Loading ...Washington’s Syria “Strategy” In Complete Disarray As “Ally” Turkey Bombs US-Armed Rebels
A little over a week ago in “Full Metal Retard: US Launches ‘Performance-Based’ Ammo Paradrop Program For Make-Believe ‘Syrian Arabs’” we outlined what is perhaps the most hilarious Pentagon scheme designed to arm rebels in Syria to date (and that’s saying something).
Following the comical demise of the latest “train and equip” program, the US is out of options for supporting the opposition in Syria and so Washington decided to go back to Old Faithful: the Kurds.
But that presents a problem.
The US is now flying sorties from Incirlik and Turkish autocrat President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hates the Kurds and has gone out of his way to make it clear that Ankara doesn’t distinguish between the PKK and the YPG. For the uninitiated, here’s the problem broken down in bullet points:
The US is flying from a Turkish airbase
Access to that airbase came with NATO’s tacit approval of Erdogan’s move to crack down on the Kurdish PKK operating in Turkey (that crackdown is designed to bolster support for the government ahead of elections next month)
Both the US and Turkey designate PKK as a “terrorist” group
BUT while Ankara equates the PKK with the Kurdish rebels battling ISIS in Syria, Washington actually supports those same rebels, setting up a conflict of interest
Now clearly, this is beyond absurd. That is, Turkey only got NATOs support for the politically motivated crackdown on the PKK because Ankara agreed to bundle said crackdown with a military campaign against ISIS. But the Syrian Kurds are the most effective ground force of them all when it comes to combating Islamic State. Because those Syrian Kurds are aligned with the PKK, Turkey is effectively trying to say its army is fighting ISIS, the PKK, and YPG all at once even as both the PKK and the YPG are also fighting ISIS.
And so, in an unbelievably silly attempt to keep from angering Erdogan, the US effectively created a fictional group of “Syrain Arabs” and then claimed that YPG had formed an alliance with the made-up army. Next, Washington dropped 50 tons of ammo into the desert (literally) and claimed that the “Syrian Arab Coalition” had retrieved it. Of course it was the Kurds who actually picked it up, the Pentagon just needed a cover story to feed to Ankara in case Erdogan lost his mind. Which he did.
As noted above, all of this comes in the context of what is supposed to be a cooperative effort between the US and Turkey to fight ISIS.