Sen. John McCain crossed over the Turkish-Syrian border today and spent a few hours in Syria meeting with commanders from the Supreme Military Council (SMC).
It hasn't been announced where he crossed the border but it was reported that he had had meetings in Gaziantep, Turkey before he crossed the border.
So he probably crossed the border in Kilis, Turkey which is just south of Gaziantep.
And this is also more or less the only place he could have done this.
The Syrian areas across the border from the Cilvegözü border crossing and the Akçakale border crossing are under the control of radical Islamic rebel groups.
And the Syrian areas across the border from the Ceylanpinar border crossing are being fought over by Kurdish groups and radical Islamic rebel groups.
And the Syrian areas across the border from the Nusaybin border crossing are under the control of Kurdish groups.
Basically the only area along the Turkish-Syrian border under any kind of SMC authority is south of Kilis, a very small area around Azaz, Syria which is partially under the control of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
I wonder if McCain knows this.
I also wonder if McCain knows that the SMC is basically a sham and has almost no say in what happens in the rebel controlled areas of northern Syria.
I wonder if McCain knows that Gen. Salem Idris, the leader of the SMC, is only a face which is acceptable to the west, and has no real power, because almost all of the other members of the council are leaders of radical Islamic rebel groups who hope to use the SMC as a vehicle to acquire weapons from the west because the west would never give them arms directly.
I also wonder if McCain knows that Gen. Idris has commuicatred his willingness to attend the Geneva 2 conference to discuss a politcal solution to the unrest in Syria even though the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SOC) is so damaged by infighting that they haven't been able to choose a president of the organization during the conference they have been having in Istanbul for the past five days.
I wonder if McCain knows that the SMC has been distancing itself from the SOC and generally refuses to cooperate with it.
I wonder if McCain knows that the SMC and the FSA are not the same thing and that the SMC and FSA are separate organizations.
I wonder if McCain really knows anything about Syria.
In response to a request in a comment below these are some quotes from some recent articles about the areas in Syria across from the the Cilvegözü, Akçakale, Ceylanpinar and Nusaybin border crossings.
Cilvegözü border crossing - Bab al-Hawa, Syria
The crossing [Bab al-Hawa] is controlled by Farouq and its Sham Hawks Brigade ally. Nusra fighters are also present in the area, along with Muhajireen al-Sham, another rebel brigade allied with Nusra, according to rebels and opposition activists on the border.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/...
Akçakale border crossing - Tel Abyad, Syria
TEL ABYAD, Syria — I just spent a day in this northeast Syrian town. It was terrifying — much more so than I anticipated — but not because we were threatened in any way by the Free Syrian Army soldiers who took us around or by the Islamist Jabhet al-Nusra fighters who stayed hidden in the shadows. It was the local school that shook me up.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Ceylanpinar border crossing - Ras al-Ayn, Syria
Hasakah province: Clashes are taking place between the YPG and rebel fighters by the Tel Halaf checkpoint in the city of Serekaniyeh (Ras al-Ein). Reports that 4 rebels were killed after they stormed the YPG checkpoint in the village of B'eirir, near the town of Abu Rasein between Ras al-Ein and Tel Nimir. this comes at a time when sporadic clashes are also taking place around the Efrin area in Aleppo province between the YPG and rebels, reports that 1 YPG fighter was recently killed.
https://www.facebook.com/...
Nusaybin border crossing - Qamishli, Syria
The Asayish are the newly formed Kurdish security forces, and despite having been formally created by the Supreme Kurdish Committee (SKC, the Syrian Kurdish coalition grouping all political forces founded in Erbil in July 2012), they serve as the PYD's police. This security apparatus now counts 13 branches in Syrian Kurdistan, also covering ethnically mixed cities like Qamishli. “We abide by an internal statute, which was drafted by jurists belonging to the Kurdish Supreme Committee,” said Ahmad Darwish, the Asayish spokesman in Qamishli. His office is busy addressing the complaints of those who saw their smuggled cars seized by state intelligence forces. “We register new cars brought into the country with a yellow plate,” Darwish told Al-Monitor.
http://www.al-monitor.com/...
I live in Turkey and have for a very long time. I spend quite a lot of time along the Turkish-Syrian border and I get a lot of my information directly.
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