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Karim Franceschi Profile picture
Karim Franceschi
@karimfranceschi
Former SDF field commander | ⵣ transnational volunteer. Asymmetric warfare researcher.
6 subscribers
Oct 1 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
1/ I was recently contacted about a man who claims to have been “in my battalion.” He rose on stolen valor, built a social platform, crowdfunded a boat—and then used other activists as his security blanket. I won’t make his name the story. This is. 2/ But before anyone labels me a spoilsport: I do not support the genocide in Gaza. My critique comes from a decolonial, field-worn anthropology — from fighting alongside Kurds in Syria and watching how solidarity is co-opted.
Sep 28 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
ASSESSMENT OF HAMAS VIDEO RELEASE
1/
 Drawing on my experience as a former commander with the YPG International Battalion during the Raqqa campaign, I assess several key elements in this video.

2/
Much of the operational picture is deliberately absent. For example, sniper teams are not shown but were almost certainly employed to suppress defenses around the target site — a construction facility likely serving as a forward IDF outpost.
Sep 27 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1/ Syria is on the brink of another Civil War.
This week has been the bloodiest in months for the SDF, and the pressure is mounting. Image 2/ On 24 Sept, in Deir Hafer, Syrian government forces used two suicide drones and sustained artillery fire on SDF positions and nearby villages.

Casualties: 1 SDF fighter killed, 8 civilians killed (including children), 4 children wounded.
Sep 18 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
That’s me in 2016, one of the founders of the Antifascist Internationalist Tabur—later dubbed Antifa Platoon by Rolling Stone magazine.

Now, as Trump announces he’s designating Antifa a major terrorist organization, I want to share my own experience. You be the judge. Thread 🧵 Image As an Italian antifascist, I carry a heritage. When I sang “Bella Ciao” with my Kurdish comrades during the siege of Kobani, I was using the same words my father had sung on the hills of Tuscany with his partisan comrades as they fought against the Nazi-Fascist occupation. /2 Image
Aug 31 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
In the month of August, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) executed twelve combined strike operations against PKK positions in northern Iraq.

Why is this happening against the backdrop of the ongoing peace process?

A thread—🧵 These operations incorporated air-delivered munitions and artillery fire support. Simultaneously, persistent unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) activity was observed across the battlespace, in support of strike coordination & damage assessment. [HPG sources]

/2
Aug 23 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Picture a bar in Nepal. Modam Kumal serves tea, makes barely enough to live. Then comes the offer: “security job in Russia.” A contract he can’t read. He signs. Weeks later, he’s not guarding doors in Moscow — he’s crawling through mud in Donetsk, under fire. Image Now imagine Sierra Leone. Richard Kanu sells what he can, pays $3,000 for a visa. A new beginning, he thinks. Instead, recruiters hand him a rifle. His dream of wages becomes a trench. His labor — stolen, militarized. 2/8
Aug 21 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Mehmet is yet another Kurdish activist getting extradited by Germany under the absurd Art. 302 of the Turkish penal code (“disrupting the state’s unity”). Why is Europe outsourcing its borders to Erdogan’s Clepto Sultanate — a regime breaking records for jailing journalists? 🧵 Image Italy extradited him to Germany on the promise he’d never be sent on to a third country—and his Italian asylum case is still pending. Now, in just 7 days, Berlin plans to hand him to Turkey, where Art. 302 = life without parole. /2
Aug 18 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Welcome to the theater of the absurd: on one stage, Trump crowns an al-Qaeda figure as Syria’s “new face of governance.” On the next, they insist it’s all about counterterrorism.

Let’s pull back the curtain on the latest OIR report. From someone who’s worn an SDF patch. 🧵 Image 2/9 The reports begins with the OIR objectives in Syria:
☑️ Prevent Syria from being used as a base for ISIS, Iran, or other terrorist groups;
☑️ Complete and verifiable destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons program;
☑️ Determine the fate of U.S. citizens missing in Syria. Image
Aug 17 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Combat Readiness of “SAA 2.0” — A Clausewitzian Lens 🧵

The fighting strength of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has undergone a severe degradation by absorbing 90,000 opportunistic, undisciplined SNA troops. This is how HTS has diluted its own military core. ↓ 2/
 Clausewitz wrote that combat strength lies not only in numbers, but in cohesion, discipline, and will. In this merger, HTS traded away its professionalism for bulk. Numbers became the enemy of force.
Aug 15 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Three days ago, The New Yorker asked: How much will Trump profit from the presidency this term?

