Posted on 05/29/2016 10:16:08 PM PDT by Cronos
...One might expect that the long-suffering inhabitants of Raqqa, who have been under ISIS' heavy black yoke since 2013, would welcome the approach of their liberators. But according to a tweet put out in English by the activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, "the strategy of taking Raqqa by SDF... push a lot of people to join ISIS to Defense for their city.
In other words, rather than preparing to welcome their would-be liberators, some Raqqa inhabitants are choosing to throw their lot behind ISIS.
Backed by the United States, the Syrian Democratic Forces are a coalition of Kurdish, Assyrian, Christian, Arab tribal and other forces. But they are dominated by the Kurdish YPG, the Popular Defense Units.
In other words, it's a Kurdish armed force with a multi-ethnic façade, and the Arabs of Raqqa could well be worried about their intentions in a post-ISIS Syria.
...North-central and eastern Syria have been in ethnic flux for the past century. As the Ottoman Empire imploded at the end of World War I, Kurds fled what became Turkey and settled in northeast Syria, between the border with Iraq and the area north of Raqqa.
They had to compete for land and resources with the already diverse local population composed of Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Yazidis and others. France, the governing power, pursued a policy of divide and rule, playing the various groups off against one another.
...The Americans are relatively confident that Kurdish fighters -- unlike other Syrian rebel groups -- won't switch sides, sell their U.S.-supplied weapons to ISIS, or disappear when the going gets rough.
... the local -- concerns of the people of Raqqa .. that a .. predominantly Kurdish force will expel or subjugate them and take their land, and as they say in Arabic, "land is honor."
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
...Overall an interesting read about a complex situation
Aka a cluster fuch. Arab nationalism vs Kurdish nationalism vs Persian nationalism vs Turkish nationalism. And I’m only talking within Iraq.
This is the Middle East
ISIS or the Kurds? Some Arabs wonder which is worse...Not complicated at all. Kill all of those bastards. I've about had with ALL of those inbred Neanderthals.
We are at a disadvantage from the git-go, since Americans just don’t generally understand conflicts that have been ongoing for many hundreds of years.
The borders are shifting as fast as the sand dunes.
Post #6 was meant in reply to post #2.
What the author doesn’t mention, is the extreme racism of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party that has ruled Syria since 1963.
Like the Nazi Party, the Ba’ath Party advocated socialism based on race rather than class. Their unending references to the mighty Arab race, are usually translated into English as “Arab Nationalism” by socialist fellow travelers in the media, but it is really Nazi-like racial supremacism. And Kurds are very explicitly NOT Arabs, in the Ba’ath Party view.
They did not just talk about about race - they terrorized Kurds with brutal oppression and systematic official discrimination. Generations of Arab kids in Syria were raised on that ideology of racial incitement in the schools of that one-party dictatorship.
The Ba’ath Party in Iraq, based on all the same principles as the one in Syria, went even further - launching a genocidal campaign (al Anfal) against the Iraqi Kurds - consciously modeled on the Nazi extermination campaign against the Jews in Eastern Europe (Einsatzgruppen).
ISIS supporters can use the race argument against Kurds to some effect, because Syrian Arabs have been racially agitated against them longer and harder than even out own “black lives matter” radicals.
Neanderthals?! I rather thought the Neanderthals were reasonably honorable men of their times. It is somewhat a disservice to link the Neanderthals with the middle-eastern Moslems. The Neanderthals deserve a better reputation. That being said, genocide is the province of Stalin, Hitler, and Satan. My solution: just stay away in any major way and let them kill each other. It is not a perfect world. If I was 4 years old and in Church Sunday School I might have more polite attitude.
Nuke it from orbit...
Kurds are Iranis — and there are no Persians in IRaq.
” ...genocide is the province of Stalin, Hitler, and Satan.” Ruled over by the largest mass murderer in history: Mao tse-tung who murdered more than 150 million.
The Kurds don’t behead anyone .That’s who I would support!
I think you've hinted at it but it's probably even more about tribalism than nationalism. So increase the number of factions by a power of ten.
Iraq should not exist. It and Saudi Arabia are made up nations from their origin, the never ending “gift” of western intervention into the Mideast.
In other words, the reason that they haven’t expelled ISIS from their city, is because the people of the city support ISIS.
Bomb the whole damn thing.
“Moderate Muslims” supporting ISIS.
Saudi Arabia was not put together by the Western powers and was never under their rule.
King Saud conquered most of the Arabian peninsula tribes and actually exiled from Jeddah the Hashemite’s to Damascus from which they were ejected to Jordan
Now, if the Shia Arabs come, they will crush the Sunni ARabs and may be kill them. If the Kurds come, then the Arabs fear a renewed Persian Empire.
If you are a secular Sunni Arab, you will have to lie low in Raqq (which some seem to have done) and may hate the Islamic state, but you will still fear the Shia Arabs and the Kurds
An analogy would be like a German Lutheran pastor with his wife and daughters in a town to the east of Berlin. assume he opposed the Nazis, was briefly jailed etc.
In 1945 he would be terrified of the Soviets coming and what they would do to his family. If he didn't have the option of fleeing to the West, he would have reluctantly fought with the Nazis.
Syria and Iraq were cobbled together by the English and French, yes.
however, this "intervention" was post-WWI when the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
IF the BRits and French hadn't stuck their noses in then, there would have been a bloody ethnic war in 1920 -- that was just delayed by 90 years...
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