The Kurds who are fighting so bravely in Kobane cannot rely on any of the powers in the region or in the west.
Lindsey German
Good to know that humanitarian concerns are at the top of our rulers’ agenda.
The plight of the Yazidis back in August, trapped on a mountaintop and under threat from ISIS, was enough to trigger air strikes from the US and its allies.
Now the Kurds trapped in Kobani — centre of an attempt at self-government by the Syrian Kurds — are under siege from ISIS.
Turkish tanks sit on the border nearby, where also have gathered thousands of Kurds from Turkey and elsewhere. The Turkish government will neither go to fight ISIS, nor allow the Kurds across the border. “It is not realistic to expect Turkey to conduct a ground operation on its own,” Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.
There is only one conclusion to draw from this: Turkey wants ISIS to defeat the Kurds, who it sees as a greater enemy. The Kurds are demanding that Turkey stops supporting ISIS.
US secretary of state John Kerry said, protecting the beseiged Syrian town of Kobani is not a primary objective of US-coalition forces: “As horrific as it is to watch in real time what’s happening in Kobani … you have to step back and understand the strategic objective.”
The outcry for intervention which has filled the media since August, and which led to the vote in parliament two weeks ago authorising British air strikes over |Iraq, has subsided. Indeed, a craven editorial in the liberal Guardian justifies Turkey’s actions.
The anti-war movement is sometimes criticised for opposing western intervention. But surely the contrast demonstrates why we are right to do so. The Kurds who are fighting so bravely in Kobane cannot rely on any of the powers in the region or in the west.
And the defeat of ISIS, from people who helped it grow in the first place, takes very much second place to their own interests.
Source: Stop the War Coalition
