Results 1 to 20 of 26
Iraqi kurdistan threatens intervention in Syria
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23650894
Massoud Barzani has pledged to defend the kurdish region of north eastern Syria against Islamism. If they intervene, it will also be a major thorn in the sides of both Assad and Turkey.
At the same time, relations between the KDP and PKK (the PYD's ally) have been tense, so there may be resentments and conflict.
Would you support intervention against islamism or is Iraqi kurdistan overreaching?
The call for the people to give up the illusions about their condition is a call for them to give up a condition that requires illusions.
The Narco-Socialist Manifesto
In general I support the struggle for Kurdish independence and autonomy, and therefore anything which assists this end is generally a positive thing. So I say yes
Men vanish from earth leaving behind them the furrows they have ploughed. I see the furrow Lenin left sown with the unshatterable seed of a new life for mankind, and cast deep below the rolling tides of storm and lightning, mighty crops for the ages to reap.
~Helen Keller
To despise the enemy strategically is an elementary requirement for a revolutionary. Without the courage to despise the enemy and without daring to win, it will be simply impossible to make revolution and wage a people’s war, let alone to achieve victory. ~Lin Biao
http://commiforum.forumotion.com/
Kurds are masters of delusion and wildly overestimate their own military capabilities.
I've seen various statements they've made about this, and judging from videos I've seen of their forces, the most they can hope for is not getting completely exterminated.
Nusra/FSA have armor and don't have to rely on calling up 60 year old men.
I don't follow. Asshead's best armed, well-trained and experienced opponents are the Islamists. And Asshead supports Kurdish autonomy. So if the Iraqi Kurds join the party and start kicking the Islamists' asses and reinforcing Kurdish autonomy, is not Asshead killing two birds with one stone here?
I don't support the intervention. I can't bring myself to support Statists, regardless of their flag or allegiance.
The 60 year old men were (former) Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, but this is certainly not the norm in the YPG, which consists of young men and women. I doubt the FSA/JAN/ISIS are much better armed than the YPG. Both seem to be armed with AK-47s, Toyota pick up trucks, and RPGs.
The YPG is presently in possession of six tanks.
+ YouTube Video
If you're referring to the Iraqi Kurds, the contemporary Peshmerga are a US-trained modern army with 250,000 members. The YPG has been holding off the Islamists for months now. If it comes to an intervention of the Peshmerga they will be wiped out.
Why would Assad support Kurdish autonomy? If he did, you don't think he would have undertaken even a step to realise this as the most powerful man in Syria? Assad has consistently repressed Kurdish activity, the language was banned in public institutions, he killed and tortured Kurdish activists and cracked down on protests.
pew pew pew
In 2008 the Turkish Army launched a punitive campaign into Northern Iraqi Kurdistan, killing hundreds of Kurds, only 10 of which were admitted as losses by Kurdish authorities. They also claimed 100+ Turkish troops killed, and only something like 25 were confirmed afterwards.
250,000 Peshmerga? How many of those are paper soldiers? I'd estimate as high as 90%. If the Kurds had such a huge body of armed men, they by all rights should have dominated post-invasion Iraq. That's in addition to 100k US occupation forces vs what, 10000 Insurgents/Islamic State fighters? Those "250,000" can't even stop the Kurds from being bombed and murdered in their own Iraqi territory by ISIS, so what makes you think they're going to be an effective interventionist force?
When Kurdish military claims start conforming to any semblance of reality, maybe then I'll start taking seriously claims of their capabilities. When they can count a single operational victory that isn't just holding territory/preventing total genocide (they seem to get partially genocided and mass murdered with alarming regularity), then maybe they might begin to have a point.
Until then, this is how the Kurds have been defending themselves:
http://guardianlv.com/2013/08/450-ku...concern-video/
Six tanks are okay, but it doesn't match the Syrian Army's 6,000+. Some support from their hevals in Iraqi Kurdistan really would be a blessing. This really is the next step for the Kurds, so they really can't afford to falter.
In which the Peshmerga was not involved, so you can't directly draw conclusions regarding the capabilities of the Peshmerga from it. Though one might suggest that this shows the Peshmerga is no match for the Turkish army and therefore did not respond. However, the Turkish army is a high quality army, far above the ISIS/JAN/FSA in Syria. (Incidentally, a few thousand PKK combatants couldn't be beaten by the massive Turkish army, that suggests "the Kurds" are capable of putting up a decent fight surely).
