While Kerry lauds anti-IS coalition, Kobane residents say threat remains

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday at a press briefing in Brussels said that the US-led coalition to combat the Islamic State (IS) has inflicted ‘serious damage’ on the militant group. 

Speaking to a representatives of 60 nations involved in the coalition who were gathered at NATO headquarters, Kerry said that roundly 1,000 airstrikes have destroyed  IS command facilities in Syria, damaged the group’s oil infrastructure, and blocked its siege on Kobane, the town that has become one of the focal points of the campaign. 

“Our commitment will most likely be measured in years," he said adding that the partners would "engage in this campaign for as long as it takes to prevail".

The coalition later issued a closing statement saying that the militant group's "advance across Syria and into Iraq is being halted", and that Iraqi and Kurdish forces were reclaiming territory.

But bunkered in his offices on Wednesday where he has been living off of rice, canned food and unclean water from the remaining wells around his town, a Kurdish official in Kobane said his community is still vulnerable to an IS takeover 67 days after coalition airstrikes began. 

“The war from the sky is going well, but on the ground it’s a different story,” Idris Nassan, deputy foreign affairs minister told Middle East Eye on Wednesday.  

“We have no ammunition on the ground, no weaponry, no help. IS is still bringing new weaponry, tanks, mortars, and fighters, even under the airstrikes of the jet fighters,” Nassan said. 

Airstrikes are holding IS off, but Nassan said they are not holding the group back and, if further reinforcements are not sent soon, he said the town could fall to IS.

Nassan said that in the past five days, IS had made ‘significant advances’ on the ground, capturing a military vehicle near the Turkish border and launching a suicide bomb attack near a hospital south-east of the city where wounded Kurdish fighters are being treated.

“On Saturday, we were attacked from all four sides of the city, including from the north near the Turkish border. They can reach every part of the city with their mortar shells,” Nassan said. “If IS have been weakened, how is it they are attacking us from four sides?” 

While most of Kerry’s speech concerned the military, the Secretary of State also touched upon the urgent need to ensure humanitarian aid to civilians living in areas damaged by the fighting

“It won’t do any good obviously if you simply reclaim a town and the folks in that town have even worse or less opportunities than before,” Kerry said.

Some civilians in Kobane are more concerned about surviving the winter than the militants, according to Barzan Iso, a journalist in Kobane.

“We are in winter now and people are desperate, they need warm clothes, food, milk, medicine. Kobane is almost destroyed, if you come and have a look, you will see you cannot live there for a day, how can civilians live in this city?” Iso told MEE.

US-Iran detente?

The fight against IS has distracted from Western efforts to end Syria's civil war, which has killed more than 195,000 people since it began as a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011.

Assad, whose main backers are Tehran and Moscow, hit out at the Western powers that had until months ago been focused on his removal from power.

"You can't end terrorism with aerial strikes. Troops on the ground that know the land and can react are essential," he said in this week's edition of French magazine Paris Match.

But the Syrian conflict has created a constantly shifting patchwork of regional alliances, the most unlikely being that of Washington and Tehran, as underscored by repeated reports of Iranian airstrikes against IS. 

The latest reports have emerged after Al Jazeera video footage, filmed on 24 November, appeared to show aircraft identified by Jane’s Defence Weekly as “Iranian McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II jet” striking IS targets in eastern Iraq. 

Iranian forces have been active on the ground in Iraq assisting Shiite militia and Baghdad government units, but officials have refused publicly to confirm or deny that the country is conducting air strikes. On Wednesday, however, the Pentagon said that it had no reason to doubt that the Iranians had bombed parts of the country.

The alleged air strikes suggested a tacit understanding between mainly Shia Iran and the United States to tackle the common threat from the Sunni extremist group on Iran's borders. 

However, Kerry stressed from Brussels on Wednesday that the two countries are not coordinating any air campaigns and said he would not confirm or deny another country’s involvement in Iraq. 

“If Iran is taking on ISIL in some particular place and it has an impact, the net effect is positive, but that is not something we are coordinating,” Kerry said.

The fight against the IS comes amid a US diplomatic drive to agree a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Officials acknowledge the two sides have discussed the war in Iraq on the margins of the nuclear talks.

US President Barack Obama was reported earlier this month to have secretly written to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to discuss possible cooperation against IS providing there is a nuclear deal.