More on Syria

[rowan]

So, for those interested in the topic itself, rather than denialist attempts to divert attention from the subject matter, here it is in full:

The Trump administration has drawn Turkey deeper into the Syrian conflict by announcing a policy that threatens Turkey’s national security. Washington’s gaffe has pitted one NATO ally against the other while undermining hopes for a speedy end to the seven year-long war.

Here’s what’s going on: On January 18, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced the creation of a 30,000-man Border Security Force (BSF) to occupy East Syria. Two days later, January 20, the Turkish Army launched a ground and air offensive against Kurdish troops in the Afrin canton in Northwest Syria.

The media has tried to downplay the connection between the two events, but the cause-and-effect relationship is pretty clear. Tillerson’s provocation triggered the Turkish invasion and another bloody phase to the needlessly-protracted conflict. Washington’s screwup has made a bad situation even worse.

A five-year-old child could have figured out that Turkey wasn’t going to sit-back and let the US establish a Kurdish state on its border without putting up a fight. Keep in mind, the US plans to defend this new protectorate with a 30,000-man proxy-army comprised of mostly Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units or YPG. The Turks, however, believe the YPG is connected to the terror-listed PKK which has prosecuted a scorched earth campaign against the Turkish state for decades. That’s why Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not allow these groups to dig in along Turkey’s southern border, they constitute a serious threat to Turkey’s security. Just imagine if Hezbollah decided to set up military encampments along the Mexican border. How long do you think it would take before Trump blew those camps to kingdom come? Not long, I’d wager.

So why did Tillerson think Erdogan would respond differently?

There’s only one explanation: Tillerson must be so blinded by hubris that he couldn’t figure out what Erdogan’s reaction would be. He must have thought that, “Whatever Uncle Sam says, goes.” Only it doesn’t work like that anymore. The US has lost its ability to shape events in the Middle East, particularly in Syria where its jihadist proxies have been rolled back on nearly every front. The US simply doesn’t have sufficient forces on the ground to determine the outcome, nor is it respected as an honest broker, a dependable ally or a reliable steward of regional security. The US is just one of many armed-factions struggling to gain the upper hand in an increasingly fractious and combustible battlespace. Simply put, Washington is losing the war quite dramatically due in large part to the emergence of a new coalition (Russia-Syria-Iran-Hezbollah) that has made great strides in Syria and that is committed to preserve the Old World Order, a system that is built on the principles of national sovereignty, self determination and non intervention. Washington opposes this system and is doing everything in its power dismantle it by redrawing borders, toppling elected leaders, and installing its own stooges to execute its diktats. Tillerson’s blunder will only make Washington’s task all the more difficult by drawing Turkey into the fray in an effort to quash Uncle Sam’s Kurdish proxies.

In an effort to add insult to injury, Tillerson didn’t even have the decency to discuss the matter with Erdogan– his NATO ally– before making the announcement! Can you imagine how furious Erdogan must have been? Shouldn’t the president of Turkey expect better treatment from his so-called friends in Washington who use Turkish air fields to supply their ground troops and to carry out their bombing raids in Syria? But instead of gratitude, he gets a big kick in the teeth with the announcement that the US is hopping into bed with his mortal enemies, the Kurds. Check out this excerpt from Wednesday’s Turkish daily, The Hurriyet ,which provides a bit of background on the story:

“It is beyond any doubt that the U.S. military and administration knew that the People’s Protection Units (YPG)…had organic ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Washington officially recognizes as a terrorist group….The YPG is the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the political wing of the PKK in Syria. They share the same leadership…the same budget, the same arsenal, the same chain of command from the Kandil Mountains in Iraq, and the same pool of militants. So the PYD/YPG is actually not a “PKK-affiliated” group, it is a sub-geographical unit of the same organization….

Knowing that the YPG and the PKK are effectively equal, and legally not wanting to appear to be giving arms to a terrorist organization, the U.S. military already asked the YPG to “change the brand” back in 2015. U.S.

Special Forces Commander General Raymond Thomas said during an Aspen Security Forum presentation on July 22, 2017 that he had personally proposed the name change to the YPG.

“With about a day’s notice [the YPG] declared that it was now the Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF],” Thomas said to laughter from the audience. “I thought it was a stroke of brilliance to put ‘democracy’ in there somewhere. It gave them a little bit of credibility.” (Hurriyet)

Ha, ha, ha. Isn’t that funny? One day you’re a terrorist, and the next day you’re not depending on whether Washington can use you or not. Is it any wonder why Erdogan is so pissed off?

