Fighting between the Syrian army and Kurdish forces intensified late on Friday and into Saturday, creating the risk of yet another front opening in the multi-sided civil war.
The two sides have mostly avoided confrontation during the five-year conflict, with the government focusing its efforts against Sunni Arab rebels in the west, and the Kurds mainly fighting Islamic State in northern Syria.
In an indication of their reluctance to escalate further, pro-government media said on Saturday they had held preliminary peace talks.
After the fighting broke out this week, government warplanes bombed Kurdish-held areas of Hasaka, one of two cities in the largely Kurdish-held northeast where the government has maintained enclaves.
Fighting there could complicate the battle against Islamic State because of the Kurds' pivotal role in the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces' (SDF) fight against the group.
On Friday, warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition flew what the Pentagon called protective patrols around Hasaka to prevent Syrian jets from targeting U.S. special forces, who are operating on the ground with the SDF, the first sorties of their kind in the war.
Ground fighting intensified late on Friday when Kurdish YPG fighters battled Syrian forces, whose air force flew sorties over the city, Kurds and monitors said.
"The clashes continue in areas inside the city today. There were military operations," a Kurdish official said.
Many inhabitants of Kurdish areas fled on Friday and at least 41 people have been killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitoring group, said.
"There are efforts to cool things between the army and the Asayish (YPG-affiliated forces), and a first meeting was held aimed at a ceasefire," Sham FM, a pro-government radio station, reported.
I've talked about it before in this thread but there is a reason Kurds have never had their own state and the YPG is just ensuring the tradition keeps on going.
Meanwhile in Yemen, Saudi's were bombing near a 100,000 strong protest in Sana'a a few days ago. Here is a BBC article about it, keep in mind its the BBC but its also the only western source that covered it. (btw situation there is basically the same, a long meatgrinder with the Saudi coalition making slow progress then being beaten back, then slow progress again.)
Perhaps you should make a seperate thread for Yemen? It would be nice to see the information on Yemen on a seperate thread especially since Yemen appears to be a forgotten war in the media.
On August 23 2016 21:23 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Perhaps you should make a seperate thread for Yemen? It would be nice to see the information on Yemen on a seperate thread especially since Yemen appears to be a forgotten war in the media.
A Yemen thread would be a stillbirth from the beginning, there are very very few foreign journalists inside the country because of violence, Saudi's restricting access/censorship, Houthi areas having basically no internet or electricity for days at a time and an abysmal security situation in general. Western journalists are almost certainly viewed as Saudi spies. Corporate news networks like CNN get millions in ad revenue from the Gulf states which, to put it lightly, doesn't make them very committed in pursuing the news in that area of the World.
So for a western audience the only time you will hear about Yemen will be a few articles on the BBC or Reuters, while the rest of the media go the OP-ed piece route, but even then their reporters are located in a Gulf state and only relay second hand information from various shades of shady sources within Yemen. RT is way more concerned with Syria and in general cite Iranian sources about the conflict. Iran is the only country that has a larger amount of journalists on the ground, they are a pro-Houthi source (of course) but you can get an idea whats developing on the Houthi side.
So a thread about Yemen would either be me talking to myself every few days, or me talking to myself with people complaining about sources. The same would happen when talking about Libya which is well on its way to becoming a Mad Max style wasteland. We had a Libya thread that mods closed after Hillary's now famous 'we came, we saw, he died' speech, mission accomplished I guess.
There is no interest in the western world about Yemen because there is just so very little news about Yemen which never gets anywhere visible.
edit: Why have a thread if there is not going to be any discussion? Take a look at this thread, there is rarely any discussion going on, someone posts a news article, basically no one cares. The next day another article, oh, lets talk about how the source is shit for a page. No opinions, no exchanging ideas about geopolitics, random guy comes in and says something that has been debunked years ago. Yeah I realize some people would not know about whats happening if it wasn't for this thread but a TL thread should be about the community participating in discussion.
I've been in this thread since the Arab Spring and the only time its came alive after that was Obamas red line fiasco and when the Russians came in. Because that the only time western news agencies spammed Syria news.
Its not that noone cares. But there is really very little to discuss. I read articles posted draw my own conclusion but everything that could be said about this shitty situation has already been said. Unless there is some major change on teh ground i dont think we will see much discussion here. But again that does not mean we dont care.
