<p>Given the betrayal of the Kurds as a result of the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops, ISIS prisoners on the loose and an alleged ceasefire with Turkish-funded fighter-bombers and jihadis thatâs been shaky at best, one thingâs been clear: The mess in northeastern Syria is all Trumpâs fault.</p><p>In 2019, maybe. Few, even in his own party, dispute Trumpâs incompetence in Syria or in other global hot spots. Whatever the outcome of Trumpâs volatile presidency, itâs unlikely heâll spend his golden years lecturing on foreign policy to rapt audiences at Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard. Itâs doubtful <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/world/middleeast/al-baghdadi-dead.html">the much-ballyhooed (by him) killing of Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi</a> on Oct. 27 in northwestern Syria will help Trumpâs standing as a less-than-deft statesman.</p><blockquote>Trumpâs just the latest head of a colonial power to exploit, double-cross or screw over the natives of the Middle East. Heâs heir to a super-shady tradition going back at least 100 years.</blockquote><p>In the fog of anti-Trump fervor, however, a fantastically complicated narrative long shot through with propaganda from all sides is being distorted or at best simplified yet againâbenefiting only those who profit from our <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/17/limited-wars-are-forever-wars/">forever wars</a>.</p><h3>Britain and France</h3><p><img class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5048cfa462c1d688e0166a8dfaed08cb" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="595d6" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDc2NTU3NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MzE1MzgyNH0.CJHFCk-qm9vtdAJQhbvgW2TeQ3NDpdAK0ZFBwn6QOT4/img.jpg?width=980"/></p><p>The truth? Trumpâs just the latest head of a colonial power to somehow exploit, double-cross or screw over the natives in this region. Heâs heir to a super-shady tradition going back at least 100 years in the Middle East. The then-secret <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-curse-of-sykes-picot-still-haunts-the-middle-east">Sykes-Picot Agreement</a>, the infamous â<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Line-Sand-James-Barr-Sir/dp/1847394574">line in the sand</a>,â was drafted in 1916 by Britain and France. They crudely carved up the spoils of the Ottoman Empire into competing spheres of colonial influence without regard for the indigenous people.</p><p>Among other things, Brits and the French promised the Kurds, then the largest ethnic group in the world without a state of their own, an autonomous region as part of the post-war deal. A few years later they reneged, crushing the Kurdish dream.</p><p>Had it not been for <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-curse-of-sykes-picot-still-haunts-the-middle-east">ISIS loudly calling out Sykes-Picot at the birth of the caliphate</a> and vowing to seize old territory in 2014, few Americans in this century would have known how egregiously Europeans remade the map of the Middle East.</p><p>President Obama, under whose aegis the U.S. illegally entered the Syrian civil war in 2013, has been canonized by the leftâand the mainstream mediaâsince Trump took office. His failed policies in Syria, which included <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2019/10/25/us-failed-to-set-attainable-military-objectives-in-syria/">secretly arming âmoderate rebelsâ with ties to extremist groups</a> including Al Qaeda at an estimated cost of $500 million in order to depose President Bashar al-Assad, have been forgottenâor never fully graspedâto begin with. Especially with the <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/08/19/barack-obama-was-an-awesome-president-and-democrats-shouldnt-forget-that/">post-Trump halo, heâs been given</a>.</p><p>âThe U.S. has been trying to overthrow the Assad family government for 50 years,â former New York Times foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer, now a <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/people/visiting/kinzer">senior fellow at Brown UniversityâsWatson Institute for International and Public Affairs</a>, told <a href="https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2019/10/24/understanding-syria-deal?fbclid=IwAR3BEbC4UMT1sNmfEgEDWiVMwJEUhpN7NpaWga3EW-0PWcQKbMtxdR4LVGk">WBUR</a> last month.</p><p>âWhen the Arab Spring popped up we figured this was our latest chance in Syria. We partnered with people we normally would have considered enemies because we thought it was our chance to destroy Assad. We put aside the fact that these people were actually connected to al Qaeda and other jihadist groups.