Syria: West must talk to PYD, not back Jihadists

By Harem Karem:

PYD checkpoint in Western Kurdistan

The growing desire to distribute even more killing machines, while deducting the bill from the victims’ resources, reached a new peak on Monday as the warmongers gathered in Brussels, aiming to lift the EU arms embargo on the pretext that the Syrian rebels are the ‘moderate opposition’ and this would instigate a resolution to the proxy-war in Syria.

Of course this profit-driven, inefficacious foreign policy isn’t new to us. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which lasted from 1979 to 1989, prompted the provision of military capabilities to the Mujahideen rebels throughout the decade of war. In fact, President Reagan addressed the Mujahideen rebels as ‘freedom fighters’ on numerous occasions. Former CIA director Robert Gates cited in his memoirs that military capability assistance to the Mujahideen rebels started as early as June 1979. While President Carter’s national security adviser admitted in an interview in 1998 that supporting Mujahideen rebels militarily began even before the Soviet invasion.

Consequently, such short-term, profit-driven, foreign policies provided the perfect ecosystem for fundamentalists to reorganise and form the Taliban regime, which ultimately caused the enormous misery and regional destabilisation that continues to this day.

On the other hand, during the uprising in Libya, similar irresponsible and ineffective polices were executed: provision of financial resources and military capabilities to the Jihadists via Qatar in order to bring down the Gaddafi regime and ‘divide and conquer’ the country’s resources might have been effective in a short-term but, in the long-term, the domestic conflict is spilling into Algeria and Mali – paving the way for another Jihadist-friendly ecosystem and causing yet more misery in North Africa.

Since the start of the Syrian conflict, regional warmongers have been constantly equipping the Jihadists in Syria. While the US and EU has not formally approved this, they have not condemned it either. Many groups of foreign Jihadists are thought to be currently fighting the Assad regime alongside the Syrians – committing some of the worst atrocities in modern times.

Arming such groups would only strengthen the Al Qaida ideology, leading to an even wider conflict beyond the Syrian borders. In addition, Syria’s substantial amount of chemical weapons could fall into their hands.

While labelling the Jihadists as ‘moderate opposition’, the EU and US hypocrites are refusing to meet with the Pro-Western Democratic Union Party (PYD) leaders due to its alleged links with the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK) Freedom Fighters.

Perhaps the hypocrite warmongers should instead arm themselves with an ounce of responsibility and meet with the PYD leaders, who control much of the oil-rich Western Kurdistan (North Syria), establish a safe haven there – similar to the 1991 safe haven in Southern Kurdistan (North Iraq) – and call for a ceasefire while resuming negotiations until an effective solution is found to this bloody conflict.

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