It's The Liberal Way

"We, under the Conservatives, shipped about 2,000 rifles over there [to Kurdish fighters in Syria]."
"We used to brag to the Americans and the British about how great Canada was to do business in."
"We were going to make them [order for 30,000 rifles and 150,000 pistols for the Peoples Protection Units [YPG] in Canada, but it's just not worth the risk."
"I'm not SNC-Lavalin."
Jeff Hussey, former president, NorthEastern Arms

Canadian special forces soldiers speak with Peshmerga fighters at an observation post, Feb. 20, 2017. Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press

Military weapons manufacturing is big business everywhere; all manufacturing nations work hard to increase their sales to other ordering nations to increase their own GDP. The manufacture of weapons of war is not quite the same in terms of civil odour as, for example, manufacturing bathroom tissues; most ordinary civilians think of the trade in weapons with no little amount of distaste. When they're produced and sold to nations at war or pursuing conflict in territorial disputes, it's hard to get beyond the reality that in so doing, the selling party is an accomplice to war, destruction and death.

When, on the other hand, weapons are transferred to another country or to a military entity that is engaged in self-defence, the issue is somewhat altered; becoming one nation aiding and assisting another one against the destructive belligerence of an adversary set on conquest. Canada had a fairly long-standing support arrangement with the Kurdish military in Syria and Iraq, supplying their militias not only with the sage strategic advice of Canadian military trainers, but giving them badly-needed weapons with which to defend themselves against Islamic State, under the former Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Over the past four years of government in Canada with Justin Trudeau as prime minister under the Liberal Party of Canada, there has been a pull-back; no more military trainers intervening on behalf of the Kurds, and a stop to the sale of weapons to erstwhile Kurdish allies. Long-promised military aid meant to be delivered to the Kurds, negotiated under the Harper government was set aside by the Trudeau government. No more training and equipping the Iraqi Peshmerga.

Then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets with Kurdish Peshmerga forces, May 2, 2015. Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

Canadian military aircraft gave the Peshmerga cover in Iraq, and private companies exported arms to the Peshmerga in 2015 and 2016. Until it all gradually dried up. The Kurds continued to fight against ISIL strongholds, but Canada's bombing campaign in Syria was abruptly halted, the special forces training Kurdish fighters in Erbil halted in 2018, military resources diverted toward Baghdad's central government.

According to Mr. Hussey, the Kurdish Regional Government placed orders for 18,000 additional rifles which the new Liberal government required they first have approval from Kurdistan and Iraq for. Despite which though both Erbil and Baghdad signed off, Ottawa did not. "They basically slow-played us", he said of the Canadian government choosing not to deny the request for export permits, but failing to approve them.

Aid promised by the Canadian government in 2016 failed to arrive as promised in Kurdistan, despite that Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan having ordered rifles and mortars, then leaving them in a warehouse in Montreal, failing to authorize their shipment to the Kurds. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey considers all Kurds his enemies, calling them 'terrorists', and as a member of NATO lobbied for the West to end military aid and weapons sales to Kurds.

While taking steps to halt new military exports to the Kurds in Iraq, the Trudeua government expanded sales to Turkey of military exports. Since the Turkish invasion of northeast Syria to drive out the Syrian Defense Forces, Canada followed the lead of censuring Western countries in suspending new export permits of weapons to Turkey, even as existing permits for weapons transfers would not be affected.

And then there is the issue of Canadian arms sales to Saudi Arabia. In 2018 alone, Canada sold 1.2 billion of military weapons to Saudi Arabia, engaged in a no-holds-barred conflict in Yemen, one of the world's poorest nations, roiled by sectarian violence and attempting to cope with a proxy war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

A Canadian LAV (light armoured vehicle   (Bill Graveland/The Canadian Press)

"This morning I sent a formal notice to the minister of foreign affairs [Chrystia Freeland] asking her to annul the export permits that have already been issued and that would allow the export of these LAVs that continue to be produced in London by General Dynamics Land Systems – Canada."
"And I have mentioned in that formal notice that if on Sept. 30 there is no positive answer, I will bring a case and ask courts to order the government to annul these export permits."
University of Montreal law professor Daniel Turp

Sanctions? Just Kidding Chum!

