Rail workers say deal won’t resolve quality-of-life concerns
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

DECEMBER 3, 2022

Rail strike threat recedes as Congress prepares to impose unpopular contract on unions. Shipping containers and rail cars sit in a Union Pacific Intermodal Terminal rail yard on November 21, in Los Angeles. Mandatory Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — When BNSF railroad conductor Justin Schaaf needed to take time off from work this summer, he had to make a choice: go to the dentist to get a cavity in his molar filled or attend a party for his son’s 7th birthday.

He chose his son.

“Ultimately I decided to take the day off for my kid’s birthday party,” Schaaf said. “Then when I am finally able to get into the dentist four, five, six months later, the tooth is too bad to repair at that point, so I have to get the tooth pulled out.”

Those are the kind of tradeoffs that railroad workers worry they might still have to make after Congress voted this week to impose a contract on them to avoid the economic disaster that would accompany a railroad strike. Workers and their unions say the deal didn’t do enough to address their quality-of-life concerns and didn’t add any sick days.

President Joe Biden signed a bill Friday to block a strike and force workers to accept the agreements union leaders made in September, even though four of the 12 unions — which include a majority of rail workers — voted to reject them. Business groups had been urging Biden to intervene for weeks.

For Schaaf, he’s not sure if the new contract will make it any easier to find another day off sometime next year to pay to have a fake tooth implanted in his mouth.

“If I had the option of taking a sick day … I would have never been in that situation,” he said from his home in Glasgow, Montana.

Schaaf said it was discouraging, but not surprising, to see Congress step in to settle the contract dispute ahead of next Friday’s strike deadline. Lawmakers have made a habit of stepping in to impose contracts when railroads and their unions reach the brink of a strike — 18 times since the passage of the 1926 Railway Labor Act, by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s count — because of the potential economic consequences.

Many businesses rely on railroads to deliver raw materials and ship their final products, so a rail strike would send a catastrophic ripple through the economy. Passenger railroads also would be disrupted because so many use tracks owned by the freight railroads.

The five-year deals that rail workers wound up with include 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses. But concerns about the lack of paid sick time and the demanding schedules that unions say make it hard for workers to ever take a day off dominated the contract talks. The rail unions say they weren’t able to get more concessions out of the railroads because the big companies knew Congress would intervene.

The railroads refused to add paid sick days to the deal at the end of three years of negotiations because they didn’t want to pay much more than a special board of arbitrators appointed by Biden recommended this summer. Plus, the railroads say the unions have agreed over the years to forego paid sick leave in favor of higher wages and strong short-term disability benefits that kick in after as little as four days.

The railroads agreed to offer three unpaid days for engineers and conductors to tend to medical needs as long as they are scheduled at least 30 days in advance. They also promised to negotiate further to improve the way regular days off are scheduled to help workers better know when they will be off.

But to retired engineer Jeff Kurtz, there is still a lot of work to be done to restore the quality of life he enjoyed before he left the railroad eight years ago. He doubts rail workers today would be able to get time off for key family events on short notice the way he did when he found out his son was getting his doctorate right before Christmas in 2009.

“You hear when you hire out on the railroad you’re going to miss some things. But you’re not supposed to miss everything,” said Kurtz, who remains active even in retirement with the Railroad Workers United coalition that includes workers from every union. “You shouldn’t miss your kids growing up. You shouldn’t miss the seminal moments in your family’s life.”

Over the past six years, the major railroads have eliminated nearly one-third of their jobs as they overhauled operations, making the work more demanding for those who remain.

The unions say they won’t stop fighting for more paid sick leave, but now they may have to wait for negotiations on the next contract beginning in 2025.

The head of the Association of American Railroads trade group, Ian Jefferies, acknowledged “there is more to be done to further address our employees’ work-life balance concerns” but he said the compromise deals that Congress voted to impose should help make schedules more predictable while delivering the biggest raises rail workers have seen in more than four decades.

1933

Why paid sick leave 

became a big issue in 

rail labor talks

Unions say rail carriers cut too much in the name of efficiency, 

leaving them with too few workers to cover for absent colleagues.

By Julian Mark

December 3, 2022

With an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote on Thursday, the Senate forced itself between freight railroad companies and their unions — an action that averted a national rail strike and potential economic catastrophe, but which failed to provide workers with a component they aggressively sought: paid sick leave.

On Wednesday, the House approved two versions of a deal meant to stave off a Dec. 9 strike by rail workers. One echoed the recommendations that union leaders and the White House agreed to in September. The other, pushed by liberal Democrats, included seven paid sick days for rail workers.

The Senate ultimately approved the option without the added paid sick leave, and President Biden signed it. The terms mirror those in the agreement the White House brokered in September, including a roughly 24 percent pay increase by 2024, more flexibility to take time off for doctor’s appointments, and a paid personal day.

After forcing rail deal, Biden works to smooth over labor relations

So why was paid sick leave such a sticking point — and why didn’t workers get it?

Rail carriers have said they need to maintain their attendance policies to ensure adequate staffing. Some industry experts and union officials say the companies no longer have enough workers to cover for absent colleagues because of the switch in recent years to “precision scheduled railroading,” a system designed to improve efficiency and cut costs. Instead of running trains that carried just one type of product — which left trains waiting for long stretches before they had enough load to depart — rail companies now have more trains carrying a mix of goods on a set schedule. Fixed scheduling allows them to use the same crew more often than they could have under the old system.

