***The Official Syria/Iraq war thread***

[Boxman]

There's no shortage of evidence documenting atrocities committed by the FSA, long before anyone had ever even heard of ISIS. I could spend my entire Friday night doing copypastas but that's your area of expertise so I'll leave that to you.

Here's a couple from all the way back in 2012:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel...b_2380399.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...ganda-war.html


Let's be honest there is no way to determine whether FSA or SAA has committed more atrocities. The simple fact of hte matter is neither side has any moral high ground, and at least the SAA is controlled by a government based on secular principles. The Syrian govt enjoys the support of Christians, Druze and other minorities in the country; they are not a sectarian religious movement like the FSA, which is and always has been a Sunni militant force.

I'm not surprised that even the recent attack by terrorists in France, who served in militant outfits that enjoyed US\Saudi\Qatari support, still hasn't changed your views on arming Islamic militants for geopolitical ends. When 3000 Americans died on 9/11, the american officials and commentators that supported Islamic jihad against Soviet Russia were also unrepentant.

[Spartan5364]

http://www.almasdarnews.com/article/...en-syria-iraq/

ISIS Issues Mandatory Conscription for the Men of Syria and Iraq

According to a civilian source in Raqqa City, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) has issued a new law that orders the compulsory military conscription of all men living in the self-professed “Khaleefa” (Caliphate) in the Syrian provinces of Ar-Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, and Al-Hasakah; and also in the provincial capital of the Nineveh Governorate in Iraq.

The new law requires men between the ages of 15-25 to fulfill their Islamic duty and protect their Caliphate from all infidels (kuffar) and apostates (murtadeen). ISIS courts will allow civilians to bypass mandatory conscription in Syria and Iraq if they pay a fee of $1,315 (U.S.), which is converted to 1.5 million Iraqi Dinars and 237,883 Syrian Pounds. Failure to pay the fee or join the military in the Caliphate will result in the imprisonment of the conscripted male.

This law is relatively new in Syria; however, this law was implemented in Mosul last month after being approved by the ISIS Shariah Courts. The civilian source in Raqqa City was not able to confirm whether or not religious minorities will be forced to serve in ISIS’ militant groups – also, no non-Sunni ISIS member has ever been identified.

[ZenBowman]

There's no shortage of evidence documenting atrocities committed by the FSA, long before anyone had ever even heard of ISIS. I could spend my entire Friday night doing copypastas but that's your area of expertise so I'll leave that to you.

Here's a couple from all the way back in 2012:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel...b_2380399.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...ganda-war.html


Let's be honest there is no way to determine whether FSA or SAA has committed more atrocities. The simple fact of hte matter is neither side has any moral high ground, and at least the SAA is controlled by a government based on secular principles. The Syrian govt enjoys the support of Christians, Druze and other minorities in the country; they are not a sectarian religious movement like the FSA, which is and always has been a Sunni militant force.

I'm not surprised that even the recent attack by terrorists in France, who served in militant outfits that enjoyed US\Saudi\Qatari support, still hasn't changed your views on arming Islamic militants for geopolitical ends. When 3000 Americans died on 9/11, the american officials and commentators that supported Islamic jihad against Soviet Russia were also unrepentant.

Spot on.

Yes, they are authoritarian despots, but at least their future vision of the country doesn't involve eliminating half the populace.

This is the essence of the recent Nir Rosen report:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/18/...centre-report/

As Syria’s moderate armed opposition loses ground and the United Nations embarks on a new peace strategy, a noted Syria researcher has written the most radical reassessment of the war’s dynamics in the history of the conflict.

The author, former journalist Nir Rosen, is a researcher with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre), a Geneva-based conflict mediation organization. Rosen’s report is 55 pages long, single-spaced, including both his own analysis and extensive quotes from Syrian officials about their views of the conflict. In it, he argues that the armed opposition has become hopelessly radicalized, while the Assad regime is nonsectarian in nature. The only way out of the conflict, he says, is through U.N.-brokered “local cease-fires” between the armed opposition and the regime, which would pave the way for an end to the bloodshed and the emergence of local institutions, though at the cost of abandoning efforts to force President Bashar al-Assad from power in the near future.

...

Rosen, who has likely spent more time than any other researcher interviewing regime officials and supporters, attempts to partially rehabilitate the image of the Syrian regime. “While the Syrian state was not the most attractive one even before the 2011 uprising, it also was not the worst regime in the region,” he writes. “It has strong systems of education, health care and social welfare and compared to most Arab governments it was socially progressive and secular…. It had a solid infrastructure and a relatively effective civil service.”

