U.S. and allied forces aren’t in position to prevent fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria from capturing the Syrian border town of Kobani, although coalition bombing has helped keep the extremist group at bay, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
“I think we all should be steeling ourselves for that eventuality, yes,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said, noting that there are no plans to stage a humanitarian relief mission to save the town because efforts by the U.S.-led coalition are focused on degrading the Islamic State’s strategic capabilities inside Syria.
Kurdish fighters holding the town got a break Wednesday as airstrikes by U.S. and Emirati aircraft helped them push back the extremists. But Kirby said any effort to break the siege would require allied ground forces, which currently aren’t available inside Syria.
President Obama’s strategy calls for training 12,000 to 15,000 moderate Syrian rebels, but Kirby said Wednesday that it would be at least five months before that process even begins.
“In Syria right now we just don’t have a ground force that we can work with,” he said.
The fate of Kobani, which sits on Syria’s border with Turkey between areas controlled by the Islamic State, is seen as a test of whether Obama’s strategy is working in Syria. Though bombing by the U.S.-led coalition has helped Kurdish fighters hold the town, the fighting has exposed a fault line between Washington and Turkey, a key U.S. ally.
Turkish troops have massed on the border within easy striking distance of the town, but Ankara has held back, demanding that the coalition’s strategy for Syria include a plan to get rid of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Turkish officials also are concerned about the reported presence among the Kurdish fighters of the PKK, a Kurdish guerrilla group that has battled Ankara for autonomy.
Officials in Ankara, meanwhile, are upset that Washington has declined to create a safe haven in northern Syria to ease the crush of refugees flowing into Turkey, which now number 1.5 million.
Kirby, like other U.S. officials, declined to criticize Ankara’s stance, saying: “We want every member of the coalition to contribute what they can. We’re not making demands of them.”
