Talk:Assault on Ras Al-Ayn

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January fighting and news

  • I suspect that this article has a strong orientalist bias, but it made me aware of something that is logical but not immediately obvious - there are Alawite Kurds. One a religion, one an ethnicity. --CE (talk) 12:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
  • A report based on this wiki article apparently fueled by this ten days old mirror. :o) --CE (talk) 21:48, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Very cool. Sad to see it's so dated, but the link is at the bottom. 64 sources for one page might be a record here. You've got this one covered great. Isn't it cool to just own a topic? That's how we should attract members. They can have a page at a good platform on which to own one issue, perhaps jointly-owned. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:35, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Yep, feels cool. :o) Glad I spotted the topic so early that it really tells the story. I spread the link around a bit in different places. Kind of baffles people... --CE (talk) 14:34, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
  • According to this article there are over 2000 defected Syrian Kurd soldiers in Iraqi Kurdistan training and waiting for orders. The interviewed soldier is enthusiastic about getting Assad but the commander sounds more like the plan is to stay in the Kurdish regions "to fill the security vacuum" once "Assad falls". In the comments people are calling them cowards and telling them that the fight is now in Sere Kaniye and they should join the YPG. --CE (talk) 10:20, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
  • In case you ever wanted to see what a Kurdish burial looks like, this is a somehow fascinating video. They bury the two mentioned YPG fighters killed on Jan 20. --CE (talk) 13:14, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
  • SOHR, Jan. 21 Civilians and children of Ras al-Ein killed by mortar attacks and snipers
Hasakah province- Ras al-Ein city (Serekaniyeh): 3 civilians, 2 were little brothers aged 3 and 10, were killed by a mortar falling on their house in the Ahmad Kan, Ras al-Ein city. Another civilian was killed by a sniper in the city. Legal activists in the city have documented the burning of bodies last night, the remains were then buried in large graves dug 2 days ago in the city.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights strongly condemns the indiscriminate attacks against an entire community, killing civilians and children in the process. We demand that the UN sends in an urgent investigation committee to fully document the crimes taking place in the city of Ras al-Ein, in order to bring all those responsible to justice. We also bring to the UN's attention that they cannot refuse to send a mission by using the Syrian authorities refusal as an excuse, since the regime has no control whatsoever on that part of Syria. It would be easy to enter and leave through the Turkish border, which is controlled and used by the rebel factions. We also urge them to send humanitarian assistance to the city, which is turning into an area of communal, civil, war

(if the Turks let them, of course) --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:42, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

LOL, excellent - they know our lazy "friend" Navi by now. This could get interesting. Erdogan beware. --CE (talk) 14:56, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
The Kurdish National Council, a pro-opposition umbrella group of Syrian Kurdish parties, condemned what it said was an ongoing assault "against unarmed civilians" by jihadist insurgents on the northern town of Ras al-Ain. It said the rebels, who came across the border from Turkey, were shelling the town indiscriminately, and called on the main opposition National Coalition and the Free Syrian Army to "pressure these militants to stop this criminal war which is detrimental to the Syrian revolution."
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 33 people had been killed over the past 48 hours in Ras al-Ain clashes that pitted the jihadist Al-Nusra Front against Kurdish fighters. Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that 28 rebels were killed in these clashes as well as five fighters from the Kurdish Democratic Union, the Syrian branch of the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party of Turkey.
A resident of Ras al-Ain told AFP both sides appeared to be preparing for a fierce battle, with Kurdish fighters building fortifications and digging trenches, and rebels bringing in reinforcements from across the border.

Rebel-Held Again?

It appears we've missed some news.

Turkey scrambled fighter jets after Syrian warplanes bombed the rebel-held border city of Ras Ayn in northeastern Syria on Monday, killing at least eight people and injuring 16, according to opposition accounts and at least one person reached in the town.

Some other awesome deails there. We finally learn what was wrong with those silly kurds. Just a lil' nervous about the conquest. "Many Kurds are wary of the Arab-led rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad, though they also have concerns about Assad and his autocratic ways." But they had worked things out into a joint effort at controlling a government-free city, it's said, starting in late November.

For the last week or so, residents said, a truce had held in Ras Ayn. Kurdish militiamen and Arab rebels patrolled different areas of the city. Some refugees had returned from Turkey. On Monday, however, the uneasy calm was shattered anew.

For no good reason, of course. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:34, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Ah, good catch, thanks. I'll see if I can find some intel from the Kurds about the reason for the new bombing and update the article tonight. The "joint effort at controlling" must be the new committee the Kurds demanded for the truce in addition to the most radical groups leaving town, as already in the article. --CE (talk) 11:16, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Vid material

Syria Ras al Ain, FSA Free Syrian Army Terrorist War Crimes

Location Alley part 1 and 2 here as seen by position of water tower, minaret and antenna at the end of part 2 on the roof.

