Thursday, 9 October 2014

Turkey cannot lead Syria ground operation on its own: FM

Smoke rises during airstrikes on the Syrian town of Ain al-Arab, known as Kobane by the Kurds, seen from the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern village of Mursitpinar, Sanliurfa province, on October 8, 2014. (Photo: AFP - Aris Messinis)

Published Thursday, October 9, 2014

Updated at 12:15 pm (GMT +3): Turkey on Thursday said it cannot be expected to lead a ground operation against jihadists in Syria alone, amid growing pressure on Ankara from the West to intervene militarily after jihadists seized more than a third of the Syrian border town of Kobani.

"It's not realistic to expect that Turkey will lead a ground operation on its own," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference with visiting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

US President Barack Obama conferred with commanders Wednesday on the "difficult" fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) jihadists as the US military warned air power alone could not prevent the group from seizing a key Syrian border town.

After a meeting with top brass at the Pentagon, Obama said there would be no easy victory against ISIS but said a growing international coalition was resolved to confront the extremists rampaging in Iraq and Syria.

"Our strikes continue, alongside our partners. It remains a difficult mission," Obama, flanked by the country's most senior military officers, told reporters.

"As I've indicated from the start, this is not something that is going to be solved overnight."

A Pentagon spokesman earlier offered a sober battlefield assessment, saying US air power on its own could not rescue the town of Kobane from an offensive by ISIS jihadists in northern Syria.

Spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters that US-led aircraft were hitting the ISIS at every opportunity but without a competent force on the ground to work with, there were limits to what could be accomplished by bombing from the air.

"Airstrikes alone are not going to do this, not going to fix this, not going to save the town of Kobane," Kirby said.

Ultimately, "capable" ground forces - referring to rebel fighters in Syria and Iraqi government troops in Iraq - would have to defeat ISIS, but that would take time, he said.

The military's Central Command said American-led forces carried out 14 coalition strikes on Wednesday and 19 bombing raids near the town since Tuesday, in an attempt to help Kurdish fighters who have fought a desperate battle to hold off ISIS militants.

"Indications are that Kurdish militia there continue to control most of the city and are holding out against ISIS," Central Command said in a statement late Wednesday.

US-led airstrikes by the US-led coalition on Tuesday that hit positions held by ISIS jihadists in the southwest of the key Syrian border town of Kobane had "little effect," says a local activist.

"The strikes hit the Mishtenur area," said local activist Mustafa Ebdi, referring to a plateau south of Kobane.

"But they (ISIS) aren't gathered there. There are other places they should be hitting," he said.

US frustrated over Turkey’s slack

The United States is frustrated by Turkey's failure to stop ISIS onslaught on the Syrian town of Kobane but hopes to win its support against the group over time, a US official said on Wednesday.

Turkish troops have sat on the sidelines as ISIS militants have fought to gain control of Kobane.

Analysts and US officials said Turkey's hesitance to commit its military, NATO's second-largest, to save Kobane reflects a fear of emboldening and empowering its own Kurdish population, which has long sought greater autonomy.

"For Turkey, the greatest threat is the empowerment of the Kurds in Syria," said Henri Barkey, a former member of the US State Department's policy planning staff. "They see the potential for an autonomous (Kurdish) region in northern Syria ... to be terribly dangerous because if the Syrian Kurds and the Iraqi Kurds have autonomy, next are the Turkish Kurds," he added.

"They don't want to save the Syrian Kurds. They want Kobane to fall because that would be a major, major blow for the Syrian Kurds," he said.

The result is a standoff between two NATO allies as a militant group that has overrun large parts of Iraq and Syria this year appeared close to seizing Kobane this week.

"There's no question the US government thinks Turkey can do more, should do more, and that they are using excuses not to do more," said the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We have been sending that message very clearly behind the scenes."

The official suggested that Turkey was juggling its desire not to see the Syrian Kurds strengthened with the potential threat to Turkey's interests, including the continuing flow of Syrian refugees across its border.

One third of Kobane under ISIS control

ISIS fighters have seized more than a third of the Syrian border town of Kobani despite US-led air strikes targeting them in and around the town, a monitoring group said on Thursday.

They moved into two districts on Wednesday in a three-week battle that Kurdish defenders say will end in a massacre and give the militants a garrison on the Turkish border if they win.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said clashes continued into Thursday morning as the forces of ISIS- still widely known by its former acronym of ISIS - pushed forward.

"ISIS control more than a third of Kobani. All eastern areas, a small part of the northeast and an area in the southeast," the Observatory's head, Rami Abdulrahman, said by telephone.

An explosion was heard on Thursday on the western side of Kobane, with thick black smoke visible from the Turkish border a few kilometres (miles) away. The sound of a jet flying overhead and sporadic gunfire from the besieged town was audible. Several ambulances sped from the border to the town of
Suruc in Turkey.

ISIS hoisted its black flag on the eastern edge of Kobani on Monday. Since then, the airstrikes have been redoubled but failed to halt the advance.

(AFP, Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

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