Hey guys, Scott here.
I've got some speeches and events and things to tell you guys about.
First of all, on the evening of February the 7th, I'm hosting another Renegade University at ThaddeusRussell.com.
On February the 24th, I'm giving a talk here in Austin at Austin Anarchy in Action.
On March 2nd, I'll be in D.C. tabling, selling books, hopefully, at the Israel Lobby Conference.
But then on March 3rd, I'm flying up to Philadelphia to give a speech to the Pennsylvania Libertarian Party at their convention.
But then I'll be back in D.C. on March the 4th to give two speeches, one at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs bookstore and another at Tenleytown Library.
So that's the weekend of March 2nd through 4th there.
On March 20th, I'll be giving a speech at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.
On March 24th, I'll be speaking at the New Jersey Libertarian Party Convention in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
On April 28th, I'll be up in Fort Worth giving a talk to the local Libertarian Party group there.
And in the first week of May, I'm not exactly sure, it's I think the 3rd through the 6th, one of those days, I will be in San Diego giving a speech for Libertopia.
Then on June 21st, the Michigan Midwest Peace and Liberty Fest is going on.
I'll be giving a talk there.
And October the 6th, planning a little bit ahead now, on October the 6th, I'll be giving a talk at Liberty Fest, again in New York City.
Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America, and by God, we've kicked Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came.
He saw us.
He died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN, like, say our name, Ben, say it.
Say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Joey Lawrence, and he goes by Joey L. He's a photographer, and it's joeyl.com is his main website, and you might remember I interviewed him almost a year ago or so, last spring, something like that, about his photography and his video documentary, a two-part documentary that he made about the Kurdish fighters going up against the Islamic State there in northeastern Syria.
If you go to bornfromurgency.com, we'll forward you on, guys, to the, I guess both parts of the documentary.
It's the two parts, right?
Yeah, it's actually three parts, but thanks for the plug, man.
It's bornfromurgency.com.
It's bornfromurgency.com, right, and then We Came From Fire is the book, correct?
That's right, yeah.
You can get all the movies up there for free, and if anyone's interested, the book's on pre-order right now, and it's coming out in June.
Cool.
All right, so I'm not certain, but I guess I'd be willing to bet that when we talked a year ago, we were already asking the question, so once the Islamic State is licked and the Americans backstab the Kurds, what's it going to look like?
What's going to happen?
I don't know, maybe that's assuming too much, but it sure does seem to be coming down to it now, right?
As the Americans announce that they're going to stay in Syrian Kurdistan, the Turks have invaded, and I don't know exactly the extent of the Turks' plans here, but what do you know?
What do you think?
Yeah, well, when we spoke, I think it was about nine months ago.
At that time, YPG and SDF were fighting ISIS, of course, which was mostly a Turkish proxy to begin with, or at least Turkey used it, let's say, as a strategic asset to weaken its enemies like the Syrian regime, and as well as to crush their old Kurdish enemies.
But now in the region of Afrin, we can see YPG is fighting Turkey head on now, which is a very, very new development.
About a week ago, the Turks invaded the province, or sorry, the region of Afrin.
And then so, I mean, the news today was that the Turks even threatened that they would attack Americans if the Americans wouldn't back off their support for the Kurds.
So what's the status of that?
Yeah.
So basically, you can kind of simplify it into two general areas of influence.
So in the northeast of Syria, you have the cantons called Kobani Canton and Jazeera Canton, and those are under the protection of the Americans.
They're special forces on the ground.
Americans own the airspace, and that was very much roped into the fight against ISIS.
But separated is the Afrin Canton, which is in the northwest, and that is not connected by land bridge to other Syrian Kurd and SDF-held territory.
It's been isolated and actually pretty quiet for most of the war.
In fact, it was Russia who owned the airspace above Afrin because of their support of the Syrian government and some offensives in Idlib and Aleppo, and elsewhere as well in the country.
So it was always kind of isolated.
