YPG flag raised in Raqqa
The Kurdish YPG is advancing with US support on the Syrian capitol of the Islamic State.
A battle is coming between the Kurds and the Fascist army of Basher al Assad. Which side will the left take?
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In the air both the coalition led by the Americans and the Russians are daily bombing the remaining parts in the hands of IS to ruins. However, it is the situation on the ground which will be decisive in the conflict between the SDF and Assad´s army which, without any doubt, will follow after the reconquest of Raqqa upon the inevitable defeat of IS. Like the Kurds in Iraq claim Kirkuk as a town originally belonging to Kurdish territory, which only after arabization by Saddam Hussein was stolen from them, so the Syrian Kurds consider Raqqa as originally belonging to Rojava before the arabization of the town by father and son Assad. When the SDF and the Arabian Army will meet halfway in a reconquered Raqqa a stalemate in the occupation of the town is unavoidable and comparable with that in Hasakah. It is to be expected that, after the expulsion of IS from the town, the real battle of Raqqa will just begin because none of the armies will concede Raqqa to the other.
https://kurdistantribune.com/after-fall-of-raqqa/
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A battle is coming between the Kurds and the Fascist army of Basher al Assad. Which side will the left take?
https://kurdistantribune.com/after-fall-of-raqqa/
If we are using a standard by which the (de jure, multiethnic) government of Syria is indeed "Fascist" (it may well be), then surely the openly revanchist ethno-nationalism of the YPG (per the article) is Fascist as well. Why should "the left" take a side at all?
Baathism was born out of Vichy and the first political act of the Ba'ath party was a pro-nazi coup in Iraq in 1941. The YPG and PKK cannot be compared to the opposition.
Just to clarify, what is the US support in question in this situation? What it's the level of coordination?
Just to clarify, this isn't a pro-Assad post - I'm no tankie. I'm just interested in clarification, if possible.
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Just to clarify, what is the US support in question in this situation? What it's the level of coordination?
Just to clarify, this isn't a pro-Assad post - I'm no tankie. I'm just interested in clarification, if possible.
It's worth checking out this reuters article:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-m...-idUSKCN1AX1RI
Basically, US forces are allied both with the Kurds and the Syrian Democratic Forces, the anti-Assad militias, to the point of setting up airbases in the Kurdish town of Kobani which, a while ago, was under siege essentially by IS. The Kurds are likely playing the game, getting themselves a powerful backer, in order to support themselves and the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey etc. From what I remember, the Kurds in Iraq won the right to an independence referendum semi-recently but I'm not sure how that has developed. It's basically clear that Syria is yet another battleground between the competing imperialist interests of the US and Russia.
Given the U.S.' long-established history of imperialist interventions, particularly in the Middle East, I don't think it's a good idea to wait around and see what the U.S. does further to Iraq and Syria after it defeats ISIS.
Global Warfare: “We’re going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran..”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-...udan-iran/5166
I, for one, would want to know if the PNAC (neoconservative) shit list is still the active agenda for U.S. warfare, and also what the U.S.' 'relationship' will be regarding the Kurds -- the Kurds want their own nation, and the U.S. looks to want a military base there.
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“Our mission ... is to defeat ISIS in designated areas of Iraq and Syria and to set conditions for follow-on operations to increase regional stability,” Dillon said, without elaborating.
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He suggested northern Syria could become a new base for U.S. forces in the region. “Maybe there could be an alternative to their base in Turkey,” he added, referring to the Incirlik air base.
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Baathism was born out of Vichy and the first political act of the Ba'ath party was a pro-nazi coup in Iraq in 1941. The YPG and PKK cannot be compared to the opposition.
“Large numbers of Arab residents populate the regions Kurds designate as their own.” [28] The PKK has taken “over a large swath of territory across northern Syria—including predominantly Arab cities and towns.” [29] Raqqa, and surrounding parts of the Euphrates Valley on which the PKK has set its sights, are mainly populated by Arabs, observes The Independent’s veteran foreign correspondent Patrick Cockburn—and the Arabs are opposed to Kurdish occupation. [30]
Kurdish forces are not only “retaking” Christian and Muslim Arab towns in Syria, but are doing the same in the Nineveh province of Iraq—areas “which were never Kurdish in the first place. Kurds now regard Qamishleh, and Hassakeh province in Syria as part of ‘Kurdistan’, although they represent a minority in many of these areas.” [31]
The PKK now controls 20,000 square miles of Syrian territory [32], or roughly 17 percent of the country, while Kurds represent less than eight percent of the population.
