The Islamic state

[coley]

That hardly reflects public opinion now does it?

Look, most people in the region want IS gone, no argument there. But that doesn't mean they wants the US to bomb them. They know that will only make things worse.

It's the only effective answer to IS, at least in the short term, once various factions get their acts together than hopefully the bombing can be tailed off.

 

[phildwyer]

yeh the distant prospect of "friendly fire" .

That's not the problem, as I mentioned above.

 

[phildwyer]

It's the only effective answer to IS, at least in the short term, once various factions get their acts together than hopefully the bombing can be tailed off.

Well, we can agree to disagree on that. Let's see what happens. I certainly hope you're right.

 

[coley]

That's not the problem, as I mentioned above.

Pickmans post sums it up nicely though, at the moment there are his two alternatives.

 

[butchersapron]

Significant developments, The Syrian Kurds have signed a power sharing agreement between the PYD and KNC brokered by the Iraqi Kurdish President Barzani as part of the deal to send Iraqi Peshmergas to relieve the Syrian Kurds in Kobane.



http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/news/middle-east/305111/syria-kurds-sign-power-sharing-agreement?


[Request] Does anyone know what sort of mandate Ansar al-Sham have within the Kurdish areas?[/Request] I would expect the behaviour of IS in mosul would have dampened their appeal amongst Kurdish Locals the way it has anecdotally amongst Sunni Arab locals.

That's the end of the autonomous canton experiments now then. I thought i'd posted the full agreement yesterday but can't find it on here now (will find it again shortly). That shows it was a clear top down bosses decision - and the results are the crony capitalism of the Barzani mob injected right at the top of the structures.

 

[Patteran]

That's the end of the autonomous canton experiments now then. I thought i'd posted the full agreement yesterday but can't find it on here now (will find it again shortly). That shows it was a clear top down bosses decision - and the results are the crony capitalism of the Barzani mob injected right at the top of the structures.

Well, bollocks. That is bad news. I don't know if it's relevant to the situation or just to the reuters journalist who wrote it, but the link that FNG posted only quotes support for the agreement from a group backed by Barzani.

The cantons may have been more viable in an obscured corner of a middle eastern civil war than under this current spotlight of US/Ankara/media attention. The involvement of US/NATO as well as Barzani will presumably bring extra pressures to Rojava. The old empires are past masters at using access to weapons/funds/luxury weekends in Paris to encourage/discourage, distract/corrupt different participants in revolutionary movements - see various shitty chapters of the post-colonial history of West & Central Africa. Kill/sidestep/marginalise the genuine revolutionary, support/arm/lionise the more venal brother, oppo, rival.

But without the US intervention, Kobane might have already fallen, and the Cantons would presumably have collapsed with it. I wonder how the PYD will react on the ground?

 

[butchersapron]

Yep - that's about the difficult complicated size of it. There was a similar agreement in a few years back the Erbil Agreement of 2012 that was done in rather different conditions - and that one collapsed from the barzani/PYD conflicts. Now there's many other actors involved and with knife-edge military situation providing the wider context.

 

[butchersapron]

Tall Shair supposed to be back in YPG hands following those dramatic airstrikes yesterday - there are pics but i can't confirm they are from today given this is the second time they've taken it.

If anyone hasn't seen that mad stuff:

 

[coley]

Yep - that's about the difficult complicated size of it. There was a similar agreement in a few years back the Erbil Agreement of 2012 that was done in rather different conditions - and that one collapsed from the barzani/PYD conflicts. Now there's many other actors involved and with knife-edge military situation providing the wider context.

You would think the current circumstances would concentrate minds,wouldn't you?
Can't get over the squabbling and the acronyms! Combining forces just to get rid of most of them would be a relief.

 

[Dogsauce]

Tall Shair supposed to be back in YPG hands following those dramatic airstrikes yesterday - there are pics but i can't confirm they are from today given this is the second time they've taken it.

If anyone hasn't seen that mad stuff:

If they keep having to do that there won't be much of a hill there anyway.