It has front lines against HTS, which is the newest embodiment of the Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda, and it also has front lines against the Turkish incursion, Euphrates Shield, and some areas bordering Syrian Arab Army positions.
So when the Turks entered there, the Americans, sort of their reaction was really interesting because it wasn't a full abandonment of, let's say, this project in the northeast.
They're sort of claiming now to have no connection with this isolated Canton.
That's from the Americans, but if you talk to SDF, they say, no, this is all part of the same project.
This is our troops, and they feel let down by not just Americans, but mostly Russians, because before the Turks entered, the Russians actually moved their positions, and of course, they opened up the airspace for the Turks to commit airstrikes.
So right now, the SDF, YPG, they're fighting the Turkish Army head on.
These are very lightly equipped soldiers, and they're fighting the second most powerful army in NATO.
And then, so, but the Americans are just withdrawing, or the Kurds that are being attacked by the Turks now are not ones that have Marines embedded with them?
So the Marines are in the northeast, and of course, there's entire units of SDF that fought alongside special forces and Marines in Raqqa.
I mean, there's entire units that fought in Raqqa that are using a Syrian government road to enter Afrin.
So for the Americans to say, like, oh, this is not our problem, this has no connection to the SDF project is not really helpful to anyone.
These are literally the exact same political organization and the exact same army.
It's just there's no magical land bridge to connect them yet, because there was no declared fight against ISIS.
So like every single justification that the Americans have, you know, which is very thin to be in Syria is, oh, it's a fight against ISIS, it's a fight against terrorism, of course, and that's how they justify their presence there.
So because there's no ISIS in Afrin-Canton, it seems like they're saying you guys are on your own.
And of course, it seems like there's some sort of deal going on behind the scenes now.
With that said, there's been some condemnations yesterday, as well as saying like, you know, the typical statements like, oh, we strongly discourage, we strongly, strongly, strongly discourage this, this doesn't help the fight on ISIS, blah, blah, blah.
But to anyone who's paid close attention to this conflict, honestly, it was just a matter of time.
I mean, Turkey, Turkish government has been ranting about wanting to invade somewhere in Syrian Kurdistan for a very long time.
And it seems like they finally got the green light from the Russians to do it after some negotiations failed between the YPG and the Syrian government to take over areas.
It seems like the Russians let the Turks roll in as a sort of way to saying like, we are your protectorate, and maybe even a way to get the YPG to come closer to the Syrian government saying you're going to get invaded if you don't side with us and improve relations with us.
So I think that's what's going on.
Well, but so what's the Turkish message to the Americans here?
Because I mean, I don't I don't mean to put America at the center of everything because it's not necessarily but this was this not in at least partially in reaction to the American announcement that, oh, yeah, we're staying in eastern Syria, i.e.
Syrian Kurdistan forever in the name of, as Tillerson even said, in the name of Iran, rather than even in the name of ISIS forces at this point.
Yeah.
Or, in other words, are the Turks really determined to completely, you know, annihilate the pseudo Kurdish state there now, or just as far as they can go without bumping up against US Marines?
I think that's a really, a really good question.
And it's one that anyone who's looking at this, this particular wing of the conflict closely is asking is asking themselves, because you can hear like really tough talk from President Erdogan of Turkey saying that he's going to invade Manbij next.
There's even some FSA forces that were formerly trained by or let's say backed by the Americans that are now threatening Americans in Manbij, which is under the protectorate of the United States and the Marines and all that.
So it's just like there's all this different rhetoric coming out saying they're going to go this far, they're going to go that far.
How far will the Turks actually go is anyone's guess.
Some people are really surprised they even invaded.
There's even some kind of like diehard Syrian rebel supporters that are totally against this operation because it undermines where they're fighting elsewhere in Idlib province.
So what I think is that like for the Turks to actually try to rule Afrin as a region is going to be a literal nightmare.
Even if they take it over, that population was like what we call apogee, like following Ocalan ideology since way before the war.
It's like mostly made up of Kurds.
