Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy, Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff has commented on recent developments in the Syria conflict.
It has been widely known that during the reign of the terrorist group Daesh (ISIS) over much of eastern Syria, that when Takfiri fighters fled, Kurdish radicals belonging to the YPG and its umbrella organisation SDF, commenced to occupy Arab houses, businesses, entire villages and cities, all while culturally eradicating any traces of Arab culture in an Arab republic. All of this has been done under the eye of a broader illegal US occupation of eastern Syria.
As Daesh collapsed, many Arabs attempted to return to their homes only to find them occupied by YPG/SDF militants who have proceeded to expand their illegal so-called Rojava regime further into legal Syrian territory. As Turkey is the only major force in the conflict that has declared its desire to eliminate PKK aligned YPG/SDF terrorism in northern Syria, the recent risings against YPG/SDF occupation in Raqqa, demonstrate that in the eyes of locals, Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch aimed at eliminating Kurdish terrorism, may be a far more popular endeavour than the continued pro-SDF US occupation of northern Syria east of the Euphrates, including in Raqqa.
It is no coincidence that in Syria, the YPG/SDF are currently occupying the country’s most oil rich regions with the aid of the United States. Nor is it a surprise that while putatively anti-PKK Kurdish groups in Iraq were once economically supplied by Turkey and while Ankara built them their own international airport, they now burn Turkish flags in the street, thus demonstrating that violent ethno-nationalism trumps party political differences during times of cross-border crisis.
The conflict in Syria has brought to light the reality that Kurdish terrorists threaten the sovereignty and territorial unity of both Turkey and the Syrian Arab Republic. It has been well documented that on Syrian territory, the illegal Kurdish regime of “Rojava”, Arabs are particularly discriminated against. Arabs are often forced to pay extremely high prices for basic goods which are sold cheaply to local Kurds. Likewise, the Kurdish regime has illegally changed the names of Arab towns, villages and cities in an attempt to acculturate Arab culture from locations in an internationally recognised Arab state. The most infamous instance of this acculturation is the unilateral refusal of Kurdish extremists to use the name Ayn al-Arab for the city they have tried to get the world to call “Kobani”.
Elsewhere, schools set up by Kurdish extremists deprive children of their legal right to be taught in Arabic, all the while anti-Syrian propaganda is shoved down the throats of the young. Most worryingly, in areas where Arabs and non-Kurdish minorities fled from Daesh, “Rojava” supporters have seized Arab private and public property and turned it into their own. Entire families have been prohibited from returning to their homes, not because of the largely vanquished Daesh, but because of “Rojava” and its heavily armed YPG terrorist militia.
In this sense, Turkey and Syria both face the same threat of annexation, ethnic cleansing, cultural cleansing and the presence of heavily armed illegal Kurdish militias terrorising civilians. Iraq and Iran face similar problems from ethno-nationalists Kurds which explains why Iraq, Turkey and Iran united to put an end to an attempted Kurdish insurgency against Iraq in September of 2017. In 2014, a group of heavily armed “Israel” backed Kurdish militants called Peshmerga, illegally occupied Iraq’s Kirkuk oil fields, thus depriving Iraq of a much needed source of revenue. By October of 2017, the Iraqi armed forces in alliance with Popular Mobilisation Units and the no-fly zone enforced jointly by Turkey and Iran, helped to end the insurgency. Some pointed to the fact that the Kurdish KPD in Iraq is politically disunited vis-a-vis the YPG in Syria, PKK in Turkey and PJAK in Iran. That not withstanding during the Autumn of 2017 Kurdish insurgency in Iraq when Kurdish forces throughout the region united in support of the uprising and so too did their common ally “Israel”.
The issue of Kurdish terrorism seems to be either dismissed outright or otherwise whitewashed by large sectors of both the mainstream and so-called alternative media. Far from simply succumbing to the idea that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, YPG terrorists in Syria stand accused of allowing Daesh terrorists safe passage through their territory, where they were then able to fire upon Syrian and allied Russian troops. Likewise, it has recently emerged that YPG/SDF militants have let Daesh fighters out of prison in exchange for their loyalty in the battle against Turkey. Similar stories have emerged in Iraq where it is widely believed that Kurdish Peshmerga militants bribed and cut deals with Daesh so that the Takfiri group would focus its barbaric violence upon Iraqi Arabs rather than Kurdish controlled areas.
Clearly from Afrin to Raqqa, Arab populations view the pro-US Kurdish terror groups as a direct threat to their peace and stability. The US may find in short order that it is not only Turkey and Turkish aligned militants who oppose the YPG/SDF, but that many ordinary locals will soon rise up against an illegitimate militant group that the US has used as geopolitical cover for its wholly illegal occupation of Syria.