US air war on Islamic State creates 500% increase in Syrian refugees

According to this story at the Council on Foreign Relations website, there has been a five-fold increase in the number of refugees entering the EU from the Middle East compared to last year. Most of the refugees are Syrians.

So what is it these Syrians are fleeing? Assad's barrel bombs? Islamic State head-choppers? Or America's war on Islamic State in Syria?

What's changed in Syria in the past year? Assad's been dropping barrel bombs for four years. Islamic State has been lopping noggins for at least two. Why the sudden uptick in refugees?

The only significant change is that last August the US and a tiny consortium of half-hearted allies began bombing Syria. According to the US Department of Defense website, the US has bombed Syria about 2400 times since then. America's six coalition partners, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi, UAE, Canada, and Australia, have added a further 120 air strikes between them.

My question is this; could adding seven or eight US/coalition air strikes per day lead to a 500% increase in refugees fleeing the hell hole that is Syria? Even allowing for the fact that a USAF Paveway 500 pounder or a Hellfire missile is likely to cause a lot more carnage than a "barrel bomb," this seems a bit of a stretch.

So what else could account for the exponential rise in the number of Syrian refugees?

Could it be possible that our erstwhile NATO ally Turkey has been quietly opening the gates of the refugee camps and encouraging their inhabitants to seek greener pastures in the EU?

"Go west, young man! Take your wives and children too!"

And why might the wily Erdogan pursue such a strategy?

Here's why.



Not that long ago Assad and Erdogan were pals. Then that odious "uprising" came outta the blue, and Erdogan allowed his NATO overlords to convince him that if he just stabbed Assad in the back, the Syrian regime would crumble, and Erdogan would be a hero, not to mention the man of the day among his NATO peers.

That was four and a half years ago. Erdogan did his part. He stabbed Assad in the back.

Since then, pretty much everything has gone wrong. Instead of being heralded as a hero, Erdogan is stuck with billions of dollars in expenses for the millions of Syrian refugees that his misguided adventure has created.

Flooding Europe with Syrian refugees is Erdogan's way of paying back his NATO betters who have hung him out to dry.

Saudis to invest billions in training "good" Syrian rebels

Apparently the House of Saud aren't the sort to walk away from a bad bet.

Instead, they're gonna double down.

Fine!

The pouty Western powers don't like the AQ crew we've flooded Syria with, we'll flood the country with jihadists who have had the appropriate sensitivity training. In addition to teaching our recruits how to chant "death to America," we will henceforth teach them to sing "Jesus loves me."

That will show the world that our guys are not scary at all, and that even though they hate America they love Jesus.

That should do it!

Turkey vows to smash Kurdish resistance in Syria

See the last paragraph in this article from Hurriyet.

That's not the kind of talk you would have heard from Ankara back when Assad still had a firm grip on the levers of power.

The Kurdish resistance in Syria is determined to carve out Kurdish enclaves in the face of the al-Qaeda led civil war in Syria. In the convoluted arithmetic of the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" doctrine this seems to be making the Kurds friends of Assad.

Which is just one more indigestible nugget on Erdogan's plate. He has stuck his neck out way too far on behalf of his fairweather NATO compatriots in facilitating the Syrian "uprising." At the same time he continues to fight a rearguard action against the "secularist" forces that permeate the "deep state" in Turkey.

Erdogan is slowly but determinedly painting himself into a corner. He is too Islamist for the secularists, too secular for the Islamists, and none of his allies trust him.

What better time to pick a fight with the Kurds in Syria!

Kurdistan rising

One of the side stories that doesn't get enough attention as we watch the slow-motion disintegration of Syria is the role of the Kurdish population.

The Syrian uprising is portrayed in Western media as a straightforward battle between rebels on the one hand and the armed forces of the Assad regime on the other. The Turkish news site Huriyet  however carries almost daily reports of sustained fighting between the Syrian rebels and Kurdish militias.

The Kurds are not fighting for Assad; they are fighting to ensure that what they consider the traditional Kurdish areas of Syria will not become part of a post-Assad Sunni-dominated Islamic Republic.

Meanwhile, across the border in northern Iraq, the Kurds have achieved a state in all but name. They have their own president and their own "militia" although the news that they sent 125 tanks to reinforce a standoff with the Iraqi army nearby Kirkuk yesterday suggests that "militia" is perhaps too modest a word.

Between the increasing independence of the Kurds in Iraq and the imminent independence of those in Syria, there is the outline of a unified Kurdistan that will end at the border with Turkey.

But it won't end there for long.