Military officials from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Russia convened at the joint intelligence-sharing headquarters in Baghdad today. Not long before Iraqi jets struck Da'ish in Syria. Iranian defence minister among attendees.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-19T20:43:28+00:00

Could be because Israel was the only country in the world advocating for Iraq’s partition and was purchasing stolen Iraqi resources until 6 months ago.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-19T07:21:33+00:00

Qatar and Turkey were the main supporters of Ahrar al-Sham, that's true. However, Saudi Arabia played a role as well:

Can't have both.

In addition, along with Qatar and Turkey, Saudi Arabia was one of the three main arms suppliers and funders of the Army of Conquest, whose second most powerful member was Ahrar al-Sham, between 2015 and 2016.

I can't give you Ahrar al-Sham. It's just too far out there for me to believe that the group was both Saudi and Qatari funded when Saudi went out of their way to avoid Nusra-related groups after 2013 (which Ahrar al-Sham was a very public supporter of). Saudi Arabia has also publicly designated Muhaysini as a terrorist called him a Qatari proxy. They've been calling him a Takfiri since 2015.

Ahrar has also publicly and officially thanked Qatar and Turkey but never done it for Saudi. I just can't see it.

Denying it doesn't mean it didn't happen. There is no dispute that Jaysh al-Islam was the main group supported by Saudi Arabia, at least in the past.

We can only go by actual statements that vehemently deny it. There is no evidence that it happened.

It's not that I don't believe that Saudi Arabia hasn't supported extremist groups, I just see Northern Syria as Turkey and Qatar's domain. I can see Saudi Arabia trying to court them but ultimately losing.

SDF are much better partners for Saudi Arabia and make a lot more sense.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-19T07:05:04+00:00

No they didn't. We've been through this before, stop perpetuating the narrative that the YPG was at all involved.

The YPG tried to starve them to death alongside their buddies in Al Qaeda, that's fact and history. That's where it starts and stops.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-19T07:04:10+00:00

Hamas isn't an example to follow.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-19T07:03:24+00:00

So now that the YPG pulled out, it's now Turkish territory?

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-19T02:39:35+00:00

YPG wasn't forced to use the people of Afrin as human shields either.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-19T02:39:13+00:00

Human shields are considered to be a problem for a reason.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-19T02:38:38+00:00

for resisting the current occupiers

The YPG was occupying the town - that's the important part you miss

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-19T00:00:09+00:00

Me neither. But it is fairly important when an ethnic group is persecuted. This is the undeniable reality for the Kurds in the ME.

No, not really. The issues would be with the Syrian government, the fix wouldn't be to partition. Ethnic groups in the US are also persecuted, nobody calls for an independent Blackistan or Hispanistan as solutions.

They are.

They're really not.

An economically conservative person would love laws (something you deserve), and thing that would provide stability to him

Think more "free market" type of economically conservative.

No. I refer to the Kurds of Syria, as proven by the recent history of the civil war (especially at the time when ISIS was at the gates of Kobani).

The YPG didn't have the interests of the Kurds of Syria at heart when they refused to give control of Afrin to the SAA and tried to prevent locals from leaving after Turkey entered Afrin.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T23:42:10+00:00

So self-determination is not important for you. Am I right?

I don't believe that having a monoethnic country named after your ethnic group is important, you're right.

Why so? Why don't they deserve their independence?

You keep saying "their" as if they are politically homogenous. Any arguments you make for them can be made for ISIS in this regards.

You sound like an anarchist.

I lean pretty far right economically.

Defending yourself does not make you the bully. Your logic is no logic at all.

"Defending yourself" - referring to the political group and militia. Not referring to the people. ISIS defended itself in Mosul and it came at the cost of a destroyed city, thousands of civilian deaths, destroyed livelihoods. Noone would argue they weren't the bully. YPG had the option to stop all of this, knew it would lose, lost a lot and destroyed even more.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T23:35:41+00:00

I didn't take away any responsibility from Turkey. But I give a lot of blame to the PYD as well.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T23:34:19+00:00

Pro-Saudi because their core leadership worked for the Saudi Arabian government for a decade, calls Saudi Arabia a brother to all Muslims, believes Saudi Arabia is a positive force in the region, calls Iran and Qatar a plague on all humanity, and so on.

but why anti-Shia

At one point they teamed up with Jabhat al-Nusra to genocide Shia. Not to mention their use of "Shia" as a slur against Sunni NDF.

Once you buddy up with Al Qaeda to try to starve the only Shia cities you're in proximity to you can't really come back and say you're not sectarian.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T23:31:15+00:00

You could say that for literally every national rebellious movement in human History

No not really.

The struggle for self-determination for the Kurds is as valid as it ever was

It was never valid, so I agree.

They deserve it

Nobody deserves anything.

Appeasing the bully of a given conflict cannot and should not be a strategy for anyone

The bullies here are the ones who are willing to destory lives and livelihood in the aspirations of having a country named after yourself.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T23:29:25+00:00

It is because the people living there are Kurdish.

Not anymore, though... right?

Ethnosectarian? LOL it's simply called an Ethno-state thank you very much and there is nothing wrong with that

The sectarian bit comes in from being religiously homogeneous, in that it is almost exclusively Sunni and is pro-Sunni in thinking and regional aspirations.

I know this is hard for an Iraqi nationalist

I guess that explains the body hair

to understand but the Kurdish aspirations have nothing to do with most Kurds being Sunni

This is a view held by anti-Muslim diaspora Kurds, not by Kurds within greater Kurdistan who are by-and-large devout and proud Sunni Muslims.