To an extent they do. They have far reaching autonomy, a massive standing army, and if I remember correctly, rights to virtually all oil. What else is there to "dominate"? Besides, the Iraqi Army has twice that number of troops.
Because the situation in both countries is utterly incomparable, irregular warfare vs. conventional warfare. In Iraq the Islamists attack by means of car bombs and ambushes (of checkpoints), which can only be prevented through military intelligence gathering. In Syria, on the contrary, there is a clear front and intervention would mean clearing out villages captured/occupied by Islamists. In this regard the Peshmerga would have an advantage on every level:
- More troops
- Well/better trained troops
- Better weaponry
- An abundance of arms and ammunition
- Etc.
The Peshmerga and YPG are two different armed groups. The YPG consists of many whom wield arms for the first time.
pew pew pew
And where is the PKK in Turkey now? That's right, they negotiated a withdrawal because they realized that their position is untenable.
The United States reported the strength of the Iraqi Armed forces as 210,000 in 2012. 250,00 according to the Iraqi government.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...7BA0GS20111211
So let's get this straight. The Peshmerga (on paper) is the size of the Iraqi army, and the Kurds control the heart of Iraq's oilfields, but they still don't even dominate what they want to claim as Kurdistan. Almost half of the territory they claim as Iraqi Kurdistan is controlled by the central government. With all that money and manpower, what's to stop them?
Kurdish controlled areas in red, black are parts of Kurdish claimed territory in the central government's hands.
Syria is not irregular warfare? VBIED attacks have been one of the most effective weapons the FSA has employed in their insurgency. The Syrian army has to painstakingly clear neighborhoods over weeks and months because of small detachments of insurgents trying to infiltrate goverment-held areas. You read about the demolition of tunnels and such just about every day.
You sound like George Dubya. Intervening is so simple; all you gotta do is fight a few battles and clear out some terrorists and put it on the 6 o'clock news. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, amirite?
Holding is the hard part of counterinsurgency warfare.
So where was this mighty Peshmerga in 2008 to respond to this brutal violation of Kurdish sovereignty by the Turks? All they could do was offer token threats of "people's resistance" even as their prime minister was crying about the Turkish invasion as an existential threat to the Kurdish nation. You can contrast this to the 3000 Hezbollah who fought an Israeli invasion to a standstill in 2006.
As I said, I'll believe it when I see it, because their entire history has done little more than convince me that they are all bark and no bite.
Last edited by khad; 12th August 2013 at 02:46.
I don't think this had so much to do with a weakness of their forces as it did from a realization that if they did this it would have likely messed up their ties to certain western countries. For what it's worth the Turkish army did not advance beyond the zone that allowed it to invade in the first place (from an old piece of Saddam-era legislation), even though nothing really should have stopped them from going further. Had Turkey tried to move beyond the almost empty areas of the Qandil range into the more populated areas, I think the outcome would've been much different and it is for this reason Turkey didn't do that.
What you are also leaving out here is that Hezbollah, unlike the PKK, has political power in the area it was defending - to the extent of representatives in parliament and now the executive. The PKK does not have any political clout in the Kurdistan Regional Government- and in fact it has had several disputes with the PUK and KDP that dominate it back in the 90s. The PKK couldn't mobilize the kind of resistance Hezbollah could, and the KDP or PUK couldn't be moved to actually do something about it if the Turks didn't go beyond the border areas near the Qandil range. This is also ignoring the substantial economic interests Turkey has in the KRG and its relatively warm relations with the two dominant political players there- much to the anger of the PKK. To say the Kurds could've been like Hezbollah in Lebanon is taking a very loose reading of the situation that relies on cherrypicking information.
It's not fair to say that they are all "bark and no bite" when considering how much shit a lot of these groups have gone through to fight for their objectives, regardless of the shittiness of their political fronts. When it comes to Kurds in Iraq and Turkey especially they've been a persistent problem for the past decades with periods of persistent warfare and attacks, and recovering even when they were completely destroyed. These being 80s-90s, intermittently afterwards for the Kurds in Turkey. 60s-75, 80s, and early 90s for Iraqi Kurds. On top of this, wildly oscillating foreign positions, swinging from pro-Soviet to pro-American and back when the situation benefited them.
