Kurds & Volunteers Take Kabane from ISIS; Media Silent?

Irony of ironies: several hours after posting a grouse about the internet wasteland and what it is taking from us, we must now talk about how powerfully this instrument can keep us informed, especially when mainstream media outlets will not.

Back when ISIS was casting the Iraqi Christians from their ancient homeland at gunpoint, and rampaging through the Nineveh plain, there seemed a dearth of coverage, all of it lowkey. In the opening days of their genocidal assaults on Christians and Shi’ite Muslims, if you wanted information, you had to go to the internet.

Here at Patheos Catholic, we were writing about it early and often, and then some more.

Until ISIS had chased the Yazidi people up to Mount Sinjar, our government was pretty quiet, and the press wasn’t exactly outraged, either.

Sadly, this is true once again. Last month we featured Max Lindenman’s informative exposition on the Lions of Rojava, giving assist to the Kurds:

…the Lions of Rojava make up a sort of foreign legion within the Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units or YPG, which operate against IS in Syrian Kurdistan. Hundreds of Westerners, including more than 130 Canadians and 100 Americans, have already joined their ranks.

Now, Rebecca Lane Frech is covering an effective pushback against ISIS — a story that should matter, but is once again getting little focus:

While we in the west were regaled with stories of Europeans and Americans rushing to Syria to join the jihad, no one mentioned that there were also men and women from the west who were rushing to fight against it. It wasn’t until I began following them on social media that I saw just how many there were. These were not young kids looking for adventure, but seasoned veterans who were resolute in their determination to fight evil…after five long months of fighting, the YPG/YPJ declared that Kabane was at last free from the scourge of ISIS.

The people of that region literally danced in the streets, and our media were mostly silent.

Read the rest, then go back and read Max’s piece, too, to get a fuller sense of how Western volunteers and the Kurds are doing that “taking-it-to-the-bad-guys-thing, while the rest of the West makes moral equivalence arguments and talks some more.