It’s sorta weird, but collaborating with ISIS is still technically illegal even with Turkey so clearly supporting militia that have been thoroughly infiltrated by jihadis, as they’ve been helpful enough to document for us.

But yeah—there’s still somehow anti ISIS law enforcement.

Kurdistan24: Kurdish-led forces bust ISIS human smuggling ring in north Syria

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A local counter-terrorism unit in the northern Syrian city of Manbij on Saturday arrested members of an Islamic State cell allegedly involved in smuggling at least six women connected to the extremist group from a camp under the control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to Turkish-held areas along the country’s northern border.

The SDF-affiliated Manbij Military Council’s media office claimed in a statement that a man named Abu Naji, a leader of the Turkish-backed Ahrar Al-Sham paramilitary group, was responsible for smuggling “ISIS elements and their families to areas controlled by the Turkish occupation.”

It continued, “After investigating this cell, it was found that ISIS members who are currently fighting in the ranks of the Turkish occupation mercenaries are trying to smuggle their families out of the Al-Hol camp.”

The sprawling facility was built to house 40,000 individuals but currently houses some 68,000 women and children from multiple nations, many of whom are related to Islamic State fighters.

Read More: Foreign ISIS wives in Syrian camp: ‘Our men are waiting for us in Turkey’

“The Turkish intelligence commissioned ‘Abu Naji’ to carry out this task, the person is known to have carried out several bombings in the city of Manbij and Hasakah, and caused the death of dozens of civilians,” the statement claimed.

I guess it makes sense, but you have to keep remembering the difference between the presentation to the world and the reality. If Turkey wants to prevent its operation in northern Syria as legal and justified, then it has to let ISIS—well recognized terrorists by this point—be captured and prosecuted.

So Turkey has to be all about the public face of their operation. (Well, their intended public face. But you can basically watch the war on the Twitters.)

Anyway, here is an independent news organization in Turkey reporting on the Ayn Issa fighting as though it were aberrational.

Ahval: Turkey breaches ceasefire, attacks Syria’s Ain Issa – report

Turkey and allied Syrian rebels have violated a Russia-brokered ceasefire in northern Syria by attacking northeast of the town of Ain Issa that lies outside of a safe zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, Iraqi Kurdish news network Rudaw reported.

The attack in Ain Issa, which is some 10 kilometres outside of the safe zone, reportedly killed four people and wounded 22, Rudaw said, citing the international aid organisation Free Burma Rangers.

“These events raise doubts about the capability of Russia to enforce the cease-fire deal brokered by themselves and furthermore raises questions regarding their role as a guarantor for the possibility of reaching a political solution for Syria,” the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Sunday, according to Rudaw.

It’s not that any of that isn’t true. It’s just that, like, that’s your basic Wednesday in Rojava.

And then again…

Ahval: Turkey foiled Pentagon’s ‘terror corridor’ plot in Syria, analyst says

Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria has foiled the Pentagon’s plans to expand cooperation with Kurdish fighters to build a terror corridor in the region, Burhanettin Duran, the head of a Turkish pro-government think tank, told the state-run Anadolu Agency on Sunday.

A Pentagon report published last week, which criticises U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out American troops in northern Syria for allowing the Islamic State (ISIS) to rebuild itself, has expressed U.S. defence officials disdain at Turkey for foiling such plots, said Duran, director of the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA).

Trump’s decision paved the way for Turkey’s military offensive last month against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey says is an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an armed group recognised as a terrorist organisation by the United States. The YPG has formed the bulk of the U.S.-led coalition forces fighting against ISIS in Syria.

The Pentagon was considering elevating its tactical partnership with the YPG to a strategic partnership, seeking to use the Kurdish fighters against Iran or to turn it into a state-like structure that would protect U.S. interests in the region, according to Duran.

“We at the same time saw that plans cooked in the Pentagon collapsed,” Duran said referring to the Turkish offensive. “Now the Pentagon shows its reaction with that report.”

A terror corridor, huh?

I wonder how the Green Berets feel about that?

I guess they’ll have to agree to disagree.

