![\"\"](\"http:\/\/themillenniumreport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/image.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDeep State<\/em> and Military-Industrial Complex Mobilize Against Trump for Syria Exit<\/h1>\nThe Millennium Report<\/a><\/p>\nOn the surface, Syria appears to be very complicated. It is … but then it isn’t.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin has done a truly stellar job at bringing peace to a country that the Neocon Zionists were hellbent on first destroying, and then permanently balkanizing.<\/p>\n
That meticulously planned balkanization plot by the US, UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey seriously went awry when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan bolted from the genocidal conspiracy. See The Syrian Holocaust: A Preplanned Genocide And Forced Exodus<\/a><\/p>\nErdo\u011fan abandoned the Zio-Anglo-American enterprise to overthrow the Syria’s Bashar al-Assad after two key events occurred:<\/p>\n
I. Putin Goes Ballistic In Syria, Obliterates The USA\u2019s Secret \u2018Mideast Strategy\u2019<\/a>
\n&
\nII. BOMBSHELL Expos\u00e9: The U.S. Military Used Incirlik Air Base To Stage Failed Coup In Turkey<\/a><\/p>\nThese two HUGE moves on the Mideast geopolitical chessboard guaranteed the failure of the ultimate ZAA scheme to rape, pillage and plunder the Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian countryside.<\/p>\n
The primary reason for the unparalleled and utter collapse of “Operation Balkanize Syria”<\/strong> is that it relied on the pivotal co-conspirator—Turkey. When Erdo\u011fan pulled out, OBS was doomed.<\/p>\nNow Putin has painstakingly put together and implemented a brilliant peace plan that appears to be durable because all the major players have bought into it. The critical support, of course, came from President Trump.<\/p>\n
First, Trump fired Neocon Zionist warmonger John Bolton; then he made a secret agreement with Turkey to remove US troops from the Kurd-occupying areas of Syria. This single masterstroke, engineered behind the scenes by Putin, has set the stage for an eventual enduring peace throughout the Norther Levant.<\/p>\n
\nKEY POINT:<\/strong> Everything points to NSA Bolton as the ultimate provocateur inside the White House who engineered the fake UKRAINEgate scandal to topple Trump … because of his refusal to attack Iran after the Neocon-inspired false flags were carried out to blame Tehran. Now the MSM has published broadside after broadside against the White House in the wake of Trump’s stealthily executed exit strategy from Syria. See UKRAINEgate: CIA black op, Deep State psyop, Democrat coup, MSM distraction, Israeli espionage, Trump sting, or all 6?<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBy permitting the installation of the S-300 SAM System in Syria, Putin also put Israel on serious notice. Russian warplanes have since been scrambled to meet Israeli fighter jets in Syrian airspace many more times than the media have reported. So, even Israel’s endless unprovoked acts of naked aggression in Syria have been halted—FOREVER.<\/p>\n
The latest gambit in Putin’s peace initiative that just took effect is the crucial “peace” of the puzzle. That’s because the intractable “Kurdish predicament” has been the thorniest of all to solve for all parties involved. Nevertheless, Moscow, Ankara, Damascus and Iran came to an agreement that no other state actor can disrupt, if only because of the geo-strategic locations of those key nations on the Mideast chessboard.<\/p>\n
It won’t be long before Putin issues a decisive “CHECKMATE”<\/strong><\/span> against Israel where it concerns the calamitous Greater Israel<\/em> project.<\/p>\nThe Millennium Report<\/a>
\nOctober 16, 2019<\/p>\nN.B. The following status report on the true situation in the Northern Levant and the subsiding Syrian theater of war today is as good as it gets. The key takeaway is that the Kurds had to somehow be tamed, which is being accomplished by the Turkish military incursions into Syria that have driven the Kurdish leadership to ask for Assad’s protection.<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/themillenniumreport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Kurds-flee-Syria-border-900x540.jpg\")
<\/a>Syrian Arabs and Kurdish civilians arrive to Hassakeh city after fleeing bombardment on Syria’s northeastern towns along the Turkish border on October 10, 2019 amid fears of a new humanitarian crisis. Photo: AFP \/ Delil Souleiman<\/p><\/div>\n
Escobar: Kurds Face Stark Options After US Pullback<\/h2>\nForget an independent Kurdistan: They may have to do a deal with Damascus on sharing their area with Sunni Arab refugees<\/h4>\n
By PEPE ESCOBAR
\nAsia Times<\/p>\n
