ISIL meets its Stalingrad

Medium.com:

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It’s not over—far from it. But it appears the People’s Protection Units, or YPG—the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party—has held the line. The jihadists are still in control of small parts of the city, but have apparently abandoned their biggest gains.

To gain the advantage, the Kurds had to negate Islamic State’s strengths in maneuverability and firepower, which the terror group augmented with captured American weapons. This meant digging in for an extended urban battle of attrition. Hundreds of fighters have died on both sides.

The United States played an important role in Kobani’s defense—sending heavy bombers to destroy Islamic State’s long-range weapons and carrying out precision strikes just yards away from Kurdish troops.

Yet it’s a strange, out-of-the-way place for a decisive battle. A confluence of events resulted in Kobani becoming a survival struggle for Syria’s Kurds as well as a symbolic battle between the United States, Islamic State, Turkey and Kurdish communists inside Turkey who want to overthrow the Turkish government.

For Islamic State, the campaign along the Turkish border is an important test of the group’s ability to seize and hold territory. It’s also an existential battle for Syria’s northern Kurds. If they lose, they could have choice but to surrender their homeland—and Islamic State could massacre anyone left behind.
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There is much more.

The Kurds are about the only ground force that has effectively resisted the aggression of ISIL.  Their defeat of the ISIL forces in Kobani is bad for that groups recruiting and fund raising.  The author of this piece notes that their strategy has been aimed more at rural and somall villages where they encouter little resistance.  But in attacking the Kurdish city they found resistance and they found out that air strikes can also impede their actions.