On August 23 2016 23:01 Silvanel wrote: Its not that noone cares. But there is really very little to discuss. I read articles posted draw my own conclusion but everything that could be said about this shitty situation has already been said. Unless there is some major change on teh ground i dont think we will see much discussion here. But again that does not mean we dont care.
I didn't say no one cared, its just thats its far from the top news story in the West with the US election season in full swing. I would say people are just not as involved in this conflict when you compare it to something like the US thread which has become a containment thread for post bots. Yesterday they talked for 5-10 pages about weather 'mess' was an insult aimed specifically at women.
I think there is a lot to be said about Syria, but it just takes a lot of time to explain everything which gets tiresome after a while when you see no one else is talking about it. Again, not saying no one cares, its just a really slow thread.
Shi’ite militias in Iraq detained, tortured and abused far more Sunni civilians during the American-backed capture of the town of Falluja in June than U.S. officials have publicly acknowledged, Reuters has found.
More than 700 Sunni men and boys are still missing more than two months after the Islamic State stronghold fell. The abuses occurred despite U.S. efforts to restrict the militias' role in the operation, including threatening to withdraw American air support, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
The U.S. efforts had little effect. Shi’ite militias did not pull back from Falluja, participated in looting there and now vow to defy any American effort to limit their role in coming operations against Islamic State.
All told, militia fighters killed at least 66 Sunni males and abused at least 1,500 others fleeing the Falluja area, according to interviews with more than 20 survivors, tribal leaders, Iraqi politicians and Western diplomats.
They said men were shot, beaten with rubber hoses and in several cases beheaded. Their accounts were supported by a Reuters review of an investigation by local Iraqi authorities and video testimony and photographs of survivors taken immediately after their release.
The battle against Islamic State is the latest chapter in the conflict between Iraq's Shi’ite majority and Sunni minority, which was unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The war ended decades of Sunni rule under Saddam Hussein and brought to power a series of governments dominated by Shi’ite Islamist parties patronized by Iran.
Washington’s inability to restrain the sectarian violence is now a central concern for Obama administration officials as they move ahead with plans to help Iraqi forces retake the much larger city of Mosul, Islamic State’s Iraqi capital. Preliminary operations to clear areas outside the strategic city have been under way for months. Sunni leaders in Iraq and Western diplomats fear the Shi’ite militias might commit worse excesses in Mosul, the country’s second-largest city. Islamic State, the Sunni extremist group, seized the majority-Sunni city in June 2014.
Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon, who recently wrote a book called "The Iran Wars," told MSNBC on Monday that the Obama administration's determination to close the Iran nuclear deal is to blame for the failure to act on its own red line in Syria.
"When the president announced his plans to attack [the Assad regime] and then pulled back, it was exactly the period in time when American negotiators were meeting with Iranian negotiators secretly in Oman to get the nuclear agreement," Solomon said.
"US and Iranian officials have both told me that they were basically communicating that if the US starts hitting President Assad's forces, Iran's closest Arab ally ... these talks cannot conclude."
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful military arm in Iran, reportedly "would not accept a continued engagement with the US if its closest ally was being hit," Solomon said.
Obama said in 2012 that his red line with the Assad regime would be the use of chemical weapons. Later that year, Assad's forces killed nearly 1,500 people in a chemical-weapons attack.
But then Obama got cold feet — he sought congressional approval for military intervention in Syria, which he was not likely to get, and eventually brokered a deal with Russia that had Assad agreeing to destroy most of the regime's arsenal of chemical weapons.
Many foreign policy experts have said that Obama's decision not to attack damaged US credibility in the international community.
Obama's establishment of the red line came as a surprise. Even his defense secretary at the time, Leon Panetta, told The Atlantic earlier this year that he "didn't know it was coming."
Obama gave The Atlantic several reasons for not enforcing the red line — uneasiness about a strike against Syria not being sanctioned by Congress, a lack of support from the international community and the American people, the possibility that the intelligence on the chemical-weapons attack wasn't 100% solid — but did not mention the Iran deal among them.
The Iran deal is thought to be the crowning foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration, and experts have speculated previously that his determination not to compromise the deal affected his policy on Syria.
Regime forces and Kurdish fighters agreed on Tuesday to a truce in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakeh after a week of clashes, a Kurdish official and Syrian state media said.
A statement distributed to journalists by a Kurdish official said the agreement included "a ceasefire and the withdrawal of all armed forces from the city."
It said the Kurds and regime would also exchange any detainees or wounded, and reopen roads blocked off during fighting.