There is something unnerving about the predictability of the grinding of the gears. And yet despite the inexorably predictability of the process, the violence inflicted comes off as arbitrary, sometimes almost capricious. It must drive people insane.

A Tale of Two Cities.

Fighting quiets down one place.

Meanwhile, a few hours drive to the west (conditions permitting, of course).

And so life goes on, albeit in different fashion from place to place.

a tale of two towns.

A place.

The place they’re supposed to be.

Another place nearby.

So it goes.

Because I share an alma mater with one of the guys in Penn & Teller (the magicians who people get mad at for telling how tricks wok), I’m going to rip a bit of the curtain back for people who are interested in seeing how following a war on Twitter actually works even though it really demystifies a lot of what I’ve been doing. People seem to think this is magic and it’s really not.

This is a rough recreation of a “branch” of a Twitter conversation about troop movements in the Ain Issa region, but you can go into the thread and tool around the branches for yourself. (Obviously—it’s the internet!)

First, consider this map Tweet:

But then consider this branch of the thread that I have attempted to recreate.

This should be mostly self-explanatory.

And then there may be different strands off of each response, and it’s not usually so pronounced as that, but yeah. People are publicly crowd sourcing their information on the war. I happened to glimpse this particular piece of a collaboration when pulling a map and thought it would be fun and instructive to share.

The nature of conflict lends itself to disinformation, which breeds conspiracy theories, often about people that strike others as bizarre. The people closest to the conflict often find it infinitely more bizarre, not just because of all the weirdness of people whom you know and work with being accused of shit, but because so many of these people are so obviously operating out in the open and in public that it just feels weird that others think they’re hiding something. Even the people who have gone completely open source get accused of secret cabal shit.

I don’t even know which “side” each of these people are on, or if it’s all the same side, or if there’s the weird intersectionality of oppositions that occur or what. There’s one guy with great information who, for the longest time, the only political orientation I had discerned was an aversion to “goat fuckers.” And then I realized he used that term pretty consistently, but I learned that through him having reliable information over time. All I really know is that they collaborate in the open and appreciate likes, which are a wonderful currency of the realm—less for the thumbs up, and more for laying breadcrumb trails across Twitter so that like minded researchers can find each other.

In this “market,” it’s not about a million likes but when you see a few reliable people have liked some posts, then you know they’ve been here before looking for the goods—goods that are Tweeted out precisely because they are for all to share. If you’re doing a good job scouring the internet, then a like from you might be recognized by others as validating the information. Real personal validation comes not from large numbers of likes but from that respect and how it links them to others. Game recognizes game. If you want to learn something from them, just find them and watch; that’s part of why they’re on the internets. I don’t have anything to add and am there simply to  learn, and though I obviously haven’t asked, it appears they appreciate it when they see the likes and, as you can see, might even be happy to help if I had any explicit questions.

The reality is, apparently the internet works just fine for things besides the safe and discreet delivery of cat pictures and pornography. Anybody can flip on their phone and basically watch what’s going on anywhere that hasn’t shut the internet off. It all works. But people just don’t believe it.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was opening an InstaGram account.

Every once in awhile you get a clear glimpse of one of the “miscellaneous” players in the conflict that demonstrates why this is so confusing to follow, i.e. it’s bug fucking insane.

Check it out:

So these are the same guys that Israel bombed the other day in Gaza and Damascus. I didn’t really write about it here because there was reason it was conducted independently of Syrian civil war considerations and I couldn’t find any good way to put it into this context.

Really, I still can’t. But I can now explain why I can’t easily do so. So check it:

Wikipedia: Al-Quds Brigades

Al-Quds Brigades (AQB) (Arabic: سرايا القدس‎, Saraya al-Quds meaning Jerusalem Brigades) is the armed wing of the PalestinianIslamist[1][2] organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ),[3] The head of AQB in Gaza was Baha Abu al-Ata, who has been described as “Tehran’s main man in Gaza”.[4][5] AQB’s leader is Ziyad al-Nakhalah, based in Damascus, Syria.[6] The PIJ is the second largest group in the Gaza Strip, after Hamas.[4]

So, to whit, the Iran-backed anti-Zionist Islamic Palestinian nationalists who Israel attacked in Damascus for firing rockets at Israel from Gaza are also here in Idlib fighting in the Syrian civil war, basically a couple hours drive north of their political and military installations in a foreign capital.

