Dilar Dirik is an activist of the Kurdish Women’s Movement and a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department of the University of Cambridge. She delivered her lecture at the 4th New World Summit in Brussels, September 19-21.
(Viewing tip: Vimeo often has insufficient bandwidth. If the video keeps stopping, hit pause, and come back later when the gray bar has advanced all the way to the right, then hit play. It can take quite a while!)
The New York Times reports: As jihadist fighters of the Islamic State lay siege to the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria, the implications of the battle have resonated deeply among residents in this part of the Qandil Mountains in northeastern Iraq, hundreds of miles and a country away.
In this region, beneath craggy peaks near the Iranian border, is the headquarters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which has been fighting a guerrilla war against the Turkish state for three decades, a fight that has claimed more than 30,000 lives. Members of the group, along with fighters from an offshoot rebel army in Syria, have been at the heart of the Kurdish resistance in Kobani.
P.K.K. commanders say their halting, nine-year-old peace process with the Turkish government and, indeed, the future of the region, will turn on the battle for Kobani and on Turkey’s response. If Turkey does not help the embattled Kurdish forces in Kobani, the commanders say, they will break off peace talks and resume their guerrilla war within Turkey, plunging yet another country in the region into armed conflict.
“Negotiations cannot go on in an environment where they want to create a massacre in Kobani,” Cemil Bayik, a founder and leader of the P.K.K., said in a recent interview in a secret location in this area of the Qandil range. “We cannot bargain for settlement on the blood of Kobani.”
“We will mobilize the guerrillas,” he vowed.
Despite increased pressure from the United States and pleas from outgunned Kurdish fighters in Kobani, Turkey has refused to deploy its military against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, or to open the border to allow reinforcements, weapons and supplies to reach the town.
In a shift, though, Turkey will allow American and coalition troops to use its bases, including a key installation within 100 miles of the Syrian border, for operations against the Islamic State, Defense Department officials said Sunday. On Sunday, Kurdish officials said their fighters in Kobani had been able to fend off a two-day assault by Islamic State fighters on the center of town. Coalition airstrikes had destroyed a convoy on its way to support the jihadist fighters, according to Idris Nassan, a spokesman for the Kobani resistance, who said the Kurds had been able to “manage” the latest assault. But without more extensive airstrikes and supplies of weapons and ammunition, he added, “Maybe tomorrow the situation will change again.” [Continue reading…]
Today’s Zaman reports in contradiction: Turkey and the US have no new agreement on the use of İncirlik airbase in southern Turkey, Turkish officials said on Monday, a day after US officials revealed that Ankara will let US and coalition forces use its bases, including İncirlik, for operations against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants in Syria and Iraq.
Existing arrangements concerning the use of İncirlik are still in force between Turkey and the US and there is no new understanding in addition to them, Prime Ministry sources were quoted as saying by state news agency Anadolu.
Turkey and the US did reach a new agreement on the training of Syrian opposition forces, the same unnamed sources told the agency.
Hugh Pope writes: Turkey feels as if it’s reliving an old nightmare. Each morning television presenters and newspaper headlines glumly round up news from the Islamic State (Isis) siege of the Syrian Kurdish town Kobani, and its spillover into Turkey. Riots, tear gas, and live fire this week have killed more than 20 people in cities in Turkey’s Kurdish south-east. There have been multiple arson attacks on cars, buses and trucks, ethnic tensions, street corner nationalist gangs, curfews and armed troop deployments unseen since the miserable years of all-out Turkish Kurd insurgency in the 1990s.
At the same time politicians have begun shrilly pouring doubt on the vital, nine-year-old peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgents. This reached an apex of absurd conspiracy when both sides began labelling each other as being “the same” as Isis, a group which is actually their mutual enemy.
A tragedy has indeed engulfed Kobani, but little fundamental has changed just because, unusually, TV cameras lined up on the border are able to record first-hand one scene within the larger epic of the Syrian disaster.
The hard truth is that the Syrian Kurds and their main Democratic Union party (PYD) militia were always vulnerable and ultimately unable to defend Kobani alone, puncturing a moment of Kurdish hubris after a summer of impressive progress. Their isolation is partly because PYD and the PKK, with which it is umbilically linked, have insisted on a level of autonomy that is controversial, both in Turkey and with the Syrian mainstream opposition.
