Mr. Cole, you are overblowing the strength and importance of the YPG. Their campaign against Manbij has been ongoing for 2 months and the only thing they had to show for was a massive defeat in Ramadan that saw them across the Euphrates. Only unrelenting air power that basically flattened Manbij and its surroundings ended ISIS.
And by the way the Syrian Observatory's daily lists of casualties as well as reporters on the ground and even your blog show clearly there was not much fight for Manbij either after they reached it. Instead ISIS took 2000 hostages, left to Al-Bab and crossed the river to Raqqa and released them.
If you want success against ISIS, checkout Mare', Idlib, Damascus and Hamah where both the Syrian regime and rebels ended ISIS there and suffered much larger casualties than the YPG.
1. There are other routes plus it is cheaper to ship gas right now than to pipe it because of oil prices.
2. One of the very few things Assad and the Syrian rebels agree on is the Russians out in some future date. Tartus belongs to Syria not Russia.
3. Israel advanced 50 Km in 4 days in the last war losing 50 soldiers and killing half the Hizbs fighting strength. Not to mention the simple fact that the Hizb right now have been devastated by the war in Syria to the point they are conscripting 15 year olds with money and gifts.
Ask Obama. He vetoed every constructive proposal since day one because all meant excluding Iran from the Syrian cake which Iran was insisting on sharing if Obama wanted a phoney deal on the nukes.
He alienated everyone in his administration who knew the region and relied on Biden and co. of dreamers and kombaya dancers and this was the result.
Everyone in the conflict told the Obama* that the Kurd were their Red-line and will intervene when that Red-line was crossed.
Obama in his infinite naivety though their red-lines were like his own, lip service for the sake of a legacy, well here is the ugly truth, the world is not naive nor nice to naives.
* From all my readings the CIA/State Department technocrats were always on the same page when it came to Syria and so was the DoD and all were vehemently resisted by Obama. Everything changed when Gates left the DoD and Admiral Flynn became the most powerful voice in the Syria policy there and it was him who forced the alliance with the Kurds because he had the president's ear.
From all the sources I read the Turks were willing to conduct such an operation for at least two years. The problem was that the US simply refused to give any assurances about the Kurds nor any support especially a no-fly zone from Ayn Al-Arab all the way to Afrin and including Aleppo.
Today the Russians, true to their word, did enforce a no-fly zone in Northern Syrian and the Turkish planes went into Syrian air space and at least 1 Turkish Armoured Brigade (the 5th) invaded Syria with no harassment from either Russia or the Syrian regime and from all the news sources Jarablus has in effect been liberated.
The Turks are now hoping that their plan they submitted a year ago to move 300k refugees from Northern Aleppo currently in Turkey back to 3-4 large refugee camps in Northern Syria in the newly liberated territory especially Manbij. The Russians did not object to refugees going back but the Kurds are (the entire Kurdish population east of Khabour is less than 300k) and the US is trying to please everyone and they will never be able to.
One Sultan out of 36 is not a rule. Plus the Suleiman's strength actually weakened the state against local interests (especially those of the Janissaries and other military groups) and there is a strong case to actually blame him for the stagnation and decline of the Ottoman empire because of those policies.
The sad story of the printing press and regular native army (as opposed to slave/landed gentry based armies both proposed in the early 17th century by visionary civil servants) is an example. Both were not to be adopted until the time was late (end of the 18th century) and Europe was decisively ascendant.
As for Erdogan, he might have eliminated all opposition within the AKP through internal party shenanigans (3-4 term limit on all MPs, something unique in Turkish history and a source of its popularity) but his political opponents are strong and will challenge him if they see him as a threat.
Erdogan's and his friends of the AKP were and are pure statist politicians, ideology for them meant nothing (that is they actually believed in the supremacy of the state) which is why he is in an open conflict with Gulen who wanted an MB/Iranian style state where the AKP would run the real state and Gulen and the movement would run the parallel state.
The Russian boycott of Turkey did not affect it. The Turkish economy grew at a healthy rate of 4.3% over the last 3 quarters.
Nor did the Russians alert the Turks about the coup. The Iranians by the way made a similar claim. The coup was detected months ahead but like previous failed coups it did not materialise and there was an intelligence failure in estimating the timeline.
