On Monday, Kurdish forces recaptured the town of Kobani in northern Syria, having driven out the jihadists of ISIL after four months of fighting. This is a symbolic defeat for ISIL and has prompted speculation that this might mark the point when the all-conquering jihadists are rolled back.
From a military point of view, the loss of Kobani, which ISIL had been so confident of taking, will not change much. There was no pressing reason for ISIL to take Kobani apart from propaganda: the town is within sight of the Turkish border and the raising of the black flag on the ridge behind the town could be caught by the TV cameras watching over the border fence.
After Kobani, ISIL appears to have two faces. Its initial push in Iraq, which began on January 1 last year in Anbar province, was a well-executed piece of military planning, showing the influence of trained officers from the old Iraqi army. The Kobani operation shows ISIL as a movement driven by its social media output.
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