And if the Turks do manage to somehow occupy Afrin, the city, and Jendreseh and some other villages like that, towns like that, they're going to be facing a nightmare insurgency.
So I think this is something similar to what we saw when the Turks traded Aleppo and evacuated their forces from there for the regime and entered them into Euphrates Shield area.
And I think it's just all tough talk to try to isolate that pocket and to make a deal with the Russians.
But how far were they actually be able to get into Afrin or how far do they want to go is anybody's guess.
Because domestically, Erdogan is using a lot of tough talk.
And if he doesn't have quick results fast, I mean, it's going to be an embarrassing disaster for him domestically.
And I don't know how close you've been following the maps, but in a week, they've barely really been able to make a dent.
Like YPG is blowing up tanks.
They're claiming a lot of casualties from Turks and it's just like a mess from all sides.
And they haven't actually been able to enter Afrin very well.
This is the Turkish army, as well as thousands of former FSA fighters that they moved from different areas, fighters from Euphrates Shield, and as well as new recruits from recruited from refugee camps and paid salaries as kind of mercenaries.
So it's just, if you look at a map and the bombardments on civilian areas that the Turks are doing, they're literally just creating a mess for themselves.
And people are kind of scratching their head asking why and what they could actually manage to accomplish there, besides pressuring some sort of a chess piece move for a region elsewhere.
But so, I mean, I must be missing something or a few things.
It seems like if the Americans weren't pushing for whatever, you know, I guess too much degree of autonomy for Syrian Kurdistan so that they can keep their permanent bases there in the name of limiting the power of the government of Syria, that's virtually won the war at this point.
Anyway, after the war has failed, they still want to keep these few bases.
But so if it wasn't for that, then the Syrian Kurds would just go back to having a deal with whatever limited autonomy in agreement with Damascus.
And then the Turks wouldn't even have anything to fight about.
They'd have the same situation as always, which is, yeah, there's YPG there, but what are you going to do?
It's the fact of their pseudo statehood now that's provoked this.
Yes.
And then that sort of federal zone that you're talking about, if you talk to a lot of policy people, they might sort of define Afrin as a, as a sort of like sacrificial lamb or one of their limbs that they could lose, but still control the other areas that I mentioned in the Northeast.
But of course, if you talk to Kurds, Afrin is a very sacred place for them.
I mean, it's got a lot of agricultural projects.
It's a beautiful landscape.
It's an ancient Kurdish homeland.
Like, but in terms of the American strategy, whatever they're trying to do, whatever they're talking about countering Iran and that kind of nonsense, it's like to them, they see maybe Afrin as a piece on the board that can be traded.
So publicly the Americans are saying like, we don't advise, you know, SDF to go fight there.
None of our anti-ISIS fighters are fighting there.
Okay.
That's like, let's say the, like Americans trying to be an overseer on this project.
But for those Kurdish fighters, they're like, oh, you're not going to tell us what to do.
And they're actually moving to Afrin.
They're mobilizing, they're fighting there themselves.
So it's, it's, it's sort of like Americans have this policy of by, with, and through.
And I don't think that they're able to influence SDF not to fight in Afrin at this point, at least.
And I think the outcome is going to be, I don't like to guess, but if I had to guess, it's going to be exactly what you said, where YPG and SDF fight enough, they resist enough to be like heroes and not totally abandon these people in Afrin to the Turks and their jihadi mercenaries.
But in the end, they're going to have to make some agreement with the Syrian government, whether that is deploying a Syrian government along the border posts and losing those areas, or maybe something like you see in Aleppo, where the YPG actually still holds a neighborhood, Kurdish neighborhood called Sheikh Maksud, but they made some kind of agreement.
And another thing I'll mention is in some cities like Hasakah and in the province, the self-administration there actually has deals with the regime and they share some of the oil wealth and things like that.
So there's like a sort of pact of neutrality.
And I think what this is, is just using a lot of pressure to try to get the SDF and the self-administration system to sort of cave in and have a looser place at the bargaining table.