So, is their role in this conflict clear yet? The answer appears to be: Everybody hates ISIS. But it’s clearly subtle and complicated.

I’ve far from looked into this in any systematic way, but everything Iran feels like this. There’s just an Iran-y feel to Iran’s ops. I wonder if, as with so much lore, that there isn’t some grain of truth here—like there is with the Russian approach to strategy. So maybe there’s something to the whole Persian tradition thing and the stuff with the assassins thing some people are so into and with that weird illuminati video game with the guy who does parkour. Maybe that sounds weird. But man if they don’t do shadowy and make it look slick as fuck.

Or maybe it’s all just that Soleimani guy. Dude is an operator.

Further adventures in legal formalism!

Also: Why the phrase “that’s just semantics” should never, ever be fucking used again. Ever. It doesn’t mean what people think. The degree to which definitions matter in Syria right now beggar belief.

So this is great:

The distinction between Turkish backed forces and Turkish militry that I labored over,  like, fucking ages ago it feels like in sorting this shit out is still playing a role in confusing people about what’s going on and even what is allowed, “allowed” being a kind of crazy concept in war but a vital part of how we try to keep abuses in check. War is awful enough.

Any attorney who gets gruff for making fine legal distinctions should just point to this conflict, tell whomever they’re talking to that it really can be life or death, drop the mic, hop into their Beemer, and drive away.

Of course, for anyone following this conflict, the issue of “Who gets to kill who?” invariably leads to the next question:

What the fuck is Russia doing these days anyway?

As has been mentioned on several occasions, this question from the SDF has steadily been growing in volume for some time now. But, yeah, the SDF increasingly would like to know what exactly anyone thinks Russia is or is not doing and how that relates to fucking anything.

Of course, it relates to everything. It’s a pretty good question.

The international community was, in many ways I think, relieved that Russia took on this mess that NATO members were so obviously unequipped to deal with. But this is very much not what was expected.

Thus far, the biggest effect Russia’s movements seem to be having in the east is that, as with the US forces, their presence or absence  determines where TFSA press their attack. And if you want to know why, all you need to do is see what they’re doing to people who even look at them funny in the west.

Basically, the US and Russia are terribly dangerous objects that move around and which the TFSA seek to avoid bumping into. The placement and shape of ground fighting contorts and conforms itself around the presence of these behemoths, but basically just flows around to where they are not, like so much dirty water spilling about.

Russia’s other big function is to make the Turkish border patrols look like assholes by playing good cop, but that seems somewhat less important—though it makes great copy for Russian news outlets with really outstanding visuals.

There is one horrible caveat:

I now see that there may be additional strategic incentives (imperatives?) to move into places where they can “dump refugees.”

So we can expect to see some kind of fucked up “anchor baby” concept where Turkey will claim that TFSA are truly just helping out the refugees even though there are only even refugees there to help because they just put them there to give them a justification to be there.

Ew.

The use of refugees/IDPs as pawns becomes more obvious every time is see it, but it’s not getting any less gross.

Remember, remember, twenty-fifth of November…

OK, so this is going to appear to be a digression into International Women’s Day which is relevant to the conflict in Syria in a lot of ways, obviously, but a more serious consideration of that would delve into jineology and shit, and this is not that.

The best way to do this is to just explain what happened that led to this post, and then the whole thing should become clear. And it’s also really funny.

Basically, I saw something online and was trying to look up if Nov 25 was International Women’s Day.

Why? Because I saw this—

—and I was wondering if it was “really” International Women’s Day or if it was something Rojava was trying to drum up so that somebody will come and stop the people trying to kill them. Yes, I can be that much of a skeptic. I blame society.

Now, here’s the thing. I should have Googled it like a civilized person. And then I would have gotten useful hits, even useful Twitter accounts for example.

The careful reader will also note that I can be dyslexic as fuck and that tweet doesn’t actually say International Women’s Day and I’m just a dumbass.