President Biden on Dec. 1 defended the deal that he negotiated to avoid a rail worker strike and said he would continue to push for paid leave for all workers. (Video: The Washington Post)

From November 2018 to December 2020, the rail industry lost 40,000 jobs, according to a report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bureau described precision scheduling as possibly the “most widely accredited reason for the decrease in rail transportation employment,” although the pandemic, uncertainties in trade and a decline U.S. coal usage also hurt the industry.

Wall Street at the time cheered the transition to a new system. In 2019, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific stocks rose 30 percent, and shares of Kansas City Southern jumped more than 60 percent.

But the labor force cuts “led to this kind of crisis of work-life balance,” said Todd Vachon, a Rutgers University labor professor who sees short staffing as “a model of maximizing profits to have high returns for shareholders.”

And unions say precision scheduled railroading leaves little room to give workers the benefits they need.

“There is a direct connection to these business decisions that the railroads have made — either PSR by itself or just these attendance policies that’s an offshoot of PSR — forcing people to work more than any average American worker wants to do or can do,” said Dennis Pierce, the national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, an influential union that narrowly voted to ratify the White House proposal.

Brendan Branon, chairman of the National Railway Labor Conference, who represented the industry at the bargaining table, rejected the idea that paid sick leave represented a sticking point in labor talks. “All rail employees have some form of paid sick leave,” he said in a statement to The Post.

A spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads, Jessica Kahanek, pointed to a list that includes several leave options, such as a system in which sick employees can temporarily remove themselves from a roster of available workers, as well as time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act. And all employees have a long-term sickness benefit that can pay a portion of the worker’s income for up to 26 weeks, the rail association said.

But time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act is unpaid, according to the Department of Labor. And the system that allows employees to remove themselves from availability is unpaid, union lawyer Richard Edelman said. Workers also could be disciplined for using it, he added.

Moreover, the long-term sickness benefit is meant for more serious illnesses or injuries, he said, and would not help employees who get the flu, for example, or need emergency dental surgery. “All of those things that are one- or two-day things — railroad employees don’t have that,” Edelman said.

Tony Hatch, a longtime industry analyst, said the financial community wants a more constructive relationship between railroad management and their workers.

“We don’t want to see semi-slave labor here,” he said. “We want to see a happy workforce because the railroads have terrific opportunity to recapture … market share.”

The negative effects of scheduled railroading and related staff reductions are a “boogeyman” that has been overblown, Hatch said. But he said that the system has made the industry more fragile and needs more flexibility to deal with emergency situations such as the coronavirus pandemic and sick workers.

“One of the things that you need to run a scheduled railroad is crew availability,” Hatch said. “And if people are quitting, you need to do something about that.”

The rail labor conference’s Brannon said workers and companies must keep talking.

“While the bargaining round has concluded, conversations about bringing greater predictability and work-life balance for railroaders will continue,” he said.

Vachon, the labor professor, said that nothing should prevent rail companies from providing their employees with paid sick leave. He said it comes down to paying for more workers and maintaining a rotating pool of people to cover shifts while others are out.

“There’s nothing inherent about the railroad industry to make paid sick leave unsustainable,” he said, adding that rail workers in Europe have the benefit. “This idea that it’s not possible is really just a cop-out. … The companies are deciding how to spend their resources, and they’re spending the money to buy back their stocks and give dividends to shareholders rather than investing in their workers.

The unavoidable crash

Dec 03,2022 - 

NEW YORK  —  The world economy is lurching towards an unprecedented confluence of economic, financial, and debt crises, following the explosion of deficits, borrowing, and leverage in recent decades.

In the private sector, the mountain of debt includes that of households (such as mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans, personal loans), businesses and corporations (bank loans, bond debt, and private debt), and the financial sector (liabilities of bank and nonbank institutions). In the public sector, it includes central, provincial, and local government bonds and other formal liabilities, as well as implicit debts such as unfunded liabilities from pay-as-you-go pension schemes and healthcare systems, all of which will continue to grow as societies age.

Just looking at explicit debts, the figures are staggering. Globally, total private, and public-sector debt as a share of GDP rose from 200 per cent in 1999 to 350 per cent in 2021. The ratio is now 420 per cent across advanced economies and 330 per cent in China. In the United States, it is 420 per cent, which is higher than during the Great Depression and after World War II.

Of course, debt can boost economic activity if borrowers invest in new capital (machinery, homes, public infrastructure) that yields returns higher than the cost of borrowing. But much borrowing goes simply to finance consumption spending above one’s income on a persistent basis  —  and that is a recipe for bankruptcy. Moreover, investments in “capital” can also be risky, whether the borrower is a household buying a home at an artificially inflated price, a corporation seeking to expand too quickly regardless of returns, or a government that is spending the money on “white elephants” (extravagant but useless infrastructure projects).

Such over-borrowing has been going on for decades, for various reasons. The democratisation of finance has allowed income-strapped households to finance consumption with debt. Centre-right governments have persistently cut taxes without also cutting spending, while centre-left governments have spent generously on social programs that aren’t fully funded with sufficient higher taxes. And tax policies that favor debt over equity, abetted by central banks’ ultra-loose monetary and credit policies, has fueled a spike in borrowing in both the private and public sectors.

Years of quantitative easing (QE) and credit easing kept borrowing costs near zero, and in some cases even negative (as in Europe and Japan until recently). By 2020, negative-yielding dollar-equivalent public debt was $17 trillion, and in some Nordic countries, even mortgages had negative nominal interest rates.

The explosion of unsustainable debt ratios implied that many borrowers, households, corporations, banks, shadow banks, governments and even entire countries, were insolvent “zombies” that were being propped up by low interest rates (which kept their debt-servicing costs manageable). During both the 2008 global financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis, many insolvent agents that would have gone bankrupt were rescued by zero- or negative-interest-rate policies, QE, and outright fiscal bailouts.

