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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Years Of U.S. Government Lies Could Soon Result In A Kurdish Massacre |
| 2018-02-03 |
| [Huffpoo] WASHINGTON ― The Trump administration is doubling down on a lie the U.S. government has promoted since it first began cooperating with the Syrian Kurds against the Islamic State group in 2014: that the Kurds it is working with in Syria differ from those that are anathema to NATO ally Turkey. American officials designed that fiction to enable the anti-ISIS strategy adopted under President Barack Obama and continued under President Donald Trump. Now it’s taking its most serious toll yet: Turkey is bombarding Afrin, a Kurdish enclave in northwest Syria, with airstrikes and artillery fire and the U.S. is refusing responsibility. Extending the Obama-era logic, team Trump maintains that Afrin is totally distinct from the Kurdish regions in Syria’s northeast that are home to American bases and thousands of U.S. troops. Dozens of civilians have died in the campaign’s initial assault on smaller villages around the main city. Over a million more are at risk, as are Turkish civilians facing rockets in response. And Trump’s choice has boosted bitterness toward the U.S. among Washington’s most effective partners in Syria. In the weeks ahead, it could torpedo U.S.-brokered cooperation between Kurds and the country’s majority Arab community, tempting more Arabs to join radical groups like the powerful local al Qaeda affiliate or what’s left of ISIS; escalate an already dire humanitarian crisis; and cede more space in Syria to actors Trump is ostensibly committed to challenging ― Russia, Iran and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. There’s little clear benefit to the U.S. in return. Squaring U.S. policy in Syria with the country’s increasingly assertive neighbor Turkey is a goal that’s eluded Washington for years. Since the Obama era, the U.S. campaign against ISIS has relied on a Kurdish militia in northern Syria called the People’s Protection Units, or YPG. Turkey views that group as inseparable from an internationally blacklisted Kurdish separatist movement called the PKK that it has fought for years. The Obama administration’s solution was to speak of a difference between the two forces as often as it could. That position fails to account for the two groups’ mutual history, leftist ideology and recruiting pools, but it’s one the Kurds can live with. Their respective officials say they sympathize for fellow Kurds across the countries they live in (Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran) but have distinct command-and-control structures. And to further assuage Turkey and Syria’s Arabs, the YPG subsumed its fighters under a larger anti-ISIS battalion without an explicit Kurdish flavor ― a two-year-old construct called the Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes thousands of Arabs and Assyrians. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #5 I DO enjoy your versions of history, but I also like Netflix Stranger Things. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2018-02-03 21:08 |
| #4 Not our stomping. I'm no fan of the Donald's personally, although I find no moral issues* with his stand vis-a-vis the Kurds. It would be nice if Trump threw the Kurds a bone, but he's not required to, except perhaps for sentimental reasons. The very fact that they needed bailing out points to their economic, military and political incompetence. Note that Israel needed zero military help to turf the Arabs. They bought everything they needed on a cash-and-carry basis. Whereas the Kurds are a shambolic mess who need our help just to feed themselves. Trump wants to keep the Turks on the inside pissing out rather than the other way around. Now, if he quietly warned the Turks to stay out of Syria, they would undoubtedly comply. Because we can crush the Turkish economy without touching their military. And I expect we could destroy enough of the Turkish military's hardware that its famously-insubordinate generals would garrote Erdogan in the traditional Ottoman way, but on live TV, just to get a reprieve. After all, they prostrated themselves before Putin after the loss of a single antique warplane. * Is Trump's affability vis-a-vis Erdogan related to his licensing agreement for Trump Towers Istanbul? Nobody knows. But I expect him to avoid any direct military entanglements requiring significant manpower and financial commitment for the same reason that Obama did - it's a major expenditure of political capital that results in reduced poll ratings, and doesn't help with many of the purely-domestic policy initiatives that need to be kick-started. Trump doesn't need his numbers to go any lower. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2018-02-03 20:59 |
| #3 We owe the Kurds nothing. The way they're posturing these days, they certainly seem to think they owe us nothing. Always up for a good stomping of individuals in the State Interestâ„¢, Robert? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2018-02-03 19:59 |
| #2 There were no lies. The Kurds thought there was an implicit understanding. No such understanding existed. We kept them alive with copious equipment, training and on-call air strikes. They fought ISIS, which they would have had to do anyway to avoid ending up dead or in exile. Who got the better end of the bargain? Who knows? But the reality is that it was a war of choice for us and a war of survival for them. We helped them survive. We owe the Kurds nothing. The way they're posturing these days, they certainly seem to think they owe us nothing. And that's OK. As long as we're clear that this is an alliance only for as long as we have mutual interests. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2018-02-03 18:33 |
| #1 The YPG has been referred to as Communists. There are two definitions of Communism and the YPG fits the rare definition. They are not of the tyrannical authoritarian definition, but that as a community under the rule of other governments they use a non property ownership, every thing is shared if necessary style of society in order to survive. |
| Posted by: Unart Glusong4283 2018-02-03 18:30 |