And especially after what you mentioned, that they announced this like 30,000 strong border force.
Well, all these countries that are not America do have an interest in weakening the Kurdish project.
And if they can't get in where American forces are located, then they can definitely crush Afrin.
And I think that's what they're trying to do.
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Alright, but so now I don't know how much say the Kurds have in it, but it seems like they would tell the Americans, okay, now that rock is liberated, get the hell out please before you cause us a worse problem.
But are they eager to have these, you know, pseudo, hopefully only pseudo permanent American military bases there?
Now what the hell are those bases supposed to accomplish anyway, in Syrian Kurdistan that if the Iranians drive some trucks across the Iraqi border, then we're just going to shell them or something or I mean, it doesn't make any sense anyway.
The whole thing to use SDF as a for a countering force against Iran is such that I mean, there's, it just doesn't make sense.
And it's also not in the interest really of the Syrian Kurds there in a way.
You know, Scott, I think what it actually is is that the YPG and the SDF really is America's only successful influence inside Syria for them to support YPG at the end of 2014 for the very first time.
This is years and years into the war, I think reflects like a change of policy.
As you know, their first priority was regime change using a jihadist proxies and taking advantage of the rebellion and trying to arm them to overthrow Assad.
And I think once that turned into a failure, and they couldn't control the fire that they had created, namely one of them being ISIS, and I don't mean like creating ISIS like conspiracy theory shit, but I mean, literally creating the grounds and giving the people next to them weapons to trade and share and conduct offensives together.
In late 2014, to help YPG against ISIS was something I think totally new inside, not only their Syrian policy, but the way that America has used proxies and jihadists.
Yeah, once they sacked Mosul, yeah, once they sacked Mosul and threatened Erbil, and they didn't really threaten Baghdad, but they did threaten Erbil, at that point it had blown up in their face so bad that they had to do something.
Yeah, because YPG fought ISIS from late, sorry, well, let's say the Al-Nusra Front first, right, in late, sorry, early 2012 until they were fighting the Al-Nusra Front and ISIS until the Battle of Kobani where America intervened.
I mean, YPG was fighting extremists that entire time with no support, and at that point they were really struggling, and it's only after Kobani the Americans actually got involved, so it's a complete reversal of policy because those jihadists were weakening the Syrian government, and I think the Al-Nusra Front got spared because they didn't have front lines against YPG, they didn't put out such slick and glossy videos threatening Americans as well as the Al-Nusra Front was mixed up with FSA random but weak brigades, so they got spared, they could keep putting pressure on the Syrian government, but to get back to your original question, why are they still there, I think that they see this as their only success inside Syria.
It is true that the regions under SDF and the self-administration system are extremely stable, probably some of the most safe inside Syria, and if they want to have influence or leverage in the future, it would make no sense to abandon those areas, so that makes sense for, let's say, Jazeera Canton, Kobani Canton, but because of all this pressure and, let's say, what YPG represents to Turkey, I think that's sort of why they're kind of turning their backs on this isolated Canton of Afrin right now, but we're talking as if the American policy is well thought out and coherent and it was part of the plan, which I'm not convinced there is a real solid methodical plan behind this, it's just sort of a show, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's pretty hard to make.
It's hard to make if this was all, from the beginning they had planned this, which I'm going to say definitely not.
If it went the way they had planned, the regime would have fallen as soon as Obama said it would have.
You know what I mean?
Well, but the thing is, I mean, just what I'm curious about, though, is the point of view of the YPG, I mean, obviously the Americans give you a bunch of money and trucks and guns, that's helpful, but they're no fools, right?
So they knew the backstab was coming.
They knew, you're talking about it looks like the Americans almost even have, possibly even have a deal with Erdogan to go ahead and do what he's doing, just go this far, not further.
This kind of thing.
They've got to be expecting stuff like that.
So are they in the position now where they still are saying, like they really are welcoming the American Marines or they're just stuck with them?
At this, all right.