â</p><p>But even before Obama, there was <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ellen-degeneres-defends-george-w-bush-friendship-cowboys-game-tweets-monologue-2019-10-08/">Ellen De Generesâ good friend President George W. Bush</a>. President Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/20/18274228/ari-fleischer-iraq-lies-george-w-bush-wmds">based on lies</a>, enabling Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (later killed in 2006) to construct an Al Qaeda franchise deadlier than that created by Osama Bin Laden (killed in 2011), leading to ISIS.</p><p>âThere would have been no Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi had Bush not invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003,â the <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-is-dead-the-war-on-terror-will-create-another?ref=home">Daily Beast reported Monday</a>. âThis history matters because it shows the expansive war the U.S. launched does not fight against a static enemy. It generates enemiesâthe slain al Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki is another exampleâand provides opportunities for new ones to arise.â</p><h3>Repeating History</h3><p>Can anything stop âthis historyâ from repeating? Thatâs doubtful, several analysts and historians told DCReport. They said one reason is that the cycle of wars in the Middle East lacks a cohesive media narrative like the one that fed the anti-war protests in the 1960s, helping end the Vietnam War in 1975.</p><p>A clearer, more objective, view of the U.S. military involvement in the Middle East and how it led up to Trumpâs fateful troop pullout has been hampered by the closing of most foreign news bureaus over the past decade. Journalists who might once have been stationed in the Middle East now report on it from Washington D.C. or New York.</p><p>âIn that environment, access and credibility depend on acceptance of official paradigms,â Kinzer <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/18/the-media-are-misleading-public-syria/8YB75otYirPzUCnlwaVtcK/story.html">wrote in 2016</a>.</p><p>âReporters who cover Syria check with the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and think tank âexperts.â After a spin on that soiled carousel, they feel they have covered all sides of the story. This form of stenography produces the pabulum that passes for news about Syria.â</p><h3>Information Gatekeepers</h3><p>Oddly, some of the biggest media outlets also rely heavily on just two peopleâboth of whom could be perceived to have their own agendas and neither of whom are journalistsâfor crucial information coming out of Syria.</p><p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/05/29/private-jihad">Rita Katz</a>, an Iraqi-born Jew whose father was arrested and charged with spying for Israel and later executed in Baghdad, runs the Search for International Terrorist Entities or <a href="https://ent.siteintelgroup.com/">SITE Institute</a>, from her home in Connecticut. Katz is often the first to issue announcements that ISIS has claimed responsibility for a terror attackâor the first to release beheading videos.</p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/world/middleeast/the-man-behind-the-casualty-figures-in-syria.html">Rami Abdul Rahman</a> runs the <a href="http://www.syriahr.com/en/?option=com_news&Itemid=2&nt=1">Syrian Observatory for Human Rights</a> out of his home in Coventry, England, after fleeing his native Syria 19 years ago. Rahmanâs organization tracks casualty figures and is considered a respected arbiter of who is behind the chemical weapon attacks inside Syria, an issue hotly-contested for years, most recently on the <a href="https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/major-revelation-from-opcw-whistleblower-jonathan-steele-speaking-to-the-bbc/">BBC</a> last week.</p><p>Competing against and often calling out the brand-name reporters, as well as Katz and Rahman, are independent journalists who are often accused of being Russian apologists or on the payroll of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They range from respected but controversial reporters like the Pulitzer Prize-winning <a href="https://theintercept.com/staff/glenn-greenwald/">Glenn Greenwald</a> and former CBS investigative reporter <a href="https://sharylattkisson.com/">Sharyl Attkissonâ</a>to lesser-knowns such as <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/author/vanessa-beeley/">Vanessa Beeley</a> and <a href="https://ingaza.wordpress.com/">Eve Bartlett</a> who actually report from Syria, but are accused of being there on behalf of Assad.</p><p>One independent journalist, Beirut-based Rania Khalek, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLbQ62wuATs">broke down the Kurdish issue</a> better than almost anyone last month but itâs likely only her Twitter and Youtube followers saw it.