Sirija

[iDemo]

je l' to treca u prvom redu s leva Shqiptaria??

[Anduril]

Argumentacija da ni Kurdi nisu idealni partneri:

 

 

Kurds Can’t Be Syria’s Saviors

Washington’s new allies in the fight against the Islamic State are gaining ground. But their Kurdish

leaders are getting in the way.

By Hassan Hassan, Bassam Barabandi


On Oct. 10, a coalition of 13 Kurdish and Arab fighting factions from northeastern Syria formed the

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and emerged as the centerpiece of the U.S.-led military effort against

the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, in the country. The SDF, in which the Kurds are the dominant

force, brings together most of the groups responsible for the Islamic State’s most significant setback in

over a year — the capture of Tal Abyad in northeastern Syria in June. The taking of that border city

deprived the jihadi group of a vital gateway from Turkey and brought some of its worst enemies —

Kurdish and Arab tribal fighters — within 50 miles of its stronghold in Raqqa.

The alliance has gained even more relevance with the recent offensive by Iraqi Kurdish forces to retake

Mount Sinjar, an area near the Syrian territory where the SDF operates. Just as Kurdish forces are

advancing on Sinjar in Iraq, the SDF is mounting an offensive near the Syrian city of Hawl 40 miles

away. The decision to launch offensives in both Syria and Iraq is a rare, smart move by the U.S.-led

coalition, as it forces the Islamic State to fight simultaneously on two fronts. In the past week, both

Sinjar and Hawl have been wrested from the Islamic State.

The Syrian coalition has quickly become indispensable to Washington’s war on the Islamic State.

In its current shape, however, the alliance is fraught with mistrust and potentially fatal shortcomings.

In its current shape, however, the alliance is fraught with mistrust and potentially fatal shortcomings.

The group’s greatest strength — its experienced and committed Kurdish leadership — is threatening to

become its greatest weakness.

The U.S. focus on the northern Syrian front against the Islamic State began with a renewed

appreciation of the Syrian Kurds’ fighting power. According to a senior U.S. official involved in the

anti-Islamic State campaign, the battle in Kobani last year marked a turning point in American thinking

about how to defeat the jihadi group in Syria. The official said that the Syrian Kurds’ unparalleled

commitment to battle the Islamic State prompted the international coalition in January to turn some of

its attention to this front and work closely with the Kurds to retake Tal Abyad.

However, the move faced tenacious resistance from Turkey, which worried that a central role for the

Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) would empower it internationally.

Ankara considers the YPG connected to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a guerrilla movement

that has fought a decades-long war against the Turkish state. U.S. officials spent weeks travelling from

Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, to Ankara to ease tensions and address Ankara’s concerns. After

the takeover of Tal Abyad, Ankara’s concerns deepened: The U.S. partnership with Syria’s Kurds

increasingly seemed to represent a strategic shift toward what the Turkish government viewed as a

hostile force that was steadily gaining territory in northern Syria.

Tensions between Washington and Ankara reached a high point in July, when Turkey pushed for an

“ISIS-free zone” dominated by Turkey’s allies in Syria that deliberately included territories west of

Kobani to the outskirts of Aleppo — an area that Kurds widely regard as part of their historical

homeland in northern Syria. The idea represented Turkey’s attempt to put an end to the expansion of

the Kurdish influence in the north.

Turkey and the United States therefore reached an understanding, accepted by the Syrian Kurdish

leadership, that the YPG will not attempt to expand west into Ankara’s envisioned “ISIS-free zone.”

The SDF — which attempts to incorporate both Kurdish and Arab forces fighting the Islamic State in

the area, with U.S. assistance — was a consummation of this new understanding.

The Kurdish-led alliance was expected to now focus much of its attention on the northern region of

Raqqa, which includes Arab-majority towns and villages that Arab fighters would hold if the Islamic

State were expelled. The Kurds, however, prefer to expand their presence in predominantly Kurdish

areas rather than fight in areas that would be controlled by Arab fighters. So instead of fighting in

Raqqa, as reports first claimed, the new alliance’s attention has turned further east, toward the region of

Hasakah.

