Turkey continued its airstrikes and rocket fire against the Kurdish YPG forces around the town of Afrin into the weekend, an ongoing flurry of attacks which began last week with airstrikes against YPG forces trying to attack ISIS, and killing 200 of the Kurdish fighters.
This led to some skirmishes with Turkish-backed rebels around Afrin too, and threatens to expand across the region, with reprots that YPG forces have started firing on the city of Jarabulus, farther to the east, killing two rebels in the attack.
This has been an ongoing problem all year, with the Kurdish YPG heavily armed by the Pentagon, and the Turkey-backed rebels the same groups armed by the CIA over the past several years, and the two constantly at one another’s throats. Efforts to keep them out of direct conflict appear to have been dramatically undermined by Turkey’s invasion.
A lot of this new fighting appears to be centered on plans to attack the ISIS-held city of Bab, with the Kurds already advancing in the area, and Turkey apparently deciding that the best way to make sure the Kurds don’t get to Bab first is to attack them outright, even if it starts another war.
From Turkey’s perspective, this is likely only a minimal concern, as their invasion of Syria came with the assumption they’d eventually be fighting the Kurds at any rate, and the shift toward attacking the YPG, even if it distracts from fighting ISIS, was one they were bound to make eventually.
I do nkt call the fight with Kurds a distraction. There are two goals Turkey announced — fight YPG and ISIS. This story is not familiar with the significance of Al-Bab. It literally means The Door. And it is — literally. Kurds could have taken ISIS out of there long time ago — but there is a reason they did not. The idea is to block anyone going on Raqqa — ISIS capital of Syria. Until — as Hillary puts it — she is triumphant at Mosul and proceeds to Raqqa — to take the area promised to Kurds. Thus — it is imperative that Turkey does not take Al-Bab and does NOT take Raqqa. That would prevent a Kurdish state from forming — Turkey wants Syria to remain undivided. And taking Raqqa would deprive Hillary from reason to enter Syria. This is why Kurds blocked Turkey from taking Al-Bab and is racing to control it. ISIS and Kurds seem to deal with each other really well. ISIS would probably give Kurds the sce and move to Raqqa. This is why Turkey took fight directly to Kurds — as to shortcut the game of Al-Bab. Turkey intends to secure the entire region along Turkish border from Mediterranean to border to Iran. And the depth would depend on the presence or absence of Kurdish population. Majority of CIA equiped FSA groups are now working under Turkish command. So — not arming them is no brainer especially now that under Turkuish command they will fight Kurds and showed annimosity to US special ops. But trying to arm Kurds has risks. Like proxy war with Turkey. Hillary’s statement about arming Kurds resulted in Turkey calling Clinton
“… a political apprentice.”