Victory in Kobani will be hard to replicate

WASHINGTON – The defeat of Islamic State forces in the Syrian city of Kobani may be difficult to replicate quickly in other parts of Syria and Iraq, where ground forces are too weak to repel the militants.

Punishing airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition contributed to the defeat of extremists in Kobani, which is on the border of Turkey. But resistance from hardened Kurdish ground forces proved decisive, according to military experts.

"The expectation of rapid and highly visible success in the air operation is misplaced," said former Defense Intelligence Agency official Jeff White, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "They (Kurds) are effective ground troops in this kind of war."

Combat troops capable of defeating the Islamic State and regaining territory are lacking in Syria and parts of Iraq. That makes coalition airstrikes in those areas less effective.

In Syria, moderate opposition forces opposed to the Islamic State have yet to receive promised U.S. military training. In Iraq, more than 1,000 U.S. advisers are helping to train the Iraqi military, which suffered humiliating defeats against Islamic State fighters last year.

"You've got to have a halfway respected ground force to complement the air campaign," said Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution. "You don't have that kind of ground force in most of areas in Syria and much of Iraq."

Iraqi forces have had some successes in Anbar province in western Iraq and Muthanna in the south, the Pentagon has said. But most of the decisive blows to the Islamic State so far have been dealt by the Kurds.

Kurdish forces, for example, were instrumental in pushing the Islamic State from Sinjar, a town in northern Iraq populated by Yazidis, a religious minority besieged by militants. Kurdish forces also played a major role in retaking Mosul Dam from the militants with help from Iraqi special forces.

A key test for Iraq's security forces will be the battle for Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, which remains in the grip of the Islamic State. Any effort to retake the city will likely include a mix of Kurds and Iraqi security forces.

"We're not going to go any faster than our Iraqi partners are able and willing to go," Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said recently. The U.S. military is helping Iraq plan for a major offensive against the militants this winter or spring.

In Kobani, the militants were close to driving the Kurds out of the city last October. The coalition responded with more than 700 airstrikes that targeted militants in and around the city, according to U.S. Central Command.

This past weekend, a pro-Islamic State news agency released a video interview with two militants who said their fighters withdrew from the town because of coalition airstrikes.