NEW YORK, October 22 (RIA Novosti) - Former Syrian parliamentarian Moustafa Mohamad has begun a hunger strike in Washington in a bid to pressure the United States to better support Kurdish fighters in the besieged north Syrian town of Kobani.
“My goal is for humanitarian aid to reach the people of Kobani; for the armed Kurds in Turkey to be able to go to Kobani to help defeat the Islamic State and for the US government and the international community to aid, including with weapons, the fighters inside the city,” Mohamad told RIA Novosti Tuesday.
Mohamad, a Kurd who sat in Syria’s parliament in the early 1990s, began an open-ended hunger strike at Dupont Circle on Monday in support of holdouts in his home town, Kobani, where Kurdish fighters are tackling an advance by Islamic State (IS) militants.
“Airstrikes from the US and its allies have been big morale booster for the town’s Kurdish fighters so they know they are not forgotten – but there needs to be more airstrikes in order for for them to prevail. Our goal is for the defenders of Kobane to secure victory there,” Mohamad added.
The group, which is also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has fought the Syrian government since 2012. It extended attacks to north and west Iraq in June and declared the creation of an Islamic caliphate.
It has also recently made gains around the Syrian town of Kobane and in Iraq’s western province of Anbar in recent weeks despite US-led airstrikes.
US President Barack Obama says IS can be routed by US-led airstrikes and by bolstering a ground force of Kurds, Iraqis and moderate elements of Syria’s opposition. Critics say he over-depends on air power, lacks reliable allies to act as ground troops and has no strategy for ending Syria’s civil war.
