The Syrian army and the Kurdish YPG jointly waved flags over the highest building in the Bustan al-Pasha Neighborhood of Aleppo city, confirming the recent facts of cooperation between two forces in the area.
Following militants withdrawal from northeastern Aleppo, Kurdish YPG forces have entered some aeras and filled the vacuum.
Now, Syrian government forces and Kurdish YPG units have a joint-control over areas in Bustan al-Basha, al-Halek and Ayn al-Tell.
Photos of Syrian army Republican Guard troops in Bustan al-Pasha and Sheikh Khidir:
I am gonna repost these pictures when SAA and PKK starts going against each other.
yaya. feel free to do whatever.
? Are you trying to be sarcastic? Don’t do it. Sarcasm requires intellgience.
Precisely .
He has butthurt written all over him, I pity the Turk.
Maybe the Kurds will realize how important it is to rebuild a Syria for all people by all people.
But something tells me that many more will die in a conflict between national forces and Kurdish separatists in the near future.
KNC (who are the only ones talking about an independent state) are a minority even amongst Syrian Kurds. And even KNC aren’t dead set on independence. Most Syrian Kurds back PYD (SDF), who are Democratic Confederalists, and as such have never even suggested breaking away from Syria. On the contrary, their Anarcho-Syndicalist system of community rule and maximum local autonomy has managed to attract more Syrian Turkomen than Erdogan has collected, along with the majority of Assyrian Christians, the only genuine moderate democratic rebels anyone has found in Syria, and quite a lot of other diverse people alongside. They want a constitution which guarantees basic rights to all citizens and adheres to secular law. There is really no good reason for the SDF and Assad not to work together and make a better Syria.
Maybe I am wrong when I say this because this is different political situation, but when Lenin federalized Russia this was a very damaging thing.
Well, fair enough: I think any structural change has the potential to cause serious damage if executed badly. However, the SDF already have a working model in place, and much of Syria is in a fairly chaotic state, so it is as good a time as any, if one wants to implement such change. And I think their system is a more efficient one, especially for a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state like Syria.
Odds are your Russian history is better than mine, but I’ll offer some reasons I think Lenin’s situation was different: Lenin wanted to impose a definite ideology, and to erase all existing ones. Because the Russian people didn’t magically become good Marxists, and didn’t just drop their Orthodox and Islamic and other creeds, he employed horrific brutality to try and force them to do so. In order to do that, he had to employ some really despicable, evil, power-hungry people. And that right their undermined the whole structure. The system was filled with ambitious sociopaths like Stalin and Beria, frequently recruited from minorities that resented Russians for being the dominant group, holding them responsible for whatever oppression the Russian Empire had visited on them, and took every opportunity to return it in kind on ordinary people. And because they were such people, they all tried to carve out as much power as they could grab, so the system became management through terror. The local officials terrorised the people, and their superiors had to terrorise them to keep them in check, and so on Under conditions like that, federalisation was a nightmare. Then again, I’m not sure what real alternative Lenin had to federalisation, for a territory that vast.
In the Syrian case there would be no such ideological imposition beyond having secular law. The only danger here is the development of some Barzani-type syndicate or syndicates in the respective regions, as in Iraq, and in that case, I think the Iraqi government more or less made that happen by opposing the federalisation their Kurds wanted in the first place. When an autonomous Kurdish region de-facto happened, in the absence of an Iraqi state that could stop it, or even govern it, it was never integrated into the system, never regulated. Worse, Americans helped set it up, and they prefer corrupt governments. I think of the SDF and AAad and the Russians sit down and negotiate a system that ensures there is some overall cohesiveness within the federation, it can work. They just need to keep the CIA and SIS out of it.
The real alternative was what made Russian nation so great: leadership under one big boss who has (unfortunately not always) the wisdom and will to keep the nation together by authority. Communism was invented by the angloamericans, after all, it shouldn’t surprise you that they did nothing good while in power (except for Stalin, where I disagree with you and the rest of the West).
I can only hope that SDF does not follow US advice and don`t pay back the aid with obedience. If Syrian Kurds can be integrated into Syrian nation, they will provide a bulwark against Neoottoman ambitions in the north.
I understand your attraction to the idea of the talented autocrat who can just get things done, in contrast to the squabbling councils and bureaucracies of other systems. Hitler, despite what some may think of his writing, actually makes a pretty good case for it, and an insightful indictment of representative democracy in Mein Kampf. However, as he himself demonstrates, it’s a risky venture. How often is your monarch or dictator really worthwhile? Hitler was talented in many ways, but the areas he lacked in resulted in the most complete devastation of his country since the 30 Years War. Off the top of my head, I can think of very few people who have pulled off such a role well. Frederick II of Prussia comes to mind. But then, pretty much every single Prussian monarch after him was mediocre at best.
As for Stalin, he, like Hitler, did more damage to the people of the nation he ruled than anybody before or since. More Soviet citizens died under him than even Lenin, and that is without counting WWII. He didn’t even like Russians. He was a Georgian Freemason. He casually appointed a serial-killer and serial-rapist (Beria) to be head of his security service. His brutality against the Ukraine is what set the stage for Stephan Bandera, and the lingering effects of what he did there is still used by the West as a tool to pry the Ukraine away from Russia. He had Beria conduct atrocities against other Soviet people, just to blame them on the Germans and set up a cycle of atrocity and counter-atrocity that would discourage collaboration.
People like to credit him with saving the Soviet Union. I don’t think he did anything of the kind. I think that the Soviet Union’s 18 million military deaths (that is Valery Gerasimov’s figure; I trust his scholarship in the matter above others) are Stalin’s own fault. The years of 1941 and 1942 were the most militarily disastrous in the history of Russia, and they are the direct result of Stalin’s purge of Tuchachevsky and the officer corps. And not just them. How many other of the Soviet Union’s most talented people: scientists, administrators (Kirov!), authors, philosophers, died in his mad purges? He also is personally responsible for all of the Red Army’s worst behaviour. While honourable officers like Zhukov and Rossikovsky did what they could to encourage their men to behave decently, with discipline and restraint, what could they do when Stalin and his mouthpieces like Ehrenberg got on the radio and appeared in pamphlets telling the troops they could do whatever they liked?! And thanks to the lack of experienced officers created by the purges, the Red Army’s officer corps had little ability to reign in the troops when they rampaged across the countryside. All of that is Stalin’s fault. I am hard pressed to think of a worse human being, for the Russian people or anyone else.
If you want to hold up a Russian example of the enlightened despot, how about Peter the Great? I think he did a lot more to advance Russia, and with several orders of magnitude less blood on his hands. Or his daughter Elisabeth, or her protégée Catherine? Or Alexander I, who was probably the only genuinely honourable head-of-state in the Napoleonic Wars, and actually tried to make life better for common people? Actually, despite the idiots, I suppose Russia did pretty well, statistically, as far as good and bad monarchs, compared to other countries.
But like I said, it’s risky. I think if you want that kind of system, you need some kind of meritocratic vetting/training process, like the Germans and Israelis use for military officers, then you allow the handful of most talented candidates to stand for general election as Dictator for maybe an initial two-year term just to test them out, with longer terms after that if they are re-elected, maybe six or eight years, so they focus more on running the country, rather than getting re-elected. Within that time they have complete dictatorial authority, like the Roman idea, but within certain Constitutional and legal limits. Obviously certain acts just can’t be justified as “for the good of the people.” Actually, having some kind of rigorous selection process that looks for certain character traits and a minimum degree of willpower and intelligence, like the German officer system might improve a regular democracy quite a bit. I think you did all right with Putin, despite what some say, but how often does anyone get a decent candidate? Most people who stand for office at any level, and in all countries are attention-starved, ambitious fools. Setting of some kind of difficult screening process would make sense.
Hold this!! Your only longterm change against jihadism!!!
Some Xanax for Erdogan, quick!