Syrian Kurds approach Islamic State stronghold
By Lefteris Pitarakis and Sameer N. Yacoub
AKCAKALE, Turkey — Hundreds of Syrian refugees poured into a Turkish-Syrian border crossing Saturday, fleeing intense fighting as Syrian Kurds closed in on an Islamic State-held town — the only passageway linking Turkey with the extremist group’s stronghold of Raqqa.
Some 13,000 refugees have already crossed into Turkey in the last 10 days, according to the Turkish Foreign Ministry. Hundreds more could be seen Saturday on the Syrian side of the Akcakale border crossing, waiting to cross into Turkey.
Astatement by the main Syrian Kurdish fighting force, known as the YPG, said its fighters have encircled the Islamic State-held town of Suluk, a few miles southeast of the strategically important town of Tal Abyad.
It said Islamic State militants have “lost control” over Suluk and Kurdish forces were advancing toward Tal Abyad. It also said the road linking Tal Abyad with Raqqa was under YPG control. The report could not be immediately confirmed. The Britainbased Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Kurds were less than 10 kilometers (six miles) away from Tal Abyad.
The loss of Tal Abyad would be a major blow to the Islamic State group.
The border town is a major avenue for commerce for the extremist group — through which it smuggles in foreign fighters and sells black-market oil. The city is also a key link between Turkey and the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the de-facto capital of the Islamic State group’s self-declared caliphate.
In Syria, a country now split mostly between Islamic militants and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, the U.S. has found a reliable partner in the country’s strongest Kurdish militia, the YPG. They are moderate, mostly secular fighters, driven by revolutionary fervor.
Since the beginning of May, they have wrested back more than 200 Kurdish and Christian towns in northeastern Syria. Along the way, they have picked up ammunition, weapons and vehicles left behind by the jihadis.
At the Akcakale border crossing, reporters witnessed hundreds of Syrians, many of them with suitcases and other belongings, standing on the other side. At one point, a group of armed, masked men — likely Islamic State militants — approached them and ordered them to return to the town. Fearful, many of them turned back, only to return after about 15 minutes.
MEXICO CITY — In Guatemala, angry citizens marched under pelting rain, undeterred. In Honduras, they carried torches at dusk. A wave of protests against corruption scandals that is sweeping across Latin America has reached Central America.
The presidents of Guatemala and Honduras face allegations that people close to them have conspired to siphon money from threadbare public health systems or maneuvered to cheat the state out of tax revenue.
Although neither President Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala nor President Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras has been directly accused, growing numbers of protesters are demanding their resignations. Grass-roots groups
Central Americans are no strangers to such malfeasance, of course. Former presidents and their associates in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Guatemala have been tried for corruption by their successors. An inquiry in Panama into former President Ricardo Martinelli’s government is drawing a wide net around his allies, and he has fled the country.
But the street protests in Honduras and Guatemala are directed at presidents who are still in office — and they are being driven by grass-roots groups. ‘A feeling of liberty’
Many of the protesters are from the middle class, deeply plugged into social media and aware of the anti-corruption protests shaking presidents in Brazil, Chile and Mexico.
“It’s a strange sensation people have, a feeling of liberty that did not exist before,” said Edgar Gutiérrez, who heads a research institute at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City.
“The consciousness of citizen power has expanded,” he said, describing how three generations of families turned out to march. If people do not demand change, he said, “the politicians will never do it, nor will the economic elites.”
The leaders of Guatemala and Honduras have become targets of a broader frustration fed by the conviction that there is little to stop well-connected business groups and politicians from conspiring to skim off their states’ scant resources.