Kurds savor victory over ISIL in Syria

Lucy Kafanov | Special for USA TODAY

AKCAKALE, Turkey — In the war against the Islamic State, few Syrian fighting factions have proved as effective as Syrian Kurds known as the YPG. But Kurdish military officials expressed reluctance Thursday to use their newfound momentum to launch an offensive against the militants in their home base.

Aided by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and a small group of Syrian rebel allies, the Kurds on Tuesday declared full control over Tal Abyad on the Syrian-Turkish border, which had been under Islamic State control for more than a year. It was a double victory: The Kurds cut the militants' main smuggling route to their de facto capital in Raqqa, Syria, and connected two isolated Kurdish enclaves.

A Kurdish-led push deeper into territory held by the militants, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is not imminent.

"We do not have any plans to attack ISIS in Raqqa," YPG commander and spokesman Redur Xelil said by telephone in Tal Abyad. "ISIS suffered a major defeat from us, but they are still a danger because they hold a lot of territory in Syria and Iraq. Our priority right now is to defend the areas in Kurdish control."

A similar Kurdish-led force ousted the militants from the border town of Kobani this year after a prolonged siege. Combined, the battlefield gains have helped the Kurds consolidate a 250-mile stretch of territory on the Syrian-Turkish border.

"This is a significant victory because it shows that ISIS can lose territory after Kobani, but it remains to be seen whether the Kurds will be able to hold this territory," said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

It's unclear whether the gains will be sustained without air power from a U.S.-led coalition, which supports ground forces battling Islamic State militants around the town. Four of the six coalition airstrikes in Syria on Wednesday were in Tal Abyad, according to the latest U.S. Central Command statistics.

"The air power played a significant role in tipping the scale in our favor," said Kani Xulam, director of the American Kurdish Information Network. "This is hopefully the beginning of the end of the Islamic State."

The fight for Tal Abyad sent more than 23,000 Syrian refugees into Turkey over the past two weeks. Most have spread across Akcakale, a dusty Turkish sister town of Tal Abyad. Some refugees said they were forced out of their homes by Kurdish YPG forces, a sign of increasing ethnic tensions between the Kurds and their Arab neighbors.

That dynamic is one of the reasons why the YPG won't make a major push southward into Islamic State strongholds, said Michael Stephens, director of the Royal United Services Institute in Qatar. "The Kurds don't see it as their historic territory, they're not interested in it, and they know that it's an area where they will have limited influence," he said.

Besides, Stephens said, the Islamic State may have lost one battle, but it is hardly ready to fall. "ISIS is nowhere near on its last legs. It's a step in right direction, but this is a ladder that could be 1,000 steps high while we are only on step 20. It is not the beginning of the end of ISIS."