Rojava

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Re: Rojava

Postby Elvis » Tue Jul 31, 2018 5:25 pm

countervortex.org wrote: Assad has issued this threat to the remaining White Helmets: "The fate of White Helmets will be the same as any other terrorist. They have two choices: to lay down their arms and use the amnesty we have offered over the last four or five years, or be killed like the other terrorists.".

This is much more latitude than most countries offer to terrorists.


Rebel leaders have disimissed Assad's co-called amnesty offer as "meaningless," (LAT) Given the Assad regime's ongoing extermination of detainees—which has now arguably reached the point of genocide—the White Helmets and others seeking evacuation from Daraa have every reason to fear the worst.

And of course this above is not true; the White Helmets have regularly been evacuated to safety in government-provided buses. The White Helmets claimed in Aleppo that government troops were 'massacring civilians as they tried to escape the city' — the opposite of what happened. This huge lie was spread all over by NYTimes and the rest of the steno pool.


Also, the singular word genocide is grossly cheapened in this and the previous posted article...

American Dream wrote:the genocidal Assad regime

I stopped reading after that.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Rojava

Postby American Dream » Thu Dec 27, 2018 3:02 pm

Podcast: Solidarity with Idlib and Rojava
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In Episode 23 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes the assassination of Raed Fares, a courageous voice of the civil resistance in besieged Idlib province, last remaining stronghold of the Syrian Revolution. The resistance in Idlib, which liberated the territory from the Bashar Assad regime in popular uprisings seven years ago, is now also resisting the jihadist forces in the province, expelling them from their self-governing towns and villages. Their hard-won zones of popular democracy face extermination if this last stronghold is invaded by Assad and his Russian backers. As Assad and Putin threaten Idlib, Trump's announced withdrawal of the 2,000 US troops embedded with Kurdish forces in Syria's northeast is a "green light" to Turkey to attack Rojava, the anarchist-inspired Kurdish autonomous zone. The two last pockets of democratic self-rule in Syria are each now gravely threatened. Yet with Turkey posing as protector of Idlib, the Arab revolutionary forces there have been pitted against the Kurds. The Free Syrian Army and Rojava Kurds were briefly allied against ISIS and Assad alike four years ago, before they were played against each other by imperial intrigues. Can this alliance be rebuilt, in repudiation of the foreign powers now seeking to carve up Syria? Or will the US withdrawal merely spark an Arab-Kurdish ethnic war in northern Syria? Weinberg calls for activists in the West to repudiate the imperial divide-and-rule stratagems, and demand the survival of liberated Idlib and Rojava alike.







American Dream » Fri Mar 09, 2018 2:42 am wrote:Here are some examples of left debate on these questions:


Rojava and Syriza: “What’s Left?” April 2015, MRR #383

The Kurds have asserted a common ethnic identity through shared language and culture for over nine hundred years, ever since the high Middle Ages of the 11th or 12th centuries. Modern Kurdish nationalism arose after 1880, and if anything gives anti-authoritarians the screaming heebie-jeebies, it’s nationalism. Patriotism, the nation-state, national liberation struggles; nationalism in all its variations and permutations is anathema certainly for anarchists and also for most left communists.

The Kurds struggled for national self-determination for a greater Kurdistan against the Ottoman empire until British/French imperialism divided up the Middle East after the first World War. Most of the Kurdish population found itself in southern and eastern Turkey, with sizable minorities residing in northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, and northwestern Iran. This arbitrary division of the region into artificial nation-states fractured the Kurdish national movement into separate nationalist struggles; the PKK in Turkey, the KDP and then the PUK in Iraq, and the KDP-I and PJAK in Iran. All of these Kurdish political entities claimed to be, to varying degrees, political parties/guerrilla armies fighting for national liberation against their respective non-Kurdish regimes.

Sectarianism, nationalism, and imperialism have continued to keep Kurdish struggles fragmented, among the most intransigent being the Kurdish PKK’s incessant “peoples war” against the Turkish state. Even Kurdish successes have been piecemeal as a consequence. This is illustrated by decades of conflict between the Iraqi Kurds and Iraq’s Ba’athist regime in aborted revolution, back-and-forth war, and state instigated genocide, finally mitigated only by the happenstance of American imperialism. When the US military enforced a no-fly zone over northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Kurdish peshmerga consolidated autonomous power in the three northernmost Iraqi provinces (Dohuk, Arbil, and Sulaimanya) and surrounding territories, even as various Kurdish political factions fought a civil war for control of what would be called by 1998 the Kurdish Federation. This territory has been governed as a state-within-a-state by the Kurdistan Regional Government after the US/Iraq war of 2003, a pro-Western, pro-Turkish sovereign Kurdish state in all but name and UN recognition with pretensions to being the first puzzle piece fit into a greater Kurdistan.

