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 The Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga were on their way to help fellow Kurds
defend Kobani in a battle that has assumed huge significance in the
United States' campaign to "degrade and destroy" the hardline
Islamist insurgency.
It is unclear whether the small but heavily armed contingent of
peshmerga will be enough to swing the battle, but the deployment is
a potent display of unity between Kurdish groups that more often
seek to undermine each other.
The unified front is being forged as Kurds emerge as the West's most
trusted and effective partner on the ground in both Iraq and Syria.
But preserving that unity be tricky, given the competing ambitions
for leadership of the world's more than 30 million Kurds, the
majority of whom are Sunni Muslim, but who tend to identify more
strongly with their ethnicity than religion.
Governments in each of the four countries across which they are
spread - Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran - have tended to exploit
internal Kurdish divisions to thwart their aspirations for
independence.
"We all want the Kurdish people to be united," said 33-year old
Ayyoub Sheikho, who fled Kobani last month and is now living in a
newly pitched row of tents at a refugee camp in Iraq's Kurdistan
region. "If we don't unite we will be trampled on."
Fuad Hussein, the Kurdistan president's chief of staff, said Islamic
State had "destroyed the borders".
"It is the same terrorist organization that attacks in (the Iraqi
towns of) Khanaqin in Jalawla in Mosul in Kirkuk but also in
(Syrian) Kobani, so this created a feeling of solidarity among the
Kurds," he told Reuters.
NATIONAL IDENTITY
The deployment of peshmerga to Kobani illustrates the unprecedented
degree of cooperation that has emerged between Kurdish groups across
borders since Islamic State overran a third of Iraq this summer and
proclaimed a caliphate straddling the frontier with Syria.
When Islamic State targeted Iraqi Kurdistan in August, fighters from
the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) descended from mountain bases on
the Turkey-Iraq border to help blunt the offensive.
Around the same time, fighters from a Syrian Kurd group that has
surged to prominence during the civil war there -- the People's
Protection Units (YPG) -- crossed into Iraq to save thousands of
minority Yazidis from death at the hands of Islamic State militants
who had torn through the peshmerga's defenses.
Kurds from Iran have also been fighting alongside peshmerga forces
in Iraqi Kurdistan.
"Kurds today are more unified than ever before, and even if they
were to take a few steps back, they will still be much further ahead
than they were six months ago,” said Henri Barkey, a former State
Department official who now teaches at Lehigh University in the
United States. "The upshot of all of this is a consolidation of
Kurdish national identity".
STRETCHED
If Kobani were to fall, officials in Iraqi Kurdistan say they fear a
domino effect on Syria's two other Kurdish "cantons", precipitating
a fresh wave of refugees into the autonomous region, already
struggling to accommodate more than 1 million people displaced by
violence within Iraq.
It would also boost the morale of Islamic State in Iraq, where the
peshmerga have been regaining ground in the north since U.S. air
strikes began in August.
Nevertheless, some question why Iraqi Kurds have deployed peshmerga
abroad when they are still stretched at home, and have yet to win
back all the territory they let slip.
The decision to reinforce Kobani was made under intense popular
pressure from Kurds worldwide.
Barzani's efforts to extend his influence across the border into
Syria have been repeatedly frustrated by the Democratic Union Party
(PYD), the political wing group of the YPG militia, which has
emerged as the dominant Kurdish force there.
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Rival Syrian Kurdish parties backed by Barzani have looked
increasingly irrelevant by comparison. The U.S. government held its
first publicly acknowledged meeting with the PYD in October and the
YPG says it has been coordinating air strikes with the U.S. military
during the Kobani campaign. Relations between the Kurds in Iraq
and Syria have been rocky.
Hundreds of Syrian Kurds trained under Barzani's auspices in
northern Iraq, but the PYD refused to let them back in, saying its
own YPG militia was the only legitimate armed force.
In turn, PYD leaders were denied entry to Iraqi Kurdistan, and,
earlier this year, the regional government dug a trench along its
frontier with Syria, citing concerns about Islamic State
infiltration.
The PYD said that was a clear attempt to throttle its nascent
administration, which the Iraqi Kurds did not officially recognize
until this month.
But, in another sudden sign of unity, the Syrian PYD -- which some
say has been tarnished by its association the Turkish militant group
PKK -- struck a power-sharing deal with other Syrian factions last
week, a move aimed at least in part to improve its image abroad.
COMMANDER IN CHIEF
As the peshmerga convoy departed Iraqi Kurdistan for Turkey, en
route to Kobani, Kurds held aloft framed portraits of Barzani and
his father, Mullah Mustafa, revered as a pillar of Kurdish
nationalism. Some prostrated themselves in the road.
By deploying the peshmerga -- of which he is commander in chief --
to Kobani now, Barzani is boosting his credentials as a
transnational leader of the Kurds and their interlocutor with the
West.
A senior member of a rival party in Iraqi Kurdistan said the move
would also help boost Barzani's popularity after setbacks on the
battlefield this summer, and mend some of the political damage
inflicted by his perceived over-reliance on Turkey, which failed the
Kurds in their time of need.
Turkey is one of Iraqi Kurdistan's closest political and economic
allies, yet Ankara fears that if Syria's Kurds follow the example
set by their brethren in Iraq and seek an independent state in
northern Syria, it could embolden Kurdish militants in Turkey and
derail a fragile peace process.
Turkey's reluctance to support the fight against Islamic State over
the border in Syria enraged its own Kurdish minority, complicated
efforts to provide aid to Kobani and meant negotiations to enable
the passage of the peshmerga through Turkish territory were delicate
and complex.
Rival groups' links to different regional powers, remain a threat to
Kurdish unity, according to Maria Fantappie, Iraq analyst with
International Crisis Group.
"I see this as a temporary convergence of interest more than lasting
realignment," she said. "Beside ideological differences dividing KDP
(Barzani's party) and PYD, these two parties' regional ties, with
Turkey and Iran respectively, remain the largest impediment to the
formation of a united Kurdish front."
(Editing by Michael Georgy and Robin Pomeroy)
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