Nor is Turkey free to drive its tanks down the hill to save Kobani, as demanded by Turkish Kurd politicians. Breaking international law by crossing a border would weaken Turkey’s international position (as with Russia in Ukraine), set off angry regional reactions from backers of Damascus such as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and could lead to Syria itself firing missiles at Turkish cities. Turkey may be a member of Nato, but the airstrikes are not a Nato operation; Nato is supposed to be a defensive alliance, and is unlikely to back a unilateral Turkish move.
Turkish action around Kobani would also mean armed confrontation between Turkey and Isis. The Turkish armed forces are absolutely unprepared for any long-term foreign operation. With its porous, 570-mile long Syrian border, Turkey has everything to lose in such an open-ended conflict, and Turkish soldiers would certainly die on a mission that most Turks would not understand let alone support. [Continue reading…]
Mustafa Akyol writes: This has been a terrible week for Turkey. Riots hit dozens of cities, mostly in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, leading to more than 30 deaths. Most protestors were Kurdish nationalists mobilized by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a political party that acts as the unofficial arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist group.
They were angry at the government for not helping their brethren in the northern Syrian city of Kobane, who have been hopelessly resisting the ongoing onslaught of the so-called “Islamic State” of Iraq and Syria (ISIL). But the protesters’ anger, and their wanton violence, didn’t help much in convincing the Turkish public that Kurdish fighters in Kobane must indeed be supported.
For most Western observers, the stance of the Turkish government in all this mess is incomprehensible. Why, they wonder, is Turkey doing nothing to help the heroic defenders of Kobane against the brutal jihadist hordes. The answer often comes by concluding that the Turkish government must have some sympathy for ISIL, due to its Islamist sentiments and anti-Kurdish biases.
The reality, however, is a bit more complicated. There is plenty of evidence to conclude that Ankara does see ISIL as a threat, and does not want to see its dominance extend beyond its southern borders. However, Ankara has two other preoccupations that are not shared by Western capitals: First, the armed Kurds in Syria, which are ultimately an extension of the PKK. Second, the Bashar al-Assad regime, which Ankara still sees as the mother of all evil in Syria.
But are these considerations right? Well, yes and no. As for the Kurds, Turkey’s decades-old concern with the PKK cannot be trashed out overnight, especially in the face of a public which still sees the group as Turkey’s main enemy. Yet still, this is the same PKK with which the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has been carrying out a much-hailed “peace process.” So, for the sake of both the process and Turkey’s domestic peace and stability, Ankara must be more amenable to the pro-PKK faction in Syria, which is now fighting for its survival.
As for al-Assad, it is true that his regime is evil, and deserves all sorts of condemnation, but Ankara must realize that now ISIL is an independent threat, with its own mania and bloodlust. Therefore the we-will-not-fight-ISIL-unless-al-Assad-is-also-fought mantra should be left aside, and ISIL must be confronted as a threat of its own, not as a mere “symptom” of the al-Assad disease. [Continue reading…]
The Guardian reports: His government is less than two months old, but there has been no honeymoon period for the new Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Wednesday, in particular, was full of woe.
That was the day authorities rushed to impose a curfew in five largely Kurdish provinces. Angry demonstrations over the government’s refusal to relieve Kobani, the Syrian canton under siege from the brutal group calling itself Islamic State (Isis), led to a spate of deaths. That toll has since risen to more than 35. Wednesday was also the day the minister for the economy politely lowered expectations. The mid-term programme cut the growth projections for this year from 4% to 3.3% and for next year from 5% to a still optimistic 4% – and boldly promised to rein in public spending before next summer’s general election.
On Wednesday, too, the European Union released its annual report on Turkish accession, which, though couched in diplomatic language, did little to conceal that in a year in which Turkey had tried to ban Twitter and YouTube, in which the national broadcasting authority gave scant air time to opposition candidates during a presidential election, and where parliament had granted immunity to national intelligence to track citizens on the web, the country had backslid on fundamental rights and the rule of law.
