Fierce street fighting in Kobane as IS flags raised

Fierce street-fighting in the Syrian border city of Kobane continued into Monday night less than 24 hours after Islamic State militants first entered the town after a weeks-long siege.

"Urban guerrilla warfare has started and the fighting is taking place for the first time in districts at the eastern entrance to Kobane, in Maqtala al-Jadida and Kani Arabane," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head Rami Abdel Rahman said to AFP.

"The jihadists and the Kurds are clashing in the streets, between apartment buildings," with hundreds of civilians fleeing towards the Turkish border.

Two IS flags were seen flying earlier on Monday afternoon, according to eyewitnesses.

The flags were seen by an AFP photographer from the Turkish side of the border as well as an Al Aan TV reporter from an unknown location.

One was flying on top of a building on the eastern side of Kobane. Another was seen being planted by a man on the crest of a hill on the eastern edge of the town.

There are also reports of a plane in the air over Kobane, although it is unknown who it belongs to and has yet to take any action.

Over the past week, news reports have indicated that IS militants were advancing closer and closer to the city on the Turkish-Syria border.

In recent days, Kurdish officials said the fighters were within several hundred metres of the city, but had met tough resistance from Kurdish fighters. 

Then on Sunday night, at least 20 IS militants were killed after entering Kobane from the east side of the city for the first time, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. 

With the enterance of IS into the city, days of street fighting should be expected, tweeted Jenan Moussa, a reporter for Al Aan TV who says she is watching developments through binoculars.

Moussa also reported that IS militants have night vision equipment which Kurdish fighters do not have. "This will be a long night," she tweeted.

Later she quoted a source saying that there were thousands of IS fighters in the town and that there nationalities ranged from Chechnyan to Uzbek among others.

Empty villages, blind eyes?

At least a quarter of Kobane and 396 surrounding villages, which are thought to have a population of around 400,000 mostly Kurds, are now "completely empty", Barzan Iso, a Syrian journalist currently in Kobane told MEE on Monday. 

"They stole everything from these villages," Iso said of the IS militants. "My grandfather's home - they burned it. They take televisions, satellites, PCs and laptops, anything that is worth money - gold, sheep. They even took cars that people abandoned on the buffer zone when they fled."

Iso echoed comments from Kobane residents and officials who have talked with MEE in recent days and said that Turkey has effectively turned a blind eye on IS crossing through its borders on what some journalists have termed the 'Jihadi Highway'. 

"In Turkish media, a channel named INC, were doing a live broadcast on the border," Iso, the Syrian journalist based in Kobane, said. "By chance, in the background, Turkish soldiers were waving IS militants across the border."

Omar Alosh, a spokesperson for the Kobane province, told MEE last week that IS recruits have been entering Turkey from Syria through three major border towns - Jarablus, Bab Aisha and Bab Arab Izza - for months now.

US Vice President Joe Biden drew ire from Turkey after he told an audience at Harvard University last week that Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan had admitted to letting "too many people through" in a reference to thousands of militants suspected of crossing from Turkey to Syria.

"I have never said to him that we had made a mistake, never," Erdogan responded. "If he did say this at Harvard, then he has to apologise to us."

US hesistancy

According to Alosh, the Kobane spokesperson, Turkey, a NATO member, is less worried about the Islamic State, who have had a presence along its border for more than a year, than it is about the Kurds in Syria.

“Turkey is worried that if we defeat IS, we may declare independence and that might embolden Kurds in Turkey to do the same,” said Alosh.

Some Kobane residents have also indicated that the US-led anti-IS coalition airstrikes around Kobane over the past two weeks have done very little to push back the militant group.

"People here are wondering if America is serious," Iso said. "There have been 20 airstrikes in different places, only once did they hit an ISIS target - three or four tanks."

Joshua Landis, director of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and writer of Syria Comment, told MEE that the US risked opening up a political can of worms if it focused its effort on Kobane.

“What do you do with them if you save them? If you save one, you’ve got to save them all, right?" Landis said. “Let’s say you set up a ‘no-ISIS’ zone around the Kurds there – then you have to do it around the Kurds everywhere. And then you’ve created Kurdish state."

With the US keen to bring Turkey more actively on board against IS, the risks of cracking an already fragile alliance are too high.

"It’s not as if the US can just go off half-cocked and create a Kurdish state on Turkey’s border and expect that Turkey’s going to suck it up," Landis told MEE.

"The US needs Turkish cooperation and a synchronisation of objectives, which have been absent in the last year.”

He suggested that ultimately Kobane's strategic importance was outweighed by its symbolic importance.

“America’s defining their mission and Turkey’s defining in a sense, their mission in Syria. Is it to protect Syrians? Is it to weaken ISIS people? Is it to protect Kurds? These are all questions that need to be answered and everybody wants them to be answered in Kobane.”

Collapse of PKK-Turkish peace talks?

Last week, Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), warned in a statement that if Kobane fell, it would mean the collapse of peace talks between the group and the Turkish government.

"I urge everyone in Turkey who does not want the process and the democracy voyage to collapse to take responsibility in Kobani," Öcalan said.

Turkey had previously urged the PKK's affiliate in Syria, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) to join the fracturing Free Syrian Army (FSA) and a strong stance against Bashar al-Assad, claiming they are currently ambiguous at best about their relationship.

“The US has been paralysed by Turkish and rebel concerns about the PYD," said Landis.

"The US is refusing to treat the PYD the way they treat the Kurds in Iraq, which is to build them up towards a future possible independence and to build up their military power. And that’s very good news for ISIS, because it means ISIS can go ahead and kill Kurds, perhaps not with impunity, but they know they’re pushing at a sensitive and conflict point within the allied coalition.”

In an analysis of the consequences of the fall of Kobane, MEE contributor David Barchard writes that the biggest immediate uncertainty "is whether Turkey's Peace Process with the Kurds can now carry on or whether the country could face renewed terrorist attacks from the PKK as well as IS."