Such a description is dramatically at odds with most U.S. officials’ and independent analysts’ assessments of the regime. In the years before the uprising, the Assad regime stands accused of organizing a campaign of terror in Lebanon against its critics, building a secret nuclear power plant with North Korean assistance, and facilitating the flow of jihadis into Iraq to combat the U.S. occupation — to say nothing of its repression of dissent at home.

Rosen also argues against the assumption that Assad presides over an Alawite-dominated regime. “Most of the regime is Sunni, most of its supporters are Sunnis, many [if] not most of its soldiers are Sunni,” he writes. “The regime may be brutal, authoritarian, corrupt and whatever else it is described as, but it should not be seen as representing a sect.”

The sectarianism that does exist in Syria, Rosen argues, is preponderantly on the side of the anti-Assad opposition. The regime’s brutality toward the Sunni opposition, he writes, “was done more out of a fear of Sunni sectarianism than as a result of the regime’s own sectarianism.”

For this reason, Rosen argues, the conventional wisdom that the Assad regime is dedicated to oppressing Syria’s Sunni majority is fatally flawed. “It is more accurate to view it as a staunchly secular regime ruling a sectarian population with an Alawite praetorian guard.”

[Spartan5364]

combat footage from kobani
I always take these with a grain of salt but apparently these videos are no joke
at 0:23 you can see the 2 ISIS guys they are shooting at

[LukeLissen]

Syrian Army Forms Suicide Unit
http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...-suicide-unit/

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/4698.htm

In what may be the first time since the Japanese kamikaze attacks of the Second World War, the army of an organized state—if Syria can still be considered such—has formed a suicide unit.

A video clip posted Dec. 30 on the Internet shows a small group of soldiers from the Syrian Army’s Mountain Battalion wearing pouches around their waists, presumably for explosives, facing the camera. All wear white headbands and masks.

“In the name of Allah, we, the commandos of the Mountain Battalion, declare from the peak of Mount Nabi Yunis the establishment of a martyrdom-seeking platoon,” declares one of them, reading from a paper. “This is our response to all the foreigners who have distorted the religion of Islam and have defiled the soil of our country.”

This will be sure to help Assad's international image if put into large scale usage, not that he had any respect left from most of the world's governments anyway.

Yes, they are authoritarian despots, but at least their future vision of the country doesn't involve eliminating half the populace.

Nor does the FSA/Syrian National Coalition. Actually Assad is well on the way to achieving that goal far more than any other group in Syria.

[Boxman]

Sigh. Here we go again.

As if there was ever any sharp philosophical divide between the "moderate" Syrian opposition and the "extremist" opposition. It took only months for the nature of the resistance to change from "popular democratic movement" to "pro-Sunni movement". The handful of real moderates never had a chance. It was always inevitable that the Syrian opposition would quickly become dominated by extremists because the extremists were the guys that got all the Gulf Arab funding and support from the start. None of our gulf "allies" ever wanted a moderate secular govt in Syria; they always intended to create another radical Wahabbi type state there.

Syria is just another of their expansionist projects. These gulf monarchies (Saudi\Kuwait\Qatar\UAE) have backed muslim insurgencies and spread muslim terrorism all over the world. They were the primary backers of the Taliban and they're also the reason extremists have risen to the top in Libya since Qadaffi's fall.

[Spartan5364]

ISIS new video allegedly shows a 10 year old child executing 2 "russian spies" by shooting them in the head
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-9975648.html


ISIS attacking border crossing "fort" and Iraq-Saudi border. Flags flying there are Saudi

[ZenBowman]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/wo...opes-fade.html

Syria Peace Hopes Dim Further as Opposition Rejects Moscow Talks


As the world focused last week on the attacks by Islamist extremists in Paris, hopes were fading for the latest effort to wind down the war in Syria, a conflict seen as driving radicalization among Muslims worldwide.

For months, Russia has been working to persuade government and opposition figures to attend preliminary talks in Moscow on Jan. 26 that are aimed at starting a new peace process. But in recent days, several leading opposition figures, apparently doubting Russia’s credibility as a mediator, said they would not attend, undermining the initiative.

Chief among them was Moaz al-Khatib, a cleric from Damascus who is one of the few exiled figures who retains credibility among opposition fighters inside Syria, and who had earlier urged colleagues to take the talks seriously. But he declared on his ******** page that he would not attend, saying, “We don’t have the conditions for the success of this meeting.”

