Iraq sends reinforcements to Kobani to repel Islamic State
The long-expected reinforcement of Kurdish forces at the besieged Syrian town of Kobani by men and equipment from Iraq began Tuesday, though it remains uncertain whether the effort will be enough to expel Islamic State militants.
A convoy of heavy weapons and ammunition set off Tuesday afternoon from Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, bound to reach Kobani on an overland route that would pass through Turkey. Separately, about 150 members of the KRG’s peshmerga militia boarded an Iraqi military aircraft in Irbil to be flown to an airfield in southern Turkey, from which they would cross into Syria.
The dispatch of fighters and weapons marked the conclusion of weeks of debate about what, if anything would be done to help the beleaguered defenders of Kobani, a Kurdish town along the Turkish border that has been under assault by Islamic State for months. But it was hardly the end of the battle for the town.
Islamic State controls 30 percent to 40 percent of the town. It’s unclear how many Syrian Kurdish fighters remain in the city.
A spokesman for the Kobani canton, the Kurdish administrative unit that governs the city, said local officials were expecting about 150 members of a peshmerga counterterrorism unit to arrive in Kobani. The spokesman, Idriss Nassan, said that under the terms negotiated for their arrival, they will remain under the command of the Kurdistan Regional Government during their time in Kobani.
The issue of who would command the troops was a principal sticking point in the negotiations between the Iraqi Kurds and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, known as the PYD by its Kurdish initials, which governs Kobani and much of the rest of Syrian Kurdistan. Kobani officials have said repeatedly that they did not want or need outside fighters – just more weapons and ammunition.
But few outside observers think the PYD and its armed militia, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, alone can regain control of the town and the surrounding villages.
Some close observers of the conflict estimate there are as few as 1,500 YPG fighters in Kobani, augmented by possibly 300 fighters from the Kurdistan Workers Party in Turkey, the notorious PKK that both Turkey and the United States have listed as a terrorist organization.
They are both outnumbered and outgunned by Islamic State, which is besieging the town with as many as 9,000 fighters equipped with tanks, armored U.S.-made Humvees, heavy artillery, mortars and anti-tank rocket systems that the group looted from the Iraqi military when it overran much of northern and central Iraq in June. Since then, Islamic State has supplemented its supplies with extensive stocks of military ordnance seized when it captured Syrian military bases.
Halgord Hekmat, a peshmerga spokesman, suggested in a statement that the men deployed Tuesday would not engage in combat. He said they would be in a “support capacity” and would deliver and oversee the use of mortars, artillery and rocket launchers.
The U.S. Central Command said it conducted four airstrikes overnight on Islamic State targets in and around Kobani. Witnesses watching the fighting from the Turkish side of the border said at least three more airstrikes had taken place by late Tuesday afternoon and that fighting continued across much of the city.
This story was originally published October 28, 2014 at 8:52 PM with the headline "Iraq sends reinforcements to Kobani to repel Islamic State."