So, we’ll see what actually happened in a moment, but here’s the stuff that came up when I Googled: international women’s day

Wikipedia: International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

So from those and other hits, two things immediately jumped out at me: 1) the UN is way into this day; and 2) it’s not actually International Women’s Day.

Pretty clear.

The problem is, I did not first ask Lord Google as I ought to have. I was in the Twitter app when I saw the Tweet that first made me ask the question, so I instinctively started typing into search in Twitter.

Now, here’s the kind of stuff which I expected to find, and which I found once I searched properly.

That’s where an interesting investigation about what this day means to the people of Rojava might begin.

But this is what actually happened.

Ho. Lee. Shit.

And that’s how I discovered the clearest example of structural institutional bias that I have ever seen. Nobody has to be intentionally being a meanie, it’s just embedded in how shit works, which is what’s usually so frickin’ hard and frustrating to explain. And it’s just sitting right there.

Wait. It gets better.

I Googled “international men’s day” to learn more and it was Nov 19, 2019. So yeah, it makes sense that a search engine, which by its data driven nature is backward looking to anticipate future requests (unless you’re in some kind of Hot Tub Time Machine scenario), would bring up something that was likely searched for recently.

So it makes sense. And it always makes sense. If it didn’t always makes sense, it wouldn’t be such a problem.

The reality is that the Twitter search is narrowing my options for the future because it hasn’t gotten over something that happened to men last week.

Happy #IDftEoVaW day everyone!!*

 

*The left really sucks at catchy acronyms and other such tradecraft. I sometimes think the lack of a labor movement in America can be traced to the insistence of writing the whole message in plain, poorly justified text on cheap t-shirts that immediately become too ugly for anyone to actually wear. There will never be a Bernie chic.

I’ve mentioned before that a lot of the people on the Rojava “side” of the conflict actually police or, if you will, “mod” [moderate] the communications even on the Twitters. I’ve even seen people “shout” “We’re better than that!” in response to a debunked image of a Kurdish child being wounded in the early days of the conflict.

Sounds like home. This blog grew out of a conversation only  made possible by self-conscious, responsible moderatorship. So anyway, here’s an example that just came across my feed:

Initial standard Tweet slagging American imperialism.

Translation:

Unsolicited correction, or How I Grew to Stop Worrying and Love the Twitters.

Translation:

Now check out who that is—I hadn’t even realized this until after I started writing this:

With all these people have been through, and they still have time to shut down bullshit agitprop meme wars. That’s class.

Digression: Jesus Christ. I just googled “agit prop” to see if it should have a hyphen (I really did this. And now I hate myself.) and this came up (now linked above)—I had no idea:

Agitprop (/ˈædʒɪtprɒp/; from Russian: агитпроп, tr. Agitpróp, portmanteau of “agitation” and “propaganda”)^[1] is political propaganda, especially the communist propaganda used in Soviet Russia, that is spread to the general public through popular media such as literature, plays, pamphlets, films, and other art forms with an explicitly political message.^[2]

The term originated in Soviet Russia as a shortened name for the Department for Agitation and Propaganda (отдел агитации и пропаганды, otdel agitatsii i propagandy), which was part of the central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The department was later renamed Ideological Department. Typically Russian agitprop explained the ideology and policies of the Communist Party and attempted to persuade the general public to support and join the party and share its ideals. Agitprop was also used for dissemination of information and knowledge to the people, like new methods of agriculture

It just doesn’t fucking end with these people. And I don’t mean Russians. I like Russians. But I had thought “agitprop” was a hipster slang term for shit like M.I.A.’s music. I know I keep saying “I had no idea” about some thing that I look up that turn out like this—this is the second time this post—but this is just what it’s like when the conflict is fundamentally over the acceptability of totalitarianism. Really, I need to stop being so surprised, but I’m not sure I’m ready to live in that world.

But it’s not just an ethics thing, is i? We know at this point that it’s also in their interest to do so—to want to staunch the flow of nonsense and, worse, disinformation (which is, hat tip again to @Barbed Wire Bob for this one, also a Russian term: dezinformatsiya. Seriously. It just. Doesn’t. End). And that’s an interesting point that offers a lot of insight into their whole angle on identity politics, specifically that they’re coming from the POV of the people who always end up getting screwed by identity based interest politics.

