Category Archives: Kurds

Backed by U.S. airstrikes, Kurds break ISIS siege of Mount Sinjar

The New York Times reports: Kurdish forces, backed by a surge of American airstrikes in recent days, recaptured a large swath of territory from Islamic State militants on Thursday, opening a path from the autonomous Kurdish region to Mount Sinjar in the west, near the Syrian border.

The two-day offensive, which involved 8,000 fighters, known as pesh merga, was the largest one to date in the war against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, according to Kurdish officials. It was also a successful demonstration of President Obama’s strategy for battling the extremist group: American air power combined with local forces doing the fighting on the ground.

A statement released Thursday night by the office of Masrour Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Regional Security Council, called the operation “the single biggest military offensive against ISIS, and the most successful.” [Continue reading…]

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Iran escalates in Iraq

The Soufan Group reports: Tehran’s employment of direct airpower in Iraq is a significant increase in its involvement and willingness to take military risks to defeat the so-called Islamic State. In terms of airpower, Iran had previously confined itself to returning to the Iraqi Air Force seven combat aircraft that the Saddam Hussein regime had flown to Iran at the start of the 1991 Gulf war to avoid destruction by U.S. and coalition air power. Because Iraq’s pilots do not have much experience operating combat jets, Iranian pilots flew the returned aircraft for Iraq; Iran acknowledged the death of one of its pilots at the hands of Islamic State anti-aircraft fire in October.

To date, the bulk of Iran’s involvement in Iraq has consisted of weapons shipments to the Iraq Security Forces (ISF) and Kurdish peshmerga fighters, reactivation and funding of Shi’a militia forces Iran formed in 2004, and military advice by the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC-QF). Photographs of the head of the IRGC-QF, General Qasim Sulaymani, have appeared frequently on social media on various Iraq battlefields, providing advice to Iraqi Shi’a militia and ISF commanders.

The Iranian airstrike in early December was reportedly conducted near the town of Jalula, a mostly Kurdish town in Diyala Province that lies only about 25 miles from the Iranian border. In late November, Kurdish peshmerga recaptured Jalula and nearby towns from Islamic State fighters, but these fighters remained nearby and continue to pose a threat to those towns and areas closer to the Iranian border. At the start of the major Islamic State offensive in June, Tehran had declared it would act militarily if Islamic State fighters moved to within 40 miles of Iran’s border; the Iranian airstrike was a direct enforcement of that threat. [Continue reading…]

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The case against dividing Iraq

Nicholas Sambanis and Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl write: At this point, partition might sound preferable to persistent sectarian conflict. U.S. policymakers were tempted by the idea at the height of Iraq’s sectarian war in 2006, when Joseph Biden, who was a senator at the time, and Leslie Gelb, the President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, advanced a plan for the “soft partition” of Iraq. In a 2006 Foreign Affairs roundtable focused on policy options for Iraq, Chaim Kaufmann, a well-known scholar of international relations, argued that only through separating the population would the violence end. This summer’s bloodshed seemed to revive the idea. Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Fareed Zakaria advocated that the United States adapt to the reality of sectarian enclaves. Others, like the Council on Foreign Relations’ Steven A. Cook, hinted that the United States might need to come to terms with a full partition of Iraq, however “bloody and protracted” the process would be.

Events in Syria, meanwhile, have further revived the partition debate. ISIS has kept a firm grip on its Syrian territory in the face of a U.S.-led air campaign, and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have proved unwilling to back down. Appearing on Zakaria’s CNN show, GPS, in November, Syria expert Joshua Landis promoted a partition plan for Syria. Landis argued that partition would “accept [the] reality” of a Sunni state spanning Syria and Iraq. Partition would be more stable, and, as Zakaria added, would “reflec[t] the realities of sectarianism.”

The usual argument for partition is that, once ethnic or sectarian fighting gets too bloody, nobody can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. War reveals the fault lines in a country’s social terrain, the thinking goes, and redrawing official borders along those lines is the only way out of a perpetual cycle of identity-based bloodletting.