In the annals of bombastic Trump tweets, this one<\/a> is simply astonishing: here we have a President of the United States, on the record, unmasking the whole $8-trillion intervention in the Middle East as an endless war based on a \u201cfalse premise.\u201d No wonder the Pentagon is not amused.<\/p>\nTrump\u2019s tweet bisects the surreal geopolitical spectacle of Turkey attacking a 120-kilometer-long stretch of Syrian territory east of the Euphrates to essentially expel Syrian Kurds. Even after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cleared with Trump the terms of the Orwellian-named \u201cOperation Peace Spring,\u201d Ankara may now face the risk of US economic sanctions.<\/p>\n
\nThe predominant Western narrative credits the Syrian Democratic Forces, mostly Kurdish, for fighting and defeating Islamic State, also known as Daesh. The SDF is essentially a collection of mercenaries working for the Pentagon against Damascus. But many Syrian citizens argue that ISIS was in fact defeated by the Syrian Arab Army, Russian aerial and technical expertise plus advisers and special forces from Iran and Hezbollah.<\/p>\n
\nAs much as Ankara may regard the YPG Kurds \u2013 the \u201cPeople\u2019s protection units\u201d \u2013 and the PKK as mere \u201cterrorists\u201d (in the PKK\u2019s case aligned with Washington), Operation Peace Spring has in principle nothing to do with a massacre of Kurds.<\/p>\n
Facts on the ground will reveal whether ethnic cleansing is inbuilt in the Turkish offensive. A century ago few Kurds lived in these parts, which were populated mostly by Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians. So this won\u2019t qualify as ethnic cleansing on ancestral lands. But if the town of Afrin<\/a> is anything to go by the consequences could be severe.<\/p>\nInto this heady mix, enter a possible, uneasy pacifier<\/a>: Russia. Moscow previously encouraged the Syrian Kurds to talk to Damascus to prevent a Turkish campaign \u2013 to no avail. But Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov never gives up. He has now said<\/a>: \u201cMoscow will ask for the start of talks between Damascus and Ankara.\u201d Diplomatic ties between Syria and Turkey have been severed for seven years now.<\/p>\nWith Peace Spring rolling virtually unopposed, Kurdish Gen. Mazloum Kobani Abdi did raise the stakes, telling the Americans he will have to make a deal with Moscow for a no-fly zone to protect Kurdish towns and villages against the Turkish Armed Forces. Russian diplomats, off the record, say this is not going to happen. For Moscow, Peace Spring is regarded as \u201cTurkey\u2019s right to ensure its security,\u201d in the words of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. As long as it does not turn into a humanitarian disaster.<\/p>\n
No independent Kurdistan<\/h4>\n
From Washington\u2019s perspective, everything happening in the volatile Iran-Iraq-Syria-Turkey spectrum is subject to two imperatives: 1) geopolitically, breaking what is regionally regarded as the axis of resistance: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah; and 2) geostrategically, breaking the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative from being incorporated in both Iraq and Syria, not to mention Turkey.<\/p>\n
\nWhen Erdogan remarked that the trilateral Ankara summit last month was \u201cproductive,\u201d<\/a> he was essentially saying that the Kurdish question was settled by an agreement among Russia, Turkey and Iran.<\/p>\nDiplomats confirmed that the Syrian Constitutional Committee will work hard towards implementing a federation \u2013 implying that the Kurds will have to go back to the Damascus fold. Tehran may even play a role to smooth things over, as Iranian Kurds have also become very active in the YPG command.<\/p>\n
The bottom line: there will be no independent Kurdistan \u2013 as detailed in a map previously published by the Anadolu news agency.<\/p>\n
\nFrom Ankara\u2019s point of view, the objective of Operation Peace Spring follows what Erdogan had already announced to the Turkish Parliament \u2013 that is, organizing the repatriation of no fewer than two million Syrian refugees to a collection of villages and towns spread over a 30km-wide security zone supervised by the Turkish army.<\/p>\n
Yet there has been no word about what happens to an extra, alleged 1.6 million refugees also in Turkey.<\/p>\n
Kurdish threats to release control of 50 jails holding at least 11,000 ISIS\/Daesh jihadis are just that. The same applies to the al-Hol detention camp, holding a staggering 80,000 ISIS family members. If let loose, these jihadis would go after the Kurds in a flash.<\/p>\n