I think a lot of these people are just so sick of bullshit that they don’t give a fuck if it’s supposed to galvanize or rally people or what. It’s never helped them in the past and it’s not going to now and they’ve just fucking had it.

And this is despite being very pissed off at Trump. And maybe Lindsey Graham. And some other people. But unlike less open societies in the region, as per above, they’re not into the whole Death to America(TM) thing because they actually differentiate between the state, the leadership, the people, and so forth, as part of the whole freedom thing. They get it because it’s what they want. They’ve had it with the other stuff that’s always pitched as for the greater good. Just had it.

As such, as per above, even their propaganda tends to be more focused and precise in its message.

Some will agree. Some will disagree. But the claim is specific as to who did what to whom and what happened and provides video that is unabashedly sensationalist—nothing disingenuous about it. That may piss some people off, but it’s not lying about some poor kid trying to stick his foot in a tailpipe. Leave that kid out of this.

I mean, seriously, how hard is it for people on Twitter to just do a bit more of this?

I guess there’s no way to move up the alpha Twitter hierarchy and increase one’s potential access to mates which Twitter glory surely guarantees without a loud and public social media strength display?

Because I love Tweets like the ones above. You learn levels of what’s going on. And they’re much easier to read.

What’s that quote about letting people tell you who they are? The people who really want us to understand what is and is not happening tend to make themselves clear.

Note: I first apologize if there is a long load time on this post. Trying something new that I hope will be interesting for this post and, if it works, it should be worth the load time. Thank you for your consideration.

Ayn Issa is lit.

I was going to call it the Battle for Ayn Issa, but that doesn’t strike me as accurate. It sounds like a big fight with a big and an end. This ain’t that. It’s been a steady build of violence now including substantial artillery and air strikes by “the regime” (Assad’s forces, but “the regime” seems to be the hip way to refer to them of late. Like how I learned all armor is “panzers” in the lingo of the place. Or something.) which may include not just drones but fighters.

And it looks like SAA/SDF, fighting shoulder to shoulder one might say, are shoving the TFSA back.

There’s a lot going on there, so first, let’s do a quick look at the west and then move east.

Idlib: Idlib Being Idlib:

That should pretty much cover that.

Ayn Issa:

Now, the intense fighting in the east is clearly especially concentrated now around Ayn Issa, and the chatter has been very focused on that place.

This is obviously a vital strategic area with the M4 and the road north to Kobane, but also the routes to connecting all of the above with Raqqa to the south, and, well, there’s a lot of ways of saying it’s a crossroads in the middle of everything and wicked important.

Raqqa has the red marker below.

The whole cross roads thing makes its importance pretty obvious, both tactically and strategically, everything from military movements to food and aid. Travel. Commerce. Everything.

But it’s also not Kobane, about which there had been chatter about a big move. Of course, fighting did intensify there, but then Russia made a lot of noise about being there, so that could have certainly changed things.

So basically, today was all about Ain Issa, and everybody seemed to know it. There is an ebb and flow to the topics of the day there as anywhere else. Obviously there is always a certain amount of noise, but in terms of main subject matters on any given day, certain topics of the day emerge. Like anywhere else. Some days more is going on than other days. Some days, there is fighting in a couple places that people are talking about. Other days, they share pictures of cats and troll US Senators. And then some days, all eyes are on one place, and today that was Ain Issa.

There was so much interesting stuff, I’m going to briefly go over the geographic situation, and then just dump a bunch of stuff for people to scroll through to see what I mean. And then at the end there’s something about Deir ez-Zur buried at the bottom. And no, it’s not oil.

There is of course an IDP camp that Turkey seems to want to fuck with.

That didn’t make sense to me at first. And then I thought, What Would COBRA Commander Do? And then is was obvious that he wouldn’t blow up the camp and kill all the residents, but rather he, in his infinite turpitude, would damage all the infrastructure, rendering the refugees even more homeless than before and worsening the humanitarian situation on the ground and further problematizing the war for his opponents. I think I’m getting the hang of this overwrought comic book villain shit.