The argument seems intuitive, but it rests on a flawed premise. It treats social identities as givens and ignores the fact that it was politics — not identities in and of themselves — that brought Sunnis and Shias to blows in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Far from resolving disputes, partitions can actually activate dormant fault lines. [Continue reading…]

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Spying effort drives ISIS to shut down cellphone service in Mosul

McClatchy reports: A covert campaign of spying by residents and Iraqi intelligence agents hunting for top leaders of the Islamic State has forced the group to suspend cellphone service in areas it controls – a move Kurdish and Iraqi officials say will do little to stop the program but will further infuriate people living under the extremists’ rule.

Iraqi officials read as a sign of success the Islamic State’s announcement last week that it had suspended cellphone service indefinitely in Mosul, the city in northern Iraq it’s controlled since June, and parts of Anbar province for fear local residents were phoning in tips that were used by U.S. and Iraqi commanders to select airstrike targets.

The U.S. military hasn’t said which of its hundreds of airstrikes since August were aimed at suspected Islamic State leaders, limiting its descriptions to generalities – an Islamic State vehicle, a fighting position or a fighting unit. But Iraqi officials confirmed that an aggressive intelligence collection program is in place to help pinpoint Islamic State leaders and military positions.

“Certainly this is an important element,” said Kurdish Foreign Minister Falah Mustafa, who agreed to speak about the intelligence collection only in general. “It helps a great deal when you know the details of what your enemy is doing in terms of their strength, their presence, their weapons, their situation, their internal situation, their supply lines, so all that is very important.” [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, Hürriyet Daily News reports: The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) has confirmed that 150 Kurdish Iraqi fighters combatting Islamist jihadists in Kobane will be replaced with a new group that will also use Turkish soil to travel to the northern Syrian town.

Although precise details are not yet known, a group of around 110 fighters is expected to enter Kobane, passing through Turkey as the first group did, Turkish military sources told daily Hürriyet on Dec. 1.

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Iraqi government and Kurds reach deal to share oil revenues

The New York Times reports: The Iraqi government agreed Tuesday to a long-term accord with the autonomous Kurdish region to share the country’s oil wealth and military resources in a far-reaching deal that helps reunite the country in the face of a bitter war with Islamic extremists.

The deal settles a long dispute between Baghdad and Erbil, the Kurdish capital in the north, over oil revenue and budget payments. It is also likely to halt a drive — at least in the short term — by the Kurds for an independent state, which appeared imminent this summer after a violent territory grab by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

As the jihadists marched toward Baghdad in June, routing Iraqi Army forces, the Kurds took control of Kirkuk and its rich oil fields. And they intensified efforts to market Kurdish oil independently, arguing that the government had withheld payments to Kurdistan that were badly needed to keep up the fight against the Islamic State in the army’s absence.

Now, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s government has agreed to pay the salaries of Kurdish security forces, known as the pesh merga, and will also allow the flow of weapons from the United States to the Kurds, with the government in Baghdad as intermediary.[Continue reading…]

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Open source analysis on yesterday’s ISIS attack on Kobane

Aaron Stein writes: Yesterday, the Islamic State detonated four suicide car bombs in the embattled town of Kobane. One VBIED detonated just inside the Mursitpinar border gate. After the explosion, clashes broke out between the YPG and the Islamic state in the area. The YPG has since claimed that the VBIED entered from Turkey. Ankara, in turn, has denied this.

I have done a brief open source analysis of the videos and imagery and have come to a few tentative conclusions. My analysis is far from definitive, but I think it deserves consideration. [Continue reading…]

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Kurdish deal with Turkey within reach but legal guarantees key, says PKK leader

Reuters reports: A settlement to end a three-decade insurgency by Kurdish militants in Turkey could be reached within months if the government puts in place legal guarantees for Kurdish rights, a jailed militant leader was quoted as saying on Sunday.

The siege by Islamic State militants of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish border has risked derailing Turkey’s fragile peace process with its own Kurds, who have accused Ankara of failing to protect their ethnic kin.

Around 40 people were killed when thousands of Kurds took to the streets in October, mostly in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, to demonstrate against what they saw as Ankara’s refusal to intervene in Kobani.

Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, nonetheless said agreement could be found within 4 to 5 months if Turkey showed it was serious, according to the pro-Kurdish HDP party, which visited him on his island prison. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS attacks Kobane from Turkey

The Associated Press reports: The Islamic State group launched an attack Saturday on the Syrian border town of Kobani from Turkey, a Kurdish official and activists said, although Turkey denied that the fighters had used its territory for the raid.