I wonder if there is an element of 'shock and awe' in the size of explosion?

 

[butchersapron]

If they keep having to do that there won't be much of a hill there anyway.

I wonder if there is an element of 'shock and awe' in the size of explosion?

Don't know really - i would have thought they'd be fairly uniform in size, but i really have no idea. The fact that this was on an elevated and open area may have made it look more spectacular. As does the beardies ambling along...

 

[Patteran]

A new video, I think, from inside Kobane, close to the frontline. This is not 'standing in a flak jacket on the roof of the Marriott' journalism. Gritty, not grisly.



Also - Syria river news feed reporting PKK killed in a firefight inside Turkey as the ceasefire wobbles again.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Mi...ack-on-turkish-power-plant.ashx#axzz3H3z1JM6q

 

[Patteran]

(above video produced by A. Rahman Gok and Ismail Eskin, according to reddit. Caption reads - 'The older guy, who they refer to as Uncle Nemir, is 67 y.o., joined YPG 4 months ago and has two sons fighting as well.')

 

[coley]

Trying to get the pictures above to play but it keeps saying they have been removed, on one of these frames it states the YPG have recaptured the hill

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-air-stike-near-Kobane-Syria-in-pictures.html

 

[butchersapron]

(above video produced by A. Rahman Gok and Ismail Eskin, according to reddit. Caption reads - 'The older guy, who they refer to as Uncle Nemir, is 67 y.o., joined YPG 4 months ago and has two sons fighting as well.')

It's steadily being crowd translated right now as well.

 

[FNG]

Also - Syria river news feed reporting PKK killed in a firefight inside Turkey as the ceasefire wobbles again.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Mi...ack-on-turkish-power-plant.ashx#axzz3H3z1JM6q

The current roadmap was negotiated by the HDP,the PKK having little or no input into the drafting. From reading this http://www.dailysabah.com/columns/etyen-mahcupyan/2014/10/25/the-pyds-dilemma?
Öcalan was presented with the final draft to sign from prison and then passed on to the De Facto PKK leadership through informal channels, given the current time frame has seen military airstrikes against the PKK and bloody suppression of Street Protests, its highly unlikely the PKK see themselves committed to the deal.

 

[FNG]

Yep - that's about the difficult complicated size of it. There was a similar agreement in a few years back the Erbil Agreement of 2012 that was done in rather different conditions - and that one collapsed from the barzani/PYD conflicts. Now there's many other actors involved and with knife-edge military situation providing the wider context.

That might be why they are putting restrictions on the numbers of Peshmerga forces they are allowing into the cantons 150 instead of 200 preposed,that size force is symbolic rather than game changing and chicken feed compared to the 13,000 FSA soldiers they have apparently agreed to allow into their territory http://www.dailysabah.com/politics/...tends-press-statement-with-estonian-president

 

[butchersapron]

There's now doubts about that fsa figure with senior ypg people saying they don't want or need them in kobane, and the best thing they could do is open other fronts against isis to the west of there.

Edit :actually seems most fsa commanders deny ever offering to send this number now. It may well prove to have been an erdogan led attempt at getting those who he has influence and pull over into kobane. Games and games.

 

[coley]

There's now doubts about that fsa figure with senior ypg people saying they don't want or need them in kobane, and the best thing they could do is open other fronts against isis to the west of there.

Edit :actually seems most fsa commanders deny ever offering to send this number now. It may well prove to have been an erdogan led attempt at getting those who he has influence and pull over into kobane. Games and games.

Aye and I suspect the YPG sussed that hence their suggestion they would be better employed elsewhere.

 

[butchersapron]

The vid Patteran posted above is noe available with english subs here:

 

[teqniq]

Kurdish forces retake north Iraqi town from Islamic State

Kurdish forces retook the northern Iraqi town of Zumar and several nearby villages from Islamic State early on Saturday after heavy coalition air strikes against the Islamist insurgents, security sources said.

A Kurdish intelligence officer in Zumar said peshmerga forces had advanced from five directions in the early morning and encountered fierce resistance, but ultimately prevailed. A spokesman for the peshmerga ministry also said Zumar was now in Kurdish hands.