Veteran war correspondent and risk analyst Elijah Magnier provides an excellent summary<\/a> of the Kurds\u2019 wishful thinking, compared with the priorities of Damascus, Tehran and Moscow:<\/p>\nThe Kurds have asked Damascus, in the presence of Russian and Iranian negotiators, to allow them to retain control over the very rich oil and gas fields they occupy in a bit less than a quarter of Syrian territory. Furthermore, the Kurds have asked that they be given full control of the enclave on the borders with Turkey without any Syrian Army presence or activity. Damascus doesn\u2019t want to act as border control guards and would like to regain control of all Syrian territory. The Syrian government wants to end the accommodations the Kurds are offering to the US and Israel, similar to what happened with the Kurds of Iraq.<\/p>\n
The options for the YPG Kurds are stark. They are slowly realizing they were used by the Pentagon as mercenaries. Either they become a part of the Syrian federation, giving up some autonomy and their hyper-nationalist dreams, or they will have to share the region they live in with at least two million Sunni Arab refugees relocated under Turkish Army protection.<\/p>\n
The end of the dream is nigh. On Sunday, Moscow brokered a deal according to which the key, Kurdish-dominated border towns of Manbij and Kobane go back under the control of Damascus. So Turkish forces will have to back off, otherwise, they will be directly facing the Syrian Arab Army. The game-changing deal should be interpreted as the first step towards the whole of northeast Syria eventually reverting to state control.<\/p>\n
The geopolitical bottom line does expose a serious rift within the Ankara agreement. Tehran and Moscow \u2013 not to mention Damascus \u2013 will not accept Turkish occupation of nearly a quarter of sovereign, energy-rich Syrian territory, replacing what was a de facto American occupation. Diplomats confirm Putin has repeatedly emphasized to Erdogan the imperative of Syrian territorial integrity. SANA\u2019s Syrian news agency slammed Peace Spring as \u201can act of aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nWhich brings us to Idlib. Idlib is a poor, rural province crammed with ultra-hardcore Salafi jihadis \u2013 most linked in myriad levels with successive incarnations of Jabhat al-Nusra, or al-Qaeda in Syria. Eventually, Damascus, backed by Russian airpower, will clear what is in effect the Idlib cauldron, generating an extra wave of refugees. As much as he\u2019s investing in his Syrian Kurdistan safe zone, what Erdogan is trying to prevent is an extra exodus of potentially 3.5 million mostly hardcore Sunnis to Turkey.<\/p>\n
Turkish historian Cam Erimtan told me, as he argues in this essay<\/a>, that it\u2019s all about the clash between the post-Marxist \u201clibertarian municipalism\u201d of the Turkish-Syrian PKK\/PYD\/YPG\/YPJ axis and the brand of Islam defended by Erdogan\u2019s AKP party: \u201cThe heady fusion of Islamism and Turkish nationalism that has become the AKP\u2019s hallmark and common currency in the New Turkey, results in the fact that as a social group the Kurds in Syria have now been universally identified as the enemies of Islam.\u201d Thus, Erimtan adds, \u201cthe \u2018Kurds\u2019 have now taken the place of \u2018Assad\u2019 as providing a godless enemy that needs to be defeated next door.\u201d<\/p>\nGeopolitically, the crucial point remains that Erdogan cannot afford to alienate Moscow for a series of strategic and economic reasons, ranging from the Turk Stream gas pipeline to Ankara\u2019s interest in being an active node of the Belt & Road as well as the Eurasia Economic Union and becoming a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, all geared towards Eurasian integration.<\/p>\n
\u2018Win-win\u2019<\/h4>\n
And as Syria boils, Iraq simmers down.<\/p>\n
Iraqi Kurdistan lives a world apart, and was not touched by the Iraqi protests, which were motivated by genuine grievances<\/a> against the swamp of corrupt-to-the-core Baghdad politics. Subsequent hijacking for a specific geopolitical agenda was inevitable. The government says Iraqi security forces did not shoot at protesters. That was the work of snipers.<\/p>\nGunmen in balaclavas did attack the offices of plenty of TV stations in Baghdad, destroying equipment and broadcast facilities. Additionally, Iraqi sources told me, armed groups targeted vital infrastructure, as in electricity grids and plants especially in Diwaniyah in the south. This would have plunged the whole of southern Iraq, all the way to Basra, into darkness, thus sparking more protests.<\/p>\n
Pakistani analyst Hassan Abbas spent 12 days in Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala. He said heavily militarized police dealt with the protests, \u201copting for the use of force from the word go \u2013 a poor strategy.\u201d He added: \u201cThere are 11 different law enforcement forces in Baghdad with various uniforms \u2013 coordination between them is extremely poor under normal circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