The assault began when a suicide bomber driving an armored vehicle detonated his explosives on the border crossing between Kobani and Turkey, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria’s powerful Kurdish Democratic Union Party.

The Islamic State group “used to attack the town from three sides,” Khalil said. “Today, they are attacking from four sides.” [Continue reading…]

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Turkey shells Kobane injuring Kurdish civilians and fighters

Rudaw reports: Turkish bombardment of Kobane on Saturday has wounded a number of civilians and fighters inside the Kurdish city, the city administrator said.

“Under the pretense of stopping an ISIS attack on Turkey the Turkish army bombarded the center of Kobane with tanks and artillery,” Anwar Muslim, co-chair of the Kobane canton told Rudaw. “A number of civilians and fighters have been wounded.”

Muslim said that heavy fighting is going on between the Islamic State (ISIS) militants and the Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and the Peshmerga forces in several parts of the city.

“The YPG and Peshmerga have countered all the attacks, the fighting is still going on and we have a number of wounded,” said Muslim.

He added that the Kurdish forces still control most of the city, but “the ISIS has mined the few parts of the city that are under their control.” [Continue reading…]

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The embargo against Rojava

TATORT Kurdistan: Although Rojava (in northern Syria) is a mosaic of languages and cultures, regional and international powers have isolated it both economically and politically—indeed, it is now entirely on its own. To the north, Turkey has walled the region off. To the east, South Kurdistan has lined its veritable ditch with military checkpoints. To the south, the radical Islamist combat units of ISIS and the Al Nusra Front have cut the region off from the rest of Syria.

This embargo is having severe consequences for the people of Rojava.

Taken by itself, Rojava is economically quite a wealthy place. It produces 60 percent of Syria’s wheat and oil, and it raises cotton for the Syrian market. Vis-à-vis Syria it had the status of a colony, in the sense of being a source of raw materials. Rojava doesn’t have processing industries. Thus it grows and harvests grains, but it doesn’t mill them. It doesn’t refine oil but shipped it at great expense to central Syria. That, at least, was the starting situation for Rojava.

The water supply for agriculture comes partly from deep wells, but after the jihadis took over the power stations in Raqqa, those pumps — and hence farming — were threatened. But Rojavans began to use diesel generators to produce power. First they had to develop the technology to generate diesel at all. Rojava’s first winter was very hard–snow fell for the first time in several years, and there was no heating oil. But today many small generators pollute the cities. Only a few of the large ones are available, and no more can be imported because of the embargo.

Turkey and South Kurdistan (the Kurdish region of Iraq) work closely together to maintain the embargo against Rojava. They recognize that Rojavans are attempting, through a grassroots organization, to go beyond capitalist modernity and Western intervention. If the Rojava project should turn out to function, the political and social consequences will ripple throughout the Middle East. That would interfere with the strategy of the NATO states, so they support the embargo. [Continue reading…]

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Biden in Turkey, warns about corrosive effect of concentration of powers

The Guardian reports: US vice-president Joe Biden on Saturday warned that a concentration of powers under a head of state was “corrosive” as he visited Turkey – which has been accused of increasing authoritarian tendencies.

Biden made the remarks before meeting Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who in August became the Turkish president after more than a decade as prime minister. Critics have accused Erdogan of seeking to centralise powers in a powerful presidency, which until he took office was largely a ceremonial role.

At a joint news conference held after a four-hour talks session, Biden said he and Erdogan had discussed a transition of power in Syria, away from President Bashar al-Assad. [Continue reading…]

McClatchy adds: Biden’s visit here also brought forth the first signs of policy convergence. Midway through the discussion here, the Turkish government disclosed that it is willing to train and equip Iraqi government forces, a dramatic shift to support Iraq’s new leadership of Prime Minister Haider Abadi after years of tensions with his predecessor, Nouri al Maliki. Turkey also disclosed it is training Peshmerga militias under control of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

This all seemed to have come about as part of the preparations for the Biden talks. Davutoglu pledged to train and assist national guard units that Abadi is setting up to fight the Islamic State, the Turkish official said. “We are always ready to give any kind of contribution” to the Iraqi authorities, added the official, who disclosed the policy changes on condition he not be identified by name.