Zumar was one of the first Kurdish-controlled towns to be overrun in August by Islamic State militants who went on to threaten the autonomous region's capital, prompting air strikes by the United States - a campaign since joined by Britain and France....

 

[FNG]

There's now doubts about that fsa figure with senior ypg people saying they don't want or need them in kobane, and the best thing they could do is open other fronts against isis to the west of there.

Edit :actually seems most fsa commanders deny ever offering to send this number now. It may well prove to have been an erdogan led attempt at getting those who he has influence and pull over into kobane. Games and games.

Coming from erdogan raised some eyebrows with me too perhaps trying to create a rift within the kurdish leadership

There's now doubts about that fsa figure with senior ypg people saying they don't want or need them in kobane, and the best thing they could do is open other fronts against isis to the west of there.

Edit :actually seems most fsa commanders deny ever offering to send this number now. It may well prove to have been an erdogan led attempt at getting those who he has influence and pull over into kobane. Games and games.

Yes, kind of worthy of note that he took the opportunity to name the commander in chief of the preposed operation Colonel Abdul-Jabbar al-Aqidi anything known about him.
further developments today Turkeys stance against the PYD has hardened or maybe more realigned itself along traditional lines they are now pushing the Iraqi Peshmerga explicitly the security force of Iraq Kurdish Regional Government as the only faction they can back, roots in the kurdish civil war there, and a further cementing of the foundations of the Barzani power play.
http://www.aa.com.tr/en/rss/410251--turkish-fm-turkey-supports-free-syrian-army-peshmerga?

 

[Idris2002]

ISIS are certainly a diverse organization:

 

[kebabking]

Gingers - they are drawn to IS because they've got no soul. i would have thought all that sunshine would have put them off, but apparently the lure of narcesistic evil is enough to make them risk sunburn.

apparently some half-wit from Portsmouth who joined IS was killed last week in Kobane.

 

[Kalfindin]

The National Union of Students has rejected a call to condemn militant group Isis on the grounds that the motion was “islamophobic”,


http://www.independent.co.uk/studen...ls-amidst-claims-of-islamophobia-9796193.html

 

[DrRingDing]

Gingers - they are drawn to IS because they've got no soul. i would have thought all that sunshine would have put them off, but apparently the lure of narcesistic evil is enough to make them risk sunburn.

apparently some half-wit from Portsmouth who joined IS was killed last week in Kobane.

.....and he looks like a goth

 

[coley]

The National Union of Students has rejected a call to condemn militant group Isis on the grounds that the motion was “islamophobic”,


http://www.independent.co.uk/studen...ls-amidst-claims-of-islamophobia-9796193.html

He said: “It was voted down due to a general feeling that the motion currently could lead to pro-interventionism – which nobody wanted.”

Except those those fighting or fleeing IS, student resolutions, made while sitting in comfort, the worst of it is, these stupid gormless gits are the future govt, and look at the present lot?

 

[teqniq]

Three soldiers killed in gunfire in southeastern Turkey

Three Turkish soldiers have been shot dead in broad daylight in the Yüksekova district of the southeastern province of Hakkari, Doğan News Agency has reported.

The three soldiers, who were not uniformed, were shot at around 4 p.m. on Oct. 25 on the district's central Cengiz Topel Street before succumbing to their injuries in hospital, the agency said.

The Gerenal Staff said in a written statement that the victims were one gendarmerie specialist sergeant and two gendarmerie privates. ...

 

[DrRingDing]

I wonder what ISIS's position on makeup is?

 

[DownwardDog]

ISIS are certainly a diverse organization:

There's gingers all over the levant, mainly descended from Circassians ethnically cleansed into the Ottoman Empire by the Russians at the end of the Russo-Circassian war in the 1860s.

There's also lots of of Chechen and Caucasian jihadis fighting in various Syrian based jamaats. eg ISIS commander Umar al-Shishani; a Georgian who found Islam in prison.