The Arta FM station strives to remain impartial, and focuses its reporting not on the war, but on the everyday lives of people living in Rojava, as the autonomous region in northern Syria is known.
With Turkey enforcing an economic blockade on Kurdish-controlled areas neighbouring the extremists’ stronghold, residents have little choice but to cross over into the relatively prosperous city.
As thousands of the country’s refugees risk their lives every day to enter Europe, Kobani’s residents are moving the other way, leaving camps in Turkey to rebuild their lives in the midst of a seemingly endless civil war.
The Kurds and the Shiite units have proven ISIL’s most effective opponents, but in Jalawla, the differences between the reluctant brothers in arms could not be papered over.
With the war on ISIS deepening the Iraq’s religious divide, thousands of Sunni Arabs moved to the autonomous Kurdish region to escape the fighting in Anbar province and a sectarian backlash in government-held areas.
For Iraq’s half a million Yazidis, ISIL’s lightning advance towards Sinjar has shattered their belief in a peaceful coexistence with the Sunni Arabs that make up the majority of Nineveh province.