Before returning to meet with Biden, Davutgoglu visited Irbil, the capital of the largely autonomous Kurdish region, and a camp where Turkey has already begun training Peshmerga forces, the official said. Just a few years ago, Turkey and the KRG were frequently at loggerheads over the KRG’s willingness to host armed Turkish separatists who were at war with the Turkish state.

Biden’s visit to Istanbul was his first since the blow-up last month that followed his public criticism of Turkey for “contributing to the rise” of the Islamic State. Erdogan said if Biden didn’t apologize for his remarks, he will be “history to me.” [Continue reading…]

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ISIS’s drive for Kobane is blunted

The Associated Press reports: More than two months into its assault on Kobani, the Islamic State group is still pouring fighters and resources into trying to capture the besieged Syrian Kurdish town, but the drive has been blunted.

Helped by more than 270 airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition, the border town’s unwavering Kurdish defenders are gaining momentum — a potentially bruising reversal for the extremists who only a few weeks ago appeared to be unstoppable.

The setback in Kobani is “a statement of IS group’s vulnerability,” said David L. Phillips, an expert on Kurdish issues.

Retired Marine Gen. John Allen, the U.S. envoy for the international coalition fighting the Islamic State militants, said the group continues to mass around Kobani, creating more targets for the U.S. and its allies.

“ISIL has, in so many ways, impaled itself on Kobani,” he said in an interview Wednesday in Ankara with the Turkish daily Milliyet, using an acronym for the Islamic State group. [Continue reading…]

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New Kurdish offensive targets ISIS in Iraq

The Associated Press reports: Kurdish peshmerga forces launched a new offensive Wednesday targeting Islamic State group extremists in Iraq, even as a suicide bomber killed at least five people in the Kurds’ regional capital.

The operation came as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said details haven’t been finalized for a deal that would have his country to train rebels to battle the Islamic State in Syria, where the militants also hold territory. That will be a major topic for retired Marine Gen. John Allen, the U.S. envoy for the international coalition to counter Islamic State group, during planned talks Wednesday in Ankara.

The new peshmerga offensive targeted areas in Diyala and Kirkuk provinces seized by the extremists in their August offensive that saw them capture a third of Iraq, said Jaber Yawer, a spokesman for Kurdish forces.

In Diyala, peshmerga forces worked in coordination with Iraqi security forces to retake the towns of Saadiya and Jalula, Yawer said. In Kirkuk, Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-led airstrikes launched attacks to retake territory near the town of Kharbaroot, located 35 kilometers (22 miles) west of the city of Kirkuk. [Continue reading…]

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Kurds say ISIS militants near defeat in Kobane

The Los Angeles Times reports: Kurdish forces say the battle against Islamic State for control of the Syrian border city of Kobani has turned definitively in their favor following weeks of punishing U.S.-led airstrikes and the arrival of Kurdish reinforcements from Iraq.

Commanders belonging to the Popular Protection Units – YPG, by its Kurdish initials – said the intensive bombardment in recent days had allowed their fighters to seize several strategic hills from Islamic State militants.

The U.S Central Command on Monday reported nine new airstrikes in the Kobani area, hitting Islamic State fighting positions, staging areas and one “tactical” militant unit.

About 250 Islamic State fighters remain in Kobani, concentrated in the southeastern corner of town, Rafiq Baradar, a YPG commander from Kobani, said during a visit to the Turkish border town of Suruc.

“They will probably be finished in four or five days,” Baradar said in an interview here. [Continue reading…]

Reuters adds: Kurdish fighters captured six buildings used by Islamic State militants besieging the Syrian town of Kobani on Tuesday, and seized a large amount of the jihadist group’s weapons and ammunition, a group monitoring the war said….

Kurdish fighters seized six buildings used by Islamic State close to council offices in the north of the town and took a large quantity of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, guns and machine gun ammunition, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

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The battle for Kobane offers a glimpse of Kurds’ new model democracy

By Karthick Manoharan, University of Essex

As the battle against Islamic State fighters draws in viewers across the world, there has been some attention given to the men and women resisting them in northern Syria. The Syrian part of Kurdistan, or Rojava, as the Kurds would like to call it, has been fighting Islamists for well over two years now but only recently has the battle for the border town of Kobane brought them to light.

