#Manbij

[dougielombax]

Speaking of greenwashing!

Yeah I can guess where Azerbaijan gets it from.

And all this bullshit is in fear of the PKK and leftists.

These tactics are disturbingly familiar and sickening to see.

Yes I know asset denial is a thing but that doesn’t justify burning crops or razing forests!

And they’ve been doing the same in Syria.

Sickening shit.

[etccsy]

Operation Claw-Sword

Four armored vehicles flying the American flag, accompanied by combat units of the Syrian Democratic Forces, headed on December 2, 2022, to the vicinity of the Al-Malikiyah "Derik" area in northeastern Syria, with the aim of monitoring the Turkish-Syrian

By, Issam KhouryThe Czech-Slovak Institute of Oriental Studies Dec 08, 2022 Four armored vehicles flying the American flag, accompanied by combat units of the Syrian Democratic Forces, headed on December 2, 2022, to the vicinity of the Al-Malikiyah “Derik” area in northeastern Syria, with the aim of monitoring the Turkish-Syrian border, and a similar patrol went to monitor the Syrian-Iraqi…

[ahb-writes]

Book Review: ‘The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice‘

The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon My rating: 4 of 5 stars Repelling a multifront attack, abetted only by dwindling supplies, negligent regional allies, and limited external support (Kobani). Fording the turbulent Euphrates in the dead of night in anticipation of a mine-laden and sniper-beset shoreline (Manbij). Laying siege to a strategically valuable dam, the nation's largest, for two and a half months (Tabqa), situated fewer than thirty miles from ISIS's stronghold. And exhausting all manner of physical and mental strength to serve as the spearhead of regional militia seeking to pry open and overtake Raqqa. The fighters of the YPJ (women's protection units) exhibited remarkable fortitude and resilience, and their efforts proved pivotal in counterbalancing a world on fire. Lemmon's THE DAUGHTERS OF KOBANI is an informative and entertaining read that sits snugly in the middleground of illuminating nonfiction for policy novices or casual strategists. This isn't a book for grinding academics, and this isn't a book for skilled militarists. This book views a limited conflict, in a tucked away region of northern Syria, for the span of a few years, through the eyes and experiences of a handful of dedicated women, belonging to an ethnic minority (Kurds). Every injustice, travail, and disdain perpetuated by the thoughtlessness, violence, and corruption native to this conflict is etched into the hearts and minds of these individuals. Readers seeking more should hunt for supplemental analysis elsewhere. But for their efforts, the women who comprise the YPJ, the growing, specialized partition of the YPG (people's protection units), the battle is personal. These women defied and rebuked the threat of domestication to take up arms against terrorists both organized and not. Lemmon's journalism assiduously documents the YPJ's origin and the personalities that guide and ground its philosophy: Azeema, for example, is boisterous and confident, but also inscrutable and prudent ("We'll sleep when the fight is over," p. 73); Rojda's "quiet calmness" is purportedly mistaken as "passivity," but people "usually made that error only once" (p. 13); and Znarin is dutiful, but not to the patriarchic obligation through which she's lost everything, but to "the cause of women's rights and, as a consequence, Kurdish rights" (p. 23). THE DAUGHTERS OF KOBANI outlines the quest for self-governance (of the Kurdish people, before and during civil war), the quest for authenticity and viability (of extended militia, among enemies and allies old and new), and the quest for individual purpose (of the women whose lives and homes were ripped apart by varying components of black-flag terrorism). Remarkable, then, is Lemmon's interweaving of the fragmented capacity (or willingness) of U.S. policymakers with the difficult reality of on-the-ground, street-to-street combat. All the more so when the point of view for said exchanges pivots between sniper positions with broken radio signals or fiendish and frantic amphibious operations aboard borrowed watercraft. This book strikes a purposeful balance. For example, readers encounter the fantastic necessity of unearthing the historical truths, convenient or otherwise, about the philosophical influence of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) and its founder Abdullah Öcalan. The long-imprisoned Öcalan's progressive intellectualism seems radical and unlikely to western ears (e.g., gender equality, freedom of expression, full suffrage, economic fairness). But the dissident's tenets of human equality and of striking a balancing with the demands of ecological necessity are entirely rational and fundamental to others who's legislative and military options are all that remain when opposed and oppressed by autocrats and terrorists. Understandably, this approach may not suffice for readers hunting for more detail than personal stories can provide. Regional experts will demand more intricate maps of the infernally tense Manbij campaign, which saw waxing and waning success as Rojda and others crossed the Euphrates at night. Or perhaps demand a few more details on the Berthnahrin Women's Protection Forces, the all-female Assyrian militia. Other, book-savvy researchers will surely demand more context for the sprawling Syrian Civil War, proper, during which the book's events take place. Lemmon focuses on the military history and political corollaries associated with the YPG and YPJ, but spends little time on the influence and effectiveness of neighboring or oppositional parties. For example, the Democratic Union Party's Charter of the Social Contract, dated to January 2014, is a remarkable document. But the Charter has clearly been amended over the better part of a decade. Whether those changes are progressive or regressive, goes unstated. Altogether, THE DAUGHTERS OF KOBANI is accessible and edifying. The author's promise is to glimpse the peculiar and inspiring, and the book does well to deliver. The itinerant nature of international war reporting obliges a few gaps in the narrative, but for all intents and purposes, Lemmon composed a memorable story about principled people whose statelessness was only the beginning of their story.