So it's sort of a very interesting answer.
So on the ground, if you talk to any YPG fighter or Syrian Kurd that has that sort of ideology, they don't talk at all like the Iraqi Kurds, for example, who lost Kirkuk and, you know, there was a big fiasco there a couple of months ago, or sorry, a few months ago.
They really have this sort of mindset of being self-sufficient, relying on nobody.
But of course, if there's a superpower that's going to offer them air support and it's going to give them all this power, they also know a lot about power and how to use it.
And they see this, their relationship with the Americans in the same tactical way, honestly, that the Americans see the relationship where it's just one of mutual convenience.
So you talk to even like an average fighter that's not a commander who might have not even gone to school, and he knows one day that the Americans are going to leave.
And they've been preparing for this for a very long time.
And it's just about like how much leverage have they been able to get along the way.
And just a matter of how big of a fight are we going to pick for them with the Turks before we abandon them?
I mean, that's the whole thing, right?
We could leave them high and dry without saying, hey, Erdogan, get them.
Yeah.
And at that point, what I think what would happen is the SDF, as well as the self-administration, would somehow have to bargain with the Syrian government, whatever future that might hold, whatever, who's in power.
At that point, they would go to the negotiating table.
It's just how strong can they get their position before the war ends?
Because one of the things that I think people get wrong a lot of times is they think that the SDF are somehow separatist forces that want to create their own Kurdistan, and they get confused with the Iraqi Kurdistan project.
From the very beginning in 2012, when they released their charter, you can see that they've always wanted just autonomy and greater minority rights inside Syria.
There's just been active disinformation campaigns to say they're ethnically cleansing people, they're Kurdish separatists, blah, blah, blah.
What I think they would probably want is a sort of federal entity, and they've said this openly, a federal zone inside the future Syria.
They can work with whatever government, they don't care, as long as their institutions and security forces can control their area, similar to what the Iraqi Kurds had before they went for full statehood.
Yeah.
Well, and so now, you know, it's obvious that the war against Assad not only didn't work but has backfired in numerous ways, and yet his government still doesn't really control as much of the country as they did before the war broke out.
It doesn't look like they really have very much, so he's in a much weaker position from which to deal as well, and he still has the Al Nusra Front to deal with in the Idlib province.
And I don't know, and what do you know about what's happened to the Islamic State fighters?
They're not all dead.
A lot of them were scattered to the winds, but which way did they blow?
Yeah, well, to answer the first part of that is I agree that the Syrian government is very weak.
I think they're winning the war against the rebels, that's for sure the outcome, is that the Syrian government's going to win, but they're weak and they have this huge offensive upcoming in Idlib province, so if you think about what's happening in Afrin, it would make sense similar to how Turkey got its proxies to leave Aleppo and enter in Euphrates Shield so that the regime could successfully take Aleppo.
That was an exchange that actually happened.
So if we have this big offensive sort of in anticipation in Idlib province, it would make sense for the regime to sort of cede Afrin, make some deal with the Turks to weaken Idlib for their own offensive.
But as for your question like where did ISIS go, I mean, all that sort of BBC report is really like that was talking about the ISIS fighters being evacuated from Raqqa in like a secret deal.
It was just really sort of like gossip being like tabloid news.
I mean, the reality is in war it's like they had civilians as like human shields and people make deals with ISIS all the time to evacuate this area, move here, move that.
It's really like no different from any other force.
Probably the public statements put out by the Pentagon are not helpful where they tried to hide it, but where did those ISIS fighters go?
They were probably moved to some areas in Deir ez-Zor or they probably slipped into Idlib by smuggling to join Al-Nusra Front.
They're probably just scattered all over the place or in the Western desert of Iraq because that border with Syria is really, really hard to police.
It's just an open desert.
So I think they just scattered every which way and local Syrians might have smuggled their way to a place they know, but all the foreign fighters, maybe they're mostly inside Turkey now hiding, maybe they're prisoners.