Anyway. Here’s some maps and a brief low-down.

ISWNews: Map: Turkey-led Forces Attacks to Capture Ayn Issa

ISWNews Analysis Group: Today on 23 November, the militants with Turkish Army heavy air and artillery support have begun a large-scale attacks to capture Ayn Issa in north of Raqqah province.

Ayn Issa and the “Brigade 93” are the main base of the Syrian Army in the northern province of Raqqah, which they entered it after agreeing with Kurdish forces.

At the beginning of today’s clashes it was said that the Syrian Army had withdrawn from the city of Ayn Issa, But sources, denied that the Army had withdrawn from the city.
It is unlikely that the Syrian Army will withdraw from Ayn Issa, and given the equipment and forces sent to the area, the Syrian Army has been active all day long in fighting with Turkish mercenaries alongside Syrian Democratic Forces.

It should be noted that Turkish mercenaries (TFSA/FSA) managed to seize the IDP camp in the northwest of Ayn Issa But shortly thereafter, the Syrian Army and the SDF were forced them to retreat with heavy counterattacks, and as of this writing, heavy fighting over control of the IDP camp continues.
According to local sources the camp suffered heavy damages due to clashes.

Now the data dump we’re trying today. Hopefully it doesn’t kill load times, because I think this could be interesting. I’ve already explained that I don’t generally do this because it’s sorta gratuitous, and most of the stuff looks pretty similar after awhile. Cannon gonna cannon.

But today was a bit different. So I think it’s a useful illustration here. You can see a bit of what a Twitter feed focused on an area might look like if you strip out a lot of the noise.

We’ll start with a fun game—almost the same video with two different descriptions!—and then you can sort through whatever it is you want to do.

Oh, and then there’s this.

OH HAI.

So Turkey is continuing to convoy people into the towns it occupies in northern Syria as part of the ethnic cleansing campaign that Erdogan has sometimes explicitly described as such and other times said he would never do it because it would be cruel to the Arab refugees in Turkey.

But, like with everything in this conflict, Turkey says things and other things but then just moves inexorably forward with what it was doing anyway.

This is, of course, happening simultaneously with tactics designed to chase the remaining people away.

Of particular note is the fact that while these are Syrian refugees, they are not indigenous to this area. Rather are Arabs from other regions such as Deir ez-Zur. Erdogan has had some weird shit to say about who belongs where and what lands are appropriate for different types of people. I’ve literally not seen anything about where any of these people actually want to live and I suspect they don’t have a lot of say, but there’s no way of knowing—voiceless being another indignity of their situation.

Inside Over: Turkey repatriates the first Syrian refugees (Google Translate Link: Italian)

One of the objectives of the Spring peace offensive launched by Turkey against the north east of Syria is the relocation of two million Syrian refugees who have arrived in the Anatolian country since the beginning of the war in Syria. A little over a month after the start of the military operation, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has kept his word: on November 21st the first “voluntary” repatriations began across the Syrian border.

According to reports from Turkish sources, the competent authorities have brought 200 people to Jarablus , a Syrian city that has been under the control of Turkey since 2016, but their journey is not yet complete.The families in question will have to be relocated to Tel Abyad (or Gire Spi), another city recently finished in Turkish hands and whose population has been forced to flee for fear of reprisals.

Two different versions

Two diametrically opposed versions have been circulating for a couple of days about the repatriation of Syrian refugees.

Turkey has declared that families who have been brought across the border are finally returning to their homes, being originally from Tel Abyad and Serekaniye, both cities included in the safe zone imposed by Ankara in late October in the north east of Syria. For the autonomous administration of Rojava, however, there is nothing true in the statements of the Turkish foreign minister. As reported by the Rojava Information Center , the families who were repatriated would not be from Serekaniye and Tel Abyad, but would come from other parts of the country such as Homs, Hama, Deir Ezzor and Goutha . . .

So that’s how awesome things are going in the places on or near the border that are not active combat zones between opposing forces.

