USA and Western allies were pressuring Turkey to help Kurdish town of Syria, Kobani, against ISIS assault. The airstrikes by USA are not enough to stop the ISIS. The Turkish government decided to act, but against Kurds and not ISIS.
The fight of Kobani shows the mess we have decided to jump into. Turkey has refused to join the coalition because it considers Kurds, Assad and ISIS its enemies and wants USA to act against all of them and not just ISIS. The USA wants to focus only on ISIS and wants to forget previous conflicts with Iran, Assad and PKK. USA has declared long ago PKK, Turkish Kurds organization fighting for independence, as terrorist organization. The Kobani Kurdish army( P.Y.D an affiliate of PKK) has been fighting along with Syrian Army of President Assad against the Syrian rebels. The Turkey is happy to see its two enemies, Kurds and ISIS, kill each other and see no need to intervene.
President Obama hosted today a meeting of top military brass of 60 countries to organize a strategy against ISIS. Shadi Hamid, a Middle East expert says in Washington post” “The coalition partners have very different conceptions about the regional order and don’t even agree on what the primary threat is,” he said. “You have all these different actors who want different things and in some cases also strongly dislike each other.”
In many regards, the corrupt States surrounding the ISIS territory may not be any better than the ISIS itself. In many of these states beheadings and other human rights violations is a routine. Why protect them ? Let it play out itself and we should get out of there.
Justin Logan argues in Politico that Middle East does not much matters and writes “Nonetheless, three fears have turned this small, poor, weak region into the central focus of U.S. foreign policy: oil, Israel and terrorism. Each of these concerns merits attention, but nowhere near the amount they have received over the last several decades. And certainly, none of them calls for the sort of forward-deployed interventionism both Republicans and Democrats favor”
The seismic eruptions that engulf muslim countries from the mediterranean, noth africa, Eurasia to south asia pose some heart rending policy choices with no short term solutions. The festering Shia-Sunni divide has unleashed tribal, ethnic and regional rivalries to levels of violence and displacement of populations not seen since World War II. The UN estimates more than 56 million internally and externally displaced people. This mass of suffering humanity has global repercussions. While such levels of insanity have no short-term antidotes the rest of the world cannot be oblivious. The US and NATO power are not able to stem the tide but they still have no choice but try and prevent the excesses posed by the psychotic militancies from seizing the battlefield advantages. The example that comes to mind is the Balkan conflict and the US bombings of Serbia to prevent the wholesale obliteration of muslims. The global pressure should also be directed upon Saudi Arabia and Iran to reach theological accomodtions to try to end the age old conflicts. It is the moral and strategic responsibility of both these so-called guardians of the fait to tamp down the religious rages they have helped unleash. Kobani is just one site in an expanding conflict that will surely engulf their national boundaries as well.