Islamic State versus Syrian Regime

Authorities in Kurdistan's capital, Irbil, the largely autonomous Iraqi region, have authorized peshmerga forces to travel to Syria to aid Syrian Kurds in close combat with Islamic State jihadis in the Syrian border town of Kobani. This deployment is contingent on whether Turkey will make good on its grudging promise of assent to enable the peshmerga troops travelling overland through Turkey to cross into Syria.

While Recep Tayyip Erdogan has personally communicated with his Maker to ensure that he sets aside a special place in Hell for Turkish and Syrian Kurds, his country appears to enjoy relaxed trade relations with Iraqi's Kurds, so an exception may be made to enable Syrian Kurds to survive the Islamic State encirclement of Kobani which lies about 450 kilometres west of the Turkish-Iraqi border crossing of Habur.

 

Kurds at a cemetery Tuesday mourn three fighters who died in clashes with Islamic State in Suruc, Turkey, near the Syrian border. Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images 

 

The violent protests that have broken out in Turkey, among Turkey's Kurdish minority over Ankara's refusal to lend aid in any form whatsoever to Syrian Kurds defending their city may have given the government pause to reconsider. That, and the obvious lowering of esteem in which Turkey is now held throughout the Middle East, by the United States, and within NATO.

After all, the Islamic State continues to distinguish itself by its horrendous attacks against defenceless Iraqis. It has renewed its assaults against the Yazidis in Iraq, as an example, who have once again appealed to the international community where thousands of Yazidis have been cut off in their refuge on Mount Sinjar. "There are hundreds of families on the mountain. We are asking for urgent assistance to avert another massacre", warned Vian Dakheel, a Yazidi lawmaker int he Iraqi parliament.

As a Yazidi, Mr. Dakheel may be part of the Iraqi governing body, but he obviously knows that he cannot appeal to the government of which he is a part to dispatch troops in defence of his people. The inept, incapable Iraqi military, even with the assistance of the Iranian special al-Quds force and irregular Shiite militias is hard put to defend Baghdad; U.S.-alliance airstrikes included.
As for Mount Sinjar where desperate Yazidis fled when their towns and cities below were invaded by ISIS, it's unlikely U.S. airstrikes will be deployed there when they've been diverted to Syria.

The U.S. and its allies have announced that air and missile strikes in the past month have destroyed over 500 jihadists. The U.S.-led air campaign against ISIS has resulted in at least 464 of their members killed, with an additional 57 belonging to the Nusra Front. A modest success, though the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims the number to be higher, and among them 32 civilian deaths, struck by the allied air strikes on non-military ISIS facilities.

What remains a constant and a dreadful reality in Syria, however, is that horrific as the Islamic State atrocities have been -- and they are undeniably barbaric -- the majority of the war crimes in that country continue to be committed by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. The focus by the U.S. and its allies on destroying the ISIS advance is hugely beneficial to the Syrian regime, giving it impunity and immunity from response to its crimes.

This, though confirmation of its atrocities ongoing against its own Sunni population appeared in a special UN report damning the regime. Though the report spelled out in excruciating detail the regime's mounting responsibility for the Syrian death toll nothing has since changed. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, leading the UN investigative panel on Syria claimed to have "run out of words to depict the gravity of the crimes committed inside Syria."

Making allusion to the beheadings of three western hostages (James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines) by the Islamic State, he emphasized that countless other Syrian civilians had been subjected to quite similar brutality and public executions at the hands of the regime, realities based on eyewitness testimonials from Syrians. While women  remain vulnerable to abuse by the Islamist terrorists, the regime "remains responsible for the majority of the civilian casualties, killing and maiming scores of civilians daily".

The situation as it stands today is that the United States and its allies have been focusing on denying Islamic State jihadists their opportunity to amass greater territory and in the process slaughter even more unfortunates than have already been killed. In so doing, they make a regrettable and seemingly unavoidable common cause with the Syrian regime, which has suffered no penalties whatever for its atrocities committed against its own civilian populations.

Civilians who have been and continue to be slaughtered by the regime, through indiscriminate shelling and barrel bombings, to shootings and summary executions by soldiers and pro-government militiamen. Any protesters, anti-government civilians, Sunnis captured or arrested by the regime are subjected to torture, denied sustenance for prolonged periods, and female prisoners regularly raped.
The failure of the international community to intervene is its collective shame.

While focus is on the dreadful depredations committed by the fanatical Islamic State, the Syrian regime has come out a major beneficiary, and it has utterly escaped facing justice for the massacres it has perpetrated on its population.