But now, inflation, fed by the same ultra-loose fiscal, monetary and credit policies, has ended this financial Dawn of the Dead. With central banks forced to increase interest rates in an effort to restore price stability, zombies are experiencing sharp increases in their debt-servicing costs. For many, this represents a triple whammy, because inflation is also eroding real household income and reducing the value of household assets, such as homes and stocks. The same goes for fragile and over-leveraged corporations, financial institutions, and governments: they face sharply rising borrowing costs, falling incomes and revenues, and declining asset values all at the same time.

Worse, these developments are coinciding with the return of stagflation (high inflation alongside weak growth). The last time advanced economies experienced such conditions was in the 1970s. But at least back then, debt ratios were very low. Today, we are facing the worst aspects of the 1970s (stagflationary shocks) alongside the worst aspects of the global financial crisis. And this time, we cannot simply cut interest rates to stimulate demand.

After all, the global economy is being battered by persistent short- and medium-term negative supply shocks that are reducing growth and increasing prices and production costs. These include the pandemic’s disruptions to the supply of labour and goods; the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine on commodity prices; China’s increasingly disastrous zero-COVID policy; and a dozen other medium-term shocks, from climate change to geopolitical developments, that will create additional stagflationary pressures.

Unlike in the 2008 financial crisis and the early months of COVID-19, simply bailing out private and public agents with loose macro policies would pour more gasoline on the inflationary fire. That means there will be a hard landing, a deep, protracted recession, on top of a severe financial crisis. As asset bubbles burst, debt-servicing ratios spike, and inflation-adjusted incomes fall across households, corporations and governments, the economic crisis and the financial crash will feed on each other.

To be sure, advanced economies that borrow in their own currency can use a bout of unexpected inflation to reduce the real value of some nominal long-term fixed-rate debt. With governments unwilling to raise taxes or cut spending to reduce their deficits, central-bank deficit monetisation will once again be seen as the path of least resistance. But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Once the inflation genie gets out of the bottle, which is what will happen when central banks abandon the fight in the face of the looming economic and financial crash, nominal and real borrowing costs will surge. The mother of all stagflationary debt crises can be postponed, not avoided.

Nouriel Roubini, professor emeritus of Economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, is chief economist at Atlas Capital Team, CEO of Roubini Macro Associates, Co-Founder of TheBoomBust.com, and author of “MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them” (Little, Brown and Company,  2022). He is a former senior economist for international affairs in the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration and has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank. His website is NourielRoubini.com, and he is the host of NourielToday.com. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022. 

www.project-syndicate.org

U.S. may consider ending COVID vaccine mandate for military: White House

By Staff Reuters
Posted December 3, 2022 

With a new COVID-19 subvariant surging in the U.S., many health experts are advising people to get a booster does of a COVID-19 vaccine before we see another wave. 

President Joe Biden’s administration is mulling a proposal from Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to repeal the U.S. military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, the White House said on Saturday.

McCarthy, who is vying to become speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, earlier told Fox News he had won bipartisan agreement to lift the mandate at a White House meeting with Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

McCarthy said it would be repealed as part of the must-pass $817 billion National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, an annual bill setting policy for the Pentagon that is expected to pass the Senate and House of Representatives this month.


READ MORE: U.S. faces pivotal years in countering the ‘China challenge,’ Pentagon chief warns

But the White House said Biden had agreed only to consider the idea.

“Leader McCarthy raised this with the president and the president told him he would consider it,” said White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton. “The secretary of defense has recommended retaining the mandate, and the president supports his position. Discussions about the NDAA are ongoing.”

The mandate, which was imposed in August 2021, requires all U.S. service members to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

“You know what I was able to achieve in that meeting? To be able (to) – we’re going to see in the NDAA — lift the vaccination mandate on our military men and women,” McCarthy, the top House Republican, said in the interview, which aired late on Friday.

Biden gets shot, says vaccines ‘necessity’ to prevent re-entering national emergency

“I know I’m going to get that,” McCarthy said. “We’re working it out right now. I believe we’re … going to get that.”

There was no immediate comment from the other three congressional leaders at the meeting.

The Pentagon’s vaccine mandate has been the object of intense opposition from Republican conservatives, including several House lawmakers who are threatening to block McCarthy from becoming speaker when Republicans take control of the chamber on Jan. 3.

According to Defense Department data, 3,717 Marines, 1,816 soldiers and 2,064 sailors have been discharged for refusing to get vaccinated. But federal courts this year have blocked military services from punishing personnel who have refused the vaccines on religious grounds.

McCarthy presented the vaccine mandate deal as a sign of how he would lead the House as speaker. He also rebutted conservative criticism over his attendance at a White House state dinner for French President Emmanuel Macron.

“That’s the things that we’re going to have with the new Republican majority,” McCarthy told Fox News.


“If somebody wants to argue about whether I’ll represent this country right and respect the very first ally that helped us create this nation, I don’t think they have their hearts in the right place.”

EXCLUSIVE
Defense bill could roll back Covid vaccine policy, top Dem says

Such a move would be a big win for Republicans, but proposals to reinstate troops already kicked out do not appear to be viable.


Preventative Medicine Services NCOIC Sergeant First Class Demetrius Roberson administers a Covid-19 vaccine to a soldier on Sept. 9, 2021, in Fort Knox, Ky. | Jon Cherry/Getty Images

By CONNOR O’BRIEN and BRYAN BENDER

12/03/2022

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — Final defense legislation set to be unveiled next week could undo the Pentagon’s policy of kicking out troops for not taking the Covid vaccine, the Democratic chair of the House Armed Services Committee said Saturday.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said a rollback of the policy is on the table for a compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act, but hasn’t been decided yet.


