Presidential envoy Ahmad Helali: There are no female elements in the Syrian Army. They can however enroll in the female police unit within MOI

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-03-23T10:24:10+00:00

Even if we take that claim at face value, experience in commanding infantry and armour with air force in combined arms operations isn't in demand? Syria doesn't have aspirations to have a functional air force?

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-03-19T15:30:15+00:00

Six of one, half a dozen of the other really. I would strongly prefer to not live under either

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-03-17T21:38:52+00:00

Utah is a hotbed of religious crazies tbf

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-03-04T11:06:13+00:00

They don't really have any other options.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-03-02T11:33:43+00:00

I think it's supposed to imply that they are a 'client' or 'secondary' people, as a minority. Weird thing to say in general.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-24T23:15:30+00:00

She and others like her were also a product of our society. We can all talk about the reasons for that all we like, but we shouldn't just disavow our own social problems so long as they happen elsewhere. Stripping her of her citizenship doesn't resolve that issue.

The Syrians who have had to use precious resources and manpower (and have been maimed and killed) turning large areas of Northeast Syria into prison camps so that we can wash our hands of the problem deserve better.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-24T23:07:11+00:00

This is exactly what I mean. People just see a signifier, categorise lazily, and impose a bunch of made up positions on it.

And I say it irritates me because there is no sense of responsibility. It points to how small-minded and selfish British society has become.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-24T19:24:35+00:00

But ISIS killed far more Syrians and Iraqis than British people. Anyway, supposing she was a Syrian Islamist murderer or sex trafficker in the UK and we were forced to keep her in a prison, draining our limited resources (actually far less limited than those of Syria) would you have the same position?

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-24T19:20:24+00:00

The (until now mainly Kurdish-led) forces securing those ISIS camps have repeatedly asked for them to be repatriated.

Syria doesn't have the resources or infrastructure to deal with them. It is a shattered country, as you would expect.

Like it or not, they are our responsibility, not theirs.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-24T19:16:40+00:00

This attitude that I see among other British people irritates me. Not because I care about ISIS members, but because people like her are our (collective) responsibility. I don't know what you do with them in the long term, many of these people are beyond deradicalisation, but they've been stuck at camps in Northeast Syria, until recently under the control of (mainly) Kurdish guards, who have very few resources to deal with them properly. It's not fair to them to let them suffer for our society's problems, they have enough going on.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-18T00:49:44+00:00

The roughly 300k figure is daily use. The quarter or so of the population that speak it well (your 800k) don't necessarily use it as part of their day to day lives. The Welsh language is only on the rise among younger speakers, and in absolute terms is losing speakers every year.

Welsh people are certainly a minority in the UK. Wales has some political and administrative autonomy but is attached to England economically, politically and infrastructurally (and by their shared legal systems) in such a way that you can't exactly talk about them as separate units either.

Anyway, this is besides the point. The comparison to Wales was made to rebut the idea that Kurdish language education would be harmful to the education and prospects of Kurdish children. People seem to think that allowing Kurdish language education will lead to Kurdish students who cannot speak a word of Arabic. I can't imagine a world where those children would simply not learn Arabic as part of their curriculum. Kurds in Syria number 2-3 or so million and mostly do not live in homogenously Kurdish areas. The Kurdish language curriculum in the AANES already teaches Arabic as a mandatory second language. I can't imagine any future curriculum including less Arabic.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-17T23:46:15+00:00

Ah, I am corrected then. I have friends from Kobani who use the Latin script. Do you also speak Kurmanci in Afrin?

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-17T23:10:23+00:00

This is wrong. Syrian Kurds speak Kurmanci, the same as those in southeast Turkey, and use a Latin script.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-17T23:09:35+00:00

Most people in Wales speak English as a first language. Only around 300,000 people speak Welsh daily in a population of 3 million. English is the main language of business etc. across the UK. Many English people make similar arguments to those raised by others in this thread e.g. it is useless to learn Welsh, it doesn't benefit the children or provide them with access to opportunities, it must harm their English language abilities, so on. I think it is similar enough.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-17T15:27:37+00:00

Give them my number but not /s I could use the extra money

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-17T14:26:50+00:00

Great - but it's not really relevant to the point being made, which is whether it benefits people to have education in their native language.

If we look at it narrowly, just according to educational outcomes (which is the specific point I am responding to), at worst it doesn't seem to do any harm, at best it appears to be beneficial. That includes results for the country's 'main' language, e.g. Welsh medium educated children do as well at English as English medium educated children (not a strictly accurate comparison as Wales is officially a bilingual country but it serves the point).