Iraqi Kurdistan is the most staid, orthodox expression of Kurdish nationalism imaginable, however. Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the PKK now in a Turkish prison for terrorism, recently rescinded the organization’s staunch Marxism-Leninism and replaced it with a libertarian communalism that has strong anarchist overtones. Traditional Leninist democratic centralism has been replaced with the democratic confederalism of Kurdistan, which:
Is not a state system, but a democratic system of the people without a state. With the women and youth at the forefront, it is a system in which all sectors of society will develop their own democratic organisations. It is a politics exercised by free and equal confederal citizens by electing their own free regional representatives. It is based on the principle of its own strength and expertise. It derives its power from the people and in all areas including its economy it will seek self-sufficiency. [“Declaration of Democratic Confederalism” by Abdullah Öcalan]


Ostensibly influenced by libertarian socialism, Öcalan and the PKK have given a particular shout-out to Murray Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism for their ideological turnaround.

The Kurds have now seized the opportunity offered by Syria’s disintegration into civil war, and the threat posed by the resurgent Sunni fundamentalist Islamic State, to fight for an autonomous Kurdish region in northeastern Syria known as Rojava. The PYD party, which fields the YPG/J guerrilla army, has close ties to the PKK and governs Rojava with the pro-Iraqi KNC through a Kurdish Supreme Committee. The PKK’s communalism and democratic confederalism pervades Rojava. The territory is organized into cantons (Afrin, Jazira, and Kobani), governed by councils and communes, all defended by armed militias. The peshmerga have even joined the YPG/J in defending Kobani against the IS. So, here is the conundrum for anti-authoritarians. Is Rojava a genuine libertarian revolution of the Kurdish people, or is it window dressing for the post-Leninist Öcalan and his crypto-authoritarian, unapologetically nationalist PKK?

When the EZLN broke onto the international political stage in 1994, the Zapatistas were mum about their origins in Mexico’s 1968 student Marxist/Leninist/Maoist politics, as well as coy about their own political ideology. Nevertheless, anarchists and left communists embraced the EZLN wholeheartedly, without reservation, and events in Chiapas were defended as both revolutionary and anti-authoritarian. Not so Rojava. The anarcho/ultra milieu is being asked either to show unconditional solidarity for the revolution in Rojava or to summarily denounce Rojava as a Trojan horse for autocratic Kurdish nationalism.

Apparently, no nuance is permitted.
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Re: Rojava

Postby American Dream » Thu Oct 10, 2019 9:30 pm

Erdogan, the Kurds and Trump’s real “betrayal”

Another purpose of Erdogan’s invasion is to resettle most of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees presently living in Turkey into this “peace zone” as Erdogan is calling it. In other words, this will be a new cleansing of the area’s present residents, setting up new conflicts. (In part, Erdogan is doing this because he has come under increased nationalist pressure inside Turkey from nationalist forces who oppose the presence of these Syrian refugees.)

YPG
The Kurdish YPG will look for new allies, first and foremost the brutal Assad regime.

The invasion places Russian imperialism in a bind. On the one hand, it has achieved closer ties with Erdogan, as for example through its sale of surface-to-air missiles earlier this year. But it is more closely linked with the Assad regime. Therefore, it is calling for “negotiations” – a typical diplomatic ploy when an imperialist power can’t decide whose side to take. “At this stage everyone should avoid any actions that can inhibit the peace process in Syria,” said a Putin representative. By “peace process” he meant the final domination of Syria by one of this century’s most brutal tyrants.

The invasion will increase the tendency towards rights abuses by the PYD (Kurdish) controlled region, as documented by Human Rights Watch as long ago as 2014.

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Raqqa, Syria, after the Trump administration got done bombing it. Most of the US “anti-imperialist” left ignored this crime.

The Turkish invasion will also benefit the fascist ISIS. Thousands of their members – male and female – are being held in prison camps in the Kurdish controlled region of NE Syria. Already, there have been reports of horrid conditions that have been greatly worsened by ISIS control over some of these camps – control in which the ISIS prisoners terrorize the rest of those in the camps. As the Kurdish forces (the YPG and the more directly US-allied SDF) mobilize to fight Turkish and FSA invaders, these ISIS members will inevitably be freed and will regroup. In fact, already al Jazeera is reporting that the group has carried out a new attack in Raqqa. That city was sort of the capital of ISIS’s new “caliphate” but they had been crushed by a combination of US bombing and shelling – which totally devastated the entire city – and an SDF invasion. (Most of the left “opponents” of US intervention in Syria completely ignored this war crime.)

US capitalism and Trump
First and foremost, we must not make the mistake of confusing Trump and the US capitalist class as a whole as one and the same. Every single important representative of the US capitalist class, right across the political spectrum, has denounced Trump’s withdrawal. The single most powerful Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, called it a “betrayal” of the US-allied Kurds. Trump’s two major attack dogs in the Senate, Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham both denounced it. (In response to Trump’s previous withdrawal announcement, Graham had said “If Obama had done this, we’d be going nuts right now.”) The view of the diplomatic wing of the representatives of US imperialism was exemplified by this comment of James Jeffrey, whom the NY times identifies as “one of America’s most experienced Middle East hands.” He had said a few months ago “We plan on having a small residual force to remain on (in N.E. Syria) for an indefinite time.” Nor should we forget that the major representative of US imperialism’s fight against ISIS, Brett McGurk, had resigned exactly due to Trump’s previous withdrawal announcement.