...

As Syria increasingly becomes the world’s problem, all sides in the conflict have reason to re-evaluate their positions. Falling oil prices are putting stress on Russia and Iran, the main backers of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Another Assad ally, the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, faces the prospect of a large population of Sunni refugees from Syria becoming permanent, altering the country’s sectarian balance of power.

On the other side, the United States, though it has long called for Mr. Assad’s ouster, increasingly appears to see checking the growth of the Islamic State extremist group as a higher priority. Turkey, a major backer of the revolt against Mr. Assad, faces a growing burden from a refugee crisis that will only deepen as the conflict goes on.

Inside the country, relatively moderate Syrian insurgents are losing ground to extremist groups like the Nusra Front and the Islamic State in the northern regions that were long their center of gravity. The government is depleting its manpower and increasingly relying on foreign Shiite militias and irregular forces.

Yet these predicaments do not seem to have moved major players closer to compromise. The Syrian government seems to believe the world has decided that Mr. Assad is staying in power.

“The hard days in Syria are gone, and now we are getting out of the tunnel,” Bouthaina Shaaban, a presidential adviser, told Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen television last week.

[Boxman]

US "ally" Turkey still strongly backing ISIS
http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/major-mus...lision-course/

"Regional analysts see Turkey becoming increasingly radical even while trying to sell the West on its moderation...U.S. ally and member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Turkey is veering ever-further from the West and is embracing more of the jihadist Islamic mantra...Erdogan has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood leadership to stay in Turkey after it was kicked out of Egypt and Qatar, has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Hamas to shift its headquarters from Damascus to Ankara and has provided material assistance to the Islamic State, or ISIS.

Such backing has prompted critics to call for the United States to put Turkey on the terrorism list and to kick it out of NATO.

The United States has done little to confront Turkey over its direction, especially as it provides assistance to Sunni jihadist groups, refuses to join the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition and has allowed Hamas to move its headquarters to Ankara. In addition, Turkey refuses to allow the U.S. to use its bases to attack ISIS strongholds in Syria. In assisting ISIS, Turkey continues to allow recruits to pass through the country into Syria, provide logistical support to ISIS and allow wounded ISIS fighters to be treated there.

Another example of how US allies in the region are playing a double game and doing vastly more harm to the region, and damage to US national security, than our supposed "enemies" Syria and Iran put together. Can you imagine if either Syria or Iran were doing the same stuff that Turkey, Saudi, and Qatar routinely get away with? Backing terrorists that murder Americans? They'd have been bombed out of existence. But our allies do the same thing and the US govt won't even talk about it.

Just goes to show the entire US plan for the region has nothing to do with wanting stability or keeping Americans safe; indeed the opposite. Our govt will happily support people that kill Americans in order to achieve strategic goals that benefit some powerful interests but actually harm the American people and everyone in the region.

[ZenBowman]

US "ally" Turkey still strongly backing ISIS
http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/major-mus...lision-course/

Another example of how US allies in the region are playing a double game and doing vastly more harm to the region, and damage to US national security, than our supposed "enemies" Syria and Iran put together. Can you imagine if either Syria or Iran were doing the same stuff that Turkey, Saudi, and Qatar routinely get away with? Backing terrorists that murder Americans? They'd have been bombed out of existence. But our allies do the same thing and the US govt won't even talk about it.

Just goes to show the entire US plan for the region has nothing to do with wanting stability or keeping Americans safe; indeed the opposite. Our govt will happily support people that kill Americans in order to achieve strategic goals that benefit some powerful interests but actually harm the American people and everyone in the region.

It has long been recognized by a few of us that Turkey, under the AKP, is not an ally but rather an enemy.

[Spartan5364]

strong hits

[LukeLissen]

Syria Interactive map

http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/fr/map/.../34.334/40.551

[Spartan5364]

The 2 italian girls captures by nusra front are apparently freed after an deal of up to $12 million

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...rs-freed-syria

Two Italian aid workers who have been held as hostages by Syria’s largest al-Qaida group since the summer have been freed, according to the office of Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi.

“Vanessa Marzullo and Greta Ramelli are free and will soon return to Italy,” the office tweeted on Thursday night.

The news was applauded in the Italian parliament and by the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, an Italian who tweeted that she was “happy for #VanessaandGreta and their families”.