"Despite the agreement to halt the fighting, air and artillery attacks continue to target the positions of fighters, civilian settlements and the hospital [in Ras al-Ayn]."
"Turkey is violating the ceasefire agreement by continuing to attack the town since last night."
Mustafa Bali, chief spokesperson, northeastern Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)

"[D]espite the cease-fire deal, the Turks are still continuing airstrikes and ground offensive against Ras al Ain."
"Some civilians have been killed in Turkish strikes, as they were trying to save some injured [people] stuck inside the city."
Ilhan Hamed, Syrian Kurdish politician

"I never expected it to hold, as each side read it completely differently, and there’s no enforcement mechanism."
"We have very little to no leverage here. Honestly, I don’t know what to say other than that amidst this idiocy."
Faysal Itani, Syria expert, Atlantic Council, Washington

Deadly Turkish air strikes on Friday shattered an hours-old US-brokered deal to stop Ankara's military offensive against Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria

“As far as he [SDF commander, Mazloum Kobani] is concerned, the ceasefire is only where there’s active fighting and he totally rejects the idea of any kind of withdrawal, any removal of heavy weapons."
"So everyone seems to be talking a different language, which can only spell more trouble."
Charles Lister, Syria expert, Middle East Institute

None of which stops U.S. President Donald Trump from crowing that he has single-handedly, as a reflection of the great wisdom with which he is endowed, solved a long-standing problem in the Middle East. Throwing the loyal Kurds whose fighting mettle and sacrifices of over a thousand fighters in the conflict against Islamic State, assured the United States that the virulent threat of Islamist jihad reaching out to the United States no longer loomed as a concern.

A misapprehended belief on Trump's part to begin with, content to leave the tens of thousands of Islamic State prisoners for the Syrian Democratic Forces to be saddled with, guarding the venomous serpents from escape and the inevitable re-invigoration of their marauding, slaughtering forces on the local ethnic and religious minority populations along with outreach to foreign conscripts to jihad under the black-death banner of ISIL.

The brilliant tactical brain that modestly admitted that he had personally 'solved' the Islamic State threat to the world at large, appeared not to have envisaged the end result of allowing a Kurd-hating Erdogan free reign to cleanse the border of Syria of its stable Kurdish presence to create a "safe zone" for the Turkish president to dump millions of Syrian Sunni refugees. At one fell swoop extinguishing Syrian Kurds from the area, while forcibly settling Arab Syrians in their place as a buffer.

That wonderful agreement between an eastern and a western tyrant, saw one allowing the other to hold onto the territory his troops and allies had taken from Kurdish fighters, in the gullible pretence that Turkey had no intention, none whatever, of expanding its breach into Syrian territory. And since Recep Tayyip Erdogan had so obligingly agreed to presenting alongside Trump the facade of a withdrawal, the reward is twofold; Ankara retains plundered Syrian-Kurdish territory, and "massive" new sanctions will not be implemented.

Syrian rebel fighters in the border town of Tal Abyad.  Khalil Ashawi/Reuters

As shams go, the affair could not conceivably be any shabbier and transparent. While committing to a permanent ceasefire in the wake of a Kurdish retreat, no promise to withdraw the Turkey-partnering Free Syrian Army fighters, enabling them to continue enjoying their murderous conquest spree. Eliciting a comment from a Turkish official that thanks to the agreement, Turkey "got exactly what we wanted out of the meeting". 

The U.S. then felt free to agreeably convince the YPG forces to withdraw. "Good news", tweeted the world's premier twit. "This deal could never have been made three days ago. There needed to be some 'tough' love in order to get it done. Great for everybody. Proud of all!" According to U.S. Vice-President Pence, YPG leaders had "greatly welcomed", the deal. He also stated U.S. readiness to work with the YPG on an "orderly withdrawal" from the 32km zone, already underway on Thursday evening.

The YPG, on the other hand indicated no intention to surrender that territory.