“We haven’t resolved it, but it is very fair to say that it’s in discussion,” Smith told POLITICO on the sidelines of the Reagan National Defense Forum. He noted that the mandate may not be logical anymore.

“I was a very strong supporter of the vaccine mandate when we did it, a very strong supporter of the Covid restrictions put in place by DoD and others,” he added. “But at this point in time, does it make sense to have that policy from August 2021? That is a discussion that I am open to and that we’re having.”

The defense bill is set to be unveiled Monday and House leaders plan to hold a vote on the $847 billion policy measure sometime next week. Negotiators had hoped to file the legislation on Friday, but congressional leaders were still ironing out several outstanding issues, apparently including the vaccine policy.

Undoing the policy — a measure that neither the House nor Senate included in their versions of the defense bill — would be a win for Republicans who argue forcing troops to get the shot or leave the military is exacerbating a recruiting and retention crisis. Thousands of troops have been kicked out for refusing the vaccine.

GOP leaders are planning to focus on the policy when they take control of the House, if it isn’t rolled back before then.

Republican lawmakers and governors have pressed hard to undo the mandate in recent days. A group of 13 Republican senators, led by Rand Paul of Kentucky, have promised to try to block the bill unless they’re granted a vote on an amendment to bar kicking out military personnel solely for refusing a Covid-19 vaccine and reinstate separated troops with back pay.

And Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) has pushed legislation to suspend the policy when the military isn’t meeting its target levels for personnel.

While negotiators are willing to entertain the possibility of undoing the policy, Smith said GOP calls to reinstate or grant back pay to troops who refused the shot amounted to a red line. He called the push “a horrible idea.”

“The one thing that I was adamant about — so were others — is there’s going to be no reinstatement or back pay for the people who refused to obey the order to get the vaccine,” Smith said. “Orders are not optional in the military.”

“Now what the policy should be from this point forward? That’s a question we were willing to ask about,” he said.

Smith all but endorsed the idea that the need for mandating the armed forces receive a Covid vaccine has passed.

He said the “pandemic has winded down,” noting that most law enforcement and health officials in his home state of Washington are no longer required to be vaccinated.

“We were very, very aggressive in Washington state on a wide variety of Covid policies,” he said. “Vaccine mandates have been lifted by a wide variety of agencies — police departments, fire departments, health departments — because of where we’re at right now and the effect of the vaccine and the effect of people who caught the disease.”

He also noted that the current Pentagon policy does not require booster shots for the coronavirus.

“At this point, let’s say you got those two shots or that one shot in March of 2021,” Smith said. “Those people can serve, but someone who hasn’t gotten anything can’t?”

Lawmaker says EU should complain to WTO over U.S. Inflation Reduction Act



Sat, December 3, 2022

(Reuters) - The European Union should file a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the next few months regarding the United States' green energy subsidy package, the head of the European Parliament's trade committee was reported as saying on Sunday.

The U.S. and the EU have so far sought to be conciliatory about the bill, saying last week they would seek to tackle the bloc's concerns about the package, known as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act.

EU members worry the $430 billion bill, with generous tax breaks for U.S. companies, may disadvantage European companies from car manufacturers to makers of green technology.

Officials from both sides are due to address the issue at a meeting next week, but Bernd Lange, the chair of EU parliament's trade committee, said he no longer expects a negotiated solution as only small changes could still be agreed through talks.


"I don't think that much will change in substance, because the law has already been passed," Lange was quoted as saying by Funke media group, adding that complaining to the WTO would make send a message that the bill was incompatible with the organization's rules.

(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)

Opinion 

 

We’re America’s most loyal ally in Syria. 

Don’t forget us.

By Mazloum Abdi

December 3, 2022 

Mazloum Abdi, commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, speaks at a Nov. 26 news conference in Hasakah, Syria. (Baderkhan Ahmad/AP)

Mazloum Abdi is the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces.

In 2014, the world learned about my hometown, Kobane, and my people, the Syrian Kurds, when we dealt the Islamic State its first major defeat in partnership with the United States and the Global Coalition. The alliances we forged there led to the end of the ISIS caliphate in 2019.

Today, Kobane is again under threat — and all the gains of those partnerships are also in danger.

This time, the threat comes not from Islamic State terror, but from a U.S. ally and a member of NATO. For more than a week, the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rained bombs down on our cities, killing civilians, destroying critical civilian infrastructure and targeting the Syrian Democratic Forces working to keep ISIS down.

For the people of our region, the military defeat of the Islamic State was never our only goal. At every step of our fight against the terror group on the battlefield, we took steps to crush the ideology behind it by building a system based on inclusion, pluralism and equality. In Raqqa, for example, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi once ruled over ISIS territory, Syrian women are now prominent leaders.

In 2015, we established the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of Kurds, Arabs and Assyrians committed to defeating the Islamic State. In every city we liberated, our people built local administrations that, for the first time in Syria, represented all ethnicities and religions and gave women equal power.

We’ve been criticized at times for falling short of the West’s democratic standards. Our system is not perfect: We had to build it while at war for our existence and under a crushing economic blockade.

But in terms of the quality of governance and security we have been able to provide, we have outdone every other authority in Syria — and none of it would have been possible without the victory at Kobane and the international support for our resistance that it brought.

Now the Turkish offensive against our region is putting all of that under renewed threat.