To give a sense of how messed up thing are on the ground in general, consider this story, for which fact checking assistance was provided by RIC (a fact which will become relevant in a moment), from the British tabloids:

Mirror (UK): British ISIS orphans to be returned home to UK after daring SAS raid in Syria

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab confirmed the rescue of ‘innocents’ as the three ‘children of ISIS parents’ were plucked from Syria in a daring Special Forces mission

The Sun reports SAS troops drove ForeignOffice staff into Syria in armoured vehicles to collect the ‘children of ISIS parents’ and whisk them away to safety.

Cool stuff, huh?

So when RojavaIC assists on a story, they generally tweet about it both publicize the information and to broadcast their availability to other media outlets, aid organizations, and so forth.

Anyway, after the above story came out, when RIC retweeted it, they offered one final “fact check.”

Basically, that’s just a Department of Youth Services visit in Rojava. People on the ground apparently think this is hysterical.

War humor is all kinds of awesome in ways I had never imagined. It’s like R&D for casual, savage irony. Meanwhile they’re being driven from their homes. It’s mayhem.

People, Place & Thing: 3 POVs on the big picture.

Groups on the ground continue to facilitate research, fact checking, interviews, and investigations into the situation on the ground for the international community.

This kind of facilitation has been made even more necessary than would normally be expected, particularly with respect to the humanitarian crisis, due to the relative uselessness of the UN for a crisis caused by a NATO power.

In fact, UN organizations have been accused of being overly quick to recommend further migration of internally displaced peoples (IDP) as solutions which actually reinforce ethnic cleansing in the region. Some insinuate sinister intent, while it may just be a function of applying the only tool they have available given the nature of the parties at conflict. (Which also means the UN is rife with the same problems as NATO, which in retrospect is kinda obvious.)

This kind of organization and communication comes in the context of the obvious uncertainty that has existed since the US announced the withdrawal of troops on Oct 6.

Here’s video of an injured vet (local) explaining how he feels about US withdrawal. It’s heavy.

And now to kick connect all this to the bigger picture, VEEP made a surprise visit to neighboring northern Iraq for Thanksgiving.

Summary: We are grateful for and offer a big thank you our military, you’re a global force of good, you’re the strongest military in history, we’re going to keep you fully equipped and trained and pay you more. Please clap.

But the good stuff is never at the main address.

Summary: Everyone here and all the cooperation is great, fighting ISIS rules and blocking Iran is awesome. We love Kurdish people and really all people but we love the Kurds. Continuing to work with the Kurds and SDF and really everyone to continue to fight ISIS and block ISIS is great fun we enjoy. Trump obviously has to bring our troops home which is why we are deploying our troops in Syria to keep the oil away from Russia, Turkey, “the regime” (Assad), and Iran and to help the our SDF friends so we have to withdraw because Trump said so and that’s how we will continue to fight with it Kurdish and SDF friends in the region. 2+2=apple.

I had no idea Pence was such an artist.

For a little background, the general international opinion of late is that the autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq is a source of stability and example for all of Iraq, and are in some ways an example to the protestors to the south who have a kind of “Why not us—especially since the country is supposedly rich!” attitude. More specifically, they’re doing a good job just being that in a strong silent type kind of way rather than stirring any of the many pots that sit in their backyard, practically begging for people to stick their grubby little fingers into them.

Turkey’s been hitting them with air strikes just for shits and giggles—and to kill Kurds, but that should go without saying st this point—although possibly to instigate a response that Erdogan would find politically useful. Pretty bold to do it so close to US forces, too. Too bad the OIR Twitter accounts are probably on lock down after Lions-gate.

So, northern Iraq:

• Ties to Kurds and other people’s in northern Syria (and, for that matter, southeast Turkey);
• Force of and example of stability in Iraq and the region;
• Fundamentally connected to issue of Iranian influence, both politically and geographically (Iran’s covered “northern corridor of influence” across to Lebanon.

So it’s a major nexus point or Venn Diagram overlap space or whatever you want to call it for a great deal of what’s going on. So it makes sense that VEEP just went there for Thanksgiving week.

And now we know why there’s an aircraft carrier parked outside in the gulf.

People had been wondering.

Anyway, in this vein, the people of northern Syria want America to know that ISIS are  still dicks.

Addendum: Ouch.