All this is in stark contrast to “New Turkey” which the building-sized posters promised in the runup to last August’s presidential poll. That contest was won on the first round by Tayyip Erdogan, Davutoglu’s mentor and predecessor. Erdogan still runs the show and few doubt his great ambition is to secure a large enough parliamentary election next year to change the constitution to a Putin-style presidential system. [Continue reading…]
AFP reports: A leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) warned Saturday that it had called all its fighters back to Turkey and could resume attacks, after protests over the government’s policy on Syria left dozens dead.
Cemil Bayik, one of the founders of the PKK which has waged a bloody 30-year insurgency for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey, said the peace process with Ankara was in danger of collapse after the deadly unrest.
“We have warned Turkey. If the state carries on like this then the guerrillas will resume the war of defense in order to protect the people,” Bayik told German broadcaster ARD in an interview recorded in Iraq.
As part of a fragile peace process, the PKK had started withdrawing its fighters from Turkey and moving them to its military base in northern Iraq.
But Bayik said these fighters had now returned to Turkey in reaction to the policies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). [Continue reading…]
Metin Turcan writes: In Turkey, people primarily remember two organizations when recalling southeastern Turkey in the 1990s, when state authority had been badly eroded: the leftist and staunchly secular Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the militant, Sunni Islamist Kurdish Hezbollah. Their bloody clashes left behind some 500 unsolved murders, many of them executions.
The scenes from recent violent street clashes in many parts of Turkey protesting the Islamic State (IS) siege of Kobani, across the border in Syria, and Turkey’s inaction toward it make one wonder whether PKK-Kurdish Hezbollah fighting might be on the verge of escalating. Armed violence between the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), the PKK’s armed youth wing, and Huda-Par, successor to Kurdish Hezbollah, have already resulted in fatalities that might bode ill for the Kurdish political movement. Huda-Par had been trying to become a political actor, steering clear of armed violence.
A call bound to escalate tensions between Huda-Par and the PKK appeared Oct. 7 through a Twitter account said to be belong to the YDG-H. It read, “To the attention of all our security units in Kurdistan and Turkey. Arm yourselves. Hezbollah-contra-Huda-Par members are to be executed wherever they are seen.” After the tweet, YDG-H members began attacking Huda-Par religious centers, associations and party premises in Diyarbakir, Batman, Bitlis and Siirt, where they are known to be strong. Huda-Par responded with arms, and the clashes intensified. [Continue reading…]
Hurriyet Daily News reports: The Oct. 7 protests that led to the deaths of at least 21 people throughout Turkey have put the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Turkey’s Hizbullah, whose members are mostly Kurdish Islamists, back in the spotlight.
Hizbullah and its affiliate, the Free Cause Party (Hüda Par), engaged in several clashes with the PKK during the Oct. 7 protests across Turkey against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The bloodiest clash between the two sides of the night caused the death of at least 10 people in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır.
The YDG-H, the youth branch of the PKK, claimed responsibility for the attack against Hüda Par’s provincial branch in Diyarbakır. Hüda Par Deputy Chair Bahattin Temel said Oct. 8 that four of their members were killed in the attack.
Mehmet Hüseyin Yılmaz, another Hüda Par deputy chair, pointed the finger at both the Turkish government and the PKK via Twitter on Oct. 8. “We are under attack in every place in Kurdistan. The PKK and the HDP are conducting a political genocide against Islamic structures. The security forces of the state, which didn’t stop the attacks yesterday, are today raiding our party and Islamic NGOs,” Yılmaz said.
While pro-PKK social media accounts have been calling for “the immediate execution of Hüda Par members,” Hizbullah supporters were equally defiant on Oct. 8. A Twitter account associated with the Hüda Par’s Batman provincial headquarters shared the photo of an alleged PKK supporter’s corpse. [Continue reading…]
Correction: @Mwforhr points out that the photograph below was taken by Matt Cetti-Roberts and appeared in his article at Medium, “On the Lonely Iraq-Syria Border, Snipers Battle for a Strategic Road” about YPG fighters in Rabia. So, the woman shown is not Nalin Afrin.