One strike in the border city of Derik, home to Kurds, Yazidis and Christians, killed more than 10 civilians. Another targeted the base near the city of Hasakah, where I work with the United States to plan operations against ISIS, striking just hundreds of meters from U.S. forces. I believe it was an attempt on my life: Turkey has assassinated several of my colleagues in the SDF and our administration this year.

Adding to the terror and chaos of the bombing campaign, Erdogan continues to threaten a ground invasion of our territory. We know what the consequences of such an attack will be, because Turkey has done this twice before.

The Turkish invasions of Afrin in 2018 and Ras al-Ayn and Tal Abyad in 2019 displaced hundreds of thousands of people and disrupted the global fight against the Islamic State. After years of Turkish rule, these regions are now infamous for chaos, instability, infighting and the presence of extremists.

Where our administration once protected ethnic coexistence, religious freedom and women’s rights, Turkish forces and Turkey-backed militias commit unspeakable abuses against ethnic and religious minorities and women with impunity.

Under our administration, Afrin was the only part of northwest Syria untouched by radical Islamists. Since the area has come under Turkish control, groups affiliated with al-Qaeda operate freely on its territory. This summer, a U.S. drone strike killed Maher al-Agal, a top ISIS leader, there.

Turkey is not threatening our people and the security and stability for which we have sacrificed so much because of anything we have done. As a pretext for war, Erdogan has accused our forces of involvement in a deadly bombing in Istanbul. Let me make it clear: We deplore and condemn this act of terror, reject all accusations of involvement and again offer our condolences to the victims. We reiterate our call for an investigation and are ready to assist if one takes place.

We ask no one to fight for us. My people are still here because we have resisted alone countless times before. If we must, we will resist again. What we ask is for the world to be with us in a more difficult task: peace.

We believe that the roots of the conflicts that have brought so much pain and suffering to our region are political. There is no inherent hatred between Kurds and Turks: Turkish leaders have made the political choice to see Kurds as a security threat and deny us our fundamental democratic rights. In the past, Erdogan has negotiated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to end the armed conflict between the group and the Turkish state and resolve the Kurdish question by peaceful means.

When those talks were taking place, we lived in peace with our Turkish neighbors. If they were to restart, we would be able to do so again.

And when our region was under threat in 2019, the PKK offered, in this very newspaper, to sit down and seek a political solution. The call went unanswered, and Turkey invaded and occupied two of our cities just months later.

Had the international community stood firmly against a Turkish invasion and spoken up for peace, things may have gone very differently. Though no one can turn back time, we can learn from the tragedies of the past.

We declare that we are ready to play a helpful role in restarting these talks and reaching the peace that we seek. We call on the international community to immediately take concrete steps to prevent a Turkish invasion and to promote a political solution to the Kurdish conflict based on democracy, coexistence and equal rights. The existence of our people and the security of the region depend on it.

Syrian Kurds say they have stopped operations against IS

ASSOCIATED PRESS • November 26, 2022


BEIRUT — The commander of the main U.S.-backed Kurdish-led force in Syria said Saturday they have halted operations against the Islamic State group due to Turkish attacks on northern Syria over the past week.

Mazloum Abdi of the Syrian Democratic Forces told reporters that after nearly a week of Turkish airstrikes on northern Syria, Ankara is now preparing for a ground offensive. He said Turkey-backed opposition fighters are getting ready to take part in the operations.

Abdi added that Turkish strikes over the past week have caused severe damage to the region's infrastructure.

Abdi said Turkey is taking advantage of the deadly Nov. 13 bombing in Istanbul that Ankara blames on Kurdish groups. Kurdish organizations have denied any involvement in the Istanbul attack that killed six and wounded dozens.

Over the past week, Turkey launched a wave of airstrikes on suspected Kurdish rebels hiding in neighboring Syria and Iraq in retaliation for the Istanbul attack.

"The forces that work symbolically with the international coalition in the fight against Daesh are now targets for the Turkish state and therefore (military) operations have stopped," Abdi said, using an Arabic acronym of the Islamic State group. "Anti-Daesh operations have stopped."

His comments came hours after the U.S. military said two rockets targeted U.S.-led coalition forces at bases in the northeastern Syrian town of Shaddadeh resulting in no "injuries or damage to the base or coalition property."

The U.S. military statement said SDF fighters visited the site of the rocket's origin and found a third unfired rocket.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, in an early report about the Friday night rocket attack said "the area has been witnessing attacks by (IS) cells." It later said that Iran-backed militias "are responsible for yesterday's rocket fire."

"Attacks of this kind place coalition forces and the civilian populace at risk and undermine the hard-earned stability and security of Syria and the region," said Col. Joe Buccino, CENTCOM spokesman.

The SDF said in a statement before midnight Friday that as Turkish drones flew over the al-Hol camp that is home to tens of thousands of mostly wives, widows and children of IS fighters, some IS family members attacked security forces and managed to escape from the sprawling facility. The SDF did not say how many escaped but that they were later detained.

Kurdish authorities operate more than two dozen detention facilities scattered across northeastern Syria holding about 10,000 IS fighters. Among the detainees are some 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them, including about 800 Europeans.

Erdogan vows Syria ground invasion, Kurds prepare response

 

Turkish Strikes on US Kurd Allies Resonate in Ukraine War

December 03, 2022 
Associated Press

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses parliament at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, in Ankara, Oct. 1, 2022. The U.S. is trying talk Erdogan out of launching an offensive against American-allied Kurdish forces in neighboring Syria.

BUCHAREST, ROMANIA —

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is toughening its language toward NATO ally Turkey as it tries to talk Turkish President Recep Erdogan out of launching a bloody and destabilizing ground offensive against American-allied Kurdish forces in neighboring Syria.