So now a messy situation gets even messier. Now the US has to choose between its own proxy army (The Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces) and a NATO ally that occupies the critical crossroads between Asia and Europe. Washington’s plan to pivot to Asia by controlling vital resources and capital flowing between the continents depends largely on its ability to keep regional leaders within its orbit. That means Washington needs Erdogan in their camp which, for the time being, he is not.

Apparently, there have been phone calls between Presidents Trump and Erdogan, but early accounts saying that Trump scolded Erdogan have already been disproven. In fact, Trump and his fellows have been bending-over-backwards to make amends for Tillerson’s foolish slip-up. According to the Hurriyet:

“The readout issued by the White House does not accurately reflect the content of President [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan’s phone call with President [Donald] Trump,”…“President Trump did not share any ‘concerns [about] escalating violence’ with regard to the ongoing military operation in Afrin.”…The Turkish sources also stressed that Trump did not use the words “destructive and false rhetoric coming from Turkey.”…

Erdoğan reiterated that the People’s Protection Units (YPG) must withdraw to the East of the Euphrates River and pledged the protection of Manbij by the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA)…

“In response to President Erdoğan’s call on the United States to end the delivery of weapons to the [Democratic Union Party] PYD-YPG, President Trump said that his country no longer supplied the group with weapons and pledged not to resume the weapons delivery in the future,” the sources added.” (Hurriyet)

If this report can be trusted, (Turkish media is no more reliable than US media) then it is Erdogan who is issuing the demands not Trump. Erdogan insists that all YPG units be redeployed east of the Euphrates and that all US weapons shipments to Washington’s Kurdish proxies stop immediately. We should know soon enough whether Washington is following Erdogan’s orders or not.

So far, the only clear winner in this latest conflagration has been Vladimir Putin, the levelheaded pragmatist who hews to Napoleon’s directive to “Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.”

Putin gave Erdogan the green light to conduct “Operation Olive Branch” in order to pave the way for an eventual Syrian takeover of the Northwestern portion of the country up to the Turkish border. Moscow removed its troops from the Afrin quarter (where the current fighting is taking place) but not before it presented the Kurds with the option of conceding control of the area to the central government in Damascus. The Kurds rejected that offer and elected to fight instead. Here’s an account of what happened:

Nearly a week ago, [a] meeting between Russian officials and Kurdish leaders took place. Moscow suggested Syrian State becomes only entity in charge of the northern border. The Kurds refused. It was immediately after that that the Turkish Generals were invited to Moscow. Having the Syrian State in control of its Northern Border wasn’t the only Russian demand. The other was that the Kurds hand back the oil fields in Deir al Zor. The Kurds refused suggesting that the US won’t allow that anyway.

Putin has repeatedly expressed concern about US supplies of advanced weapons that had been given to the Kurdish SDF. According to the military website South Front:

“Uncontrolled deliveries of modern weapons, including reportedly the deliveries of the man-portable air defense systems, by the Pentagon to the pro-US forces in northern Syria, have contributed to the rapid escalation of tensions in the region and resulted in the launch of a special operation by the Turkish troops.” (SouthFront)

Erdogan’s demand that Trump stop the flow of weapons to the SDF will benefit Russia and its allies on the ground even more than they will benefit Turkey. It’s another win-win situation for Putin.

The split between the NATO allies seems to work in Putin’s favor as well, although, to his credit, he has not tried to exploit the situation. Putin ascribes to the notion that relations between nations are not that different than relations between people, they must be built on a solid foundation of trust which gradually grows as each party proves they are steady, reliable partners who can be counted on to honor their commitments and keep their word. Putin’s honesty, even-handedness and reliability have greatly enhanced Russia’s power in the region and his influence in settling global disputes. That is particularly evident in Syria where Moscow is at the center of all decision-making.

As we noted earlier, Washington has made every effort to patch up relations with Turkey and put the current foofaraw behind them. The White House has issued a number of servile statements acknowledging Turkey’s “legitimate security concerns” and their “commitment to work with Turkey as a NATO ally.” And there’s no doubt that the administration’s charm offensive will probably succeed in bringing the narcissistic and mercurial Erdogan back into the fold. But for how long?

At present, Erdogan is still entertains illusions of cobbling together a second Ottoman empire overseen by the Grand Sultan Tayyip himself, but when he finally comes to his senses and realizes the threat that Washington poses to Turkish independence and sovereignty, he may reconsider and throw his lot with Putin.

