A little over four months ago, Daesh assaulted the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane in northern Syria, on the border to Turkey. They threw thousands of their best fighters against Kobane, including many leaders, and had initially taken over about two thirds of the city. The Syrian Kurdish YPG, a leftist, secular militia where men and women fight together, resisted fiercely, yet nearly everyone assumed that the city would fall.
To the chagrin of people like Turkish leader Erdogan, who had predicted that Kobane would fall and whose government has been indirectly and directly supporting Islamist extremists in Syria, the Syrian Kurds, with the help of heavy-duty U.S. airstrikes, a small artillery battalion of Iraqi Peshmerga Kurds, and two small battalions of FSA fighters, turned Kobane into a meat grinder for Daesh.
After more than four months of existential struggle to defend Kobane and drive Daesh from the city, the defenders of Kobane managed to take Mishtenur Hill, the first of two key, strategic hills to the east of Kobane a few days ago. They hung a huge Syrian Kurdish flag from the radio towers located there:
Since the hill overlooks Kobane from the southeast, it was clear that the last Daesh strongholds in the east of the city were in trouble. Today, after heavy fighting, the flags of the Syrian Kurds were raised over Kanya Kurdan Hill, in the northeast of Kobane:
When Daesh initially attacked Kobane, they carried an aura of invincibility after having easily conquered wide swathes of both Iraq and Syria. Thanks to the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, with assistance from coalition air forces, that aura of invincibility has been shattered and Daesh has suffered thousands of fatalities and more wounded amongst their extremist fighters.
And now, as the Syrian Kurds push out from Kobane, reclaiming the hundreds of villages initially lost to Daesh, the hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees who fled to Turkey will hopefully be able to return home from the deplorable conditions they face in Turkish refugee camps.
10:54 AM PT: Huge street celebrations are breaking out in Kurdish cities throughout Syrian Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Turkey. To give you an idea of how Kurds virtually everywhere are celebrating this huge victory with song and dance, here's a video from Dyirbakir, Turkey:
4:13 PM PT: And here is a video of female and male Kurdish YPG fighters in Kobane celebrating their victory together with song and dance. This has got to be driving Daesh fanatics crazy, as they hate music and dance, and the whole idea of men and women being on equal footing is abhorrent to them.