Jesus. Right back into the frying pan. They’re desperate.
BEIRUT — America’s Syrian Kurdish allies struck a deal with the Syrian government on Sunday to bring Syrian troops back into areas along the Turkish border to help confront Turkish troops, following a chaotic day that saw the unraveling of the U.S. mission in northeastern Syria.
Hundreds of Islamic State family members escaped a detention camp after Turkish shellfire hit the area, U.S. troops pulled out from another base and Turkish-backed forces consolidated their hold over a vital highway, cutting the main U.S. supply route into Syria.
By the time Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper appeared on Face the Nation to announce that President Trump had ordered the final withdrawal of the 1,000 U.S. troops in northeastern Syria, it was already clear that the U.S. presence had become unsustainable, U.S. officials said.
I can’t even.
People. Study the Assad regime.
Better that than Erdogan.
EDIT: MichaelNY suggested I edited my commentary to point out how terrible the Assad regime is, and why their very badness expresses the Kurds’ absolute desperation.
He’s right. I apologize if my initial comment isn’t clear.
This is a terrible thing. The Kurds fear utter devastation, loss of home, land, their very lives, and where can they go? Syria has been so completely destroyed by the civil war in which militias like ISIS had been terrorizing the people and blowing things up including ancient and treasured ruins. But Assad himself with Iranian/Hezbollah assistance and Russian troops and armament is perhaps the guiltiest of all. He snuffed out the desire for democracy with barrel bombs, total destruction.
Horrifying. Horrifying.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
Updates:
Europeans harshly critical of Turkish onslaught:
BRUSSELS — France and Germany’s leaders sharply criticized Turkey’s escalating offensive against Kurdish positions in Syria on Sunday, calling for a halt and warning of painful consequences for Turkey and for their own security as the United States accelerated its pullout from Syria.
French President Emmanuel Macron convened an emergency meeting of his security advisers Sunday evening, immediately following a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Paris.
The conflagration held direct and immediate risks for Europe, some of whose citizens had been held inside prison camps for alleged Islamic State fighters and their families. Those camps had been guarded by Kurdish fighting groups now under attack by Turkey.
France and Britain have also had special forces deployed in Syria, leaving their troops potentially exposed amid the fighting.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
Sunday, Oct 13, 2019 · 8:49:13 PM +00:00 · Colorado Blue
AND to serve you better we left behind high value ISIS targets when we fled. Swell.
Per the New York Times,
The American military was unable to carry out a plan to transfer about five dozen “high value” Islamic State detainees out of Kurdish-run wartime prisons before the Pentagon decided to move its forces out of northern Syria and pave the way for a Turkish-led invasion, according to two American officials.
In the same area on Sunday, hundreds of Islamic State sympathizers escaped from a low-security detention camp in the region, taking advantage of the chaos caused by the Turkish ground invasion and the accompanying strikes.
Both developments underscored the pandemonium unleashed by President Trump’s sudden decision to order American troops to evacuate part of the Syrian region bordering Turkey.
That allowed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to order an invasion of Syrian territory controlled by a Kurdish-led militia that was at the center of American-led efforts to contain the Islamic State over the past several years.
www.nytimes.com/…
My god.
Tell me this guy isn’t working for Putin.
Update:
Oy. This video was embedded in a story from Washington Post. It shows Kurdish people being executed while the murderers film the event for the media and social media:
From WaPo:
BEIRUT — Videos posted on social media showing at least one execution-style killing have called into question the discipline of the soldiers engaged in Turkey’s near week-long effort to seize territory controlled by Kurds in northeastern Syria.
The most gruesome and explicit of the videos shows Turkish-allied Syrian fighters pumping bursts of automatic fire into the body of a bound man lying on the side of a desert road as a gunman shouts to his comrades to take his phone and film him doing the shooting. Another trembling, handcuffed man crouches on the opposite side of the road as the shooting erupts. “Kill them,” one man is heard shouting.
The video is one of a series of photographs and videos posted on Twitter accounts of the Turkish-backed rebel groups and circulated by the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces that suggest some of the Syrian rebels participating in Turkey’s offensive to capture territory in Syria might have committed war crimes.
www.washingtonpost.com/...