As is to be expected, the editorial boards of both the NY Times and the Washington Post denounced the move, but even the editors of the Wall St. Journal denounced it too. (They have become his strongest defenders in most instances.) Their editorial, "With Friends Like These”, denounced the withdrawal as a “betrayal” of the only real allies in Syria that the US has – the Kurdish YPG.

As for the US military: It was his previous withdrawal announcement that led to the resignation of General James Mattis from Trump’s administration and helped pave the way for the resignation of General Kelly.

One of the most serious strategists for US capitalism, and one who it’s most helpful to read, is Max Boot. He is a longtime former Republican who turned against that party and its president out of genuine patriotism, if one understands the term in its true sense: loyalty to the real interests of the capitalist class, in this case the US capitalist class. Boot explains ‘In August, the inspector generals for the State and Defense departments reported that the Islamic State retains 14,000 to 18,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq and is stepping up insurgent operations in both countries. The drawdown of U.S. forces, the inspectors general wrote, “decreased the amount of resources and support available to . . . Syrian partner forces at a time when they need additional reinforcing for counterinsurgency operations against ISIS.”‘ One clear implication here is the opposition of the US military wing of the government to this withdrawal.

They all point out that no future ally of US capitalism will be able to rely on the US in the future. They also point out how Trump’s withdrawal will not only strengthen ISIA, but also Russian imperialism as well as Iranian sub-imperialism.

“Worse than a crime”
Boot summarized the position of himself and of his class in general by quoting 19th century French statesman, Talleyrand, who had said, “This is worse than a crime. It’s a mistake.”

Boot also put his finger on the underlying problem with Trump: His “lack of loyalty to anyone not named Trump,” as he put it. In other words, Trump has little or no loyalty to the US capitalist class or even any major wing of that class.

Trump
Oaklandsocialist has written many times over about Trump’s money-laundering links to the Russian mafia capitalists. The presence of a president who is directly tied to a rival imperialist capitalist class shows the extreme weakness of the US capitalist class.


More: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2019/10/09 ... -betrayal/
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Re: Rojava

Postby American Dream » Mon Oct 14, 2019 1:28 pm

Rojava and the ghost of Kropotkin: “What’s Left?” April 2019, MRR #431

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The centuries-long legacy of European imperialism and subsequent Third World decolonization left the Kurds and their national aspirations stateless, divided between four artificially constructed Middle Eastern nation-states and among a dozen surrounding ethnic/religious communities. With the Cold War overlay and global contention between the Soviet bloc and the “Free World,” the Kurds had a brief few decades when they sought to choose between socialism or barbarism instead of competing imperialisms. Virtually every Kurdish political formation claimed to be socialist at minimum or Marxist-Leninist in full, with several dozen conflicting Kurdish political parties divided territorially, ideologically, and by tribe/clan, thus generating a highly fractious nationalist politics. I don’t have the space to discuss this complexity other than to note that when Soviet-style Communism collapsed internationally between 1989 and 1991, the US was left the victor and sole superpower. The Kurds reoriented themselves to seeking alliances with and aid from the US, which has repeatedly proven to be a mistake.

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The US has blatantly used the Kurds and their nationalist ambitions for short-term American imperialist gain time and again, betraying them without a second thought whenever it was convenient. Through the CIA, the Nixon Administration fomented a Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq against Saddam Hussein as a favor to the shah of Iran in 1975 which Henry Kissinger then betrayed. In 1991, George H.W. Bush personally encouraged the southern Shia and northern Kurds of Iraq to revolt against Saddam Hussein, only to balk at militarily aiding those rebellions, leaving the Shiite and Kurdish insurgents to be brutally crushed by the Ba’athist dictatorship. Kurdish autonomy and the Kurdistan Regional Government that emerged thereafter were more honored in the breach than the observance by the US, establishing a de facto Kurdish independence after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That autonomy was compromised after the US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 as the central Iraqi government, backed by Iran, rolled back agreements on power sharing, oil production, and territorial control with the Kurds. The 2011 collapse of Syria into civil war, and the subsequent rise of IS with its 2014 Northern Iraq offensive were followed by the battles for Kirkuk and Mosul, the consolidation of Kurdish power in northern Syria, and the Kurdish defeat of IS in both Iraq and Syria. The US aided this Kurdish military resurgence, but now Trump and the US threaten to betray America’s Kurdish allies once again by a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria.

The Kurds see the US as the political and military guarantor of Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq, and now in northern Syria, where Rojava is carrying out a profound libertarian socialist experiment in self-government. But the US is a notoriously unreliable partner, first and foremost because America always pursues its own imperialist interests in the region. Second, the US consistently promotes the interests of regional client states like Israel and Egypt and regional allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The US being the principal imperialist power remaining in the world means that support for the Kurds and Rojava is a complicated affair, especially for the left of the Left.

