NEW YORK – As Kurdish troops halted an advance by Islamic State (IS) on Kobane on Thursday, Kurdish-Americans maintained pressure on the US government to better help those defending the besieged town in northern Syria. US aircraft hit nine IS targets around Kobane on Thursday, including a tank, buildings and a heavy machine gun. “Indications are that Kurdish militia there continue to control most of the city and are holding out against” the jihadists, the US military said in a statement. “I think the United States has clearly done more than, I would say, any other country in the world to-date to take on the threat of ISIL, We have done more strikes on the area of Kobane,” US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told Rudaw TV’s Washington correspondent Namo Abdulla. “But our focus in Syria is taking on ISIL and going after areas where there are safe heavens and reduce their ability to train, equip and sustain this fight,” she added. Kobane is being seen as a litmus test for US President Barack Obama’s strategy to beat IS, which is also known as ISIS and ISIL, with US-led air strikes and a ground force of Kurds, Iraqis and moderate elements of Syria’s opposition. Turkey has faced criticism for failing to assist Kurdish forces on the other side of their southern border. Obama’s plan has been criticised for an over-dependence on air power and a lack of reliable allies to tackle IS on the ground. “Obama promised to degrade and destroy IS. Instead, he has allowed it to degrade and destroy the city of Kobane,” said Kani Xulam, director of the American Kurdish Information Network. “The IS flag is now part of the skyline over the hill of Mistenur, a stone’s throw from the city.” Kurdish-Americans in Nashville, home to the largest Kurdish community in the US, were set to protest at a government building on Friday. Others in California are petitioning lawmakers to give weapons to Kurdish forces in Kobane. They warn of the ferocity of IS, a well-armed sectarian Sunni Muslim militia that controls swathes of Sunni-majority areas straddling the Iraq-Syria border. The militiamen “celebrate acts of genocide and revel in their atrocities”, the petition says. “Kobane is defending itself against a tyrannical, anachronistic force on par with fascism,” said Dr Amir Sharifi, a scholar at California State University. “Everyone agrees that it should be stopped, but is the world community genuinely taking action to prevent another IS massacre in Kobane?” Fighting around Kobane has claimed more than 400 lives and sent 180,000 civilians, mostly Kurds, fleeing across the Turkish border. The town, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, had been a home to those displaced by Syria’s spiralling civil war. “ISIS has defeated, at the tactical level, the Syrian and Iraqi armies, Hizbullah, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Peshmerga. They are 5-0 against potential enemies,” Christopher Harmer, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, told Rudaw. “The idea that we can beat these guys by dropping bombs is ridiculous. Somebody has to be the boots on the ground fighting them.”
