The seal on the left is the seal of the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF–OIR). The seal on the right is of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).According to Reason, the CJTF–OIR is embedded with the SDF (see below*).
But Ahmed al-Sharaa AKA Abu Mohammad al-Julani said that the Kurds were the brethren of Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). /s
If the Kurdish-Arab alliance unravels, the U.S. military may decide to directly back Arab tribes as a bulwark against Iran and the Islamic State, according to Nicholas Heras, who has advised the U.S.-led military coalition in Syria and is now senior director for strategy at the nonprofit New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington. In 2019, when former President Donald Trump wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, the Trump administration considered a strategy of letting the Kurdish forces fall to Turkey and buying off Arab tribes.
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The United States has, directly and indirectly, backed all sides of the fight. Turkey is a NATO ally. Some of the SNA [Syrian National Army] units now attacking Kobane had received weapons and training from the CIA and the U.S. military. (After the Trump administration cut off support, a U.S. official condemned these same factions as “thugs, bandits, and pirates that should be wiped off the face of the earth,” and the Biden administration imposed human rights sanctions.) Meanwhile, several hundred U.S. troops are embedded with the SDF.
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In his Sunday victory speech about the fall of the Assad government, President Joe Biden said that he wanted to support an “independent, sovereign—an independent—independent—I want to say it again—sovereign Syria.” But U.S. policy at the moment seems to be creating the opposite: aSyria chopped up [Balkanization] by foreign powers.
Rojava is also known as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said his nation won’t deploy Navy warships to the South China Sea in response to recent clashes with Beijing in disputed waters.
New laws specifying Manila’s claims have also angered smaller countries such as Malaysia, which could hamper unified resistance to China’s attempts at regional dominance.
Maritime clashes between the Philippines and China had been mostly over the Philippines’ military outpost, BRP (BRP—Barko ng Republika ng Pilipinas, which translates to “Ship of the Republic of the Philippines”—the ship prefix for the Philippines) Sierra Madre, in the Spratly Islands, which is disputed by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan (a province of China, as recognized by the United Nations’ Resolution No. 2758), and Vietnam. The BRP Sierra Madre was intentionally run aground on a reef near the Second Thomas Shoal in the disputed Spratly Islands, in 1997, so that the Philippines could stake their territorial claim.
For more than two and a half years, war has been the raison d’être of the Ukrainian state. The budget presented by Kyiv this week allocates more than 50% of the budget to the defence sector – to which must be added the cost of veterans – something that has been repeated since 2022. Maintaining the front, avoiding its collapse and ensuring that there is still enough support to continue fighting until the objectives are achieved is the priority of the government team, which has set aside practically all other obligations of the state, which today depends entirely on foreign subsidies that make it possible to pay salaries and pensions. One of the aspects that has completely disappeared under the cover of the unity demanded by the war is precisely domestic politics. The Russian invasion gave Zelensky’s team the opportunity to create for the president the image of a war leader, the representation of the nation, a savior capable of achieving what he sets out to do, the only person capable of rescuing the country from certain ruin.
Brian Berletic, November 29, 2024 Russia’s use of its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile in eastern Ukraine represents an unprecedented escalation in what began as a US proxy war against Russia in 2014.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has welcomed the nomination of Keith Kellogg for the position of Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia and expressed its readiness to cooperate.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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