#and have to do a walk of shame to the ra at 9 pm and say uhhh oops 👉👈 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Trump MUST BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE IMMEDIATELY, if for no other reason than dereliction of duty!!! He has put a target on military and is responsible for the #genocide of the Kurds other minority groups in the region. The only reason he withdrew our troops is because he wanted to change the news cycle off impeachment and rally his fucking base. SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.

U.S. forces say Turkey was deliberately ‘bracketing’ American troops with artillery fire in Syria

By Dan Lamothe | Published October 12 at 6:07 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 12, 2019 7:00 PM ET |

Turkish forces who launched multiple artillery rounds near a U.S. Special Operations outpost in northeastern Syria on Friday have known for months that Americans were there, according to four current and former U.S. officials, raising questions whether Turkey is trying to push American troops farther from the border.

The incident occurred on a hilltop base overlooking the town of Kobane as Turkey continues an operation launched Tuesday against Syrian Kurds, some of whom the United States has partnered with for years in its campaign against the Islamic State. The incursion has focused on an area 60 miles to the west of Kobane, but U.S. officials believe Turkey has long-term aspirations to control a much larger swath of Syria.

The rounds landed about 9 p.m. within a few hundred yards of the base on Mistenur Hill, U.S. officials said. Navy Capt. Brook DeWalt, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that the U.S. troops “came under artillery fire” but were unharmed and that there was an explosion.

“The U.S. demands that Turkey avoid actions that could result in immediate defensive action,” DeWalt said.

In a statement issued Friday, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said its troops had not fired on the Americans and were acting “in self-defense” after one of their border posts was attacked.

But the situation, first reported by Newsweek, was more serious than characterized Friday, several officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

One Army officer who has deployed to northeastern Syria and has knowledge of the situation said that multiple rounds of 155mm fire were launched from Turkey’s side of the border and that they had a “bracketing effect” in which shells landed on both sides of the U.S. outpost.

“That’s an area weapon,” the officer said, noting its explosive effects. “That’s not something we ever would have done to a partner force.”

The officer said that Turkey knew there were Americans on the hill and that it had to be deliberate. The service members vacated the outpost after the incident but returned on Saturday, according to a U.S. official and images circulating on social media.

“We had been there for months, and it is the most clearly defined position in that entire area,” the officer said.

Brett McGurk, a former special envoy for both the Obama and Trump administrations in the campaign against the Islamic State, raised concerns about the incident on Friday, saying on Twitter that the United States had declared the position to Turkey.

“This was not a mistake,” he said.

McGurk, who often collaborated with the U.S. military in Syria before resigning his position in December, emphasized the increasing risks to Americans throughout Syria in an email Saturday.

“Turkey wants us off the the entire border region to a depth of 30 kilometers,” he said. “Based on all the facts available, these were warning fires on a known location, not inadvertent rounds.”

Turkey launched its operation into Syria on Tuesday, two days after President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the issue in a phone call and the White House announced that the United States would not stand in Turkey’s way. Trump, explaining his decision, said Monday that he wants to end “endless wars" in the Middle East.

The move immediately raised concerns that the United States was abandoning Syrian Kurds, who have been the closest U.S. partner in counter-terrorism operations against the Islamic State. The Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protect Units, or YPG, has formed the backbone of U.S. efforts in northeastern Syria and collaborated with U.S. troops, but Turkey considers the group to be part of a Kurdish movement, the PKK, that it deems a terrorist organization.

Turkey said in its statement that it opened fire after Kurdish forces launched rounds at them but stopped when the United States warned that the rounds were too close. U.S. officials confirmed Saturday that the firing ended after U.S. forces reached out to the Turks, but some questioned whether the Kurdish were involved at all.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Friday that they would not abandon the Kurds but acknowledged that the Pentagon has withdrawn forces from Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn in response to Turkey’s incursion in between the two border towns.

Turkey appears to have aspirations to push the United States away from Kobane, as well, several officials said. The Army officer with knowledge of Syria said that Turkish forces previously have launched artillery over the border near U.S. forces.

Milley, speaking Friday at the Pentagon shortly before the incident outside Kobane, said the Turkish military “is fully aware, down to explicit grid coordinate detail" of the location of U.S. troops in Syria. He said senior U.S. military officials are coordinating with the Turks “to make sure that they know exactly where American forces are.”

Another U.S. defense official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that the Pentagon “obviously” told Turkey where U.S. troops are and “they certainly [went] closer than we would have liked” in the incident outside Kobane.

