Kobane Diary: 4 Days Inside The City Under ISIS Attack

Heysam Mislim is from Kobane/Kobani.

Hey decided to stay with his people in the city as the ISIS onslaught began.

In this newsweek article he describes the lives of the defenders and the ordinary folk who refused to leave the besieged city.

An interesting read for anybody wanting to know some of the realities of this conflict between the Kurdish people and ISIS.

Kobane Diary

Many people who bring medicines and other supplies from Turkish Kurdistan are risking their lives because the Turkish government closed the border crossings and the Turkish border guards do not hesitate to shoot Kurdish civilians. Turkish border guards also arrested 158 Kurdish civilians of Kobane today after they tried to cross the border into northern Kurdistan (Turkey). They are now held as prisoners in the border village of Ali Kur. I talked to one girl among those arrested because she still secretly has her phone and she said that the Turkish soldiers have threatened to deport them back to ISIS-controlled areas of Kobane. The soldiers have told them that they should have evacuated Kobane long ago and that they are now considered illegal smugglers because the Turkish government no longer accepts refugees from Kobane. So this was my besieged city today. It is alive still, pretty defiant in the face of all these sorts of pressures, embargoes and terror attacks coming from all sides. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

I counted the bodies of nine dead ISIS gunmen on the ground, and one YPG fighter told me that they had killed them in an ambush earlier in the morning when the gunmen had advanced, unaware that the YPG fighters were stationed inside the demolished buildings.

Sali was sitting outside the Democratic Union Party (PYD) headquarters holding his gun in one hand and smoking a cigarette in the other. He appeared very sad and I had never seen him so down. He told me that he has been informed that gunmen had beheaded his 74-year-old grandfather who was a farmer and had refused to leave his home in the village of Pinar, in the outskirts of Kobane. He said his cousins and uncles are now in Turkey and they rang him to confirm the tragedy because ISIS published photos of his beheaded grandfather on the internet.

The resolve of the fighters who remain in Kobane to fit the scum that is dubbed "ISIS" is something to be commended (such an understatement).....

When I read accounts like this, THAT is the ONLY thing that brings hope, otherwise it is nothing but sadness and horror and it downright sickens me.

I was musing about this when I shared this link on my fb a few minutes ago after reading the story. I'm out of words so I will just share it here....

As I sit, sipping coffee in the comfort of my bed....laptop laying on my lap, I read this vivid account and all I feel is shame. Ashamed....Ashamed of my country...ashamed of this government that claims to speak for me, with my tax dollars. Ashamed that the foreign policy of my nation helped create this situation. Ashamed of the lies....Ashamed, knowing that the tax dollars provided by all of us are killing people in distant lands. Ashamed knowing that we sit back, the "social pundits" of our day, analyzing, opining, speculating.....all the while the truth of the situation lost in the "fog of war"..... There is nothing but sadness here. Nothing but lose. All the veracity and morale of a people determined to survive, no matter how commendable, cannot hide the shame....it cannot hide the horror. All that any could say cannot stop what I feel....without feeling. Strange how that works. So detached, without emotion, it seems so far away.....yet so real, so close, so.......emotional. The human race is a disgrace.....we were born and bred to do nothing but self-destruct, save the ability to pretend that "there is beauty"....all the while actively working to destroy it, be it consciously or on some strange, subconscious level. How can one turn a blind eye to all this (and so much more) and even smile? How can one not be jaded by this? How is it possible, IF it is possible, not to feel hopelessness? What is "faith"? How does one obtain that? Oh, how I wish I had faith, in something.....in ANYthing! Despondent, dissociative, disheartened, and disillusioned.....it is all I take away from reading these types of accounts. ............and yet I have the ability to "turn it off".....to "tune it out"....to "make play" like it isn't real. To live my life free from this type of suffering. How is that fair? How did I end up with this life while so many suffer?...........................Sometimes, sometimes I feel like the lone survivor of some horrible plane crash, always questioning WHY I am the lone survivor. Always questioning, how did I end up here and so many others with some much more "spirit" than myself end up in such forced suffering, living it atrocious conditions seeing and surviving repugnant and atrocious things.....unspeakable things. It isn't fair...... Where is your god? .....your God turned "his" back on this place long ago. In every real sense of the phrase......your God is dead. Only evil remains, sometimes masking as beauty only to keep us attached here....to feed on us, like vampires they do. My words here aren't articulate......it matters not. What is to be said that can turn beautiful the horrors of mans' work? There are none.....there is nothing that can be said. Only the ramblings of those far into the distance, wishing desperately that this world wasn't what it is......Only ramblings of one who is sometimes at a lose for words because the emotions don't fit the mind's state..... ....the mind says "this is horrible".....the emotions say, "I cannot feel".....I have long ceased feeling, for it is painful and the only escape is to retreat from the emotions themselves. It is pure, plain, simple survival, that is all it is....I do NOT kid myself! .....Oh how I wish I was blind.....I wish_I_was_blind

