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"Vice President Mike Pence says he’s being dispatched to the Middle East by President Donald Trump as U.S. troops pull out of northeast Syria and Turkish forces invade. Pence says Trump spoke with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier Monday and called for an immediate end to Turkey’s moves against the Kurds in Syria. Pence says the president is “very concerned about instability in the region” and is denying that Trump gave Turkey the green light to launch the invasion when he announced a troop pullout. Pence says the U.S. is “simply not going to tolerate Turkey’s invasion of Syria...

President Trump has played this out perfectly. By isolating Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and effectively leaving him naked to an alliance of his enemies, Erdogan is now urgently asking for the U.S. to mediate peace negotiations with Kurdish forces. This request happens immediately after President Trump signed an executive order [See Here] triggering the sanction authority of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Erdogan called the White House requesting an urgent phone call with President Trump. After President Trump talked to Kurdish General Mazloum Kobani Abdi, the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, President Trump then discussed the options available to...

The only good thing that can be said about the U.S. propaganda media is that they aren’t the only ones who know how to BS people. Turns out our ‘good buddies’ the Kurds in Syria are pretty good propagandists too. If only that ogre Donald Trump hadn’t decided to pull American troops out of yet another failed Mideast dung heap.

Message to the Swamp: American voters still are supposed to be in charge. That means they get to decide who gets elected. For example, in 2016, they elected a man named Donald Trump. He is still the president. Go suck an egg if you don’t like it. It also means that American voters get to choose where our soldiers, sailors and airmen get deployed around the world. They choose that by electing “representatives” to Congress, who vote to declare wars. They also get to choose the commander in chief of America’s mighty military. (Again, see previous paragraph about a man...

The Kurds in Syria say the Syrian government has agreed to send its army to the northern border to try to halt Turkey's offensive against them. Syrian state media earlier reported that government forces had been deployed to the north. It follows the US decision to pull all its remaining troops from the area... (Turkey said) It also plans to resettle more than three million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey within the zone. Many of them are not Kurds. Critics have warned this could lead to ethnic cleansing of the local Kurdish population. (Just as Turkey did after it took...

Qamishli (Syria) (AFP) – Syria’s Kurds on Sunday announced a groundbreaking deal with Damascus on a Syrian troop deployment near the border with Turkey, as Ankara pressed a deadly cross-border offensive that has sparked an international outcry. The announcement came as the United States ordered the withdrawal of almost its entire ground force in Syria. Defence Secretary Mark Esper said the move to withdraw 1,000 US troops came after Washington learned that Turkey was pressing further into Syria than had been expected. Turkey’s relentless assault, which has seen air strikes, shelling and a ground incursion manned mainly by Syrian proxy...

The head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation Hakan Fidan was in the Kurdistan region of Iraq to meet with the region’s President Masoud Barzani in the city of Duhoq between 14-15 March, according to local news agency Roj News.The agency, which bases its story on ‘inside sources’, reported that Fidan met with both Masoud Barzani, who is also the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (and Deputy Leader of the KDP) Nechervan Barzani during his visit.The same sources said that the KDP’s relations with Turkey and a joint plan...

Syrian government troops will deploy along the border with Turkey to help Kurdish fighters fend off Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria, the Kurds said Sunday, hours after President Donald Trump ordered all U.S. troops to withdraw from the area to avoid getting caught in the middle of the fast-escalating conflict. The announcement represents a major shift in alliances for Syria’s Kurds after they were abandoned by the U.S., with whom they were longtime partners in the fight against the Islamic State group. Adding to the turmoil, hundreds of Islamic State families and supporters escaped from a holding camp in northern...

BEIRUT/QAMISHLI, Syria, (Reuters) - The Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been holding negotiations at a Russian airbase in Syria, a Syrian Kurdish politician told Reuters on Sunday, expressing hope for a deal that would halt a Turkish attack. Ahmed Suleiman, a senior member of the Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party in Syria, said the talks were being held at Russia's Hmeimim airbase in Latakia. He did not say if he or his party - which is independent from the SDF - had a role in the negotiations. Asked about Suleiman's comments, the head of the SDF media...

If our NATO partner and ally by treaty Turkey is conducting genocide and war crimes against the Kurds, then perhaps we should call on all our NATO partners and allies to condemn Turkey? We are currently committed by treaty to defend TURKEY, NOT the Kurds. We could tear up the treaties with Turkey and NATO and then enter into a mutual defense treaty with Kurdistan, but then what will Russia and Iran do? Oh, wait, there is no country named Kurdistan. This is the way world wars are started.