</p><p>Compared to the days when veteran trench-coated correspondents reported from overseas on one of just three networks or a handful of prestigious, big-city dailies, news from the Middle East is now a convoluted, partisan, free-for-all.</p><h3>Kurdish Storyline</h3><p>Not surprisingly, then, Westerners who donât know Raqqa from Rio have been wringing their hands over headlines about the pitiful, abandoned Kurds ever since Trumpâs decision to pull troops from Syria last month. Though they are <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-who-are-the-kurds-20191008-sv6co4otrngpzkyqdzqohfl26i-story.html">a tough, shrewd and perpetually stateless tribe</a> whoâve done what theyâve had to doâ<a href="https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/a-timeline-of-the-pkk-s-war-on-turkey-1974-2019-30618">including terrorism</a>âto survive in hostile territory for centuries, theyâve been reborn as heroic and wronged victims thanks to Trump.</p><p>The Kurds have never had it easy. Theyâve been imperiled, said one analyst, for the past 1,000 years of their 2500-year known history, and they go to who they think is their best ally at that moment. Since 2011 it was the Americans, now theyâre hoping Assadâand by extension, Vladimir Putinâwill protect them.</p><p>âInstability is very stable,â GĂŠrard Gautier of the Kurdish Institute of Paris told DCReport.âThe people in these regions have all agree they donât want the Kurds around for years, for centuries. But the Kurds are landlocked, a stateless people trapped between these big players that have nowhere to go. So they keep fighting and they ally themselves with those they think can help them at the time.â</p><p>If Syria is confusing enough; the Kurdish issue is even more so.</p><h3>Alphabet Soup</h3><p>The pro-Kurd group PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, was established in Turkey in the mid-1970s by left-wing Kurdish students led by the charismatic Turkish-born <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/03/201332114565201776.html">Kurd Abdullah Ocalan</a>. They were seeking, then as now, an independent Kurdish state, and waged <a href="https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/a-timeline-of-the-pkk-s-war-on-turkey-1974-2019-30618">four decades of terror against Turkey</a> trying to get it. Ocalan was an anti-capitalist who credited the anarchic philosophies of Bronx-born <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/15/how-my-fathers-ideas-helped-the-kurds-create-a-new-democracy/">Murray Bookchin</a>, of all people, a libertarian socialist and a pioneer of the ecology movement, with helping formulate his beliefs.</p><p>The PYD, created in 2001 in Syria was an offshoot of the PKK, and was so influenced by Ocalan that his photos are still all over PYD facilities in northeastern Syria. The PYDâs military arm, the YPG and YPJ, included female fighters, another idea that came directly from Ocalanâs socialist-democratic beliefs. The SDF was the official paramilitary unit formed to be boots on the ground for the U.S. in the fight against ISIS. The SDF was literally a motley crew that included Syrian Kurds from the PYD, as well as Syrian Arabs and Turks.</p><p>If youâre lost in that alphabet soup of Syrian geopolitics, youâre not alone. Therein lies the problem. And it gets worse. The Turkish-sponsored âArab militiasâ now threatening to take over northeastern Syria and drive out the Kurds are called the TFSA, or Turkish Free Syrian Army, but they include members of the FSA, or Free Syria Army from Syria, who were Arab militants trained and for awhile controlled by the U.S. under Obama.</p><p>âTerrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder,â <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq">wrote Seumas Milne in the Guardian</a> in 2015,â and nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where todayâs terrorists are tomorrowâs fighters against tyrannyâand allies are enemiesâoften at the bewildering whim of a western policymakerâs conference call.â</p><p>Independent journalist Mark Ames, a vocal opponent of stories by more brand-name reporters, was less gracious when summing up what heâand othersâsee as the hypocrisy at the heart of what Americans are told about Syriaâand by extension the rest of the Middle East, going back decades.</p><p>âMagically before our eyes, the same groups that our media called "Syrian rebels" or "Free Syrian Army" for 8 straight years have been rebranded as "Arab militias" who are all Turkey's fault,â <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1184588405277102080">Ames wrote on Twitter</a>.</p><p>âLike, we never even met these assholesâjust armed & trained & PR'd them is all.â</p>
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