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2/ Thread 2 is @NicholasAHeras’s response to @AliAlleile: he suggests 2 options: 1) pull out SDF/YPG & empower the tribes to be in charge, with Saudi & US support 2) absorb the tribes into a larger civilian structure. Either way, YPG isn’t in the picturehttps://twitter.com/nicholasaheras/status/1139916902812327936?s=21 …
Thread 3: from @UticaRisk, who accepts there’s a mess but says US didn’t make a mistake. It accepted the risk of disgruntled Sunni tribes as inevitable if they were to defeat ISIS, which meant relying on the YPG/Kurds.https://twitter.com/uticarisk/status/1139963545964240897?s=21 …
4/ Throwing in my own thread’s worth; I’m not sure the US did calculate that risk. They bought into the SDF fiction and many officials told me Arab-Kurd relations weren’t fraught like they are in Iraq.
And I’m not sure @NicholasAHeras’s two options work if it is true, as the @AliAlleile thread says, that the US is dealing with the wrong tribes, the tiny minority that accepts them and not the 90 percent who don’t. Very much echoes of Iraq circa 2005/6.
I think it's not very accurate the phrase things like this: "US strategy subordinated the Arabs to the Kurds". The people I speak to, from Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, don't talk about having a problem with the "Kurds" but with the politics of the PYD/SDF and how they govern
People don't just identify as members of some ethnic/religious group in Syria, I have, for example never heard any Sunni Arab tell me they are a "Sunni Arab". And it's well known that many Kurds disagree very strongly with the PYD's politics as well. Anyway, I suspect that...
@UticaRisk knows these things also very well, and Twitter just isn't a very good place to have a nuanced debate. Just hoping that the US doesn't base its policy in the region on this kind of thinking
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