USA is backing out of Syria for a reason – but it’s not what you think it is.

Written by Rune Scott, Edited by Wyatt Mingji Lim.
Cover Photo taken from The Hill (Getty)

Most Kurds aren’t actually trying to form a nation of Kurdistan. Turkish Kurds, and to some extent Iranian Kurds, are the two most interested in this, because they understandably want out of nations whose governments are fundamentally hostile and oppressive to them.

So, it’s true that there are multiple Kurdish groups who naturally have their own goals, but the way he makes it sound like they are just too fractious to agree is deceptive. KRG is a corrupt almost feudal state run by the Barzani clan, purely for the interest of the Barzani clan. That’s both why Turks will work with them (the Barzani ideology is profit), and why other Kurds want nothing to do with them.

The SDC/SDF and it’s Syrian Kurds in Rojava have *never* been specifically seeking an independent nation. They declared their autonomous zone at a time when the Syrian state seemed about to collapse. They maintain their autonomy because they are deeply opposed to being ruled by Islamic law. They have repeatedly stated that if Syria will adopt a secular constitution and secular law, they will accept Syrian governance. Their other demand is that people in Rojava be allowed to conduct official business in their language of choice, whether that is Kurdish or Arabic or whatever.

The SDC are Democratic Confederalists, a form of Anarcho-Communalism that stresses maximum autonomy at the lowest level for all local matters, within the structure of a single Constitution. Building nation-states is kind of the opposite of what they are about, since they essentially regard nation-states as outmoded and oppressive entities that are the primary reason Communism failed. They really think all of Syria and the world should be governed that way, but from a practical perspective, they just want to get on with their lives, and are perfectly willing to be a part of Syria as long as it doesn’t involve being oppressed with barbarous anachronisms like child-marriages.

Now, here is the catch: the US isn’t backing out because they aren’t there to form an independent Kurdistan. On the contrary, the US State Department would *love* to form an independent Kurdistan, not out of any love of Kurds, but because they could chop up a whole host of countries, several of which they don’t like, like Syria, Iran, and to some degree Shia-led Iraq, and then try to meddle in and bring the government of such an entity under their sway, while gaining control of a crucial strip of land they’d like to build oil pipelines across.

…the US is backing out because the SDC don’t care about an independent Kurdistan, and they are not fundamentally hostile to Assad, while the US is.

No, the US is backing out because the SDC don’t care about an independent Kurdistan, and they are not fundamentally hostile to Assad, while the US is. The SDF have repeatedly avoided combat operations against the Syrian Arab Army, outside of skirmishes with specific militia sub-groups over regional and religious/legal issues. The US has been trying to push them into being it’s proxies, and they have opted out, unless it involves killing Islamic extremists, who are already their bitter enemies. They also won’t work with Barzani and his crime-syndicate with a nation, because they regard his ilk as little better than the terrorists. That’s why the US is abandoning them. They aren’t being good and obedient tools.

Who is Masoud Barzani?

Former fighter against Saddam’s forces sought to lead Iraqi Kurds to independence but ended up as its biggest casualty. Masoud Barzani, a former Peshmerga fighter, has led the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) since 1979, battling for autonomy for Iraq’s Kurdish region. The KDP is one of the two dominant parties in the northern Kurdish region.

Also, the reluctance of US commanders to leave, and their constant demands for more troops and resources, isn’t about building their own local power bases (which are inherently temporary), but rather because US troops there generally *like* the SDF, whose rather modern secular values and independent-mindedness seem vastly more appealing than the cultures and attitudes of everybody else in the whole region for hundreds of kilometres, especially all the various anti-Assad Islamic terrorists they are told to support.

To the world-view of typical American soldiers, the SDF actually seem like ‘good guys’ in a region where everyone else seems like a bunch of deranged barbarians. Plus, loyalty and camaraderie being what it is in the military, they aren’t super enthusiastic about betraying their comrades-in-arms (and they only people they work with over their who have any morale or sense of tactics), and there is a general dismay amongst US military personnel for their government’s long-standing habit of leaving allies out to dry, and they’d rather not see their country disgrace itself in that manner yet again.

( This is an extract from the discussion in DPA’s Military, Warfare & Geopolitics Facebook Group by Rune Scott, one of our group members, in response of an article by Michael Petraeus on Critical Spectator:
https://criticalspectator.com/middle-east/why-trump-is-right-on-syria )