A Kurdish resident holds a signs during a demonstration in support of the Peshmerga troops in front of the U.S. consulate in Erbil, north of Baghdad, August 11, 2014. (Reuters)
Nahal Toosi, Politico: ISIL fight forces U.S. to choose between allies
Syrian Kurds are serving as 'boots on the ground' against the Islamic State, but Turkey opposes their involvement.
As the United States and Turkey launch airstrikes to oust the Islamic State from a stretch of northern Syria, they appear at odds over the role of a critical fighting force on the ground: the Syrian Kurds.
Turkey insists that the main Syrian Kurdish militia have no role in the new operation, a reflection of its worries about the separatist leanings of Kurds in the region. But U.S. officials aren’t willing — at least not publicly — to freeze out the Syrian Kurds, whose fighters already have driven the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, out of much of northern Syria.
WNU Editor: To me .... this choice is a no brainer. The Kurds have proven themselves more than once to be the only effective ground force that can take on the Islamic State .... and to defeat them. In the case of Turkey, they have been an ineffective ally in this conflict, and there is mounting evidence that they have in fact been helping the Islamic State in its war against Syrian President Assad. But .... there are other factors at play, and one of them is that the Kurds themselves are deeply divided. Until the Kurds are unified .... I do not see the U.S. changing its Kurdish policy.
1 comment:
The Turks will NOT allow a unified Kurdish state on their borders, which is foolish in the extreme. They are in fact waiting for enough Kurds to die in the conflict before they fully enter the war and deal ISIS a death blow. It's really a shame, because the Kurds are not terrorists, and they were responsible for stabilizing North Iraq during the entire conflict.
This is racist, counterproductive, and a shame, and there's absolutely nothing we can or could do about it.
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