Kurdish fighters in Syria on the march

While Iraqi army falters, peshmerga forces backed by air strikes push back Islamic State

BEIRUT — In contrast to the Iraqi army’s failures, Kurdish fighters in Syria are on the march against the Islamic State group, capturing towns and villages in an oil-rich swath of the country’s northeast under the cover of U.S.-led air strikes.

As the Kurds close in on Tel Abyad, a major commercial centre on the Turkish border, their advance highlights the decisive importance of combining air strikes with the presence of a cohesive and motivated ally on the ground — so clearly absent in Iraq.

In Syria, a country now split mostly between al-Qaida-style militants and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, the U.S. and its allies, including Canada, have found a reliable partner in the country’s main Kurdish fighting force, known as the YPG. The peshmerga — the military forces of Iraqi Kurdistan — are moderate, mostly secular fighters, driven by revolutionary fervour and deep conviction in their cause.

Since the beginning of May, they have wrested back more than 200 Kurdish and Christian towns in northeastern Syria, as well as strategic mountains seized earlier by Islamic State. Along the way, they have picked up ammunition, weapons and vehicles left behind by Islamic State fighters.

The push has gotten them closer to Tel Abyad, a major avenue for commerce for the extremist group through which it smuggles foreign fighters and sells black-market oil to help fund its conquests. The city is also a key link between Turkey and the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State group’s de facto capital in its self-declared caliphate.

“The YPG doesn’t lack a will to fight, like soldiers in the Syrian army, or soldiers in the Iraqi army who mostly fight for a salary,” said Wladimir van Wilgenburg, a Middle East analyst at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington. “The YPG is much more motivated than other forces in the region, and doesn’t lack cohesion and doesn’t have co-ordination problems.

“The YPG is quite ideological, while the Syrian and Iraqi army aren’t very well motivated,” van Wilgenburg added.

The Iraqi military has struggled to make gains after its humiliating defeats last year, when it virtually crumbled in the face of the militant onslaught in northern Iraq. Poor training, corruption and sectarian politics have all been cited as reasons for the military’s shortcomings. The U.S. spent billions of dollars training Iraqi forces from 2003 to 2011, but much of that training did not reach the foot soldiers battling the Islamic State group today.

Last week, U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter criticized the Iraqi army following the fall of Ramadi, the strategic capital of the country’s largest Sunni province of Anbar, saying the Iraqi military lacked the “will to fight.”

Within days, Islamic State fighters had also dealt a major blow to Assad’s forces in Syria, seizing the historic city of Palmyra, a major crossroads linking the capital, Damascus, with territory to the east and west. In images reminiscent of the Iraqi defeat in Ramadi, Syrian soldiers fled the city, leaving behind tanks and ammunition.

By contrast, Syria’s Kurds have shown remarkable cohesiveness.