Dear Friend,
The war unleashed by Turkey’s invasion of Syria, targeting formerly US-backed Kurdish forces, escalated out of control this weekend as the Syrian army and Iran moved to counterattack. With Turkish troops and allied Al Qaeda militias advancing deep into Kurdish-held territory in Syria, the Middle East is only days away from an all-out war between the major regional powers that could trigger a global conflict between nuclear-armed world powers.
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Syrian army, Iran threaten counterattack against
Turkish invasion of Syria
by Alex Lantier
The war unleashed by Turkey’s invasion of Syria, targeting formerly US-backed Kurdish forces, escalated out of control this weekend as the Syrian army and Iran moved to counterattack. With Turkish troops and allied Al Qaeda militias advancing deep into Kurdish-held territory in Syria, the Middle East is only days away from an all-out war between the major regional powers that could trigger a global conflict between nuclear-armed world powers.
The war unleashed by Turkey’s invasion of Syria, targeting formerly US-backed Kurdish forces, escalated out of control this weekend as the Syrian army and Iran moved to counterattack. With Turkish troops and allied Al Qaeda militias advancing deep into Kurdish-held territory in Syria, the Middle East is only days away from an all-out war between the major regional powers that could trigger a global conflict between nuclear-armed world powers.
UN reports show that 130,000 Syrians have fled their homes in the region amid the Turkish offensive, and Turkish officials claim they had “neutralized” at least 415 Kurdish fighters. Turkish troops seized the cities of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, amid heavy fighting including ongoing Turkish air raids, and seized a road crossing that cut off US and Kurdish troops in Kobani. Turkish troops also fired artillery at US troops near Kobani in what former US envoy Brett McGurk said was “not a mistake,” although Turkish officials later denied this.
Smoke billows from fires on targets in Ras al-Ayn, Syria, caused by bombardment by Turkish forces [Credit:”AP Photo/Emrah Gurel]
Turkey’s Syrian “rebel” allies, the Islamist Syrian National Army (SNA, formerly the Free Syrian Army), are executing Kurdish civilians in areas they hold, according to multiple reports. Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf was executed; her bullet-riddled car appeared in a video surrounded by SNA fighters. Beyond Al Qaeda-linked calls to destroy infidels, the British Daily Telegraph noted, the SNA’s main outlook “is sectarian: they are anti-Kurdish and they are Arab chauvinists.”
Yesterday evening, the Syrian army announced it would march on the area. The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported: “Syrian Arab Army units began moving north to confront Turkish aggression on Syrian territory… The movement comes to confront the ongoing Turkish aggression on towns and areas in the north of Hasaka and Raqqa provinces, where the Turkish forces committed massacres against locals, occupied some areas and destroyed infrastructure.”
The Syrian army has reportedly reached an agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia, whose alliance with the United States was broken by Washington a week ago. Under this agreement, Syrian army troops would reach the city of Kobani near the Syrian-Turkish border in 48 hours. On Saturday, President Donald Trump had authorized the remaining 1,000 US troops in Kobani to withdraw, and US forces were in full retreat across northern Syria this weekend to avoid being cut off by advancing Turkish troops.
Iran, which has deployed tens of thousands of troops as well as drones to Syria in recent years to back the Syrian regime against a NATO-led proxy war, indicated it would support the Syrian army.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s Advisor for International Affairs Ali Akbar Velayati met with Syrian Ambassador to Iran Adnan Mahmoud yesterday in Tehran. He gave Iran’s “full support to Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, calling for the withdrawal of the Turkish forces,” SANA reported. Velayati added, “The principled policy of Iran is based on supporting the people and government of Syria and defending their righteous stances in a way that entails continuing joint cooperation until terrorism and terrorist organizations are completely eliminated.”
At the same time, military tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia are surging amid mutual attacks on tankers carrying Persian Gulf oil supplies that are critical to the world economy. Last month, the US and Saudi governments blamed a September 14 missile attack on Saudi oil facilities that caused a sharp rise in world oil prices on Iran, without providing any evidence. Then on October 11, two missiles hit the Iranian tanker Sabiti off Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast.
Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, said yesterday that Iran would retaliate against unnamed targets for the attack on the Sabiti. “A special committee has been set up to investigate the attack on Sabiti… Its report will soon be submitted to the authorities for decision,” Shamkhani told Fars News. “Piracy and mischief on international waterways aimed at making commercial shipping insecure will not go unanswered.”
Saudi officials declined to comment on the Sabiti attack, and officials with the US Fifth Fleet in the Gulf sheikdom of Bahrain claimed to have no information on it. But there is widespread speculation in the international media that the attack was carried out by Saudi Arabia or with its support.
The conflicts erupting between the different capitalist regimes in the Middle East pose an imminent threat not only to the population of the region, but to the entire world. Workers can give no support to any of the competing military plans and strategic appetites of these reactionary regimes. With America, Europe, Russia and China all deeply involved in the proxy war in Syria, a large-scale Middle East war could strangle the world oil supply and escalate into war between nuclear-armed powers. The working class is coming face to face with the real possibility of a Third World War.
