How the Media’s Focus on Kobani Obscures the War in Syria

How the Media’s Focus on Kobani Obscures the War in Syria

Kerry’s ignorance is simply astounding
The Jew killers
Assad Must Go Dead or Alive

Source: The Mashable – by Emily Feldman (How the Media’s Focus on Kobani Obscures the War in Syria)

As the world’s attention is gripped by the Islamic State’s advance on the small Kurdish town of Kobane in northeastern Syria, other towns in Syria are being overrun by forces loyal to the dictator Bashar al-Assad largely without notice.

Though local journalists and activists have tried to draw attention to a mounting crisis in the key city of Aleppo, they have not managed to raise the sort of interest now fixed on Kobani which is located near the Turkish border.

“There is a massive campaign from the regime to lay siege to Aleppo,” said Rami Zayat, a journalist in Aleppo who has been sounding the alarm about the threats to his city for months.

Adding to the troubles for the resistance, ISIS began capturing areas north and east of the city this summer, making it harder to defend Aleppo as the Western-backed fighters are increasingly spread thin.

From the front lines, Zayat sent off photos and dispatches, hoping to raise awareness of the dire situation there. Yet, to the frustration of Zayat and other opposition supporters, the crisis in Aleppo has received just a spattering of media attention. The recent round-the-clock coverage of ISIS’s assault on Kobani — made possible by the easier access to that city — has only added to the activists’ frustration.

“Kobani was a peaceful, safe, secure town. No one ever thought it would fall, so it’s not wrong that they have received attention,” Zayat said. “But journalists and newspapers and news agencies are like rivers to Kobani now and it’s just ridiculous because the same thing has happened to dozens of cities more [strategically] important than Kobani.”

Kobani, a predominately Kurdish town of about 400,000 people, has been under attack since mid-September. Fighters from ISIS are surrounding the city on three sides, their tanks, heavy weapons and even flags visible from the Turkish border where news crews are watching the fighting unfold from a hilltop, dubbed ‘the hill of shame.’

Whereas the high risk of kidnapping and death has deterred many news organizations from sending crews into Syria, Kobani’s proximity to Turkey has allowed news crews and even amateurs to share clear footage of the fighting.

From the safety of Turkish soil, crews have been able to provide live coverage of the drama unfolding around Kobani—residents fleeing, missiles flying, coalition aircraft circling overhead—giving many viewers their first look at the fighting in Syria.

The conflict has also opened old wounds in neighboring Turkey where members of its own Kurdish minority have demanded their government intervene. Adding to the complexity of the situation, street violence has flared up in some Turkish cities, testing the country’s shaky path toward peace with an outlawed Kurdish militant group linked to those defending Kobani.

So far, fighters defending Kobani have managed to keep ISIS from fully capturing the town, avoiding the dark fate that has befallen other parts of the country and large swaths of neighboring Iraq.

A 24-year-old activist in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ez-Zor remembers the day in August when the radical fighters from ISIS took his hometown, Mayadeen. Nearby oil refineries were captured and hundreds of thousands of civilians were subjected to the brutal rule of the Islamic State.

“I saw how the tanks shelled populated neighborhoods and how they were shooting the wounded in ambulances,” said the activist who spoke on condition that only his nickname, Khaled Alsaleh, be used. ISIS has cracked down hard on those who have spoken out against them.

Compared to the international outrage prompted by the attacks on Kobani, the silence as Mayadeen fell was deafening: There were no prime-time statements from U.S. officials and other world leaders who have commented on the siege of the Kurdish city.

“I thought help would come to us and [for] the United States to be at the forefront,” Alsaleh said.

Since Mayadeen fell, the city has largely gone dark, with media coverage dropping as the risk has mounted for both journalists and activists. Alsaleh, however, is defiant — perhaps because of what he has already seen.

“I’ve considered myself dead since I was sent to a Syrian prison,” Alsaleh said, referring to his four-month detention in 2012 for demonstrating and tweeting against the regime.

As a smaller demonstration of his contempt for ISIS, Alsaleh lit a cigarette. “Forbidden,” he said, flashing a smile.

The advance of ISIS and Assad’s regime forces have been keenly felt by the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, which has lost many fighters in its battles against both enemies.

An FSA official who spoke on condition of anonymity expressed frustration about the lack of sustained media attention.

“We have lost big parts of Syria at the hands of the regime and ISIS terrorists,” he said. “Now there is a lot of international attention on Kobani. Why didn’t we see this attention when Raqqa was falling? We lost many of our fighters against ISIS in Deir Ez-Zor. Brave fighters no one supported in the fight against ISIS. And

Still, he sees a possible benefit to the proliferation of news from Kobani. If presented as a microcosm of a much larger conflict, the Kobani focus could shift international attention to the wider Syrian war.

“We hope that these cameras will show that this is not the first,” he said. “We have suffered this in many other areas. The people who are fighting now in northeast Aleppo are suffering the same.”

How the Media’s Focus on Kobani Obscures the War in Syria

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