The Russo-Turkish rapprochement has been going on since March and there was a full restoration of ties well before the coup.
The reason for this rapprochement was aimless US policies by a stubborn Obama (just read the State Department diplomats letters and the open revolt of the Pentagon against any kind of cooperation with the Russians and his infamous Atlantic Monthly interview) who thinks that Iran and the Kurds are the key to solving all the problems and not realising that you cannot satisfy both because survival is a zero-sum game in the middle east and no one will accept a Kurdish autonomous region let alone a state. Islamists are now helping Assad in Aleppo to bombard the Kurdish neighbourhood, that is how much everyone does not want to empower the Kurds.
Antagonised by an Obama who is arming YPG in Syria only to see those weapons used in Bitlis 300 km away from the Syrian border, an American refusal to stop Kurdish ethnic cleansing of areas where there are no Kurds and giving Iran everything they want in Iraq including attacking the positioning of Turkish troops and Turkish financed Arab militias 30 km from Mosul and insistance on using the sectarian shia militias to attack Mosul was just the last straw.
Within a month Turkey got almost everything it wanted for the last 2 years and the US could not save its own Kurdish allies which will create yet another long term mess.
Turkey historically was ruled by the civil service (Divan i-Humayun), only a limited number of Sultans ever held real power. Not even the most ardent AKP supporters want a presidential system without some sort of accountability of the president especially in appointments, something Erdogan is against.
A proposed senate has been rejected by him earlier because it contained electoral reform which would end the AKP's domination of parliament with an elected senate.
There is a difference between a guy who killed 300k of his own people and a country that has lost 700 of its civilian citizens well before intervening in Yemen. Plus the UN never gave the Houthis or Saleh a pass, they actually killed more civilians than Saudis.
Come on Professor Cole, do you really think that this demo (which is certainly the largest since 2014) was larger than the +80 days demo that took down Saleh?
And the war in Yemen won't end any time soon unfortunately. Neither the Saudi government and the Southern Yemeni alliance nor the Houthis are bowing down and as Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi said "This war will end at Mount Marran" (the last mountain in Northern Yemen and the historic "Fuhrerbunker-like" of the Houthis since the 1960s civil war) before the Saudi Borders and the Saudi Lead coalition is already 50km away from the Sanaa air port.
How are you going to give the Kurds a state? By arbitrarily drawing a line on a map too on lands they have no near or far historic claim too? How are you going to enforce such state?
They have a 500 km from with ISIS and that front has not been active in months except the occasional rogue ISIS commander attacking and losing his head for it.
ISIS did not even bother fight for Palmyra (all sources agree less than 200 die-hard elements refused to withdraw and died fighting) or sending reinforcements or bomb the concert while they had enough suicide bombers and artillery to attack Kurdish forces in Tal Abyad that same day.
The real question id why now chose a confrontation with the Kurds and what happens when the 20k troops with their full gear in Hasakah provice decided to invade towards Qamishli?
The Syrian government might have stopped attacking military YPG targets but hundreds of civilians have been killed or wounded in 3 straight days of bombing and there is no sign of it stopping.
Is this yet another green light from Obama saying its OK to kill civilians so long that they do not use chemical weapons or US troops?
The Kurds were warned by the Syrian opposition and Kurdish parties that are not part of the PYG (Mishal Tammou etc. who were assassinated by PKK operatives) never to trust the regime. Now they risk losing everything and the Syrian opposition rightly won't extend its hand to them.
Well the Syrian regime is now doing what the Turks have been wanting to do for months, bombing Kurds and not interferring with FSA factions attacking ISIS North of Al-Bab with deafening silence from the US and Iran.
It seems that Erdogan is getting exactly what he wanted all along.
The man who inherited power, won "elections" by 99% of the vote with no opposition and murdered 300k of his own citizens is the legitimate leader of Syria?
By the way checkout what that legitimate leader did today to the Jihadi (Actually Marxist-Leninist but who cares about facts anyway) Kurds fighting ISIS.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Putin got himself involved with unreliable allies and now wants out or the Chinese in.
