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The real threat to HTS is the USA. One of the primary reasons Assad fell is something like 40% of Syrian national funding came from oil revenue denied by US ba

The real threat to HTS is the USA. One of the primary reasons Assad fell is something like 40% of Syrian national funding came from oil revenue denied by US backed Kurdish separatists. The US will have to make the hard choice between HTS success or sacrificing Kurdish autonomy.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> US will have to make the hard choice between HTS success or sacrificing Kurdish autonomy Could an Iraq-style autonomous subnational government that pays some tax to Damascus not work? Does Syria fundamentally not work without those revenues? What if we took over the lease at Tartus?
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  All good questions and I would be lying if I said I knew. My assumption is that Syria does not work without the revenue, as evidenced by the fall of Assad and many other poor petrostates when the tap is cut off. Most states cant survive a 40% budget shortfall, let alone a fledgling one trying to bind together many armed factions. HTS & Ahmed al-Sharaa is reportedly not open to national partition [1], but the SDF is unwilling to integrate into the national military structure. It might work as an uncomfortable trupple if the US and HTS are willing to be bedfellows, but it is unclear if that is attractive or even viable for either. Everything we know about Ahmed al-Sharaa indicates they they should be a ideological enemy, and the only thing that hedges against this is that it would be really convenient if they wern't. Maybe this will be shown in time, but military trust building is measured in terms of years or decades, while payroll is due weekly. In general, I think Syrian Kurdistan is a fascinating example cognitive blindness, where the US public and media simply memory holes anything that happens there because creates too much cognitive dissonance. This was true when the US was fighting Russia for the oilfields, and is happening again now, as NATO allied Turkey is bombing Kobani cement factories to impede US base building. [2] https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-reportedly-setting-up-new-base-in-northern-syria https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-reportedly-setting-up-... https://hawarnews.com/en/renewed-bombing-by-turkish-occupation-warplanes-on-countryside-of-kobani-and-sirin https://hawarnews.com/en/renewed-bombing-by-turkish-occupati...
dralley 2y ago
So long as the Turkish and Kurdish nationalists are at odds, an independent Kurdish state is nonviable without foreign backing from the US to keep the Turks out. There's a decent chance that they'd be better off working with HTS to carve out some concessions about their position within a consolidated Syrian state than relying on continued foreign support, especially seeing how things went last "T" was in office.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> US will have to make the hard choice between HTS success or sacrificing Kurdish autonomy Could an Iraq-style autonomous subnational government that pays some tax to Damascus not work? Does Syria fundamentally not work without those revenues? What if we took over the lease at Tartus?

s1artibartfast 2y ago
All good questions and I would be lying if I said I knew. My assumption is that Syria does not work without the revenue, as evidenced by the fall of Assad and many other poor petrostates when the tap is cut off. Most states cant survive a 40% budget shortfall, let alone a fledgling one trying to bind together many armed factions. HTS & Ahmed al-Sharaa is reportedly not open to national partition [1], but the SDF is unwilling to integrate into the national military structure. It might work as an uncomfortable trupple if the US and HTS are willing to be bedfellows, but it is unclear if that is attractive or even viable for either. Everything we know about Ahmed al-Sharaa indicates they they should be a ideological enemy, and the only thing that hedges against this is that it would be really convenient if they wern't. Maybe this will be shown in time, but military trust building is measured in terms of years or decades, while payroll is due weekly. In general, I think Syrian Kurdistan is a fascinating example cognitive blindness, where the US public and media simply memory holes anything that happens there because creates too much cognitive dissonance. This was true when the US was fighting Russia for the oilfields, and is happening again now, as NATO allied Turkey is bombing Kobani cement factories to impede US base building. [2] https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-reportedly-setting-up-new-base-in-northern-syria https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-reportedly-setting-up-... https://hawarnews.com/en/renewed-bombing-by-turkish-occupation-warplanes-on-countryside-of-kobani-and-sirin https://hawarnews.com/en/renewed-bombing-by-turkish-occupati...

dralley 2y ago

So long as the Turkish and Kurdish nationalists are at odds, an independent Kurdish state is nonviable without foreign backing from the US to keep the Turks out. There's a decent chance that they'd be better off working with HTS to carve out some concessions about their position within a consolidated Syrian state than relying on continued foreign support, especially seeing how things went last "T" was in office.