Security sources told the Guardian that the women were released after the payment of a multimillion-dollar ransom to Jabhat al-Nusra, or the al-Nusra Front, which has direct ties to al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. One report from Al Aan, a *****-based media group, said the ransom was worth $12m, but that report was not confirmed.
Islamic State militants seize four more foreign hostages in Syria
Read more

European governments have been far more willing than the United States to pay ransom for hostages, a decision that has provoked intense debate in the US following the beheading of several Americans, among others, by the Islamic State (Isis) in 2014.

A spokesman for Renzi did not respond to request for comment on the ransom payment. The US Treasury said in 2012 that the kidnapping of civilians for ransom had become a significant source of terror financing and estimated that terrorist organisations had collected about $120m in ransom payments from 2004 to 2012.

News of the women’s release marked the end of a crisis that began in late July, when the two women, both in their early 20s, were seized near the northern city of Aleppo just days after arriving in Syria for aid work.

Ramelli and Marzullo were seized by an unknown Islamist group in Aleppo and then either sold or passed on to Jabhat al-Nusra late last year. They were held in the countryside near Aleppo, according to sources in Syria.

The last time the women were seen publicly was in a chilling video that was posted on YouTube in early January, in which they warned that they were in “big danger” of being executed.

The two were seen wearing the black hijab. “The government and its militaries are responsible for our lives,” one said in English, appearing to read from a statement.

The women students were described as idealists in Italian press reports. They had co-founded a group, Horryaty Project, to deliver medical goods to the war-torn country but had been urged by their parents not to travel there.

Ramelli’s mother, Antonella, described her daughter as “determined”.

“Can you change your daughter who has these values and strong ideals about solidarity and human empathy? Should you?” she wrote on ********, according to press reports.

“We are brimming with happiness,” she said on Thursday night, according to reports. “We can’t wait to hug our daughter again.”

[Spartan5364]

*****://twitter.com/green_lemonnn/status/555788960774254594

Ambassador Ford: "rebels can't expect intl help if they work w/Nusra, The days of us looking the other way are finished."

America finally admitting what everyone already knew.
I guess this means a possibility of no more support for FSA

[LukeLissen]

Syrian Reporter @ReporterSyrien
'2015 We still want freedom #Syria'














Its a shame that most of the weapons in Syria are in the hands of [not the normal people]. I know for a fact that the mass of people are Syria are actually very good people and could build a great future if given the chance.

[LukeLissen]

Israeli airstrike in Syria reportedly kills son of late Hezbollah commander:
http://news.vice.com/article/israeli...icenewstwitter

Jihad Mughniyeh

[TacticalTaco]

If I wanted to leave the U.S. and fight with the Kurds, bringing my own rifle/equipment, how would I do this.

[ZenBowman]

There is a serious shift underway in US policy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/wo...riorities.html

American support for a pair of diplomatic initiatives in Syria underscores the shifting views of how to end the civil war there and the West’s quiet retreat from its demand that the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, step down immediately.

The Obama administration maintains that a lasting political solution requires Mr. Assad’s exit. But facing military stalemate, well-armed jihadists and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the United States is going along with international diplomatic efforts that could lead to more gradual change in Syria.

...

Still, Secretary of State John Kerry declared last week that the United States welcomed both initiatives. He made no call for Mr. Assad’s resignation, a notable omission for Mr. Kerry, who has typically insisted on it in public remarks. Instead, he spoke of Mr. Assad as a leader who needed to change his policies.

“It is time for President Assad, the Assad regime, to put their people first and to think about the consequences of their actions, which are attracting more and more terrorists to Syria, basically because of their efforts to remove Assad,” Mr. Kerry said.

...

Western diplomats who had long called for Mr. Assad’s immediate resignation say now that while he must not indefinitely control crucial institutions like the military, a more gradual transition may be worth considering.

One Western diplomat at the United Nations said that while a “post-Assad phase” must eventually come, “the exact timing of that, we can discuss,” as long as the solution does not “cement his position in power.”

Western leaders now openly talk about a deal allowing some current officials to remain to prevent Syria from disintegrating, like Iraq and Libya.

Thank God for this spurt of sanity. Libya has already been totally derailed, and it is a good thing if Syria can stay in one piece (or at least two pieces instead of 5-10).

[whyalwaysmeque]

If I wanted to leave the U.S. and fight with the Kurds, bringing my own rifle/equipment, how would I do this.