And while it’s easy to portray the Kurdish people as pitted against this new terrorist threat, they are actually involved in something far more profound. Kobane is symbolic and the conflict there carries a universal significance. Not only are the Kurds battling the Islamists, but they are also attempting to create a model of democracy that might actually bring stability to a war-torn region.

The Kurdish political vision is not founded on any particular racial, ethnic, regional or religious belief but rather on an idea, or a set of ideas, that should resonate with people everywhere.

Fighters in Kobane claim to be standing up for the freedom of everyone in the region, be they Kurds, Turks, Arabs or anyone else. The way the fighters in Kobane have challenged stereotypical gender roles is just one example.

As far as religious difference goes, Kobane disproves both Islamophobes who believe the Middle East to be incapable of progress and politically correct Islamophiles who push the patronising idea that religious identity is a top priority for Muslims the world over. In their readiness to defend the Yazidi minority against persecution from IS, the Kurds have essentially been promoting a radical secularism and a vision of tolerance in a region torn by religious strife.

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Syrian Kurds give women equal rights, snubbing jihadists

AFP reports: The local government in a majority Kurdish area of Syria has passed a decree granting women equal rights in what a monitoring group called “an affront” to discriminatory jihadist moves.

Published on the local government’s official Facebook page on Wednesday, the decree states that women and men should enjoy “equality… in all walks of public and private life.”

Last year, Syria’s Kurds created autonomous governments in the three regions where they are a majority, establishing self-proclaimed rule.

Arabs also hold office, and the decrees apply to all ethnicities living in the self-governing areas.

The decree, passed by the leaders of the Al-Jazira canton — officially Hasakeh province — stipulates that women have the right to equal labour rights, including pay.

Women must be 18 years old to marry, and they are cannot be married off without their consent.

“Polygamy is forbidden,” the decree states, adding that women have the same right to bear witness in court as men, and that they have full inheritance rights. [Continue reading…]

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The Kurds can’t afford to leave Iraq

Luay Al Khatteeb and Ahmed Mehdi write: The federal government in Baghdad believes the Kurds have been playing a double game by demanding their share of federal oil revenues while also signing a string of independent contracts with international oil companies and midsize wildcatters and then pocketing the oil export profits after bypassing Baghdad.

In the past, Iraq and the Kurds have always come back to the negotiating table. This time could be different.

Despite Mr. Barzani’s calls for an independence referendum, K.R.G. officials are still counting on Baghdad to send them money. However, this double strategy is precarious — and the threat doesn’t come from Baghdad, but from Basra in the south.

There is a real risk that Iraq’s southern Shiite provinces — which produce over 90 percent of Iraq’s oil — could copy the Kurds in their call for autonomy. Basra’s political elites do not see why a share of their oil profits should go to the K.R.G. government in Erbil if those funds are only helping to subsidize Kurdish independence ambitions.

The Kurds face a hard choice: either they become part of a viable federal oil revenue sharing system or go their own way. And for the K.R.G., losing revenues from the central government would be irreversible and disastrous. That’s because an independent Kurdistan would make less than $7 billion per year — almost a third less than they received when given just 12 percent of Iraq’s total oil revenues. [Continue reading…]

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Oil politics and the battle for Kobane

By Mika Minio-Paluello, Open Democracy, November 7, 2014

Kobane was supposed to fall. As ISIS assaulted the town, Turkish troops besieged it from the north, preventing reinforcements and arresting hundreds fleeing. US jets bombed ISIS forces elsewhere, driving them towards Rojava: the largely Kurdish region in northern Syria self-administered by the movement for a democratic society (Tev-Dem), headed politically by the PYD, and defended by the YPG and YPJ. A month into the battle, Kerry admitted that defending Kobane was still not a US strategic priority, despite growing pressure for an airdrop.

But Kobane didn’t fall. Unlike the Iraqi Army with its tanks and Humvees, the lightly-armed YPG and YPJ guerillas held firm. Kurdish activist Dilar Dirik argues that, “The people of Kobane were massively outgunned. But their will to fight kept them going. They are fighting for a fundamentally different future.”

