Tidbits and notes posted on FB and Twitter. Part 220
Note: I take notes of books I read and comment on events and edit sentences that fit my style. I pa attention to researched documentaries and serious links I receive. The page is long and growing like crazy, and the sections I post contains a month-old events that are worth refreshing your memory
“A Berlin, on pourrait recruter 20 chomeurs pour controller si les proprietaires de chiens ramassent les crottes de leurs animaux” (Claudia Hammerlig, deputee’ Verte). Je pense que ces controlleurs de crottes doivent eux-meme les ramasser s’ils donnent une amende: ou bien ils les ramassent ou bien les clients paient une amende.
Les controlleurs de crottes de chiens doivent pouvoir louer aux proprietaires de chiens les equipement necessaire pour ramasser les crottes
“Seul celui qui travaille doit pouvoir manger?” (Depute’ alleman Munteferingo). Et Tous ceux qui touchent des allocations doivent fumer et boire de la bierre?
La pauvrete’ decoule du comportement des gens de sous-culture? Sous-entendu, c’est pas le porte-monnaie qui est vide, mais l’esprit. Comme si les riches qui achetent des objets de luxes qu’ils n’utilizent pas, ou bien une seule fois, ont tant d’esprit a distribuer?
To where the 200,000 inhabitant of Al Raqqa were transferred to? The USA has the humanitarian duty to save all civilians and Not commit war crimes as ISIS and allow UN team to visit this totally bombed and demolished city.
Now that Turkey entered Afrin, it want to attack the city of Manbej in the Syria Kurdish canton of Kobani? This city co-habit “Arab” tribes, Kurds, Turkmenes, tcherkess and Tchetchenes. It was liberated in 2015 from ISIS.
The northern region of Syria is at proximity of historic cities such as Mardin and Nusaybin that mandated France over Syria and Lebanon gave to Turkey in 1935
A Kobani, dans la residence Kongra Star, ce sont les femmes qui traitent les plaintes de vendetta des crimes d’honneur, avant de les referer a la justice quand elles ne trouvent pas de compromis.
En 2015, l’ organisation Kurde de Syrie (PYD), a l’instigation des Americains, ont rases des villages entieres dans la region de Tell Abyad pour que les Americains construisent leurs bases militaires (des crimes de guerre documentes par Amnesty)
A l’ Assemblee’ Legislative du canton Kurde Al Jazira (Cezire) dans la ville de Amoude siege 101 membres , dont la moitie’ sont feminins.
Rojava (Ouest du Kurdistan) de Syrie, Iraq et Turkie
Les grandes puissances coloniales ont l’intention d’hypoteque’ l’avenir du Nord Syrie, riche en hydrocarbure (25% des reserves de terre), surtout dans la region de Al Malikiyah (Rumeillah) pres de la riviere Tigre.
Le contrat social de la Federation democratique des Kurdes de la Syrie rejette le nationalism et prone une societe’ egalitaire, paritaire et le respect des droits des minorites. (Mireille Court et Chris Den Hond, envoyes speciaux du Monde Diplomatique)
Les organizations Kurdes PKK et le PYD se referent a Abdullah Ocalan (Kurdish/ Turkish leader in prison since 1999) et a l’ecologiste Americain Murray Brookchin (1921-2006)
A destroyed school in Qirnas, a village that Iraqi forces took back from the Islamic State.Credit Ali Mohammed/European Pressphoto Agency
BAGHDAD —
The international airstrike campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has clearly played a role in slowing the Sunni Muslim group’s advance.
Analysts say other factors are having a major effect, including unfavorable sectarian and political demographics, pushback from overrun communities, damage to the group’s financial base in Syria and slight improvements by ground forces in Iraq.
Across the territories the Islamic State holds, the group has overhauled its operations. Bases and hospitals have been evacuated and moved to civilian homes that are harder to identify and bomb, Iraqi officials said.