The Chinese will not put their hand in the cookie jar, in addition to the looming economic disaster in China and the US's strategic intent to confront China through mass military build up China is still the underdog in its own backyard, entering the Syrian fray will get them nothing especially that the only leverage there is against them, half their oil imports are from Saudi Arabia which also invested 10s of billions in Petrochemicals.
Although this is a running Iraqi joke it doesn't make it less true unfortunately. The Iraqis in 2010 accused Bashar of supporting AQ in Iraq and provided proofs and withdrew their ambassador. After a visit by the Iranian ambassador the cash strapped Iraqi government loaned the Assad government $10 billion and restored relations.
The cease fire ended because the Syrian regime barrel bombed 6000 civilians to their graves during the "calm" period. Cease fires are two way streets.
As for the Russian action, it reflects despair on their part and on the part of the Iranians. The Aleppo shock was too much to handle and the performance of every ground force involved including Hizbullah's leader (who for the first time did not call the Syrian rebels Takfiris and called the war a "Fitnah" between brothers) was so pathetic the big guns had to come.
As for bombing Saudi Arabia, this will trigger a world war that no one want to see it.
By the way, the legendary resistance in Mare' by the last major FSA force and Islamist allies against ISIS with no air support and the little artillery support by the Turks while at same time fighting the Kurds offensive to their rear towards Azaz and the Syrian government recent onslaught against the Castello Rd. before the Aleppo offensive by the rebels turned the tables hardly gets any mentioning.
I hope Prof Cole also mentions the role of other groups who lost thousands of fighters fighting ISIS while Assad troops were either watching or in effect aiding them like what happened during the Al-Bab offensive and the battles around Mare' and got no help from any other source except Saudi Arabia and sometimes Turkey and Qatar.
And you know this because the 12 million Syrians kicked out of their homes by the Syrian dictator and 5 million living in rebel and ISIS controlled territory (both amount to 70% of all Syrians) told you they will elect the dictator who did that to them?
And how is that video more horrendous than the thousands of videos of Syrian and shia militias doing the exact same thing to children? Not to mention bombing hospitals, refugee camps and bakeries.
I agree with you that it was an urban/upper class dress that pre-dates Islam in Arabia as well as other places in the Semitic world (Palmyra ruins used to shows that) but it was adopted by Islam since the days of the prophet. The debate between Buqa and Hijab is as old as Islam itself with some companions of the prophet advocating one over the other but neither advocating its imposition by force which is critical.
Pick any major work on Islamic jurisprudence written by any school from the medieval periods like Sharh Al-Mudawwanah and others.
The burqa is as old as Islam itself, however a more correct description of it is that it was an urban wear rather than a rural one. Pick any photo album of Syria in the 19th century and you will see that.
As for Rojava, short of ethnically cleansing a million native Arabs or so (who are the crushing majority west of the Euphrates all the way to Afrin and the Turkish borders and the fact that Arabs lived in those areas since the days of Crassus and the battle of Carrhae where Plutarch mentions that Arab tribes fought with the Persians), it won't happen for the simple fact Kurds only won because of western air forces. Western Air forces won't intervene in a war with the Arabs who will have the full support of the Turks who do not want a Rojava west of the Khabour.
Contraceptions were illegal only in Lebanon when it was under christian minority rule, in Syria the government was pretty active in promoting contraceptions since the 80s, the problem was the Syrian people, ironically women more than men, did not want birth control because having children for the sake of having children is a source of pride among women, a barren woman means her sisters won't marry and bachelor women is a great shame in their culture.
I should know, my neighbour had 13 children and 4 miscarriages, all her daughters married by the time they were 18 and the one as old as I am (31 and who is currently living in Syria) has 8 children on her own 3 of them during the war.
It was the case until 2013, not anymore. The Chemical attack and the cowardly response to it changed everything. The world basically said, and this is what Syrians say in social media including militant secularists like Ghassan Al-Imam, the life of a sunni is worthless to us.
It is all a matter of perception and if this was the people's perceptions people will adopt it
So what is the end game here? Sunni Syrians are 80% of Syrias citizens and virtually no one of them is currently fighting on Assad's side and the only minority actually fighting are the Alawites who have basically ran out of men (one town of 6000 lost 150 men in the latest Aleppo fighting) which is why they are importing shia militias.