“Syria In Brief” is an internet project [[url=syriainbrief.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/leftist-groups-on-the-syrian-civil-war/]syriainbrief.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/leftist-groups-on-the-syrian-civil-war/[/url]] which summarizes the position of some fifty-four western Leftist groups, all of which “support secularism and socialism […] and oppose intervention by Western powers, but their attitudes towards the Assad regime, the Kurdish PYD/YPG-led Rojava, the vast and multi-colored opposition,” Russian intervention, “and the so-called Islamic State vary greatly.” For the anti-imperialist Leninist Left disparagingly called “Tankies,” those politics are rigid, vulgar and formulaic. Imperialism is categorically bad and US imperialism is particularly bad, so the Butcher of Damascus Assad and his Russian allies are to be supported at all costs. Thus Tankie anti-imperialism means defending the client Syrian state of the former “real existing socialist” state of Russia without fail. By contrast, virtually all of the left communist and left anarchist groups listed—as well as assorted independent Leninists, Trotskyists and Maoists—support the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria/Rojava, the PYD/YPG/SDF, and their libertarian socialist experiment on the ground. Many also critically or partially support the Free Syrian Army in particular and the Syrian opposition generally.


More: https://leftyhooligan.wordpress.com/201 ... 9-mrr-431/
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Re: Rojava

Postby American Dream » Tue Oct 15, 2019 12:53 pm

https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2019/1 ... ern-syria/

On the Turkish offensive on north-eastern Syria

October 14, 2019 by Leila Al Shami

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Syrians flee their homes amid Turkish bombardment. Photo credit: Delil Souleiman/AFP

The recent Turkish offensive on north-eastern Syria and US withdrawal of troops from the region is unleashing yet another humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions.

In the past few days over 130,000 Syrians have fled for their lives, in desperate search of safety. Dozens of civilians have been killed by Turkish bombs and assassinations by Turkish allied militias. Among the chaos ISIS prisoners have broken out of detention camps and are now running free – many of them foreigners, including children, whose respective states have refused to take responsibility for their nationals.

The Turkish invasion was green lighted by Trump (and likely Russia too) and has seen the US abandon its allies, the Syrian Democratic Forces (dominated by Kurdish militia), which it partnered with in the war to destroy the Islamic State. It is not the first time the US has abandoned allies in Syria, and it’s unlikely this betrayal will easily be forgotten by those who will suffer the consequences.

Turkey’s operation has two aims. It hopes to crush Kurdish autonomy in the north, much of which has been under the control of the Kurdish PYD since 2012, a group linked to the PKK, long seen by the Turkish state as a domestic enemy, and to establish a buffer zone in which to return Syrian refugees facing increasing hostility and xenophobia in Turkey. As many of the refugees are Arabs and would be returned to an area where many minorities – Kurdish and others – reside, such a move would likely lead to further demographic change, now a key feature of the Syrian tragedy. Syrian opposition groups allied with Turkey therefore fight for a Turkish agenda, and one that bears no resemblance to the Syrian revolution for freedom and dignity which began eight years ago.

Inhabitants of the region have good reason to fear a Turkish occupation. The Kurdish-majority city of Afrin, which fell to Turkey and allied forces last year, sets a terrifying precedent. Many civilians were displaced from their homes and prevented from returning, and there was widespread looting of abandoned property, as well as arrests, rape and assassinations.

Given the fears Syrian Kurds hold of ethnic cleansing by Turkish forces, and no allies willing to defend them, the PYD has been left with little option but to negotiate a return of regime control, ending an experiment in Kurdish autonomy which has led to significant gains for the population in the realization of many of their rights long denied by the Arabist regime. This was likely only a matter of time. When the regime handed power to the PYD it probably calculated three factors: that this transfer of power would stop the Kurds fighting the regime, allowing the regime to concentrate military resources elsewhere; that it would fragment and thus weaken the Syrian opposition to Assad along sectarian divisions; and that if the PYD became too powerful, Turkey would intervene to prevent them from expanding, allowing the regime to retake control.

Reportedly the deal brokered between the regime and the PYD-dominated SDF includes a guarantee of full Kurdish rights and autonomy. Yet it’s unlikely the regime will ever accept Kurdish autonomy, as it’s repeatedly made clear in public statements. Elsewhere in Syria all promises given by the regime in ‘reconciliation’ deals were not worth the paper they were written on. Anti-regime activists, both Arabs and Kurds, are now at risk of being rounded up and detained for possible death by torture. SDF fighters are also not safe. Just days ago Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Maqdad declared that they had “betrayed their country and committed crimes against it.” Whilst many Kurds, abandoned by the US, may feel safer under Assad than Turkey, some Arab civilians living in SDF controlled areas such as Deir Al Zour and Raqqa fear a reconquest by the regime and Iranian militias above all else, and feel safer under Turkish protection. Syrians are rendered desperate, and dependent on foreign powers for survival. Foreign journalists also under threat by the regime have fled Syria leaving atrocities to unfold out of sight of the international media.