The official told AFP that the powerful Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and Syrian forces would withdraw from Hasakeh, while the police forces of both the Kurds and the government would remain.
He added that the deal was brokered "under the auspices of Russian military officials."
Syrian state television confirmed the truce was reached on Tuesday afternoon.
A local journalist working with AFP said the city was quiet on Tuesday afternoon, with several stores reopening in the city centre.
On Monday, Kurdish, regime, and Russian officials met in the coastal Hmeimim air base to hash out an agreement to put an end to the outbreak of violence in Hasakeh.
It is natural for the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad to have a place at the negotiating table in peace talks for the war-torn country, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Tuesday.
In comments shown live by broadcaster NTV, Kurtulmus also said that starting to overcome the Syrian crisis with Russian help will help pave the way for a new peace perspective in Syria.
Turkey has long been one of the most vocal critics of Assad, saying he ultimately must be ousted for there to be peace in Syria.
Activists say Syrian rebels, backed by Turkey, are preparing an offensive on Jarablus, a nothern Syrian border town. What is exactly going on there?
It's hard to say - but Kurdish forces, that Turkey opposes, retook the city of Manbij a few weeks ago.
"Turkey wants to make sure that the Islamic State armed group, if it's going to be driven away from the Turkish border, that it's done by the Syrian Arab opposition and not by the Kurds," says Patrick Cockburn, a middle-east expert. "The worst thing thing that happened to Turkey in this war is the creation of a Kurd enclave in east and northern Syria, which is very large."
Edit: @above: that's to be expected; invariably, after IS conquers a town, you'll have civilians working for them. best case scenario it's just a business agreement, worst case it's a spying/snitching that leads to beheadings agreement.
At least nine more Turkish tanks entered northern Syria on Thursday as part of an operation aimed at driving Islamic State out of the border area around Jarablus and stopping Kurdish militia fighters from seizing territory, Reuters witnesses said.
A senior Turkish official said there were now more than 20 Turkish tanks inside Syria and that additional tanks and construction machinery would be sent in as required.
"We need construction machinery to open up roads ... and we may need more in the days ahead. We also have armored personnel carriers that could be used on the Syrian side. We may put them into service as needed," the official said.
The deployments are part of "Operation Euphrates Shield", in which Syrian rebels backed by Turkish special forces, tanks and warplanes on Wednesday entered Jarablus, one of Islamic State's last strongholds on the Turkish-Syrian border. It is Turkey's first major U.S.-backed incursion into its southern neighbor.
The sound of gunfire, audible from a hill on the Turkish side of the border overlooking Jarablus, rang out early on Thursday and a plume of black smoke rose over the town.
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Islamic State had been driven out of the town and it was now controlled by the Syrian rebels, who are largely Arab and Turkmen. He said the operation was targeting both Islamic State and the Kurdish YPG militia, whose gains in northern Syria have alarmed Turkey.
Ankara views the YPG as an extension of Kurdish militants who have fought a three-decade insurgency on its own soil, putting it at odds with Washington, which sees the group as an ally in the fight against Islamic State.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Thursday that YPG fighters were retreating to the east of the Euphrates river, a red line for Turkey, foreign ministry sources in Ankara said.
In a telephone call, the two emphasized that the fight against Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq would continue together, the sources said.
Speaking during a visit on Wednesday to Turkey, a key NATO ally with the alliance's second-biggest armed forces, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden also tried to soothe Turkish concerns about Kurdish territorial gains in Syria.
He said there should be no separate Kurdish entity in northern Syria and the country should remain united. Kurdish militia fighters would not receive U.S. support if they failed to pull back east of the Euphrates as promised, he said.
China's Defence Ministry said on Thursday it has been providing medical training for Syria, following a visit to the war-ravaged country last week by a senior Chinese officer.
While relying on the region for oil supplies, China tends to leave Middle Eastern diplomacy to the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, namely the United States, Britain, France and Russia.
But China has been trying to get more involved, including sending envoys to help push for a diplomatic resolution to the violence there and hosting Syrian government and opposition figures.
Guan Youfei, director of the Office for International Military Cooperation of China's Central Military Commission, met Syrian Defence Minister Fahad Jassim al-Freij in Damascus last week and discussed personnel training.
Ministry spokesman Wu Qian told a monthly news briefing that this year marked the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries and that they had long been good friends.
"China has always played a proactive role in looking for a political resolution for the Syrian issue," he said.
"At the agreement of both countries militaries, China has provided medical equipment as well as medicine and other humanitarian aid to Syria, mainly to ease the humanitarian crisis," Wu added.