The Leader of YPG in Kobane is the Kurdish Woman Nalin Afrin. pic.twitter.com/GsxovJQT2i
— Wiktor Szyc (@WiktorSzyc) October 10, 2014
Acc to source, female General commander of kurds in #Kobane is v. committed. She believes there is still chance to push ISIS out of town.
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 11, 2014
Source in #Kobane tells me: General commander of all kurdish forces defending city against ISIS is female. Her name: Nalin Afrin. @akhbar
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 11, 2014
Breaking news: #YPG Kurdish forces killed #ISIS Top commander Ebu Waleed Al Tunsi just few min ago in #kobane pic.twitter.com/F2mUNXeMjz
— Botin Kurdistani (@kurdistannews24) October 11, 2014
The Telegraph reports: They are the forgotten people of the war for Kobane.
As the battle for control of the strategically vital border town creeps closer to a bloody denouement, between 10,000 and 13,000 terrified refugees cower on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey – trapped in a dangerous no-man’s-land between the murderous violence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [Isil] and official Turkish suspicion towards Kurds.
Many sleep inside family cars parked next to the chicken wire border fence. Some have brought livestock with them in the hope that they can soon return to the farmlands they hastily vacated, an increasingly forlorn aspiration.
Now many have started to suffer grievously in their state of limbo after Turkey finally sealed the border to stop the flood of refugees.
Up to 50 may have died in recent days, from various causes, including starvation and stepping on landmines, say Syrian Kurdish groups.
Some – including Kurdish fighters brought to the border from Kobane – are said to have bled to death from minor wounds after being denied access into Turkey.
The thousands of refugees stuck at three separate border points appear in less obvious danger from Isil atrocities than the 700 civilians still stuck inside Kobane itself, according to United Nations estimates.
Yet it is the former who have become the latest trigger for Kurdish anger over Turkey’s stance in the war between Isil jihadists and the Kurdish militias fighting to save Kobane.
While the stranded border refugees have run short of water and food, Turkish security forces have intervened aggressively to stop aid groups and relatives approaching the fence to render assistance. [Continue reading…]
Katherine Wilkens writes: It is difficult to explain why U.S. airstrikes were so limited during the critical first two weeks leading up to the final siege of the Kurdish enclave. Washington has also resisted making direct contact with the PYD/YPG despite the fact that they represent the only moderate force in eastern Syria that can provide highly motivated and effective ‘boots on the ground’ in the fight against the Islamic State. The muted U.S. response, as the world watches Kobane succumb to the jihadist advances, sends a starkly different message about American priorities than the one U.S. President Barack Obama articulated this summer. If Turkey is permitted to derail the coalition’s priorities it sends a strong message to other partners and raises new questions about the [anti-ISIS] coalition’s viability.
Turkey’s attitude toward the battle for Kobane has eliminated any remaining doubts about what Ankara sees as its priorities in Syria. The prospect of a Kurdish entity run by the PYD along Turkey’s border with Syria is too much for Ankara to accept. Instead, Turkey wishes to create its own buffer zones inside the Syrian border area to accommodate new refugee flows and deny the Syrian Kurds territorial self-rule. Despite U.S. and European pressure, Ankara has stiffly refused to permit Kurdish fighters from other areas to cross the Turkish border to assist in the defense of Kobane—effectively blocking off the only channel for outside reinforcements to reach exhausted defenders in the enclave.
In secret meetings last week between PYD leader Saleh Muslim and Turkish intelligence officials, Ankara reportedly demanded that the price for support to the YPG is that the PYD must dissolve its self-ruling local governments in northern Syria, join the Free Syrian Army—which has for the most part refused to recognize minority rights in Syria—distance itself from the PKK, and become part of Turkey’s ‘buffer zone project’ along the Syrian border. The Syrian Kurds were given a choice of full surrender to Ankara at the table or to the Islamic States on the battlefield. [Continue reading…]
AFP reports: Kurdish residents in Kobane “will be most likely massacred” by advancing Islamic State jihadists, a UN envoy warned Friday, urging Turkey to stop blocking Kurds from crossing into Syria to defend the besieged town.
The plea to Ankara by Staffan de Mistura, a Swedish-Italian diplomat appointed as UN envoy on Syria in July, was a highly unusual one. Normally, the United Nations strives to be neutral in conflicts.