Sooner or later as one secular Sunni activist said the day of reckoning will come when the regime will collapse on its own weight and the only way to save the minorities is direct military invasion.
Let us remember there was not a single bearded man in 2011 leading a military faction and the number of dead and refugees was less 3000 and 250k respectively. The powers dragged their feet as the slaughter against Sunnis continued and lead to the inevitable outcome we see today. The window is still open for peace provided the Assad clan is removed from power and put to trial for war crimes. Anything less will make peace harder.
The shia militias in their media do not hide the fact that is the 1400 year revenge in waiting against the grandsons of Yazid, the depopulation of the countryside of Homs (upwards of 50% of all Syrian refugees are from Homs and its province) and the importation of tens of thousands of shias and turning Sunni mosques into shia mosques and desecrating sunni graveyards (all proudly shown on the media above) tells a different story.
I wish the story was different but it is not. There are no shias in Syria to defend, Alawites were apostates until the infamous fatwa of the Marje's in Iraq and Iran in 2011 that made them followers and defenders of Hussain which basically made them shia again. That fatwa lead tens of thousands of shias to volunteer and to fight for pure sectarian reasons.
Because from the last 6 years every Sunni male from the age of 10 is a rebel, the 300k civilians dead Assad butchered are a proof. I could post you videos if you want.
And the role of the shia militias, Iran, shia government in Iraq and Russia that has been active in Syria since the summer of 2011 engaging in mass religious cleansing of Sunnis? Who is at fault for that?
People said the same about the Ergenekon trials and what happened?
The overwhelming majority were found innocent and their sentences quashed and jobs restored.
The people who were suspended (not arrested) will get their day in court and the majority of the 100 or so special prosecuting judges appointed are well known Kemalists appointed to the HSYK well before Erdogan became PM. I trust that they will not be taking orders from him or his partisans anytime soon.
Everyone demonstrated against this coup even the people who hated him the most.
Not to mention the tiny fact that 50% of the people voted for the AKP last time around. Thankfully the Turkish are is neither sectarian nor politicised so when they saw the people against them the majority refused to heed to orders to shoot at the protesters and joined them.
The road was not even closed, the Syrian regime and allied militias are still between 1 and 1.5 km away from the road, the Mallah farms are at an elevated position making it easier to target the opposition.
And Daesh and the Kurds already cut the road before and it was opened by force and if you check the maps there are other roads open to the south where the rebels are still in control.
As for the war, it is still far from over, 5 provinces are either partially or fully under rebel, Kurdish or ISIS control, Mr. Cole is quite silent about the advances in Latakia province where Qardaha village, the hometown of the Assads was attacked for the first time in the war and the countryside around Salma was liberated during a Ramadan offensive.
In 2013 the rebellion was all but dead militarily (just as the regime was a year before) and 3 years later people are still saying the rebels are in their dying throws.... Just what Rumsfeld said in 2004.
The number of people living in west Halab is less than 600k, and the whole city never had more than 2 million to begin with (last Syrian census) and refugees from Halab and its province are around 1 million most from the city itself.
No, when a state brings in shia terrorist organisations that murder civilians en masse and post their murdering and raping on social media (check HRW reports and graphic pictures and videos) then the state is a terrorist state if it can be called such because the Syrian state according to my neighbour who visited it last year does not exist anymore.
Jaysh Al-Islam and Ahrar Al-Sham have committed war crimes and allied themselves with AQ but at least they are Syrian and rule over 4 million Syrians who refused to leave or join Assad, the shia militias are Iraqis, Lebanese, Pakistanis and Afghanis, ironically a shia version of Daesh.
The only thing I can say is good riddance. May more good news like this come because nothing can describe the Syrians' happiness in the Twitter sphere.
By the way, the shia sectarian militias have been reported on this very site to operate as early as 2011 yet surprisingly as of late Mr. Cole only mentions them with conjuncture with Daesh who do not operate anywhere near any area where the shia sectarian militias fight.
Mr. Cole, you are overblowing the strength and importance of the YPG. Their campaign against Manbij has been ongoing for 2 months and the only thing they had to show for was a massive defeat in Ramadan that saw them across the Euphrates. Only unrelenting air power that basically flattened Manbij and its surroundings ended ISIS.