I am tempted to report this to the authorities. If you are a [sole] citizen of the United States it is illegal for you to travel and fight for any other force whether state sponsored or rebel. You have no obligation to be fighting with the Kurds. If you want to help them, join the United States Armed Forces, become a properly trained soldier and look for deployment. Aiming high, toward the special forces, will surely increase your chances of deployment.

I'm not going to report the post to authorities, because I'm hopeful that you are more switched on than that post would infer.

I would like to add that your mentality is the reason so many people around the West right now find it appropriate to leave their countries and friends and families and neighbors behind (the people who they have an immediate and real obligation to), to fight for extremist groups. If you make it out alive, you will come back without an appropriate support system and you will be displaced mentally and possibly physically. Whether you're fighting with the Kurds or with ISIS you will have subverted the society in which you live, and you'll invariably become a ticking time bomb.

If you want to help the Kurds, help your country, and join the USAF. It's not the quick-and-easy route to combat that you want but you'll receive proper training and have the proper support systems around you required to effectively reach your goals of helping the Kurds and defeating the radicals, and ultimately reintegrating back into society.

You are American before everything else. Remember that.

[LukeLissen]

I am tempted to report this to the authorities. If you are a [sole] citizen of the United States it is illegal for you to travel and fight for any other force whether state sponsored or rebel. You have no obligation to be fighting with the Kurds. If you want to help them, join the United States Armed Forces, become a properly trained soldier and look for deployment. Aiming high, toward the special forces, will surely increase your chances of deployment.

I'm not going to report the post to authorities, because I'm hopeful that you are more switched on than that post would infer.

I would like to add that your mentality is the reason so many people around the West right now find it appropriate to leave their countries and friends and families and neighbors behind (the people who they have an immediate and real obligation to), to fight for extremist groups. If you make it out alive, you will come back without an appropriate support system and you will be displaced mentally and possibly physically. Whether you're fighting with the Kurds or with ISIS you will have subverted the society in which you live, and you'll invariably become a ticking time bomb.

If you want to help the Kurds, help your country, and join the USAF. It's not the quick-and-easy route to combat that you want but you'll receive proper training and have the proper support systems around you required to effectively reach your goals of helping the Kurds and defeating the radicals.

You are American before everything else. Remember that.

Damn great post. I made a response to him with information but deleted it. It is illegal but so far the US has chosen not to prosecute those doing so, but they could if they wanted to.

Your post is the best response. reps

[LukeLissen]

The latest barrel bombing just killed 65 civilians in a sheep market in Tel Hamees. Civilians intentionally targeted. Not the accidental tragedy of civilians getting hit in warfare between combatants but civilians being intentionally targeted by a regime that is no longer nor will ever again be legitimate.

The very graphic vid of the dead is available on the net like the thousands before it. Title ...

+18 الحسكة - تل حميس - سوق تيماء - مجزرة سوق الغنم راح ضحيتها أكثر من 50 مدني والعدد في إزدياد

To anyone who still thinks that Assad can regain normal leadership of a whole Syria, sorry you are mistaken. The only way that could happen now is if he genocided many millions of people. This is not just barrel bombs either. That's only one small but horrible part of it.

[AlKhas]

http://sn4hr.org/blog/2015/01/23/2853/

Most Prominent Massacres Perpetrated by Shiite Militias in Syria

“It barely goes unnoticed”

Introduction

The first extremist foreign militias to emerge in Syria were’t Daesh or An-Nussra Front where months before their emergence, non-Arabic fighters appeared in Syria. Also, at the end of 2011, rebels arrested fighters from Al-Mahdi Army which is affiliated to the Iraqi-****te leader Muqtada As-Sadr as reports surfaced about him recruiting and sending soldiers to Syria despite that fact that he denied openly his involvement in the Syrian conflict until recently. The most notable development regarding the Shiite involvement in the Syrian conflict was in the summer of 2012 when Liwa Abdulfadl Al-Abbas emerged and many Shiite leaders called for Shiites to come and protect the Shiite shrines in general and As-Sayda Zainab shrine in particular which was in conjunction with a huge amassing propaganda that was adopted by various media institutions including newspapers, TV channels, and social websites.

Shiite fighters kept flowing into Syria to fight for Liwa Abdulfadl Al-Abbas. Hezbollah entered the conflict openly in April 2013 in Al-Qusair and its suburbs which was a major development with respect to the nature of the Shiite regional forces that support the regime. Over the next months, ****te groups affiliated to Iraqi factions emerged openly which was a noticeable change for most of the political and military Shiite-Iraqi forces even for the Iraqi government which facilitated the flowing of fighters into Syria in addition to some evidences that suggested that the Iraqi government itself is involved.

