Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials -- October 16, 2014

ISIS Retreats From Besieged Syrian City -- Piotr Zalewski, Time

But Anwar Muslim, the head of Kobani's local government, tells TIME more than a thousand civilians are still trapped in the city center.

The Syrian city of Kobani, just across the border from Turkey, breathed easier Thursday as U.S. coalition airstrikes helped dislodge jihadist fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) from several neighborhoods.

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Speaking by phone from Kobani on Thursday, Anwar Muslim, the head of the local government, told TIME that the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish forces defending the enclave, were now in control of “65 to 70 percent” of the besieged city. In neighborhoods in the south and east, he said, ISIS fighters were in partial retreat. In the west, they remained about three miles away.

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Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials -- October 16, 2014

Saving Kobane -- Namo Abdulla, Al Jazeera

The fall of Kobane: The impact on Turkey, Kurds and the United States -- Chase Winter, War On The Rocks

Turkey Is Trying To Blackmail The U.S. -- Kate Brannen, Foreign Policy

Islamic State Loses Its Oil Business -- Matthew Philips, Bloomberg Businessweek

Nine Days in the Caliphate: A Yazidi Woman's Ordeal as an Islamic State Captive -- Ralf Hoppe, Spiegel Online

Hunger is the latest effect of Al Assad’s war -- The National editorial

Common enemy brings Iran, Saudi Arabia closer -- Ali Mamouri, Al-Monitor

Escaping North Korea: one refugee's story -- Priyanka Gupta, Al Jazeera

Finding Allies for China -- Asyura Salleh, The Diplomat

China Embraces a Russia Cut off From Western Capital -- Henry Meyer and Evgenia Pismennaya, Bloomberg Businessweek

Asia’s American Angst -- Roger Cohen, New York Times

Throwing the Intelligence Community under the Bus -- Elise Cooper, American Thinker

$100 … $80 … $70? $60? $50? How low will oil prices go? -- Jared Gilmour, CSM

Selective Memory and the CIA -- Max Boot, Commentary

Ebola Nurses Are As Brave As Soldiers -- Michael Daly, Daily Beast