And by the way the Syrian Observatory's daily lists of casualties as well as reporters on the ground and even your blog show clearly there was not much fight for Manbij either after they reached it. Instead ISIS took 2000 hostages, left to Al-Bab and crossed the river to Raqqa and released them.
One thing we can be sure of is the massive campaign of ethnic cleansing that has been ongoing by the YPG and with approval of the US of every Arab east of the Euphrates and is quite well documented in HRW and Amnesty reports:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ru/contents/articles/originals/2015/10/syria-turkey-right-groups-accused-kurds-rojava-of-war-crimes.html
If you want success against ISIS, checkout Mare', Idlib, Damascus and Hamah where both the Syrian regime and rebels ended ISIS there and suffered much larger casualties than the YPG.
1. There are other routes plus it is cheaper to ship gas right now than to pipe it because of oil prices.
2. One of the very few things Assad and the Syrian rebels agree on is the Russians out in some future date. Tartus belongs to Syria not Russia.
3. Israel advanced 50 Km in 4 days in the last war losing 50 soldiers and killing half the Hizbs fighting strength. Not to mention the simple fact that the Hizb right now have been devastated by the war in Syria to the point they are conscripting 15 year olds with money and gifts.
Ask Obama. He vetoed every constructive proposal since day one because all meant excluding Iran from the Syrian cake which Iran was insisting on sharing if Obama wanted a phoney deal on the nukes.
He alienated everyone in his administration who knew the region and relied on Biden and co. of dreamers and kombaya dancers and this was the result.
Everyone in the conflict told the Obama* that the Kurd were their Red-line and will intervene when that Red-line was crossed.
Obama in his infinite naivety though their red-lines were like his own, lip service for the sake of a legacy, well here is the ugly truth, the world is not naive nor nice to naives.
* From all my readings the CIA/State Department technocrats were always on the same page when it came to Syria and so was the DoD and all were vehemently resisted by Obama. Everything changed when Gates left the DoD and Admiral Flynn became the most powerful voice in the Syria policy there and it was him who forced the alliance with the Kurds because he had the president's ear.
From all the sources I read the Turks were willing to conduct such an operation for at least two years. The problem was that the US simply refused to give any assurances about the Kurds nor any support especially a no-fly zone from Ayn Al-Arab all the way to Afrin and including Aleppo.
Today the Russians, true to their word, did enforce a no-fly zone in Northern Syrian and the Turkish planes went into Syrian air space and at least 1 Turkish Armoured Brigade (the 5th) invaded Syria with no harassment from either Russia or the Syrian regime and from all the news sources Jarablus has in effect been liberated.
The Turks are now hoping that their plan they submitted a year ago to move 300k refugees from Northern Aleppo currently in Turkey back to 3-4 large refugee camps in Northern Syria in the newly liberated territory especially Manbij. The Russians did not object to refugees going back but the Kurds are (the entire Kurdish population east of Khabour is less than 300k) and the US is trying to please everyone and they will never be able to.
One Sultan out of 36 is not a rule. Plus the Suleiman's strength actually weakened the state against local interests (especially those of the Janissaries and other military groups) and there is a strong case to actually blame him for the stagnation and decline of the Ottoman empire because of those policies.
The sad story of the printing press and regular native army (as opposed to slave/landed gentry based armies both proposed in the early 17th century by visionary civil servants) is an example. Both were not to be adopted until the time was late (end of the 18th century) and Europe was decisively ascendant.
As for Erdogan, he might have eliminated all opposition within the AKP through internal party shenanigans (3-4 term limit on all MPs, something unique in Turkish history and a source of its popularity) but his political opponents are strong and will challenge him if they see him as a threat.
Erdogan's and his friends of the AKP were and are pure statist politicians, ideology for them meant nothing (that is they actually believed in the supremacy of the state) which is why he is in an open conflict with Gulen who wanted an MB/Iranian style state where the AKP would run the real state and Gulen and the movement would run the parallel state.
The Russian boycott of Turkey did not affect it. The Turkish economy grew at a healthy rate of 4.3% over the last 3 quarters.
Nor did the Russians alert the Turks about the coup. The Iranians by the way made a similar claim. The coup was detected months ahead but like previous failed coups it did not materialise and there was an intelligence failure in estimating the timeline.
