ISIS Thread

I agree they could be a help in the short term ... but backing off on sanctions and letting them get nukes might be too high of a price. I imagine Israel would not be thrilled either.
 
Forostar said:
Who knows there'll be more understanding as well: The Kurdish want to survive. The Turks can fight side by side with them against a common enemy.
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I'm afraid you're oversimplifying this. The Kurds have been notorious in the past for fighting amongst themselves whenever the opportunity arises. This case is no different.

  • Neither the Barzani government nor the Peshmerga have done anything to protect Yezidi civilians from the clutches of IS. Their goal is to defend their Kurdish state in Iraq and expand its borders. They are using the current chaos to create new facts to confront the world with after IS is defeated. Kirkuk, previously a multiethnical city under the control of the Baghdad government, is now under Kurdish control and non-Kurdish residents are discriminated against.
  • PKK are using this conflict to brush up on their PR and save Yezidi civilians who have been abandoned by the Iraqi Kurdish government. They however still have the very same goal of creating an independent Kurdish state by use of violence and terror against the Turkish state and population.
  • Many Muslim Kurds living in Syria, Turkey and Iraq view the Yezidis as a nuisance and won't weep for their disappearance.
  • Kurdish military and paramilitary organisations such as the Peshmerga and the PKK are not afraid of IS. They are partisans and they know that once they lose control of big cities, they just have to withdraw to the mountains where they are absolutely invincible. From there on, they will fight anybody, indiscriminate of whether they are IS or Turkish soldiers.
  • Nobody knows where arms currently sent to Kurdish resistance will end up once the conflict is over. It's the same approach the West had when they supported the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Those weapons were later used by the Taliban.
  • Barzani wants a Kurdish state under his dominance. Talabani is still out there and will take any chance to get back into power. The PKK wants a Kurdish state under their dominance. This is more important to them than fighting against IS, because they know that once shit hits the fan, the West will take care of it.
 
Sorry to be so blunt about it but ISIS is a threat so urgent that it needs to be dealt with swiftly despite all the risks. What more is needed to be convinced about that?
 
IS is an urgent threat, but the whole situation in that area is so delicate that things can go wrong easily, and a "let's go!" approach can make things worse. The Soviets in Afghanistan were considered to be the worst thing possible, and then America made the Taliban happen.
 
Forostar said:
Sorry to be so blunt about it but ISIS is a threat so urgent that it needs to be dealt with swiftly despite all the risks. What more is needed to be convinced about that?
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ISIS is not an urgent threat to Turkey, unless we screw up big time. PKK, however, is a constant threat that is getting stronger and stronger. Perun is right on the money about this matter.
 
If somebody needs an urgent heart surgery to save their life, you don't just frantically cut open his chest and do things by approximation because the organs will work together to save the person's life.
 
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ISIS not an urgent threat to Turkey? Turkey has been accused of harboring -- or at least helping -- ISIS militants by letting them traffic fighters, weapons and lucrative oil shipments over its borders. Do I really have to feel more pity with a country helping*** terrorists than with people outside their country fleeing and slaughtered in masses? I don't need to do some rocket science formula to make a choice.

Very nice of me indeed, to choose for the Kurds who are under threat right now. It's pure conscience.

Fecking hell. If the Turks want a chance to show they are a believable international ally, then this is the moment.

They're role is pivotal. They are needed. And it's probably going to happen sooner or later.

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***Hmm it's especially American media about Turkey having helped terrorists in the past, so I shouldn't take that for granted. Nonetheless, I think Turkey should help their fellow humans on the other side of the border.
 
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Alright.

Back in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. They tortured people, they turned once fertile lands into minefields that were a threat to everybody. They completely destroyed the land and drove millions of people away from their homes. The situation was terrible. Something had to be done about that, urgently.

The Americans sent arms to an indiscriminate array of warriors. The only criteria was that they fought the Soviets. These warriors were called the Mujaheddin. They consisted of many individual groups with zero things in common. They were of different ethnicities, different religions and different backgrounds altogether. Some actually used those arms to fight other Mujaheddin groups instead of the Soviets.

The Soviets were defeated and withdrew from Afghanistan. The Americans patted themselves on the back for a job well done and left the Mujaheddin to sort out what was going to happen next.