Fighters who used to cross the desert in convoys now move in small groups or by motorcycle.
Fallout From the Battle With ISIS for Kobani
A visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria.
OPEN Graphic
“The airstrikes from the coalition have been very helpful, and now the ISIS fighters are confused and don’t know where to go,” said Maj. Gen. Hamad Namis al-Jibouri, the police chief of Salahuddin Province in Iraq, where a combination of government security forces and Shiite militias have been fighting the jihadists near the town of Baiji. “They have also raised the spirits of the groups on the ground that are fighting ISIS.”
Still, airstrikes alone cannot achieve President Obama’s goal to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State, analysts say. And they have not been the only reason the group’s advance has seemed to slow.
One main factor in the shift has been demographics.
ISIS thrives in poor, Sunni Arab areas that have lost their connection to the central state. The Sunni-led uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria opened up such areas there. And the neglect of such areas in Iraq during the tenure of former Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki made them an opportunity for the jihadists.
But after months of steady expansion, the Islamic State has taken most of these areas in Iraq while failing to seize areas with non-Sunni populations. And although it could still expand in Syria, the group also faces resistance from rival rebel groups there.
“ISIS can only expand in areas where it can enter into partnerships with the local population, and that largely limits the scope of the expansion of ISIS to Sunni, disenfranchised areas,” said Lina Khatib, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
It is in Iraq, where coalition forces began bombing in August, that the Islamic State has lost the most ground.
In recent weeks, combinations of Iraqi government units, Kurdish pesh merga forces, Shiite militias and armed Sunni tribesmen have seized the Rabia crossing with Syria; taken back the area of Zumar in the north and Jurf al-Sakr south of Baghdad; opened crucial roads in the country’s center; and held off Islamic State advances elsewhere.
For the first time since the jihadists seized Mosul and much of north-western Iraq in June, an Iraqi military vehicle can drive from Baghdad to the northern city of Erbil on a main highway.
Hisham Alhashimi, an Iraqi researcher and an expert on the Islamic State, said those changes had broken up the group’s territory, making it harder for it to move its forces and for its couriers to relay messages among the leadership and the field commanders.
And indications have emerged that Sunni populations in some areas it controls are trying to undermine it.
In Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, ground forces have cut the group’s supply lines and killed a number of its local leaders with the help of tips from angry residents, security officials there said, speaking on condition of anonymity under government protocols.
Others say the group’s own rhetoric has left it vulnerable.
What differentiates the Islamic State from Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups is that it claims to have re-established the Islamic Caliphate, making its commander the spiritual leader of Muslims everywhere.
Very few Muslims abroad agree, and the group’s argument would further fall apart if its fighters went underground.
“So central to this group’s appeal is its ability to keep expanding,” said Noah Bonsey, a Syria analyst with the International Crisis Group. “But as soon as that stops, the whole narrative is less convincing.”
While the group appears to have lost no ground in Syria, the air campaign has forced it to leave its headquarters in former government buildings and lighten its patrols in the city of Raqqa. And strikes on oil wells and small refineries run by the Islamic State have undermined its economic base, making fuel prices rise.
Over the last week, Islamic State fighters have been struggling with government forces for control of natural gas fields in Homs Province, facilities that are unlikely to be bombed because they fuel electricity plants.
While airstrikes have weakened the Islamic State, its adaptations will make it even harder to fight without effective ground troops, Mr. Alhashimi said.
Its fighters now move in small groups, making them less vulnerable to air power. And instead of storming into towns with overwhelming force, the group has begun establishing sleeper cells in areas it wants to seize.
“It used to be that a force would come from the outside and attack a city,” Mr. Alhashimi said. “Now the forces rise up from inside the city and make it fall.”
It has certainly not been all setbacks for ISIS.
While the various Iraqi ground forces have generally grown more effective, they are still lacking in many parts of the country, including Anbar Province, a vast and predominantly Sunni Arab region that abuts the capital.