"On the same consideration, China has also provided medical, nursing and other professional training," he said, without elaborating.
Asked whether Chinese troops were in Syria for the training and where it was being done, Wu said he would look into the matter and provide that information later.
While China has shown no interest in getting involved militarily in Syria, China's special envoy for the crisis there in April praised Russia's military role in the war.
China has its own security concerns about violence in the region.
China is worried that Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people from western China's Xinjiang region, have ended up in Syria and Iraq fighting for militant groups there, having traveled illegally via Southeast Asia and Turkey.
China getting involved is sort of interesting. I feel like this conflict could be over way quicker if the world just got behind the government. People don't realize that there are a lot of Sunnis in both the Iraqi and Syrian army, so this war isn't a Shia vs Sunni issue (at least not wholly). It will be a whole different issue once it comes to the YPG, I have a feeling Turkey, Syria and maybe Iraq will pressure the Kurds out of independence and/or autonomy in Syria, considering that there are parties in the north east of Syria who do not wish to join a Kurdish autonomy, and that neither Russia or the US supports it.
Iraq needs to seriously work its politics out. The new oil minister seems to be doing something helpful by trying to heal the oil trade crisis with the KRG, though the issues that would remain is the control of land when this is all over, from what I've heard, the yezidi's deffinitely don't want to be with the KRG. Assyrians are sort of split on this and have been for a while, the KDP isn't helping the situation. I've been hearing from other Kurds that you can't live in the KRG without respecting the KDP which is unfortunate. Hopefully the control of land will be same as before, that way the new proposed provinces can be created as was brought up before the war started, and will be helpful for the Assyrian and Yezidi communities survival.
Also unfortunately, this was has decimated relationships between every ethnicity/sect and will leave a very big scar. Also Islamic terrorism won't just stop. Don't know if this situation can be recovered, unless all parties make a serious attempt to reconcile.
(open the image in a new tab if you want to see it closer)
Well day 2 of Turkeys expedition into Syria is well on its way, they have moved further south and established a contact line with Kurdish forces in the area with sporadic fighting between them. Looks like Kurds are being told to leave everything west of the Euphrates alone and have already given up control of Manjib to a local council (basically they were told to do this by the US)
ISIS are diverting most of their forces south-west to Al-Bab which they have been heavily fortifying in the last few weeks. Al-Bab is extremely important to all sides in this conflict because of its position.
If the reports coming in that the rebel enclave in Daraya has agreed to surrender after the SAA cut it in two that is huge news. Apparently they are going to evacuate the civilians into Damascus while the fighters have received amnesty and will be bussed through Syrian territory under international surveillance to Ildib province.
This will free up around 6000 Assad soldiers that have been surrounding the enclave since 2012.
Again, multiple conflicting reports but in general the end is near for jihadists and rebels in Daraya (Daraya is not to be confused with the southern city of Dara, Daraya is a suburb of Damascus)
Looks like Daraya is free. After 4 years of fighting its not really worth anything as an inhabitable area but its a huge moral victory for the Syrian people, the biggest win after Palmyra.
Damascus 2012
Damascus August 2016
Reading up a bit more this will free up 2000+ Syrian soldiers plus heavy weapons, I thought 6000 was a bit much.
For those of you that are interested in Turkeys expedition to Syria today they have suffered their first loss. An armored column that came out of Jarablus heading south was attacked by the YPG with small arms and anti-tank weapons.
They hit two tanks, killing one Turkish soldier and injuring 3 (allegedly, of course with military censorship you never know). The conflict between Turkey and the YPG seems to be heating up as Turkey makes a bigger push into YPG controlled territory. Many conflicting reports coming in about dead Kurds and their numbers.
Meanwhile in Yemen, holy shit, the Houthi's are actually making a push for Najran. What the fuck is going on in the Saudi military? How are barefoot tribesman on the brink of surrounding a city of 250,000 people in Saudi Arabia??
Yeah, its probably just a ruse so that the coalition would move forces to relieve Najran but you have the third highest military budget in the World Saudi Arabia, get your shit together. The Houthi's I am seeing on Saudi territory raiding and capturing Saudi military equipment look like they just pulled random clothes out of a goodwill bin. I saw one guy wearing a skirt, sandals and a dress suit jacket walking around an abandoned Saudi position.
Brand new rocket launchers, small arms, mounted machine guns, brand new ammunition just left there in some places. And the Houthi's just go from outpost to outpost collecting food and weapons.
