The Kurdish region of Afrin in northern Syria has become a new geopolitical pivot point in the conflict. With so many actors’ interests overlapping, whose positions will be weakened and whose solidified if hostilities escalate? With so many different agendas now converging along the borderlands, many fear that Turkey’s latest military masterplan and march towards…
Washington has decided to relegate its project for the destruction of states and societies in the Greater Middle East to second place in its preoccupations, and to concentrate its forces on opposing the Chinese project for the Silk Road. This has apparently been implemented by President Donald Trump and the Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm…
The complexities of the fighting in Afrin have – unsurprisingly – confounded most people, to the points where understanding of what is actually going on there is becoming very difficult and is causing much misunderstanding. Deciphering Russian policy with respect to the Afrin conflict between Turkey and the Kurds is causing special problems. The most…
In hoping to play the “lesser evil” of the “federalist” Kurds off against the “greater evil” of the invading Turks, Damascus might have inadvertently committed a grave mistake by opening the Afrin gates to the most radical members of the YPG who stand to reverse any “pragmatic” agreements that the government thought they had achieved…
Kurdish media reports that latest Turkish airstrikes have killed three Syrian NDF fighters on the Turkish-Kurdish frontline in northwestern Syria near the Kurdish-held town of Afrin. Earlier this week hundreds of Syrian NDF militiamen from the nearby Shia Arab area of Nubl and Zahraa crossed over into YPG-held Afrin enclave and put themselves at the…
The Kurds aren’t playing Damascus like a fiddle just yet, but they’re coming dangerously close. Conflict Context The past week has seen a flurry of conflicting reports about the true status of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allied militias in Afrin, with the general conclusion being that Damascus is playing a dangerous game…