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

Just spoke to President @RTErdogan of Turkey. He told me there was minor sniper and mortar fire that was quickly eliminated. He very much wants the ceasefire, or pause, to work. Likewise, the Kurds want it, and the ultimate solution, to happen. Too bad there wasn’t.....

54.9K

11:42 AM - Oct 18, 2019

Abandoning Syrian Kurds to Turkey's Deadly Invasion

"This unilateral action [Turkey invading Syria's northeastern border to establish a 'safe zone' through clearing the presence of Kurds from majority Kurdish enclaves between Syria and Turkey] risks undermining the stability of an already-fragile region, exacerbating the humanitarian situation and rolling back progress achieved by the Global Coalition Against Daesh, of which Turkey is a member."
"We call for the protection of civilians and on all parties to respect their obligations under international law, including unhindered access for humanitarian aid."
Department of Foreign Affairs, Canada

"Damascus needs the Kurds. The Kurds and Damascus have two things in common: enmity for Turkey and a desire not to see Sunni rebel militias ruling the northeast of Syria."
"But they don’t agree on anything when it comes to ruling northeast Syria."
"I think there will be real friction but I do think the Russians will be able to manage it. There is a deal to be made [between Russia, Syria and Turkey]."
Joshua Landis, head, Center for Middle East Studies, University of Oklahoma

Smoke rises from the Syrian border town of Tel Abyad, following an offensive by pro-Turkish forces. Photograph: Bülent Kılıç/AFP via Getty Images

 Turkey, as a member of the North American Treaty Alliance, has under the ruling Justice and Development Party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, increasingly challenged the values and loyalty to shared democratic principles of all other members of NATO. Erdogan's incendiary hatred for the Kurds living within Turkey and within the boundaries of Iran, Iraq and Syria is expressed by his description of their nationhood-aspiring collective as "terrorists".

It is well understood within NATO countries that Turkey gave support to Islamist Sunni rebels and militias including those of Islamic State, whom Erdogan regards as legitimate fighters, not terrorists.

As Erdogan unleashed his full military might against the towns and villages with largely Kurdish populations along the corridor within Syria contiguous with the border of Turkey, airstrikes on civilian targets have continued to claim the lives of civilians. The Syrian Sunni rebel groups reliant on Turkish support have been invited by Erdogan to join Turkish troops in battling the YPG and the Syrian Democratic Forces, responsible for the well-being of millions of Kurdish lives.

Which gave the Syrian rebels entry to the semi-autonomous Kurdish state in Syria's northeast, which the Kurdish military with U.S. air cover wrenched back from Islamic State terrorists to enable them to wreak their ISIS-style atrocities on Kurds, going so far as to video their barbaric slaughter of vulnerable victims, including a female Kurdish politician caught with her bodyguards while driving on a road the rebel militias were entering into Kurdish territory.

Germany and France along with several other NATO members, and now Canada, have declared an immediate halt to military weapons transfers and sales to Turkey as its army pushes into Kurdish territory. Everyone was caught off guard by U.S. President Donald J. Trump's sudden agreement in a telephone conversation with his Turkish counterpart to withdraw American support in northeast Syria and leave the Kurds to look after their own welfare, after they had spent years of sacrifice battling Islamic State not only for their own security but that of the U.S.

Canada had promised upgraded weaponry to be delivered to its Kurdish allies whom members of the Canadian military have been engaged in training. Those weapons were held up, placed in storage and remain there, never delivered to the courageous Kurds whose defensive weapons are no match for those of the technologically-advanced Turkish military nor its warplanes. Canada has a record of supplying significant levels of military goods to Ankara yearly, estimated at over $115 million in defence-related products in 2018 alone.

The military electronics and imaging goods Canada sold to Turkey is now being used in bombing the Kurdish enclaves. Turkey is a signer of the selective Automatic Firearms Country Control List where Canadian defence companies can sell tightly restricted weapons to the Kurdish military through export permits. The Kurds (the 4th largest ethnic group in the Middle East), have been allies of Canada, and Canada, like the U.S. and other NATO-aligned countries, have failed the Kurds, long deserving of establishing their own sovereign territory on their ancient ancestral land, allocated by France and Britain to Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey 100 years ago.

