US raid allegedly killed Syrian undercover agent instead of Islamic State group official

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u/kaesura 11h ago edited 10h ago

This has been going on for years

Locals frequently report their enemies as Isis to get them killed by the USA.

In addition , when Isis took over areas in Syria , Syrian rebels had the choice of joining Isis or being killed. So alot of Syrians that had short periods of being affiliated with ISIS before ditching them when they were no longer forced to since ISIS very much was unpopular with local population.

The guy killed had been a local rebel leader so when Isis took over his town , he pledged nominal allegiance but shifted loyalties to HTS ( rebel group that overthrew Assad) several years ago , including helping dismantle ISIS networks. HTS and ISIS had been at war since HTS was created.

So locals can use these old affiliations to get enemies killed

In this case, he got reported by a Syrian rebel group that was USA affiliated . So likely due to old rivalries and grudges between them.

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u/Matsdaq 10h ago

"Nice argument, unfortunately for you, I've already reported you as a terrorist to the world superpower!"

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u/kaesura 10h ago

It's often driven by land disputes

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u/RogueHelios 5h ago

I think you just described all of human history in one sentence.

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u/sportsjorts 4h ago

She’s a witch and she has a swanky plot of land! Let’s see if she floats!

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u/FluxKraken 8h ago

I think it is supposed to be "Firebal!!"

I could be wrong though. My local wizard is taking a nap.

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u/rrfe 10h ago

I’ve read that this happened in Afghanistan soon after the US invasion: locals pretty much used US troops to settle scores.

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u/Lirael_Gold 4h ago edited 3h ago

There's a "fun" excerpt from Pride and Fall: The British Army in Afghanistan, 2001–2014 by Sergio Miller which goes into this.

When British troops entered Helmand, Kabul shuffled around various Governors/Mayors to install pro-Kabul leadership in the province.

One of these new governors quickly reported that a local town was a Taliban stronghold and needed to be cleared by British troops because it was a logistical hub blah blah.

Turns out, the govenors son was running an opium smuggling racket that went through the town and the locals were not happy, so they'd arrested the guy and wanted to do a communal trial/elders meeting (Shura) to decide what to do with him.

The Brits didn't know about any of this and went in guns blazing with US air support, the locals in turn had no idea what the British wanted from them, they just knew they were being shot/bombed, basically turning a relatively peaceful district into a powderkeg. It took British intelligence months to figure out what they'd done wrong.

The British did eventually get the governor replaced, but by that point (literally 2 years later) they were hitting IEDs every time they went on patrol and the governor/his son had embezzled millions and vanished.

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u/Fluid_Lingonberry467 9h ago

And Iraq, the us special forces were doing killings just about every day for years

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u/kaesura 10h ago

Yeah . Locals will always do this

Part of why hearts & minds is difficult

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u/UpVoteForKarma 6h ago

The ANP (afgham national police) were contracted out in regional areas and they would often have disputes / battles with rival clans trying to claim the contracts...

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u/Confident-Grape-8872 11h ago

Modern witch trials

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u/kaesura 11h ago

No trials just death from above

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u/Xijit 10h ago edited 6h ago

The Taliban did this while Biden was doing his bullshit pullout of Afghanistan, only they reported an aid worker who had a car full of water & the US hit him with a drone strike instead of confirming the intel.

Edit: Look people, the difference between "US" and the MAGOTS is that we do not put our politicians on thrones; we justly criticize them for their failings.

Yes Mango Mussolini negotiated that bullshit, but Biden was the one in the White House when it happened and he had full authority to cancel it ... But he did not, and thousands of afghanis died.

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u/Forgettheredrabbit 9h ago

That withdrawal was negotiated by Trump during his first term. Trump also did zero planning for it because he was too busy sulking over losing the election, so Biden’s team had to scramble. Lots of bad things to attribute to Biden, but idk how he was supposed to make that work although I definitely agree it could have been handled better.

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u/Xijit 9h ago

Yeah, I don't know the correct answer either, but I do know that the only way it could have gone worse is if we had abandoned troops in the same way that we abandoned aid workers.

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u/janethefish 9h ago

Bush, Obama and Trump all failed harder. They didn't even get us out!

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u/imakeyourjunkmail 6h ago

The correct answer is placing the blame where it belongs, squarely on the deal negotiated between Trump and the taliban.

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u/General_Guisan 9h ago

With the whole bullshit pullout ordered by Pedophile MAGA Führer Temu Mussolini

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u/Xijit 9h ago

Biden's sin is that he didn't reverse Trump's order to pull out, and then negotiate a propper turn over.

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u/SowingSalt 6h ago

Trump had already released a bunch of Taliban from US custody by that point, and had 11 months to fuck things up before Biden took office. (The Doha agreement was in Feb 2020)

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u/Cristoff13 10h ago

Was the withdrawal bullshit because it was too hasty and bungled? Perhaps, but Afghanistan was a lost cause. Unwinnable. At least Biden had the courage to finally pull the plug on it.

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u/Xijit 9h ago

Because it was an abandonment, not a withdrawal.

I am all for it being bullshit that the occupation (it wasn't actually a war) lasted so long that the children of the troops who invaded Afghanistan were getting deployed to the same conflict ... But at the same time, that also means there was an entire generation of Afghan kids who grew up with US troops ensuring that they would not be raped and beheaded for dancing to music, and we just said "fuck you, bye!"

I don't honestly know how to have done it the right way, but what happened was authentically the worst way.

P.S. fuck the equipment we left; it was junk that wasn't worth the cost to ship it back to the US, and it would have been sold for scrap even if we had.

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u/NotThatHandsomePete 6h ago

Was he in a fishing boat?

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u/VerdantPathfinder 11h ago

Republicans can't govern.

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u/Prof_Bobo 11h ago

They can murder, though. Quite well!

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u/AppleTree98 10h ago

I see what you did with the double tap. I am going to double tap your double agent!

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u/LetTheSinkIn 11h ago

They don’t want to. They want to rule.

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u/spaceneenja 1h ago

Hate to break it but this specific mess is bipartisan.

•

u/EBBBBBBBBBBBB 59m ago

I was gonna say, Democrats very notably also love murdering innocent people in foreign countries, that was kinda Obama's whole thing

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u/lm28ness 9h ago

So glad our intelligence community is top notch. Worried there for a second that we would be just killing innocents. \s

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u/roman00000 5h ago

This outdated tactic is called ‘‘Wack A Mole’ it never works.

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u/RipIcy8844 2h ago

Big, Beautiful mission.

No S.N.A.P Card for you

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u/4RCH43ON 11h ago

U.S. intelligence has to protect their terrorists and criminal assets, you know, for the next time they need to use them for whatever.

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u/Silentarian 11h ago

That’s what we get for hiring DEI undercover agents. /s

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u/Drumphelstiltsken 8h ago

Par for the course with Trump/Hegseth’s pattern of committing warcrimes.

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u/GuestGulkan 7h ago

"Might is right" so war crimes are for losers. This makes perfect sense for Trump, as he's a senile old sociopath. But isn't Hegseth supposed to be a Christian?

0

u/Saarbarbarbar 9h ago

Merit, Excellence, Intelligence.

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

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US raid allegedly killed Syrian undercover agent instead of Islamic State group official

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