Breaking News: The Syrian war is over, winner-Russia. Shocking twist US abandons Kurds

[ALE]

it's not that simple, that war is a mess and i wouldn't be surprised if russia and assad start killing kurds with erdogan next week

 

[dragonsfly]

Lol, the Kurds are in their land. It is only like 15% of syria, but that 15%, connects to the remaining 90% of what used to be Kurdistan.

Assad and Hussein could never break them. Good luck trying to push the Kurds around with 10,000 troops.

The problem with the Kurds is that they don't have loyalty whatsoever and they always join who benefits them best at that moment. Hence why the other parts are more serious partners. They are bound to be overlooked from now on. They are not relieble

 

[VivaRevolution]

it's not that simple, that war is a mess and i wouldn't be surprised if russia and assad start killing kurds with erdogan next week

Why would Russia want that?

They have a gas pipeline they want to run right through Kurdish territory. That costs the Kurds nothing, and gains them Russia having a strategic interest in the Kurds stability.

 

[VivaRevolution]

The problem with the Kurds is that they don't have loyalty whatsoever and they always join who benefits them best at that moment. Hence why the other parts are more serious partners. They are bound to be overlooked from now on. They are not relieble

Yeah, that tends to be the case when a people has no country to call their own.

 

[VivaRevolution]

Bump

 

[VivaRevolution]

So, anyone have an evaluation of the potential impact, if the Kurds in Syria did flip to russia?

 

[Andy Capp]

Afrin marks the point of collapse for American influence in Syria
Washington's abandonment of the Kurds left them with no other choice but to turn to the Assad government and its Russian backers. It's Moscow's chessboard now
By DAVID P. GOLDMANFEBRUARY 21, 2018 11:30 AM (UTC+8)


Abandoned by Washington and under bombardment by the Turkish army, the beleaguered Kurdish forces in the northern Syrian town of Afrin asked for, and received, help from Russia. A spokesman for the Kurdish YPG militia announced on February 20 that the Russian-backed government of Bashar al-Assad would send reinforcements to Afrin to assist the Kurds. France24reported that a convoy of pro-Assad forces entering Afrin came under Turkish artillery fire, and Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan claimed the government forces had to turn back.

The situation on the ground is unclear, but what is painfully clear is that Kurds have been abandoned by the United States less than a month after the Pentagon announced the formation of a 30,000-man ‘Border Security Force’ in northern Syria composed mainly of Kurdish fighters who had pushed ISIS out of the area. Turkey responded to the American initiative by invading northern Syria and bombing the Kurds, reportedly killing several hundred civilians. In deference to Turkey, the United States did nothing, so the Kurds asked for help from Russia.




As Alfred Hackenberger wrote in the German daily Die Welt, on February 19: “Russia would belong to the winners in the case of a Syrian-Kurdish military alliance. It would expand Russia’s military control of the country markedly. And Turkey would have to stop its invasion of Afrin, because a confrontation with Syrian soldiers would bring it directly into conflict with Russia.”

The siege of Afrin, to be sure, seems a minor episode in the long and miserable course of Syria’s civil war, but it may turn out to demarcate the point that American influence in the region collapsed beyond repair. Trained by the US and German armed forces, the Kurds represented the only effective force on the ground independent of the Russian-backed Assad regime following the defeat of Sunni militias backed by the US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The Kurdish resurgence in Syria, though, drew a ferocious response from Turkey, which fears that Kurdish self-government spanning Iraq and Syria on its southeastern border would link up with its own rapidly-growing Kurdish population. More than half of Turkey’s population under 30 will be ethnic Kurds by the mid-2040s.

For the US administration, American assets in the region are like hotels on the Monopoly board, to be protected individually and piecemeal. No unified strategy ranks their relative importance or gauges whether they might be sacrificed for a larger goal

After its painful experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US won’t put boots on the ground beyond the few thousand special forces now deployed in Syria. The Kurds fought as a NATO auxiliary against ISIS and wanted nothing more than an American alliance. The Turks, meanwhile, are NATO members in name only and are hostile to key American interests. Among other things, Turkey is helping Russia to bypass Ukraine in delivering gas to southern Europe via the Turkstream pipeline. The Turks are bargaining hard with Russia, but ultimately will play ball.

Nonetheless, Washington is paralyzed by fear that Turkey might leave NATO if it stands behind the Kurds. “Nobody wants to be the guy who lost Turkey,” an administration official said.

The default view at the Pentagon is that Kurdish autonomy would create chaos in Iraq, threatening the country’s territorial autonomy. Iraq’s sectarian Shia government is now an ally of Iran, with Iranian-led Iraqi militias deployed in Syria. A little chaos in Iraq would strengthen America’s hand at the expense of Iran.

