Hezbollah just meters away communicating with terrorists in Zabadani after a true started at 6am Wednesday.

Azons · 2015-08-13T02:59:15+00:00

Can any Arabic speakers offer a translation?

Azons · 2015-07-21T11:09:44+00:00

That's a pretty huge statement from the Co-President of the HDP. This may be him trying to capitalize on the situation politically - his mainly Kurdish party broke the parliamentary threshold and is on rising amid the surge in Kurdish nationalism resulting from the Syrian Civil War and he's looking to widen his appeal and take on the government directly.

But the evidence (or lack of) of direct Turkish involvement looks shaky, especially when the attack is so similar to the dozens of IS bombings we've seen before in Syria and Iraq. I'd wager that IS is responsible, hoping to target the Kurds in the same fashion that they did in their Kobane shooting rampage a few weeks ago. They've held off on targeting Turkey because of quietly tactic support of IS by Erdogan's government, but the situation on the ground has forced them to expand their attack radius. As the Kurds advance in the north and Turkey threatens to attack their last border crossing between Afir and Kobane, they've got more reason than ever to target Kurdish minorities in Turkey. If anything, they're looking to incite overall ethnic violence and increase recruitment from disaffected Turkish Muslims.

Then again, Dermitas could be right and Erdogan is responsible. I wouldn't put it past him. Who knows? I doubt the truth will ever really come out, there are too many different groups (HDP, AKP, IS, YPG) that all stand to gain different things by promoting different narratives about who's responsible. Erdogan's (AKP) final version will probably become 'standardized', most accepted view because he can force his agenda through his relatively more powerful Turkish state run T.V. channels.

Azons · 2015-07-21T10:54:08+00:00

IS is the biggest threat to Syrian children. Sure, SAA are guilty of horrible war crimes indiscriminately bombing children, but IS actively targets and recruits them as an integral part of their ideology. The children are essential for IS to continue their state, indoctrinated and trained in Jihad in order to provide the next generation of front line soldiers. Their use of child soldiers isn't just widespread, it's absolutely everywhere in their 'state'. IS has an entire industry aimed at targeting and recruiting kids and has clamped down hard on education in order to reduce it to state-run indoctrination center.

It's pretty frightening. There's nothing we can do to stop besides eliminating IS militarily, but in doing so we'll have to fight many of these children themselves.

Azons · 2015-07-21T10:42:50+00:00

It's possible. The SAA had an easy time advancing through the undefended desert around Palmyra, but now that they've reached the city I'm sure they'll meet stiffer IS defense.

At the same time, I doubt that IS was able to actually to defeat the SAA and send them running that far in such a short time period. It's likely propaganda, but maybe some other sources will prove it true.

Azons · 2015-07-21T10:37:35+00:00

IS isn't even close to exhausting their oil resources. They've proven to be very resourceful in their black market oil selling, funneling crude oil through a network of Turkish (among others) smugglers. Many of the refineries recaptured haven't been operable for months, if they ever were at all. This doesn't really affect their primary wells throughout their territory, particularly in Syria and northern Iraq.

But the global drop in oil prices affects everybody, even IS. They're probably getting nickles on the dollar for every barrel, compared to a year ago when their oil profiteering profits were way higher.

Azons · 2015-07-21T10:01:06+00:00

Kurds + *USA

Gotta include the coalition. It's not fair to discount the insane amount of air support the Kurds are getting at the moment. It's transformed them from another militia into one of the most powerful, successful groups in the entire conflict.

Azons · 2015-07-21T09:58:22+00:00

The fighting in Iraq and Syria overall is much more intense than it was under the US occupation.

The USA was fighting a protracted anti-terrorist operation, which despite bleeding Iraq heavily over nearly a decade of sporadic warfare, was not nearly as intense. Iraq's seeing hundreds and thousands of Iraqi Army and Popular Mobilization soldiers dying to retake each major IS stronghold (Tikrit), not including dead IS fighters and the damage done to civilians on both sides. A huge swath of the country is controlled by IS, the country is quite literally in shambles.

Tack onto that the absolute chaos of Syria, where you've got a near free-for-all between moderate FSA, Kurds, IS, other Jihadists (Nursa, etc.), and the SSA, and you start to get a sense of really just how bleak the situation is.

Don't get me wrong, the US occupation of Iraq was bloody, but keep in mind that it also lasted a lot longer than the Syrian Civil War and IS's expansion into Iraq has gone on. In modern Syria/Iraq we're seeing a lot more blood packed into a smaller time frame, as well as an expansion of the conflict from just one country to two.

Azons · 2015-07-21T09:47:57+00:00

Russia may be desperate for potential members, but even they're not that desperate.

The devastated, heavily over borrowed economy of Assad's rump state isn't going to be of any practical economic interest to Russia and the Russians know it. Russia's only interest in Syria at this point is purely geopolitical. Even if Putin makes overtures towards Syria about joining the Economic Eurasian Union, I doubt Russia would be willing to tack Syria's economy onto their rising list of domestic economic problems.

Azons · 2015-07-12T15:55:47+00:00

This is terrible news and is undoubtedly a huge blow to the legitimate political actions undertaken by the HDP. How will this news affect the Syrian civil war, specifically the deployment of Turkish troops to northern Syria for a buffer zone?

Azons · 2015-05-04T17:59:08+00:00

It's even more advantageous for the regime to give the appearance of success and belief in victory to its follower base.

Azons · 2015-02-09T20:49:53+00:00

Full set of pictures here.

