Meanwhile, in Syria

Kurdish fighters in Syria claimed Tuesday to have lifted the Islamic State’s four-month siege of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani and said the last Islamic State attackers were on the run.

[...]

If the Islamic State remains routed, the outcome would be a major victory for Syrian Kurdish forces in a town that was thought to have had negligible strategic value but became the primary focus of the U.S. aerial campaign against the Islamic State; estimates by both the Associated Press and Al Jazeera said 80 percent of U.S. airstrikes in the past four months hit targets in Kobani.

  McClatchy

So, now that they’ve got it back, is there anything there?

“U.S. Central Command confirms that anti-ISIL forces now control approximately 90 percent of the city of Kobani,” the military command said, using the government’s preferred acronym for the Islamic State. “While the fight against ISIL is far from over, ISIL’s failure in Kobani has denied them one of their strategic objectives.”

[...]

The victory, however, is unlikely to see the quick return of the estimated 200,000 Syrian Kurds who fled to Turkey during the siege. Abduljabbar al Akidi, a commander of a moderate Syrian rebel group that contributed fighters to defending Kobani, said he thought it would be some time before residents could return.

“Civilians can certainly come back, but the city is destroyed almost completely,” he said.

Well, I guess that answers my question.