The Russo-Turkish rapprochement has been going on since March and there was a full restoration of ties well before the coup.
The reason for this rapprochement was aimless US policies by a stubborn Obama (just read the State Department diplomats letters and the open revolt of the Pentagon against any kind of cooperation with the Russians and his infamous Atlantic Monthly interview) who thinks that Iran and the Kurds are the key to solving all the problems and not realising that you cannot satisfy both because survival is a zero-sum game in the middle east and no one will accept a Kurdish autonomous region let alone a state. Islamists are now helping Assad in Aleppo to bombard the Kurdish neighbourhood, that is how much everyone does not want to empower the Kurds.
Antagonised by an Obama who is arming YPG in Syria only to see those weapons used in Bitlis 300 km away from the Syrian border, an American refusal to stop Kurdish ethnic cleansing of areas where there are no Kurds and giving Iran everything they want in Iraq including attacking the positioning of Turkish troops and Turkish financed Arab militias 30 km from Mosul and insistance on using the sectarian shia militias to attack Mosul was just the last straw.
Within a month Turkey got almost everything it wanted for the last 2 years and the US could not save its own Kurdish allies which will create yet another long term mess.
Turkey historically was ruled by the civil service (Divan i-Humayun), only a limited number of Sultans ever held real power. Not even the most ardent AKP supporters want a presidential system without some sort of accountability of the president especially in appointments, something Erdogan is against.
A proposed senate has been rejected by him earlier because it contained electoral reform which would end the AKP's domination of parliament with an elected senate.
There is a difference between a guy who killed 300k of his own people and a country that has lost 700 of its civilian citizens well before intervening in Yemen. Plus the UN never gave the Houthis or Saleh a pass, they actually killed more civilians than Saudis.
Come on Professor Cole, do you really think that this demo (which is certainly the largest since 2014) was larger than the +80 days demo that took down Saleh?
And the war in Yemen won't end any time soon unfortunately. Neither the Saudi government and the Southern Yemeni alliance nor the Houthis are bowing down and as Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi said "This war will end at Mount Marran" (the last mountain in Northern Yemen and the historic "Fuhrerbunker-like" of the Houthis since the 1960s civil war) before the Saudi Borders and the Saudi Lead coalition is already 50km away from the Sanaa air port.
How are you going to give the Kurds a state? By arbitrarily drawing a line on a map too on lands they have no near or far historic claim too? How are you going to enforce such state?
They have a 500 km from with ISIS and that front has not been active in months except the occasional rogue ISIS commander attacking and losing his head for it.
ISIS did not even bother fight for Palmyra (all sources agree less than 200 die-hard elements refused to withdraw and died fighting) or sending reinforcements or bomb the concert while they had enough suicide bombers and artillery to attack Kurdish forces in Tal Abyad that same day.
The real question id why now chose a confrontation with the Kurds and what happens when the 20k troops with their full gear in Hasakah provice decided to invade towards Qamishli?
The Syrian government might have stopped attacking military YPG targets but hundreds of civilians have been killed or wounded in 3 straight days of bombing and there is no sign of it stopping.
Is this yet another green light from Obama saying its OK to kill civilians so long that they do not use chemical weapons or US troops?
The Kurds were warned by the Syrian opposition and Kurdish parties that are not part of the PYG (Mishal Tammou etc. who were assassinated by PKK operatives) never to trust the regime. Now they risk losing everything and the Syrian opposition rightly won't extend its hand to them.
Well the Syrian regime is now doing what the Turks have been wanting to do for months, bombing Kurds and not interferring with FSA factions attacking ISIS North of Al-Bab with deafening silence from the US and Iran.
It seems that Erdogan is getting exactly what he wanted all along.
The man who inherited power, won "elections" by 99% of the vote with no opposition and murdered 300k of his own citizens is the legitimate leader of Syria?
By the way checkout what that legitimate leader did today to the Jihadi (Actually Marxist-Leninist but who cares about facts anyway) Kurds fighting ISIS.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Putin got himself involved with unreliable allies and now wants out or the Chinese in.
The Chinese will not put their hand in the cookie jar, in addition to the looming economic disaster in China and the US's strategic intent to confront China through mass military build up China is still the underdog in its own backyard, entering the Syrian fray will get them nothing especially that the only leverage there is against them, half their oil imports are from Saudi Arabia which also invested 10s of billions in Petrochemicals.