In their efforts to create a Kurdish region inside Syria, the PKK “has been accused of abuses by Arab civilians across northern Syria, including arbitrary arrests and displacing Arab populations in the name of rolling back Islamic State.” [33] The PKK “has expelled Arabs and ethnic Turkmen from large parts of northern Syria,” reports The Wall Street Journal. [34] The Journal additionally notes that human rights “groups have accused [Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish fighters] of preventing Arabs from returning to liberated areas.” [35]
Full article :
https://gowans.wordpress.com/2017/07...al-excellence/Overall US support for the Kurds has been inconsistent. Whatever their presence is now, the US more or less abandoned Kobani until quite late into the siege. Turkey's civil war against the PKK and HDP and their expulsion of refugees was all in exchange for US use of Incirlik.
Additionally YPG did all of the hard work on the ground of saving the Yazidi people from genocide. For all of the faults you can identify, The Kurds have also handled the refugee crisis much better than the Turks, and the arab nations of the middle east, who have taken shamefully few. There is simply no comparison.
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content...-refugee-needs
http://www.dw.com/en/arab-monarchies...eat/a-19002873
http://kurdishquestion.com/article/3...main-in-sinjar
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We demand that the UN, EU and other international organisations function as guarantor parties, and that the PKK, which is an effective national force in the fight against ISIS, continues to defend our society.
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The declaration also said that the PKK had taken initiative in coming to the Yazidis' rescue in August 2014 and called on the group to remain in the region.
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Additionally YPG did all of the hard work on the ground of saving the Yazidi people from genocide. For all of the faults you can identify, The Kurds have also handled the refugee crisis much better than the Turks, and the arab nations of the middle east, who have taken shamefully few. There is simply no comparison.
"the Yazidi people" are simply Kurds who follow a different religion than the majority Muslim Kurds, and thus what you describe is perfectly compatible with an ethnocentric revanchist program. But even if the Yazidi were not Kurds it doesn't excuse the entirely separate issue of ethnically cleansing Arab people!
I mention the yazidi Kurds to give depth to my overall point. The kurds have suffered multiple campaigns of genocide, the yazidi being only the most recent, and Rojava has not only saved them where no arab or Turkish army would, but they also took in the refugees fleeing from fascist atrocities committed by ISIS or the Ba'ath while neighboring states have refused. Your own article does not mention the words gencide, massacre, torture, sexual enslavement etc. as actions committed by the YPG (it does favorably compare the fascist regime in Syria to the Union under Lincoln and calls it a socialist champion of democracy around the world, which in itself is enough to dismiss the article). All of these atrocities have been suffered by the Kurds but none have been returned in kind.
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I mention the yazidi Kurds to give depth to my overall point.
Your overall point appears to be that "the left" owes their support to a particular nationalist group whose ethnic cleansing campaigns have been -- perhaps -- not as bad as some other ethnic cleansing campaigns in recent memory, and as such is utterly without merit.
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All of these atrocities have been suffered by the Kurds but none have been returned in kind.
Of course anybody with the most rudimentary reading comprehension skills that comes across this thread will be forced to draw the very opposite conclusion, but whatever.
The larger point is that "the left" is in no way obligated to carry water for this or that bourgeois nationalism. As a Leninist, I happen to think that Lenin's criteria for the support of national liberation struggles are an excellent starting point:
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Originally Posted by The Foundations of Leninism
[T]he imperialist war and the revolution in Russia have confirmed, that the national question can be solved only in connection with and on the basis of the proletarian revolution, and that the road to victory of the revolution in the West lies through the revolutionary alliance with the liberation movement of the colonies and dependent countries against imperialism. The national question is a part of the general question of the proletarian revolution, a part of the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat. [...]