In any event, Washington has clearly tipped its hand revealing its amended strategy for Syria, a plan that abandons the pretext of a “war on terror” and focuses almost-exclusively on military remedies to the “great power” confrontation outlined in Trump’s new National Defense Strategy. Washington is fully committed to building an opposition proxy-army in its east Syria enclave that can fend off loyalist troops, launch destabilizing attacks on the regime, and eventually, effect the political changes that help to achieve its imperial ambitions.

Tillerson’s announcement may have prompted some unexpected apologies and back-tracking, but the policy remains the same. Washington will persist in its effort to divide the country and remove Assad until an opposing force prevents it from doing so. And, that day could be sooner than many people imagine.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/29 ... ng-turkey/

[Digby]

Anyone got anything even close to approaching a good idea on what to actually do next that will meet enough concerns of the Turks, Iranians, Syrians and Kurds such it will be acceptable to all? Likely it'd not even be a good idea, just the least worst, and even that looks unlikely even before the genius of Trump is considered

[rowan]

The US needs to respect international law and Syria's sovereignty and simply butt out altogether. Only then will things begin to return to normal. As for what should be done about longstanding issues such as the plight of the Kurds in the north, that's a very different issue. At this point I believe they are not even involved in negotiations. But certainly no progress can be made in that respect under the current conditions.

[Digby]

Probably a mistake saying anyone, has anyone but Rowan got any ideas?

[Mellsblue]

Don’t be so infantile.

[Digby]

Just a thought I had that 'display this post' doesn't proffer much in the way of how to move forwards

[rowan]

You're obviously not interested in resolving the issue then. & it's perfectly clear you don't remotely understand it - nor really care about it. If you genuinely want to end the conflict, you must first remove the agent of its origin. Anything else would be a case of dealing with the symptom, rather than the disease.

As the article clearly states, if the US weren't still meddling in Syria, there would have been no need for its NATO ally Turkey to invade. You can read into that situation what you like, but it's going to be very difficult to resolve the issue with the Kurds being invaded and left out of negotiations.

[OptimisticJock]

You're obviously not interested in resolving the issue then.

We thought we'd leave it to you as you're doing such a good job of it.

[Stones of granite]

Already answered that:

So you've decided to attack both me and the author because you don't like the subject matter. That's a juvenile and cowardly approach and discredits you entirely. The article states quite clearly that, by positioning Kurdish troops just across the border from Turkey, which is engaged in a long-running battle with its Kurdish minority (and their kinsmen across the border), the US had provoked Turkey into invading Syria. That's perfectly clear and evident. The US has screwed up and failed in its latest attempt to seize control of a Middle Eastern nation and its resources. That's also perfectly clear and evident - on the surface. But pointing out these self-evident facts is sinister,dishonest and juvenile in your view because you just don't like to read about it. You then get hung up on a footnote adding the possibility of a further dimension to the situation, regarding this as a contradiction rather than expansion of the topic, though it is clearly the latter. In fact, I raise this possibility partly because I don't think the most powerful (and destructive) military organization on the planet is dumb enough to screw up, and the only reason they were initially defeated in Syria was because they opted for a covert op rather than all-out invasion, obviously not considering it worth the risk of all-out war with Syria's longstanding Russian allies. So if you didn't get that, your grasp of the English language is as poor as your understanding of the situation in Syria. I mean, really, liar, liar, pants on fire! Is that the level you're at?

No, you really didn’t. That’s just another example of the kind of self-deceiving shite mixed with abuse that you post. Frankly, whatever cause you support is done more harm by your pathetic ramblings than if you restricted your posts to match reports from the 3rd division of the Kazakhstan pub league.

You’re a fraud and a liar.

[rowan]

Another cowardly diversion tactic by the juvenile denialist, Stones. So far he has contributed precisely nothing constructive to the discussion, you will notice, and that is because he really knows nothing about it. Indeed narrow-mindedness is further exemplified by his obvious aversion to rugby in the non-elite playing nations. Such is the hideous face of jingoism.

[Stones of granite]

Another cowardly diversion tactic by the juvenile denialist, Stones. So far he has contributed precisely nothing constructive to the discussion, you will notice, and that is because he really knows nothing about it.

I asked you to comment on why your post said almost the exact opposite the article it linked to to support it. All you have done since then is bluster and lie.

You are a fraud and a liar.

Please consider changing your username to Billy Bullshit.

[rowan]

No, you simply decided to try and derail the topic with cowardly and juvenile attacks on the author of the article and my response to it, both of which you clearly misunderstood.