The Iranian government gave them that permission.
Although this is a running Iraqi joke it doesn't make it less true unfortunately. The Iraqis in 2010 accused Bashar of supporting AQ in Iraq and provided proofs and withdrew their ambassador. After a visit by the Iranian ambassador the cash strapped Iraqi government loaned the Assad government $10 billion and restored relations.
The cease fire ended because the Syrian regime barrel bombed 6000 civilians to their graves during the "calm" period. Cease fires are two way streets.
As for the Russian action, it reflects despair on their part and on the part of the Iranians. The Aleppo shock was too much to handle and the performance of every ground force involved including Hizbullah's leader (who for the first time did not call the Syrian rebels Takfiris and called the war a "Fitnah" between brothers) was so pathetic the big guns had to come.
As for bombing Saudi Arabia, this will trigger a world war that no one want to see it.
By the way, the legendary resistance in Mare' by the last major FSA force and Islamist allies against ISIS with no air support and the little artillery support by the Turks while at same time fighting the Kurds offensive to their rear towards Azaz and the Syrian government recent onslaught against the Castello Rd. before the Aleppo offensive by the rebels turned the tables hardly gets any mentioning.
I hope Prof Cole also mentions the role of other groups who lost thousands of fighters fighting ISIS while Assad troops were either watching or in effect aiding them like what happened during the Al-Bab offensive and the battles around Mare' and got no help from any other source except Saudi Arabia and sometimes Turkey and Qatar.
break it into two syllables.
And you know this because the 12 million Syrians kicked out of their homes by the Syrian dictator and 5 million living in rebel and ISIS controlled territory (both amount to 70% of all Syrians) told you they will elect the dictator who did that to them?
And how is that video more horrendous than the thousands of videos of Syrian and shia militias doing the exact same thing to children? Not to mention bombing hospitals, refugee camps and bakeries.
I agree with you that it was an urban/upper class dress that pre-dates Islam in Arabia as well as other places in the Semitic world (Palmyra ruins used to shows that) but it was adopted by Islam since the days of the prophet. The debate between Buqa and Hijab is as old as Islam itself with some companions of the prophet advocating one over the other but neither advocating its imposition by force which is critical.
Pick any major work on Islamic jurisprudence written by any school from the medieval periods like Sharh Al-Mudawwanah and others.
The burqa is as old as Islam itself, however a more correct description of it is that it was an urban wear rather than a rural one. Pick any photo album of Syria in the 19th century and you will see that.
As for Rojava, short of ethnically cleansing a million native Arabs or so (who are the crushing majority west of the Euphrates all the way to Afrin and the Turkish borders and the fact that Arabs lived in those areas since the days of Crassus and the battle of Carrhae where Plutarch mentions that Arab tribes fought with the Persians), it won't happen for the simple fact Kurds only won because of western air forces. Western Air forces won't intervene in a war with the Arabs who will have the full support of the Turks who do not want a Rojava west of the Khabour.
Not true at all.
Contraceptions were illegal only in Lebanon when it was under christian minority rule, in Syria the government was pretty active in promoting contraceptions since the 80s, the problem was the Syrian people, ironically women more than men, did not want birth control because having children for the sake of having children is a source of pride among women, a barren woman means her sisters won't marry and bachelor women is a great shame in their culture.
I should know, my neighbour had 13 children and 4 miscarriages, all her daughters married by the time they were 18 and the one as old as I am (31 and who is currently living in Syria) has 8 children on her own 3 of them during the war.
It was the case until 2013, not anymore. The Chemical attack and the cowardly response to it changed everything. The world basically said, and this is what Syrians say in social media including militant secularists like Ghassan Al-Imam, the life of a sunni is worthless to us.
It is all a matter of perception and if this was the people's perceptions people will adopt it
So what is the end game here? Sunni Syrians are 80% of Syrias citizens and virtually no one of them is currently fighting on Assad's side and the only minority actually fighting are the Alawites who have basically ran out of men (one town of 6000 lost 150 men in the latest Aleppo fighting) which is why they are importing shia militias.
