More on Syria

[Zhivago]

Aleppo has fallen/been liberated

[paddy no 11]

The yanks arming fundamentalist jihadis has never gone wrong before......right!

Not that there's any merit in the al assad/putin regime

[paddy no 11]

Women are not allowed to talk in public spaces in Afghanistan anymore

[Mellsblue]

At least we know Greg Wallace’s whereabouts.

[Zhivago]

The yanks arming fundamentalist jihadis has never gone wrong before......right!

Not that there's any merit in the al assad/putin regime

HTS is not funded by USA. Turkey and Qatar fund them.

[paddy no 11]

The yanks arming fundamentalist jihadis has never gone wrong before......right!

Not that there's any merit in the al assad/putin regime

HTS is not funded by USA. Turkey and Qatar fund them.

Thanks, not sure where I got that misinformation from. Why are turkey and the uae involved here? What's in it for them?

[Zhivago]

The yanks arming fundamentalist jihadis has never gone wrong before......right!

Not that there's any merit in the al assad/putin regime

HTS is not funded by USA. Turkey and Qatar fund them.

Thanks, not sure where I got that misinformation from. Why are turkey and the uae involved here? What's in it for them?

As I said years ago, probably they want to build a gas pipeline through Syria

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar%E ... y_pipeline

[paddy no 11]

HTS is not funded by USA. Turkey and Qatar fund them.

Thanks, not sure where I got that misinformation from. Why are turkey and the uae involved here? What's in it for them?

As I said years ago, probably they want to build a gas pipeline through Syria

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar%E ... y_pipeline

As your informing me

UAE are in Sudan too and this is mineral driven too? No ideology just wealth driven?

I'll correct wealth to greed

[Which Tyler]

The yanks arming fundamentalist jihadis has never gone wrong before......right!

Not that there's any merit in the al assad/putin regime

HTS is not funded by USA. Turkey and Qatar fund them.

SDF is the US supplied one, isn't it?

[Zhivago]

Thanks, not sure where I got that misinformation from. Why are turkey and the uae involved here? What's in it for them?

As I said years ago, probably they want to build a gas pipeline through Syria

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar%E ... y_pipeline

As your informing me

UAE are in Sudan too and this is mineral driven too? No ideology just wealth driven?

I'll correct wealth to greed

UAE is not Qatar

[Zhivago]

The yanks arming fundamentalist jihadis has never gone wrong before......right!

Not that there's any merit in the al assad/putin regime

HTS is not funded by USA. Turkey and Qatar fund them.

SDF is the US supplied one, isn't it?

I think so

[paddy no 11]

Homs gone now.

[Sandydragon]

Latest reports suggest that Assad has fled/is dead and Damascus has fallen. Not sure how reliable they are but the Syrian army seems very uninterested in fighting without massive Russian support.

God alone knows what happens to Syria now. The new owners of Damascus aren’t exactly liberal and I can’t see the other factions, especially the Kurds just disarming.

It does mean embarrassment for Russia who now will almost certainly lose its strategically important naval and SigInt bases unless Russia strikes a new deal (unlikely). It’s a good day for turkey though.

[Zhivago]

Latest reports suggest that Assad has fled/is dead and Damascus has fallen. Not sure how reliable they are but the Syrian army seems very uninterested in fighting without massive Russian support.

God alone knows what happens to Syria now. The new owners of Damascus aren’t exactly liberal and I can’t see the other factions, especially the Kurds just disarming.

It does mean embarrassment for Russia who now will almost certainly lose its strategically important naval and SigInt bases unless Russia strikes a new deal (unlikely). It’s a good day for turkey though.

It won't happen, but there should be a Kurdish state

[Sandydragon]

Latest reports suggest that Assad has fled/is dead and Damascus has fallen. Not sure how reliable they are but the Syrian army seems very uninterested in fighting without massive Russian support.

God alone knows what happens to Syria now. The new owners of Damascus aren’t exactly liberal and I can’t see the other factions, especially the Kurds just disarming.

It does mean embarrassment for Russia who now will almost certainly lose its strategically important naval and SigInt bases unless Russia strikes a new deal (unlikely). It’s a good day for turkey though.

It won't happen, but there should be a Kurdish state

Agreed, but Turkey really won’t want that.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Latest reports suggest that Assad has fled/is dead and Damascus has fallen. Not sure how reliable they are but the Syrian army seems very uninterested in fighting without massive Russian support.

God alone knows what happens to Syria now. The new owners of Damascus aren’t exactly liberal and I can’t see the other factions, especially the Kurds just disarming.

It does mean embarrassment for Russia who now will almost certainly lose its strategically important naval and SigInt bases unless Russia strikes a new deal (unlikely). It’s a good day for turkey though.

It won't happen, but there should be a Kurdish state

Agreed, but Turkey really won’t want that.

True but it would be nice if the Kurds can hold that big chunk of the North of Syria they have. It's a start. In a fair world they'd have a bit of Syria, a bit of Iraq and a bit of Turkey. Basically where the Kurds live.

[Sandydragon]

It won't happen, but there should be a Kurdish state

Agreed, but Turkey really won’t want that.

True but it would be nice if the Kurds can hold that big chunk of the North of Syria they have. It's a start. In a fair world they'd have a bit of Syria, a bit of Iraq and a bit of Turkey. Basically where the Kurds live.

I agree. But having a viable Kurdish state on its border will provoke Turkey. I expect they will have some demands for their support which will include ensuring that doesn’t happen.

[Puja]

Agreed, but Turkey really won’t want that.

True but it would be nice if the Kurds can hold that big chunk of the North of Syria they have. It's a start. In a fair world they'd have a bit of Syria, a bit of Iraq and a bit of Turkey. Basically where the Kurds live.

I agree. But having a viable Kurdish state on its border will provoke Turkey. I expect they will have some demands for their support which will include ensuring that doesn’t happen.

I don't really understand the Turkish position here. I can absolutely understand why they don't want Kurdistan within their borders or carved out of their land, but surely this is the ideal opportunity to set one up out of part of Syria and say to all the Kurdish nationalists, "Here you go, you want a homeland, it's over there, kindly fuck off in that direction" without it really costing them anything?

Can someone explain why they're they so against that?

Puja

[paddy no 11]

True but it would be nice if the Kurds can hold that big chunk of the North of Syria they have. It's a start. In a fair world they'd have a bit of Syria, a bit of Iraq and a bit of Turkey. Basically where the Kurds live.

I agree. But having a viable Kurdish state on its border will provoke Turkey. I expect they will have some demands for their support which will include ensuring that doesn’t happen.

I don't really understand the Turkish position here. I can absolutely understand why they don't want Kurdistan within their borders or carved out of their land, but surely this is the ideal opportunity to set one up out of part of Syria and say to all the Kurdish nationalists, "Here you go, you want a homeland, it's over there, kindly fuck off in that direction" without it really costing them anything?

Can someone explain why they're they so against that?

Puja

There's a wiki page that answers this

Turkey does not recognise kurdish in any aspect there all turkmen. Erdoğan will double down on this - international community would have zero chance to influence I'd say

[Puja]

I agree. But having a viable Kurdish state on its border will provoke Turkey. I expect they will have some demands for their support which will include ensuring that doesn’t happen.

I don't really understand the Turkish position here. I can absolutely understand why they don't want Kurdistan within their borders or carved out of their land, but surely this is the ideal opportunity to set one up out of part of Syria and say to all the Kurdish nationalists, "Here you go, you want a homeland, it's over there, kindly fuck off in that direction" without it really costing them anything?

Can someone explain why they're they so against that?

Puja

There's a wiki page that answers this

Turkey does not recognise kurdish in any aspect there all turkmen. Erdoğan will double down on this - international community would have zero chance to influence I'd say

Ah. So the issue isn't that Turkey are determined that they own the land, it's that they're determined that they own the people? The latter belief seems substantially more difficult to enforce than the former, but I guess logic never did come into these things.

Thanks for the explanation.

Puja

[Sandydragon]

Plus would a a Kurdish homeland over the border not want the land in Turkey currently occupied by Kurds? Forcibly moving out a entire group of people is pretty much ethnic cleansing, so unlikely to win too many friends.

[Puja]

Plus would a a Kurdish homeland over the border not want the land in Turkey currently occupied by Kurds? Forcibly moving out a entire group of people is pretty much ethnic cleansing, so unlikely to win too many friends.

I mean, it's not pretty much, it's the literal definition, but the international community hasn't appeared to give two short shits when Israel does it forcibly, so I don't expect Turkey would care too much about the reaction to them making life in that area shitty for Kurds and encouraging cross-border travel in one direction.

Note that this is not me advocating this as a good, moral, or correct policy - I am assuming Erdogan to act like a dickhead (ie, in character) and what he might want to do from a practical standpoint of removing the PKK threat, given that it's shown throughout history that one cannot remove a terrorist threat with force.

Mind, I'm not actually sure how much power Turkey have to prevent a Kurdistan in the currently Kurdish-controlled part of Syria. The rest of the rebels don't exactly have any power in that area to re-establish is as part of Syria, so even if Turkey withdraws support completely, would that have any great effect on their control of Western Syria? I'm assuming Turkey isn't planning on using their military to annex the land into their borders, although I guess anything's possible in 2024.

A situation involving a completely different Turkish leader might look at this as the opening point of negotiations - support a homeland in exchange for relinquishing all future claim to Turkish land and have the inevitable happen on their terms.

Puja

[Son of Mathonwy]

Netanyahu shits on international law, again. Lucky we don't have any land bordering Israel, maybe he'd fancy that too.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... ons-depots

[Puja]

Netanyahu shits on international law, again. Lucky we don't have any land bordering Israel, maybe he'd fancy that too.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... ons-depots

While I am loathe to defend Netanyahu and strongly disbelieve in any concept of him "temporarily" acquiring land, especially when he is backed by expansionists and settlers, I... can sort of understand that move. No-one's sure exactly what kind of government the Syrian rebel leader is going to create - he seems conciliatory and moderate so far and him dropping the nom-de-guerre is promising, but he's also backed by more than a few hardcore extremists and has made common cause with IS and Al Quaeda in the past, so it's not out of the question that Syria could get very hostile for Israel, very quickly, possibly as a rogue state that would have no compunction about moving military into the Heights themselves, possibly as a weak state who can't control access to Assad's chemical weapons or stop rogue elements from using them.

If it wasn't the genocidal, territory-stealing fuckwit ordering this, I'd say it's legitimately proactive self-defence, as Israel cannot afford to have the Golan Heights not under their control if there's the possibility of chemical weapons flying free.

Of course, because it is him ordering this, the next step is settlers creating towns, which then means they need a deeper buffer zone to protect *those* from "unprovoked attacks", so another bit of land has to sadly be annexed, just for self-defence...

Puja

[Son of Mathonwy]

Netanyahu shits on international law, again. Lucky we don't have any land bordering Israel, maybe he'd fancy that too.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... ons-depots

While I am loathe to defend Netanyahu and strongly disbelieve in any concept of him "temporarily" acquiring land, especially when he is backed by expansionists and settlers, I... can sort of understand that move. No-one's sure exactly what kind of government the Syrian rebel leader is going to create - he seems conciliatory and moderate so far and him dropping the nom-de-guerre is promising, but he's also backed by more than a few hardcore extremists and has made common cause with IS and Al Quaeda in the past, so it's not out of the question that Syria could get very hostile for Israel, very quickly, possibly as a rogue state that would have no compunction about moving military into the Heights themselves, possibly as a weak state who can't control access to Assad's chemical weapons or stop rogue elements from using them.

If it wasn't the genocidal, territory-stealing fuckwit ordering this, I'd say it's legitimately proactive self-defence, as Israel cannot afford to have the Golan Heights not under their control if there's the possibility of chemical weapons flying free.

Of course, because it is him ordering this, the next step is settlers creating towns, which then means they need a deeper buffer zone to protect *those* from "unprovoked attacks", so another bit of land has to sadly be annexed, just for self-defence...

Puja

I can't agree. Either laws are universally applied or they're not. 'Proactive self-defence' is indistinguishable from aggression, whether it's the Golan Heights, the West Bank, Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, 'WMD-possessing' Iraq or wherever.

No one is completely safe. That's impossible . . . without killing everyone else. Short of that you have to make peace. We have in Europe (mostly), despite how inconceivable that must have seemed in 1945. Israel needs to make peace - it's the right thing to do, and in the long run it's the only way to survive.