MS Risk Blog

Understanding Kobane

The battle in Kobane (also spelled ‘Kobani’) is being called “the most decisive battle” in the campaign against ISIS, yet help has been slow to arrive. For weeks the town’s residents have been under siege as ISIS has battles to take control of the region, causing thousands of Syrian refugees to flee into Turkey.

Despite the increasing humanitarian crisis and the consequence of letting Kobanefall into ISIS hands, the town has been omitted from US and coalition strategy. Fighting began in the town on 16 September, and while the US has conducted air-strikes around the town, US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Mid October that “Kobane does not define the strategy for the coalition in respect to [ISIL].” It was only on Sunday that the US began to air-drop weapons and supplies to Kurdish fighters.  Earlier today, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he had been informed that agreement was reached for 200 Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga reinforcements to pass through Turkey to help defend Kobane. It is expected that ISIS will take heavy losses numbering into several hundreds, yet they are prepared to do so.

Kobane’s Importance to ISIS

The fall of Kobane would result in a major strategic win for ISIS for a number of reasons. First, it is a heavily agricultural region. A large percentage of the residents are farmers, and there is significant grain and wheat production. Access to this agricultural resource would be a boon for ISIS, in terms of supporting the population within its own territory and providing another avenue of income.

Second, Kobane sits on the Turkish border with Syria. If ISIS were to capture the town, they would gain a significant and strategic expansion of their territory along the Turkish border. Capture of the region would give ISIS control over a main road that connects Raqqa, the city which headquarters ISIS operations, with Aleppo. Further, it would add an additional border crossing for weapons, supplies, and radicalised fighters to enter into ISIS controlled territory.

Finally, the predominant strategic value of Kobane is that is a majority Kurdish town. An ISIS win at Kobane would weaken the Kurdish resistance. Kobane is one of three administrative cantons of the Syrian Kurds. If it Kobane falls, it will weaken the other cantons which secure Syria’s 1,200 kilometre border with Syria. Effectively, a win in Kobane could potentially allow ISIS to capture full control of the Turkish Border.

Kobane’s Importance to the Kurds

Kobane has become a symbol of Kurdish aspirations for an autonomous state. One analyst states, “Kobane symbolises the Kurdish resistance, not only in Syria but in other parts of the Middle East. Its loss would translate into a defeat for the entire Kurdish nation.”

The Turkish and Syrian Kurdish community remains close in culture, language and proximity. In the early 1900s, Kobane stretched across both Turkey and Syria. In 1921, a border was put in place by Mustafa Kemal, dividing the Kurdish village in two. The demarcation is a railroad that has served as the border between the two nations. Since the siege on the town, over 100,000 refugees from Kobane and other nearby towns have fled to the Turkish side, now called Mursitpinar.

This closeness of Syrian and Turkish Kurds has remained in place. The current crisis has gelled efforts to keep Kobane standing. Over several weeks of fighting, Kobane has resisted falling to ISIS occupation, creating a symbol of resilience against ISIS and hope in the face of others who have denied Kurdish autonomy. Mostafa Minawi, director of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Initiative at Cornell University.”Kobane [now] lies at the heart of a Kurdish dream. It is less connected with history and more connected with future ambitions. Kobane was phase one of the implementation of a wider local-rule model [for both Syria’s and Turkey’s Kurds].”

Kobane’s Importance to Turkey

Despite the threat of an ISIS capture of Kobane and the imminent threat on his border, President Erdogan has appeared slow and reluctant to provide aid to Kurdish fighters. “For Turkey,” one analyst says, “Kobane is essentially a PKK issue.” Erdogan has long opposed the establishment of a Greater Kurdistan, and Ankara has deemed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) a terrorist organization.

Earlier this week, the US delivered air-dropped weapons and medical supplies in Kobane, which were provided by Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government. Erdogan criticized the move. In a statement today, Erdogan criticised the move. In a phone call between Erdogan and US President Barack Obama, Erdogan said, “America did this in spite of Turkey, and I told him Kobani is not currently a strategic place for you. If anything it is strategic for us.”