Long history aside Kurds have never achieved a permanent nation state Reuters

Canada's current minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, while condemning Turkey's invasion of Kurdish-majority semi autonomous northeastern Syria, also saw fit to laud Ankara for resettling Syrian refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war and the bombing rampages of Syria's Shiite President Bashar al-Assad who, like Turkey's Erdogan, described the Syrian Sunni protesters as "terrorists". As for the haven that Erdogan has given Syrian refugees, he has been attempting to persuade and to forcibly return them to Syria.

And this is where the 'safe zone' he is attempting to clear of Kurds comes in; Erdogan's intention is to move an estimated two million of the 3.2 million Syrian refugees out of Turkey to populate the towns and villages that hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been forced to flee under Turkish air bombing. With the decision of the European Union to halt any further sales of military goods to Turkey, Erdogan has responded by threatening to open the floodgates once again into Europe for Syrian refugees, jettisoning the agreement he has with the EU which has already absorbed millions of refugees.

Kurdish authorities in desperation had little option left to them to try to protect the vast numbers of Kurdish people at risk of annihilation through Erdogan's cleansing aspirations, but to call upon a lesser evil to come to their aid. Syria's regime was happy to comply, for in so doing, the Kurdish geography of northern Syria, representing almost a full one-third of territory wrested from Islamic State would thus fall back under Syria's authority. How the Kurdish authority could negotiate with the regime to respect their autonomy while challenging the Turkish incursion to save Kurdish lives will be a mystery.

Now, it is Russia's turn to intervene. Its alliance with Syria is of utmost importance to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin, able to take possession of a deep-sea port and air installations for Russia to reestablish hegemony in the region once again, with the departure of the United States started by the Obama regime and continued by that of Trump's White House. Syria's stability is Russia's first priority, a priority that will revolve around Mr. Putin persuading his Turkish ally to stand down from his intentions before many more lives are lost.

With the near-absence of the United States to mediate within the Middle East, the axis of power has been shifting steadily and perhaps irrevocably, and now there is Russia, allied with Iran, with Syria, and further afield with Turkey. Iran brings with it Qatar, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, as well as Syria and Hezbollah and Hamas. A coterie of terrorist-inclined Islamists to continue roiling the always-muddied waters of the violent Middle East.

Canada's Responsibilities for its Islamic State Citizens

"Those Canadian citizens who came here, they came to kill us and they came to kill our kids and to destroy our towns."
"And the moment that we arrested them and had them in our prisons or our camps, we were saving the Canadian people in Canada. We were preventing them from doing any terrorist attacks."
“So doing nothing towards those citizens, [Canada refusing to repatriate them to take them off Kurdish hands currently responsible for them], that’s really not respectful for the sacrifice that we have done."
"The Canadian citizens who are here, they are six men and 12 women and some kids so when we talk about Canada … it’s as big as 10 million metres squared. It’s a very big country compared to our country [Kurdistan]."
"I’m just surprised how a big country like Canada cannot take six or 12 citizens to their country."
"The situation is really getting worse. We have those women in our hands, and every day, they are taking care of the kids, how to make them ISIS, how to make them follow ISIS ideology."
Mustafa Bali, spokesman, Syrian Democratic Forces

"I think it was pretty clear from our experience in Al-Hawl that there’s a small subset of women who kind of run the show at the camp, who are very much kind of overpowering a lot of the other women in the camp, policing what they wear, policing what they can say, policing how they act."
Foreign fighter expert Prof. Amarnath Amarasingam, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario

"The reality is that these individuals are Canada’s problem, yesterday, today and tomorrow. If they show up at our consulates or embassies, they will be a very real problem."
"If they help to reconstitute the Islamic State, they will be an even bigger one. And if they conduct terrorist attacks and take more lives, that will be on us."
Former Canadian Security Intelligence Service analyst Jessica Davis

At Al-Hawl camp in northern Syria, children watch as women confront Kurdish guards in a confrontation that quickly turned violent. Stewart Bell

For the past six months and more, since the Islamic State geographic caliphate was fully dissolved, Al-Hawl (Hol) camp in Syrian Kurdistan has housed an estimated 70,000 ISIL family members, women and children. Among them are 40 Canadians. Along with other foreign-sourced women who were pleased and excited to become part of a bold new Islamist enterprise in the creation of a dominating caliphate whose geographic presence was meant to expand, just as its ideology continues to fester in the Middle East and beyond.