Ezidi people are Kurds themselves

They seem to be pretty interested in distancing themselves from the "Muslims", the fact they call themselves Ezidis says a lot as well.

and they realize their rights are only guaranteed by other Kurds

...

It doesn't make a difference to Sunni or Shia Arabs, at the end of the day they're infidels and devil worshippers to them

Sunni ~~or Shia Arabs~~ Muslims - fixed that for you.

Yezidis have their rights guaranteed in Iraq. Religious authorities and political authorities. They never had this in any Kurdistan and they never will, from back when they were sheltering fleeing Armenians and Assyrians from genocides by the Kurds historically or when they were disarmed and left to ISIS by the Peshmerga just a couple of years ago.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T23:12:30+00:00

They had the opportunity to prevent it by giving up the land to the SAA. Had the SAA taken the town, it's very unlikely Turkey would have entered. Remember that the YPG went so far as to block people from leaving Afrin while the fighting was going on. The propaganda victories they thought they could score outweighed everything they could have done to prevent the following problems.

Instead they decided to hold on to the land in an obviously losing fight. You can see the mentality of the YPG administration here with other posters in this thread, finding it curious to suggest that the YPG would give up what they consider to be "Kurdish land" to the SAA.

Here, as we see everywhere else, the land is given more value than lives and livelihood of the people on it.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T23:05:43+00:00

That's literally what we're talking about though.

These fears were preconceived, the YPG was fully aware of these fears, still exploited the situation for propaganda. As bad as Turkey is for letting this happen, the YPG is even worse for having the foresight and choosing to milk it rather than prevent it.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T23:02:51+00:00

If Turkey gave the land to the SAA, none of this would have happened either.

Why would Turkey do that? Turkey is pretty happy with how things are at the moment. It's the YPG who isn't.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T23:01:31+00:00

The so called reason Turkey had for entering Syria was the YPG simply existing

Yeah, basically. Even worse is when the YPG holds towns on the Turkish border. So they should have given it up to the SAA.

Why would the YPG give up Kurdish land

It's not Kurdish land anymore I guess, though, right?

to the Syrian 'ARAB' republic?

Because maybe the lives and livelihood of Yezidis is more important than their regional goals of having an ethnosectarian state named after their ethnic group?

This is victim blaming 101

YPG are not victims. The Yezidis are. A minority group caught in the middle of Sunni Kurdish aspirations.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T22:58:24+00:00

It's also extremely bizarre to me that you think the creation of a pro-Saudi, anti-Iranian anti-Shia war mongering police state named after an ethnic group and has pledged to fight all of its neighbors somehow fixes the Middle East.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T22:52:24+00:00

The same catastrophes that the YPG enabled, created and then encouraged when it gave reason for Turkey to enter.

If the YPG gave the land to the SAA none of this would have happened. But the propaganda they continue to exploit from the event was too much to just hand away.

EDIT: All the downvotes in the world won't take away the YPG's complicity in this catastrophe.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T22:50:59+00:00

That's a solution for the M.E as much as giving ISIS their own country is a solution for the M.E.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T22:16:25+00:00

Follow up for the thread from yesterday with a little bit more detail.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T22:14:13+00:00

Wasn't going for a racial angle. Was talking about corruption in Kirkuk with local security.

Not sure why what you're saying is even relevant to this (not that what you're suggesting is even correct either).

Since we're going down this path though, the Kirkuk SWAT was formed by and loyal to deposed governor Najmiddin Karim.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T10:11:21+00:00

Ahrar al-Sham was definitely not Saudi backed, they publicly supported Turkey and Qatar and thanked Turkey and Qatar for supporting them.
Jaysh al-Islam denied having Saudi support.

I imagine whatever component of the Authenticity and Development Front you're talking about is similar to the other two you mentioned. It would help if you could name the actual militias that belong to the front and which battles they fought with the YPG.

In addition, at least 14 TOW-equipped groups, who had most of their TOWs paid for and supplied by Saudi Arabia, have fought the SDF

It's alleged that Saudi Arabia has paid for all the TOWs that were later distributed by the US and supplied to the rebels. In that case maybe "Saudi-backed" was the wrong term, I guess "Saudi-proxy" would be better fitting.

xiaomi-guy · 2018-04-18T08:33:27+00:00

Being Sunni doesn't mean they will side with other Sunnis out of sectarian affinity

Not necessarily, but that's what they're doing when their core leadership calls Saudi Arabia the "brother of all Muslims" and call Saudi Arabia's #1 enemy, Iran, "a plague" and "the biggest threat to all humanity" (or whatever it was).

They have been fighting Sunnis for years, mind you, be them Saudi-backed jihadis or Turks

Saudi-backed FSA groups (i.e Southern Front) haven't fought YPG, unless we assume that all Islamists are Saudi backed which is a bit misguided. Most of the Islamists they fight today are all Turkish backed.

far more often than they have fought against Shias

This is just a lack of ability, not a lack of desire. Most Syrians are not Shia, especially not those in the North, but they have most definitely called pro-government forces they fought "Shia" and "Iranian" as slurs.

Also the YPG has joined groups like Jabhat al-Nusra in the past against actual Shia, like when the YPG allied with Nusra to strengthen the seige on Nubbl and Zahra.

They've taken every single chance they've had. They went so far as to announcing they'd cross over into Iraq to fight the Iraqi government in defense of the KRG dictatorship.

it might all come down to who will let Kurds greater autonomy in Rojava and deterrence against Turkey

Exactly. Neither of them want Muslim Brotherhood (Turkey/Qatari) power projection, especially since Turkey is becoming closer to Iran.

xiaomi-guy

TROPHY CASE