But de Mistura said he was speaking out because of the imminent danger confronting Kobane.
He drew parallels to the 1995 Bosnian war massacre of 300 men and boys in Srebrenica when UN peacekeepers failed to intervene, insisting the world never again could allow something like that to happen.
Reports say the IS jihadists have overrun the headquarters of the Kurdish forces in Kobane after a three-week offensive.
Showing a satellite image to reporters in Geneva, de Mistura said Kobane, which sits just a few kilometres (miles) from the Turkish border, was “literally surrounded” except for one narrow entry and exit point.
There were up to 700 mainly elderly civilians still inside the city centre and another 10,000-13,000 gathered nearby, all of whom were at risk, he said.
“If this falls the 700, plus perhaps if they move a little bit further, the 12,000 people … will be most likely massacred,” he warned.
“We would like to appeal to the Turkish authorities in order to allow the flow of volunteers at least, and their equipment to be able to enter the city to contribute to a self-defence operation,” de Mistura said.
He said the volunteers should be allowed to go “with sufficient equipment to be able to fight and defend Kobane”, but refused to say whether he thought Turkey should provide weapons. [Continue reading…]
The urgency of this appeal is underlined by the fact that ISIS is currently attempting to gain control of the border crossing. If they succeed, Kobane will be fully encircled and the Kurds remaining inside the city will almost certainly doomed.
ISIS does not control border crossing with #Kobane. ISIS trying to capture it but Kurdish YPG still holding out there. Source @akhbar
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 10, 2014
Jenan Moussa, who reports for Arabic Al Aan TV and is arguably the best-informed journalist covering the ISIS assault on Kobane, has for the last week been speaking every day to Anwar Muslim, head of the Kobane canton in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), who remains in the city. She says that his tone is down today and he says “we’ll fight till death.”
I spoke again to #Kobane chief Anwar Moselm who is in city. "If we dont get help now, #Kobane is indeed under threat of falling to ISIS"
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 10, 2014
"ISIS now controls between 30 to 40% of #Kobane" Defense chief inside city tells me over phone. @akhbar
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 10, 2014
Acc to #Kobane Chief: "there are btwn 1000 to 3000 civilians in #Kobane. Many more on border. Corridor needed to get them out" @akhbar
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 10, 2014
#break #Kobane Chief inside city tells me Kurds urgently need following: "Airdrop weapons now, evacuate civilians, more airstrikes" @akhbar
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 10, 2014
#break Kobane Chief Anwar Moslem, tells me over phone from #Kobane: "Security zone (police bldg +court) has fallen into ISIS hands." @akhbar
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 10, 2014
UN Syria envoy says 500-700 people, mostly elderly, still in #Kobane. 10,000-13,000 stranded in border area btwn Turkey &Syria. @akhbar
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) October 10, 2014
The Daily Beast reports: Within the U.S. Air Force, there’s mounting frustration that the air campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq is moving far more slowly than expected. Instead of the fast-moving operation with hundreds of sorties flown in a single day — the kind favored by many in the air service — American warplanes are hitting small numbers of targets after a painstaking and cumbersome process.
The single biggest problem, current and former Air Force officers say, is the so-called “kill-chain” of properly identifying and making sure the right target is being attacked. At the moment, that process is very complicated and painfully slow.
“The kill-chain is very convoluted,” one combat-experienced Air Force A-10 Warthog pilot told The Daily Beast. “Nobody really has the control in the tactical environment.”
A major reason why: the lack of U.S. ground forces to direct American air power against ISIS positions. Air power, when it is applied in an area where the enemy is blended in with the civilian population, works best when there are troops on the ground are able to call in strikes. From the sky, it can be hard to tell friend from foe. And by themselves, the GPS coordinates used to guide bombs aren’t nearly precise enough; landscape and weather can throw the coordinates off by as much as 500 feet. The planes need additional information from the guys on the ground. The only other option is to use laser-guided bombs, but even then the target has to be correctly indentified before hand.
But putting the specialized troops the Pentagon calls “Joint Terminal Air Controllers” or JTACs into combat comes with a cost. “The problem with putting JTACs on the ground is that once you get American boots on the ground, and one of those guys gets captured and beheaded on national TV or media,” the A-10 pilot said.
