Why Islamic State Wants to Conquer a Kurdish Border Town
By Piotr Zalewski September 25, 2014
On Thursday morning, the shelling around the Syrian city of Ayn al-Arab could be heard from the Turkish side of the border. For a week, the forces of Islamic State, the radical fundamentalist Sunni Muslim army, had swept through the northern edge of Syria, pushing more than a hundred thousand refugees into neighboring Turkey. By late Wednesday, they were within a few miles of Ayn al-Arab, besieging it from the east, west, and south. In an attempt to relieve the city’s defenders, the U.S. and its allies have been staging airstrikes on Islamic State installations 20 miles outside the town.
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