Last month, Islamic State seized the Anbar town of Hit and has since been killing members of the Albu Nimr tribe, which resisted its advance. The Iraqi human rights ministry said this week that more than 300 tribe members had been killed.
Because of Iraqi’s sectarian dynamics, most agree that the government cannot send Shiite forces to fight in Anbar. The result has been a delayed, anemic attempt to push back ISIS there.
“The executions continue, and the support is weak,” said Naim al-Gaood, an Albu Nimr leader who has spent recent weeks asking Iraqi officials for arms support while receiving nearly daily reports of new killings from home. “All we are asking for is supplies to protect people from getting killed and food to keep them from starving.”
The Islamic State faces even less resistance in Syria, where government forces and the rebels are exhausted from three and a half years of civil war. A covert program by the United States to arm select rebel groups has made little difference, and a Pentagon program to train 5,000 fighters a year is still in the planning stages.
In many areas dominated by the Islamic State, residents still cannot imagine a force that can push it out.
“There are a few guys who try to launch attacks on them or shoot at them, but there is no force that can really challenge their control,” said an activist reached through Skype in the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zour.
Kobani, Company, Ain Arab in north Syria… What’s the big picture?
Kobani is a large town in north Syria, a few miles from Turkey, and predominantly Kurdish.
Not just Syrian Kurds, but Kurds who support the Turkish Kurdish revolutionary Party PKK of Abdullah Ojalan (or Abbo Ocalan) who is in prison. (Read the link in the note)
Daesh is now encircling Kobani from three fronts and occupy 50% of the town.
And you wonder: “Why Daesh or ISIS has to venture so near Turkey and get into a tight trap when Turkey decides to wipe them out of town later on?”
Daesh has no major interest in getting far away from its bases, unless it was pressured and even threatened by Turkey to attack Ain Arab.
The US has today dropped 25 bombs and missiles on Daesh troops around Kobani.
Turkey refuses to get engaged, even though it had amassed tanks on the border
Turkey refuses to save Kobani from certain genocide, even though daily marches and demonstrations in Turkey are demanding serious actions in favor of the Kurds in Kobani.
Over 50 demonstrators were killed by live bullets but Erdogan despises demonstrators not agreeing with his views.
What is the strategy of Erdogan’s Turkey?
Turkey does not want any Kurds in Syria out of its direct control, and prefers all Syrian Kurds to vacate Syria and be relocated in areas under its control. Even if they flee to Turkey.
The strategy is to send a strong message on the ground that Turkey refuses any program to give the Kurds any independent State.
The clearing of the Kurds in the northern Syrian stretch region is a way to deny any kinds of links among the Kurds in Iraq, Turkey and Syria and allow Daesh State to be a buffer zone.
The “peace negotiation” between Ocalan, the PKK and the Turkish government has been going on for 2 years now. Already the PKK has sent its fighting resistance troops to Iraq, but the Turkish government has been unable to satisfy its part in the terms of the deal.
Most probably, Turkey is getting ready for another civil war and a genocide against the Kurds, as it perpetrated the genocide against the Armenians in 1915.
Mind you that Turkey relied on the Kurds as its executive hand to round up the Armenians and dispatch them on this death trail toward Deir el Zour in 1916.
Kobani didn’t exist in 1912.
The German company who had the monopoly to install the railroad linking Istanbul to Damascus, Bagdad and Mecca, decided for this location as a major in-between warehouse and routing facility. People around called this location Company, and later transformed into Kobani.
If Kobani is allowed to fall, mayhem will devastate Turkey and the PKK fighters will return from Iraq to resume the fight.
Note 2: The young girls in Kobani are participating in active resistance. 6 of them were trapped in an ambush. 5 died in the fight, the remaining fighter shot herself in order not to be taken prisoner
Nelly Yazbekshared a link. “Get to know Darine, the Syrian Kurdish resistance fighter).
Adonis Diaries 