Estimates run to $3.4B, spanning crypto plays, real estate, corporate settlements, & high-value partnerships in the Gulf. 1/4Image Those Gulf ties go through Tom Barrack, the most powerful envoy in US history. Part diplomat, part lobbyist, part deal-maker, stitched together to turn U.S. foreign policy into an opportunity for Trump’s inner circle to access immense wealth. 2/4

I broke it down here 👇
Aug 3 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Eleven years ago, ISIS came to Sinjar. They called the Yazidis infidels. Men were lined up and shot. Women chained and sold in markets. Children stolen. It was meant to erase them from the earth.
A thread, 🧵 Image Thousands fled to the mountain. No food. No water. A slow death awaited. /2 Image
Jul 29 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
[Thread 1/5] English subtitles of Al-Hadath’s interview with SDF General Mazloum Abdi:

--> Commitment to the March 10 agreement (one Syrian land, one flag, one army)
--> Talks necessary
--> Why Paris meeting was postponed
--> Debunks fake news on travel restrictions [2/5]
--> Syrian foreign minister statements on the Paris meeting postponement
--> Rumours about divisions within the SDF
--> Concerns after the events in Suweyda without constitutional protections #Syria
Jul 25 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The highly anticipated Paris meeting between the Syrian interim government, SDF, and DAANES officials, which was supposed to be brokered by Macron, was postponed indefinitely. A lot of wild stories out there on the reasons why. 1/4 Syrian govt officials came in with a set of preconditions that the SDF was expected to accept just to sit at the table:
- SDF to disband / lay down arms
- DAANES to submit not as a partner, but as a subject under full government authority. 2/5
Jul 23 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack brokered Trump’s Gulf alliances. Now he’s running PR for a regime that executed civilians in hospital beds—while scheming to dismantle the SDF.

Let's follow the money, and the bodies...🧵Image 1/ Over the past week, Suweyda endured a brutal siege: a city cut off, its people surrounded by thousands of jihadists. Massacres followed. Yet Tom Barrack, is lying through his teeth:

"The world is confused, the Syrian troops haven't gone in the city..."
Jul 21 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Hard to believe, but they held. The jihadist wave came like a flood, trucks full of zealots chanting for blood, believing Suwayda would fall by nightfall. But the Druze didn’t scatter. They stood. They bled. They fought for every inch. A thread, 🧵 Image 2/ They poured in from all over [MAP] — until the retreat order came. From none other than Ahmed al-Sharaa, the self-declared “President of Syria.”
A man who claimed he had no control over the fighters. One order, and the entire murderous circus packed up. The purge ended early. Image
Jul 19 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
“What’s happening inside Suwayda right now is darker, more vile, and more revolting than anything we’ve seen in the past seven days.”

A thread based on direct testimony from the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. #Suwayda #Syria 2/
 “We are witnessing executions, just like the case of Munif, a fighter from northern Aleppo, whose head was severed.”
“They asked me not to publish it. I did. Because this is the truth. So far, we’ve documented 185 summary executions, and counting.”
Jul 19 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The hordes answering the Friday prayer call to jihad didn’t pause, after Tom Barrack's Tweet. They poured into Suwayda, overran the initial line of Druze defenses, and are now carrying out a war of extermination, block by block.

As someone who’s seen HTS tactics up close. Here’s why the Syrian government is neck-deep in this. 1/4 Let's break down how core HTS veterans (responsible for the blitz from Idlib to Damascus) are now coordinating the mob’s war effort. Officially “dissolved” into Syrian govt ranks, but clearly running the show behind this campaign of extermination. 2/4 Image
Jul 18 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The scene is unreal. We’re talking trucks, buses, every kind of mass transportation vehicle imaginable, moving across Syrian government-controlled territory. Sunni Arabs are being loaded up...🧵 1/5 Image handed rifles with zero background checks, and transported by the thousands to the frontlines to kill Druze. No one is stopping them, not Israel, not the Syrian government, not the United States. 2/5
Jul 15 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
[THREAD] HTS thermal units just entered Suwayda. What does that mean for the city's defenders? A look at one of the most dangerous night-capable forces in the region— and how to counter it. Image HTS has fielded what it calls “Thermal Sniping Companies”: elite units built specifically for night warfare. These aren’t just fighters with scopes. They're trained to move, kill, and infiltrate under total darkness — while you can’t see a thing. 1/6
Jul 11 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1/ I didn’t expect the disarmament ceremony to feel this emotional, or to see so many senior PKK commanders among the first to lay down arms. As a former YPG tabur commander, I recognized the gravity immediately. 2/ I had estimated 20 fighters, but 30 appeared. They stepped forward onto a platform that looked like an Olympic torch stage; not by accident. It was there they laid down their weapons to be burned.
Jul 7 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1/🚨 Last week, I posted a thread with Military Map on the sudden intensification of Turkish military operations against the PKK in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Things have since taken a grim, and ironic, turn. 🧵 Image 2/ Turkey’s been using chemical weapons to smoke PKK fighters out of tunnel networks for a while now — yeah, even though it’s banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention. And get this: their own Defense Minister, Hulusi Akar, admitted it in parliament.