Several analysts, as well as the Kurdish population have become critical of Erdogan’s intentions. They believe that the Turkish government has purposefully delayed the allowance assistance to Kurdish fighters, allowing ISIS to ‘do the dirty work’ of reducing the gains that Syrian Kurds have made in the power vacuum of the Syrian war. Critics use as evidence Erdogan’s call for the establishment of a buffer zone in Syria, citing it as an attempt to occupy the region.

In fact, Erdogan has used Kobane as a negotiating chip with the PKK. In order for Iraqi Kurds to supply Syrian Kurds with weapons or fighters, their options are to cross through ISIS controlled territory, or go through Turkey. The former is unrealistic; the latter requires permission from the Turkish government, which has been slow coming as Turkey has sought to bolster their position against a Kurdish nation. To this end, peace talks between Kurdish leaders and Turkey have been jeopardised as Kurdish leaders interpret Erdogan’s stance as tacit support for ISIS. Leaders in Ankara deny supporting ISIS but it has become apparent to some analysts that they are using the situation as an opportunity to gain an upper hand with the Kurds.

As a result, Turkey finds itself pressured by the coalition and forced to work in tandem with a group that it opposes. The outcome in Kobane will not only be significant to ISIS, but will have longstanding ramifications for the Kurds in the diaspora and their relationship with Turkey.

WHO Declares Nigeria and Senegal Ebola-Free

With six weeks of no new Ebola cases, on Monday officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Nigeria officially free of Ebola, just three days after officials declared Senegal Ebola-free. While it is a containment victory in an outbreak that continues to rage in three West African countries, both states are not immune from another outbreak however their methods of containment may be used in future outbreaks.

Nigeria

On Monday, officials at the WHO declared Nigeria Ebola-free after six weeks of no new reported cases. For officials to declare the country Ebola-free, Nigeria had to make it 42 days with no new cases, effectively double the incubation period, verify that it actively sought out all possible contacts, and show negative test results for any remaining suspected cases.

Nigeria had a total of twenty cases after a Liberian-American man, Patrick Sawyer, flew into Lagos international airport on July 20 and collapsed shortly afterwards. As Nigeria had no previous screening procedures in place, the deadly virus ultimately killed eight people, a low number in comparison to the thousands of cases and deaths in other countries, with the disease spreading from Lagos to Port Harcourt before it was contained. Amongst those who died was Dr Ameyo Stella Adadevo, who diagnosed Mr Sawyer and who is credited with helping to contain the outbreak at its source. The last reported case in Nigeria, which is Africa’s most populous country, was discovered on 5 September.

Speaking to reporters shortly after the declaration, Nigerian Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu disclosed “its possible to control Ebola. Its possible to defeat Ebola. We’ve seen it here in Nigeria,” adding “if any cases emerge in the future, it will be considered – by international standards – a separate outbreak. If that happens, Nigeria will be ready and able to confront it exactly as we have done with this outbreak.”

Nigeria has won praise for its swift response to the outbreak. With the epidemic raging in Western Africa since March, officials knew that there was a likelihood that a case of Ebola could surface within its borders. This prompted officials to train health care workers on how to manage the disease and to disseminate information across the country about the disease and how it spreads. Shortly after Mr Sawyer’s death, the Nigerian government declared a national public health emergency. This effectively enabled the Ministry of Health to set up its Ebola Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), which is an assembly of public health experts within Nigeria, and which includes officials from the WHO, Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and medical aid groups such as Doctors Without Borders. The EOC was tasked with contact tracing, implementing strict procedures for handling and treating patients, screening all individuals arriving or departing the country by land, air and sea and communicating with the community. Some EOC workers were involved in going door-to-door to offer Ebola-related education while others worked with religious and professional leaders to spread information about the disease. While in the beginning, there had been some misinformation about available cures and rumours circulating across the country, Nigerian officials used social media in order to increase awareness efforts and publicized those patients who had been successfully treated and discharged from hospital. While other regional countries opted to close their borders with those affected countries, Nigeria chose to keep its borders open with Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, indicating that such a move would have been counterproductive. According to Dr Faisal Shuaib of the EOC, “closing borders tends to reinforce panic and the notion of helplessness….When you close the legal points of entry, then you potentially drive people to use illegal passages, thus compounding the problem,” adding that if “public health strategies are implemented, outbreaks can be controlled, and that closing borders would only stifle commercial activities in the countries where economies are already struggling due to Ebola.”

