Russians Backing Kurds

The Russians seem bent on backing the Kurds in Syria, something the U.S has been doing for many years.  But, as in all things in the Middle East, this is not straight-forward.  Thomas Grove and Ben Kesling in today's Wall Street Journal [Russia Pursues Ties With Kurds to Keep Foothold in Region  - long, but good reading] point out that the Kurds are not one group.  In this case, the U.S. And Russia may not be on the same side, even though both are supporting the Kurds.  The Kurds hold a part of Syria that is almost as big as the one held by Assad's government.  

Ever since the Turks shot down a Russian military jet when it flew over their territory, we have kind of been wondering what the Russians were going to to do about it.  It appeared like they were doing nothing.  Maybe not.  The brand of Kurd the Russians are supporting are the Afrin's, [for a description see http://thekurdishproject.org/kurdistan-map/syrian-kurdistan/afrin-syria/].  They are in the northwest part of Syria and mostly Sunni.  They are not far from the Russian base at Latakia.  When the Syrian government pulled out of that area in 2012, the area was run by the Turkish People's Protection Unit (YPG).  Turkey considers the YPG to be allied with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which causes so much damage in Turkey.  The US does not support either the Afrin's nor the PKK, but does support the YPG.  This is no more complicated than the situation faced anywhere in that area, but does help us to understand why it is so difficult to pick friends and enemies in that part of the world.  The Russians pick the Afrins but the US does not.  Given the culture, it hardly matters.

The Afrins are fighting the other factions in that area including the Al-Nusra Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra, sometimes called al-Qaeda in Syria or al-Qaeda in the Levant.  Nobody wants these folks to win, so the Russian support cannot be entirely unwelcome.  Our White House had great agony over support to the Kurds because of all of the factions within that group.  Maybe it wasn't just painfully slow decision making.