When I opined that U.S. President Joe Biden’s George W. Bush-era carryover foreign and security policy team would create two so-called Kurdish statelets in Syria and Iraq, some Turks, Kurds and Farsi friends objected. After the two Kurdish statelets, I predicted that they would push them to merge to create a security curtain for Israel against Iran and to dismember Türkiye and Iran by providing an exemplification for their ethnic Kurdish people.
Their main anchor points in the argument against my suggestion were that the "Syrian Kurdish State" would not be an authentic “Syrian Kurdish” entity, but it would be owned and operated by PKK terrorists based in Türkiye. They also said the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq would never join forces with the PKK terrorist group's Syrian wing, the YPG, let alone merge with a state created by them.
If you really have time to argue, you might counter these arguments by asking, whom they have in mind when they refer to the KRG for instance. If you remember the long and bloody fights to represent Iraqi Kurds, which culminated in what is known as the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War during the mid-1990s, you’d know that the existing peace and coexistence arrangement between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK-led by the Talabani tribe) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) created by the Barzani tribe is not an easy one.
I won’t go into details of that bloody fratricidal war in which thousands of Kurdish people perished. It also emboldened Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to massacre thousands on both sides. U.S. President Bill Clinton’s Iraq Liberation Act, providing military assistance to Iraqi opposition groups, including the PUK and the KDP, finally created peace in the region. However, 60,000 KDP supporters had been expelled from the PUK-controlled regions; likewise, 50,000 PUK supporters were expelled from the KDP-controlled regions.
The KRG today is a result of an uneasy balance in the country and the management depends on very intricate rules to maintain that balance.
So, if the so-called international coalition against Daesh in Syria (that is, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and its Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR)) deems that it is about time to convert what they call the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) into the KRG in Syria, there will be no shortage of people in Iraq willing to rush to Syria asking where to sign up!
The U.S. commander of the CJTF-OIR, Maj. Gen. Matthew McFarlane, asked YPG leader Ferhat Abdi Şahin (code-named Mazloum Kobani and adopted by the PKK’s founder Abdullah Öcalan when he was 12 years old and later took part in many terrorist activities in Türkiye and Iraq) and PUK’s current leader Bafel Talabani to meet him in Hasakah in northeast Syria. Bafel is the elder son of the PUK’s founder Jalal Talabani, who, according to the delicate arrangement after the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq, had become the president of the country from 2006 to 2014.
Bafel was so euphoric in that meeting that he posted several Twitter messages congratulating himself and Şahin for their “continued coordination” in operations against Daesh but he did not miss the opportunity to criticize the PKK’s Syria management.
He posted "emphasis on the security vacuums” in the area at that meeting. Bafel, unlike his father, whom his tribe used to call emphatically Mam Jalal (uncle Jalal in Kurdish), and his younger brother, who has been deputy prime minister of the KRG since 2014, has been in the PUK’s military wing.
His military prowess has been questioned and he has been accused of losing oil-rich Kirkuk to the Iraqi central government, but it is not the point here. Bafel appeared in the Hasakah meeting in a real euphoria of victory according to the videos he shared on Twitter.
He promised “Iraqi Kurdistan National Union (KNU) for the West,” in his English post and in his message in Sorani, he said: “In West Kurdistan, as the symbol of resistance, we have been with you and we will continue to support you.”
Bafel was not alone in his euphoria. The PKK’s chief honchos, Cemil Bayık and Murat Karayılan, sent separate letters to the organizer of the Hasakah meeting as representatives of the KCK, the PKK’s political wing spreading the ideology of confederalism among the Kurdish people in four countries. PKK terrorists used the opportunity to support their call to unite the nationals among all the Kurdish people.
The meeting was probably the U.S. response to Türkiye’s military preparations against the increased cross-the-border terrorist activities of the YPG. The American side does not want Türkiye’s extended operation to push the PKK terrorists 30 kilometers (19 miles) away from its border.
Probably the new commander McFarlane, after assuming the duty in September, might have wanted to know his “partners” better; however, this unholy meeting provided the stage for solidarity between the PKK and PUK forces.
Back to the real mission of the U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria: Despite the reduction of its number of troops and bases, the CJTF-OIR has the largest military presence in the history of Iraq and Syria. Even Russia, Syria’s only ally, never had that many soldiers in Syria! Russia is the only guarantor of the territorial integrity of Syria and under watchful Russian eyes, the U.S. is creating its own country in Syria, as designed 100 years ago by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to replace the disappearing Ottoman Empire.
After relinquishing command of the task force, the outgoing commander said that he worked with “our Kurdish and Syrian partners” hand in hand. Later, a Turkish journalist talked to an unnamed senior security official of the CJTF-OIR and said, “We mind our business, we don't care who says what.”
Yes, that is what I think too: The CJTF-OIR is working hand in glove with their partners, minding their business. The problem is the nature of the business they have in mind and whose hand they are holding while coordinating it.
