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How the Lights Have Gone Out For the People of Syria (bbc.co.uk)
dryriver shares an excerpt from a report via the BBC that shows what the impact of the Syrian war looks like from space: Six years of war in Syria have had a devastating effect on millions of its people. One of the most catastrophic impacts has been on the country's electricity network. Images from NASA, obtained by BBC Arabic, show clearly how the lights have gone out during the course of the conflict, leaving people to survive with little to no power. Each timelapse frame shows an average of the light emitted at night every month from 2012, one year after the war began. They show that the areas where Syrians can turn lights on at night, power their daily lives and get access to life-saving medical equipment, have shrunk dramatically. The city of Aleppo was Syria's powerhouse and home to over two million people. But the country's industrial hub became a battleground and remained so for more than four years. Russian airstrikes against Syrian rebels began in October 2015 and the timelapse shows the city in almost complete darkness at night throughout 2016, when the battle for Aleppo was at its peak. As mains power supplies dropped off, ordinary people had to be creative in finding alternative sources for light and power.
I think that an independent Kurdistan would make a great western ally in the Middle East as they tend to be far more progressive, probably because many of them put more stock in their Kurdish heritage than their religion, and as ethnic group they're quite diverse religiously. However, I don't think Kurdistan would happen because Turkey would be heavily opposed since it would mean massive instability for a large part of their country and probably an eventual war.
We'd pretty much have to kick them out of Nato and give Russia carte blanche to fight Turkey, which Russia would probably do in order to secure control of the Bosphorus if they knew that the west wouldn't get involved. After the shit Erdogan has pulled, I wouldn't even feel bad about throwing them under the bus like that, and it would probably be better for the country in the long term to have him deposed and the country broken up.
I agree fully with your statements on our policy.
The obvious solution is a partition. The Syrian Kurds can join with the Iraqi Kurds in an independent Kurdistan.
Which Turkey will never tolerate along its boarder. Resulting in another probably inevitable war, but this time with a NATO member involved, which will tie the hands of both American and much of the EU.
The Sunnis can form their own statelet or join up with the Iraqi Sunnis.
Which sounds nice but won't be economically viable, land locked and we all know the future of mid east oil revenue isn't good, and that isn't the most productive area of region to start with. What else of value can come out of there.....
The Alawites can keep Assad and the land along the coast and the Lebanon border.
Sure right up until the Sunni groups decide to invade.
As nasty as it sounds this is a case where the devil we know was probably the best. We should have just kept our hands clean, and let Assad crush the rebels. This thing would be over by now. thousands would be dead or displaced rather than millions.
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Why does Turkey seem to have such an active, long-standing dislike for the Kurds?
The Kurds were the one "other" that they couldn't get rid of, as they did the Armenians and Anatolian Greeks.
Too many to ignore, too similar to drive out, it's like the damn Irish.
Which it totally part and parcel of vowing to enforce a no-fly zone in an area patrolled by Russian jets. If it was Putin promising to enforce a no-carrier-fleet policy in the region, threatening to sink American aircraft carriers and other vessels in the process, would you argue with people who said Putin said "let's attack the US"?
Uh, yeah. The first world war was started over less. President Hillary starts enforcing her no-fly zone and some Russian jets are shot down. Then Russia starts enforcing Syrian sovereignty and starts shooting down U.S. jets - and navy ships firing missiles. You really need a picture painted for how this "spirals out of control" in a few very short, easy steps?
Yes, for forgetting all those violations of Syria's sovereignty, all those acts of war.
Syrian. Not Russian. But the goalposts do look quite lovely in the new location you've chosen for them.
As if consistency is the strong suit of Democrats? They switched so fast from hating Comey to singing his praises, it's a wonder they aren't all in traction from herniated disks. Besides, there's a gap between your premise and your conclusion - Republicans have loved imperialism and bombing other countries for several decades now - you think this is a change for them?
So much less light pollution, the night sky is probably stunning! Except for the glare from the occasional rockets, I mean.
Why would the United States government agree to such a partition?
I would be willing to let them keep Texas.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert. This is a layman's understanding of the situation
The short version: Another example of ethnic tensions in west Asia. Segments of the Kurdish population consider Turkey an occupying power. Segments of the Turkish population view Kurds as terrorists. Both feel justified in inflicting pain on the other.
A slightly longer version: The Kurds haven't done well in the grand game of empires. To my knowledge, while the Kurds have traditional homelands, known as Kurdistan,, they've never been their own nation. Kurdistan encompasses portions of northern Syria, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and, you guessed it, southeastern Turkey. Kurds haven't been particularly well treated by any of the aforementioned nations (Saddam Hussein infamously used chemical weapons on the Kurds during the Gulf War) but Turkey generally deals with Kurdish uprisings more harshly.
Kurds have been rebelling against the Turkish government since around 1920. As I understand it, they placed a lot of hope in the Wilsonian ideal of ethnic self-determination, but the Turkish government had other ideas in the wake of WWI. The Turkish government routinely cracks down on the Kurds, going so far as to ban the use of the Kurdish language. In response, there have been a handful of Kurdish uprisings or sustain terrorist campaigns by Kurdish nationalists against the Turkish government. In response, the Turkish government routinely cracks down on the Kurds. And so the cycle goes.
For their part, nationalist Turks don't recognize Kurds as a separate ethnic group. They refer to Kurds as "mountain Turks", considering a subset of the Turkish ethnicity who somehow lost the Turkish language. The Turkish government is adamant about maintaining territorial integrity and views any sort of Kurdish political autonomy as a threat to the sovereignty of the Turkish government.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein