Free Republic

Syria’s new government will relocate ISIS families from camps, with Kurdish and US support. The new Syrian transitional government is seeking to find a way to deal with thousands of ISIS families who have been housed at camps in eastern Syria since ISIS was defeated in Syria in 2019. When ISIS was defeated in several villages near the Euphrates River in 2019, some of the terrorist group chose to surrender, and thousands of families of ISIS fighters ended up in the hands of the US-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The thousands of families were sent to several camps and detention facilities...

I nominate Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, as the most inconsistent, mysterious, and therefore most unpredictable major politician on the world stage. His victory in a referendum last Sunday formally bestows him with near-dictatorial powers that leave Turkey, the Middle East, and beyond in a greater state of uncertainty than ever.Here are some of the puzzles:Mystery #1: Holding the referendum. The Turkish electorate voted on April 16 in a remarkable national plebiscite that dealt not with the usual topic – floating a bond or recalling a politician – but with fundamental constitutional changes affecting the very nature of their...

After eight months of grinding urban warfare, Iraqi government troops on Thursday captured the ruined mosque at the heart of Islamic State's de facto capital Mosul, and the prime minister declared the group's self-styled caliphate at an end. Iraqi authorities expect the long battle for Mosul to end in coming days as remaining Islamic State fighters are bottled up in just a handful of neighborhoods of the Old City. The seizure of the nearly 850-year-old Grand al-Nuri Mosque -- from where Islamic State proclaimed the caliphate nearly three years ago to the day -- is a huge symbolic victory. "The...

ARA NewsKobane – A Syrian Kurd opened a falafel restaurant in the city of Kobane, and decided to name it after the US President-elect Donald Trump.Walid Shekhi, 40, opened his “Trump Restaurant” last week in central Kobane, a city under reconstruction since the expulsion of ISIS militants nearly two years ago. Shekhi, a father of six, told ARA News that he named his restaurant after Tump for the US-led coalition’s key role in liberating his hometown from ISIS.“And I believe that the United States under Donald Trump will provide more support to the Kurds to fight and eventually eliminate Daesh terrorists,” he said, using...

Call it the dark side of liberation. America’s most loyal allies in Syria, the Kurds, are now facing the wrath of Turkish proxies that helped topple Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny earlier this month. As of now neither President Joe Biden nor president-elect Donald Trump have offered any guarantees for the survival of the 200,000 Kurds who are now at risk of being cleansed from the northeastern city of Kobani and surrounding areas. “We feel betrayed,” Ilham Ahmed, a Kurd who serves as the de facto foreign minister for the North and East Syrian administration, told The Free Press in an interview...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Wednesday that it is his country's destiny to expand its borders, particularly into Syria.Speaking at the Scientific and Technological Research Council (TÜBİTAK) and Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA) Awards Ceremony at the Beştepe National Congress and Culture Center, the President stated: "Every incident that has occurred in our region, especially in Syria, recently reminds us of this fact; Turkey is bigger than Turkey. As a nation, we cannot limit our horizon to 782,000 square kilometers."According to him, "Just as a person cannot escape his destiny, Turkey and the Turkish nation cannot escape or...

Six Druze villages, in the portion of the Golan Heights occupied by what was formerly Syria, have reportedly decided to request that Israel annex their village. Many have family and friends in the many existing and very successful Druze communities in Israel, where they enjoy the benefits of citizenship, including civil rights, freedom of speech and religion and equal protection under the law. Is it any wonder that they would like to join them and become a part of Israel? If Israel accepts this proposal, then the US and other nations should approach the matter with moral clarity and rightly...

Syrian rebels who overthrew the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad on Sunday are reportedly executing their opponents, imposing Islamic sharia law, and threatening non-Muslim minorities, including the Kurdish population in the north. Videos are circulating on social media showing Syrian rebels killing people associated with the regime — some of whom may have been part of the state security services, and others who appear to have been ordinary employees. The New York Times reported Tuesday: Islamic State forces on Tuesday killed 54 people in the Homs region in central Syria who had been part of the Syrian government’s military and fled...

SOME ORDER Among the many groups, there are mainly four: A. HTS al-Jolani: Islamic Jihadists ex Nusra (supported Hamas Oct 7 attacks). B. Other Islamists - backed by Turkiye. C. Kurds - allies of US C. Others, including secular. Non jihadisrs are mainly under FSA

The Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, has toppled the regime of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. The group insists it has renounced its ties to al-Qaeda and that it will respect pluralism and the rights of minorities. Since the downfall of Assad’s regime, the Syrian President has reportedly fled the country and been granted asylum in Russia. Meanwhile Israel has seized a buffer zone in the Syrian-controlled area of the Golan Heights. It says this is a temporary but necessary measure since Syrian soldiers had abandoned their positions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has...