The decisions being made today are the machinations of foreign powers, and it is Syrian civilians who will pay the price. The current power struggles between states are manipulating ethnic divisions leading to increased sectarianism which will plague Syria for the foreseeable future. The refusal of Assad to step down when Syrians demanded it is what has led to this bloodbath along with the repeated failure of the international community to protect Syrians from slaughter and the failures of both Arab and Kurdish opposition leaders to put their own interests aside and promote unity among those who wish to be rid of authoritarian rule. One by one, around the country, the regime has crushed any democratic experiment in community autonomy, and the international community seems willing to normalize relations with a regime that has held on to power through unleashing slaughter on a massive scale. What is happening today is a disaster not only for Kurds but for all Free Syrians.

Once again the situation in Syria has highlighted the moral bankruptcy of segments of the left. Many of those protesting Turkey’s assault on north eastern Syria failed to mobilise to condemn the ongoing Russian and regime assault on Idlib where three million civilians are living in daily terror. In fact they’ve failed to notice that for years Syrians have been massacred by bombs, chemical weapons and industrial scale torture. Some of those calling for a No Fly Zone to protect Kurdish civilians from aerial bombardment previously slandered Syrians elsewhere calling for the same protection as warmongerers and agents of imperialism. Once again solidarity seems dependent not on outrage against war crimes, but on who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. Syrian lives are expendable in the battle for narratives and grand ideological frameworks.

The Syrian tragedy is a stain on the conscience of humanity.
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Re: Rojava

Postby American Dream » Thu Oct 17, 2019 8:11 am

The Turkish Invasion of Syria

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Fighting capitalism for the only possible alternative – communism – means fighting war in all its manifestations, combatting imperialism in all its guises as the main instigator of war. This also means not falling into the nationalist game of the Kurdish minorities who, in order to pursue their objective – a bourgeois and capitalist nation state – hitch their wagon to imperialism and become a tool that, once its usefulness is over, is cast aside. This is the case of the YPG, exploited by the USA against ISIS and then handed over to Turkish imperialism. In the midst of this devastating crisis that produces war upon war, it is not the birth of new nationalisms, whether Kurdish or of any other ethnic group that is the order of the day, but the proletarian revolution, the only one that can put a stop to crises, wars and the inhuman arrogance of imperialism.


https://libcom.org/blog/turkish-invasion-syria-15102019
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Re: Rojava

Postby American Dream » Fri Oct 18, 2019 7:54 am

Perfidious Trump throws Kurds to Erdogan and Assad

BY OAKLANDSOCIALIST ON OCTOBER 17, 2019

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Results of Turkish aerial attack on civilians in NE Syria.

Marcus Halaby writes from London:


“Regime change” and the “war on terror”
It would be a huge mistake though for Western leftists to imagine that this “crisis of leadership” is something that exists only “over there”, and that our role “over here” is merely to deliver high-minded sermons about internationalism to people whose struggles and whose very lives are most directly threatened. Only the principal anti-war movement organisations in the West are also in the grip of a “crisis of leadership”, one that has seen them promote a politics that separates “anti-imperialism” from “international solidarity” by treating the latter as an unwarranted impertinence, or even as a cover for imperialist intervention.

Far too many of the Western anti-war movements’ most prominent public figures, in Britain for example amongst them George Galloway and Andrew Murray, responded with outright hostility to the Syrian revolution against Assad, either from its very outset or at least from its transformation into an armed struggle in early 2012. On the basis of the Assad regime’s much-exaggerated “support” for the Palestinians, its two-faced “anti-imperialist” rhetoric or the fact that its principal backers have been Russia and Iran, they have treated the one “Arab Spring” revolution of 2011 that was most sustained and that sank the deepest roots into the popular masses as being a US “proxy war” for “regime change”, like the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Indeed, many of these figures (and the organisations associated with them) rose to prominence during the 2001-05 movements against the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; and it appears that they have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing about the failure of these movements to “stop the war”.

More mainstream anti-war figures like John Rees and Tariq Ali have avoided the more extreme expressions of support for Assad of their allies, albeit in Tariq Ali’s case only just. But they have still fallen in behind their false perspective of opposing the “regime change war” that wasn’t happening, whether because they prefer to let their congenitally pro-Russian and pro-Iranian allies do their strategic thinking for them, or because they fear breaking ranks with them in case this deprives them of the resources that provide their shrinking organisations with the outward signs of continued life.

“anti-imperialism” and international solidarity
This was obscene enough in the two years before the rise of Islamic State, insofar as it promoted an “anti-imperialism” that was hostile or indifferent to the principal victims of our own ruling classes’ Russian imperialist rivals, or whose “international solidarity” was with the victimisers. Utterly distorting the meaning of the German revolutionary Karl Liebknecht’s commendable maxim that “the main enemy is at home”, they have taught an ageing generation of 2003-era activists to regard Russian imperialism’s bloodstained interventions as being relatively benign, or at least as being something that people should not get too worked up about.

But for the last five years, it has also produced an “anti-war movement” whose leaderships have been far more worried about the outside risk that US imperialism could double-cross its Russian allies in their joint “war on terror” against Islamic State than with opposing the principal interventions of Western governments. Major Western atrocities like the airborne destruction of Mosul or Raqqa receive very little attention, as if they are just so much background noise. Emergency demonstrations and hyperbolic expressions of outrage are reserved for minor punitive actions against Assad, like those that followed his poison gas attacks on Douma last year or on Khan Shaykhun in 2017.

