Meantime the US has moved 500 Kurdish fighters away to the eastern Syrian border to help put the squeeze on a very large and deadly pocket of IS resistance armed with anti-tank missiles and other heavy weaponry. (Iraq and France have been shelling IS at the same time from east of the Iraqi border.)
Turkey, who agreed to joint patrols with the US up in Manbij, seem to have simply driven in and taken over, and taking full advantage of Kurd troop movements out of the area they have commenced heavy shelling today of Kobane and other villages east of the Euphrates along the northern Syrian border, places fought for at heavy sacrifice by the Kurds not too long ago. The Kurds drove IS out, but mainly just wanted their homelands back. Turkey does not want any Kurds along their southern border and openly states that she will force the creation of a bufferzone in those very same sacred Kurdish lands. Erdogan is announcing the start of this campaign.
Has some backdoor deal been made where the Kurds have been thrown to the wolves, I wonder? Are the Kurds hoping that by helping the US eradicate IS in eastern Syria, the US will stand by them in their defense against the Turkish onslaught? Should the Kurds trust the US?
And have Turkey done a deal partly to help IS by attacking the remaining Kurds back in their newly-won homelands?
Most of this information can be found digging around in the back pages of al Arabiya, etc., but little of it seems to have hit the mainstream Western press.