--CE (talk) 05:36, 21 November 2012 (UTC)--CE (talk) 04:59, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I understand these videos are also from Ras Al-Ayn. "Yellow carpenter" is some castle in Ras Al-Ayn.

Original uploads in HD quality:

-- Petri Krohn (talk) 07:30, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Petri. The first two are parts of the one which is already in the article, will look at the others later. I think i've seen those guys before, isn't the "tour leader" with the Wahhabi beard one of the Libyans from the al-Harati gang? The "Yellow Carpenter" is very likely an ancient site Tell el Fakhariya and in the second video they are parking here at its foot. --CE (talk) 11:31, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
I've looked at a few of these, but a severed head video caught my attention more. Already cut,the worst is done, but it's still horrible. Syria, FSA Free Syrian Army Terrorist War Crimes +21 Posted by the same suriyeninsesi Nov. 14, so possibly related, but not clear. It was at zero views when I found it, saved it just in case, but it's still there today, 77 views. --Caustic Logic (talk) 23:51, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Latest:

--CE (talk) 13:35, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Is this related? -- Petri Krohn (talk) 06:13, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Opinion:

Text Sources

For what it's worth, we should collect some text sources for possible inclusion. I'll start with one of the less mediocre ones I found easily. --Caustic Logic (talk) 23:34, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

The situation along the border is posing serious problems for Ankara. Ismail Arslan, the mayor of Ceylanpinar whom I spoke to yesterday, criticized Turkey’s extension of medical assistance to wounded opposition militants but not to the PYD's.
Arslan said, “If Turkey really wants to remain neutral in these clashes, it has to stay neutral also for the wounded. Arabs and Kurds live together here. In every house, we have relatives who came from Syria. We share our lives. It is a right decision for Turkey to stay out of Arab-Kurd clashes.”
The fight between the PYD, known as a Syrian extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and the Syrian opposition is over controlling Ras al-Ain, which has a mixed Arab and Kurdish population and is known as the gate to Syria’s Kurdish region. The FSA did not allow PYD units that came back to parade through the town, and asked the PYD to fly Syrian-opposition flags, not the PYD’s.''
The opposition that captured the town after sustained clashes with regime forces now sees Ras al-Ain as its sovereign territory. The PYD makes the same claim for the town where more than half of the population is Kurdish. When the clashes escalated yesterday, Ankara reacted cautiously to the opposition’s calls for assistance.
Turkey is justified in trying to stay out of the Arab-Kurdish fighting in Syria. Turkey is already fighting with the PKK in its own territory and in northern Iraq, so it doesn’t want to open a third front with the PKK. Although the PYD is an armed body of Syrian Kurds, the PYD’s “popular defense forces” are mostly PKK or PKK-trained militiamen. But the PYD has been claiming that its structure is different from the PKK’s and has been trying not to confront Turkey.

Yeah our fan HB over at the forum just delivered a guy David Enders writing for McClatchy, apparently three articles, that last one a week ago. Some interesting claims, source unclear. References to more mainstream articles (or even the jokes of AlJ and AlA) are good to flesh it out. Feel free to add directly to the article as always, of course. I give high credence to the German-Kurdish source though, they have little benefit in lying, sitting between all chairs. It's run by a whole bunch of Kurds, mostly students at German Universities. I think next the article needs a more detailed description of the atrocities committed Nov 8-11 as seen in the videos above, but i'm SO SICK AND TIRED of watching creeps shouting Allahu Akbar atm. --CE (talk) 00:20, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Cynical Thoughts

Excellent article already, CE! What a mess. My thought is Turkey's for any kind of escalation now. Even illegal, border-crossing, uprovoked, unjustified, civilian-attacking, we-dare-you-to-fight-back mentality. Then there'll be lots of dead, calls for order, tricky moves to blame "Assad" somehow, some new excuse to go defend their guys and start imposing "stability"on the areas the Turks and the Jihadists messed up. --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:37, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, yeah it's sick. From the other news item on diekurden.de it seems like they are planning to attack larger cities in the region with the same tactics. --CE (talk) 04:59, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, they're now saying they took over half a nearby military base and swiped some pretty heavy weapons. --Caustic Logic (talk) 23:36, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
That says near Aleppo, not Ras Al-Ayn. --CE (talk) 00:28, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
So it does. But in my defense, they were smooshed together in the first paragraph. --Caustic Logic (talk) 05:29, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

The rebels asked for a two-day truce? Someone needs to get on the phone and alert these YPG guys that in two days the rebels will have their reinforcements in order for another and bigger crossing. Better call up a couple thousand fighters, not a couple hundred, from all around and ambush the scum real good. --Caustic Logic (talk) 00:20, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Oops! Somehow I deleted all the video stuff and whatever else, 7,588 characters. I didn't even see it here somehow but now I remember it was, so ... can be easily restored, right? No time to try it myself, have to run to work now. Jeez, how did I manage that? --Caustic Logic (talk) 00:27, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Hahaha, fixed. No need to ambush the page just because some Kurds prove the old saying "never mess with Kurds"!!! :oD --CE (talk) 00:32, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Adana Agreement