Their real guiding maxim has therefore not been that “the main enemy is at home”, but rather that “the only enemy is at home, and then only if it is antagonising its principal rivals abroad instead of conducting wars alongside them”. No-one after all wants to be accused of “supporting jihadists”, and it is far easier to oppose “regime change” than it is to oppose the “war on terror”, especially when our own governments are also opposed to “regime change” and are fighting a war against “jihadists”.

And yet far from the USA or Russia double-crossing each other, so far it has only been Turkey and the USA that have double-crossed their Arab Syrian and Kurdish clients. In the medium-term future, there remains the prospect that Putin could double-cross Assad as the price of a “regional settlement” – something that no sane person anywhere should shed a single tear over – or that Russia could abandon Iran to some US, Saudi or Israeli aggression – something that will be a disaster for the people of Iran and of the region, for all of the Iranian state’s nefarious role in assisting Assad’s genocide of his own people.

Imperialism supporting Assad regime
The uncomfortable fact is that for the last five years in Syria, US imperialism and its Western allies have been at war with the Assad regime’s enemies, rather than with Assad. As also was Russia, with the difference that while the West primarily fought Islamic State to protect its own access to Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil reserves, the USA’s uncomfortable Russian and Iranian allies took advantage of this breathing space afforded to them by Western intervention to crush Syria’s democratic revolution.

That was the real “imperialist war” that socialists everywhere needed to oppose, of course without for a moment backing the ultra-reactionaries of Islamic State. That was the real “imperialist intervention”, not some mythical “war for regime change”. The fact that Obama provided quite limited aid to some Syrian rebels – primarily for use against Islamic State – does not change that for a moment. Nor does the fact that Obama’s Saudi, Turkish and Qatari allies tepidly provided aid to the Syrian opposition for use against Assad, in the process seeking to exploit and to suborn their justified struggles just as US imperialism has sought to exploit and to suborn the entirely justified struggles of Syria’s Kurds.

It might even be said that Obama’s choice of the YPG as his principal instrument against Islamic State – rather than the rebels’ “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) – was motivated precisely by the fear that a successful revolution against Assad’s regime would prove to have consequences as unpredictable and as difficult to manage as the 2011 revolution that overthrew the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi did. Like Putin and like Iran’s leader Hassan Rouhani, Obama too was opposed to any “regime change” in Damascus that might cause the Libyan or Iraqi-style collapse of Assad’s state and security apparatus.

The only appreciable difference between Obama and Trump in this regard has been that Obama’s cant about supporting “democracy” in the Arab world meant that he had to cover his tracks with calls for a “negotiated transition” in Syria, during which Assad would be allowed to remain in power pending “elections”. Trump however has been far more explicit in opposing any arrangements that might require US imperialism to commit long-term resources to maintaining the “stability” of a country in which the USA has few pressing interests. And he has combined this with a bellicose rhetoric towards Iran that marks a partial reversal of Obama’s efforts to bring Iran back into the Western fold after a forty-year absence.

The need for a new anti-war movement
Much of this is a closed book to much of Western anti-war opinion, which has largely followed its ossified leaderships in hailing the YPG as an anti-imperialist force while denouncing the FSA as a tool of “Western-backed regime change”, not that this widespread fetishisation of Rojava has done much for the Kurds. In fact, so badly misinformed have many Western anti-war activists been by their own leaders that to many of them it will come as complete news that the YPG was a US ally to begin with, especially given the bizarre and yet widely-held belief that the the USA was “supporting al-Qaeda and Islamic State”.

This outlook led many either to slander or to patronise those Arab Syrians and their supporters who raised futile and misguided calls for a “no-fly zone” to protect the rebel-held areas from Russian and Assad regime bombing. But now that the Kurds and their supporters in the West are raising similar such calls, what arguments are these “anti-war” figures left with to oppose them with now, beyond stating the obvious: that a US military intervention against Erdogan to “save the Kurds” is about as likely as a US military intervention against Assad to “save Aleppo and Idlib” was in 2016?

With this model of “anti-war politics”, it should be no surprise that so many pro-Syrian democracy activists continue to display illusions in Erdogan, or that so many pro-Kurdish activists continue to display illusions in US imperialism. An “anti-imperialism” that rejects international solidarity could not be better designed to drive the advocates of solidarity with the oppressed directly into the arms of the advocates of imperialist “humanitarian intervention”.

What this all demonstrates is the need for a complete re-elaboration of anti-war and anti-imperialist politics, and with it the emergence of a new anti-war movement on a new political basis. An anti-war movement whose points of unity will be opposition to the warlike acts of the global imperialist and regional great powers everywhere, whoever the victims or perpetrators are – including the many bloody interventions with unfashionable victims that today’s anti-war movements are often so reticent about raising any vocal opposition to.

