How Putin Outfoxed Trump, Pence and Erdogan

by Malcolm Lowe • November 6, 2019 at 5:00 am

President Donald Trump claimed the entire credit for this outcome. But in reality it was the culmination of a scheme that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been planning since at least January 2019.
The drama of recent weeks began with joint Turkish-US patrols along the Syrian side of the border and ended with joint Russian-Turkish patrols. This switch already indicates who intimidates Erdogan and who does not.
Above all, the "Joint U.S.-Turkish Statement" nowhere defined the length or even the depth of the "safe zone," allowing Erdogan to understand it to mean – as in the various Turkish statements at the UN – the entire length of the border and a variable depth enabling the settlement of one or two or three million Islamist Syrian refugees.
Assad and Putin may be scheming to recapture Afrin in same style as they have used to regain most of western Syria, namely, Assad regime infantry backed by heavy Russian bombing. Only this time the SDF will be available to serve as infantry.
Note the opinion of Robert Pearson, a former US Ambassador to Turkey, speaking on Middle East Forum Radio on October 23, that "Sooner or Later, Putin Will Force Turkey out of Syria."

Pictured: US Vice President Mike Pence visits Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, Turkey on October 17, 2019. (Photo by Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Turkish Presidency via Getty Images)

On October 17, brandishing President Donald Trump's threat to destroy the Turkish economy, US Vice President Mike Pence visited Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Feigning a spirit of compromise, Erdogan agreed on a memorandum with Pence that effectively gave Erdogan the green light to complete his ethnic cleansing of the Syrian Kurds.

On October 22, Erdogan went to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin. This time, Erdogan feigned full satisfaction with a joint memorandum that limited his ethnic cleansing to an Arab-majority stretch of Syrian territory adjacent to the Turkish border, where few Kurds live anyway, while conceding the protection of all other Syrian Kurds to Putin.

Trump claimed the entire credit for this outcome. But in reality it was the culmination of a scheme that Putin had been planning since at least January 2019, when he promoted a meeting between representatives of the Syrian Kurds and of the Assad regime.

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Should Europe Bring Back the Fighters Who Left for ISIS?

by Alain Destexhe • November 6, 2019 at 4:00 am

This debate about repatriation is another example of how confused the West has become when trying to apply its moral principles. The real victims here are the people who were murdered, injured, raped, tortured or displaced by ISIS. Their children, if still alive, will have to live with the consequences of ISIS terror.
If European governments have to choose between supporting a Yazidi rape survivor and her unwanted child or a woman who willingly left Europe to spit in the face of Western societies and the values of her country of origin to join ISIS, they should choose the former. Sorry, do-gooders. These deserters should not be allowed back to Europe.

European governments are confronted with the thorny problem of what to do with their citizens who were "foreign fighters" for ISIS. Most of the surviving fighters are being held in Iraqi or Kurdish jails. There is currently growing pressure to bring them back to Europe. (Source of Heathrow border photo: dgmckelvey/Flickr)

After the Turkish offensive into Syria, European governments are confronted again with the thorny problem of what to do with the "foreign fighters".

Foreign fighters are Muslim extremists who left their countries of residence to join ISIS and fight against Western civilization and values. Most of them are men, but many women joined them to support the Caliphate. Many of these women later became pregnant with the children of ISIS terrorists.

Since the fall of Mosul and Raqqa, most of the surviving fighters are currently being detained in Iraqi or Kurdish jails. Some are also in detention in northern Syria, a territory whose future is uncertain. Most women (and their children) live in refugee camps, often in miserable conditions.

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