Turkey joins in to kill/torture Kurds under the pretense of attacking ISIS. US capitulates and betrays Kurds. Turkey is no longer a friend. Kurds are no longer friends. Fantastic work. Expect terrorism from a bunch more sources.
On August 28 2016 20:57 bardtown wrote: Turkey joins in to kill/torture Kurds under the pretense of attacking ISIS. US capitulates and betrays Kurds. Turkey is no longer a friend. Kurds are no longer friends. Fantastic work. Expect terrorism from a bunch more sources.
Its not as simple as that.
I talked about this earlier in the thread:
'The reason why the Kurds have never had their own independent country is because they are one of the easiest people to turn on each other because of tribal stupidity. They have spent a millennium fighting each other over foreign interests and now when they are the closest have have been to national independence in a very very long time what do they do?
One large group hates Turks One large group works with Turks One large group wants to kick all non-Kurds out One large group works with Assad against terrorists'
And we get to the actions of the YPG last week, attacking the SAA garrison at Hasakah was so stupid and against Kurdish interests in the long run that you have to wonder what the hell they were thinking or who told them to do that. While the Assad government in Damascus is officially complaining about the Turkish invasion behind closed doors he is all smiles that his enemies are weakening each other.
Make no mistake, this operation would not have gone ahead without the green lights from Russia and the US. After the coup attempt in Turkey Erdogan has basically built all his bridges back with Russia and has shifted into a 'i love secularism' policy. Turkish planes have started going into Syria for the first time since the SU-25 was shot down which is a clear sign that Putin has given his blessing. And whatever Russia says, the Syrian government will go along with it.
Long story short, the YPG is fucked because they are on the wrong side of Syria, Turkey, the US and Russia now. But they don't represent all Kurds.
On August 28 2016 20:57 bardtown wrote: Turkey joins in to kill/torture Kurds under the pretense of attacking ISIS. US capitulates and betrays Kurds. Turkey is no longer a friend. Kurds are no longer friends. Fantastic work. Expect terrorism from a bunch more sources.
'The reason why the Kurds have never had their own independent country is because they are one of the easiest people to turn on each other because of tribal stupidity. They have spent a millennium fighting each other over foreign interests and now when they are the closest have have been to national independence in a very very long time what do they do?
One large group hates Turks One large group works with Turks One large group wants to kick all non-Kurds out One large group works with Assad against terrorists'
And we get to the actions of the YPG last week, attacking the SAA garrison at Hasakah was so stupid and against Kurdish interests in the long run that you have to wonder what the hell they were thinking or who told them to do that. While the Assad government in Damascus is officially complaining about the Turkish invasion behind closed doors he is all smiles that his enemies are weakening each other.
Make no mistake, this operation would not have gone ahead without the green lights from Russia and the US. After the coup attempt in Turkey Erdogan has basically built all his bridges back with Russia and has shifted into a 'i love secularism' policy. Turkish planes have started going into Syria for the first time since the SU-25 was shot down which is a clear sign that Putin has given his blessing. And whatever Russia says, the Syrian government will go along with it.
Long story short, the YPG is fucked because they are on the wrong side of Syria, Turkey, the US and Russia now. But they don't represent all Kurds.
I'm not suggesting that the Kurds are innocent, just that they're the last significant faction the West had yet to make an enemy of. The Kurds were also the most effective force against ISIS and the US' most effective partner - now it's likely they'll be primarily fighting the US' other partner and ISIS will get breathing room. In effect the US no longer has any partners. There's Assad, Russia, Russia's friend Turkey, ISIS, and the Kurds who are effectively at war with the US' official ally.
I mean we will see how it develops, but it looks to me like Turkey has just humiliated the US to the benefit of Russia and that there is now absolutely no hope of stopping Assad. So what now? Continue funding/training rebels to pointlessly prolong the war, or leave them to be massacred?
On August 28 2016 20:57 bardtown wrote: Turkey joins in to kill/torture Kurds under the pretense of attacking ISIS. US capitulates and betrays Kurds. Turkey is no longer a friend. Kurds are no longer friends. Fantastic work. Expect terrorism from a bunch more sources.
'The reason why the Kurds have never had their own independent country is because they are one of the easiest people to turn on each other because of tribal stupidity. They have spent a millennium fighting each other over foreign interests and now when they are the closest have have been to national independence in a very very long time what do they do?
