Almost three years after Kurdish fighters defeated IS in the Syrian town of Kobani, residents still mourn the dead and feel abandoned by their foreign allies as they struggle to rebuild.
IS’s defeat in Kurdish Kobani in early 2015 helped turn the tide against the ultra-militant group and marked the start of a more open US military relationship with the Kurdish YPG militia. But much of the town near the border with Turkey was destroyed, leaving it facing a huge reconstruction challenge and in need of help from the allies that had supported the fight to defeat IS, including the US.
Electricity still works only a few hours a day and regularly cuts out. The Internet, using a Turkish communications signal, is expensive and unreliable.
That, local officials say, is because aid quickly dried up, and the town’s problems could soon be replicated across parts of northern Syria as IS cedes ground. “There were never (reconstruction) projects that reflected the scale of destruction,” said Khaled Barkal, a vice-president in the local government.
Kurdish ties with the West are complicated by local rivalries and alliances, and by Kurdish efforts to assert autonomy in areas captured from IS.
Local officials also accuse the West of trying to appease Nato ally Turkey, which sees the YPG as an extension of the PKK, a Kurdish group waging an insurgency against the Turkish government.
“Turkey doesn’t want life to return here,” Barkal said. Ankara opposes the YPG role in capturing Arab-majority areas such as Raqa, saying it threatens demographic change. Kurdish self-assertion in Iraq and Syria has also brought charges of mistreatment of Arabs, which officials deny.
Western diplomats in the region say support for the YPG in the battle against IS cannot extend to bolstering a Kurdish-led project to cement an autonomous region.
Washington opposes plans for autonomy in northern Syria, with the international community seeking a nationwide resolution to Syria’s more than six-year-old civil war. The people of Kobani fear more upheaval lies ahead.
Syrian President Bashar al Assad wants to win back control of all Syria, and Kurdish-led authorities are seeking to cement regional autonomy through elections, which could increase tensions. — Reuters
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