Book Reviews || ahb writes on Good Reads

[navramanan]

You have to be a special type of diabolical to bomb your neighbouring country in the region that has been affected by the same earthquake that your citizens have been affected by who desperately need & dont receive enough of your help but anything is possible when you're the republic of turkey

[yamayuandadu]

Is Bat-Nikkal Ishtar?

For context for readers who might be unfamiliar with this theonym, Bat-Nikkal (also romanized Bath-Nikkal), literally “daughter of Nikkal”, is a deity from Harran who according to Doctrine of Addai, a Syriac Christian manuscript about the legendary deeds of st. Addai, was also worshiped in Edessa in his times (so in the first or second century CE; note the text itself only dates to the fourth or fifth century CE though). 

The passage is rather brief (“Behold, there are among you which worship Bat-Nikkal, like the inhabitants of Harran, your neighbours”) and provides no detailed theological information - it’s really just a blanket condemnation of some of the local cults. The other information provided doesn’t seem particularly outlandish - it is fairly plausible that people living in Edessa would indeed worship deities introduced from Harran and Manbij, and that Arabs settling in the city would’ve brought their own gods with them.

While as far as I am aware the name Bat-Nikkal is unique, a survey of my pdf archive indicates that researchers generally agree this is indeed a late reference to Ishtar, specifically in an astral aspect; this argument has most recently been made by Enrico Marcato (An Aramaic Incantation Bowl and the Fall of Hatra, p. 141).

To make sure this is plausible, I checked Aino Hätinen’s The Moon God Sin in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Times. Turns out there’s no explicit reference for her being a major deity in Harran in either the Neo-Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian period, and the author warns against a weird trend pioneered by JoAnn Scurlock - arguing that references to Ishtar as daughter of Sin are concerned with a nonexistent “Ishtar of Harran” instead of representing a tradition recognized all across Mesopotamia (Scurlock is generally an author to avoid when possible, her writing on Mesopotamian deities is subpar and her coverage of Greek religion is somehow even worse). However, Hätinen nonetheless notes that Ishtar was undeniably worshiped in nearby Sultantepe through both periods, and pretty clearly continues to appear in association with Sin in Greek, Roman and Islamic sources (p. 310-311). She suggests that she and Shamash might have been minor deities in Harran compared to their parents to explain the scarcity of references to them (p. 391).

While no source gives Ishtar an epithet which can be considered a direct predecessor of Bat-Nikkal, it’s perfectly in line with her standard genealogy. Making her a daughter of Sin and, at least implicitly, his wife is both the oldest (already documented in the Early Dynastic period; see Hätinen, p. 309) and most widespread (so widespread Hurrian and Hurro-Hittite sources make Shaushka and Pinikir children of the moon god too) tradition regarding her parentage, so its late survival is anything but unexpected.

To sum up: I think ultimately we can cautiously conclude that Bat-Nikkal was indeed a form of Ishtar worshiped in Harran in the early first millennium BCE.