Looked a tad into the 1998 agreement for more details/confirmation that Turkey was in charge of the border there. There was an agreement reached in I think Oct. 1998, signed in '99, called the Adana agreement, mostly on Syrian support and harboring of the PKK. The WP on Syria-Turkey relations mentions it, but the link is red (no page). The sought detail was too obscure to surface easily, but it would seem, if so, the Turks used that term of the agreement to make the border fail and let Turkish flag-planting terrorists slip across and provoke the Kurds. Besides control of gates and mine fields, one interesting article from April mentions other ways in which "Adana agreement paves legal path for Turkish intervention in Syria."

Article 1 of the Adana agreement states that “Syria, on the basis of the principle of reciprocity, will not permit any activity that emanates from its territory aimed at jeopardizing the security and stability of Turkey.” The bloody crackdown on the opposition that has entered its second year has destabilized the country, with over 1 million Syrians internally displaced and nearly 25,000 Syrian refugees having fled to Turkey. The United Nations reports say that more than 9,000 civilians have been killed in the Syrian government's yearlong assault on protesters opposed to Assad.

And the refugees created by Turkish imports of Jihadists are, I guess, some threat now to Turkey's stability. But almost eight months, on, they've had to pull more brazen tricks and most recently this. So apparently the definition of security threat was deemed not met in April, as this stupid article suggested. --Caustic Logic (talk) 06:53, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. The early articles on diekurden.de also mention rumours that Turkey had not only removed the mines at the border strip just in time, but also set up refugee camps before the original assault happened. Only rumours, so I didn't include it in the article ... but given their antics I wouldn't be surprised. --CE (talk) 15:42, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Oh, and thanks for the anglo-fying of the text. :o) --CE (talk) 15:44, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Berlin-Baghdad Railway

It was interesting to note, that the Berlin to Baghdad Railway forms the border between Turkey and Syria for some 400 km. Imperialist, globalists and capitalist hate infrastructure. What a brilliant idea from some imperialist to split the railway up between two countries, so that neither one would have use for it.

All of Turkey's southern border is flanked by a 500m wide control strip with minefields. On the Syrian side the fields and villages extend right up to the border / railway line. The border looks worse, than the Inner German border, with the Turks playing the role of the bad Stasi,

I do not know if the Baghdad Railway now has any economic significance to Turkey. If it has, then it is open to sabotage from the Syrian side. They could basically steal the tracks without anybody on the Turkish side able to do anything to stop them. If Erdogan has any sense, he would keep this part of the border as quiet as possible.

West of Jarabulus the situation different. This part of the track is unused.

What do you make of this? It is a new border crossing in Jarabulus, with no access over the tracks to the Turkish side. Where do all the lines go? Like some traffic park for kids. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 02:28, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

May 2013

The latest: -- Petri Krohn (talk) 14:13, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Rumours so far. I say unlikely at this time as it would ruin the whole PKK deal process, and the shit is in the process of hitting the fan in Hatay province. But who knows, those guys don't seem to act rationally anymore. --CE (talk) 14:40, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

July 2013

Syriangirl: Al Nusra receiving medical treatment in Turkey. The Turkish people don't look very happy about it

-- Petri Krohn (talk) 11:02, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

October 2013

BBC video from the border: -- Petri Krohn (talk) 04:58, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Associated Press: -- Petri Krohn (talk) 09:47, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Militiamen capture Yaaroubiyeh post in north-east Syria after three days of clashes with several jihadist groups

ISIS breaks truce

The ISIS declared that Jabhat al-Nusra was its subordinate organization. Jabhat al-Nusra commanders refused this claim and said they were under al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri. These claims caused disputes within the organization. Chechen groups under Abu Omar in Syria split from Jabhat al-Nusra and joined the ranks of the ISIS. It was the ISIS fighters who provoked the recent clashes with the PYD. Reports said the ISIS entered and opened fire in PYD-controlled villages to disrupt the non-hostility agreement between the PYD and Jabhat al-Nusra.
That's very interesting. If ISIS is the outfit that is run by Iraqi al-Qaeda, whereas Nusra is run by the CIA stooge Zawahiri in AfPak somewhere, then that suggests the ISIS Iraqis broke free of CIA remote control but continued to receive Qatari money & weapons, which is why Qatar is now in disgrace, and the Sauds should take over control of all the Jihadi groups as far as CIA is concerned. Iraqi al-Qaeda has repeatedly broken away from US purposes in the past, and US has had to play Jihadi factions against one another in Iraqi via 'Sahwa' etc.
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