Turkey's government says its military struck sites on Wednesday night in Iraq and Syria linked to Kurdish militant group the PKK, after blaming it for an attack near Ankara that killed at least five people. Various videos from the attack earlier on Wednesday show at least two people firing guns around the entrance of Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), which is located some 40km (25 miles) outside the capital.... No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, in which five people were killed and 22 injured. "A total of 32 targets belonging to the terrorists were successfully destroyed" in the retaliatory...

It's what Muslims do. Once they have a core, they will declare a caliphate and then push outward to increase the size of the caliphate, until they have the whole thing.

The president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani, traveled to Tehran on Monday to meet with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who warned him to prevent “anti-revolutionary elements” from getting too friendly with the autonomous Kurdish region. The warning appeared to be a threat intended to dissuade Kurdish cooperation with the United States and any potential cordial ties with neighboring Israel. The KRG maintains friendly relations with the United States and cooperates militarily with Washington, particularly against the Islamic State (Isis) jihadist organization. The KRG’s Peshmerga forces were pivotal in the ouster of the ISIS “caliphate” from...

Videos depicting Muslim migrants causing disturbances in Japan are surfacing. They engage in street altercations with locals, riot in cafes, and vandalize traditional Japanese Shinto shrines. In a recent incident, a family dispute escalated into a stabbing, leaving several people injured. On the streets, Kurdish Muslim demonstrators protest against “racism,” shouting slogans like “Japan must die!”Despite comprising only 2,000 individuals, Kurds who fled persecution in Turkey and Iraq to seek refuge in Japan are stirring up significant trouble. Increasingly, evidence of their disruptive behavior is circulating on social media platforms.Encounters between Kurds and local Japanese often turn violent, involving physical...

10 Questions PRO-Palestinians Can’t Answer (Can You Prove Me Wrong?) 0:00 - intro 1:48 - The oppressed people of the Middle East 4:28 - Stolen Land 5:56 - Why wasn’t an independent Palestinian state established between 1948 and 1967? 7:58 - Egypt 9:24 - Genocide 9:52 - Blacks and Palestinians 13:03- The State of Palestine 14:01- The R-word 14:58 - Tell me who your friends are

Dutch Jewish aid worker (A)Lex Aronson was hanged on this date in 1975 in Iraq. Aronson (English Wikipedia entry | Dutch) had survived Bergen-Belsen as a child* — his grandfather was not so fortunate — and gone on to a peripatetic career in global relief work that took him to Israel, Syria, Gabon, Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, and points beyond. The last point beyond was Kurdish northern Iraq, during the terrible Iraqi-Kurdish war there of 1974-1975. By the accounts of his friends, Aronson was a free spirit, a man of idealism and wanderlust. By the account of the Iraqi government that...

For the record, the term “Palestinian” is a fictitious contrivance currently used to define the Arabs from various nations who migrated into Palestine in relatively recent times. “Palestinian” was once used to describe the Jewish Zionists who settled in what was then the Ottoman territory known as Palestine. Also, unlike Palestine, the establishment of a nation of Kurdistan was included in the aftermath of the Versailles Treaty. As Lenin used to say, “promises are like pie crust...made to be broken.” What is currently called Kurdistan is the border region where Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey converge. Kurdish separatist tendencies are...

A German-made tank, which Berlin once dubbed one of the best in the world, has had its shortcomings embarrassingly exposed on the battlefield in Syria. Photos from the Turkish military operation dubbed 'Euphrates Shield', which began in August 2016, show the charred remains of one of the Leopard 2 tanks which was reportedly blown up with mines. The images - taken from an ISIS video published in January 2017 - show the tank with its turret completely blown off. Other pictures from the same conflict show Leopard 2s standing idle in ditches and snow after being severely damaged. The 1970s-built...

French President Emmanuel Macron had proposed it during the election campaign this year and now 200 randomly chosen French citizens have come together to consider "priority issues" regarding the "end of life". Last Sunday as the World Cup fever gripped France news was published that beginning January 6th the "citizens convention" will look at 10 priority issues including "extreme forms of psychological suffering" which will constitute reasons to "end life". The convention's recommendations will go onto French lawmakers for consideration. Good news Friday for the government as railroad unions reached labor agreements... Today in Paris Yellow Vests on the streets......

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned Friday’s mass shooting attack at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris, which killed three people and wounded four. "The Kurds of France have been the target of a heinous attack in the heart of Paris. Our thoughts are with the victims, the people who are struggling to live, their families and loved ones," Macron said in a tweet. The attack took place in the Rue d'Enghien in the 10th arrondissement of the French capital. Two of the wounded are in critical condition. An eyewitness told AFP that seven or eight shots were fired during the...