Prior to this week, Kobani was a relatively unimportant and unheard of town to the rest of the world, resting between the Syrian-Turkish border and serving as home to around 50,000 Syrian Kurds. Yet it gained new significance to the rest of the world as a symbolic representation of the U.S. led coalition’s fight against the Islamic State. Its close proximity to the Turkish border means that for the first time journalists are able to get a first hand view on what is happening in the war against the Islamic State.
CENTCOM (the U.S. military central command) announced on Tuesday that the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had conducted bombing raids directed at preventing the IS from conquering Kobani. Despite their efforts, the bombings have proven ineffective. A tweet posted by Jenan Mousa of Al Aan TV in Dubai read, “Kurdish guy from #Kobane tells me: we hoped American planes will help us. Instead American tanks in hands of ISIS are killing us.”
According to the U.S. and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, things are going to get worse, and in a report from UN envoy, Staffan de Mistura said, “thousands will most likely be massacred.”
What about Turkey? The Turkish parliament did vote to join the coalition on Oct. 2, but they’ve been reluctant to deploy troops. This is because the main Kurdish fighting force in Kobani known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, are believed to be connected to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as the PKK, which is classified as a terrorist organization by both Turkey and the United States.
The PKK waged a bloody, 30-year war against the Turks beginning in 1984 and ending in 2013, after PKK leaders called a ceasefire so they could send fighters to northern Iraq to battle IS. In addition, NATO commanders have refused Turkey’s demands to establish a no-fly zone over northern Syria and to create a buffer zone along the border both due to its enormous cost and questionable international legality.
At this point, Turkey doesn’t feel it owes anybody any favors. They are content to set up tanks and troops along the border, ensuring that the violence doesn’t spill over, and to watch and wait.
Representatives from the Pentagon have attempted to reassure the public that Kobani simply isn’t a strategic town and that the coalition is fighting to destabilize the Islamic State, not save villagers. In a report from CBS, a Pentagon spokesman tried to play down the humanitarian threat this poses by saying, “Kobani is horrible, but right now there’s a lot of horrible in Iraq and Syria.” Thus far, over 200,000 Kurdish refugees have fled from other nearby villages into Turkey, an event that largely went unnoticed by the rest of the world.
Kobani’s fall will mean that the Islamic State will gain control of approximately one fifth of the Syrian-Turkish border, but that doesn’t mean IS fighters will be able to walk or move supplies in and out of Turkey. Turkey boasts the seventh largest military in the world and has the fourteenth largest defense budget, it is perfectly capable of defending itself against an attack. Essentially, for IS, Kobani represents the furthest north they can effectively go at this point. It has no overall strategic significance in the fight against the U.S. led coalition.
Yet, the Obama administration is forgetting that fighting a prolonged war like this isn’t just about focusing exclusively on one objective. In a democratic nation such as the United States, public opinion matters, and citizens of democratic nations are impatient for results when it comes to fighting.
If Kobani falls and the world is watching, Obama’s entire strategy will be called in to question. The effectiveness of the coalition will be scrutinized and a war fought by fighter jets and drones may soon have to escalate to boots on the ground to appease the public opinion if IS fighters can still make tactical gains in the face of an aerial bombardment.
Kobani may not be a strategic loss for coalition forces, but it is a symbolic defeat to the rest of the world.