Military gains in this region — from Shaddadi to Hawl to Malikiyah — will help secure the Kurds’

strongholds along the Iraqi border. Southern Hasakah could potentially provide the Kurds with

lucrative resources, including oil fields currently controlled by the Islamic State. Meanwhile, the SDF’s

Arab component could also resolve a key dilemma for the Kurds, by providing it with a friendly force

to run Arab-majority areas in the area. That would allow the YPG to use its limited resources to attack

the Islamic State in the region or deploy fighters elsewhere in the country.

But there is a very real risk that this strategy will not go as planned. If the SDF hopes to break the

stalemate in northeastern Syria, it must address a key shortcoming in the alliance: the Arab tribal

fighters’ relative weakness compared to their Kurdish allies.

One of the complaints repeatedly heard by Arab fighters within the alliance is that they are poorly

armed, as compared to their Kurdish counterparts.

One of the complaints repeatedly heard by Arab fighters within the alliance is that they are poorly

armed, as compared to their Kurdish counterparts. They also claim they are deliberately kept weak by

the Syrian Kurds, so that they will remain subordinate to the YPG and so that their role is confined to

guarding Arab towns.

A senior commander of the Raqqa Revolutionaries’ Brigade, one of the SDF factions, told the authors

that uneven American support for the YPG enabled the Kurds to dictate terms to the rest of the

factions. The main task of the new alliance “is to protect their areas only because the Kurds can’t cover

all the region,” he said. “[The army] has only light weapons so it does not become too powerful.… The

American support is what made [the Kurds] above the rest and impose their political goals.”

This reality was exemplified last month, when the Pentagon said that U.S. jets airdropped 50 tons of

ammunition to Arab rebel forces in northern Raqqa. However, the Arab factions seemingly could not

move the ammunition on their own, and it quickly ended up in Kurdish hands.

There are three reasons the subordinate role for Arab tribal fighters undercuts the alliance’s potential.

First, the imbalance will undermine the military capabilities of the coalition to push against the Islamic

State in Arab-dominated areas.

Second, the tribal fighters’ status as junior partners in the alliance will increasingly reduce their

morale — as happened previously, when many U.S.-trained rebels abandoned the battlefield because

they felt the program was aimless and disproportionally focused on counterterrorism. Tribal fighters

say that U.S. support for the Kurds indicates it is less committed to tribes in the long term. They fear

that nobody would come to their aid if the Islamic State returned to areas from which it had previously

been expelled, as happened in Iraq over the years or in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor last

year, when repeated appeals for help went unnoticed by the international community.

“Had it not been for the [international] coalition, ISIS would have reached Qamishli,” said a fighter

from the Shammar tribe, which leads the Kurdish-Arab alliance’s al-Sanadid forces. “And the fact is

that when ISIS wants, it could reach anywhere.”

Finally, there are widespread fears that as more areas are seized by the Kurdish-led alliance, incidents

of ethnic cleansing will increase. Last month, Amnesty International released a report accusing the

YPG of committing war crimes, including the forced displacement of Arab civilians and demolition of

their houses. “Whenever the YPG enters an area, they displace its Arab residents,” the Shammari

fighter said, referring to Arab towns in southern Hasakah. “Fifteen villages were leveled to the ground

in Tal Hamees, Tel Brak, and Jazaa.”

Meanwhile, when it comes to the local Arab communities they seek to control, the Arab and tribal

factions are widely viewed as lackeys to the YPG. This view was reinforced after the capture of Tal

Abyad, when Free Syrian Army factions were marginalized despite initial promises they would help

run the city, in addition to the reported incidents of mass displacement detailed by Amnesty. Tal Abyad

was a missed opportunity to change the perception about these forces and enable them to mobilize

locals and win their support.

