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AZTG;9250585 said:On ISIS news, the YPG just finished liberating the town of Manbij. It took close to 3 months of fighting. At this point, the YPG effectively cut off Raqqa from Turkey. ISIS still has some land on the Turkish border but its pretty much standalone now.
They are calling Manbij the secret capital of ISIS. This is where foreign recruits were trained to attack the West. Another huge strategic loss for ISIS, meaning, they will probably be planning some aggressive attacks in Europe.
AZTG;9254647 said:The thing with Erdogan is he has been trying to cut a deal with Assad for about a year behind doors now. Depending on what type of deal they cut, Assad might stay.
Dont let the breaking of Allepos Siege fool you. The rebels have 1 goal, and that is that if they can take Allepo, they might be able to force the regime to negotiate. Over the last 12 months, Assad retook the momentum on the battlefied and got strong enough to refuse negotiations. All the rebels want is to take some land to force Assad to negotiate. Assad isnt worried about ISIS cause he knows eventually the coalition will finish them off, which is getting closer and closer to happening, he is focused strictly on the rebels and i dont honestly expect the rebels to be able to do much
Swiffness!;9256369 said:Lmao i love this photo
https://twitter.com/HalaJaber/status/764138493153054721
Turkey likely has more binding agreements with the US, if nothing else.kingblaze84;9289686 said:Joe Biden also today said America will remain loyal to Turkey and warned the Kurds to not take on Turkey with violence from this point on, also saying America will cut off all funding to Kurdish groups if they don't retreat to the east. Damn, as I suspected, now even America wants the Kurds to submit to Turkey.
janklow;9296122 said:Turkey likely has more binding agreements with the US, if nothing else.kingblaze84;9289686 said:Joe Biden also today said America will remain loyal to Turkey and warned the Kurds to not take on Turkey with violence from this point on, also saying America will cut off all funding to Kurdish groups if they don't retreat to the east. Damn, as I suspected, now even America wants the Kurds to submit to Turkey.
well, i don't know what's said publicly versus what's said to Kurds off the record... but yeah, Turkey is in NATO and just had all the coup drama, so it seems likely they'll get the favorable treatment.kingblaze84;9296257 said:Yeah but America air raiding the same villages that held Kurdish militias is somewhat surprising to me considering all the aid and weapons they gave them. But you're right that America has agreements with Turkey to back it up as a NATO member, so I should have seen this coming. I just didn't think America would be actively air raiding these areas, Turkey has admitted towns in the border they are clearing out have ISIS and Kurdish militias. And America was very active in the operations according to the Turkish vice president.
seems in line with Turkish policy, honestlykingblaze84;9296257 said:Some say there are more Kurdish areas being cleared out then ISIS ones, not sure if that is true.
janklow;9298984 said:well, i don't know what's said publicly versus what's said to Kurds off the record... but yeah, Turkey is in NATO and just had all the coup drama, so it seems likely they'll get the favorable treatment.kingblaze84;9296257 said:Yeah but America air raiding the same villages that held Kurdish militias is somewhat surprising to me considering all the aid and weapons they gave them. But you're right that America has agreements with Turkey to back it up as a NATO member, so I should have seen this coming. I just didn't think America would be actively air raiding these areas, Turkey has admitted towns in the border they are clearing out have ISIS and Kurdish militias. And America was very active in the operations according to the Turkish vice president.
seems in line with Turkish policy, honestlykingblaze84;9296257 said:Some say there are more Kurdish areas being cleared out then ISIS ones, not sure if that is true.
to be fair, i heard a more nuanced version of this...kingblaze84;9357230 said:Members of the Free Syrian Army chased American soldiers from a town formerly held by ISIS fighters yesterday, and there's video of them chanting death to America as American vehicles leave the town. This is the same Free Syrian Army that has received hundreds of millions of dollars in ammo and weapons.....I wonder how long it will be before America designates the FSA as the next terror group, another group that it helped create, as Americans helped create and develop other terror groups in the past. The Free Syrian Army members are also heard saying Christians have no place among them.....
still certainly a poor lookWho says the United States got nothing for the star-crossed, $500 million train-and-equip program for Syrian rebels that fell apart last year? It apparently bought enough goodwill with one rebel group that they escorted U.S. special forces troops back into the northern Syrian town of Rai on Friday, just hours after they’d been asked to leave by other Syrian rebels.
Those Syrian Arab fighters, who had pushed into Syria from southern Turkey last month with the help of Turkish special forces and American warplanes, accused the Americans of supporting nearby Kurdish forces, who who have emerged as rivals in the hydra-headed fight to retake land from the Islamic State. Washington has openly supported the Kurds in their fight, providing equipment and embedding teams of commandos with them on the front lines in northern Syria, but that’s soured tensions with Turkey of late.
The brief standoff in Rai underscores the competing agendas on the ground as the United States, Turkey, and several Gulf Arab countries pour money and resources into supporting a bewildering range of groups battling ISIS and the regime of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad in the country’s five-year old civil war. Russia has also thrown its military into the fight, nominally to fight terrorists, but also to prop up Assad’s crumbling power.
American largesse with one rebel faction in particular, Liwa Al-Mutasem, seems to have helped defuse a potentially embarrassing situation. The group received two American airdrops of weapons earlier this year, and has managed to consolidate other Syrian Arab rebel groups under its umbrella in northern Syria.
Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who has written widely on Syrian rebel groups, told Foreign Policy Friday that fighters from Liwa al-Mutasem accompanied the Americans out of town, then escorted them back in after Turkish officials told the other Free Syrian Army rebels to stand down. The rebels who objected to the American presence have since been moved to other areas of the battlefield.
“These groups got a very stern message from the Turks,” after the Friday incident, Lister said, as “Turkey has realized it is in their interests to have the U.S. involved” on the ground in northern Syria. That’s in part a reflection of gradually improving U.S.-Turkey ties after the summertime coup attempt in Ankara and Istanbul threw a wrench in bilateral relations.
Earlier this year, President Barack Obama approved the deployment of about 300 American special operations troops to Syria, but it’s not clear how many are currently on the ground.
Washington was caught off guard by the FSA’s push into the Syrian border town of Jarablus late last month. Turkish and American military officials had talked about a joint operation in Syria for months, but the original assault took place while the proposal languished at the White House and with no warning to the Americans, according to U.S. officials.
Pointedly dubbed “Operation Euphrates Shield,” the invasion by about 1,000 FSA fighters and Turkish armor and artillery units was aimed not just at pushing ISIS off the Turkish border, but also at preventing Kurdish forces from consolidating control over a contiguous stretch of territory along Turkey’s southern flank.
If the FSA and the Turks — now accompanied by American forces — move further south toward the ISIS stronghold of Bab, they’ll effectively snuff out any remaining Kurdish hopes of uniting strongholds east of the Euphrates with the Kurd enclave to the west of the river.
As ISIS is feeling renewed pressure from the Turkish and American-backed rebels, Washington’s air war has claimed another terrorist leader. The Pentagon announced Friday that a Sept. 7 airstrike near Raqqa killed “Dr. Wa’il”, also known as Wa’il Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad, who “operated as the minister of information for the terror organization and was a prominent member of its Senior Shura Council,” spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement. The announcement comes just days after American officials announced they had killed Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, spokesman for the group and a key leader for plotting and inspiring external terror attacks.
The American involvement, however small, is another sign that after months of tension between Washington and Ankara following the failed military coup against the government of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, relations between the two NATO allies are slowly improving. Vice President Joe Biden visited Turkey last month, and a long of American military brass has traveled to Turkey in recent weeks for talks.
On Friday — the same day that American commandos pushed into Syria — Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford met with Turkey’s Chief of the General Staff, Gen. Hulusi Akar before the NATO Military Committee in Chiefs of Staff conference in Split, Croatia, to talk about the fight against ISIS, according to Dunford’s office.
seems like a colossal fuck-up, but why are we saying "consistently?" why are you disputing it was an accident?kingblaze84;9359316 said:American planes "by accident" consistently shot at and bombed Syrian soldiers who were actually fighting ISIS soldiers on the ground. Yes that's correct, Syrian soldiers fighting ISIS were bombed and shot at by American planes last night, 83 Syrian soldiers dead, over 100 were injured.
janklow;9361200 said:seems like a colossal fuck-up, but why are we saying "consistently?" why are you disputing it was an accident?kingblaze84;9359316 said:American planes "by accident" consistently shot at and bombed Syrian soldiers who were actually fighting ISIS soldiers on the ground. Yes that's correct, Syrian soldiers fighting ISIS were bombed and shot at by American planes last night, 83 Syrian soldiers dead, over 100 were injured.
also, were you this mad when Syrians and Russians INTENTIONALLY hit people fighting ISIS?
so has Syria, and yet i notice you haven't posted anything about the Syrians and/or the Russians hitting an aid convoy.kingblaze84;9361953 said:America has shown a DISGRACEFUL PATTERN of horrible behavior and massive war crimes in the Middle East over the past 15 years or so
