Just when you thought the Syrian civil war couldn’t get any messier, developments last week proved that it could. For the first time in the armed conflict that has raged for nearly five years, militia fighters from the Assyrian Christian community in northern Iraq clashed with Kurdish troops. What made that incident especially puzzling is that both the Assyrians and the Kurds are vehement adversaries of ISIS—which is also a major player in that region of Syria. Logically, they should be allies who cooperate regarding military moves against the terrorist organization.
But in Syria, very little is simple or straightforward. Unfortunately, that is a point completely lost on the Western (especially American) news media. From the beginning, Western journalists have portrayed the Syrian conflict as a simplistic melodrama, with dictator Bashar al-Assad playing the role of designated villain and the insurgents playing the role of plucky proponents of liberty. Even a cursory examination of the situation should have discredited that narrative, but it continues largely intact to this day.
Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/syrian-civil-war-just-became-even-more-complex
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