“Whether that’s intentional or reckless, either way it’s troubling,” the official said.

Liz Sly contributed to this report.

In Syria, U.S. pullout and Turkish assault sparks exodus to anywhere that feels safe

By Louisa Loveluck, Erin Cunningham and Asser Khattab | Published October 12 at 3:58 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 12, 2019 7:00 PM ET

IRBIL, Iraq — Long-awaited but still feared by Syria’s Kurds, Turkey’s assault on northeast Syria has sparked a terrified exodus. As the sound of shelling echoes through border towns, families are piling into cars — if they have them — or walking hours when they do not.

On Saturday, more than 100,000 Syrians were hiding out across woods, schools and packed apartments while Turkish-backed troops advanced on a key border town and threatened to seize a main route to safety.

The Turkish military operation, launched Wednesday, followed a U.S. decision to pull troops from a strip of northern Syria controlled by Syrian Kurd-led militias who led the fight against the Islamic State.

Neighboring Turkey views the largely Kurdish-controlled force as a terrorist group on its doorstep and a threat to its national security. But the multiethnic force, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, had worked alongside U.S. troops for years, suffering 12,000 combat casualties as they pushed Islamic State militants from towns and cities, taking and holding territory in the process.

Turkish forces advanced on the key border town of Ras al-Ayn on Saturday, trying to seal a first major advance in the campaign to carve out a Turkish-controlled zone. With hold of the town comes access to a major arterial road.

Turkey’s Defense Ministry said Ras al-Ayn had been “brought under control” following clashes with the SDF. The Kurdish-led force denied that troops had seized the town.

“Ras al-Ayn is resisting, and clashes are continuing,” said Mervan Qamishlo, an SDF spokesman.

Dozens of Syrian and Turkish civilians have been killed in the fighting. Mortar fire from Kurdish fighters has emptied Turkish border towns. A much heavier bombardment by the Turkish military has civilians streaming away for safer ground.

More than 100,000 people have fled along an 80-mile strip between Ras al-Ayn and Tel Abyad, to the west, in recent days, according to the United Nations.

Reached by phone, displaced civilians in Syria described an atmosphere of rising dread as the violence worsened and families camped out wherever they could find space.

“The sound of fighter jets is scaring the children; even the adults who are supposed to calm them down can’t hide their fear,” said Nowruz, a woman from a village near Ras al-Ayn, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used because of worry for her family’s security. “What people have been fearing for years [has] come true. We didn’t know what to do.”

In the city of Hasakah, about 50 miles southeast of Ras al-Ayn, Kurdish writer Nariman Evidke said she had fled Ras al-Ayn with nine members of her extended family. But one was missing: an uncle who was a fighter. He disappeared as mortars rained down around the town days earlier.

In daylight hours, she said she had combed the city’s hospitals and morgues, without success. At night, she huddled with her family and made what calls she could as cellphone networks faltered.

“I cannot describe what I have seen,” she said, voice shaking. “In the morgue, we saw a young man’s body with a severed leg on the bed next to him. In the hospital, there was an old man, wounded and just lost. He seemed to have no family.”

Turkey has said it intends to press 18 miles into Syrian territory — a goal that seems increasingly difficult as international alarm about the offensive escalates.

Virtually all of Turkey’s major allies have expressed fears that the Islamic State will reemerge as a result of the operation, as the Kurdish fighters are called away to the Turkish front. Those worries were brought into sharp relief Friday, when the SDF said five Islamic State detainees had escaped from a prison in eastern Syria.

The SDF forces control jails housing thousands of alleged Islamic State fighters, as well as several displacement camps where tens of thousands of civilians — some of them families of the militants — are penned in amid worsening conditions and rising anger.

American forces are still stationed farther south in Syria’s Kurdish-dominated region, and the U.S.-led coalition says it is continuing counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State. But U.S. and Kurdish officials already acknowledge in private that the violence has hampered that fight at a critical time.

Trapped in the middle, civilians interviewed by phone in the Syrian border zone said they felt betrayed by a U.S. pullout that now left them vulnerable to Turkish bombs and Islamic State attacks. They worry that sleeper cells are dotted across the region. On Friday, attackers proclaiming allegiance to the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a car bomb outside a usually packed restaurant in the Syrian city Qamishli. Reports on casualties were unclear.

“If they do not want to protect us, what are they doing here?” asked Nowruz, referring to U.S. forces. “Why are they still in Syria?”

Turkey views Syria’s Kurdish fighters as terrorists for their links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a decades-long battle for greater autonomy in Turkey.

