The harsh note you hear--or don't, if you only listen to the siren song of the American media--is the discordance between the Turkish and American arrangements of this score. Both want to abolish the Baathist regime in Syria, and demolish the secular Syrian state. The U.S.--for various reasons, including its commitment to the Zionist program for the region--has been laser-focused on that outcome, and has long considered the break-up of Syria into three parts--Sunni, Alawite/Shia, and Kurd--an acceptable path ("Plan B") to that outcome. In fact, in 2012, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon and another "high-ranking Israeli officer" gleefully foresaw: "Syria's fragmentation into provinces, " the formation of an Alawite district in the coastal region" a Sunni province "and "a Kurdish province in northern Syria." (And if you don't think what Israel wants is reflected in what America does, think again.)
This Plan B has become more attractive to the U.S., as the fall of Damascus has been stymied, for a while at least, by Russian military support of the Syrian government. At the same time, the Kurds have a lot of international sympathy. Their legitimate national aspirations have lbeen crushed by the governments of the countries they inhabit--Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey. For this reason, and because they inhabit areas with substantial oil reserves, the Kurds have been repeatedly recruited as "partners"-- i.e., opportune instruments--in various American and Israeli schemes against the three of those countries they target.
Aware of this international sympathy for the Kurds, and too beleaguered elsewhere, since 2012 the Syrian government ceded a kind of semi-autonomy to Kurdish groups in northern Syria. The Syrian army would keep some forces there to demonstrate formal sovereignty, but Kurdish parties and militias would effectively run key towns like Hasakah without interference. This created an opening for American intervention, especially since ISIS wasn't content to let the Kurds be. The U.S. has armed and supported a number or Kurdish (and other ethnic) groups in northern Syria, helped them organize as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and put American troops on the ground--ostensibly for the purpose of protecting the Kurds from ISIS.
These were the "partners" the Americans were defending from the Syrian Ari Force last week. In fact, the American forces goaded elements of the SDF, particularly the People's Protection Units (YPG), into breaking the live-and-let-live gentlemen's agreement and attacking the Syrian government outpost in Hasakah. This provoked the inevitable Syrian response in defense of their troops, and allowed the U.S. to start proclaiming a "no-fly" zone of sorts over Syrian territory. It was also a move by the U.S. to begin creating an autonomous Kurdish zone in northern Syria, completely cleansed of a Syrian government presence. This zone would de facto commence the desired break-up of Syria, and provide a safe haven for favored jihadi groups. The YPG Kurds may have thought they were striking a blow for an independent Kurdistan with this attack on August 18 th , but MoA was somewhat more perceptive: "I believe that this is a severe miscalculation by the Kurds which they will come to rue. The U.S. is not a reliable friend and it will not defend the Kurds should the other actors turn against them with their whole might."
Six days later, Turkey invaded Kurdish Syria and occupied Jarablus. American Vice-President Joe Biden stood beside Turkish President Erdogan and commanded the Kurds to back off and let Turkey have its way--to actually surrender territory they had won from ISIS to Turkey, and to the Free Syrian Army, Faylaq Al-Sham, Nour al-Din al-Zenki, and re-costumed-ISIS jihadis who follow in the wake of Turkish tanks.
A lot of Kurds are in no mood to surrender to Turkey, and are furious. As even the NYT recognizes, Kurdish groups are "reeling from what [they] see as an American betrayal." The KCK claims that Turkey's "main target is Syrian Democratic Forces aiming to democratize Syria." The YPG, who a few days before were attacking Syrian troops in complicity with their American advisors, was shelled by Turkish artillery, with American support, for not moving out of the way fast enough. Within a week, the U.S. supported and attacked the same group.
Probably because, within a month, the U.S. had gone from abetting a coup against Erdogan to being his best-bud accomplice in occupying Kurdish Syria. There's widespread perception of American complicity in the Turkish coup attempt--which killed 250 people, and which was opposed by every political faction in Turkey. As Patrick Cockburn says: "It is difficult to find anybody on the left or right who does not suspect that at some level the US was complicit." A quite reasonable suspicion, since the coup plotters were centered at the Incirlik air base, and, as Pepe Escobar puts it "not a pin drops in Incirlik without the Americans knowing it." Escobar also remarks that: "every intel operative in Southwest Asia knows that without a Pentagon green light, Turkish military factions would have had an extremely hard, if not impossible, time to organize a coup," and cites "a top American intel source" saying that "the Turkish military would not have moved without the green light from Washington."
This undoubtedly forced the U.S. government to accede to its crucial NATO ally's wishes regarding its more-dispensable Kurdish "partners." Bottle spun. Make-up war kisses for Turkey, while the Kurds join America's betrayed-ally-of-the-week club.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
2