It's just ISIS's control in terms of territory I think is really, really small.
But at the same time, if it's the American's justification to stay inside Syria, I can't see them like fighting over those last pockets and totally announcing that they're gone from Syria yet until they figure out like what the hell they're going to do there.
So it's really interesting that the Russians and the Syrian government announced the end of ISIS inside Syria, let's celebrate.
But the Americans say like, no, no, no, there's still these like few pockets, which is true.
But if ISIS is totally eradicated from Syria, do they still have a justification to stay inside of those Kurdish areas?
Will they say, well, ISIS will come back as an insurgency and now we're going to like build stability.
But I think it's just going to come down to a final sort of political peace talk settlement where the Syrian Kurds know they have to make some sort of deal with the Syrian government.
The Americans want that deal to go in their favor, to have influence over the country.
And it's going to sort of, right now, I think it's just all coming down to who has the most leverage and that's what all these operations are about.
And unfortunately, just like this whole war is a proxy battle between superpowers, it's always the people and the civilians on the ground who are suffering.
Like there's images on Twitter and even friends of mine, my friend and translator who I work with in Kurdistan all the time, his village is under siege and some of the stuff he's sending me on WhatsApp is just unbelievable what the Turks are doing there.
And just like always, there's no mainstream media reporting on it.
So once again, it's just like, you mean showing civilians?
Oh yeah, yeah.
It's just superpower bullshit at the expense of Syrian people.
Once again, I mean, the Turks, like post coup, their military is really weakened, especially their number of fighter pilots, if you want to call them talented fighter pilots who are purged, and they're mostly using, they are doing airstrikes, but they're using a lot of artillery.
And like these are civilian places that, like there's no way there's a YPG presence there.
Some of them are just random hamlets and small villages in the countryside.
And they're just being pummeled to try to get the civilian population to move so the army can move in easier.
It's very similar to what the Turks did in Diyarbakir, Sir, in Turkey's southeast.
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And now, when it comes to the ISIS fighters, do you know, are they just going back to the Al Nusra Front now, or is it not that easy?
I thought it was impossible, and when I saw a few pop up in Idlib province, I was like, what the hell is going on now?
But it is easier than you might imagine to sort of slip over checkpoints, bribe people, and smuggle yourself across Syria.
We're used to looking at color-coded maps of different areas of control, but it is possible for former ISIS fighters to join the most ideologically similar group, the Al Nusra Front, in Idlib.
There's even a pocket of ISIS north of Hama.
But I think probably, in terms of the leadership and influential people, they're probably laying low somewhere in the Deir ez-Zor desert, or the bordering desert of Iraq.
So what's the status of the Syrian Army's war against Al-Qaeda there in Idlib?
So the Syrian Arab Army relies on a lot of different loyalist militias and Iranian groups and hodgepodge, and a lot of their areas of control also rely on sort of like ceasefires and very slowly rolling out reconciliations.
But they are sort of extending their grasp all across the country.
Anyone who says they're not has clearly not been paying attention.
I think they are winning the war.
But at the same time, I think the regime is incredibly fragile and incredibly weak, and this sort of battle for Idlib is going to be basically a bloodbath, because it's been a dumping ground for all the groups that they've half-defeated and moved with buses.
Every armed faction you can think of, of all spectrums of ideology, all the extremists are kind of dumped in Idlib province.
And really, ideologically, there's no difference from al-Nusra Front and ISIS, just one kind of made better videos, just like gangster-style, mafia-style jihadists, you know what I mean?
But Jelani used to work for Baghdadi, and Baghdadi used to work for Zawahiri.
It's all it is is al-Qaeda in Iraq that broke in half, is all.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
And if you zoom out and if you judge these people's goals by what they hope to achieve, they have the same goal, they have just different tactics to get there.
So the al-Nusra Front is a little more clever, I think.
But in terms of the Syrian government's offensive, so I think Turkey is going to make some kind of deal with them.
I mean, they inserted themselves into northern Idlib province, which is just south of Afrin.