The Kurdish-led SDF militias in Syria, vastly outgunned by Turkish forces and vulnerable to air strikes, warned US officials in talks leaked by CNN that they would appeal for Russia to attack Turkey and protect SDF and Syrian army forces. As Turkey is legally a NATO ally of Washington and the European powers, such an attack could compel the United States and its European allies to either break the 70-year-old NATO alliance or go to war with Russia to protect Turkey.
“You are leaving us to be slaughtered,” SDF General Mazloum Kobani Abdi told US officials in a meeting last Thursday. “You are not willing to protect the people, but you do not want another force to come and protect us. You have sold us.”
Mazloum dismissed US officials when they replied by demanding that the SDF not cut a deal with Russia, but instead keep taking huge casualties from Turkish air raids. He said, “I need to know if you are capable of protecting my people, of stopping these bombs falling on us or not. I need to know, because if you’re not, I need to make a deal with Russia and the regime now and invite their planes to protect this region.”
US forces across Syria were in full retreat, however, and US Defense Secretary Mark Esper told US television news yesterday that the Turkish-Kurdish conflict “gets worse by the hour.” Given the attempts by the Kurds to work out an alliance with Syria and Russia, he added, Trump “directed that we begin a deliberate withdrawal of forces from northern Syria.”
Esper said he would “not place American service members in the middle of a longstanding conflict between the Turks and the Kurds. This is not why we are in Syria.”
Esper said the Turkish army was rejecting the Pentagon’s appeals for a ceasefire with the Kurds and instead expanding its war aims inside Syria. “In the last 24 hours, we learned that they likely intend to expand their attack further south than originally planned, and to the west,” he said. Esper added that “all the exact things” US officials warned their Turkish counterparts would likely happen if they invaded Syria were now taking place, including the release of tens of thousands of Islamic State (ISIS) fighters held in prison camps by Washington’s former Kurdish allies.
What is unfolding in the Middle East is a bloody debacle produced by three decades of imperialist wars waged by Washington and its European allies since the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq. Their inflaming of national, ethnic and sectarian divisions in an attempt to divide and rule this oil-rich region has placed it on the brink of an all-out conflagration. Former US allies across the region are turning against Washington amid the deep discrediting of these wars and of the entire capitalist political order among hundreds of millions of people in the Middle East, America and Europe.
Radio France Internationale journalists along the Syrian border inside Turkey reported intense anger over US foreign policy among Turkish civilians and soldiers. One told RFI, “The United States do not fear God, they trust their strength. But they take 15 hours to arrive here by plane, and to do what? They interfere in our affairs and act like a fighter who only fights those he knows he can defeat. When they face a strong opponent, they run away.”
The only force giving a progressive expression to this elemental anger against imperialist war is the international working class and the resurgence of the class struggle. Mass protests against the US-backed regime in Iraq and the military dictatorships in Algeria and Sudan, and an escalating strike movement among US autoworkers, teachers and miners, testify to the growing radicalization of the working class. However, this international movement faces enormous dangers and enormous tasks.
To the extent that this growing anger is diverted behind the national ambitions and military staffs of the competing capitalist nation states, truly catastrophic global wars can break out—as they did twice in the 20th century.
It is critical to mobilize the workers independently of all the warring capitalist states in an international antiwar movement of the working class fighting for socialism.
Originally published by WSWS.org
United States Abandon Kurds and How will this Move Impact Middle East
by Hossein Bouazar
Syrian regime with help of their allies will attack the Kurds from South and Turkish government will attack the Kurds from North. The Syrian government crushing of the rebellion in Syria with
help of their allies will also continue. This will strengthen Iran and Iranian allies’ forces throughout the Middle East, which get Iran closer to the regime’s primary goal, to project power throughout the Middle East to counter Israeli, and Saudi influence in the region.
Syrian Kurds are a distinct group and they have lived and owned their lands close to the Turkish and an Iraqi border for decades. They have been subjected to systematic discrimination. The People’s Protection Units is a mainly-Kurdish militia in northern Syria and the primary component of the Syrian Democratic Forces. The YPG mostly consists of ethnic Kurds, and also Arabs. They secured the north region of Syria and their control was concentrated in three predominately Kurdish regions, Afrin, Kobane, and Qamishli.
The YPG fighters joined US lead coalitions against Islamic state group becoming spare head of Syrian Democratic Forces also known as SDF. SDF Influence widened Manbij and Raqqa. Sometime in the year 2017 ISIS were defeated in both cities. Turkish we are always concerned about the Syrian Kurds.
After US announcement that they withdrawal their forces from Northern Syria Erdogan orders Turkish offensive against northern Syria “to fight ISIS” and “and to bring peace to the area”. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the beginning of the operation to create a “safe zone” cleared of US-backed Kurdish militias, which Ankara labels ‘terrorists’.
The dictator Bashar Al-Asad and the Iranian terrorist regime are very pleased about US’s decision. Hassan Rouhani, Iranian president said “Turkey has concerns about its southern borders, and it is their right that these concerns be alleviated, but the right path should be chosen. The solution for security in the northern borders of Syria and southern borders of Turkey is possible with the presence of Syria’s army.”
