Failed state run by a strongman transitions to failed state run by armed extremists. surely not good for the US unless Biden/Trump can rush in to pull the new leaders into the fold, if that's even possible. can we try a Ukraine 2.0 and handpick and replace the entire govt? unlikely, as the prize worth winning is a fraction of Ukraine. and they're not likely to support us after Obama's retreat and failed redline. we basically fucked off and left them to die and they won anyways in the longrun. Hail mary is let the Saudis pull them into the anti-Iranian fold of the Islamic wall and MAYBE MAYBE pull Iraq back into the fold as well.

obligatory "what is Aleppo"

This post was edited by thesnipa on Dec 9 2024 09:02am

Tel Rifaat is old news. Manbij seems likely to fall and is already mostly in rebel hands. I'm curious where Kurds try to make a stand. Euphrates seems like a natural barrier. The Turks would probably push from the north at that point though through Kobani maybe. Manbij is like 2% Kurd, they weren't going to hold it considering most locals are Arabs. Raqqa is 55% Kurd though, if the Turks try to push that far in, the US should do something. I'm sure behind closed doors the Turks got the talk which territory is 'okay' to move into and which is not.



This post was edited by ofthevoid on Dec 9 2024 10:59am

This is horrible the Kurds are so peaceful

absorb them into Israel and send a message to the arab world about absorbing populations in turmoil.

Are they though? I don't think there are any parties here that are truly innocent, maybe with the exception of some very small minorities that even if they wanted to commit some atrocities they just don't have the weapons/funding/numbers to carry it out. The Kurds for sure are better than the child beheaders or the ones carrying off women as pirate's booty.

I think it makes sense for the Kurds to leave places like Manbij. The 2% ethnics shouldn't be ruling over the 98% Arab locals. It's true for Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, Alawites, fill in the blank. Inherently all these ethnic groups if they make up a majority of a given region should have some level of self determination and if you lump them all together through Sykes-Picot, you end up with Assads that even if he was the purest of hearts would have no chance to control all of these competing interests, so the natural outcome is suppression of one for the benefit of the other. That's what makes the ME so complicated. It's nice to have homogeneity if you want everyone to get along and not fragment. Truth made evident throughout history. In China with the Han dominating and breeding out Uyghurs, in Soviet times with everyone being Russofied for this reason, with Israel being an ethno-state.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Dec 9 2024 11:39am

I don't see Iraq happening. Iraq actually has a Shiitic majority and its population centers lie in the eastern side of the country, closer to Iran than to Syria or Saudi Arabia.
Aside from the Israel piece of the puzzle, the major crux of the ME pre-2003 is that you had a Sunni majority being ruled by a Shia dictator in Syria and a Shiitic majority ruled by a Sunni dictator in Iraq.
And of course the eternal conundrum of the Kurds, a people without a homeland who get pushed around endlessly, prospering whenever they can seize a power vacuum and are left alone, but ultimately always getting shafted.

Lmao didn't see this coming. Those cheers on EU streets about to turn to sobs in like a week.

>Oh you were persecuted by Assad? He's gone now, you gotta go back.

send them all back

There's millions of displaced within Syria right now. Kurds, Assad loyalist, many others. I feel bad because these people have no where to go. Lebanon is too small to absorb this wave. Turkey already has ~3million that they want to push back into Syria. Germany is signaling they wont take in anymore with this revocation. True humanitarian disaster brewing particularly if social services, food deliveries, are disrupted in all of this without some central power structure. It's a pretty big shit show, which is one of the reasons i get so hot and bothered by MSM and others hailing this implosion as some great positive event. It's not, millions are about to suffer.

So am I right that for the sake of regional stability Israel had to occupy whole Golan Heights and preventively bomb the sovereign Syrian territories for good? Does it give Iran the rights to melt Israel nuclearly?