The Kurds beat ISIS in Kobani, but there's not much Kobani left

Peter Weber, The Week US's avatar
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(Image credit: BBC/YouTube)

The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and their peshmerga allies handed Islamic State a decisive, humiliating defeat when they pushed ISIS out of the Syria-Turkey border town of Kobani. But "victory seems to have come at the price of the town itself," say Ayla Albayrak and Joe Parkinson at The Wall Street Journal, in their dispatch from Kobani:

Streets lie in ruins. Water and power systems are shattered. Decaying corpses of jihadist fighters remain, some stripped of footwear and clothing, and one still swaddled in a suicide vest. Thousands of people died, and another 200,000 remain refugees across the border in Turkey. [Wall Street Journal]

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Peter Weber, The Week US
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.