Since November 20, after six people died in an Istanbul bombing a week before — which Turkey blamed, without evidence, on the United States and its Kurdish allies in Syria — Turkey has launched cross-border airstrikes, rockets and shells into U.S.- and Kurdish-patrolled areas of Syria, leaving Kurdish funeral corteges burying scores of dead.

Some criticized the initial muted U.S. response to the near-daily Turkish bombardment — a broad call for “de-escalation” — as a U.S. green light for more. With Erdogan not backing down on his threat to escalate, the U.S. began speaking more forcefully.

US Pleas for Calm Fail to Resonate Along Turkish-Syrian Border

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called his Turkish counterpart on Wednesday to express “strong opposition” to Turkey launching a new military operation in northern Syria.

And National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Friday made one of the administration's first specific mentions of the impact of the Turkish strikes on the Kurdish militia, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, that works with the U.S. against Islamic State militants bottled up in northern Syria.

Wide repercussions

How successfully the U.S. manages Erdogan’s threat to send troops in against America's Kurdish partners over coming weeks will affect global security concerns far from that isolated corner of Syria.

That's especially true for the Ukraine conflict. The Biden administration is eager for Erdogan's cooperation with other NATO partners in countering Russia, particularly when it comes to persuading Turkey to drop its objections to Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

But giving Turkey free reign in attacks on the Syrian Kurds in hopes of securing Erdogan's cooperation within NATO would have big security implications of its own.

U.S. forces on Friday stopped joint military patrols with the Kurdish forces in northern Syria to counter Islamic State extremists, as the Kurds concentrate on defending themselves from the Turkish air and artillery attacks and a possible ground invasion.

Since 2015, the Syrian Kurdish forces have worked with the few hundred forces the U.S. has on the ground there, winning back territory from the Islamic State and then detaining thousands of Islamic State fighters and their families and battling remnant Islamic State fighters. On Saturday, the U.S. and Kurds resumed limited patrols at one of the detention camps.

“ISIS is the forgotten story for the world and the United States, because of the focus on Ukraine,” said Omer Taspinar, an expert on Turkey and European security at the Brookings Institution and the National War College. ISIS is one widely used acronym for the Islamic State.

“Tragically, what would revive Western support for the Kurds ... would be another ISIS terrorist attack, God forbid, in Europe or in the United States that will remind people that we actually have not defeated ISIS,” Taspinar said.

Turkey says the Syrian Kurds are allied to a nearly four-decade PKK Kurdish insurgency in southeast Turkey that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people on both sides. The United States' Syrian Kurdish allies deny any attacks in Turkey.

U.S. Central Command, and many in Congress, praise the Syrian Kurds as brave comrades in arms. In July, Central Command angered Turkey by tweeting condolences for a Syrian Kurdish deputy commander and two other female fighters killed by a drone strike blamed on Turkey.

In 2019, a public outcry by his fellow Republicans and many others killed a plan by President Donald Trump, which he announced after a call with Erdogan, to clear U.S. troops out of the way of an expected Turkish attack on the Kurdish allies in Syria.

Then-presidential contender and now U.S. President Joe Biden was among those expressing outrage.

“The Kurds were integral in helping us defeat ISIS — and too many lost their lives. Now, President Trump has abandoned them. It’s shameful,” Biden tweeted at the time.

The measured U.S. response now — even after some Turkish strikes hit near sites that host U.S. forces — reflects the significant strategic role that Turkey, as a NATO member, plays in the alliance's efforts to counter Russia in Europe. The State Department and USAID did not immediately answer questions about whether the Turkish strikes had hindered aid workers and operations that partner with the United States.

Trying to exert leverage

Turkey, with strong ties to both Russia and the U.S., has contributed to its NATO allies' efforts against Russia in key ways during the Ukraine conflict. That includes supplying armed drones to Ukraine, and helping mediate between Russia and the United States and others.

But Turkey is also seeking to exert leverage within the alliance by blocking Finland and Sweden from joining NATO. Turkey is demanding that Sweden surrender Kurdish exiles that it says are affiliated with the PKK Kurdish insurgents.

Turkey’s state-run news agency reported that Sweden extradited a member of the PKK, and he was arrested Saturday upon arrival in Istanbul.

Turkey is one of only two of the 30 NATO members not to have signed off yet on the Nordic countries' NATO memberships. Hungary, the other, is expected to do so.

At a gathering of NATO foreign ministers in Bucharest, Romania, this past week, NATO diplomats refrained from publicly confronting Turkey, avoiding giving offense that might further set back the cause of Finland's and Sweden's NATO membership.

Turkey's foreign minister made clear to his European counterparts that Turkey had yet to be appeased when it came to Finland or Sweden hosting Kurdish exiles there.

“We reminded that in the end, it’s the Turkish people and the Turkish parliament that need to be convinced,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters on the sidelines.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to talk Thursday with Finland's and Sweden's foreign ministers on dealing with Turkey's objections to their NATO accession.

Experts say the Biden administration has plenty of leverage to wield privately in urging Erdogan to relent in the threatened escalated attack on Syrian Kurds. That includes U.S. F-16 fighter sales that Turkey wants but have been opposed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez and others in Congress.

There's a third big security risk in the U.S. handling of Turkey's invasion threat, along with the possible impact on the Ukraine conflict and on efforts to contain the Islamic State.

That's the risk to Kurds, a stateless people and frequent U.S. ally often abandoned by the U.S. and the West in past conflicts over the past century.