The Pentagon has compensated for this, in part, by easing back in Syria on the restrictive rules used minimizing civilian casualties like it is in Afghanistan. But in many other aspects, current and former Air Force personnel say, U.S. Central Command is fighting the war against ISIS in largely the same way it operates against the Taliban in Afghanistan. “The strategic problem posed by [ISIS] is different than that in Afghanistan,” one former senior Air Force official said. “So the similarity of the minimal application of airpower, along with excessive micromanagement by the CENTCOM bureaucracy is a symptom of not recognizing that this is a different strategic problem.”
After all, ISIS isn’t simply a collection of terrorists. The group holds territory, and manages an inventory of heavy military and civilian equipment. There’s a reason they call themselves the Islamic State. So instead of worrying about individual air strikes, this former official said, the CENTCOM needs to run a wider more free-ranging air war where more targets are hit much more quickly. “Very few in the military today have experience in planning and executing a comprehensive air campaign—their experience is only in the control of individual strikes against individual targets,” the official added. “There needs to be constant 24/7 overwatch, and immediate attack of any [ISIS] artillery, people, vehicles, or facilities that they are occupying.”
But that is a view shared mainly by those within the Air Force — which has, for decades, argued that it has the ability to win wars though strategic bombing.
Even in the case of the campaign against ISIS, there are many officers from the Army, Navy and even the Air Force who told The Daily Beast that they agree with the restraint shown by CENTCOM leadership — noting it is pointless to bomb the wrong target and antagonize the local population.
Further, the challenge for CENTCOM is further compounded by the lack of workable intelligence in Syria.
This claim about a “lack of workable intelligence” is bullshit — as a BBC News report made clear yesterday:
Asya Abdullah, a co-leader of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) representing Syrian Kurds, told the BBC that they were ready to work with US-led coalition forces.
“We have provided coalition forces with the coordinates of IS targets on the ground and are willing to continue providing any help they will request,” she said.
Kurdish commanders on the ground say that some of the latest air strikes have been more effective than previously and that this has helped their fighters to push back IS on several fronts.
A senior female Kurdish commander on Kobane’s defence council, Meysa Abdo, told the BBC: “If the coalition is serious about degrading IS, then Kobane is where they should target IS because they have an effective partner on the ground which has successfully fought back against IS alone.”
CENTCOM might plead that it cannot reliably select targets without Joint Terminal Air Controllers on the ground, but these specialized troops don’t have supernatural powers. The vetted intelligence they provide must depend more than anything else on what they are being told by locals who themselves know much more about the terrain and their adversaries than any American could, having only just arrived on the scene.
The problem is not a lack of military intelligence, but a lack of ordinary intelligence — the kind that would liberate itself from a bureaucratic straightjacket and say, “To hell with senseless directives from Washington about who we can and cannot talk to.”
Michael Weiss reports: The following is an interview NOW conducted with Abu Saif, the field commander of Raqqa’s Revolutionaries Brigades, which is now stationed in Kobane, fighting alongside the People’s Protection Units (YPG) militias of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) of Syrian Kurdistan. Although not much-discussed in the international press coverage of Kobane, the FSA’s participation in this anti-ISIS campaign illuminates just how isolated indigenous Syrian forces are in combating a transnational terrorist army.
(Note: ISIS is referred to throughout this interview by its widely used epithet, Daesh.)
NOW: In the past, the FSA has fought the YPG, often alongside Daesh. Is this cooperation with the Kurds just a tactical maneuver, or can you envision a long-term strategic partnership?
Abu Saif: Initially, we started out actually fighting against the YPG or the PYD, and then when Daesh moved on Raqqa, we stopped fighting against the YPG and shifted into fighting Daesh. Then Daesh pushed us out of Raqqa and we had to withdraw from the city and into the northern suburbs of Raqqa, which are close to Kobane. There was a sort of cease-fire or truce between the FSA and the YPG. Ahrar al-Sham played a role in that cease-fire. And so we were on board with the cease-fire. It was for six months. We reached out to the Kurds and we became friends. Then we withdrew even further into Kobane itself. The YPG were fighting Daesh, so we were forced into an alliance with the YPG. We had nowhere else to go. Daesh were surrounding us on all sides, except of course behind us was the YPG. As the Arabic proverb goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
NOW: Can you see the YPG joining the FSA, as both Turkey and the United States seem to want?
