Gen. David Petraeus misled America about US allies in Syria

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Former CIA Director and retired US Army General David Petraeus has been attacking US President Trump in the media this weekend saying in one interview on CNN, “Well, I think we have abandoned our Syrian Kurdish partners. They took over 10,000 losses as the defeat of Islamic State was carried out”.

by Melissa Hemingway

These are the US-allied YPG/YPJ/PKK/SDF fighters in Syria General David Petraeus is speaking about.

"They took over 10,000 losses as the defeat of Islamic State was carried out." Gen. David Petraeus These are the US-allied fighters in Syria that General David Petraeus is speaking about. “They took over 10,000 losses as the defeat of Islamic State was carried out.”
said Gen. David Petraeus
These are the US-allied YPG/YPJ/PKK/SDF fighters in Syria that
General David Petraeus is speaking about.
Photo Credit: KurdishStruggle/Flikr
Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine

The Truth:

  1. The United States does not have any diplomatic relations with Syria and it is not possible to have diplomatic relations with a non-state entity like the SDF or PKK / YPG
  2. The United States has created various “alliances” within which it funds and arms militias and those militias act as a surrogate fighting force on behalf of the United States Pentagon which is then able to launch military adventures without risking American lives hence without risk of admonishment by the American taxpayer. This process needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case individual basis. It is not raised as a negative, just a fact.
  3. Many of the “surrogate forces” the USA has hired or created comprise today’s terrorist organizations created by the United States but acting against the United States. That is now true of the PKK / YPG which have since last week been allied to the Assad regime.
  4. The Kurdish people are an Iranian ethnic group native to a mountainous region of Western Asia known as the Kurdistan region, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northern Syria. There are also exclaves of Kurds in central Anatolia and Khorasan, according to Wikipedia.
  5. The United States has never been partnered with the two to four million Syrian Kurdish people, hundreds of thousands of whom are living in Turkey. Today in fact, the soldiers that were wearing YPG uniforms fighting against Da’esh are now wearing the Syrian Arab Army uniforms of the al-Assad regime which has never been an ally of the Syrian Kurds.
  6. Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to which the USA was partnered is an alliance in the Syrian Civil War composed primarily of YPG/PKK, Arab, and Assyrian Syriac militias as well as some smaller Armenian Turkmen and Chechen militants.
  7. The PKK / YPG segment (about 80%) of this once US-allied SDF group is acknowledged globally as a terrorist organization.
  8. The PKK is also an underworld crime organization that specializes in drug and human trafficking. Many of the PKK / YPG fighters are children.
  9. FPM.news has interviewed female civil society medical workers who have helped some of these child soldiers escape their captors. (USA “shoulder-to-shoulder” child soldiers in Syria. USA/PKK Child Soldiers RINJ helped escape.)
  10. The PKK / YPG segment (about 80%) of this US-allied SDF group wanted to drive the Islamic State from the Northern Syria regions it has seized so that the PKK could take over and keep those regions to use later to launch attacks against Turkey, according to numerous PKK / YPG fighters known personally to the writer.

The Syrian Civil War has been exploited for YPG goals of seizing territory along the Turkish border from which to launch attacks against the nation state of Turkey and in the alternative for the purpose of ultimately achieving Kurdish statehood . The YPG is a subset of the PKK which has been at war with Turkey since 1978.

"They took over 10,000 losses as the defeat of Islamic State was carried out." Gen. David Petraeus These are the US-allied fighters in Syria that General David Petraeus is speaking about. “They took over 10,000 losses as the defeat of Islamic State was carried out.”
said Gen. David Petraeus
These are the US-allied YPG/YPJ/PKK/SDF fighters in Syria that
General David Petraeus is speaking about.
Photo Credit: KurdishStruggle/Flikr
Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine

The Truth:

On 19 July 2012, the YPG besieged government buildings in the Kurdish city of Kobanê, and the Syrian government forces were forced to leave without a fight. Similar developments occurred in Efrîn and Cizrê. The central government forces showed no resistance. It is not clear why the regime allowed the YPG to control the Kurdish region and cities were handed over to the Kurds, but some believe that Assad withdrew from northern Syria and gave the north to the YPG in order to counter Turkish influence in northern Syria. Assad did not want to fight several fronts at the same time. Although the Kurds and Syrian army are jointly fighting ISIS on some fronts, the Syrian government is still opposed to any Kurdish stability – for example, the Syrian army attacked a Kurdish checkpoint and their forces in Hasake on 19 May 2014. The Syrian government did not back the Kurds, but preferred to remain neutral. — From: “Kurdish Regional Self-rule Administration in Syria: A new Model of Statehood and its Status in International Law Compared to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq” — Cambridge University

Child soldiers training in a Marxist/Leninist Terrorist group known as the PKK/YPG American exploited Child soldiers training in a Marxist/Leninist Terrorist group known as the PKK / YPG. The recruitment and use of children occurred on a significant scale, with 3,377 verified cases (3,150 boys and 227 girls). Of those, 2,753 children (82 per cent) served in a combat role – armed, in uniform and sometimes following military training. In addition, 1,026 children (30 per cent) were below 15 years of age when they became associated with armed forces and armed groups. During the reporting period, the verified numbers of cases of recruitment and use of children continued to rise steadily: 351 in 2014, 538 in 2015, 1,034 in 2016 and 1,142 in 2017, with children, overall, becoming younger and increasingly used in combat roles. The United Nations also verified the recruitment and use of 310 children during the first half of 2018.  Photo Credit: YouTube Video Capture ~ Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine

Some Facts About the Real Kurds

  1. Iran: estimated 8.2-12 million
  2. Iraq: estimated 5.6-8.5 million
  3. Turkey: estimated 14.3-20 million
  4. Syria: estimated 2-3.6 million before being driven from the country by terrorists
  5. United States: 20,591
  6. The Kurds have an official Army they call “Peshmerga”. The Kurdish people generally do not support the  PKK / YPG.

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