But most of all, Abbas stressed: \u201cMany people I talked to in Karbala think this is the American response to the Iraqi tilt towards China.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the surface, Syria appears to be very complicated. It is … but then it isn’t.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin has done a truly stellar job at bringing peace to a country that the Neocon Zionists were hellbent on first destroying, and then permanently balkanizing.<\/p>\n
That meticulously planned balkanization plot by the US, UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey seriously went awry when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan bolted from the genocidal conspiracy. See The Syrian Holocaust: A Preplanned Genocide And Forced Exodus<\/a><\/p>\n Erdo\u011fan abandoned the Zio-Anglo-American enterprise to overthrow the Syria’s Bashar al-Assad after two key events occurred:<\/p>\n I. Putin Goes Ballistic In Syria, Obliterates The USA\u2019s Secret \u2018Mideast Strategy\u2019<\/a> These two HUGE moves on the Mideast geopolitical chessboard guaranteed the failure of the ultimate ZAA scheme to rape, pillage and plunder the Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian countryside.<\/p>\n The primary reason for the unparalleled and utter collapse of “Operation Balkanize Syria”<\/strong> is that it relied on the pivotal co-conspirator—Turkey. When Erdo\u011fan pulled out, OBS was doomed.<\/p>\n Now Putin has painstakingly put together and implemented a brilliant peace plan that appears to be durable because all the major players have bought into it. The critical support, of course, came from President Trump.<\/p>\n First, Trump fired Neocon Zionist warmonger John Bolton; then he made a secret agreement with Turkey to remove US troops from the Kurd-occupying areas of Syria. This single masterstroke, engineered behind the scenes by Putin, has set the stage for an eventual enduring peace throughout the Norther Levant.<\/p>\n KEY POINT:<\/strong> Everything points to NSA Bolton as the ultimate provocateur inside the White House who engineered the fake UKRAINEgate scandal to topple Trump … because of his refusal to attack Iran after the Neocon-inspired false flags were carried out to blame Tehran. Now the MSM has published broadside after broadside against the White House in the wake of Trump’s stealthily executed exit strategy from Syria. See UKRAINEgate: CIA black op, Deep State psyop, Democrat coup, MSM distraction, Israeli espionage, Trump sting, or all 6?<\/a><\/p>\n By permitting the installation of the S-300 SAM System in Syria, Putin also put Israel on serious notice. Russian warplanes have since been scrambled to meet Israeli fighter jets in Syrian airspace many more times than the media have reported. So, even Israel’s endless unprovoked acts of naked aggression in Syria have been halted—FOREVER.<\/p>\n The latest gambit in Putin’s peace initiative that just took effect is the crucial “peace” of the puzzle. That’s because the intractable “Kurdish predicament” has been the thorniest of all to solve for all parties involved. Nevertheless, Moscow, Ankara, Damascus and Iran came to an agreement that no other state actor can disrupt, if only because of the geo-strategic locations of those key nations on the Mideast chessboard.<\/p>\n It won’t be long before Putin issues a decisive “CHECKMATE”<\/strong><\/span> against Israel where it concerns the calamitous Greater Israel<\/em> project.<\/p>\n The Millennium Report<\/a> N.B. The following status report on the true situation in the Northern Levant and the subsiding Syrian theater of war today is as good as it gets. The key takeaway is that the Kurds had to somehow be tamed, which is being accomplished by the Turkish military incursions into Syria that have driven the Kurdish leadership to ask for Assad’s protection.<\/p>\n Syrian Arabs and Kurdish civilians arrive to Hassakeh city after fleeing bombardment on Syria’s northeastern towns along the Turkish border on October 10, 2019 amid fears of a new humanitarian crisis. Photo: AFP \/ Delil Souleiman<\/p><\/div>\n By PEPE ESCOBAR In the annals of bombastic Trump tweets, this one<\/a> is simply astonishing: here we have a President of the United States, on the record, unmasking the whole $8-trillion intervention in the Middle East as an endless war based on a \u201cfalse premise.\u201d No wonder the Pentagon is not amused.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s tweet bisects the surreal geopolitical spectacle of Turkey attacking a 120-kilometer-long stretch of Syrian territory east of the Euphrates to essentially expel Syrian Kurds. Even after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cleared with Trump the terms of the Orwellian-named \u201cOperation Peace Spring,\u201d Ankara may now face the risk of US economic sanctions.