Abu Saif: I don’t think the PYD will give up its identity and bundle itself into the FSA. However, in Kobane, our brigade received an offer from the Kurds to have the PYD to join with them and fight under the FSA banner. This might make it more amenable for the Turks to come to Kobane’s rescue. This is still in the negotiations phase, no final decisions have been made.
NOW: You’re in Kobane now. Can you describe conditions in the city? What part is invaded by Daesh, what part is being held by the YPG/FSA?
Abu Saif: The situation right now is quite miserable. Unfortunately, we had to withdraw at least half of our men. In fact, the situation was quite bad even months ago when we were still fighting Daesh in the suburbs of Rae. No one gave us anti-tank weapons. We had RPGs, but Daesh relied on heavily armored vehicles, after the capture of Mosul.
When Daesh pushed against Kobane, the situation became even worse. We asked for assistance, but no one gave us anything. There were no anti-tank weapons. When Daesh breached the defenses and made their way into the city, the fighting became street-to-street. We decided we had to withdraw at least half of our forces to save their lives. [Continue reading…]
Kurdish Women’s Defense Units (YPJ) freedom fighters and protectors of people of #Rojava against ISIS v @seyitevran21 pic.twitter.com/JwOXCjzu9o
— Fêkîfiroş (@KawaHogir) August 17, 2014
David Romano writes: Writing in the Guardian this week, columnist David Graeber compares the plight of Syria’s Kurds and the besieged town of Kobane to the Spanish Civil War: “Amid the Syrian war zone a democratic experiment is being stamped into the ground by ISIS. That the wider world is unaware is a scandal.”
Just as Spanish revolutionaries empowered women and fielded female combatants, so too do the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the Syrian Kurds. The lightly armed YPG partisans now fight house to house against much more heavily armed fascists of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS). They fight to protect their land and an attempt at local democratic governance – an attempt that provided refuge to and empowered not just Kurds, but Turkmen, Christians, Arabs and others. The main political party directing the YPG forces in Syrian Kurdistan is the Democratic Union Party (PYD). Like the Spanish and many other revolutionaries, the PYD are of course not angels, and they stand accused of shutting out rival Kurdish parties promoted by Turkey, the United States and the Iraqi Kurds. They have strong organic links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Nonetheless, the Syrian Kurds have not attacked anyone but the Islamists trying to take over their lands. They have not even asked for a Kurdish state or secession from Syria. Rather, they proclaimed local self-government in the three cantons of Kobane, Cizre and Afrin. The three cantons emerged as tolerant, somewhat democratic islands amidst the grim maelstrom that is the Syrian civil war. By the PYD’s own rules, all the administrations must have male and female leaders and include all the ethnic and religious groups of the area within their decision making structures.
Yet since they established their autonomous cantons in 2012, the United States, Europe and even most independent “progressives” of the world seem to have studiously ignored the Syrian Kurds. [Continue reading…]
Kerem Nisancioglu writes: The Kurdish town of Kobanê has recently become the centre of a geopolitical conflagration that may well change the course of Middle Eastern politics. After months of silence over the threat faced by Kurds from ISIS, the world is now finally watching, even if the ‘international community’ remains conspicuously quiet. However, many Western responses, be it from scholars, journos or activists, have somewhat predictably retracted into recycled critiques of US and UK imperialism, often at the expense of missing what is truly exceptional and noteworthy in recent developments. So, in the style of contemporary leftist listicles, here are four things we can and should learn from events in and around Kobanê.
