One cannot praise the fighting resolve of the Kurdish people in Kobane Syria too much. The Kurdish men, and especially women, are amazing fighters and together with ordinary citizens including grandparents and children, they are striking back against ISIS.

Good outline from the Daily Beast HERE:

In a stunning show of bravery the Kurdish men and women holding Kobani continue to hold out—and an ISIS poster boy is reported killed

SURUÇ, Turkey—He gazes at the photograph of his daughter Evan on his cellphone as he offers to let me look. She is 18 years old with long dark wavy hair. It isn’t a snapshot but a more formally posed picture. The girl has lively eyes, a pleasant smile. It was taken shortly before she left a note for her parents telling them she was crossing the border into Syria to join the Kurdish defense militia, the YPG. That was six months ago and last week she contacted him and explained she was fighting the militants of the Islamic State in the besieged town of Kobani.
There is both sadness and pride in her father’s eyes. Ali, a 47-year-old shepherd and father of ten from a nearby village, says, “She is greater than me. I can’t be like her. I have not reached her level of commitment.”
We are standing close to the Turkish-Syrian border—Turkish soldiers are meters away patrolling the fence, more to stop Turkish Kurds from joining the fight that to protect the country from Islamic militants besieging the Syrian border town. In the distance, black smoke is swirling from the western and northern sides of Kobani, the last redoubts of the few hundred YPG fighters who are there fighting for their lives. They control only about a third of the town now, YPG sources inside tell me, and the question remains how long they can defy the odds and prolong their last stand in a battle that resonates every bit as powerfully for Kurds as the Alamo once did for Americans.
The battle is taking a heavy toll on ISIS fighters as well. A high profile American jihadist who defected from Al Qaeda earlier this year to join ISIS was reported by YPG sources to have been killed Sunday in fierce fighting in Kobani. Abu Mohammad al Amriki was first featured in an ISIS recruitment video in February. Speaking in English with what seemed a heavy North African accent, he said he had lived in the US for ten years or so before traveling to Syria. He joined the Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra first, but then shifted allegiance and became a poster boy for “Jihad Cool” foreign fighters. Pictures of him were featured heavily in ISIS propaganda tailored for foreign audiences.
It isn’t clear whether he was a US citizen but it seems unlikely he was native born. FBI officials earlier this year said they were seeking to identify him. Where and how he was killed wasn’t disclosed by the YPG, nor could the information be confirmed independently.
On Friday night the intensity of the combat carried over into Turkey—the crackle of non-stop semi-automatic gunfire, regular thumps from DShK heavy machine guns, known as doshkas, and big explosions from U.S. missiles and precision-guided bombs impacting their targets. The cacophony and acrid smoke—added to the news that Islamic State, widely known as ISIS or ISIL, had made major advances—prompted predictions of Kobani’s imminent downfall. The shudder of the fighting could be felt 16 kilometers away. “The house shook and the windows rattled—it woke me up,” says Naimas, a Kobani refugee.
But on Saturday and Sunday the Kurdish defenses were still holding and from the border both days appeared quieter. U.S. warplanes attacked just five times on Saturday morning—a sandstorm obscuring much of the town may have contributed to the decrease in American air operations—and they started up again in the evening. (read more)

If the Kurds can hold Kobani, then it will advance the objective of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) the Syrian offshoot of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), to forge an autonomous state of its own, changing overall Turkish-Kurdish dynamics. But if Kobani falls it could well end up re-igniting the 30-year long Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.