Sooner or later as one secular Sunni activist said the day of reckoning will come when the regime will collapse on its own weight and the only way to save the minorities is direct military invasion.
Let us remember there was not a single bearded man in 2011 leading a military faction and the number of dead and refugees was less 3000 and 250k respectively. The powers dragged their feet as the slaughter against Sunnis continued and lead to the inevitable outcome we see today. The window is still open for peace provided the Assad clan is removed from power and put to trial for war crimes. Anything less will make peace harder.
The shia militias in their media do not hide the fact that is the 1400 year revenge in waiting against the grandsons of Yazid, the depopulation of the countryside of Homs (upwards of 50% of all Syrian refugees are from Homs and its province) and the importation of tens of thousands of shias and turning Sunni mosques into shia mosques and desecrating sunni graveyards (all proudly shown on the media above) tells a different story.
I wish the story was different but it is not. There are no shias in Syria to defend, Alawites were apostates until the infamous fatwa of the Marje's in Iraq and Iran in 2011 that made them followers and defenders of Hussain which basically made them shia again. That fatwa lead tens of thousands of shias to volunteer and to fight for pure sectarian reasons.
Because from the last 6 years every Sunni male from the age of 10 is a rebel, the 300k civilians dead Assad butchered are a proof. I could post you videos if you want.
And the role of the shia militias, Iran, shia government in Iraq and Russia that has been active in Syria since the summer of 2011 engaging in mass religious cleansing of Sunnis? Who is at fault for that?
And the besieger in Aleppo has become the besieged.
It seems that good news are coming in pairs these days but only one of them is covered I hope due to time lag.
People said the same about the Ergenekon trials and what happened?
The overwhelming majority were found innocent and their sentences quashed and jobs restored.
The people who were suspended (not arrested) will get their day in court and the majority of the 100 or so special prosecuting judges appointed are well known Kemalists appointed to the HSYK well before Erdogan became PM. I trust that they will not be taking orders from him or his partisans anytime soon.
Why should the people accept an unelected dictatorship that will murder them and confiscate their property?
The protests started well before Erdogan came on air his appearance to rally the people was his constitutional duty.
Everyone demonstrated against this coup even the people who hated him the most.
Not to mention the tiny fact that 50% of the people voted for the AKP last time around. Thankfully the Turkish are is neither sectarian nor politicised so when they saw the people against them the majority refused to heed to orders to shoot at the protesters and joined them.
The road was not even closed, the Syrian regime and allied militias are still between 1 and 1.5 km away from the road, the Mallah farms are at an elevated position making it easier to target the opposition.
And Daesh and the Kurds already cut the road before and it was opened by force and if you check the maps there are other roads open to the south where the rebels are still in control.
As for the war, it is still far from over, 5 provinces are either partially or fully under rebel, Kurdish or ISIS control, Mr. Cole is quite silent about the advances in Latakia province where Qardaha village, the hometown of the Assads was attacked for the first time in the war and the countryside around Salma was liberated during a Ramadan offensive.
In 2013 the rebellion was all but dead militarily (just as the regime was a year before) and 3 years later people are still saying the rebels are in their dying throws.... Just what Rumsfeld said in 2004.
The number of people living in west Halab is less than 600k, and the whole city never had more than 2 million to begin with (last Syrian census) and refugees from Halab and its province are around 1 million most from the city itself.
No, when a state brings in shia terrorist organisations that murder civilians en masse and post their murdering and raping on social media (check HRW reports and graphic pictures and videos) then the state is a terrorist state if it can be called such because the Syrian state according to my neighbour who visited it last year does not exist anymore.
Jaysh Al-Islam and Ahrar Al-Sham have committed war crimes and allied themselves with AQ but at least they are Syrian and rule over 4 million Syrians who refused to leave or join Assad, the shia militias are Iraqis, Lebanese, Pakistanis and Afghanis, ironically a shia version of Daesh.
The only thing I can say is good riddance. May more good news like this come because nothing can describe the Syrians' happiness in the Twitter sphere.
By the way, the shia sectarian militias have been reported on this very site to operate as early as 2011 yet surprisingly as of late Mr. Cole only mentions them with conjuncture with Daesh who do not operate anywhere near any area where the shia sectarian militias fight.