An anti-war movement that does not abuse the maxim that “the main enemy is at home” to oppose any effective solidarity with progressive struggles abroad. But one that understands that opposing the interventions of “our own” governments at home is a priority because those are the interventions that we are materially in a position to obstruct – and not because the interventions of their rivals by default are are any less horrific or more benign. An anti-war movement that is not paralysed by the useless shibboleths of “opposing regime change”, “preserving sovereignty” or “promoting stability”; or for that matter by the faith placed by many in the meaningless platitudes of “international law”.

This movement’s overall message should be one of opposition to the interventions of all the powers, whether they are aimed at the overthrow of regimes or at their stabilisation or preservation, whether they are aimed against armed insurgencies or against internationally-recognised states, and whether or not they involve the immediate prospect of war with other major powers.


Excerpted from: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2019/10/17 ... and-assad/
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Re: Rojava

Postby American Dream » Sun Oct 20, 2019 7:55 am

The ceasefire that never was: betrayal in Rojava

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MERCENARIES, ISLAMISTS AND OPPORTUNISTS
While Turkey has resorted to indiscriminate bombing from the sky, numerous atrocities have been carried out by Turkish-backed Syrian fighters who were recently reorganized under the banner of the Syrian National Army (SNA).

Three days after launching the operation, fighters belonging to the Islamist Ahrar Al-Sharqiya — a group formed by fighters who had previously servedJabhat Al-Nusra in eastern Syria — committed a series of summary executions. Videos circulated on social media, which have been verified by the UN, which showed the execution of three Kurdish captives on the M4 highway.

On the same day, the Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf, a leading figure within the Future Syria Party, was also killed on the highway. According to reports by Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, she was dragged out of her car and shot in cold blood on the road. Disturbing videos shows one Ahrar Al-Sharqiya fighter stamping on her body after she was executed.Her autopsy reveals she was shot, beaten with heavy objects and dragged by her hair until the skin on her scalp came off.

Moreover, a report published by Foreign Policy appear to confirm accusations that these Turkish-backed mercenaries have been using chemical weapons against civilians in Serekaniye. Children with chemical burns across their body consistent with white phosphorus have been admitted to a hospital in the region, and a US official has admitted to knowledge of such claims.

Most of the Syrian fighters are battle-hardened fighters who see themselves as the heirs to the uprising against Bashar Assad. While there are a considerable number of groups with extreme Islamist persuasions, such as Ahrar Al-Sharqiya and Jaysh Al-Islam, there are also various Arab and Turkmen groups who hail from the north-eastern region of Syria.

Since 2016, these groups have been funded by Turkey, and despite claims of being the heirs to the Syrian revolution, have tended not to engage in clashes with regime forces. Instead, they resemble a mercenary force motivated by money rather than a specific ideology. “The main problem with these forces is their criminality,” Elizabeth Tsurkov, an expert who has interviewed many of the fighters, explained. “Hatred of Kurds, a sense of Arab chauvinism, complete intolerance for any dissent, and just a desire to make a profit is what’s driving most of the abuses.”

Given the many atrocities committed by the Turkish-backed SNA — ranging from summary roadside executions to the use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians — it was expected that any ceasefire agreement negotiated by the Trump administration would have, at a minimum, prevented the continued presence of such forces.

But the wording only goes as far as stating that the safe zone will “primarily” be enforced by the Turkish Army — meaning Turkish proxies will still have free rein to continue their war crimes against the Kurdish population of Rojava.

A PAINFUL COMPROMISE
Turkey’s advance and the US’ betrayal have forced the Rojava administration into Assad’s fold. The sheer brutality of much of these mercenary forces, and Turkey’s clear intentions to ethnically cleanse the border area, means the people of Rojava have little choice but to resist.

Turkey claims this is a fight against the “terrorist elements,” and as a result, are more than happy to fight dirty. Much like Afrin, rather than suffering casualties on their own military, and thereby dialing up the pressure on Erdoğan domestically, Ankara has chosen to employ their own mercenary forces to terrorize the local Kurdish population.

With such an existential threat to Rojava, ceding control to Turkey and their mercenary forces was and remains unthinkable. In this, reaching an agreement with the Assad regime appeared to be the “least bad option.” While the finer details of the agreement are yet to be flushed out, the hope is that the Kurds will continue to retain some degree of self-rule.

Some reports suggest that the Kurds secured a guarantee of full Kurdish rights in a new Syrian constitution with some form of autonomy, in return for the integration of the Kurdish forces into a legion of the Syrian army under Russian patronage.

Others have portrayed the deal with the regime as the end of the autonomy enjoyed by the Rojava administration, although the SDF have been quick to point out that the agreement reached is purely on a military basis only.

According to a statement released by the SDF on Sunday night, the deal was made to prevent the Turkish attack and would lead to the Syrian army being deployed across the length of the Syrian-Turkish border. As mentioned earlier, while the area between Tal Abyad and Serekaniye remains uncertain, the deployment of regime forces appears to have successfully limited the scope of Turkey’s invasion to this area.

However, despite SDF claims, allowing regime forces the ability to deploy across Rojava will undoubtedly lead to certain unpleasant compromises for the administration. In an article in Foreign Policy, the SDF commander Mazloum Kobane, acknowledged this reality when he said “we know that we would have to make painful compromises with Moscow and Bashar al-Assad if we go down the road of working with them,” but insisted that they would have to choose such compromises over the genocide of Kurds that the Turkish invasion threatened.

