Just to illustrate how messed up the US coalition is to fight the Islamic State across Syria and Iraq!!

Quite a selective R2P policy by the Obama administration and its “coalition” of fifty nations. Why did the western coalition save the Sinjar mountain people and not the Syrian Kurds?

○ Syrian Kurds protected their territory by fighting jihadists of Al Nusra Front to dismay of Turkey

Turkish fighter jets bomb PKK positions for first time since start of peace bid | Hürriyet Daily News |

The Turkish General Staff ordered the bombing of the PKK’s positions in the Dağlıca district the southeastern Diyarbakır province late Oct. 13. The bombarded targets had reportedly been involved in “assassination, armed incidents and attacks on security bases” after last week’s nationwide protests.

Many provinces in Turkey’s east, as well as the largest cities of the country, saw violent protests against the government’s policies over the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) advance on the Syrian border town of Kobane. Some 37 people were killed and hundreds were injured in the demonstrations.

The Dağlıca military guard post had been attacked with rocket-propelled grenades by the PKK for three days, and the Turkish military airstrikes came after the last attack that took place on Oct. 13. F-16 and F-4 jets flying from Malatya and Diyarbakır bombarded PKK positions in the Dağlıca district.

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A Turkish army check-point in Hakkari province in 2011 illustrating its battle against PKK terrorists/freedom fighters (Photo EPA/Murat Cetinmuhurdar)

The airstrike is the first broad operation against the PKK since the government initiated the peace process with Turkey’s Kurds in 2013.

Triple suicide attacks hit Kurds in Iraq

More below the fold …

Triple suicide attacks hit Kurds in Iraq | Al Jazeera |

A triple suicide attack tore through a Kurdish compound in eastern Iraq, killing at least 29 members of the security forces and wounding 88, according to hospital and security officials. The triple car bombing happened in Qara Tappah, in the eastern Diyala province about 100 miles northeast of Baghdad.

ISIL fighters targeted three different locations in close proximity to each other — two of them were used as bases by Kurdish security forces and a third by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) political party. The attack came as a major blow to Kurdish forces who, with the help of the U.S.-led air strikes, were able to capture back territory from ISIL in recent weeks.

As ISIL attacks Kobane, Turkey and US mired in wider stalemate over Syria | Al Jazeera |

The high-stakes game of chicken between the U.S. and Turkey over who should step in and save the Syrian town of Kobane from an imminent takeover by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has exposed a deep divide between the two NATO allies on critical elements of Syria’s future, which analysts suspect may not be resolved until long after the Kurdish enclave falls.

Ankara has been the most critical holdout from the U.S.-led coalition striking ISIL in Syria and Iraq — a consequence of the coalition’s refusal to target Turkey’s foremost enemy in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Leveraging the urgency of the Kobane crisis, Ankara has pinned a long-delayed intervention in Syria to certain conditions that the U.S. has long ruled out — above all, widening the scope of the anti-ISIL effort to include regime targets.

Syrian Kurds, rebels find common enemy in ISIS | Al Monitor | March 2014 |

ERBIL — The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have found a common enemy in the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in the countryside of Aleppo. This new alignment represents a reversal of the situation in summer 2013, when the same rebel group fought with ISIS against the Kurds, accusing the main Kurdish party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), of abetting the Syrian regime. Today, however, accusations of collaborating with the regime are being directed at ISIS, and PYD leader Salih Muslim is accusing the regime of supporting jihadist attacks [cached version] against the Kurds.

The YPG’s strategy is to work through Jabhat al-Akrad, the Kurdish faction with links to the FSA, to end the ISIS siege on the Kurdish enclaves of Afrin and Kobani, in Aleppo province close to the Turkish border, and to create easier access between the Kurdish areas interspersed among mixed Arab-Turkmen areas. It is difficult, however, to access these areas without support of local Arabs and Turkmens.

The FSA, on the other hand, wants to use Kurdish-controlled areas as a safe haven against the ISIS and take advantage of the fighting strength of the Kurdish fighters trained by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

“For our part, the cooperation still continues between all of the Free [Syrian] Army and the YPG in fending off ISIS attacks,” the YPG said in a March 19 statement, confirming their cooperation with the FSA for the first time.

Humanitarian Aid for Syrian Kurds In R2P Response at a Price

As Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters surround the Syrian-Kurdish enclave of Kobane on three sides and civilians flee en masse toward the tightly sealed border with Turkey, Ankara sees an opportunity: Much-needed ground reinforcements to save Kobane will have to either come from or transit through Turkey, which may be able to leverage its long-awaited participation in the U.S.-led coalition against ISIL for its own purposes.

Despite considerable misgivings about bailing out Kobane’s ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD) — the armed sister party of the Turkish-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgency, which Ankara and Washington both regard as a terrorist organization — the brutality that many fear would ensue if the town of 40,000 falls to ISIL has put Ankara under humanitarian and political pressure to send in troops. U.S.-Arab airstrikes have not been enough to boost the struggling Kurdish ground forces, which have ordered an evacuation of Kobane and are desperately pleading for help.

Read my earlier diary – Turkey In Alliance with ISIS – Undermining Obama’s Policy In Iraq.
and ISIL Militants In Swap for 49 Turkish Hostages from Mosul.