Despite being declared Ebola-free, Nigerian authorities are preparing for any additional outbreaks as the current Ebola epidemic in West Africa is far from over and a spread to additional countries, including Nigeria and Senegal, remains possible. Nigeria has not slowed down its training and preparations for the possibility of more cases, with Dr Shuaib disclosing “outbreak response preparedness is a continuous process that requires constant review of the level of the response mechanisms in place to ensure that the health system is ready to jump into action at all levels.” 

Senegal

On Friday, the WHO declared Senegal, which borders with Guinea, clear of the disease. The agency made the assessment after the West African country went forty-two days, without reporting any new cases. The WHO has commended the Senegalese government’s efforts at preventing the spread of the virus. In late August, Senegal had one confirmed case of Ebola, an imported one from Guinea, which prompted officials to monitor seventy-four contacts of the patient and increase surveillance at the country’s entry points.

In new figures released by the UN health Agency Friday, 4,555 people have died of confirmed, suspected or probable cases of Ebola, with almost all of the deaths occurring in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. A total of 9,216 cases have been reported. An estimated 70% of those infected with the deadly disease have died in those countries. The situation in all three West African countries has continued to worsen, with deaths attributed to the disease on the rise in all three.

Carter Center leaves Egypt as Student Protests Rise

21 October– The Carter Center, a human rights organisation founded by former US President Jimmy Carter has announced that it will close its offices in Egypt due to restrictions on democratic rights. The organization has also stated that it will not send a mission to observe parliamentary elections that are scheduled for later this year.

The organisation has monitored six elections in the country since opening offices in Cairo in 2011. In a statement, Jimmy Carter said, “The current environment in Egypt is not conducive to genuine democratic elections and civic participation.” The Carter Center cited “crackdown on dissidents, opposition groups, and critical journalists, together with heightened restrictions on core freedoms”.

Since July 2013, over 16,000 people have been detained in a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization from which former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi hails. Late in 2013, the organisation was designated as a terrorist group. Hundreds of Brotherhood members, including senior leaders, have been sentenced to death.

In addition to the crackdown on the Brotherhood, the government has imposed a restriction on public gatherings or demonstrations which include more than ten people. Several journalists have also been arrested and imprisoned, some on terrorism related charges for meeting with members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Carter Center assessed that “the political environment is deeply polarised and that political space has narrowed for Egyptian political parties, civil society, and the media. As a result, the upcoming elections are unlikely to advance a genuine democratic transition in Egypt. Both Egyptian civil society and international organisations face an increasingly restrictive environment that hinders their ability to conduct credible election observation.”

The organisation called on Egyptians to work toward ensuring and enhancing the democratic rights of all Egyptians, including the right to participate in political affairs and the fundamental freedoms of association, assembly and expression.

Over the past week, Egyptian students have conducted a series of protests,

Today members of the Students Against the Coup (SAC) alliance, a pro-Muslim Brotherhood organisation, launched a week long “breaking the siege” campaign to protest security forces’ tight grip on university campuses across Egypt. In addition to Egyptian security forces, the government has hired private security companies to prevent political protests or activities on campus.

Students have gathered at Al-Azhar University and at the universities of Alexandria, Damietta, Mansoura, Dakhalia, Ain Shams and Cairo. One student said that the “oppressive methods used by the security forces” were worse than those used during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in 2011. The students in Cairo attempted to march toward Tahrir Square as security forces halted the protest with teargas and rubber bullets. The students have said they will continue their demonstrations.

On Sunday, large numbers of riot police stormed the campus gates at Mansoura University. Students also clashed with personnel from Falcon Security, the privately owned security firm that has been hired to guard 15 universities across Egypt. The SAC branch in Mansoura called the incident “systematic attempts to use violence against students”, using armoured vehicles and riot police. The group added that hold the president of the university responsible for all the attacks.

Since 2013, over 1,000 students have in the crackdown against supporters of former president Mohamed Morsi. Many students have been given extensive prison sentences in a series of mass trials. Over 500 students, accused of “rioting” have been expelled or suspended. Since the start of the academic year on 11 October at least 163 students have been arrested, including 29 students over the past weekend. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression demanded the Egyptian authorities release university students arrested.