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

Project2025 #CorpMedia #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #FeelTheBern

JinJiyanAzadi #BijiRojava Şehîd Namirin [UPDATES]

RELATED UPDATE: British volunteers preparing for 'bloodbath' fighting Isis in Raqqa as offensive on Syrian stronghold looms

RELATED UPDATE: YPJ: We dedicate the Raqqa victory to AP0 and all the women

RELATED UPDATE: Syria: SDF launches assault on ISIS remnants in Hajin

RELATED UPDATE: SDF fighters: We are developing new strategies against Turkish attacks

RELATED UPDATE: About the People’s Defense Units (YPG)

https://ypgrojava.org/about-us

RELATED UPDATE: Activists in Marseille will today celebrate 12th anniversary of the Rojava Revolution

RELATED UPDATE: "Resistance flag will remain fluttering under the slogan of Jin Jiyan Azadî"

RELATED UPDATE: Kurdish Detainee from "Woman, Life, Freedom" Movement Re-Arrested by Iranian Security Forces in Mahabad

RELATED UPDATE: Kongra Star on Qamishlo attack: No one can defeat the will of free women

[sharktea4-0]

Atargatis of Ancient Syria. Potentially the first mermaid. She was primarily a fertility goddess, and also the ancestor of the royal line of Hierapolis (modern Manbij). She was transformed into half a fish after she drowned herself in a river.

Day 1 of a Global Exploration of MerMay.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.12 (after 1900)

1914 – World War I: The United Kingdom and the British Empire declare war on Austria-Hungary. 1914 – World War I: The Battle of Halen a.k.a. Battle of the Silver Helmets a clash between large Belgian and German cavalry formations at Halen, Belgium. 1944 – Waffen-SS troops massacre 560 people in Sant'Anna di Stazzema. 1944 – Nazi German troops end the week-long Wola massacre, during which time at least 40,000 people are killed indiscriminately or in mass executions. 1944 – Alençon is liberated by General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, the first city in France to be liberated from the Nazis by French forces. 1948 – Babrra massacre: About 600 unarmed members of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement are shot dead on the orders of the Chief Minister of the North-West Frontier Province, Abdul Qayyum Khan Kashmiri, on Babrra ground in the Hashtnagar region of Charsadda District, North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Pakistan. 1950 – Korean War: Bloody Gulch massacre: Seventy-five American POWs are massacred by the North Korean Army. 1952 – The Night of the Murdered Poets: Thirteen prominent Jewish intellectuals are murdered in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union. 1953 – First thermonuclear bomb test: The Soviet atomic bomb project continues with the detonation of "RDS-6s" (Joe 4) using a "layered" scheme. 1953 – The 7.2 Ms  Ionian earthquake shakes the southern Ionian Islands with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). Between 445 and 800 people are killed. 1960 – Echo 1A, NASA's first successful communications satellite, is launched.x 1964 – South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games due to the country's racist policies. 1969 – Violence erupts after the Apprentice Boys of Derry march in Derry, Northern Ireland, resulting in a three-day communal riot known as the Battle of the Bogside. 1976 – Between 1,000 and 3,500 Palestinians are killed in the Tel al-Zaatar massacre, one of the bloodiest events of the Lebanese Civil War. 1977 – The first free flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise. 1977 – The Sri Lanka Riots: Targeting the minority Sri Lankan Tamils, begin, less than a month after the United National Party came to power. Over 300 Tamils are killed. 1981 – The IBM Personal Computer is released. 1985 – Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes into Osutaka ridge in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, killing 520, to become the worst single-plane air disaster. 1990 – Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton found to date, is discovered by Sue Hendrickson in South Dakota. 1992 – Canada, Mexico and the United States announce completion of negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). 1994 – Major League Baseball players go on strike, eventually forcing the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. 2000 – The Russian Navy submarine Kursk explodes and sinks in the Barents Sea during a military exercise, killing her entire 118-man crew. 2015 – At least two massive explosions kill 173 people and injure nearly 800 more in Tianjin, China. 2016 – Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) capture the city of Manbij from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). 2018 – Thirty-nine civilians, including a dozen children, are killed in an explosion at a weapons depot in Sarmada, Syria. 2021 – Six people, five victims and the perpetrator are killed in Keyham, Plymouth in the worst mass shooting in the UK since 2010.

[honeysuckle-potion]

Atargatis was the chief goddess of northern Syria in Classical antiquity.  Primarily she was a fertility goddess, but she was also responsible for their protection and well-being as the baalat ("mistress") of her city and people baalat ("mistress") of her city and people she was also responsible for their protection and well-being. Her chief sanctuary was at Hierapolis, modern Manbij,  northeast of Aleppo, Syria.

According to a third-century Syriac source, "In Syria and in Urhâi [Edessa] the men used to castrate themselves in honour of Taratha.

