After about a week of Kurdish YPG leaders and US hawks lamenting the
“betrayal” they see in the announced US withdrawal from Syria, cooler
heads are prevailing and the focus has shifted toward finding another
ally against the imminent Turkish invasion of Syrian Kurdistan.
To that end, the YPG has some fairly obvious options.
The Syrian government, after all, attempted to back the Kurds in
defending the Afrin District from a Kurdish invasion. They failed, but
would be the most natural ally in resisting Turkey’s invasion of Syria’s
entire northeast.
Syria doesn’t want to lose vast amounts of its country to Turkey, and
that’s also brought Russia into the mix. Russia has openly warned
Turkish to stay out of Syria, and to let the Syrian government reclaim the territory formerly occupied by the US.
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the Kurds, as the plan for Rojava
was always to be an autonomous region within Syria. Russia’s position
is to keep Turkey away and may well just default down to the autonomous
region they’d always planned on anyhow.
Ditz is partly wrong here to put it mildly especially about the “failing to protect Afrin” part which is easy to debunk: Syria was only allowed to send in a minor group of NDF militia not the regular SAA and SyAAF backed up by Russia which obviously failed and since Kurdish greed on getting assurances of keeping their loot and land grabs also obviously failed and that the terms of the central Syrian authority ultimately were rejected.
Now the “great Kurdish minds”, again, has the opportunity to either correct their mistakes and accept the terms which among a few other things is that no state- in- state separate Kurdish army or militia would be allowed, only the SAA in which Kurdish commanders can work as they indeed still does in other parts of the country, Turks will be ok with that, or they can do the Afrin 2.0, ultimately flee and let Turkey and their cutthroat allies have their way rather than accept Syrian central authority.
With such treasonous guests Syria really need no enemies….
Good, a return to some sort of familiar status quo, ideally with a greater degree of Kurdish autonomy within the state of Syria, seems like a likely way for the armed conflict to end. The US has ended or reduce its ambitions for regime change, hopefully Saudi Arabia and others will soon end their ambitions to remake the region in their own interest.
I doubt the sense of betrayal is very high on the side of the Kurds. They’ve understood by now that help from the Americans is of the transactional kind. It can stop any moment.
Thank Christ! This is what I’ve been calling for for years. Erdogan is a revanchist. He thinks the whole damn region belongs to him. Someone needs to put that beast on a f**king leash and Russia is the only one who can do it.
The Rojavan model is really the only reasonable solution to the Kurdish question. It’s based on Abdullah Ocalan’s ideal of a confederation of stateless autonomous zones in the Kurdish territories of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. It’s not nationalism, at least not in the vulgar sense of the word. It’s more of a solution to nationalism.
Told you so. That said it was always the obvious way out. Trump just did like in NK, disrupted the stalemate and forced everyone off the dime. Next, watch for Trump to coordinate with Assad/Syria & Russia & Turkey to make the transition orderly. ***You are witnessing Political Genius in real time.***
Plus, icing on the cake, the complete discrediting/repudiation of the Neocon all-war-all-the-time foreign policy establishment. The swamp drains slowly,… but it drains.
Trump has his legs now, and we can expect to see some real progress in the next six years.
Prediction: watch for a major Trumpublican single-payer health care effort in the run up to 2020. And if so, the Mother-of-All-Bitch-Slaps delivered to the Dems in that election.
Out of Syria, out of Afghanistan, a rational, genuinely affordable, single-payer health care system, and a combination Wall and rational immigration policy. Making MAGA more than a slogan, and Trump closing the gap on Washington as the Greatest President Ever.
Sing me your pain!
I couldn’t have said it better, Jeffrey Stein .. You just posted what I was thinking.
Trump just did like in NK, disrupted the stalemate and forced everyone off the dime. Next, watch for Trump to coordinate with Assad/Syria & Russia & Turkey to make the transition orderly. ***You are witnessing Political Genius in real time.***
Yes, Jeff, Trump does have his legs now, and we can expect to see some real progress in the next six years.
Tell it, Jeff! Tell it! Watch for a major Trumplublcan single-payer health care effort in a run-up to 2020 .. and if so, the Mother-of-All-Bitch-Slaps delivered to the Dems in that election.
Out of Syria, out of Afghanistan, a rational, genuinely affordable, single-payer health care system, and a combination Wall and rational immigration policy. Making MAGA more than just a slogan, and Trump closing the gap on Washington as the Greatest President ever.
Trump 2020!
You guys are funny, like a boxer, ko’d in the ring, getting kudos for not fighting. And GOP “socialized medicine” ? LOL