By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 1 March 2018
Aftermath of a pro-Asad coalition bombing in Hamouria, in besieged Eastern Ghuta, near Damascus, 22 February 2018. (AFP)
In the summer and autumn of 2017, it was claimed Syria’s civil war was winding down, but the nearly seven-year conflict is nowhere near to finished, and recent events suggest it could even escalate. Continue reading
Published at TRT World
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 13 February 2018
There was a serious escalation between Israel and Iran in Syria last week. This has been a long-time coming, an inevitable part of the contest for regional order that was obscured, and fuelled, by the narrow focus on the Islamic State (Daesh) and the war against its “caliphate”, particularly over the last year. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 13 February 2018
In response to Turkey beginning an operation on 20 January to clear the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from the Efrin canton of Syria on its border, a unit of foreign fighters has been announced in the enclave using the name of the “Antifascist Forces in Afrin” (AFFA) or the “Martyr Michael Israel Brigade”, referring to one of the Westerners killed fighting for the PKK in Syria. Their statement is reproduced below. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 11 February 2018
YPG check maps ahead of calling in an American airstrike, Hasaka, Syria (picture by Mauricio Lima for The New York Times)
The British Parliament has released a report today, entitled, “Kurdish aspirations and the interests of the UK”, which examines the implications for the United Kingdom of having supported various Kurdish groups and parties as part of the Coalition against the Islamic State (IS). Continue reading
Published at The Arab Weekly
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 11 February 2018
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid out the Trump administration’s vision for Syria, making clear that, contrary to the expectations of many, the United States will stay in Syria beyond the collapse of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) self-proclaimed caliphate, holding the jihadists at bay and establishing an order compatible with US interests.
Crucially, Tillerson—in a sharp break with US President Donald Trump’s predecessor—specified that countering Iranian influence within Syria was a central US objective. The problem with the strategy is that it seems to rely on repurposing the United States’ anti-ISIS Kurdish militia allies against the Iranian revolution. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 9 February 2018
El Shafee Elsheikh (image source) and Alexanda Kotey (image source)
Last night, The New York Times reported and Reuters confirmed that two British Islamic State (IS) jihadists, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, both of them designated terrorists by the United States, have been arrested in Syria. Kotey and Elsheikh, along with the late Mohammed Emwazi (Abu Muharib al-Muhajir) and Aine Davis, formed a four-man cell that has become known as “The Beatles”—hence Emwazi being near-universally known as “Jihadi John”—that guarded, abused, and murdered hostages for IS from before the “caliphate” was founded in 2014. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 27 January 2018
YPG/YPJ fighters raise the banner of the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in Raqqa city on 19 October 2017 (YPG Press Office)
The Central Intelligence Agency has publicly recognized that the Kurdish partner force the United States-led Coalition against the Islamic State (IS) has been working with in Syria is a subsidiary of the terrorist-designated Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Continue reading
Originally published at Ahval
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 21 January 2018
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, threatened on Jan. 13 to begin a military operation “in about a week” to evict Kurdish militants from Afrin in northwestern Syria. Erdoğan has repeatedly threatened to “cleanse” Afrin of the fighters over the last two years. It turned out he really meant it this time: on Jan. 20 Turkey commenced Operation Olive Branch against Afrin.
Kurdish forces, affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), have constituted an important element of the Coalition’s ground force in Syria against the Islamic State (ISIS) since late 2014, expanding their “Rojava” statelet by capturing vast swathes of territory from ISIS in northern and eastern Syria that is connected to Afrin under a deal with the pro-regime coalition—Bashar al-Assad, Iran, and Russia.
Any Turkish government would see this situation as a threat, and be angry at the United States for supporting the Kurds. The PKK regards Rojava and the ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD) as strategic elements in its long war against the Turkish state. Indeed, Kurds in Rojava have already provided at least logistical support for PKK attacks inside Turkey.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 11 January 2018
Al-Naba 43, page 3
The Islamic State (IS) brought out the forty-third edition of Al-Naba, its newsletter, on 16 August 2016. On page 3 was an article that made reference to IS’s insurgent activities, which had already begun in areas it had lost. A rough copy is reproduced below.
At that time this article was published, IS was on the verge of losing Minbij, and had issued statements in May 2016 and June saying that the loss of the caliphate would not be the end of the group. By early 2017, IS’s insurgent operations were visibly mature, long before the formal declaration in October 2017 that IS was giving up its statelet and recommencing all-out insurgency. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 29 December 2017
The Astana track of Syrian “peace” negotiations began on 23 January 2017, under Russian guidance in the Kazakh capital, with Iran and Turkey also invited as “guarantor countries” of the various sides in Syria. The process, initiated in the shadow of the savage conquest of Aleppo city in December 2016 that signalled the total strategic defeat of the insurrection against the Bashar al-Asad regime, was an attempt by Moscow to convert the military gains it had enabled by Asad and Iran on the ground into political facts that could then be imported into the internationally-recognized Geneva process. This “Astana-isation of Geneva” was Russia’s bid to take control of the political process and redefine it: rather than having Asad’s removal as its end-goal, it would set the terms of reintegration into the Asad state. Abetted by a purblind Western campaign against the Islamic State (IS) and a strategic reorientation in Turkey, the pro-Asad coalition has more or less had its way for the last year. But there are now signs that this approach is beginning to unravel. Continue reading
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