Friday, November 20, 2015

A northern fly zone in Syria is not going to work. That is the Kurds.

To begin with that is a border with Turkey, a country that is a NATO ally. I would expect it to handle it's own no fly zone.

It is also where the Kurds call home. PKK lives there. I am sure the PKK is assisting the Kurds more than anyone might think and they should. 

November 20, 2015
By the editorial board

...Since the war began in 2011, (click here) the Obama administration has rejected proposals for a no-fly zone because they would require a significant military commitment: knocking out Mr. Assad’s air defenses, mounting an extended American air patrol and stationing ground troops to protect the zone and the refugees....

There is an international understanding of a Kurdistan in imaginary borders that overlap with actual sovereign borders of other countries in the region.

The No Fly Zones worked in Iraq, but, the longest border is shared with Iran. The No Fly Zones actually prevented a larger war from developing with Iran over and over again.

Northern Syria is a very different issue. What happens when Turkey comes to the USA and states, "What do you think you are doing, we can't run jets out there to handle the build up of PKK?" What then? The USA would have a UN mandated No Fly Zone and Turkey is complaining because it makes things too cozy for PKK.

And, yes, Turkey runs jet raids to its borders because of PKK. And then there is going to be that commander that isn't as savvy as the rest of his peers and orders strikes against PKK without clearing it with the USA.

If the USA is going to protect the northern reaches of Syria, why not all of Kurdistan?

Countries have to take care of themselves and at this point Syria's future is too strange to even estimate how a No Fly Zone would impact the country. It just isn't workable. 

I have addressed this before and I think the events in France clearly illustrate how diffuse the SUPPORT for Daesh is where Muslims are somewhat disenfranchised in their societies.

July/August 2005
By Robert S. Leiken

 ...The Pentagon (click here) wages war in the Middle East to stop terrorist attacks on the United States. But the growing nightmare of officials at the Department of Homeland Security is passport-carrying, visa-exempt mujahideen coming from the United States' western European allies.

Jihadist networks span Europe from Poland to Portugal, thanks to the spread of radical Islam among the descendants of guest workers once recruited to shore up Europe's postwar economic miracle. In smoky coffeehouses in Rotterdam and Copenhagen, makeshift prayer halls in Hamburg and Brussels, Islamic bookstalls in Birmingham and "Londonistan," and the prisons of Madrid, Milan, and Marseilles, immigrants or their descendants are volunteering for jihad against the West. It was a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent, born and socialized in Europe, who murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam last November. A Nixon Center study of 373 mujahideen in western Europe and North America between 1993 and 2004 found more than twice as many Frenchmen as Saudis and more Britons than Sudanese, Yemenites, Emiratis, Lebanese, or Libyans. Fully a quarter of the jihadists it listed were western European nationals -- eligible to travel visa-free to the United States....

The woman that committed suicide with a bomb in France was Moroccan and socialized in Europe. I find her very interesting. It sort of confirms what I have been thinking about recruits by Daesh of foreign citizens.

Other than she, there was a foreign citizen talking to the internet for one reason or another. He was unarmed. Behind him were at least four people (couldn't see their faces) with assault rifles.

USA military and intelligence stated the foreign citizens recruited by Daesh first are approached for conversation and then taken deep into a electronic chamber to complete the estrangement from that person's national culture. That is not volunteering. That is kidnapping.

Once a person commits to Daesh in the open web it is still a distant reality. What happens after that is primarily wealth to bring that person to Syria. Once they are in Syria they have no way out. A few have traveled back and forth and that is an issue, but, I am not convinced all of those removed to Syria are carrying out their acts voluntarily so much as 'managed' into violence.

It doesn't matter, taking a trip to Syria to kill, no matter who it is, is criminal. But, there are those that realize once they get to Syria they have been deceived and manipulated and want to return home. I don't think that plea of innocence should be rewarded by allowing people to return home. And, the borders of Syria are porous enough people can leave without any problem. Whether or not they are accepted back home is another issue.

I state that because I don't believe Daesh has power over their recruits in the way The West believes it does. It probably doesn't make much difference except on the home front and the ability of a sovereign power to shut down aspects of the internet to protect vulnerable citizens. THERE ARE THOSE RECRUITS THAT ARE NOT AS INVESTED as countries may think. And there are recruits that do come and go from Syria with no other ambition than to fight within Syria for 'the cause.'

The best example of a foreign citizen fighting for the cause is John Walker Lindh. This has gone on for a long time. Until Daesh decided to imagineer a caliphate the fighting was in places the USA had no real interest. The foreign citizen was simply there to fight in jihad believing they were vital to protecting Muslims unable to take care of themselves. John Walker Lindh has sat in a room with bin Laden and sure as heck didn't expect the USA military to drive down roads in tanks or otherwise.

Morroco has a population of about 33 million people. About 99 percent of people are Sunni Muslims. As a Sunni she would be welcomed by Daesh. With so many others in the apartment I am not convinced she was manipulated into being a disposable person for the violence the men needed and wanted.

17 November 2015
By Jack Lang

...Invited to address the topic of the danger (click here) of foreign funding of Islam in France, Jack Lang hailed Morocco as “very friendly country” and a model of “Islam of enlightenment and peace.”
“Foreign funding come in general from countries that very respectful of an Islam of enlightenment and peace. I refer especially to Morocco. If the conception of the Moroccan Islam were applied nowadays in the whole Islam world, we would live in peace,” Lang said.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco was among the first world leaders to send his condolences to French President Francois Hollande and express his solidarity with the French people and his willingness to cooperate with the French government in the fight against ISIS.

“I offer my most saddened condolences to you, to the innocent victims’ families and to the entire French people as well as my earnest wishes of prompt recovery to the wounded,” King Mohammed VI said in a message sent to the French President on Friday night.

“I would like to condemn in the strongest terms on behalf of the Moroccan people and in my own name these vile terrorist acts and express our full solidarity and support to France and its people in this ordeal,” the Royal message concluded....

Morroco is about 172 thousand square miles; about the size of California. 

Morocco is not in Europe. It is in North Africa and does not share it's borders with Mali, but, with Algeriaand Mauritania. I'd like to say Morocco is a stable and Western friendly country, but, there has been some instability in Algeria.

I'll continue this later.