All you've got is Liar, liar, pants on fire

What an imbecile

So, in an attempt to get the discussion on track again:

As the article clearly states, if the US weren't still meddling in Syria, there would have been no need for its NATO ally Turkey to invade. You can read into that situation what you like, but it's going to be very difficult to resolve the issue with the Kurds being invaded and left out of negotiations.

Article being discussed: https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/29 ... ng-turkey/

[Digby]

Does anyone think for a moment, and by anyone I mean anyone but Billy Bullshit, if the US hadn't intervened or now removed themsevles from the process that Turkey would have no incentive to invade Syria and go after the Kurds? There is some history that might suggest it's happened before, which isn't to perhaps to excuse some of the latest stupidity of the Trump doctrine

[Sandydragon]

Turkey has a long running issue with the Kurds. The only way they wouldn’t have gotten involved is if the Kurds hadn’t expanded their area of influence during the past few years.

The US have helped some Kurdish groups, but given the situation at the time, it’s understandable why.

This is local power politics and Turkey waving a big stick, trusting that recent good relations with Russia will keep things sweet with Putin. I really don’t see how this can be blamed on Trump(for once).

[Mellsblue]

It would still be an ominshambles. It would just be a different ominshambles with slightly different actors.

[rowan]

Yes, Turkey has a longstanding conflict with the Kurdish community, who have the misfortune to be divided by the various regional borders. But it had never carried out major cross-border operations prior to the current conflict; at least not since the foundation of the republic. Trump has discontinued Obama's support for the anti-government rebels/terrorists, which was the underlying cause of the wider conflict to begin with. But America retains a presence in Syria, uninvited and unwanted, and in clear violation of international law. It clearly wants to retain a foothold in oil-rich northern Syria, and is using the Kurdish situation as a pretext - as if it cared about them. So we can only speak hypothetically about a Syria free of the US once again. Obviously pressuring Damascus to afford the Kurds a greater degree of autonomy is what we want, but it would further antagonize the Turks, who would no doubt not permit it. & if the US somehow succeeds in overthrowing Assad, the most likely replacement would be the Muslim Brotherhood, the arch enemy of the regime and cause of most of its internal conflicts. So given the Brotherhood was removed by the military in Egypt, and Egypt remains the second biggest recipient of US "aid" after Israel, that would seem more than a tad ironic.

[Donny osmond]

What has amused me *most* is that this...

'‘If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense,’ said Rowan. ‘Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?’

... was followed by this ...

blah blah wank. Precisely why I don't bother with this thread much. Blah blah wank. Sad.

... which was followed by numerous posts, including self-quotes, on this thread.

RR gold.

Sent from my HUAWEI VNS-L31 using Tapatalk

[Sandydragon]

And in other news, the sarin has used against civilians has been positively identified as belonging originally to the Syrian government. A batch of the same stuff was surrendered to UN inspectors.

But of course, the use of chemical weapons was just propaganda, or else it was anti Syrian forces dropping chemical munitions from their own aircraft (not that they had any).

I suspect th same apologists would be up in arms if th US were using WMDs against civilians.

[rowan]

In fact, it is the invading forces of the NATO organization which are being accused by the victims themselves. You don't hear their stories because you don't live in this part of the world and have no real insight. What you read is the propaganda of the countries illegally involved in Syria, from precisely the same media outlets who accused Saddam Hussein of developing weapons of mass destruction and Muammar Gaddafi of planning a genocide of his own people; the racist, warmongering propaganda designed to support America's invasions and clandestine interventions across the Middle East, leading to millions of deaths, untold suffering, and destruction of entire nations. Legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who exposed the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam and the torture at Abu Ghraib, has already traced the chemical weapons back to a NATO member. & Barack Obama himself recognized that arms being funneled to anti-government rebels fighting their proxy war were ending up in the hands of terrorists. It is possible their own stockpiles have been struck during bombing of their strongholds. But as another award-winning investigative journalist, the late John Parry (who helped break the Iran-Contra story) wrote in his final article, the accusations against Syria simply do not stand up to scrutiny, for those who care to apply it.

[rowan]

In fact, the Syrian Kurds allied to the Americans have repeatedly accused NATO of supplying chemical weapons directly to the anti-government rebels/terrorists, who were in turn using them against the Kurds themselves, as well as on civilian targets to frame the leadership. There are countless reports on this in various languages including English, but it has been ignored by the Western mainstream media, as have the findings of the aforementioned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

"Yellow phosphorous is highly toxic and banned under international law from use in civilian areas, although it has been proven used in war zones by Israel and the US.

