omg

Sorry to hear about that 😔

DM me if you want a referral. There’s almost certainly a fitting role open at my company though I can’t guarantee or even say with confidence they’re rushing to fill those positions

It’s not like they’re trusting the Americans for the hell of it. What other choice do they have?

Let’s take the Rojava Revolution. The American partnership started in 2014 first with the Yazidi Genocide. As you may know, the YPG and PKK sent in a force from Syria and from the Qandil mountains to relieve the IS siege of Sinjar Mountain and to create a safe passage for the Yazidi to flee to Syria. This resulted in tens of thousands of Yazidi being saved. It was assisted by American and British airstrikes + spec ops. At this point-when it is literal genocide-who are they to turn down the support of literally anyone?

But of course the real American intervention started in the battle of Kobane. Let’s again think of the situation the PYD/YPG were in. IS had taken most of the city and the YPG had been ground down to the pulp. If Kobane had been taken the defenders would have had nowhere to go and would have been slaughtered (and some tortured, raped, etc). The Americans offer to help, what do you say? You say yes because it is the only way to avoid your complete destruction and death.

After this the PYD DID try and balance the US and Russia and sought the support of both because air power was vital to defeat IS given the latter, in the 2014-2015 years above all, had seriously strong light infantry, significant armour, and was deeply entrenched in a lot of big cities (the south of Hasakah, Manbij, Tabqa, Raqqa, etc). In Afrin the YPG favoured Russia, yet this balancing act fell apart in 2018 when Russia withdrew and allowed Turkey to invade and ethnically cleanse Afrin. Thus the trust with the Russians was gone and the YPG was solely reliant on the US with no other great power options who could viably (A) help them defeat IS but, much more importantly, (B) stop Turkey from invading. Considering Russia and the US are the sole powers who can stop this, the options are not many.

When the US partially withdrew in 2019 the PYD turned back to Russia and invited them + the Syrian army back (the latter in a strictly controlled fashion) but in places east of the Euphrates now, while the Americans remained in Deir ezzor and Qamishli simply because balancing is better than overreliance and because the American relationship brought financial benefits too (and they can help open up trade with the KRG, too). Since then the PYD has expertly played the two off each other to prevent a planned Turkish invasion of Tel Tamr despite Russia repeatedly promising to allow the invasion if the SDF did not effectively surrender the whole region to the hated government.

Really the foreign policy of the AANES has been very smart-though some major mistakes were made during the learning process (e.g., the PYD/YPG immediately learnt after the catastrophe of Afrin and from then on allowed Syrian government troops back into NE Syria to appease Russia. The AANES was overreliant on the US from Afrin to the partial withdrawal and now they have returned to a balancing act despite the distrust of Russia and the feelings of betrayal around Afrin). Indeed, they have tried to balance just about everyone they can to maximise their gains, even working with Iran and its friendly militias in Afrin. Iranian militias sell ATGMs to the Afrin YPG who then use them in the insurgency against the Turkish occupation of NE Syria.

So it’s not as simple as “trusting America”. The AANES/PYD/SDF leaders don’t trust America and they have said so many times in Kurdish media, they simply have no other choice. There are two untrustworthy great powers who can stop their immediate destruction and the ethnic cleansing of millions of Kurds, Yazidi, and Christians (Assyrians and Armenians) from NE Syria. There is no alternative but to work with them and to try and play them off the other.

I’ll stop there but it’s never just blind trust in America. If you study the times where Kurdish groups partnered with the US you will see there is always a far more rational reason than you are implying, e.g., a lack of alternative partners most of all. I will explain other cases if you would like but I’ll end it here for the time being simply because this is already a long comment.

Listen, I’m not going to start spouting off about critical support for the Baathist party or anything. But don’t accuse me of diminishing anything. The poster specifically spoke of the chemical attack as a genocide. All I did was take the wikipedia number and compare their rhetoric and rationalizations with a number four orders of magnitude larger.

Some believe his spirit marches on as catholicsocialist