If the U.S. stands by while Turkey escalates attacks on the Syrian Kurds who were instrumental in quelling the Islamic State, “especially in the aftermath of Afghanistan, what message are we sending to the Middle East?" asked Henri J. Barkey, an expert on Kurds and Turkey at the Council on Foreign Relations and at Lehigh University.

“And to all allies in general?" Barkey asked.

An ethnic group of millions at the intersection of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, Kurds lost out on a state of their own as the U.S. and other powers carved up the remnants of the Turkish Ottoman Empire after World War I.

Saddam Hussein and other regional leaders used poison gas, airstrikes and other tools of mass slaughter over the decades to suppress the Kurds. As under U.S. President George H.W. Bush in 1991 after the Gulf War, the U.S. at times encouraged popular uprisings but stood by as Kurds died in the resulting massacres.

On November 28, hundreds of Syrian Kurds gathered for the victims of one of the Turkish airstrikes — five guards killed securing the al-Hol camp, which holds thousands of family members of Islamic State fighters.

Relatives of one of the Kurdish guards, Saifuddin Mohammed, placed his photo on his grave.

“Of course, we are proud,” said his brother, Abbas Mohammed. “He defended his land and his honor against the Turkish invading forces.”

Russia calls on Turkey to show ‘restraint’ in Syria

Russian negotiator Alexander Lavrentyev attends a session of the peace talks on Syria in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan April 26, 2019. (File photo: Reuters)

AFP, Astana
Published: 22 November ,2022: 

Russia on Tuesday said it hoped Turkey would exercise “restraint” and refrain from “any excessive use of force” in Syria, where Ankara has carried out air strikes and is threatening to launch a ground offensive against Kurdish fighters.

“We hope to convince our Turkish colleagues to refrain from resorting to excessive use of force on Syrian territory” to “avoid the escalation of tensions,” Alexander Lavrentyev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy on Syria, told reporters in Astana.

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Turkey on Sunday launched a series of air raids targeting bases of outlawed Kurdish militants across northern Syria and Iraq.

At least 37 people were killed in the strikes, according to a report by Britain-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Russia has for months ... done everything possible to prevent any large-scale ground operation,” Lavrentyev said in the Kazakh capital, which is hosting a tripartite meeting between Russia, Turkey and Iran on Syria.

The three countries are major players in the war in Syria, which has claimed nearly half a million lives since 2011.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been threatening to launch a new military operation in northern Syria since May.

“We will make those who disturb us on our territory pay,” he said on Monday, adding that consultations were ongoing “to decide the level of force that should be used by our ground forces.”

The Turkish air offensive, codenamed Operation Claw-Sword, came a week after a blast in central Istanbul killed six people and wounded 81, an attack Turkey has blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The PKK has waged a bloody insurgency in Turkey for decades and is designated a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies. But it has denied involvement in the Istanbul explosion.

Read more:

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Another Major Turkish Military Ground Incursion Very Likely Amid Rising Tensions in Syria Experts Say

November 22, 2022 

VOA
Begum Donmez Ersoz

The aftermath of air strikes carried out by Turkish warplanes in Derik countryside, Syria November 21, 2022.

The uptick in tension between Turkey and Syrian Kurdish militants could result in a new ground operation by Ankara, experts said, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vows more comprehensive military action amid the rising nationalist sentiment in the country with elections six months away.

Two people were killed and 10 wounded Monday in a mortar attack by Syrian Kurdish militants in Gaziantep province in southern Turkey, officials said.

According to Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, one of the projectiles hit a schoolyard in Gaziantep’s Karkamis town, killing a teacher and a child, and wounding 10 people, including a pregnant woman.

Officials said schools in the area will be closed for the remainder of the week.

The attack, which officials blame on the Syrian Kurdish militants, came after a series of airstrikes by the Turkish military in neighboring Iraq and Syria over the weekend.

Ankara says the airstrikes were in retaliation for last week’s deadly bombing in a busy area in Turkey’s biggest city, Istanbul.

Turkish authorities said Kurdish militants were behind the bombing, which killed six people and wounded dozens. The Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) and its Syrian branch, People’s Defense Units (YPG) denied involvement.

But Erdogan indicated that another ground operation in Syria is possible, saying Turkey’s military actions would not be limited to airstrikes.

The Turkish military have launched three ground incursions in the past in northern Syria, where it says Kurdish militants backed by the United States want to establish an independent Kurdish state.

Speaking to journalists during his return flight from Qatar, where he attended the opening ceremony of FIFA World Cup 2022, Erdogan said, “I always said we might come suddenly one night. We were not saying this in vain.”

“It is out of the question that this would be limited to air operations. Our Ministry of Defense and chief of staff will make a decision on how big a unit from our ground forces would be needed. We will engage in consultations and then will take our steps accordingly,“ he added.

US condemnation

The United States considers the PKK a terrorist organization while it backs its Syrian affiliate, Syrian Democratic Forces, led by YPG, in the fight against ISIS in Syria. U.S. support for the YPG has caused tension between the two allies.

"The United States expresses its sincere condolences for the loss of civilian life in Syria and Turkey. We urge de-escalation in Syria to protect civilian life and support the common goal of defeating ISIS. We continue to oppose any uncoordinated military action in Iraq that violates Iraq’s sovereignty," State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

The U.S. Embassy in Ankara condemned the recent attack in Gaziantep, calling it “violent and unjustified” in a statement shared on its official Twitter account, saying “The U.S. Mission joins the people of Türkiye in mourning the three innocent lives lost today in Karkamis.”

