The State Department confirmed today that it held a weekend meeting with the Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD), the political wing of the YPG, and a group with close ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The PKK is considered a terrorist organization in the United States and perhaps more importantly in Turkey, where they’ve been fighting an on-again, off-again war for decades with the Turkish government.
Since the YPG is leading the defense of Kobani, the Syrian border town where the US is conducting massive airstrikes, it makes a lot of sense the State Department is interested in talking to them. It’s also a diplomatically risky move.
A lot of the Syrian rebel factions are in bed with terrorist groups, but the PKK is particular is a controversial one at a time when the US is trying to coax Turkey into the war.
Turkey was in the middle of a peace talks with the PKK, but after airstrikes against PKK fighters earlier this week that seems to be in ruins, and Turkey seems to be poised to start that war anew.
For the first time since the Afghanistan war the state department realizing that there are other forces beside terrorism from Saudi Arabia that can fight the saudis/UAE barbarians in the region, among others Kurdish fighters, the Iranian and syrian government. Keep up the good work Kerry, but don't scrw it as you have done many times and don't apologize to israelies, they ar noteworthy.
Duke Ellington
“If you have to ask, you will never know”
Empire USA has always been a terrorist state, a most corrupt and criminal state with brutal imperialism it’s only stock in trade, but always in the past it has been kept under cover by covert CIA operations in the Middle-East, a secret State Department orchestrated coup now and then in Central and South America, that sort of thing.
So, why now are we in so public a way, terrorizing the public, by using notorious terrorists to combat all the corruption that we orchestrate in the Middle-East? But surely, it’s like Duke Ellington whenever he was asked what is Jazz, he would answer, “If you have to ask, you will never know.”
The US is biggest promoter and practitioner of terrorism.It uses terrorism label against those who do not follow its lead or do its bidding.It ignores the terrorism of its clients.
Ain't necessarily 'principled' against talking-to-groups-so-labeled… But also aint above reading into who does it. Isn't this sort of a break with their own norms? Like was the-woman-you-love-to-hate John McCain doing trial balloons for this kind of eventuality when he posed with the each next mass murdering group in e.g. Libya, Syria, …? … even as humanitarian groups have been scared of talking to the local rescuers 'cause USg calls 'em a nasty name and takes conversation as 'material support?'
Kurds have been promoted in the US as a victim caste–could that be part of why State thinks it get's-away-with-this? Ain't it interesting who else has been so promoted, is absolutely murderous, yet get's it's a$$ kissed daily here? Don't those two also talk to each other quite a bit?… fascinating.