Yes, they don't control all their claimed regions - but at the same time the central government hasn't really been successful in bringing them in, and has had difficulty doing so historically. Iraq in its different states has not been too successful with attempts at force beyond mass killing, so this has largely fallen onto trying to buy off local leaders and play them against one another, which paid dividends in the 70s as it does for Iraq now in the disputed zones.
What is problematic about Kurdish groups is inter-party disputes. The Iraqi Kurds pretty much did this for the whole period of their activity and the different groups from each region often fought against one another and continue to do so, which is largely the main reason why they haven't been able to achieve much of anything in Iraq.
Even in this particular situation, we should note the reaction of the PYD's leader to the offer from the KRG President- basically one of "no just send us supplies". This highlights a problem between the two- the KRG and especially its KDP member was long trying to position certain Syrian Kurdish parties it was friendly with as the representative of Kurds there, and it was opposed in this by the PYD, which is for all intents and purposes a PKK front (which in turn has had conflicts with the KDP). Even after the pro-KRG and PYD parties made up and created the YPG between themselves, it is still dominated by the PYD and the movement adjusted as such. The PYD's response to this shows that they are aware that the Iraqi Kurds are now hoping to extend more control over them as they encounter difficulties and as such are trying to rebuff them essentially. Their leadership has likewise been making trips to both Turkey, the pro-FSA in the immediate region, and to Iran, the pro-government force in the region, to try and hedge bets.
To drive this home, look at the response to this from two different Kurdish press. The first, a largely pro-KRG group, has this particular announcement front and center, while the second, pro-PKK, makes no mention of this announcement.
http://rudaw.net/english
http://en.firatajans.com/
What has been interesting to see is how the KRG's position towards the Syrian situation has developed overtime. They had originally come out in support of the Syrian protests and you can see this in their media (though both the KDP and PUK were supported by Syria in the 70s and 80s). About July their media seems to have started becoming a lot more critical of the FSA, now covering conflicts between Islamist militia and YPG that previously only pro-PKK media had been talking about. Within the past few weeks it has become more or less hostile to the FSA in the media, it is rare to see anything remotely positive or encouraging sympathy about the FSA on Kurdish press any more, party-tied or independent, and they largely view them with the same cynicism that they do with the government.
I think this change is probably a response by Iraqi Kurdish leaders concerned with their image especially ahead of an election for their government, and maybe an acknowledgement that there is nothing left to salvage in the Syrian opposition. They also know that while they have continued to ignore this, their population, both old and young, have become sympathetic to the YPG and not so much to the pronouncements of the pro-KRG Syrian Kurds- because unlike the pro-KRG outfits, the PYD actually was doing something tangible.
Actually it's part of a re-orientation of strategy that developed since 2005 with the forming of the Koma Civaken Kurdistan, which centres around urban and rural popular assemblies -- moving away from the "people's war" type strategy.
I'm sorry, but are you really this dumb? You think because an army is the same size as another army that therefore the one army has every reason in the world to start a war, a war that will no doubt be bloody, lengthy, and with no guarantee of victory, risking everything they have? Come on. It's like asking, why China would not just attack India, after all: similar sized military, disputed territory. Or Pakistan attack India, or Thailand, Cambodia, or China, Japan, etc. Come on. I'm sure you can figure out that the immense costs and risks of war generally outweigh the potential gains in victory.
The primary modus operandi, to me, seems the use of conventional armed power, and as of 2013 a primarily role for snipers in such places as Aleppo. If we look at the ISIS/JAN attacks on Kurdish/YPG-held areas we see that car bombs have been used once, against a prominent politician. It's conventional warfare.
I never said it would take a few battles or that'd be simple, I said it would involve clearing them out, which is true. I didn't say they will necessarily succeed (although in all probability they would) or that it will be swift.
You don't think there is a qualitative difference between fighting a fully equipped NATO-army and rag-tag militias of Islamists with almost exclusively small arms? Come on. The Peshmerga may be no match for Turkey's military might, but simply look at their size and equipment (tanks, humvees, armored vehicles, mortar, artillery).
pew pew pew
The Peshmerga are not a modern army. Rolling around with pt76s and t55s, small arms consisting of AKMs and even still using 47s? They're also relatively untested by combat, with the most experienced, and the best trained Kurdish units having been folded into the Iraqi defense forces (I don't remember it was IA or ING), as I recall.
