Mysterious incident kills 3 American soldiers in northeast Syria
▻https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/mysterious-incident-kills-3-american-soldiers-in-northeast-syria
Three U.S. military vehicles crashed while patrolling Tal Tamr town, killing 3 soldiers immediately.
However, other reports spoke of a roadside bomb that went off as the vehicles passed by. AMN cannot verify the authenticity of both narratives.
Mysterious, vraiment ? #syrie
Turkey Eyeing Further Expansion in Northern Syria, Say Rebels
▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/syria/articles/2017/11/01/turkey-eyeing-further-expansion-in-northern-syria-say-rebels
After establishing a presence in northern Idlib and western Aleppo over the past month, Turkish troops and Turkey-backed rebels are now looking to expand their area of control along the border by moving further east into Aleppo’s countryside, a rebel spokesman told Syria Deeply.
Although Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last week that his country’s operation in northeast Syria was nearly complete, Ankara recently dispatched reconnaissance teams to new areas, and some rebels reported being in talks to hand over their positions to Turkish forces, according to a military spokesman for the Syrian opposition faction Nour al-Din al-Zenki.
Ankara began its cross-border operation with the purported aim of enforcing a de-escalation zone in Idlib, which was agreed upon by Russia, Turkey and Iran in the Kazakh capital of Astana in September. So far, its troops have deployed only in areas separating the opposition and Kurdish forces. The Turks have not moved into front-line areas between rebels and the Syrian regime.
According to Abdul Salam Abdul Razzaq, Turkey is looking to replicate this strategy further east. He told Syria Deeply that Nour al-Din al-Zenki had already agreed to hand over its positions in rural Aleppo to Turkish forces.
He added that although it had not been determined exactly where the Turkish troops would be stationed, Ankara was looking to establish observation posts in the Sheikh Aqil Mountains, located in the al-Bab district, which Turkey liberated from the so-called Islamic State last year.
Climate change and the Syrian civil war revisited (Political Geography, Sept. 2017)
►http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629816301822
We find that there is no clear and reliable evidence that anthropogenic #climate change was a factor in northeast Syria’s 2006/07–2008/09 drought; we find that, while the 2006/07–2008/09 drought in northeast Syria will have contributed to migration, this migration was not on the scale claimed in the existing literature, and was, in all probability, more caused by economic liberalisation than drought; and we find that there is no clear and reliable evidence that drought-related migration was a contributory factor in civil war onset. In our assessment, there is thus no good evidence to conclude that global climate change-related drought in #Syria was a contributory causal factor in the country’s civil war.
A comment on “climate change and the Syrian civil war revisited”
▻http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629817301531
To the extent the dominant narrative got the Syrian case “wrong”, it will ultimately make it harder for scholars and scientists to communicate the very real economic and security implications of climate change more broadly.
From Qamishli to Qamishlo: A Trip to Rojava’s New Capital - The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
▻http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/from-qamishli-to-qamishlo-a-trip-to-rojavas-new-capital
I had not been to Qamishli for twenty years. As a Ph.D. student at the French Institute for the Near East, I went with two friends in the late 1990s to explore northeast Syria. This journey led us to Raqqa, Deir al-Zour, Hasaka, and Qamishli. Since 1997 I have returned to other Syrian cities on several occasions but did not have the opportunity to go to Rojava. Twenty years ago, I stayed in the venerable Semiramis Hotel. This luxurious Art Deco hotel was built in the 1950s, the ‘’Golden Age’’ of Jazira when Qamishli was the economic center of this rich grain and cotton producing area. The Semiramis welcomed the tradesmen, textile merchants, and millers of Aleppo who came to buy crops, and the restaurant hosted the high society of Qamishli who came to taste French wines and eat filet mignon. The city was mainly Christian, the rural exodus having not yet engulfed Qamishli. The Armenian and Syriac populations had fled Turkey for France after the First World War, and the French installed them in this almost empty region in order to limit the land claims of Mustafa Kemal in northern Syria. The Christians made the desert bloom using the land that was granted to them by the authorities.
Videos emerge of US flags on vehicles in convoy with YPG forces
▻http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/28042017
Videos emerged on Friday showing armored vehicles flying US flags in a convoy with vehicles flying People’s Protection Units (YPG) banners, claiming to be near the town of Darbasiyah in northeast Syria near the Turkish border.
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Teflon Sultan
▻http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160717/1043158581/erdogan-turkey-coup.html
Pepe Escobar, très en forme !
