While the Pentagon is providing airstrikes in support of the Kurdish YPG virtually daily in its fights against ISIS, reports are that the Obama Administration is blocking other nations’ plans to provide heavy weapons to the group, in hopes of bolstering their fight.
The YPG is the dominant Kurdish fighting forces in Syria, and controls broad swathes of territory along the Turkish border on both sides of ISIS territory, including the cities of Hasakeh and Kobani. The group has been fighting ISIS heavily on both fronts.
This has led many in the US-led alliance to see the YPG is their most reliable allies inside Syria, and the US itself seems eager to back them with airstrikes at every opportunity. Directly arming them, however, is apparently a step too far, and the reason is likely Turkey.
Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist organization, and has openly threatened to invade Syria to stem their advances along their border. They have chastised the US for aiding the YPG to the extent that they already have, and the administration is likely trying to placate them by limiting the aid to airstrikes.
Weapons would be a much different matter, of course, as Turkey sees themselves as the inevitable next target of the YPG if they manage to defeat ISIS, and those weapons would be used against Turkey, a NATO member.
Oddly, the US hasn’t extended the same ban to Iraqi Kurdistan, even though they hold similar secessionist ambitions, and Iraq has similarly objected to the provision of arms to the Peshmerga. Despite this, US allies have regularly provided arms to them, and the current US military spending bill being debated would have the US do the same.
Oh so now the tough chickens in DC are taking orders from Turkey.
From turkey and Israel, don't forget that. The point is to keep ISIS as long as possible and cooperate with those who supply and support ISIS to keep fighting the Iraqi and Syrian and other nations.
So the shape of the next few years in Syria begins to emerge. Cut off the Kurds (again); arm Al Nusra against Assad, but thereby strengthen ISIS in Syria, while at the same time, supporting Shiites in Iraq against ISIS while training the non-existent Iraqi army to fight ISIS. ISIS to retake the border with Turkey, chasing the Syrian Kurds over the border into Iraq, and restoring their supply lines. ISIS will then be able to benefit from American support against Assad while they are engaged in a simultaneous struggle to the death with America in Iraq. As nominal American allies, then, ISIS are good guys who cannot lose, much preferable to Assad, while at the same time they are the scourge of civilization and must be opposed by all methods possible.
All very simple. I guess the old rule applies: always bet that the Kurds will be betrayed.
The Kurds have many groups. They are hostile to each other, and differ widely.
The YPG group is in fact terrorists, and listed as such. They may be useful against other terrorists at the moment, but that does not change what they are.
We DO have friends among the Kurds. Those friends don't like the YPG either.
It isn't just about Turkey. We can't be friends with all the Kurds, because they are so hostile to each other.
The Washington DC neocon crowd lately has used a fake idea of a unified Kurds as its magic solution to solve all the problems the neocons have caused in their ever downward spiral of foolishness.
They are warmongers, and this is a wrong as everything else they push on us in their Middle East delusions, and Middle East wars.
How many of those "airstrikes" are going to empty desert.