The Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) congratulated the women of the world on the occasion of March 8, International Women’s Day, and stressed the escalation of the struggle against policies of extermination, occupation, and isolation.
Today, the General Command of YPJ issued a statement to public opinion on the occasion of March 8, International Women’s Day, the statement read:
“We congratulate March 8, the day of the women’s uprising, the day of resistance and struggle for all the women of the world, and we congratulate the leader (APO), the companion of women’s path and the most loyal to them. On the occasion of this holy day, we remember all the martyrs of the women’s freedom revolution, and we renew our pledge to escalate the struggle.” .
As the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), we continue our march for freedom today, and we are inspired by the honorable legacy of resistant women in the world. We received the banner of resistance and liberation from (Rosa , Clara Zetkin, Leyla Qasim, Leyla Khaled, Sakne Cansiz and Gulnaz Karatas), and through the heroines of the resistance in Rojava such as (Arin Mirkan, Revan Kobane, Zilan Hasaka, Tolheldan Raman, Rojda Manbij and Sorkhun Rojhalat).
We salute the spirit of resistance women in the world, starting from New York to Afghanistan, and from Shingal to Iran, that shook the throne of male domination.
The Free Women’s Units/YJA-STAR are waging a holy war against the chemical bombing on the mountains of Kurdistan. In Iran, women struggle against all forms of attacks, executions and violence. Under the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” and in the spirit of “Gina Amini”.
We direct our call to every woman to organize herself, so that we can, with the free will of women, defeat all policies of genocide, occupation and isolation.
Kurdish groups gripped by fear as they brace for a US pullout from northeast Syria
A high-level visit by a top US commander did little to address concerns that Kurdish groups will become collateral damage of the war in Gaza
US soldiers patrol an area in the town of Tal Hamis, southeast of the city of Qameshli, in Syria’s northeastern Hasakeh governorate, on 24 January 2024 (Delil Souleiman/AFP)
Published date: 7 March 2024 20:08 GMT | Last update:4 hours 46 mins ago
Battered by Turkish air strikes and stalked by fears of a US military withdrawal, Washington’s Kurdish-led allies in northeast Syria are increasingly concerned they will be ditched as “collateral damage” of the war in Gaza.
A rare visit last week to northeast Syria by General Erik Kurilla, the top US military commander in the Middle East, did little to boost confidence in the Kurdish-led autonomous region, officials there told MEE; neither has an extended reduction in attacks by Iran-backed groups on US targets in the region.
Chief among the worries of officials in northeast Syria has been a surge in attacks by Turkey since 7 October, when the Israel-Palestine war erupted.
Ankara has upped its bombardment of civilian infrastructure in northeast Syria, including power stations, the region’s electric grid, medical facilities, and oil fields – which Human Rights Watch said last month have left millions powerless and without access to clean drinking water.
“The whole region is on fire and nobody will respond to Turkey’s aggression against us when everyone is busy with Gaza. We have asked the US to rein in Turkey, but they have brushed us off,” Mahmoud Meslat, co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political wing of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), told MEE.
The Turkish strikes come amid fears that the war in Gaza is accelerating what Janda Muhammad, another senior SDC official, described to MEE as a potential “Afghanistan-like pullout” of roughly 900 US troops from northeast Syria, which she said would have “chaotic results” for the region.
The gloom among officials in the northeast has been exacerbated by Washington’s approval of the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.
‘Sitting ducks’
“The Americans told us Turkey would not use the jets against their allies [the SDF],” Meslat, told MEE. “But we think Turkey will do what it wants.”
The US’s support for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces has long been a point of contention with its Nato ally, Turkey.
Ankara views the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long war for independence against Turkey and is also considered a terrorist organisation by the US and the European Union. But Washington has refused to cut ties with the SDF, its main partner in their fight against the Islamic State (IS) militant group.
A fighter of the Syrian Democratic Forces loads a machine gun belt in Syria’s northeastern Deir Ezzor province, on 4 September 2023 (Delil Souleiman/AFP)
More recently, Turkey and the US have been enjoying a thaw in ties which has unnerved the SDF. In January, Ankara approved Sweden’s ascension to Nato, which officially became a member on 7 March, and Erdogan has patched up ties with Greece, steps that helped the Biden administration move forward with the F-16 sale.
Turkey’s concerns about the PKK led it to launch an invasion of Syria in 2016, with the aim of depriving Kurdish fighters a base along its border. Two more military forays followed in 2018 and 2019, giving Turkey and its Arab proxy militias control over large swaths of Syrian territory.