The Canadian government -- like most other Western governments whose citizens answered the call to jihad and fled to Turkey to enter Syria and join the Islamic State terrorist group -- has no intention to reclaim its citizens. This is the very same government that overturned the previous Conservative-led government which had legislated a revocation of citizenship to any Canadians of immigrant status who left the country to go abroad to fight in the name of terrorist jihad with Islamic State. Justin Trudeau made it clear that to him, "A Canadian is a Canadian" and he would have no part of a two-tier citizenship system.

So these are still Canadians, their citizenship is intact (unlike Britain which detached their citizens), but the Liberal government sees no need to exert itself to relieve the pressure on the Kurds whose ill fortune it has been not only to be forced to be the only reliable fighting force to counter the malevolent deadly threat of Islamic State, but to imprison and to guard them, at the cost of manpower and treasury, attempting to handle a poisonous situation no other country is willing to undertake, much less assist with.

Al-Hawl Camp,  Associated Press

As for those Canadian Islamic State members who have returned of their own volition to Canada, many are free to roam the streets of the country, (instead of being peremptorily imprisoned) while Canada's security and intelligence agents twist their hands, and bemoan the fact that unless they are able to amass hard evidence directly implicating these ISIL stalwarts, arresting and imprisoning, much less trying them for the crimes they are suspected to have been involved with, won't pass muster under Canadian law.

The Turkish military invasion of southeast Syria enabled by a brain-distracted Trump administration has had the effect of disabling the Kurdish military from its preoccupation with ferreting out ISIL sleeper cells, as they must now respond to the defence of their nation and their people. Moreover, the hundreds of Kurdish YPG fighters deployed as guards over the prison camps housing tens of thousands of ISIL members and those of their families have been hollowed out in numbers, responding to the emergency imposed by Turkish President Erdogan's ambition to annihilate the YPG 'terrorists' and establish a 'safe corridor' between Turkey and Syria.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's plan is to forcibly dump Syrian refugees, an estimated two million of the three-and-a-half million living in squalid refugee camps inside Turkey, fearful of returning to Syria where the Baathist regime's Alawite President Bashar al-Assad will resume barrel-and-chemical-bombing them once again. In forcing the Syrian Democratic Forces to withdraw their guards for the urgency of the battlefield against Turkish invasion, the fears now focus on Islamic State prisoners being freed from their prison custody, enabled to resume their reign of terror, as a result.

In the Al-Hawl prison camp where the ISIL women and children are incarcerated, a message from ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called for his supporters to free the women from what he called the "prisons of humiliation", pleasing the women no end. They had, in effect, the hard-core among them, been effectively running the camp along an Islamic State model, in defiance of the Kurdish guards, and even threatening them with knives and cudgels.

The Kurdish guards speak of the camp as a "ticking time bomb". A dismembered body, days ago, was discovered in a septic tank at Al-Hawl. Some time later the body of a 20-year-old women was found as well, with 16 fatal stab wounds, according to a camp official. Last month, a 14-year-old girl had been murdered, her penalty for refusing to wear a niqab. Guards have reportedly been stabbed by these ferociously Islamist-violent woman of Islamic State. Little wonder that the camp has been described as a "mini caliphate".

Somehow, the camp women have been able to take possession of cellphones, of knives and even, it was reported, guns. The 400 guards who were responsible for the camp prior to this week's redeployment, make no pretense that the women haven't taken command of the day-to-day operations of the camp. They have been making efforts to smuggle themselves out of the camp, efforts that increased after they were called on to "rise up" by Baghdadi.

Guards at Al-Hawl camp in northern Syria arrest women accused of gathering to whip a woman for violating their religious code. Stewart Bell