This does not mean, of course, that the proletariat must support every national movement, everywhere and always, in every individual concrete case. It means that support must be given to such national movements as tend to weaken, to overthrow imperialism, and not to strengthen and preserve it. Cases occur when the national movements in certain oppressed countries come into conflict with the interests of the development of the proletarian movement. In such cases support is, of course, entirely out of the question.
Source
That said, it is not necessary to be a Leninist to see why lending support to any particular struggle for nationhood shouldn't be mechanically applied as a matter of principle.
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Your overall point appears to be that "the left" owes their support to a particular nationalist group whose ethnic cleansing campaigns have been -- perhaps -- not as bad as some other ethnic cleansing campaigns in recent memory, and as such is utterly without merit.
Of course anybody with the most rudimentary reading comprehension skills that comes across this thread will be forced to draw the very opposite conclusion, but whatever.
The larger point is that "the left" is in no way obligated to carry water for this or that bourgeois nationalism. As a Leninist, I happen to think that Lenin's criteria for the support of national liberation struggles are an excellent starting point:
Source
That said, it is not necessary to be a Leninist to see why lending support to any particular struggle for nationhood shouldn't be mechanically applied as a matter of principle.
Okay, so what's your conclusion regarding the Kurds and *their* particular bid for a nation-state? Would their geographical independence unswervingly *require* the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population there?
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Okay, so what's your conclusion regarding the Kurds and *their* particular bid for a nation-state? Would their geographical independence unswervingly *require* the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population there?
I haven't studied the Kurdish question deeply. But as far as I know the dominant political players in Kurdistan are not openly calling for de-jure independence at this time, so the question is a moot one.
In general, I take a "heuristic" approach -- will independence for nation X hurt the US bourgeoisie? if yes, I support it. Down with yankee imperialism!
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I haven't studied the Kurdish question deeply. But as far as I know the dominant political players in Kurdistan are not openly calling for de-jure independence at this time, so the question is a moot one.
Your understanding is contradicted by the latest news:
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“The objective is independence, for us to determine our fate,” said Masoud Barzani, president of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region at a rally in Zakho’s newly built stadium.
The United States has voiced concerns that the referendum will distract from the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Skilled Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga have been key U.S. allies in the drive to oust ISIS from Iraq and Syria.
The governments of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria vehemently oppose the prospect of the Kurds carving out an independent state from their territory.
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In general, I take a "heuristic" approach -- will independence for nation X hurt the US bourgeoisie? if yes, I support it. Down with yankee imperialism!
Understandable, but even if an independent Kurdistan *was* carved-out, it would hardly *threaten* U.S. interests, in my estimation. (Saudi Arabia is the U.S.' largest ally there.)
The Kurds themselves aren't really a united people, "kurd" is an old persian word for nomad. They are a combination of oppressed people from several nations, states, and empires. They are a lot like the bantu of subsaharan africa. They have no real identity they cannot trace their origins or roots, and their name has been more often used throughout history as a slur for the lower classes, then as a term of pride. They have no ancient empire, or ancient borders they wish to reconstruct. That's why they are made up of many people Turks, Persians, Sunnis, Shias, Jews, and Zoroastrians. If they can be considered a distinct ethnicity than they are the largest ethnicity on earth without a state.
If you support a Kurdish state then please tell me where are their borders?
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The Kurds themselves aren't really a united people, "kurd" is an old persian word for nomad. They are a combination of oppressed people from several nations, states, and empires. They are a lot like the bantu of subsaharan africa. They have no real identity they cannot trace their origins or roots, and their name has been more often used throughout history as a slur for the lower classes, then as a term of pride. They have no ancient empire, or ancient borders they wish to reconstruct. That's why they are made up of many people Turks, Persians, Sunnis, Shias, Jews, and Zoroastrians. If they can be considered a distinct ethnicity than they are the largest ethnicity on earth without a state.
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If you support a Kurdish state then please tell me where are their borders?
No, I realize that the formulation is problematic -- at this point the Kurdish bid for nation-state status *may* be historically-progressive (national liberation / self-determination) only to the extent that it cuts against reactionary regional hegemony, as from Turkey and Iraq (extending to counterposing U.S. interests there, as well).