Using warplanes and an allied Syrian ground force, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s offensive is advancing into Syria along roughly 80 miles of the shared border, between the Syrian towns of Tal Abyad in the west and Ras al-Ayn in the east, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Pentagon’s top general, said in a media briefing Friday.

The flat landscape in that zone favors Turkey’s conventional military in the battle, analysts said.

But for days, the Syrian Kurds have been able to carry out deadly strikes across the border — into Akcakale, across the border from Tal Abyad, and into Ceylanpinar, the Turkish town that borders Ras al-Ayn. Firefights have terrorized neighboring towns farther east as well, including Qamishli, in Syria, and the Turkish town of Nusaybin, half a mile away.

Doctors Without Borders, the medical charity, said a hospital it supported in Tal Abyad — the only public hospital in the immediate region — closed after the medical staff fled the town, along with their families. Kurdish authorities said another hospital, in Ras al-Ayn, was temporarily closed after it was struck by Turkish shelling.

As civilians moved to what safety they could find, reports Saturday suggested a buildup of hundreds along a border crossing into Iraq’s Kurdish region. Aid groups have scrambled to receive them: A camp has been prepared, and reception centers are ready at the border crossings.

“It is crucial that all actors ensure civilians can safely and voluntarily escape the violence in [northeast] Syria and seek protection in Iraq,” said Tom Peyre-Costa, a spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council. International funding to support any influx would be critical, Peyre-Costa said.

“We fear a spillover into Iraq could spark instability,” he said.

Cunningham reported from Istanbul and Khattab reported from Beirut. Mustafa Salim in Irbil, Kareem Fahim in Istanbul and Sarah Dadouch in Beirut contributed to this report.

Here’s what we know about the ISIS prisons controlled by the Syrian Kurds

By Miriam Berger | Posted October 12 at 11:49 AM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 12, 2019 7:00 PM ET

The Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led coalition of troops that has been backed by U.S. forces, has been guarding some 20 small prisons that hold 10,000 people accused of being members of the Islamic State. The Kurds also control and operate several camps that house 70,000 women and children accused of being family members of Islamic State fighters.

Now the Kurds say they may have to pull guards from these facilities to fight off Turkish troops crossing the border. If this were to happen, the United States has said it won’t intervene.

On Friday, SDF forces said several Syrian Islamic State prisoners escaped from a detention facility in Qamishli, in northeastern Syria, after Turkish forces bombed it. Kurdish forces are caught between protecting the prisons and camps and staving off Turkish soldiers at the border. Controlling prisoners has also become one of their last bargaining chips for trying to influence what they see as an increasingly fickle United States.

There’s much we don’t know about these prisons. The SDF remains secretive about many detention facilities, with foreign journalists, researchers and humanitarian aid workers allowed to access only a few. A few hold the most hardcore members. Many of the detention facilities are overcrowded “pop-up” prisons, converted schools or government offices where men are crammed in rooms without beds or mattresses and have little room to lie down.

“ISIS would be very interested” in learning more about these facilities, said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow in the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. An SDF spokesperson declined to comment.

So far, the State Department has said there are no or just a few prisons in the area that Turkey has moved into. But Turkish authorities have also said they want to build a buffer zone 30 kilometers deep into Syria, and about 15 percent of the 10,000 prisoners are in that zone, according to the State Department. Turkey has also signaled, and Kurdish forces fear, that the Turks will seize the opportunity and overrun the entire border area, in which there are more detention facilities.

The makeshift nature of many of these prisons is a concern. According to a recent report by Washington-based International Crisis Group, “The SDF’s Western Coalition partners have been legally unable to contribute more than limited funds to reinforce existing detention facilities and turn buildings such as schools into ‘pop-up prisons.’ ” That’s because the U.S. money that the SDF is receiving is congressionally mandated not to be used to build new structures, including better prisons.

“SDF partners have been concerned that ISIS could target these makeshift prisons for jailbreaks or that prisoners could stage riots that turn into mass escapes, a threat that will become all the more serious now that Turkey and its allies are entering northeastern Syria and the SDF will have to redirect its resources to confronting them,” the report continued.

Of the estimated 10,000 Islamic State members held, around 2,000 are foreign fighters representing over 40 countries. The foreign fighters are generally hardcore supporters of the extremist group, compared to many of the Iraqi and Syrians who joined for socio-economic rather than ideological reasons.

The United States has taken into custody and transferred to Iraq two high-profile detainees from Britain — Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh — who are accused of being part of the notorious “Beatles” who executed American hostages. U.S. officials are also weighing whether to take into custody or transfer another 40 individuals considered important Islamic State members.

