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Generational Dynamics World View
*** 7-Nov-16 World View -- US-backed Kurdish militias in Syria make surprise announcement of Raqqa operation

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
  • US-backed Kurdish militias in Syria make surprise announcement of Raqqa operation
  • Is Syria's Bashar al-Assad a 'necessary evil'?

****
**** US-backed Kurdish militias in Syria make surprise announcement of Raqqa operation
****


[Image: g161106b.jpg]
Kurdish forces on Sunday preparing to liberate Raqqa (Rudaw)

The Kurdish US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Sunday
announced the beginning of an operation to recapture Raqqa from the
so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). Raqqa, a city
of over 300,000 people, has served as the "capital city" for ISIS.

Different news reports of the operation are calling it by different,
though similar names. The names I've seen so far are:

  • Operation Euphrates Rage
  • The Wrath of the Euphrates
  • Euphrates Anger
  • Angry Euphrates

The announcement was a surprise, coming so soon after the beginning of
the operation to recapture the city of Mosul in Iraq from ISIS. It's
possible that the start of the operation was speeded up in order to
give ISIS less time to prepare. However, both of the operations, in
Raqqa and Mosul, are expected to take months, and to require bloody
street to street fighting.

The announcement is also controversial because the principal fighters
are Kurds, something that's opposed by Turkey and by many Arab Sunnis.
The Kurds have treated Sunni Arabs harshly in other cities that the
Kurds have liberated from ISIS, and have expelled many of the Sunnis,
and Raqqa Sunnis are afraid that the same thing will happen to them.
This is not an unreasonable fear. The Kurds are known to be trying to
form an independent Kurdish state called "Rojava" in northern Syria
and Iraq, along the border with Turkey, and so expelling Sunni Arabs
from Raqqa would be consistent with this plan.

Turkey on the other hand has launched Operation Euphrates Shield on
the other (western) side of the Euphrates River, allied with the Free
Syrian Army, to recapture regions around Aleppo from ISIS, and also to
block the Kurds from creating Rojava. Turkey is bitterly opposed to
the use of Kurdish militias in Syria, since it considers them to be
terrorists, allied with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is
considered a terrorist group by the US and Europe, and has been
conduction terrorist bombings in Turkey.

Turkey had wanted to participate in the liberation of Raqqa, and
didn't want the Kurds to participate. The US had to choose between
the two, and chose the Kurds. Haaretz (Israel) and Rudaw (Iraqi Kurdistan) and AP

Related Articles

****
**** Is Syria's Bashar al-Assad a 'necessary evil'?
****


I've written frequently that Syria's Alawite/Shia president Bashar
al-Assad is the worst genocidal leader so far in the 21st century,
because of his war crimes and his apparent attempted extermination of
the Alawite's historic enemies, the Syrian Sunnis. One web site
reader says that al-Assad is a "necessary evil":

> [indent]<QUOTE>"I personally do not like Assad, John, I even wrote a
> very lengthy article about how the U.S. should interfere to end
> the war and depose his regime, but my views have since evolved.
> As evil as Bashar may be, he is a necessary evil to the region --
> at least for now, especially in the wake of the massive
> geopolitical changes going on right now."<END QUOTE>
[/indent]

I understand your argument, but there are two problems with it.

First, why is he "necessary"? You're making an assumption that the
region is better off with him there, committing genocide against
Sunnis, than the region would be without him. How do you justify that
assumption? Was Adolf Hitler a necessary evil for Germany when he
perpetrated the Holocaust? Was Mao Zedong a necessary evil for China
when he perpetrated the Great Leap Forward? Was Pol Pot a necessary
evil for Cambodia when he perpetrated the Killing Fields? I don't
think you can successfully make the argument you're trying to make.

Second, I think it's demonstrable, or very close to it, that the
region would be better off without him. The civil war in Syria didn't
spring from nowhere. It was caused when al-Assad unleashed his army
and air force against peaceful protesters in 2011. Up to that point,
Turkey and Saudi Arabia were friendly with al-Assad. Things really
turned around in August 2011, when al-Assad launched a massive
military assault on a large, peaceful Palestinian refugee camp in
Latakia, filled with tens of thousands of women and children
Palestinians. That's what led to the geopolitical disaster you're
alluding to.

Since then, Sunnis have been fighting Shia/Alawite Assad on a
sectarian basis. The Sunni groups fighting Assad can be split into
rough categories:
  • Syrian people: the "moderate" Free Syrian Army (FSA)
    types
  • Syrian people: the "jihadist" types who joined Jabhat al-Nusra
    (al-Nusra Front, now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS)
  • Foreign fighters: They have come from around 80 countries around
    the world to fight al-Assad. However, the Syrian people don't like
    them, and they don't like the Syrian people, so they went on their own
    to form ISIS.

Since 2011, The rise of Sunni groups fighting al-Assad has brought in
countervailing sectarian forces from Iran and Russia. This has turned
the Syrian "civil war" into a proxy war.

This is a generational Awakening era for Syria, like America in the
1960s when people were still living in the shadow of WW II and did not
want another war. In Syria today, the war was begun by al-Assad in
2011 by attacking peaceful protesters, and is continuing today because
of unceasing attacks by al-Assad, Russia, Hezbollah and Iran -- and
even so, al-Assad's army is struggling for survival.

So I claim that it's demonstrable that if al-Assad were replaced by a
technocrat, then the war would fizzle. Syria would once again get
along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The Syrians -- the FSA and
al-Nusra -- would then unite and expel ISIS. This is what happened in
Iraq during the "surge" in 2007, when the Iraqi Sunnis united and
expelled foreign fighters from al-Qaeda in Iraq. Millions of people
in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, and even Europe could then return to
their homes in Syria.

So I disagree with you. Al-Assad is not a "necessary evil." He's an
extremely destructive evil. Bashar al-Assad is the first major
genocidal leader of the 21st century, and the most evil leader so far
in the 21st century.

Related Articles


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Raqqa, Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Operation Euphrates Rage, Angry Euphrates, Mosul, Iraq, Rojava,
Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, Operation Euphrates Shield, Turkey,
Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot,
Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, JFS, Front for the Conquest of Syria,
Free Syrian Army, FSA, Iran, Russia, Hezbollah

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RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 05-14-2016, 03:21 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 05-23-2016, 10:31 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 08-11-2016, 08:59 PM
7-Nov-16 World View -- US-backed Kurdish militias in Syria make surprise announcement - by John J. Xenakis - 11-06-2016, 09:12 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 01-18-2017, 09:23 PM
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