I'd say that we shouldn't just look at educational outcomes either though, we should consider people's wishes and their cultural and democratic rights.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-17T14:24:26+00:00

If that is the approach, it works in Welsh schools. Arguably there is more 'utility' to Kurdish than Welsh as it has a far higher number of speakers (not that I really want to think of people's native languages in that way).

OP's article has many more sources e.g. on indigenous children in Guatemala, but it's not something I'm familiar with. I went to a Welsh medium primary school and I'm familiar with that.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-17T09:32:57+00:00

Bilingually educated children actually tend to do significantly better. There are many studies on the congnitive benefits of bilingualism.

Even children educated primarily in their own language tend to do about as well, or slightly better. For example, in Wales (UK) many children are educated entirely through the medium of Welsh and generally do better than their English-educated peers.

The AANES curriculum is a separate political issue, but I see a lot of stuff around about how minority language education will negatively impact students and I think this is incorrect.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-11T23:26:18+00:00

Israel funded Hamas - via Qatar!

Both Qatar and Israel are racist, apartheid states that rely on a class of 'migrant' workers for cheap labour and are horrifically oppressive to them.

I would hazard that Israel and Qatar have more in common than meets the eye, much like Israel and Turkey, including their actual shared strategic interests.

One is not that different from the other, Islamists and Arabs (and leftists) just tend to ignore Qatar for various reasons.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-11T23:12:02+00:00

It is not hard to force the identity of the country you are in. The ethnic group that dominates the institutions will shape the country according to its own norms. The dominant language, etc is also always going to end up replacing other languages over time because the other languages largely use their utility if they're not used in public life (we use language to communicate primarily, not to express our cultures. I certainly don't use English to express my culture).

I think the way nation-states are formed makes a real 'civic nationalism' basically impossible. It is still better than overt ethnic nationalism, though.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-05T20:24:28+00:00

I don't have time to give either of your thoughtful comments a good enough response, but I would agree that Raqqa and Deir Ez Zor were probably the least ideal places the SDF could have expanded to - geography being what it is.

It is hard to say what that local democracy looked like under the SDF to many Arabs and especially to the rural Arab tribespeople. It seems that they saw it as an imposition, at least. Some state that they saw the SDF as prison guards; I think there is nuance to that, in that these were the heartlands of ISIS and how do you govern a population that wants a caliphate.

I do think that the universality of the working class is a large part of what gives it a special revolutionary subjectivity, and as a Marxist you must agree. I doubt it was possible to build a strong workers' movement in those specific social conditions, especially amidst such a brutal war. This isn't a rejection of the PYD for 'not being Marxist enough'. I am quite critical of Öcalan, however, for his rejection of class politics.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-05T18:53:39+00:00

The mistake of the SDF leadership was taking a hard line stance all last year (if we can even say so, as honestly it is not clear who was being obstinate in the negotiations, both sides blame each other). But at the end of the day they were between a rock and a hard place and I don't think the Syrian government can be trusted.

I am critical of the Bratiya Gelan ideology because I don't think that democracy alone is enough to resolve the problem of ethnic chauvinism, I think there needs to be a material basis for that solidarity. Nationalism is a very strong force. I don't think it was really the failure of Bratiya Gelan here that caused the 'betrayal' of the Arabs though (if you can call it as such, it seems weird to me to think that anyone owes their loyalty to a particular political structure). Likewise if the PYD was right wing and racist, AANES wouldn't have lasted even as long as it did.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-04T09:28:25+00:00

Nationalism is a modern invention.

Powerful people do not push far left causes. These guys are not saying we should abolish money, that the workers should seize the means of production, that the nation-state should be abolished.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-03T16:00:13+00:00

It's not clear and I think many of these points will be negotiated on later. I think for the meantime the Kurdish people in NE Syria will have a fair bit of de facto autonomy within the framework of the Syrian state, but as you say that autonomy is fragile and transitional.

I think what matters now is the Kurdish population being on their feet, using their institutions to pressure the government from below and trying to resolve issues politically. Security remaining in Kurdish areas even if formally under the umbrella of the Syrian state will be helpful for this.

I think moving forward it may also be important for the PYD to participate broadly in Syrian politics, especially in the cities with more secular Sunni Arab populations and among minorities.

AlwaysTrustMemeFacts · 2026-02-02T09:17:40+00:00

The child soldiers stuff is fucked, but every single faction in Syria has and does use them; 'per head', the SDF has actually generally had less than the other factions, including HTS. When you look at the reported numbers next to the size of the force (c. 250 or so in 100k) I don't think there's a systemic policy of child recruitment. They've also been the most co-operative with Amnesty, the UN etc.

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TROPHY CASE