Put capitalism in a bag of rice.
So, their greatest claim to fame is that Saddam didn't kill ALL of them.Originally Posted by Red Commissar
You bet that instills a fuck ton of confidence right there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_WarOriginally Posted by Tim Cornelis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vi...icts_1979-1990
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1947
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1965
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1971
Your point fails. Border conflicts almost always occur with up-and-coming nations seeking to avenge historical wrongs, usually when one side perceives its strength sufficient to achieve victory. That the Kurds, with their 200,000 supersoldiers, haven't done jack shit is very telling of their actual position more than any empty threat made by that opportunist Barzani.
Can you point me towards one major conflict in Modern Iraqi history which the Kurds can count as a victory?
Well, have fun trying to convey these facts to the Kurdish propaganda minister over there.
Last edited by khad; 12th August 2013 at 15:16.
Also, if the Peshmerga are such an effective force, what major engagements did they participate in, in OIF? Weren't their operations limited to Kurdistan, except those units that got folded into the Iraqi forces?
Put capitalism in a bag of rice.
Those small arms kill you just as dead as modern small arms.
Personally i would rather get shot with an M-4 then the AKM ( that is the same as the ak-47 only the M stands for modernized)
But that is besides the point.
Simple fact is that those T-55's are barely more then propaganda material unless they have the full military capabilities that any modern army has they wont be able to fight and win in conventional warfare.
So by default they would have to fight in a urban guerrilla war rendering any enemy advantage in armor air or plain infantry numbers moot.
You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location. The kind of place where there might be a monster, or some kind of weird mirror...
+ YouTube Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5j6TPNe8QY
YPG "tanks"
First tank has no lights or turret power, broken/missing stabilizer. It is towing tank two which is missing the rear right road wheel and obviously is not usable without a major repair. Tank three, a T-55, has engine problems as the injectors look shot to hell, while tank four is a seemingly functional T-55, but we know how long those last, etc etc
Look, I'm not gonna have an argument with you about modern militaries. I don't know what qualifications you think you have to talk about these things, but given your comment about how you would rather be shot by one thing and not the other, I'll just sit here quietly as the guy who is an actual combat veteran.
Put capitalism in a bag of rice.
khad seems to think that the Kurds are simply weak and genocide-prone as a people (perhaps an ethnic slur, but lets continue). I would point out that the determining factor in his examples is foreign support. Where would The Party of God have been in a fight with the IDF without its friends in Iran and Syria? Where would Assad be right now without his friends in lebanon, Russia and Iran? Where would al qaeda be right now without Saudi Arabia, and years of shelter and support given to them by Assad's government during the Iraq war. How would kurdish history look if foreign support had not been constantly revoked from them right at the last second by the US? Vulgar hacks don't very often consider asking these sorts of questions.
As for Turkey's intervention in 2008, the KDP likely felt it politically in their interest to abandon their rivals the PKK to the turks. This way they could make idle noises about existentialism, while watching their rivals suffer. I doubt that the Kurds would have been so passive had the Turks occupied Ebril.
I submit that the conditions there will be determined by much more complex material factors involving foreign intervention than the "delusion" of any particular race.
Last edited by Turinbaar; 16th August 2013 at 20:30.
The call for the people to give up the illusions about their condition is a call for them to give up a condition that requires illusions.
The Narco-Socialist Manifesto
That said, should communists not raise the slogan of driving all foreign troops out of Syria? It seems as if no one actually asked the Syrian Kurds, let alone the Syrian Kurdish proletariat, anything - an outfit supported by American imperialism, holding a good portion of the partitioned Iraq as a parastate, has decided that they represent the Syrian Kurdish population. That sounds rather suspicious to me. If they are concerned about these people, why not send them arms and supplies, so they can defend themselves?
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/fea...251722498.html
They've been training Syrian Kurds across the border for about a year now. Presumably they don't send them back to fight empty handed.
The call for the people to give up the illusions about their condition is a call for them to give up a condition that requires illusions.
The Narco-Socialist Manifesto
