.
10/11/14, "Nations intone “Never again,” but we are
watching a human catastrophe happen as Western powers fail to employ
their massive resources." Jerusalem Post Editorial
"In mid-September, the Islamic State terrorists launched a coordinated
assault on the Kurdish enclave of Kobani in Syria, near the Turkish
border. As Islamic State rolled through 21 Kurdish villages, more than
45,000 people escaped across the frontier. By October, more than 180,000
Kurdish refugees were estimated to be in Turkey. Since that initial
assault, Islamic State has been strangling the Kurdish forces defending
the city.
By Thursday, Islamic State fighters had reportedly
seized more than a third of Kobani, although the US military said
Kurdish forces appeared to be holding out.
The world stands by as
Islamic State continues the ethnic-cleansing and mass murder that it
has conducted across Syria and Iraq. But most shameful is the fact that
the Turkish army has sat just across the border and watched the carnage
in Kobani.
When Kurdish protests broke out in Istanbul and across
five provinces in Turkey on Tuesday, the police were swift to try to
put them down, killing 21 protesters.
Turkey’s President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has engineered a dangerous game of blackmail, using the
massacre of Kurds as collateral while warning that Kobani is about to
fall.
“We asked for three things: one, for a no-fly zone to be
created; two, for a secure zone parallel to the region to be declared;
and for the moderate opposition in Syria and Iraq to be trained and
equipped,” Erdogan said on Tuesday.
Ankara feels that Islamic
State is dealing a death blow to Turkey’s traditional Kurdish enemies,
and that it can use the humanitarian disaster to its benefit to pressure
Washington to help get rid of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The idea
is to use Kurdish suffering to get back at Assad. At the same time,
Turkey is trying to get the US to do the job of defending its border.
“Our
government and our related institutions have emphasized to US officials
the necessity of immediately ramping up air bombardment in a more
active and efficient way,” Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan said
last week.
The UN has also called on the international community
to do more. “They [Kurds] have been defending themselves with great
courage. But they are now very close to not being able to do so. They
are fighting with normal weapons, whereas the ISIS has got tanks and
mortars,” Staffan de Mistura, the UN’s special envoy for Syria, said.
The
international community has greeted the ethnic- cleansing and mass
murder by Islamic State over the last months with indifference. Mass
murder of Shi’ite civilians became evident in July, as Islamic State
terrorists proudly and routinely taped civilians they had rounded up
digging mass graves and then filmed their gunmen slaughtering people. In
Iraq in mid-August, the world watched as Yezidis were ethnically
cleansed and slaughtered, and Islamic State fighters sold women.
Although the US initiated a limited operation to evacuate survivors,
little was done to stop Islamic State’s advance.
In September,
attention turned to Syria’s Kurds. Although the US, France and UK did
begin limited air strikes on Islamic State, the illusion that they would
be effective has been burst with the siege of Kobani. Pentagon
spokesman R.-Adm. John Kirby told Fox News on September 8 that Kobani
was not a priority for air strikes. “ISIS wants this town, they want
territory, you need willing partners on the ground,” he said. “We are in
discussions the Turks about what they can or may do, we can’t make the
decision for them.”
Kirby added: “There is a limit to air
power.... IS wants to hold ground.... Everyone is focused on Kobani and
we understand, but we are taking away revenue [from Islamic State] and
removing command and control nodes.”
This statement illustrates
that protecting civilian life is not a real goal of the US
administration or its allies. The technical references to preventing
revenue from reaching Islamic State shows that stopping ethnic-cleansing
and mass murder is not on the international community’s agenda.
The tragedy unfolding in Kobani is unacceptable.
.
Nations
intone “Never again,” but we are watching a human catastrophe happen as
Western powers fail to employ their massive resources.
It is time for the world to wake up and do something to aid the Kurds in their battle with Islamic State before it is too late."
=======================
"Helpless: A Kurdish boy looks on through a barbed wire fence after
fleeing Kobani where ISIS have renewed their attacks today by shelling
parts of the city," EPA photo from UK Daily Mail
10/4/14, "Armed Turkish police use tear gas to disperse
Kurdish protesters near Syrian border as ISIS renew their attacks on
town of Kobani," UK Daily Mail, Chris Pleasance
.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment