generalspeaking

Back to Zero, Back to Assad Rule

"Turkey's military offensive is endangering civilians and threatening peace, security and stability in the region."
"[Turkey's actions were] setting conditions for possible war crimes."
U.S. President Donald J. Trump

"I know the regime well and I lived for 50 years under it. But we are forced to stay in the regime because the people would be slaughtered. For this reason I cannot deny that my heart is heavy'"

"If we are conscious, that we, as a people, are going to be exterminated, we would not just make agreements with the regime, but with the devil."
Sirwan Muhammed, 51-year-old truck driver, Qamishli

"It will be a disaster. Ninety per cent of young people here are wanted by the government for military conscription. Thousands of people were also involved in supporting the Syrian revolution, both charges could put them in jail."
"The sad thing is that we lost our homes and our relatives and now were are back to zero, back to Assad rule."
Ahmed, resident of Raqqa

Civilians flee as Turkish troops with American-made tanks and Turkish-backed Syrian fighters gather near the village of Qirata (AFP/Getty)

As obviously sanctimonious, self-exculpating statements go, the above rates as a classic. Those 'possible war crimes' were set in motion by Mr. Trump's abdication of his country's responsibility to an ally, vulnerable to attack by a neighbouring country whose president and ruling party are determined to use all military means to destroy the Kurdish presence in a long-established Kurdish enclave that also just happens to represent the Kurdish ancestral heritage geography.

The 'safe corridor' that Recep Tayyip Erdogan envisages and has long agitated for, means the cleansing of Kurds and the forcible transfer to the area of Syrian Sunni refugees living in crowded tent camps in Turkey.The Syrians meant to be a living buffer against the presence of Kurds whom Erdogan characterizes as 'terrorists' because they aspire to have their ancient homeland declared a long-desired sovereign state.

That the Kurds with their courageous fighting mettle and military determination to challenge the Islamic State's aspirations for a caliphate -- where Syrian troops and Iraqi military vanished in fear at the advance of the feared Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as they increased their territorial advantage -- could be abandoned with no further thought to their welfare speaks volumes in terms of realpolitik and trustworthiness of the U.S.

Like the dodgy businessman that he really is, President Trump thinks in terms of advantage and impacts of the 'deal', not of the judgement of loyalty and responsibility to the larger picture. It's the trade potential between the United States and Turkey that inspires this pretender-to-the-throne to entertain Erdogan's tantrums and demands, and the fact that Trump fancies himself a strongman, admiring other dictatorial personalities not too different from his own in self-adoring ego and lust for power.

Leaving the Kurds to the mercy of the second-largest standing military in NATO, and the unmerciful aspirations of Erdogan, didn't trouble Trump's conscience until the immediate backlash of contempt and outrage from other NATO members, the EU and his own Republican party in Congress, much less the political opposition. Thus, Trump found it amenable to accuse the Kurds of staging Islamic State prisoner escapes from Kurdish custody, to entice him to change his mind on U.S. troop withdrawals.

The Kurdish authority were left with little option but to appeal to the Syrian regime whose threat to Kurdish longevity is perhaps second to Erdogan's, to surrender their autonomy over Syria's northeast to President Bashar al-Assad, to protect the integrity of Syrian territory, and just incidentally the lives of Syrian Kurds. Said to be a deal brokered by Russia, the Kurds, abandoned by their American allies, agreed that the best way to apprehend further assaults by the Turks was to set the Syrians against them.

Outside Manbij, a key city on the border of Turkey and Syria being evacuated by U.S. forces on orders by their president, Syrian troops clashed with the Syrian rebels backed by Turkey. Russia will intervene to ensure that no direct confrontations take place between Turkey's military and that of the Syrian regime. Which is a great pity, since that kind of 'skirmish' could cost each dearly and could that be such a negative, after all? One serving to disable the other...? Ah yes, as though there is not even now enough violence in the Middle East.


The U.S. sanctions on Turkish officials, the reimposition of steel tariffs and the halt to negotiations on a $100 billion trade deal between the U.S. and Turkey must pain Trump as much as it will Erdogan whose economy is already in the doldrums. But, like a crazed psychopath, Erdogan is focused on an unstoppable advance against the hated Kurds and refuses to take caution into consideration on the repercussions of his passion for slaughtering Kurds. Kurdish autonomy will represent the most unfortunate price paid in this complex, nasty situation.

The provinces of Hasakah and Raqqa are now being entered by regime military personnel, consolidating lost control over areas of the Turkish-Syrian border, and all with the unforeseen permission of Kurdish troops, standing down over the greater issue of protecting Kurdish civilian lives from mass annihilation by Turkish soldiers and their Syrian rebel sidekicks of the 'National Army' which has boasted of capturing a tank from Assad's forces during battle.

Because Russia is involved and Vladimir Putin is concerned over Syrian stability and looks most unfavourably upon Erdogan's invasion of Syria's border, Turkish warplanes thunder overhead but no bombs have been dropped on Assad's forces, despite Erdogan declaring his intention of placing the city of Manbij under control of "our Arabic brothers" in the National Army. They're on their own, despite Erdogan's declaration, since to give them air cover would displease Putin mightily and lead to deadly air skirmishes between Syrian and Turkish warplanes.

A Syrian regime soldier waves the national flag a street on the western entrance of the town of Tal Tamr in the countryside of Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province ( AFP/Getty )

Labels: Kurds, Military Invasion, Syria, Turkey, United States

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, October 16, 2019