People in cars and on bikes whizzed by Moustafa Mohamad as he sat on a sidewalk in Washington one day not so long ago. Commuters poured out of the Dupont Circle Metro station and rushed by on their way to school or work. Tourists rumbled by on a double-decker bus. Mohamad hoped some of them paused to take notice of him. He hoped that somehow his presence on the sidewalk would help relatives and friends nearly 9,400 miles away, in his hometown -- the besieged Syrian city of Kobani. That city near the Turkish border has been the site of intense fighting for weeks between ISIS extremists and Kurdish forces backed by fighter jets and bombers from the United States and other countries.
@highlight
Syrian Kurd living in U.S. goes on three-week hunger strike on Washington sidewalk
@highlight
Moustafa Mohamad wants to draw attention to plight of his hometown, Kobani
@highlight
He says his able-bodied relatives are fighting ISIS in Kobani
@highlight
Hunger strike is in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., he says
Mohamad longed to do what he could to help his fellow Kurds -- even from a great distance, in the relative safety of @placeholder.