The Mujaheddin started fighting amongst themselves. Even more millions of people fled the country, and if there was anything left to be destroyed, it was destroyed now. The Mujaheddin warlords didn't care. And so a new group came into appearance: The Taliban. They recruited their ranks from the Afghan refugees, allied with some Mujaheddin warlords and conquered the country. The world was indifferent, because they thought it can't get worse than what happened under the Soviets. They were wrong, as we all now know.

The scenario in West Asia is essentially the same as it was in Afghanistan back then. IS takes the role of the Soviets, who implore a situation on the people that 'can't get worse'. There are warlike factions in the region who look beyond IS and have particularist agendas.

I'm not saying that IS shouldn't be stopped. I'm saying that whoever meddles with things must be damn fucking sure whom to ally with and look BEYOND IS. If Afghanistan, a country of so little geostrategic importance, brought such a mess to the world, imagine what's going to happen when shit hits the fan in important countries like Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

We must stop policies for the hour. We have to become aware of the long-term effect that things have.
 
Iran are too much of an unknown to help the US first hand. If you put a gun against their head and forced them to pick a side, they'd most likely go with America, but there's no guarantee that Iran would get involved in that regard anyhow.
 
The Flash said:
You don't give a shit what happens to my country, so we should just go and attack ISIS, right? Very nice of you.
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I understand your concern and it is indeed well placed, but I don't think Foro intended to come off that way. I'm not too cognizant with the PKK and issues in Turkey at the moment myself, and with the shit going down at the moment with ISIS, I think it's a natural reaction to fear the unknown spread of genocidal fanatics more at this moment in time. That's not me or Foro saying we don't care about your problems, we're simply more aware of a more omnipresent threat at this time.
 
I couldn't have said that better. Thank you kindly sir.

Perun, indeed important to look beyond IS. That's probably the most difficult aspect to it. I wish current action can be undertaken while doing that.
 
What I said was an intended overreaction. I know what Foro meant, but I was a bit mad that I couldn't get my point across.

Nothing wrong with fighting ISIS, I'll support it. But I won't support an all-out military operation, because we're on the fence and we might fall if something goes wrong. There's just more to it than just fighting the horrible guys here, because we're also dealing with a problem that might have destructive effects on us. That's all I'm saying. I do hope Perun's excellent example of what happened in Afghanistan helps put things into better perspective.

Forostar said:
ISIS not an urgent threat to Turkey? Turkey has been accused of harboring -- or at least helping -- ISIS militants by letting them traffic fighters, weapons and lucrative oil shipments over its borders. Do I really have to feel more pity with a country helping*** terrorists than with people outside their country fleeing and slaughtered in masses? I don't need to do some rocket science formula to make a choice.
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By the way, to inform you of that "helping terrorists" thing, Foro, they were compromises our incompetent government made in order to get back the 48 hostages I mentioned when I opened this thread. They recently returned to Turkey.
 
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Stuff like this is always tricky ... I am sure Turkey would send ISIS away in a second if they had one of those cool Superman mirror things and that is all there was to it, but internal issues most always trump external. Otherwise an organization like the UN would actually server a useful purpose.
 
As expected, Kurdish militant forces started to utter constant threats to Turkish people. A Kurdish militant group made a public announcement today saying that the "Metropols won't sleep tight. We'll bring hell to them and shed the fire of Kobane." Kobane is also known as Ayn-al Arab, currently massive battles are going on there between ISIS and PKK. PKK and Kurdish people who support them accuse Turkey of "not helping them enough". There are mass protests all over Southeast Turkey with Kurdish people committing acts of vandalism, leading to the deaths of 24 people so far. There was a curfew in place in 5 Turkish provinces for the past couple of days, lifted only today.

The country is heading to complete chaos and possibly civil war as day go by. And that was something to be expected. You CANNOT make deals with a terrorist organization in an "effort" to bring peace. It just doesn't work like that. Terrorist organizations are manipulative and chaos-indulging by their very nature and that represents itself no matter how you try to paint the scene.

Note: I've changed the thread title to "ISIS Thread", since this was originally a news thread that became the main discussion place of the events.
 
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