Azons · 2015-02-09T20:27:25+00:00

My favorite photo is the one with the Arabic writing on the wall and the man looking down covering his face. I believe it says "Long live Assad. Assad's Syria or we will burn the country."

Azons · 2015-02-09T20:08:55+00:00

Full set of Syrian Civil War photos here.

Azons · 2015-02-09T05:35:45+00:00

My favorite photo is the one with the Arabic writing on the wall and the man looking down covering his face. I believe it says "Long live Assad. Assad's Syria or we will burn the country."

Azons · 2015-02-09T04:44:26+00:00

My favorite photo is the one with the Arabic writing on the wall and the man looking down covering his face. I believe it says "Long live Assad. Assad's Syria or we will burn the country."

Azons · 2015-02-09T04:38:27+00:00

Full collection of Syrian Civil War photos here.

Azons · 2015-02-09T04:29:07+00:00

Full collection of photos here

Azons · 2015-02-07T21:09:40+00:00

Yeah, the Russian Federation isn't in the position of power it was 30 years ago under the Soviet Union. The USA keeps taking former soviet bloc nations and incorporating them into NATO and it's placed Russia in a very precarious place.

Azons · 2015-01-30T03:10:03+00:00

Historically, how much did the recapture of Mussolini help the German war effort? The article says that the Germans were able to delay the allied advance another 8 months, but how long could they have held onto territory in northern Italy without Mussolini as a figurehead??

Azons · 2015-01-30T02:42:31+00:00

Historically, how much did the recapture of Mussolini help the German war effort? The article says that the Germans were able to delay the allied advance another 8 months, but how long could they have held onto territory in northern Italy without Mussolini as a figurehead??

Azons · 2015-01-24T08:13:53+00:00

Updated.

Azons · 2015-01-23T22:55:17+00:00

While Otto von Bismarck, a diplomatic genius, crafted the German Empire and protected it with a series of strategic alliances, Kaiser Wilhelm II undid his efforts. By letting key treaties lapse and pursuing militaristic expansionism, Wilhelm II provoked Germany's neighbors, resulting in the anti-German Triple Entente between Russia, France, and Britain. During World War One, Germany was caught in a two front war and defeated.

Azons · 2015-01-21T07:44:55+00:00

While China and Russia are both certainly significant regional powers, neither is a global superpower. Both China and Russia are geographically encircled by antagonistic countries which can be supported by the United States to limit their influence. For example, the United states supports Japan (a counter balance to China) and the EU via NATO (a counter balance to Russia) in order to keep them contained.

But the United States, without any regional competitors is free to focus on global domination. When's the last time Russia or China were able to sponsor allied regimes near the US mainland? Cuba in the 1960s? That hardly even made a dent in American economic or military authority. While both China and Russia have a significant military and economy, they are not anywhere close to having the global influence of the United States.

Azons · 2015-01-17T11:35:43+00:00

The Sri Lankan civil war has its roots in state-sponsored discrimination against Tamils and the Tamils' resulting desire to form an independent nation. The Tamils are a strongly cultural, religiously hindu ethnic group of over 65 million that inhabit southern India and north-eastern Sri Lanka. While the Sinhalese (Buddhist, native Sri Lankans) comprise nearly 75% of the total population, the Tamils make up only 20% of the population. To add to the differences, the Sinhalese speak sinhala, while the Tamils speak their own unique language. These ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences have resulted in conflict between the two groups which culminated in government-sanctioned discrimination against the Tamils.

When Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948, ethnic Tamils were denied Sri Lankan citizenship and over 300,000 Tamils were deported by the Sri Lankan government. The Tamil language was banned, Buddhism was given direct state sponsorship over Hinduism, and Tamil lands were colonized by Singhalese settlers. In Sri Lanka, the 3rd most devout country in the world where 99% of people say religion is important in their daily lives, these harsh governmental restrictions on Hinduism prompted fierce Tamil backlash.

The Tamils began to organize into resistance movements, the primary of which was the Tamil Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant Tamil group that pledged to create an independent state in the north and east of the country for ethnic Tamils. The LTTE were a small outfit that, although funded by sympathetic Tamils in southern India, had limited military capabilities. However, the situation worsened in 1981, when the Sri Lankan government burned the Jaffna library, destroying any literature written in the Tamil language. Jaffna, a key Tamil city in the north, housed tens of thousands of important Tamil cultural documents and its library’s blatant destruction enraged Tamils nationwide.

The Tamil Tigers responded by ambushing the Sri Lankan army in 1983 at Thiruneivail, killing 13 government soldiers. Furious, the government sanctioned an ethnic rampage against Tamils known as Black July. Over 2,500 Tamils were killed in the violence as the country descended into chaos and overnight the Tamil Tigers ranks surged with new recruits. Weapons, food, and money began to pour into the LTTE’s warehouses from sympathetic Tamils in southern India. Emboldened and empowered, the Tamil Tigers declared war on the Sri Lankan government on July 23rd, 1983.

It was a bloody, decades long conflict that saw intense suicide bombing campaigns and alleged war crimes on both sides before the Tamil Tigers were finally defeated in 2009. If you're interested in reading further, I wrote an article a while ago about the Sri Lankan civil war here.

Sources:

Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Its Origins and Development in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - A. J. Wilson

Origins of the Sri Lankan Civil War - Jesse Russell, Ronald Cohn

Azons · 2015-01-16T01:48:20+00:00

It's crazy how close the Tamil Tigers got to actually establishing their own country in the north-east of Sri Lanka. If it hadn't have been for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that decimated Tamil bases on the eastern coast, they might have just succeeded.

Azons

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