[AlKhas]

http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/01...-legionnaires/

France admits soldiers have deserted to ISIS, including ex-elite special forces and French foreign legionnaires

Several French former soldiers have joined the ranks of jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq, the country’s government confirmed on Wednesday, as it outlined a series of new anti-terrorism measures following the Islamist attacks in Paris.

Most of the ex-soldiers, reportedly numbering around 10 and including former paratroopers and French foreign legionnaires, are said to be fighting on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

[AlKhas]

1000s came to the sit-in in Babilla to demand an end to Assad regime siege. And for food.

[LukeLissen]

British Army Training The Peshmerga

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vePk1hVskik

[TacticalTaco]

I am tempted to report this to the authorities. If you are a [sole] citizen of the United States it is illegal for you to travel and fight for any other force whether state sponsored or rebel. You have no obligation to be fighting with the Kurds. If you want to help them, join the United States Armed Forces, become a properly trained soldier and look for deployment. Aiming high, toward the special forces, will surely increase your chances of deployment.

I'm not going to report the post to authorities, because I'm hopeful that you are more switched on than that post would infer.

I would like to add that your mentality is the reason so many people around the West right now find it appropriate to leave their countries and friends and families and neighbors behind (the people who they have an immediate and real obligation to), to fight for extremist groups. If you make it out alive, you will come back without an appropriate support system and you will be displaced mentally and possibly physically. Whether you're fighting with the Kurds or with ISIS you will have subverted the society in which you live, and you'll invariably become a ticking time bomb.

If you want to help the Kurds, help your country, and join the USAF. It's not the quick-and-easy route to combat that you want but you'll receive proper training and have the proper support systems around you required to effectively reach your goals of helping the Kurds and defeating the radicals, and ultimately reintegrating back into society.

You are American before everything else. Remember that.

Duh. I'm not actually trying to go, it was a question. If I were to go to the ME, it'd be in the U.S. military, not with the Peshmergh. Let me rephrase that, " Are people just traveling to the ME with open visas and linking up with these people?"


LMAO at reporting me, get a life dude. I said Kurds, not ISIS.

Age: 45

Lmao

[ZenBowman]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0KZ1B320150126

Kurdish fighters, backed by U.S.-led air strikes, are close to regaining full control of the Syrian town of Kobani near the Turkish border from Islamic State fighters, a group monitoring Syria's war and a Kurdish official said on Monday.

The town, also known as Ayn al-Arab, has become a symbol in the battle against the hardline Sunni Muslim insurgents who have captured large expanses of Iraq and Syria. Islamic State launched a campaign to capture the town in July.

Syrian Kurdish YPG forces, who have been often backed up by Iraqi Kurdish forces known as peshmerga, are still battling Islamic State on the eastern outskirts of the town, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A little good news from Kurdistan. May they soon be free of all their accursed oppressors.

[LukeLissen]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0KZ1B320150126



A little good news from Kurdistan. May they soon be free of all their accursed oppressors.

Kobani has now been fully liberated of ISIS.




Kurdish fighters celebrate victory over ISIS in battle for Syrian town of Kobani

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj08yuDNirU










Hundreds of Kurds rally in celebration at the Kobane border after Kurdish victory in ousting ISIS. Happening right now, from recent minutes-




























The Battle for Kobani lasted 134 days.

ISIS lost.

[Boxman]

*****://twitter.com/green_lemonnn/status/555788960774254594

Ambassador Ford: "rebels can't expect intl help if they work w/Nusra, The days of us looking the other way are finished."

America finally admitting what everyone already knew.
I guess this means a possibility of no more support for FSA

You're assuming the US govt actually has a moral or philosophical objection to arming people like ISIS, Al-Nusra, Al-Queda and other varieties of Islamic terrorists.

I would argue that successive US gov't have proven, repeatedly over the past 30 years, that they will happily give out money, arms and support to any group of murderers that further their geopolitical goals. And yes, our gov't has also proven, repeatedly, that they'll happily get American citizens killed as a cost of doing business.

[Lakersbake]

I guess I wont make a new thread so Im here for some LOLs.

LOL @ The US bombing ISIS while Israel bombs Assad. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy who's enemy is my enemy.

ISIS must be eliminated, but Assad must also be eliminated. Maybe at the end of all this we can have Jeb Bush be the leader of the new Syria.