BEIRUT (AP) – With more than a thousand militants killed and territory slipping away, the Islamic State group is losing its grip on the Syrian border town of Kobani under intense U.S.-led airstrikes and astonishingly stiff resistance by Kurdish fighters.
It is a stunning reversal for the Islamic State group, which just months ago stood poised to conquer the entire town – and could pierce a carefully crafted image of military strength that helped attract foreign fighters and spread horror across the Middle East.
“An IS defeat in Kobani would quite visibly undermine the perception of unstoppable momentum and inevitable victory that IS managed to project, particularly after it captured Mosul,” said Faysal Itani, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, referring to the militants’ seizure of Iraq’s second-largest city during its blitz into Iraq from Syria last summer.
It would also rob the group of a “psychological edge that both facilitated recruitment and intimidated actual and potential rivals, as well as the populations IS controlled,” Itani said.
In September, Islamic State fighters began capturing some 300 Kurdish villages near Kobani and thrust into the town itself, occupying nearly half of it. Tens of thousands of refugees spilled across the border into Turkey.