Syrian regime with help of their allies will attack the Kurds from South and Turkish government will attack the Kurds from North. The Syrian government crushing of the rebellion in Syria with help of their allies will also continue. This will strengthen Iran and Iranian allies’ forces throughout the Middle East, which get Iran closer to the regime’s primary goal, to project power throughout the Middle East to counter Israeli, and Saudi influence in the region.
By now everyone should know Bashar Al-Asad well enough, a dictator who is killing civilians in Syria. Some estimate he murdered more than half million Syria who were protesting for their own rights, and six million refugees fled Syria. United States abandoning the Kurds is like giving permission to Bashar to mass murder more people and this time is the Syrian Kurds. Will this be another humanitarian crisis this time in northern Syria? Could or better say will Untied States stop this humanitarian crisis?
Even though the Trump administration designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization in April, Yemen’s Houthi rebels with help of Iran have launched a few drone attacks on a civilian airport and a strike on Saudi Arabian oil facilities.
US withdrawal also means America’s Syrian Kurdish allies are at risk of losing control of the vast camp. the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Gen. Mazloum Kobane said “There is a serious risk in al-Hol. Right now, our people are able to guard it. But because we lack resources, Daesh are regrouping and reorganizing in the camp,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “We can’t control them 100 percent, and the situation is grave.”
While US trying to defeat ISIS, withdrawal from North Syria isn’t going to help them to reach their goal, in fact ISIS may regrow in the region.United Stateswill be handing Middle East to Iran and their allies if they don’t help the Syrian Kurds.
A shocking move by the United States and a great example of United States handing a country to Iran, is Iraq. since United States 2003 invasion of Iraq, this might be the worst week for United States foreign policy.
Iranian regime is keeping MiddleEast unsafe by deploying IRGC to interfere with other countries, meanwhile creating such event “Iranian regime’s military parade terrorist attack” is just to give themselves an excuse to arrest Ahwazi activists in Ahwaz.
While Iranian regime’s economy continue to suffer, and the damage is so great that the regime is doing everything to stop Trump from getting re-elected. A hacking group linked to Iran government attempted to break into US President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.
Iran has mastered conquering a country without replacing its flag and Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria are few examples. Meanwhile IRGC continuous their terrorist attacks, assassinations and kidnappings, and it’s sponsor attacks against Coalition Forces in Iraq, and drone attacks in Saudi soil.
Hossein Bouazar is a human rights activist from the Ahwaz region in Iran. He writes about human rights abuses committed on the Arab Ahwazi.
Healing the Rift Between Political Reality and Ecological Reality: A Q & A with Shaun Chamberlin
by Stan Cox
An interview with Extinction Rebellion activist Shaun Chamberlin
Australia Rejects IMF Carbon Tax & Preventing 4 Million Pollution Deaths By 2030
by Dr Gideon Polya
An International Monetary Fund (IMF) report on climate change mitigation advocates a Carbon Tax of $75 per ton of CO2 by 2030 that, if progressively implemented in the G20 countries
alone, would prevent an estimated 4 million air pollution deaths by 2030.
Saudi Arabia Is Opening Its Doors: But What Will You See Once There?
by Andre Vltchek
The rulers of the KSA are very secretive people. No one really knows which direction the country is going to evolve in the next few years. Could the KSA one day become “neutral”? I don’t know. But one thing is certain: something is moving, brewing and evolving. KSA is not the same country as it was five years ago. In the future, perhaps five years from now, it may become unrecognizable.
Second India-China Informal Summit: A New Direction In India China Relations
by Countercurrents Collective
Some official statements
Modi’s summit-2 with Xi Jinping: Implications for Kashmir – Part I
by
Ramakrishnan
Now Modi supposedly pulled off a diplomatic victory, befriending China and isolating Pakistan, more so on Kashmir. An unsaid part of this welcome summit with Jinping is to convey, in a subtle manner, that China has been won over to ‘our side’, thus isolating Pakistan and obfuscating the Kashmir issue. This is not true. Facts are otherwise.
Celebrate Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar as hero of India’s greatest nonviolent revolution after Buddha
by Vidya Bhushan Rawat
It was a massive gathering that had jolted many hearts but brought a new hope in the lives of millions who thronged the venue which today is called as ‘Deekshabhumi’, in Nagpur. The impact is so much that no other political or spiritual leader in the history of
post-independence India has that much of following as of Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar today. You have to just visit Nagpur during the Dhammachakra Pravartan Diwas and watch the massive gathering of people from different parts of the country, as a mark of their deep respect to the man who changed their lives.
Revisiting Sir Syed In The Contemporary World
by Suhail Mohammed
The dream of Sir Syed will be strengthened with the opening of five regional centers of Aligarh Muslim University across the country. The University must strive to rise and shine and reclaim its glorious past. It must put efforts to be an Institute of prime eminence and thus we would live the dream of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.
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