At the same time, there are other U.S.-backed groups in eastern Syria — and there’s at least one

alternative that skirts the SDF’s inherent ethnic rivalries. The New Syrian Army, a new U.S.-backed

militia dedicated to the fight against the Islamic State in the eastern region of Deir Ezzor, consists of

fighters who were previously expelled from the area by the Islamic State.

The Kurdish-Arab alliance at the heart of the SDF still has huge potential to reverse the gains made by

the Islamic State, whose hold over Syrian territory is much more tenuous than in Iraq. But the YPG

should not steer its operations to suit its narrow agenda. Establishing a true balance among the forces

that constitute the coalition will boost its military potential and help it better secure both Arab and

Kurdish areas held by the Islamic State.

[Skyhighatrist]

je l' to treca u prvom redu s leva Shqiptaria??

Yup.

 

 

Kadar iz novog PR uratka ‘No Respite’ (nema odmora dok traje obnova)

Edited November 26, 2015 by Skyhighatrist

[Bane5]

kad se pominju kurdi treba dodati da se dobar deo trgovine IS-ove nafte odvija upravo preko njihovih posrednika i preko njihovih teritrorija u iraku i siriji.

cela vertikala vlasti (ukljucujuci kliku oko predsednika masuda barzanija) u irackom kurdistanu je ogrezla u debelu korupciju.

biznis ne gleda u krvna zrnca.

[Marcus Wulffings]

a amerikanci im svesrdno pomažu kroz vojnu opremu

[dragance]

Kao da je to nešto čudno ili novo. U najvećem jeku rata u BiH, '92 i '93 barem u Hercegovini (a verujem da je tako bilo i drugde) je standardna razmena robe bila cigare za naftu, pa je čak i iznad Stoca u no mans landu bio i skoro pa zvanična pijaca izmedju zaracenih strana. Da ne pominjem iznajmljivanja oklopnih vozila sa posadom HVOu od strane RS za 100dm po danu.

[Prospero]

Možda se omašili ali i majka Srbija je u koaliciji. i Kosovo i Rusija, mmmmm sve, aaaaa.

 

Čestitam nam novi rat!

Edited November 26, 2015 by Prospero

[dragance]

Aman, zbrda zdola nabacane zastave. Kakva koalicija...

[Prospero]

Stejt department ne misli kao ti


What the 60-plus members of the anti-Islamic State coalition are doing

 

Coalition supporters

The following nations have an unspecified commitment but State Department has said they are part of the coalition: Andorra, Bosnia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Tunisia and Ukraine.

[Hamlet Strašni]

Predlažem nasilni miting kao prvu kampanju u ratu.

 

Послато са SM-G900F уз помоћ Тапатока

[dragance]

Andora :D

[Shan Jan]

Ceka se da isplovi brod sa malteskim vitezovima.

[Gandalf]

kad se pominju kurdi treba dodati da se dobar deo trgovine IS-ove nafte odvija upravo preko njihovih posrednika i preko njihovih teritrorija u iraku i siriji.

Kurdi, Turci, sirijski rezim, pobunjenicke milicije, svi redom podrzavaju i pomazu IS. trguju naftom.

Edited November 26, 2015 by Gandalf

[Pontijak]

a jednostavnije bi bilo da se prihvati nova realnost i da se prizna postojanje IS. onda bi se oni malo smirili, ustvari i nema neke razlike izmedju saudijske kraljevine i islamskog kalifata, trgovina naftom, verski ekstremizam i tako dalje. za 10 godina bi kalifat izgledao kao samo malo ekstremnija saudi arabija, bavili bi se izvozom svoje vere u svet kao i saudi arabija, naucili bi da uzivaju u ekstremnom luksuzu i rasipanju kao sto to ume kuca sauda, sve u svemu, najbolje resenje. sirija kakva je bila ionako vise ne postoji i tesko da ce opet postojati u granicama pre pocetka sukoba

Edited November 26, 2015 by Pontijak

[Ryan Franco]

Mislim da ti u Stokholmu već motaju dve Nobelove nagrade za poneti.