So the number one eyebrow-raising possibility is a go; Erdogan’s intel services knew a coup was brewing; and the wily Sultan let it happen knowing it would fail as the plotters had very limited support. He also arguably knew – in advance — even the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), whose members Erdogan is trying to expel from parliament, would support the government in the name of democracy.
Two extra facts add to the credibility of this hypothesis. Earlier last week Erdogan signed a bill giving soldiers immunity from prosecution while taking part in domestic security ops – as in anti-PKK; that spells out improved relations between the AKP government and the army. And then Turkey’s top judicial body HSYK laid off no less than 2,745 judges after an extraordinary meeting post-coup. This can only mean the list was more than ready in advance.
The major, immediate post-coup geopolitical consequence is that Erdogan now seems to have miraculously reconquered his “strategic depth” – as former, sidelined Prime Minister Davutoglu would have it. Not only externally – after the miserable collapse of both his Middle East and Kurdish “policies” – but also internally. For all practical purposes Erdogan now controls the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary – and is taking no prisoners to purge the military for good. Ladies and gentlemen, the Sultan is in da house.
This means the neo-Ottoman project is still on – but now under massive tactical reorientation. The real “enemy” now is Syrian Kurds – not Russia and Israel (and not ISIS/ISIL/Daesh; but they never were in the first place). Erdogan is going after the YPG, which for him is a mere extension of the PKK. His order of the day is to prevent by all means an autonomous state entity in northeast Syria – a “Kurdistan” set up like a second Israel supported by the US. For that he needs some sort of entente cordiale with Damascus – as in insisting that Syria must preserve its territorial integrity. And that also means, of course, renewed dialogue with Russia.
Combats à Qamishli entre la police kurde (Asayish) et le YPG d’une part, et la milice pro-régime (Forces de Défense nationale) et une milice syriaque pro-régime (Sootoro), d’autre part.
La ville jusqu’ici partagée entre PYD et régime, connaît pour la première fois de tels combats avec plusieurs morts de part et d’autre.
▻https://www.yahoo.com/news/kurds-regime-deadly-clashes-northeast-syria-190019093.html
Qamishli (Syria) (AFP) - Deadly clashes between Syrian pro-government fighters and Kurdish forces raged on Wednesday in the northeastern city of Qamishli, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
Loud blasts from rocket fire and heavy machineguns could be heard throughout the city into the evening as warplanes screeched above, the reporter said.
Qamishli is under the shared control of the Syrian regime and Kurdish authorities, who have declared zones of “autonomous administration” across parts of north and northeast Syria.
The clashes broke out between government forces and the local Kurdish police force, known as the Asayish, at a checkpoint earlier on Wednesday, a Kurdish security source told AFP.
Malgré un accord de cessez-le-feu passé entre le YPG et le régime - à la suite de ces incidents rapportés par l’AFP ci-dessus, les combats auraient repris quelques heures après selon al-Masdar (site pro-régime) :
▻https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/temporary-truce-falls-apart-qamishli-kurdish-government-forces-clash
Il y avait déjà eu des accrochages, moins graves, entre la milice Sootoro et les Asayish il y a quelques mois, mais impossible de retrouver un lien... :(
Carte de la situation militaire aujourd’hui à Qamishli (via twitter Joshua Landis) :
Il y a un mois, la température s’était déjà élevée quand le YPG kurde avait assiégé le quartier-général des Forces de Défense Nationale (milice pro-régime) à Qamishli : ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/470562
UN calls for mass #polio vaccination in #syria and neighboring countries
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/un-calls-mass-polio-vaccination-syria-and-neighboring-countries
A Syrian refugee woman watches children playing as they wait close to the town of Semalka, in northeast Syria, for permission from the Kurdish Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPG), who control a crossing into neighboring Iraq, on October 21, 2013. (Photo: AFP - Mauricio Morales)
More than 20 million children are to be vaccinated in Syria and neighboring countries against polio to prevent the spread of the crippling infectious disease following (...)
Ten children diagnosed with #polio in northeastern #syria: WHO
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/ten-children-diagnosed-polio-northeastern-syria-who
Palestinian children who fled Syria with their families hold placards during a protest in front of the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to demand assistance and work on October 28, 2013 in Gaza city. (Photo: AFP - Mahmud Hams)
Updated 2:30 pm Polio has broken out among young children in northeast Syria, the #World_Health_Organization (WHO) confirmed on Tuesday, and could spread inside and outside the country, where civil war has led (...)