The PKK terrorist organization has been fighting a secessionist war against the Turkish state for nearly four decades and nearly 50,000 people have lost their lives in the process. The United States and Ankara's European allies have placed the PKK on their lists of international terrorist organizations.
The PKK has used hit and run tactics and in recent years and limited their attacks to planting roadside bombs and detonating them as military vehicles pass by. At one point, the PKK also sent suicide bombers into Ankara and Istanbul and killed dozens of civilians, but later gave up the tactic. Between 2014 and 2015, the PKK, emboldened by the events in Syria, tried to instigate an uprising in some southeastern cities and towns that backfired and triggered a massive security operation that has crippled the separatists inside Turkey.So the PKK returned to its cowardly guerilla tactics of planting roadside bombs, trying to create the image that it was continuing its separatist campaign.
The PKK started concentrating on flexing its muscle in Iraq and Syria, which are riddled with local wars. The power vacuum left in the mess created in Iraq and Syria allowed the PKK to flourish in Sinjar province in northern Iraq near Mosul just east of the Syrian border. It also slipped into oil-rich Kirkuk. The PKK maintains a major base in the Qandil Mountains of northeastern Iraq.
In Syria, however, the PKK created the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People's Protection Units (YPG) forces, which courted the U.S. and became its fighting force in Syria with the pretense of fighting Daesh terrorists.
The U.S. trained and armed the YPG militants. They gave them heavy arms, provided them with excellent intelligence and provided them with logistics support. U.S. generals bragged that they had an excellent fighting force that could counter Daesh. But they either knew or did not care that they were actually training a terrorist horde that would eventually become a menace for Turkey.
Turkey offered to provide its capabilities to fight Daesh with its own assets in Syria and with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), but U.S. generals felt these forces could not do the job as effectively as the PKK terrorists' YPG affiliates.
When the Turkish military drove into Afrin with the help of the FSA to push the YPG out of the Afrin region, U.S. generals were still thinking Turkey would be bogged down in a mess in the swamp of Afrin, just as their forces were in Vietnam, and that this would be a disaster for Ankara.
Yet, the YPG has been no match for the Turkish military. The YPG rapidly lost its positions in Afrin much to the shock of their American masters who had trained them. So when it came to the real stuff, the YPG has proved to be a paper tiger. So much so for the brilliance of the U.S. generals who have failed all over the world. Turkey has dealt a heavy blow to the PKK as well its PYD and YPG affiliates, who are the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a name created by the U.S. to put a sugar coating on the YPG.
Incidentally, didn't the U.S. generals who have been acting as mentors of the YPG ever raise objections that the YPG forced children to become soldiers and perish in the war in northern Syria?
Now U.S. taxpayers have to ask their generals why they support terrorists knowing they are a menace to Turkey? Why did they use taxpayer money to help militants who were not up to the job? The U.S. generals who claim the YPG is a viable fighting force only have to look at Afrin to see how wrong they are.