a reply to: seabhac-rua

Dang!
I just come back around to this thread to lurk and see how the conversation had progressed since this morning.
Apparently this was posted at a bad time or it got buried in the "ebola is going to kill each and every one of us" million thread flood.

I am surprised more aren't interested in this.
This was a very insightful, well written account that details the human aspects as well as describes the fighting very vividly.

I think more here would enjoy reading this so I am commenting to bum this thread again. Hopefully, given the time of day, it will get more attention as it makes the rounds through the recent posts this time.

a reply to: Jakal26

Hey Jakal26, cheers man!

I just posted this for people to read I guess, I found it very interesting.

I've been paying a lot of attention to this battle, I'm not really sure why. I just find it appalling the way the Kurdish people who live in Kobane are being treated, and how their fate hangs in the balance.

I also find it very inspiring, their fierce courage in the face of such a terrifying outcome is astounding to me.

a reply to: seabhac-rua

I found it very interesting as well. It brought closer to home something that I hope to never experience. It was a well done piece.

I also find it very inspiring, their fierce courage in the face of such a terrifying outcome is astounding to me.

As do I.
Something I noted while browsing through the pictures within the report....the smiles on some of those embattled faces. They may not have been much but they speak volumes about the tenacity of the people behind them. Their determination not to be forced through fear, out of their homes and into becoming refugees without a place to go. Their ability to smile in the face of what most be terrifying and indescribably saddening is something that commands my respect. It is why I found the article so gripping. Determination and grit that walks the talk (because it IS necessary and is the only option save death or what amounts to death, in the end) is something would should all respect, look to as a source of hope and as a lesson to log and learn, something we should teach our children of.....it is something lacking in this world today, determination and grit.....but it is alive an well in some, and that gives me a glimmer of hope even when all looks to be covered by a vast black facade.

I rarely get emotional while researching, reading about, and reporting on war and the like. I have that luxury sitting here playing commentator from the comfort of my bed and my warm house. These people do not have that same luxury. Many around the world will NEVER have that luxury, even once.....and I think about this and I become emotional.
Well written pieces like this bring that emotion to the forefront.....it takes a lot when one has exposed ones self to this stuff for as long as some of us have. Desensitization is a very real effect and I have been jaded by it.....but then I read this and I know that it isn't that I don't care, it is that I am just too detached and need intimate accounts like this to "bring it home" to me......

....this did.
Again, thanks for sharing this here....I have shared it everywhere that I interact and share online. I hope that others drag from the text within that article what I have. Maybe then discussions revolving around this type of thing could transcend the expected, tired old, politically styled talking points and focus more on the human aspects and the human toll that ALL war has on the common man.

a reply to: Jakal26

One star is not worthy of your post.

Well said, and 100% agreed!!

Great stuff. Thanks for sharing.

With regards to lack of feedback, I am guessing two things. First, any one who would have normally replied must have got the Ebola and are now incapacitated. Second, the story has a complex background. I would argue so complex it dissolves into something past tragic. Most folks will just shake their head and hope for the best for the people caught in the middle.