Most members of America’s foreign-policy establishment see Turkey as an ungrateful ally, perhaps even a Trojan horse inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s walls. On Capitol Hill and in many Washington think tanks, a call for concessions to Tehran will get a more sympathetic hearing than a call to compromise with Ankara, a treaty ally for 67 years. Turkey’s determination to secure its southern border against the YPG is a wanton impulse, in the prevailing view. But the YPG has substantial ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, as then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter testified before Congress in April 2016....

The near consensus view of President Donald Trump’s decision to remove US special forces from the Syrian border with Turkey is that Trump is enabling a Turkish invasion and double crossing the Syrian Kurds who have fought with the Americans for five years against ISIS. Trump’s move, the thinking goes, harms US credibility and undermines US power in the region and throughout the world. There are several problems with this narrative. The first is that it assumes that until this week, the US had power and influence in Syria when in fact, by design, the US went to great lengths...

President Trump has answered these critics. The Kurds were engaged in a contractual relationship fighting the Islamic State (ISIS). They were well paid and equipped for their fighting, much like any mercenary group. Further, they were given three years to consolidate eastern Syria to feed their long-held desire to form an independent Kurdistan with other Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. They failed. The Kurds’ problem, and by association that of the U.S., is that regional powers like Turkey and to a lesser extent Iran and Syria have long held the Kurds in disdain. In fact, Turkey considers the Syrian...

Turkish forces who launched multiple artillery rounds near a U.S. Special Operations outpost in northeastern Syria on Friday have known for months that Americans were there, according to four current and former U.S. officials, raising questions whether Turkey is trying to push American troops farther from the border. The incident occurred on a hilltop base overlooking the town of Kobane as Turkey continues an operation launched Tuesday against Syrian Kurds, some of whom the United States has partnered with for years in its campaign against the Islamic State. The incursion has focused on an area 60 miles to the west...

Fierce fighting is taking place around the Syrian border town of Ras al-Ain as Turkish forces continue their offensive in the north-east against the Kurds. Turkey says it has taken the key town, but the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) dispute this. The SDF on Saturday called on their Western allies to close off air space to Turkish warplanes. Nearly 50 civilians have reportedly been killed on both sides of the border and more than 100,000 displaced. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw US troops from the area effectively triggered the Turkish incursion against the SDF - the main Western...

President Trump’s decision to withdraw our few troops from the Syria-Turkey border area earned him considerable criticism from allies. Senator Lindsey Graham said the decision is “a catastrophe in the making.” Representative Lin Cheney said it’s “a catastrophic mistake.” Former UN Secretary Nikki Haley said, “We must always have the backs of our allies.” President Trump has answered these critics. The Kurds were engaged in a contractual relationship fighting the Islamic State (ISIS). They were well paid and equipped for their fighting, much like any mercenary group. Further, they were given three years to consolidate eastern Syria to feed their...

Amir did a really good middle east update as usual...I have been waiting for his explanation to understand what is going on between Turkey and the Kurds from his point of view and he did not disappoint... The first half is the middle east update and then gets into Brazil, amazon etc... Amir Tsarfati: Middle East Update, October 11, 2019

“President Trump is right on Syria!,” according to Johny Messo, the President of the World Council of Arameans (Syriacs) (“WCA”). Withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria and halting financial and arms support to the YPG Kurds may help restore peace and security in Syria. Messo further argues that “the YPG Kurds are responsible for the current escalation in the northeast and that they hold the key for peace in this part of our ancestral homeland.” 1) President Trump made the right decision in withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria to end the “ridiculous endless wars,” fulfilling yet another campaign promise; he already...

Acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper announcing the deployment of 1,800 additional US troops to Saudi Arabia.... The move comes hours after explosions were reported on an Iranian oil tanker..... Iran hailing the notion of mediation in its relations with Saudi Arabia..... Intense fighting in northeastern Syria as the Turkish military continues its attack to take Kurdish controlled territory..... Citing a Kurdish source and one at the Pentagon "Newsweek" reported today that some US Special Forces got caught in the Turkish shelling..... In Syria Friday one Russian soldier and two Syrian soldiers wounded when an improvised explosive device exploded..... The Russian...

Five Isis militants have reportedly broken out of a prison in northern Syria following Turkish mortar strikes nearby. The detainees fled from a jail in Qamishli city, according to a spokesman in the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as reported by the Independent. It follows earlier reports that the SDF had stopped operations against the terror group to defend against the Turkish advances. As more Kurdish fighters left their posts, makeshift prisons holding Islamic State fighters would become vulnerable to escapes, they warned. Separately, women affiliated with the extremist group attacked security officers at a camp in one of the...