For Washington, the path of least resistance was to use the Kurds to fend off ISIS and then hang them out to dry. That left the Kurds with no other choice but to turn to the Assad government and its Russian backers. As a result, Russia is now the key ally both of the Assad government and the Kurdish militias that the US envisioned as its boots on the ground in the region.

Israel, America’s only real ally in the region, realized the consequences immediately. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s deputy minister for public diplomacy, Michael Oren, told Bloomberg News on February 12: “The American part of the equation is to back us up,” but the US “has almost no leverage on the ground. America did not ante up in Syria. It’s not in the game.” Two days earlier, an Israeli F-16 was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile over Syria. Most reports claim that a Syrian anti-aircraft battery firing a Cold War era A-7 Russian missile downed the plane, but there are also unconfirmed reports that a Russian crew fired at it with a Russian S-200 missile. If that is true, Russia presumably wanted to let the Israelis know who was in charge of the Syrian skies.


Israel’s diplomacy with Russia appears to have borne results. On February 20, Russia Today reported the TASS news agency quoting Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying (on February 19): “Russia condemns Tehran’s remarks that Israel should be wiped off the map and also believes that solving any regional problems should not be viewed through the prism of a conflict with Iran.” According to the RT report: “He made the statement at the opening of the Valdai International Discussion Club’s conference ‘Russia in the Middle East: Playing on All Fields,’ adding that tensions between Israel and Iran are escalating and there are historical reasons for that.”

Russia does not want an Israeli-Iranian war, but it does want to be the regional power that keeps the two parties from fighting. Israel evidently is beholden to Moscow after the Afrin debacle, which left the United States with no ante in Syria, as Ambassador Oren put it. The projected Kurdish Border Protection Force was the last American piece on the Syrian chessboard, and Washington abandoned it. It is hard to see what sort of leverage the United States can acquire now.

http://www.atimes.com/article/afrin-marks-point-collapse-american-influence-syria/

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The only question really left unanswered is what will be done with the Golan heights occupied by Isreal. I don't think Russia and Iran are unreasonable actors. I think they will let Israel keep the Golan Heights in the interest of not starting WWIII.

Discuss......

Interestingly, I've just seen a segment about the State Department. About half of the positions have not been filled and many countries don't even have a US ambassador, including Turkey.
Anyone who didn't see this coming, i.e. that the US would abandon the Kurds as soon as it was expedient, is the President of the United States.

 

[Islam Imamate]

So, anyone have an evaluation of the potential impact, if the Kurds in Syria did flip to russia?

Very bad.

People are blaming the US for abandoning them but the Kurds are the one who overplayed their hand with the referendum and their lot seems to have only gotten worse since then.

 

[Amerikuracana]

So we don't get to waste money?

 

[ShinkanPo]

Amerika and Russia you two scare me.

 

[danny23]

So, anyone have an evaluation of the potential impact, if the Kurds in Syria did flip to russia?

US in the north east get kicked out. Only reason they can stay there is because the Kurds in that area seek their support. If they feel they're better off with Assad and Russia they could switch alliances. Seeing how many times US has abandoned the Kurds in the past this could be a possibility.

 

[Prutfis]

Awesome. Training arab freedom fighters to fights russians has always worked out so well for us. Every time .

Time to send the cavalry

 

[7437]

Time to send the cavalry

Funny how this is never on tv anymore

 

[ICHEERTHEBULL]

'Shocking twist' ? there is nothing shocking about it

 

[Prex32]

US will probably focus on removing erdogan now and come back in 5 years again, when trump is possibly also gone
at least that will be the plan i think
what did you guys expect? supporting turkeys worst enemy was natos last desperate attempt to try something, that was designed to fail anyway

 

[tkotom]

Awesome. Training arab freedom fighters to fights russians has always worked out so well for us. Every time .

When has the US done that prior to this?

 

[tkotom]

Once again, our government supports and urges the Kurds, then abandons them in the final moments. What was one of the most shameful foreign policy decisions of the 20th century is now being repeated in the first quarter of the 21st century.

What do you know about Kurds? Nothing. Just what you read from other dumbasses online. They are incredibly vicious and racist people who terrorise everyone who isn’t a Kurd in any area they step foot in, including the indigenous people upon whose land they want to build a nation. Don’t take my word for it, go and read about how they were complicit in a half dozen genocides this last century - which every Kurd still denies. That is part of the reason why they are hated by every single ethnic group in the area.

 

[7437]

When has the US done that prior to this?

seriously?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

 

[Rod1]

So, anyone have an evaluation of the potential impact, if the Kurds in Syria did flip to russia?

Loyalties change too fast to say anything right now.

Russia endgame with the Kurds i believe is to try and force Turkey out of NATO.

 

[Seaside]

Loyalties change too fast to say anything right now.

Russia endgame with the Kurds i believe is to try and force Turkey out of NATO.

if NATO was smart they would kick Turkey out.