces reported to number 45,000, accused the Syrian-Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) of being loyal to the Damascus regime of President Bashar al-Assad. He also branded Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party, with which the PYD is allied, of serving the Assad regime. Such accusations from Sunni Arab rebel groups are nothing new, but Alloush’s latest comments may reflect frustration that the fate of Kobane is taking away attention from the broader struggle against the Assad regime and focusing too much on the heroism of the besieged Kurds. The video was filmed in late October, just before the arrival in Kobane of Peshmerga reinforcements dispatched from by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq. The deployment was in coordination with the Free Syrian Army, the mainstream Western-backed rebel movement in Syria. According to the London-based Middle East Eye, which carried the video, “Forty two-year-old Alloush is little known in the West but with the gradual weakening of Syria’s moderate opposition, the Free Syrian Army, his group, the Islamic Front, have emerged as one of the more effective fighting forces on the ground.” MEE said the Islamic Front was also a key player among rebel groups holding off Syrian government forces trying to recapture the strategic northern city of Aleppo. It is a Salafist coalition, that proclaims support for the establishment of a Caliphate, but it opposes Islamic State. “Kobane is a Syrian city and the residents are Muslims and we will put all efforts to liberate it, just as we are trying to liberate other cities from Assad's regime,” Alloush said in the video by the activist Shaam network and published on YouTube. “Our views on Daash [Islamic State] have not changed,” he said. “We cannot forget the horrendous crimes they have committed against the people of Syria.” Most of his criticism, however, was focused on the Kurds. There were good ones and bad ones, he said, just as there were among Arabs. However, “there are Kurds who are loyal to the regime: PKK and PYD.” Referring to Bashar al-Assad’s predecessor and father, he claimed: “The PKK was created by the late Hafez al-Assad. And the PYD is an extension of the PKK.” He said his movement was determined to defend all Syrian towns from the regime and its allies and “foreign and domestic occupiers, including ISIS.” The PYD, which declared autonomy is Kobane and other cantons in the past two years, tried to keep Syria’s Kurds out of the fighting with the Damascus regime and filled a vacuum when government forces withdrew from the region. Mainstream Arab opposition leaders had insisted that the Kurds should shelve their aspirations for autonomy for the sake of the wider rebel struggle.
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