Ceasefire Doubts as Reports of Fighting Emerge in Northeastern Nigeria

While on Friday, Nigerian officials disclosed that they had agreed to a ceasefire with Boko Haram militants, adding that schoolgirls kidnapped in April would soon be released, doubts emerged over the weekend as witnesses and security sources reported that government forces had engaged in fighting with the militants.

 On Friday, a senior aide to President Goodluck Jonathan, Hassan Tukur, announced that an agreement to end the hostilities had been reached following talks between Boko Haram and the Nigerian government, with Defence Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Chris Olukolade disclosing that the fate of more than 200 missing schoolgirls, who were abducted by the insurgents six months ago, was still being negotiated. Nigeria’s chief of defence staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, confirmed the truce during a meeting in Abuja between Nigerian and Cameroonian military officials Friday, adding that he had ordered his troops to immediately comply with the agreement.

Many Nigerians however quickly expressed their doubts that the five-year insurgency, which has killed thousands and has left hundreds of thousands homeless, could end with a simple cease-fire. There has also been no immediate confirmation from Boko Haram, with some Nigerians believing that this may simply be a move by the Nigerian government to demonstrate that they are winning the war against the militant group. President Goodluck Jonathan is expected to declare his bid for re-election in the coming weeks and any positive news pertaining to the hostages and the violence would likely give him a much needed political boost. Furthermore, previous government and military claims pertaining to the end of the deadly five-year insurgency, and the fate of the missing girls, have left many cautious. Last year, when a government minister charged with negotiations announced an agreement, Boko Haram quickly released a video with its leader, Abubakar Shekau, denying that an agreement had been reached.

Doubts about the ceasefire were further heightened after witnesses and security sources reported that troops from the 7^th Division of the Nigerian Army fought dozens of suspected Boko Haram militants in the town of Damboa in Borno state on Sunday evening. The militants had earlier attacked that town of Sabon Gida, also in Borno state. Senior army and intelligence officials have also disclosed that they have not yet received any operational orders pertaining to the ceasefire despite Air Marshal Alex Badeh indicating Friday that he had already ordered his troops to comply with the agreement immediately.

IS Reportedly Using Iraqi Pilots to Train Militants to Fly

A UK-based activist group, which is monitoring the conflict in Syria and recent territorial gains by Islamic State (IS), reported Friday that Iraqi pilots who have joined IS are now training IS members in Syria to fly three captured fighter jets.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), witnesses have reported seeing planes being flown around the Al-Jarrah military airport, which is located east of the contested city of Aleppo. Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the SOHR, disclosed Friday that IS militants were using Iraqi officers, who were pilots under ex-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, to train fighters in Syria. He added, “people saw the flights, they went up many times from the airport and they are flying in the skies outside the airport and coming back.”

While it remains unknown just how many Iraqi pilots have defected and what the trainees’ previous level of familiarity with flight is, it is known that IS has three planes in its possession, which they captured earlier on the ground in Aleppo and Raqqa.

If IS is indeed using Iraqi pilots to train its fighters, such a move could have a major impact on global security, and could see the militant group attempt to hijack planes in Europe and the United States. With officials in Europe already warning that a number of EU nationals have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside IS militants, the jihadist group could be training militants with EU passports on how to hijack planes and carryout terrorist attacks similar to 9/11.

Meanwhile Iraqi forces have launched an attack on IS militants stationed near Tikrit. The Iraqi government reported Friday that its troops have gained ground to the northern and western regions of Tikrit, effectively cutting an important IS supply route. The city is amongst those areas that were seized by IS in Syria and Iraq earlier this year.

Kurdish forces, backed by US-led air strikes, are continuing to fight the militants in the northern Syrian town of Kobane. On Friday, US-led warplanes targeted jihadists attacking Kobane as Pentagon officials disclosed that despite a recent wave of deadly bombings in Baghdad, there was no imminent threat to the capital city.

Pentagon officials announced Friday that despite recent advances made by the militant group to the west of Baghdad, IS was not poised for an assault on the capital city. The battle for the town of Kobane has been seen as a major test for the US-led coalition’s air campaign and whether it will be able to successfully push back the militant group.