Rojava’s preference was for a continuation of their partnership with the US in order to avoid such painful compromises, but Trump’s betrayal have forced the hands of the autonomous administration.

EXPLOITING ETHNIC TENSIONS
The future of the SDF is more uncertain than ever. They are often painted as Kurdish allies in western media, but the SDF was envisioned as a multi-ethnic force and includes Arabs, Christians, Yezidis and Turkmen in their ranks alongside Kurds.

The SDF may have been born out of the predominately Kurdish YPG/J, but as the battle against ISIS led to the liberation of Arab regions such as Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, the SDF have succeeded in enlisting a greater number of Arabs into the fold. According to research conducted on the ground, Arabs make up more than 50 percent of the entire ethnic composition of the group.

Partly due to the perceived cooperation between Assad and the Syrian Kurds, the participation of Arabs and broader FSA forces within the SDF is often underreported. For example, during the defense of Tal Abyad prior to its capture by Turkish-backed forces last week, the groups primarily engaged with resisting Turkish advances were well known FSA groups such as Liwa al-Tahrir (Liberation Brigade) and Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa (Raqqa Revolutionaries Brigade).

There have certainly been tensions with the YPG over the years, but the presence of such groups underlines the cooperation with which opposition Arab groups have cooperated and actively worked alongside Kurdish forces. However, now that a deal with the regime has been reached, it appears likely that Assad will attempt to break up such cooperation and flush out known FSA elements.

Another battleground where this dynamic is materializing is in Manbij. While regime and Russian forces have prevented Turkish-backed rebel groups from launching an offensive by placing themselves on the front line north of the city, reports have suggested that the city’s residents and the Manbij Military Council (MMC) have been uneasy with the presence of the SAA. The MMC, who control the city and are allied to the SDF, have their roots in FSA battalions that took up arms against the regime in the early days of the revolution.

Allying with Assad will certainly have unfortunate repercussions. Aside from militias who have their roots in an anti-authoritarian uprising against Assad, there are thousands of civilians living in Rojava that are wanted by the regime.


More: https://roarmag.org/essays/rojava-turkey-invasion/
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Re: Rojava

Postby American Dream » Wed Oct 23, 2019 12:39 pm

The Turkish invasion: Latest step in the Russian-led destruction of the Syrian revolution

How Erdogan handed northeast Syria to the Assad regime without it firing a shot

By Michael Karadjis

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On October 6, the Turkish regime of Tayyip Erdogan launched its long-heralded invasion of northeast Syria, aiming to expel the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from a 30-kilometre border region, and then to dump some its 3.5 million Syrian refugees into territory from which the local population has been expelled. Erdogan’s deal with Russian president Putin consecrates a victory for both Erdogan and Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad, who will divide SDF-held territories between them. 

Turkey and the Kurds
Turkey, along with Iran, Iraq and Syria, have long oppressed their Kurdish populations. In their resistance to Turkish oppression, the Kurdish people in southwest Turkey faced extraordinary state violence under the decades of military regimes, forcing them to take the path of armed struggle in the 1980s, led by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Over the next two decades, some 40,000 people were killed, overwhelmingly by the Turkish state’s brutal counterinsurgency war.

However, the PKK, like many just struggles in the context of state-terror, also often operated in a ruthless fashion, earning it the same “terrorist” label as the Syrian rebels, the Palestinian resistance, the Irish freedom fighters and others in the oppressor’s discourse. Yet while ultra-hypocritical when this label is used by defenders of Turkish state-terror, the crimes of the PKK (including silencing rival Kurdish organisations) did contribute to its alienation from a much of the Turkish working class who are therefore more easily manipulated by state propaganda.

The main force in the SDF in Syria is the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of the PKK, and its militia, the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The Syrian Kurds were brutally oppressed under the Assad dictatorship and hundreds of thousands denied citizenship. Although Turkey’s claim that the YPG-SDF represents a “threat” to Turkey’s security is laughably false – the YPG has never fired a shot across the border – it is true in the sense that the Kurdish autonomy achieved by the SDF in northeastern Syria is a “threat” via the example it sets for the Kurds in Turkey.

Just one part of the Syrian massacre …
This brutal aerial and land attack on the Kurdish and Arab civilian population is simply one more theatre of terror within the genocidal massacre that has engulfed Syria for 9 years, some 95 percent of which has been perpetrated by the fascistic dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, backed by his Russian imperialist masters who have joined Assad in raining death from the skies, and the death squads sent by the Iranian theocracy. Most of the remaining killing was carried out by ISIS and by the US bombing that helped the SDF drive ISIS from eastern Syria.

Indeed, the last 6 months of particularly brutal mass homicide and dispossession carried out by Assad and Russia in northwest Syria has been barely noticed by the international media; many seem to have only just noticed that Syrians are being bombed.


Read more: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2019/10/23/the-turkish-invasion-latest-step-in-the-russian-led-destruction-of-the-syrian-revolution/
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