Goran Mohammed had just completed his second year of university in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil when he dropped out to help his father run the family grocery store. When that still didn’t earn the family enough money, the 19 year old was forced to take a second job as a taxi driver.

Iraqi Kurdish forces will only stay in Syria “temporarily” to help reinforce fellow Kurds fighting to defend the town of Kobani from militants with the Islamic State group, an Iraqi Kurdish politician said Sunday, adding that coalition airstrikes alone will not defeat the militant threat.

Dozens of Iraq’s Kurdish peshmerga fighters will fly to Turkey on Tuesday and from there cross into the Syrian border town of Kobani to help fellow Kurds fight Muslim militants, a spokesman for the Kurdish force said.

Lawmakers in Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region Wednesday authorized peshmerga forces to go to neighboring Syria and help fellow Kurds combat Islamic State militants in the key border town of Kobani, providing much-needed boots on the ground.