Why was the US happy to see ISIS crush Rojava? The heavy violence in Syria is heavily influenced by oil-driven geopolitics. This goes well beyond the smuggling of crudely refined fuel from ISIS-controlled Deir Ezzor into Turkey. For decades, energy colonialism has enabled the repression of democratic movements.

Energy colonialism

Large oil fields and potential export routes contributed to Kurdistan – spread between Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria – being subjected to intense violence. For over a century, foreign policy decisions made in Washington, London and Paris aimed to control oil reserves in the region and preserve corporate profits. Borders were drawn, autocrats were supported and weapons poured in. Kurdish movements were used opportunistically and encouraged to revolt – only to be abandoned and slaughtered once short-term goals were achieved.

The 2003 war on Iraq and 1990s sanctions followed a much older pattern: where democratic forces and organised labour grew, British and US governments, corporations and local elites crushed them. When oil workers in Iraq occupied a pipeline pumping station in 1948, the company surrounded them with machine guns and armoured cars, starving them out. The next year, the Syrian parliament refused to ratify construction of the Trans-Arabian pipeline. The oil companies had the CIA organise a coup and the new military government immediately completed the agreement.

Today’s pipeline routes are the product of wars and political struggles, expensive infrastructure, mass displacement, and intensive corporate lobbying. Kurdish communities were seen as a threat, and subjected to cultural assimilation, forced emigration and brutal crackdowns. The enormous twin Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipelines from Iraq to the Mediterranean snakes its way through the Kurdish mountains, carrying 1.6 million barrels of oil every day. Its construction brought thousands of Turkish troops along its the route and into nearby villages.

Oil reserves in both Syria and Turkey – while not enormous – are heavily concentrated in Kurdish areas. 60% of Syrian oil is in and around Rojava, while 99% of crude extracted in Turkey comes from the south-east. Shell recently started fracking for shale gas around Diyarbakir. More reasons why Turkish and Syrian governments opposed any Kurdish autonomy.

The conservative-nationalist Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq managed to leverage its oil resources to attain significant autonomy, largely by making itself an ally to western energy interests and neoliberal power. In contrast, the Kurdish movements in Turkey and Syria are aiming for greater social liberation.

Who can decolonise energy?

Kurdish autonomy in Turkey or Syria could threaten western oil interests, especially with the Öcalan-inspired PKK and PYD sister parties both espousing “democratic, ecological, gender-liberated society”. The PYD is the driving force in Rojava, where popular assemblies have seen a “flourishing of a democratic culture that promotes popular participation, social emancipation, gender equality, ecological sensitivity, local self-organization, and ethnic and religious pluralism.”

Rojava’s deliberative politics has created a vision of an ecological society not subjugated to neoliberalism. Its political economy is characterised by community-based production and large-scale cooperatives. The Assad regime’s property was turned over to worker-managed co-operatives. A free Rojava is less open to exploitation for foreign interests, like Gulfsands, the London sanctions-dodging oil company that drilled for crude in Rojava.

The PKK and PYD are the most organised and democratic political forces in the region, and have the best chance to begin democratising and decolonising energy. Energy democracy in the Middle East would be transformative globally. Western elites use the control of oil overseas to weaken democratic forces at home, fearmongering about “energy security” and undermining the power of energy workers.

We need Rojava

This is one more reason why the US and Turkey are relaxed about ISIS and the YPG battling it out. No elite power wants a progressive and democratic revolution that could begin to transform our energy future. Neither the US or Russia, Turkey or Iran, the Israelis or Saudi Arabia.

By delaying meaningful airstrikes on ISIS positions around Kobane, the US ensured that the PYD became dependent on western support. The YPG needs heavy weapons – airdrops have begun and there is potential for more. The US excels at using “aid” to alter movement politics and enforce subservience. Guns come with strings attached and American military advisers to pull them. But the PYD/PKK have deep ideological roots and hopefully won’t roll over.

Whichever way the battle for Kobane ends, the longer struggle for Rojava will continue. We all need Rojava, as an inspirational model to draw on, and as an ally in dismantling energy colonialism that keeps us all weak. Rojava needs us, and we need Rojava.

This article was originally published in the independent online magazine www.opendemocracy.net

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