Kurds and FSA/Nusra are now enemies

[Bleipriester]

While the Syrian army advances, it should be noted that the Kurds ("Syrian Democratic Forces") did not wait after being blackmailed by the FSA and took the momentum. With Russian air strikes, they capted some ground from the terrorist groups.

Syrian army

Kurdish/Arabic/Christian militia

http://www.almasdarnews.com/article...ure-al-malkiyah-northern-aleppo-clashing-fsa/

Syrian Democratic Forces Capture Another Village from the FSA in Northern Aleppo as the Russians Bomb 'Azaz

 

[waltky]

Kurdistan border takes shape...

As Iraq's Kurds eye statehood, a border takes shape
Dec 5,`16 -- The sand berms and trenches that snake across northern Iraq stretch toward Syria, some accompanied by newly paved roads lit by street lamps and sprawling checkpoints decked with Kurdish flags. The fighters here insist it isn't the border of a newly independent state - but in the chaos of Iraq that could change.

Construction began in 2014, when this marked the front line between U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, known as the peshmerga, and the Islamic State group, which had swept across northern Iraq that summer, routing the army and threatening the Kurdish autonomous region. Since then, a more permanent boundary has taken shape as Kurdish aspirations for outright independence have grown. The frontier could mark the fault-line of a new conflict in Iraq once the extremists are defeated. A similar process is underway in Syria, where Syrian Kurdish forces have seized large swathes of land from IS. "It was our front line, now it's our border, and we will stay forever," said peshmerga commander and business magnate Sirwan Barzani. He's among a growing number of Kurdish leaders, including his uncle, the Kurdish region's President Massoud Barzani, who say that lands taken from IS will remain in Kurdish hands.

The Kurds have been at loggerheads with the Baghdad government over the so-called disputed territories - lands stretching across northern and eastern Iraq - since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution says their fate should be decided by a referendum, but such a vote has yet to be held, and as the Iraqi army collapsed in 2014, the Kurds moved in. They took control of the long-disputed northern city of Kirkuk that summer, ostensibly to protect it from IS. Since then, with the aid of U.S.-led airstrikes, the Kurds have taken territory equivalent to 50 percent of their recognized autonomous region. "After the defeat of IS, Sunnis will dispute the Kurdish claims, the Shiites in Baghdad will dispute both the Sunni claims and the Kurdish claims, and the possibility of conflict there is real," said Anwar Anaid, dean of social sciences at the University of Kurdistan Hewler. "What happens on the ground depends on the circumstances. There is a real Kurdish wish to go for independence."

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, right, stand at one of their positions over a sand barrier created by Kurdish forces to demarcate their border, at an open field in the Nineveh plain, northeast of Mosul, Iraq. The sand berms and trenches snake across northern Iraq all the way to Syria, alongside newly paved roads and sprawling checkpoints decked with Kurdish flags, in what increasingly resembles an international border. The boundary takes in lands claimed by the Kurds and the Baghdad government, and could ignite a new conflict once the Islamic State group is defeated.​

Peshmerga commander Aref Taymour said that once IS is driven from the northern city of Mosul, the Kurds will negotiate a new border with Baghdad. But he added that "lands that have been liberated by blood, we have no intention to give them back to the federal government." Another Kurdish official, Dishad Mawlod, was even more direct, describing the fortifications as the "future borders of Kurdistan." "We're not violating any international laws, nor are we occupying anyone's land," he said.

Barzani, the regional president's nephew, said the Kurds no longer trust the Iraqi army to defend the country, after it lost nearly a third of it to IS two and a half years ago. "Of course there will be another Daesh," he said, referring to IS by its Arabic acronym. "None of the internal Iraqi issues have been resolved," he added, saying the Kurds "will be ready." In the meantime, he hopes for talks on independence as early as next year. "It's a bad marriage, let's get a divorce," he said.

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