<\/p>\n The predominant Western narrative credits the Syrian Democratic Forces, mostly Kurdish, for fighting and defeating Islamic State, also known as Daesh. The SDF is essentially a collection of mercenaries working for the Pentagon against Damascus. But many Syrian citizens argue that ISIS was in fact defeated by the Syrian Arab Army, Russian aerial and technical expertise plus advisers and special forces from Iran and Hezbollah.<\/p>\n As much as Ankara may regard the YPG Kurds \u2013 the \u201cPeople\u2019s protection units\u201d \u2013 and the PKK as mere \u201cterrorists\u201d (in the PKK\u2019s case aligned with Washington), Operation Peace Spring has in principle nothing to do with a massacre of Kurds.<\/p>\n Facts on the ground will reveal whether ethnic cleansing is inbuilt in the Turkish offensive. A century ago few Kurds lived in these parts, which were populated mostly by Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians. So this won\u2019t qualify as ethnic cleansing on ancestral lands. But if the town of Afrin<\/a> is anything to go by the consequences could be severe.<\/p>\n Into this heady mix, enter a possible, uneasy pacifier<\/a>: Russia. Moscow previously encouraged the Syrian Kurds to talk to Damascus to prevent a Turkish campaign \u2013 to no avail. But Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov never gives up. He has now said<\/a>: \u201cMoscow will ask for the start of talks between Damascus and Ankara.\u201d Diplomatic ties between Syria and Turkey have been severed for seven years now.<\/p>\n With Peace Spring rolling virtually unopposed, Kurdish Gen. Mazloum Kobani Abdi did raise the stakes, telling the Americans he will have to make a deal with Moscow for a no-fly zone to protect Kurdish towns and villages against the Turkish Armed Forces. Russian diplomats, off the record, say this is not going to happen. For Moscow, Peace Spring is regarded as \u201cTurkey\u2019s right to ensure its security,\u201d in the words of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. As long as it does not turn into a humanitarian disaster.<\/p>\n From Washington\u2019s perspective, everything happening in the volatile Iran-Iraq-Syria-Turkey spectrum is subject to two imperatives: 1) geopolitically, breaking what is regionally regarded as the axis of resistance: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah; and 2) geostrategically, breaking the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative from being incorporated in both Iraq and Syria, not to mention Turkey.<\/p>\n When Erdogan remarked that the trilateral Ankara summit last month was \u201cproductive,\u201d<\/a> he was essentially saying that the Kurdish question was settled by an agreement among Russia, Turkey and Iran.<\/p>\n Diplomats confirmed that the Syrian Constitutional Committee will work hard towards implementing a federation \u2013 implying that the Kurds will have to go back to the Damascus fold. Tehran may even play a role to smooth things over, as Iranian Kurds have also become very active in the YPG command.<\/p>\n The bottom line: there will be no independent Kurdistan \u2013 as detailed in a map previously published by the Anadolu news agency.<\/p>\n From Ankara\u2019s point of view, the objective of Operation Peace Spring follows what Erdogan had already announced to the Turkish Parliament \u2013 that is, organizing the repatriation of no fewer than two million Syrian refugees to a collection of villages and towns spread over a 30km-wide security zone supervised by the Turkish army.<\/p>\n Yet there has been no word about what happens to an extra, alleged 1.6 million refugees also in Turkey.<\/p>\n Kurdish threats to release control of 50 jails holding at least 11,000 ISIS\/Daesh jihadis are just that. The same applies to the al-Hol detention camp, holding a staggering 80,000 ISIS family members. If let loose, these jihadis would go after the Kurds in a flash.<\/p>\n Veteran war correspondent and risk analyst Elijah Magnier provides an excellent summary<\/a> of the Kurds\u2019 wishful thinking, compared with the priorities of Damascus, Tehran and Moscow:<\/p>\n The Kurds have asked Damascus, in the presence of Russian and Iranian negotiators, to allow them to retain control over the very rich oil and gas fields they occupy in a bit less than a quarter of Syrian territory. Furthermore, the Kurds have asked that they be given full control of the enclave on the borders with Turkey without any Syrian Army presence or activity. Damascus doesn\u2019t want to act as border control guards and would like to regain control of all Syrian territory. The Syrian government wants to end the accommodations the Kurds are offering to the US and Israel, similar to what happened with the Kurds of Iraq.