Syrian town struggles to cope alone after victory over IS

epa05875796 A photograph made available on 28 March 2017 showing destroyed military hadware amongst the rubble in Kobani, the Kurdish region in the Aleppo Governorate in northern Syria, 26 March 2017. US and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State (IS) of Iraq and Syria, conducting 30 strikes consisting of 72 engagements against ISIS targets 27 March 2017, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported on 28 March 2017.  EPA/STRINGER

KOBANI / Reuters

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 predominately 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 United States.
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 Raqqa, 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.

HIGH PRICE
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.
Residents say they willingly paid the price of defeating IS and are grateful for US help in the victory. But the price was high, in terms of lives and destruction. Shereen Hassan was among the first fighters killed defending Kobani, which was under siege from IS for four months. Family members learned of her death when
they tried to call her and IS militants
answered her phone.
“They said: ‘We’ve killed your daughter and we’re posting a picture of her head on Facebook’,” Hassan’s brother Ednan Hassan said at their home. The image was
later posted, showing a grinning militant holding the 19-year-old’s severed head.
Fighters are buried in a military cemetery on the edge of town where yellow YPG flags flutter above gravestones. Portraits of dead Kurdish fighters dot the walls of the local administration and hang from rows of lamp posts.
The violence did not end completely when the battle for Kobani was won. In June 2015, months after IS was defeated in the town, the group launched a raid that killed nearly 150 people there including 11 members of Hassan’s family.
Such experiences have militarised society and the small scale of aid leaves people unwilling to rely on outside help.

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