Its effects are similar to napalm, i.e. burning the flesh down to the bone and inhibiting breathing.

A report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons last month accused ISIL of using chemical weapons against the Kurds in 2015.

FBI agent Coleen Rowley brought up the possibility that ISIL has had chemical weapons for years, and has in fact used them against civilians in an effort to bring the US into the civil war.

Rowley questioned current CIA director James Clapper and then-director John Brennan about their failure to attribute chemical weapons attacks to ISIL and instead to the Syrian government.

“Possibly even back in 2013 it was the terrorist groups that staged that attack of sarin in order to get the US to enter into the fray in Syria. This is something that should be investigated internationally; human rights groups and the UN should be investigating right now. It is a good thing there is a ceasefire, and it is a bad thing that some elements want to stop that ceasefire and get back to having war,” Rowley said.

If the YPG accusations are in fact true, and they seem to be, the course of the Syrian war and foreign intervention could be altered significantly."

Good article on the topic here: http://theantimedia.org/chess-game-syri ... ly-turkey/

[rowan]

Another cowardly diversion tactic by the juvenile denialist, Stones. So far he has contributed precisely nothing constructive to the discussion, you will notice, and that is because he really knows nothing about it. Indeed narrow-mindedness is further exemplified by his obvious aversion to rugby in the non-elite playing nations. Such is the hideous face of jingoism.

Quoted: a constructive addition to the discussion.

Quoted: a constructive addition to the discussion. Trala !


Here, watch this & learn something:

[rowan]

Seymour Hersh who exposed the My Lai Massacre and Aru Ghraib torture chambers compared to the New York Times, which blindly supports all of its government wars? & you've clearly taken the latter? That says an awful lot about you, hapless.

Meanwhile, here's the template for the standard warmongering speech directed at every sovereign nation America wishes to invade, right up to Syria: To keep falling for this same old racist propaganda is not only stupid, it requires a certain degree of evil:

[rowan]

Wonderful contribution you're making to the discussion, Hapless.

[rowan]

You still haven't contributed to the discussion, hapless. A little ironic, given the tone of your earlier post. Like a few others, you're only tactic is to drag the discussion down to kindergarten level because you have no sensible argument to offer.

[Stones of granite]

Wonderful contribution you're making to the discussion, Hapless.

Oh good lord, you still don't get it do you?

Have you ever wondered why no one bothers to engage with you? And that the closest anyone would come to even giving you the time of day is to dunk all over you?

The fact that you can't even recognise the fact that this particular round of you getting shat on started with you getting called out for hypocritically engaging in the very behaviour you accuse others of speaks for itself. Are you really too fucking stupid to even recognise that this particular tangent was never even intended to be related to the main topic of this thread to begin with?

I'm sure you'll have some sort of witty response to this, which will be little more than either A) "I know you are, but what am I?" or B) a big old word salad where I'm apparently supposed to be an imperialist propagandist blah-blah-blah.

I also like how you keep trying to make that "hapless" insult a thing. You're like Gretchen from Mean Girls, trying so hard to make "fetch" happen.

Almost everything that Billy Bullshitter has written about the Turkish campaign in Afrin is wrong.
The Americans didn't deliberately provoke it, the article he cited confirms this. Also the American (and French) governments have raised protests with the Turkish Government. Protests that Erdogan in his usual style has rubbished with the kind of rhetoric that we expect from Bully Bullshitter, perhaps it's a Turkish thing.
"Meanwhile, Turkey took umbrage at remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron, who warned against an "invasion operation" of Afrin.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called the warning an "insult" and said Thursday that France was in no position to "teach a lesson" to Turkey over its cross-border offensive, referring to past French military interventions in Algeria and other parts of Africa. "

The YPG in Afrin are not supported by the Americans. American support is limited to the SDF - which does include a substantial number of YPG fighters - which is part of the anti-Daesh coalition. The YPG in Afrin are not part of that. It is fairly likely, however, that some equipment will find its way from American trained and supported units to those in Afrin.

The number of Turkish troops directly involved in Afrin is still relatively small, with the Turkish Government preferring to fight this campaign with Syrians. Probably at least partially due to the fact that Erdogan recently purged the army of 28,000 men.

Meanwhile, there are reports that "Operation Olive Branch" is provoking a Kurdish backlash, which may well result in the resumption and upscaling of terrorist activity by the PKK inside Turkey itself.

Standby for the stock response of "you don't live in the region" by Billy Bullshitter.