<\/p>\n The options for the YPG Kurds are stark. They are slowly realizing they were used by the Pentagon as mercenaries. Either they become a part of the Syrian federation, giving up some autonomy and their hyper-nationalist dreams, or they will have to share the region they live in with at least two million Sunni Arab refugees relocated under Turkish Army protection.<\/p>\n The end of the dream is nigh. On Sunday, Moscow brokered a deal according to which the key, Kurdish-dominated border towns of Manbij and Kobane go back under the control of Damascus. So Turkish forces will have to back off, otherwise, they will be directly facing the Syrian Arab Army. The game-changing deal should be interpreted as the first step towards the whole of northeast Syria eventually reverting to state control.<\/p>\n The geopolitical bottom line does expose a serious rift within the Ankara agreement. Tehran and Moscow \u2013 not to mention Damascus \u2013 will not accept Turkish occupation of nearly a quarter of sovereign, energy-rich Syrian territory, replacing what was a de facto American occupation. Diplomats confirm Putin has repeatedly emphasized to Erdogan the imperative of Syrian territorial integrity. SANA\u2019s Syrian news agency slammed Peace Spring as \u201can act of aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n Which brings us to Idlib. Idlib is a poor, rural province crammed with ultra-hardcore Salafi jihadis \u2013 most linked in myriad levels with successive incarnations of Jabhat al-Nusra, or al-Qaeda in Syria. Eventually, Damascus, backed by Russian airpower, will clear what is in effect the Idlib cauldron, generating an extra wave of refugees. As much as he\u2019s investing in his Syrian Kurdistan safe zone, what Erdogan is trying to prevent is an extra exodus of potentially 3.5 million mostly hardcore Sunnis to Turkey.<\/p>\n Turkish historian Cam Erimtan told me, as he argues in this essay<\/a>, that it\u2019s all about the clash between the post-Marxist \u201clibertarian municipalism\u201d of the Turkish-Syrian PKK\/PYD\/YPG\/YPJ axis and the brand of Islam defended by Erdogan\u2019s AKP party: \u201cThe heady fusion of Islamism and Turkish nationalism that has become the AKP\u2019s hallmark and common currency in the New Turkey, results in the fact that as a social group the Kurds in Syria have now been universally identified as the enemies of Islam.\u201d Thus, Erimtan adds, \u201cthe \u2018Kurds\u2019 have now taken the place of \u2018Assad\u2019 as providing a godless enemy that needs to be defeated next door.\u201d<\/p>\n Geopolitically, the crucial point remains that Erdogan cannot afford to alienate Moscow for a series of strategic and economic reasons, ranging from the Turk Stream gas pipeline to Ankara\u2019s interest in being an active node of the Belt & Road as well as the Eurasia Economic Union and becoming a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, all geared towards Eurasian integration.<\/p>\n And as Syria boils, Iraq simmers down.<\/p>\n Iraqi Kurdistan lives a world apart, and was not touched by the Iraqi protests, which were motivated by genuine grievances<\/a> against the swamp of corrupt-to-the-core Baghdad politics. Subsequent hijacking for a specific geopolitical agenda was inevitable. The government says Iraqi security forces did not shoot at protesters. That was the work of snipers.<\/p>\n Gunmen in balaclavas did attack the offices of plenty of TV stations in Baghdad, destroying equipment and broadcast facilities. Additionally, Iraqi sources told me, armed groups targeted vital infrastructure, as in electricity grids and plants especially in Diwaniyah in the south. This would have plunged the whole of southern Iraq, all the way to Basra, into darkness, thus sparking more protests.<\/p>\n Pakistani analyst Hassan Abbas spent 12 days in Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala. He said heavily militarized police dealt with the protests, \u201copting for the use of force from the word go \u2013 a poor strategy.\u201d He added: \u201cThere are 11 different law enforcement forces in Baghdad with various uniforms \u2013 coordination between them is extremely poor under normal circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n But most of all, Abbas stressed: \u201cMany people I talked to in Karbala think this is the American response to the Iraqi tilt towards China.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n&
\nII. BOMBSHELL Expos\u00e9: The U.S. Military Used Incirlik Air Base To Stage Failed Coup In Turkey<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\n
\nOctober 16, 2019<\/p>\n
\n<\/a>Escobar: Kurds Face Stark Options After US Pullback<\/h2>\n
Forget an independent Kurdistan: They may have to do a deal with Damascus on sharing their area with Sunni Arab refugees<\/h4>\n
\nAsia Times<\/p>\nNo independent Kurdistan<\/h4>\n
\u2018Win-win\u2019<\/h4>\n