1. It’s Time to Question the West’s Fixation on ISIS
If Barack Obama, David Cameron and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are to be believed, the ‘savagery’ of ‘fundamentalism’ is the primary focus of NATO involvement in Syria. Notably, many left critics have reproduced this very same fixation on ISIS when discussing Western interests. However, for an almighty imperialist organisation supposedly hell bent on stopping ‘Islamic extremism’, NATO have been curiously ineffective. In fact, the US has been indirectly responsible for arming ISIS and altogether incompetent and/or reluctant in arming the decidedly secular Kurdish resistance. US and UK air strikes have been fleeting, and at best symbolic, making little impact on the advance of ISIS. Moreover, Turkey has repeatedly turned a blind eye to ISIS’s use of its territories and borders for training activities and supply lines, respectively. More recently, as Kobanê teetered on the edge of conquest, Turkey insisted any military assistance was dependent on the Kurdish PYD abandoning self-determination and self-governing cantons, and agreeing to Turkish buffer zone in Kurdish controlled areas in Northern Syria (which amounts to little more than a colonial land grab). Now, considering the US and UK were keen to intervene long before ISIS was seen as a threat, and considering Turkey long-standing hostility to the PKK/PYD, we should be more demanding of any analysis of intervention that begins and ends with ISIS. In short, it is becoming increasingly clear that ISIS is little more than a pretext for NATO to pursue other geopolitical aims – namely removing Assad and destroying Kurdish autonomy.
2. Be Wary of Liberal Internationalism
Many anti-intervention critiques have argued that non-military options remain available through diplomatic channels and pressure on regional players such as Iran, the Gulf States and even Russia. This is to misread the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. Firstly, the US does not control every allied state with complete impunity. Despite historical relations of dependency, despite metaphors of ‘puppets’, most Gulf States are remarkably powerful actors in their own right, with interests and activities that are beyond US control. Any suggestion to ask the Saudis to end financial support is likely to be as effective as asking ISIS to calm down a bit. [Continue reading…]
For BBC News, Guney Yildiz reports: Several thousand Kurdish fighters are still in control of Syrian border town of Kobane despite an all-out attack by a much better-equipped and numerically superior İslamic State army since mid-September.
However, their resistance has failed to impress US military planners, whose aim is to “degrade” IS by air strikes in Syria as well as Iraq.
Echoing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s words, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Martin Dempsey, predicted two days ago that the town would fall to IS.
But as his views were aired, Kurdish fighters on the ground launched a counter-attack against IS before the jihadists were able to get reinforcements from Raqqa, Jarablus and Tal Abyad to carry out a renewed offensive.
The US military has predicted that not only Kobane, but other towns could also fall to IS.
“We don’t have a willing, capable, effective partner on the ground inside Syria right now,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm John Kirby said on Wednesday.
But Kurdish officials inside Kobane have challenged Rear Adm Kirby’s claim, saying that effective airstrikes will save Kobane because there is an effective fighting force on the ground.
Asya Abdullah, a co-leader of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) representing Syrian Kurds, told the BBC that they were ready to work with US-led coalition forces.
“We have provided coalition forces with the coordinates of IS targets on the ground and are willing to continue providing any help they will request,” she said.
Kurdish commanders on the ground say that some of the latest air strikes have been more effective than previously and that this has helped their fighters to push back IS on several fronts.
A senior female Kurdish commander on Kobane’s defence council, Meysa Abdo, told the BBC: “If the coalition is serious about degrading IS, then Kobane is where they should target IS because they have an effective partner on the ground which has successfully fought back against IS alone.” [Continue reading…]
The Kurdish female guerrilla army of YPG/YPJ. They are fighting the enemies of women and humanity in #Kobane. #ISIS pic.twitter.com/ktuba00ok9
— Memo Zîn (@ZagrosEuphrates) October 10, 2014
Gen Dempsey and America’s other military leaders could learn a lot for the YPJ — the women heroically defending Kobane. Not only do they give the lie to the idea that men are innately more suited to combat, but they also seem to expose a fallacy around which martial culture has generally been built: that the warrior requires psychic armor, deadening his capacity to feel.
Once the YPJ put on uniforms and pick up AK-47s, they apparently see no need to also assume faces of steel. They seem to have learned how to fight without forgetting how to smile. And I wouldn’t simply put this down to the cheerful disposition of young women. It seems more than that — an expression of humanity.
In contrast, their adversaries in ISIS in the name of their ruthless ideology, have sacrificed their own humanity, thereby turning themselves into heartless instruments of brutality.