The United States has so far remained mum about what to do if a prison break comes.

As The Washington Post’s Liz Sly and Missy Ryan reported, “U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the evolving U.S. strategy in Syria, said the Pentagon did not have enough forces to oversee the prisons if those facilities were left unguarded, nor a mandate to do so.”

In addition to the detention for facilities, there are camps holding the wives and children of suspected fighters, some of whom are themselves members and supporters of the organization.

Observers have said that the dismal Hol detention camp — holding an estimated 70,000 women and children — could be a particular risk, as it’s badly secured and houses some very radicalized and violent female detainees.

“The camp is surrounded by a flimsy fence and lacks even basic security precautions such as searchlights,” Sly and Ryan reported Tuesday. “In an interview last week, the SDF’s top commander, Gen. Mazloum Abdi, said Kurdish guards don’t have ’100 percent’ control of the camp.”

Some of the Kurdish prisons have tried to take a different approach, aiming “to rehabilitate and reintegrate many of the Islamic State fighters in their custody, in hopes of deterring a revival of the militant movement,” as Sly reported.

But these efforts at breaking the cycle of revenge take time and resources, something increasingly elusive as military operations escalate.

As Turkish forces advance in northeast Syria, Russia warns of Islamic State revival

By Kareem Fahim, Sarah Dadouch and Karen DeYoung | Published October 11 at 10:07 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 12, 2019 7:00 PM ET

AKCAKALE, Turkey — Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Friday that Turkey’s offensive in northeast Syria could bring about a revival of the Islamic State militant group, adding to the international chorus of alarm about the military operation launched this week.

“There are areas in northern Syria where [Islamic State members] are active militants,” Putin said in Turkmenistan, Russian news agencies reported. “Kurdish units used to keep an eye on those areas, but now that Turkish troops are entering the region, they may just flee away,” he added, referring to the Syrian Kurdish forces that are the target of Turkey’s offensive.

“I’m not sure that the Turkish army will be able to take control of the situation, and quickly,” Putin said.

The warning, an unusual public rebuke of Turkey’s government by Putin, underscored the spreading sense of dismay about the Turkish campaign into Syria.

Cross-border firefights, a rising death toll and a growing exodus of people from their homes over the past few days have reinforced worries that the operation might easily spiral out of control.

The Trump administration has been concerned that U.S. troops still stationed in Syria could get caught in the crossfire. On Friday evening, an explosion occurred near a U.S. military position outside a Syrian border town where U.S. troops remain, U.S. officials said.

Navy Capt. Brook Dewalt, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. troops came under artillery fire from a Turkish position near Kobane while they were “a few hundred meters” from the area they had intended to patrol with the Turks before Ankara shifted gears to launch a unilateral operation.

“The explosion occurred within a few hundred meters of a location outside the Security Mechanism zone and in an area known by the Turks to have U.S. forces present,” Dewalt said. “All U.S. troops are accounted for with no injuries.”

A few hours earlier, the Pentagon’s top general, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, said Turkish forces know where American troops are in Syria “down to the grid” on a map. He said U.S. troops retain the right to defend themselves as needed. He said that some U.S. forces in the region had been “repositioned” for force protection as Kurdish fighters, who were providing security for U.S. installations, headed north toward Turkey.

Turkey’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that its troops had not fired on the U.S. soldiers. A Turkish border post south of the Turkish town of Suruc had come under attack Friday from hills about a kilometer southwest of a U.S. observation post, and Turkish troops had fired back “in self-

defense,” the statement said.

“All precautions were taken prior to opening fire in order to prevent any harm to the U.S. base,” the statement said.

The Turks acknowledged they had stopped firing after “receiving information” from the United States. One U.S. estimate found that a shell landed within a few hundred yards of American troops.

More than two dozen civilians have been killed on both sides of the border, including at least 12 people in Syria and 17 in Turkey, officials said. About 100,000 people have fled the Turkish advance in northern Syria, the United Nations said on Friday. A staff member of a nongovernmental organization working with Save the Children in the area said families were leaving the border areas, where fighting is concentrated, and other, larger Syrian towns as a precautionary measure.

Turkish border towns battered by mortar fire from Syria have also been emptied.

The Kurdish-led force, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said on Friday that Islamic State detainees had escaped from a prison in the Syrian city of Qamishli after it was shelled by the Turkish military. A video released by the Kurds of what they said was the prison showed what appeared to be mortar shells landing in a courtyard and near a fountain. It also showed a group of people rushing through a door, though it was impossible to determine who those people were and whether they were fleeing or being escorted to safety.

