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Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Welcome to the Neno's Place!

Neno's Place Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality


Neno

I can be reached by phone or text 8am-7pm cst 972-768-9772 or, once joining the board I can be reached by a (PM) Private Message.

Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

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Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

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    First step in fixing Syria, arm the Kurds

    Rocky
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    • Post n°1

    First step in fixing Syria, arm the Kurds Empty First step in fixing Syria, arm the Kurds

    Post by Rocky Sat 24 Sep 2016, 4:25 am

    First step in fixing Syria, arm the Kurds
    Posted on September 24, 2016 by Editorial Staff in Kurdistan
    First step in fixing Syria, arm the Kurds Kurdish-YPG-forces-at-the-Tishrin-dam-Syria-Dec-26-2015-Reuters
    Kurdish YPG forces at the Tishrin dam, Syria, Dec. 26, 2015. Photo: Reuters
    [size=11]The Chicago Tribune[/size]
    It’s hard for any entity involved in Syria’s brutal five-year civil war to cite consistent stretches of success. President Bashar Assad would be on the ropes if it weren’t for Russia’s intervention. President Barack Obama’s track record in Syria has been pockmarked with failure, and likely will leave a lasting stain on his legacy. Moderate rebel groups are fighting to survive. And the one group everyone wants out of Syria, Islamic State, has slowly, steadily been losing territory day by day, acre by acre.
    One player in Syria, however, has been able to grow stronger and build on its battlefield victories. Syrian Kurds have expanded the territory they control in the northern part of the country, and have retaken from Islamic State key cities like Kobani and Manbij. As a result, the Kurds are in the best position to mount an offensive against Islamic State fighters in their de facto Syrian capital, Raqqa.

    A victory over Islamic State in Raqqa, coupled with what the West hopes is an eventual ouster of the militant group from its biggest stronghold in Iraq, the northern city of Mosul, would deal a crushing broadside to the militant group’s vision of a caliphate in the Middle East. The Islamic State would find itself on the run — hardly a selling point in its online recruiting.
    Syrian Kurds’ pivotal role in the fight against the Islamic State has the White House weighing whether to arm Kurdish fighters. Up until now, the Pentagon has armed militias belonging to the Syrian Arab minority in Kurdish-held territory, but has not been directly arming Syrian Kurds. Speaking at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, U.S. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said bolstering Syrian Kurd fighters’ military capability “will increase the prospects of our success” to retake Raqqa. “They are our most effective partner on the ground,” Dunford said.
    Obama has had his share of tough choices to make during the Syrian conflict. Arming Syrian Kurds is one of the toughest — but it’s the right choice to make.
    Reinforcing Syrian Kurds’ military capability would come with a price. It would further inflame tensions with Turkey, an important U.S. ally in the war against Islamic State but an avowed enemy of the Kurds, who have a history of separatist conflict in eastern Turkish provinces. U.S. relations with Turkey are already fraught, following the detentions and firings of tens of thousands of Turkish military officers, professors, teachers and judges in the aftermath of the failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
    Erdogan is already incensed by Washington’s refusal to extradite the man he believes masterminded the coup — Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric and Erdogan’s primary political rival, now living in Pennsylvania. And there’s another major complication: The stronger the Kurds get, the closer they move toward their vision of a transborder Kurdistan state.
    Syrian Kurds have established a semiautonomous region across northern Syria that they call Rojava, with a separate constitution, instruction in Kurdish in many schools, and even foreign offices set up in Moscow and other European capitals. Together with the autonomous region Kurds have governed in northern Iraq since 2005, Kurdish leaders could one day forge their own de facto state, Kurdistan, stretching from Iran on the east to Turkey on the west and encompassing 9.5 million people. Can a trans-border Kurdistan co-exist with regimes in Ankara and Damascus that see Kurds as mortal enemies, and a government in Baghdad that uneasily tolerates Kurdish autonomy?
    What’s important now is the ouster of the Islamic State from Raqqa, and achieving that success involves arming Syrian Kurds.
    Turkey might not acquiesce. One point the U.S. can stress to Erdogan’s administration is that Kurds wouldn’t be getting heavy artillery, just small arms and ammunition. They should also remind Erdogan that Islamic State remains a major threat to Turkish national security. The terrorist raid on Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport in June that killed 45 people was carried out by assailants that Turkey linked to Islamic State.
    Some of Obama’s most embarrassing failures in Syria have involved pinning hopes on the wrong fighting forces. A yearlong $500 million program to train and equip 5,400 moderate Syrian rebel fighters yielded just a handful of troops. Obama can at least start to redeem his record by beefing up the Syrian Kurds’ arsenal.

    http://ekurd.net/fixing-syria-arm-kurds-2016-09-24
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