“We are NATO allies but unfortunately it was the United States that sent thousands of supplies and equipment, ammunition and weapons to the terror region in Syria,” Erdogan said after the Monday’s attack, noting that he raised the issue with U.S. President Joe Biden as he has with other U.S. presidents, including Trump and Obama.

Presidents Biden and Erdogan met on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Indonesia last week. According to the readout provided by the White House, Biden “expressed his deep condolences to President Erdogan and the people of Turkiye on the acts of violence in Istanbul and made clear we stand with our NATO Ally.”

Pentagon opposed to military action

Washington is known to have long opposed a major incursion by Turkey because it would disrupt the stability in the region.

The U.S. Department of Defense said on Monday that it “continues to oppose any military action that destabilizes the situation in Syria or violates Iraq’s sovereignty through military actions uncoordinated with the Iraqi government.”

“These actions threaten our shared goals, including to continue the fight against ISIS and make sure the group can never resurge,” Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Phillip Ventura told VOA.

Domestic politics and election calculus

Turkish President Erdogan threatened a military incursion last summer, but those plans met with pushback from several actors in the region, including Russia, the United States and Iran.

The deadly bombing in Istanbul followed by the recent attack in Gaziantep, both blamed on Kurdish militants, increased the likelihood for the threat of military action to materialize.

Experts speaking to VOA believe it’s very likely, if not imminent, that Turkey will launch a new ground operation in Syria in the coming months.

Max Hoffman, the senior director of National Security and International Policy at Center for American Progress focusing on Turkey and Kurdish regions, says one of the reasons for the heightened tensions is Erdogan’s domestic political calculus as he faces an election battle in six months.

“We have history as a guide here. Three of the four major Turkish interventions in northern Syria have come in the run-up to Turkish elections. I don’t think that’s the only consideration but it’s certainly an important one. At some point it’s very likely that we’ll see a significant incursion,” he said.

James Jeffrey, former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, appears to agree. He told VOA there is a strong nationalist sentiment in Turkey right now, and Erdogan may see the military incursion as a way to increase his chances of winning the election.

Jeffrey served as the Secretary’s Special Representative for Syria Engagement and the Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS until 2020 before he joined the Wilson Center in Washington.

Both experts predict that, in the event of a new military incursion by Turkey, the level and tone of the reaction from the United States would depend on where Turkish military would target in Syria.

“If it's a major Turkish attack on, for instance, Kobani, I think you'll see a stronger U.S. response,” Hoffman tells VOA.

Jeffrey says that although the United States would prefer there be no military incursion into Syria, “Washington is less concerned about possible military action in the northwest of Syria as opposed to the northeast.”

In the broader context of Turkey-U.S. relations, Ankara has yet to ratify Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership as the Russian invasion in Ukraine continues.

Turkey has requested to purchase F-16s and modernization kits from the United States and a possible sale would require the approval by U.S. Congress.

Max Hoffman says a major military operation by Turkey in Kobani would not help the overall picture, adding that “there are important voices on Capitol Hill particularly in the Senate whose positions would be affected by a possible Turkish incursion.”

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish service. VOA's Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.

Turkish warplanes attack US center for training Kurd fighters

TEHRAN, Nov. 22 (MNA) – Turkis warplanes delivered an airstrike at a US center for training Kurdish fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria’s northeastern al-Hasakah governorate.

According to the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen television channel on Monday, US military instructors are working in this center.

No data about casualties are available.

Meanwhile, Turkish forces shelled the Amuda border area in the north of Syria’s al-Hasakah governorate, the Firat news agency reported on Monday.

According to the news agency, dozens of shells were fired at the positions of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the settlement Mer’it. Several civilians were killed or wounded.

Earlier in the day, Turkish warplanes attacked SDF positions in the settlements of Bahira and Tell Hamdun in this border sector, wounding two locals.

Also on Monday, Turkish fighter jets delivered strikes at Kurdish units near Ayn al-Arab (also known as Kobani) on the Euphrates eastern bank. Apart from that, artillery shelling was conducted at several Kurdish villages in the Al-Shehba neighborhood in western Aleppo.

On November 20, SDF attacked the Karkamysh border area in the Gaziantep province and the Onjupynar checkpoint near the city of Kilis, wounding eight people.

Earlier, Turkey’s defense ministry reported that 89 targets had been destroyed during the night air attack in northern Iraq and Syria on November 20. The ministry claimed that strikes had been delivered at places of deployment of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and Syrian Kurdish units.

Turkish National Defense Minister Hulusi Akar announced on Monday, "Since the beginning of Operation Claw-Sword, 184 terrorists have been killed by means of aircraft and fire support from the ground. According to our estimates, this figure will grow. We will continue our struggle until the last terrorist is destroyed."

Experts say that Turkey’s cross-border operation in northern Iraq and Syria was a response to the November 13 terror attack in Istanbul, which left six people dead and more than 80 injured. The Turkish authorities placed the blame for it on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and SDF’s People's Defense Units.

Moscow also called on Turkey to show restraint in light of the strikes on Syrian territory, tensions cannot be allowed to escalate.

"We will call on our Turkish colleagues to show certain restraint in order to prevent an escalation of tension, not only in the northern and northeastern regions of Syria, but throughout the entire territory," Russia's special presidential envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev said at the beginning of the 19th round of talks on the Syrian settlement in Astana.

He said work with all interested parties should be continued, and an attempt should be made to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue.

Lavrentyev said Turkey had not notified Russia in advance about the air operation in Syria and Iraq; the issue would be discussed during the meeting on Syria in Astana.

"We hope to convince our Turkish partners to refrain from using excessive force on Syrian territory," the Russian special envoy said.

ZZ/PR