October 10, 2014

This Guy Is Live-Tweeting the ISIS Attack on Kobani From Inside a Pepper Bush

Meet Cahit Storm, the brave, mysterious observer who’s been watching the battle for northern Syria.

Cahit Storm/Twitter

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For the past week, a man going by the name “Cahit Storm” has endured sweltering sun and dust storms, battled scorpions and mosquitoes, and hid in a red-pepper bush armed only with his iPhone. As he’s inched closer and closer to Kobani, the northern Syrian town that ISIS is fighting to take from Kurdish militias, Storm has tweeted everything he’s seen in broken English and astonishing detail.

“I am a witness,” he told me over the phone when I called him a couple of days ago. Storm, a Turkish Kurd, is one of the few civilians to sneak past the Turkish military, which has blockaded the border with Syria, allowing only a slow stream of refugees to pass. Most people hoping to cross the border to document or join the fighting in Kobani must evade a gauntlet of soldiers.

Storm says his primary mission is to provide aid to the refugees who have crowded into Turkish border towns. “I brought them water, candies for the children, and meat for the holiday,” Storm tells me, referring to the Sacrifice Feast, an Islamic holiday in Turkey. Yet his secondary mission as an observer of the fight in Kobani between the Kurds and the self-proclaimed Islamic State has garnered him considerable attention across social media. Among his more than 6,500 Twitter followers are journalists from the New York Times, the BBC, and the International Business Times, and Anonymous.

Storm does not provide specific details about his appearance or background on his Twitter profile, though Vice reported that he is a computer engineer who fled Kobani himself. (“Cahit” is a male name in Turkey.) As a Kurd, he is deeply skeptical of the Turkish government’s response to ISIS and its recent advances near its border with Syria. “I am quite sure if others could have reached Kobani the situation would have been very different…The Turkish are just blocking [Kobani] right now…[Turkey] has a very ambiguous attitude against daesh,” he says, referring to ISIS by the loose Arabic acronym commonly used in the Middle East. 

Storm attempts to document events in Kobani in real time as well as correct media reports he finds inaccurate. He told me that he only tweets what he’s observed or knows to be true, never speculation or rumor. “I want to only present facts,” Storm says. He continuously changes his position outside Kobani, which is right over the border with Syria. “I have to use tricks to stay hidden,” he explains. Fearing that he’ll get shot, he retreats back to Turkish border towns at night.  

His preferred choice of cover while watching the action has become one of his trademarks. “I was hiding in a pepper field because the area is forbidden and no one can enter,” he explains. He promised to eat a pepper for his 5,000th follower. Fans from across the globe have sent him pictures of peppers or pepper-related items in solidarity. He even changed his Twitter profile image to a man in a red-pepper costume.

Storm’s tweets from Kobani are detailed, terrifying, and pretty funny, too. He’s compiled images and descriptions of air strikes, bombings, and shelling in and around Kobani. His tweets about airstrikes include clear images, as well as cardinal directions and exact timing. Earlier this week, he was one of the first to identify a American B-1 bomber flying overhead, and he has faithfully tracked the warplanes since they first appeared.

A few samples of his observations and ability to keep things light as he treads the edge of a war zone:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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