She is sometimes described as a mermaid-goddess, due to identification of her with a fish-bodied goddess at Ashkelon. She was the first ‘’mermaid’’.  Atargatis fell in love with a mortal shepherd named Adad and they had a daughter called Semiramis, who later became the queen of Assyria.  Atargatis caused the death of her husband by accident and so drowned herself in the lake due to guilt.

She transformed, still beautiful in death, into a woman with the tail of a fish, she had now become a mermaid. Atargatis was worshipped in a temple built for her in Israel, it was said the temple was made out of gold and diamonds with a pool filled with living fish.  Worshippers had to swim through the pool of fish to reach the altar. Both fish and doves were sacred to Atargatis. Doves symbolised love and fish were a symbol of fertility and bounty.

-Atargatis by Artificium

[photos-mdx]

An M-ATV used by U.S. troops near Manbij, Syria, July 2018

[dougielombax]

Just leaving this here.

Feel free to reblog.

[nando161mando]

🇸🇾 #Syria - #Rojava: Turkish-backed mercenaries attempted to infiltrate a village in northern Manbij last night, with the Turkish military supporting the operation. The SDF’s Manbij Military Council was able to repel the attack, reportedly inflicting heavy casualties on the mercenaries. Turkish military convoys have now been seen heading in the direction of the Manbij frontlines.

[icephas]

The Tragic Story of a Green Beret Losing His Wife in the 2019 Manbij Bombing

[nationalpathfinderassociation]

30 March 2018: MSG Jonathan Dunbar was KIA from an IED while on a combat mission near Manbij, Syria. He was serving in Delta Force at the time. He was 36 years old. His awards: Bronze Star Medal(3), Purple Heart Medal, Army Commendation Medal(4), Army Achievement Medal(6), Afghan Campaign Medal with two stars, Iraq Campaign Medal with 2 stars, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, GWOT Expeditionary & Service Medals, NATO Medal, Ranger Tab, Combat Infantry Badge, Parachute Badge,PATHFINDER Badge, Military Freefall Badge, Expert Rifle Badge, German Jump Wings

[yousef-al-amin]

Operation Euphrates Shield expands

Evidence has emerged that pro-Turkish armed forces in the area of the Euphrates Shield military operation are planning to expand the geography of hostilities and reach a bridge near the village of Kara Kozak. If they manage to do this, then the supply lines of the Kurdish armed forces in northern Syria will be cut, and the Kurdish group on the western bank of the Euphrates will be surrounded. Previously, pro-Turkish forces had already captured bridges across the Euphrates near the village of Jarabulus, and now the bridge near the village of Kara Kozak is the only opportunity to supply Kurdish armed forces and civilians near the city of Manbij with the forces of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. If the pro-Turkish armed forces are able to implement their plan, the Kurds who find themselves on the western bank of the Euphrates will have no other opportunity to survive except to reach an agreement with the legitimate Syrian government in order to arrange supplies of food, water and medicine from territories controlled by the legitimate to the Syrian government. Given the insistence with which the Turkish government intends to implement its plan, it is better for the Kurdish troops on the west bank of the Euphrates to establish a dialogue with the Assad government now.

[amirblogerov]

Russia is restoring peaceful life north of Aleppo

After the Manbij and Tell Rifaat districts came under the control of pro-Turkish gangs, the humanitarian situation in them constantly deteriorated. Ankara, being uninterested in the local population's support for its actions, paid absolutely no attention to the standard of living of Syrian citizens in these areas.

Moreover, Turkey sought to make life in the territories under its control simply impossible, so that Syrian citizens would leave it themselves. Afterwards, Ankara intended to populate the abandoned areas with its own citizens and families of controlled militants.

Russia's policy towards citizens of the Syrian Arab Republic is completely diametrical. The Center for the Reconciliation of Warring Parties provides assistance to everyone, regardless of nationality, ethnic origin and religion.

In areas destroyed by pro-Turkish militants north of Aleppo, in particular Manbij and Tell Rifaat, Russian troops are primarily restoring water supplies. Now the main efforts of the Center’s staff for the reconciliation of warring parties are aimed at this.

At the same time, Russia is providing humanitarian assistance in the form of food packages and qualified medical services to the Syrian citizens whom Ankara is trying to get rid of from the territories under its control. This is being done on a systematic basis, despite the proximity of pro-Turkish armed forces and regular provocations.