One large group hates Turks One large group works with Turks One large group wants to kick all non-Kurds out One large group works with Assad against terrorists'
And we get to the actions of the YPG last week, attacking the SAA garrison at Hasakah was so stupid and against Kurdish interests in the long run that you have to wonder what the hell they were thinking or who told them to do that. While the Assad government in Damascus is officially complaining about the Turkish invasion behind closed doors he is all smiles that his enemies are weakening each other.
Make no mistake, this operation would not have gone ahead without the green lights from Russia and the US. After the coup attempt in Turkey Erdogan has basically built all his bridges back with Russia and has shifted into a 'i love secularism' policy. Turkish planes have started going into Syria for the first time since the SU-25 was shot down which is a clear sign that Putin has given his blessing. And whatever Russia says, the Syrian government will go along with it.
Long story short, the YPG is fucked because they are on the wrong side of Syria, Turkey, the US and Russia now. But they don't represent all Kurds.
i would disagree with your assessment: - Putin does not 100% control Assad; apart from russian's, Assad has his own interests to pursue, e.g. Syria+Golan under his rule. by giving the green light to Erdo to invade Syria, Putin could've killed 2 birds with 1 stone: Assad's imperialistic desires and a possible kurdish unification(under US umbrella). Iran previously hinted at giving Assad, if situation requires, a safe exile place so i'm guessing they would mainly be interested in Syria's religious affairs - as long as they'll be shia and friendly, Iran doesn't care. - any territories that turkish backed FSA conquers, will be used as bargaining chips at the negotiation table; that gives FSA dibs in a post war Syria. - fuck knows what US wants at this point but it must have something to do with EU: it's expansion, independence(economical/political) from US etc. - syrian kurds got the short end of the stick but they do seem to want more than they can chew.
On August 28 2016 20:57 bardtown wrote: Turkey joins in to kill/torture Kurds under the pretense of attacking ISIS. US capitulates and betrays Kurds. Turkey is no longer a friend. Kurds are no longer friends. Fantastic work. Expect terrorism from a bunch more sources.
Its not as simple as that.
I talked about this earlier in the thread:
'The reason why the Kurds have never had their own independent country is because they are one of the easiest people to turn on each other because of tribal stupidity. They have spent a millennium fighting each other over foreign interests and now when they are the closest have have been to national independence in a very very long time what do they do?
One large group hates Turks One large group works with Turks One large group wants to kick all non-Kurds out One large group works with Assad against terrorists'
And we get to the actions of the YPG last week, attacking the SAA garrison at Hasakah was so stupid and against Kurdish interests in the long run that you have to wonder what the hell they were thinking or who told them to do that. While the Assad government in Damascus is officially complaining about the Turkish invasion behind closed doors he is all smiles that his enemies are weakening each other.
Make no mistake, this operation would not have gone ahead without the green lights from Russia and the US. After the coup attempt in Turkey Erdogan has basically built all his bridges back with Russia and has shifted into a 'i love secularism' policy. Turkish planes have started going into Syria for the first time since the SU-25 was shot down which is a clear sign that Putin has given his blessing. And whatever Russia says, the Syrian government will go along with it.
Long story short, the YPG is fucked because they are on the wrong side of Syria, Turkey, the US and Russia now. But they don't represent all Kurds.
I'm not suggesting that the Kurds are innocent, just that they're the last significant faction the West had yet to make an enemy of. The Kurds were also the most effective force against ISIS and the US' most effective partner - now it's likely they'll be primarily fighting the US' other partner and ISIS will get breathing room. In effect the US no longer has any partners. There's Assad, Russia, Russia's friend Turkey, ISIS, and the Kurds who are effectively at war with the US' official ally.
I mean we will see how it develops, but it looks to me like Turkey has just humiliated the US to the benefit of Russia and that there is now absolutely no hope of stopping Assad. So what now? Continue funding/training rebels to pointlessly prolong the war, or leave them to be massacred?
I don't think so. The Turks intervened so the 2 seperate regions of the Kurds can't link up. I doubt they'll go for a full scale invasion of Kurdish territory. Russia and the US are hardly relevant in the decision to invade. Judging by the fact that the US told the Kurds to cross back over the euphrates they're hardly surprised something like this happened.
If assad ever seriously thought getting the Golan heights back was a possibility in his lifetime it's well and truly gone now.
If anything the ypg kurds will be given a seat in post war Syria. They need them for the final victory over ISIS but unification with other kurds is a step too far with turkey right there.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3BbQv4i.jpg)
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