In the fall of 2014 ISIS successfully captured the city of Kobani in Northern Syria.
Since
then reclaiming Kobani has been the main focus of US military attention.
So the question is,
where do we stand now?
What is happening in Kobani and how does that affect the future of
this war?
Well, the good news is Kurdish troops with the help of 17 US led airstrikes over one
24 hour
period, were able to reclaim the city.
The bad news is that practically speaking this may not
matter much to ISIS.
The importance of Kobani from a military perspective may have been
overblown.
Before the fighting, Kobani was a relatively small city, with little resources and
geographic benefits outside of sharing a border with Turkey.
A border ISIS was never fully able
to control, and due to Turkey’s NATO membership, may have had no intention of controlling in
the first place.
The fact is, we can’t really know what the value of Kobani was to ISIS, but we do know
that
Kobani didn’t become a symbol of military success until the US and their Alias made
it one by
fighting for it.
The capital city of ISIS is Raqqa not Kobani and losing Kobani doesn’t
do anything to change that or ISIS as a whole.
It just gives the US and it’s alias one battlefield
win in a war that will have many more important battlefields.
Obviously this is just a quick update on a complicated issue, if you’d like to see
our full
coverage of the Kurds and their fight against ISIS check out our video on that.