The Turks actually had an incursion in which they directly negotiated with HTS, which is the al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda literally escorted the Turkish military to some post south of Afrin to have a staging ground inside Idlib.
And I think it's just going to be a very slow march where they figure, I guess...
Wait, was that the group that the headlines called the FSA, it was really just al-Qaeda?
For the last six years, yeah, yeah, one of those.
Sometimes the papers will differentiate and say, well, this group is just, you know, al-Qaeda adjacent or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
But yeah, so there's going to be a slow...
I mean, the offense for Idlib has already started.
There's going to be, I think it's just going to be a very slow sort of movement by the Russians and the Syrian government and allied forces slowly taking over Idlib.
If you look on a map below Afrin where that Turkish incursion pocket was actually put, it is of course in anticipation of a lot of different IDPs fleeing the region for the same crisis that might be coming in Idlib province.
The Turks wanted to extend their presence below Afrin because the YPG could take advantage of the fighting there, easily fight those HTS, Nusra Front rebels as al-Qaeda and even grab more land in Idlib and get closer to regime territory.
I don't think they're ever going to reach the sea or something crazy like some analysts are saying.
Like the YPG is going for the sea.
I mean, they'd probably want to if they could, but at this point it seems like that Turkish incursion is a buffer zone to sort of try to sort out the rebels from various spectrums of gray.
So it's like if you went to the paint supply store and you looked at all the different shades of gray of like paint to buy and it's like one is the most black, it's the most extreme, like try to sort these out in areas of shade from lightest to darkest.
And I think that's what they're trying to do.
The darkest shades will go fight, like the darkest shades of Jihad will go fight the Syrian government expectedly in the offensive and the, let's say the groups that are more like sidelined and are FSA and fought alongside ISIS and al-Nusra, but are ready to surrender or at least be part of some settlement in a future Syrian government.
They'll sort of expectedly, I guess, go back to this Turkish pocket.
And I think that's, what's going to be the sorting out of this whole conflict.
And it might be in Russia's interest and America's interest together in a rare sort of moment in history to sort of make this whole Syria thing work in the end under some kind of a coalition government where those various factions that still have support of people who hate Bashar al-Assad, which is still a huge feeling for a lot of the population in the country, give them some power because you're never going to fix Syria without that.
And I think the Russians know that too.
Although the Syrian state is very popular among most Syrians, let's say.
So I think that's what's going on.
And right now, it's just how much can you grab before that happens?
Because before every single peace talk, there's some offensive or some sort of a state trying to act as a spoiler, you know?
Well, I sure hope you're right that it really is coming down to it.
Certainly, you know, if everybody was being reasonable about it, they'd have gone along with Kofi Annan back in 2012.
They could have cut all kinds of deals all this time and it's come to this.
Yeah, but the way there is going to be bloodshed because none of these people are good at negotiating with one another.
I think the Syrian Kurds have been, like, they've clashed with the Syrian government many times, but they do have a pact of neutrality because both of them fear the country going to the hands of jihadists.
So I think they can at least negotiate, it's just the negotiations that broke down over Afrin can't and, you know, not one side could agree.
So they're like, okay, we're going to remove our air force and see how you like it when the Turks roll in.
So, like, I agree that this could get to some kind of settlement, but, like, it's not going to be pretty.
It's going to be a horrific mess like what we see in Afrin right now.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for coming on the show and talking about this crazy, terrible stuff with us.
It's nice to talk to you, Scott.
It's always a pleasure.
I really appreciate it.
All right, you guys, bornfromurgency.com.
Go there to get the three-part movie now, a documentary by Joey L. in Syrian Kurdistan.
It's really great stuff.
I've seen the first two, so I can definitely vouch for that.
And then We Came From Fire is his book, the book of his photography there covering the war.
And you know me, I'm Scott Horton.
So, scotthorton.org, foolserend.us, antiwar.com, libertarianinstitute.org.
And I'm on Twitter, at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks guys.