Mervan Qamishlo, an SDF spokesman, said five Islamic State detainees had escaped as panicked guards fled the area. Turkey has denied claims that it is attacking Qamishli, saying it does not have military units in the area.

Turkey’s government has portrayed the offensive as a limited, careful operation aimed at clearing the border area of Kurdish fighters and establishing a “safe zone” in northeast Syria, where it says at least 1 million Syrian refugees residing in Turkey would be resettled. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to eliminate the threat from Islamic State militants and to send aid to areas affected by the violence once the operation is finished.

Turkish officials have said the military intends to advance up to 19 miles into Syria. It still had a considerable distance to go: By late Friday afternoon, as a column of Turkish tank carriers was seen lumbering toward the border town of Akcakale, Turkey, the Turks had advanced five to six miles into Syria, according to estimates by Turkish and U.S. officials.

“We’re not seeing any indication of . . . any planned stoppage,” Milley said Friday at a Pentagon news conference.

He said that he was in regular contact with his Turkish counterpart and that the U.S. military was closely monitoring the progress of the incursion. “Right now, the Turks have conducted airstrikes, with fixed-wing manned aircraft and with UAVs [drones] in both reconnaissance and strike mode. .They’ve conducted artillery strikes and some direct fire from tanks on the Turkish side,” he said.

“To our knowledge,” Turkish operations have been “relatively limited in terms of ground forces,” Milley said, with movement into Syria on both sides of the two main zones of attack along an 80-mile strip, bordered by the towns of Tal Abyad in the west and Ras al-Ayn in the east.

Turkish light infantry forces numbering in the hundreds and about 1,000 Turkish-backed Syrian rebel forces were “coming south on both sides of the two zones,” he said, and had reached about three to six miles inside Syria in the west and one to two miles in the east.

Milley said the United States was asking the SDF “to continue their partnership with the United States. Naturally, there is a considerable amount of anxiety” on the part of the Kurds, and their leadership “has given instructions to some forces to begin to move north.”

“We’re encouraging them not to overreact at this point, to tamp things down, to allow some sort of diplomatic resolution of all of this,” he said.

Milley and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said that counter-

Islamic State operations were continuing throughout eastern Turkey outside the zone where Turkey is operating in the north.

With fighting underway, both sides provided conflicting numbers of casualties. On Friday, the Turkish Defense Ministry said 342 “terrorists” — referring to Kurdish fighters — had been killed. The SDF said it had lost only 22 soldiers but claimed to have killed 262 Turkish soldiers and allied Syrian rebel fighters.

The Syrian National Army, an umbrella group for Turkish-backed Syrian rebels, said nine of its fighters had been killed. The Turkish Defense Ministry said two Turkish soldiers had been killed since the start of the operation.

An SDF statement said the two heavily populated northeastern towns of Amudah and Qamishli have suffered the brunt of the Turkish attack, with indiscriminate bombings that killed many civilians, but it did not specify a number.

In the southern Turkish town of Suruc, two civilians were killed Friday in a mortar attack launched from Syria, the state-run Anadolu Agency said. In Nusaybin, farther east, eight Turkish civilians were killed on Friday, the provincial governor said.

A ceremony was held Friday morning in the city of Sanliurfa to honor two of Turkey’s victims: Cihan Gunes, 31, and Muhammed Omar, who was 9 months old. They were killed in separate mortar attacks Thursday in Akcakale.

Gunes, who was employed in the municipal tax office in Sanliurfa but had gone to work in Akcakale for the day, was killed after a rocket fell in the courtyard of a government office, a police officer said. Omar, whose family is Syrian, was hit by shrapnel in front of his home.

The ceremony was packed with police officers and municipal workers. Their two wooden caskets, draped with Turkish flags, were displayed on stands covered in white tablecloths. A picture of Omar, wearing a white beanie, leaned against his coffin. “Muhammed Omar’s casket is small, but his heart is big,” an imam said during prayers.

A co-worker said Gunes had worked in the Sanliurfa tax office for about a year and a half and was engaged to be married. Another colleague, Halil Polat, called him “a good guy, a nice guy.”

They had spoken on Thursday. “I jokingly told him I’d say my prayers for him,” Polat said.

DeYoung reported from Washington. Dan Lamothe in Washington, Zeynep Karatas in Sanliurfa, Turkey, and Liz Sly in Beirut contributed to this report.

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