This is a well written article on the Kurd situation in Syria.
President Trumps policy is accurate and one must remember that the Kurdish fight has been going on for over 100 years. Also Most Kurds are Sunni while the Iranians and much of the rest of Syria are Shiite.
The Kurds have a successful, great enclave in Northern Iraq, which is where they all should go to balance the Shiite influence in Iraq.
The Turks want control of the oil pipeline which comes up through Syria into Turkey, upon which the Turkish economy relies.Once that is secured, they will likely leave the Kurds to their own devices.
The extended problem will be when Iran and Russia start arming the Kurds to fight Turkey, keeping the region at instability for their own purposes of cutting off the oil supply to Turkey and the West. Ame4rica makes a lot of oil now, and doesn’t care as much as the EU should.
I don’t give a Shiite
I dont see Russia or Iran “ arming” the Kurds esp vs Turkey, but working together on a regional plan with Turkey to create a cordon sanitaire along the recognized border and working out some degree of autonomy in the Syrian Kurd areas, as long as the Kurds agree to keep fighting ISIS and al Qaeda, and accept being part of Assads Syria... and stop being used by the West to lead a resistance force vs Assad, ie the “ SDF”
This will take Russian diplomacy because the Syrians see the Kurds as disloyal, and the Turks seem them as enemies
The Kurds need to get serious about their real prospects and real Western support for an independent Kurdistan carved out of resource rich areas of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran,
Not. Gonna. Happen.
Trump is the first honest POTUS.
We owe the Kurds protection from real genocide ( delivered in Iraq) and support for continued ops vs ISIS. But we dont owe them a chunk of Turkey Syria Iraq and Iran, and American lives, to establish an independent nation,
“Also Most Kurds are Sunni while the Iranians and much of the rest of Syria are Shiite.”’’’’’.
No. The Sunnis are the majority in Syria. The dictator in Syria is an Alawite Muslim, which is an offshoot of Shia Islam, though it is generally considered heretical to most Sunni and Shia Muslims.
Assad and his minority have clung to power over the Sunni majority in Syria by running a ruthless police state. It is no wonder that under those conditions so many Sunni in Syria became radicalized. That was the same, in reverse, in Iraq, where Saddam was a Sunni and the Shia were a 2/3 majority, and after so many decades under Saddam so many Shia became radicalized.
There was no three year agreement with the Kurds of Syria that they had to get their autonomous region in Iraq, the Kurds in Turkey (12 million under the thumb of Erdogan) and their villages in Syria all hooked up under one political banner. The author is blowing smoke on that.
100% of ALL the Kurds sought in Syria was to defeat the ISIS thugs who were taking over their lands in northern Syria, establish political control of what they could kick ISIS out of and eventually make an arrangement for autonomy with the government in Syria, whomever it would turn out to be.
ALL Kurds know that anything else will be a very long term process that it will be way off in the future before they could possibly realize it.
The author, with his lie about a “three year” timeline for Kurds is in fact slandering the Kurds.
He must be a Turkish sympathizer, seeking to defend the indefensible.
Trump’s crass comment that the Kurds were not with us on D-day demonstrates he does not know history very much. He needs to read up on the history of the Ottomans and Turkey since the Ottomans. Then he’d understand that Turkey under Erdogan is a ally in name only (NATO) and that privilege should be ripped from him.