Syria war just transitioned from proxy war to full-scale regional war
Turkey's invasion of the Kurdish areas of Syria was always going to be a threat for the region. Yesterday it happened.
Turkey warned the Syrian government Monday against entering the Kurdish-controlled enclave in northern Syria where a major Turkish military offensive is underway, saying it would hit back at the troops if their goal is to protect the Kurdish fighters.
The warning sets up a potential clash between Turkish troops and Syrian government forces backed by Russia and Iran, whose deployment would be a first step toward restoring President Bashar Assad’s presence along the border with Turkey.
The warning by the Turkish foreign minister came shortly after Syrian state media said pro-government forces would enter Afrin “within hours” to “bolster” local forces in confronting Turkey’s “aggression” after reaching an agreement with the Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which controls Afrin.
#BREAKING Regime forces will enter #Afrin area 'within hours': Syrian State TV
— Guy Elster (@guyelster) February 19, 2018
Up until now, the Turkish offensive hasn't made a lot of progress in Afrin. The Kurds have done a good job of slowing the pro-Turkey jihadists. However, the sheer weight of numbers is on Turkey's side.
The U.S. has made it painfully obvious, by agreeing only on Manbij, that they were prepared to sacrifice the Afrin canton to maintain diplomatic ties with the NATO ally. This forced the Kurds to ask Assad for help to save Afrin.
That request was nearly a month ago. What took so long? Obviously Assad wanted something in return for help that the Kurds were reluctant to give. My guess is that the agreement involved driving a wedge between the Kurds and the invading army of the U.S. in eastern Syria.
So the next time Assad decides to take back his oil fields, our Kurdish allies will wave them through.
That isn't the only escalation going on.
Corrupt and soon to be indicted war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just went past threatening Iran over its troops in Syria, but threatened Iran directly.
“Last week its brazenness reached new heights” he said. “We will act without hesitation to defend ourselves. And we will act if necessary not just against Iran’s proxies but against Iran itself.”
Don't be fooled into thinking that this is just more threats. Israel is already diving deeply into the Syrian civil war.
According to foreign media reports, over the past few months Israel has begun carrying out airstrikes against Syrian army facilities and targets linked to Iran and its Shi’ite militias, in addition to its longstanding targeting of convoys carrying arms to Hezbollah. Tsurkov also reported on other developments taking place.
Dozens of rebels who spoke with Tsurkov described a significant change in the amount of aid they receive from Israel. Moreover, she said at least seven Sunni rebel organizations in the Syrian Golan are now getting arms and ammunition from Israel, along with money to buy additional armaments.
...Nevertheless, she wrote, there’s an expectations gap between the two sides. The rebels expect unlimited Israeli support, and some are even hoping for help in their efforts to topple the regime. Israel’s plans are much more modest, and are intended as a holding action.
If that sounds familiar, it is. Israel tried the very same thing in Lebanon, and failed.
Nevertheless, Assad and pro-Iranian forces are taking the threat seriously.
Comments
Turkey threatens war with Greece
doesn't Turkey have enough on its plate?
It was bound to happen. Erdogan wants
to resurrect the Ottoman Empire. Netanyahu needs a crisis to deflect from corruption charges, Assad is fighting to hold on to his territory and his Presidency, the Kurds are fighting for a homeland, the US is fighting for control ovet Middle Eastern assets and political policy, and Russia is fighting to cripple US ‘domination’ of the Middle East.
And the wheels on the bus go round and round,..
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Hitler's timing for war
Erdoghan and restoring the Ottoman Empire?
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
"Bellamy omnium contra omnes" The War of all against all
"Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War; and such a war as is of every man against every man.[15] [...] In such condition there is no place for Industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual Fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
The fall of Industrial civilization, the MENA district is the canary.
John Michael Greer recently wrote:
“I expect mass migrations on the very large scale once climate change goes beyond certain levels, as warm periods in the past have caused extreme droughts in what’s now the Muslim Middle East. If people have a choice between migration and death, they’ll migrate — and so we’re talking about entire national populations on the move, more likely than not armed with everything the armies of their former nations had to hand.
Europe is utterly unprepared to deal with such a thing — due to many decades of blind trust in the United States for their defense, most European countries have feeble, poorly trained, poorly equipped militaries that have no experience in actual combat conditions. I see phenomena such as Daesh and Boko Haram as the first stirrings of the tsunami to come.
Will there be fighting? You bet, just as there was fighting when Islam first expanded across the Middle East, but by the time the fighting ends, I expect the borders of the EU to change in roughly the same way that the borders of the Byzantine Empire changed in the wake of the great Muslim invasions — and as usual in such situations, woe to the vanquished…”
John Michael Greer (January 2018 Open Post)”
Think it's bad now...wait awhile.
https://forecastingintelligence.org/2018/02/18/islamic-volkerwanderung/ Heh! Not sure of the political assignation of this site but since it quote Nafeez Ahmed and John Michael Greer. I went with it as valid speculation.
Based on a climate map I saw
it will start with Indonesia (the map did not account for war) So look to Australia.
On to Biden since 1973
It's already on going in MENA
Netanyahu reference