Experts say the deteriorating security conditions in northeast Syria reflect how Ankara is taking the opportunity of better ties with Washington to push its objective of degrading the SDF.
‘Northeast Syria is collateral damage of Gaza. I wouldn’t have too much hope about its future’
– Fabrice Balanche, Syria specialist
Dareen Khalifa, an expert on Syria and senior advisor at the International Crisis Group, told MEE that since the war in Gaza erupted, Turkey has pursued a new strategy in its bombing campaign.
“The Turks are taking advantage of the situation in Gaza, of course,” Khalifa said. “Specifically they are degrading the Kurdish-led administration’s ability to extract and refine oil, in a huge blow to their financial resources.”
Northeast Syria is home to 95 percent of Syria’s oil and gas reserves. In a press conference last month, Mazloum Abdi, commander of the SDF, said Turkey’s strikes on commercial sites and infrastructure had cost the cash-strapped SDF 50 percent of its budget.
Abdi himself is hunkered down with US soldiers at al-Shaddadah military base to avoid assassination by Turkey’s drones.
“Basically, Kurdish fighters have become sitting ducks to Turkey’s strikes,” Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International, told MEE.
US-SDF rift
Lund said that Turkey’s emphasis on hitting energy infrastructure since October had made “life miserable for local civilians…and adds to stress between the US and SDF”.
Last week, Centcom Commander Erik Kurilla stopped in the northeast as part of a regional tour. He visited al-Roj and al-Hol refugee camps, which are home to 45,000 people – including the families of IS militants. Kurdish forces also guard over 9,000 IS members.
But Kurilla’s visit did little to dispel the SDF’s sense of gloom and the feeling of powerlessness to persuade the US to lobby Turkey against more strikes, regional officials told MEE.
His visit coincided with a Turkish drone strike that killed at least three members of a local Christian police force. The SDF is Kurdish-led but also counts Syriac Christians, Armenians and Arab forces among its ranks.
Kurdish-Syrian firemen put out a blaze at a power station in Qamishli, on 15 January 2024 (Delil Souleiman/AFP)
The US Defence Department warned in a February report that Turkey’s strikes were succeeding in driving a wedge between US troops operating in the northeast and their SDF allies, “this tension between the US and SDF forces could result in threatening the safety of US personnel”.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is due to travel to the US on Thursday to meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security advisor Jake Sullivan. But Syria will likely be a sideline topic, with the Biden administration’s energy focused on pushing Hamas and Israel into a six-week truce, analysts tell MEE.
Iran knocking on the door
Fighting in Gaza has slowly seeped out beyond the besieged Mediterranean enclave’s borders, morphing into a shadowy proxy contest between the US and Iran over who calls the shots in the Middle East.
Dealing with the number of hot spots in the region has become a game of whac-a-mole for the Biden administration.
In Yemen, the US is launching air strikes against Iran-backed Houthi rebels who are waging war against commercial shipping, in what they say is solidarity with Palestine. Meanwhile, the US is conducting shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Lebanon to prevent the outbreak of war with Hezbollah.
‘Iran understands that events are slowly but surely going in its direction. They aren’t in a rush’
– Robert Ford, former US ambassador Syria
Syria is also a battleground between the US and Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance”. In February, seven SDF fighters were killed in an attack on al-Omar oil field, the largest US-led coalition base in Syria.
Syria’s decade-long civil war ended with President Bashar al-Assad controlling about two-thirds of Syrian territory. The semi-autonomous region of northeast Syria, also referred to by Kurds as Rojava, occupies the other roughly one-third. Driving the US out of the northeast has long been a goal of Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers.
Since 7 October, Iranian proxies have launched more than 170 attacks on US forces, mainly in Iraq and Syria, according to the Institute For the Study of War. The deadliest strike that killed three US soldiers, however, caught US troops off guard at a little-known base in Jordan that supports the US’s mission in Syria.
The Biden administration responded with dozens of strikes against Iranian assets, including one that killed a senior Iranian-backed militia commander in Baghdad with a hellfire missile fitted with switchblades, called the flying Ginsu. Since then, attacks by Iran and its proxies have all but stopped.
Robert Ford, a former US ambassador to Syria, told MEE that the slowdown in strikes didn’t signal Iran is giving up on its goal of expelling the US from the region, rather, the opposite.
“The Iranians are stomping hard for America to leave,” he told MEE. “They understand that events are slowly but surely going in their direction. They aren’t in a rush.”
‘Arm the shit out of the Kurds’
The slowing of attacks may actually make it more palatable for the Biden administration to agree to a drawdown of the US-led counter-IS mission in Iraq, which is a key goal of Tehran and its Iraqi proxies.
‘A volcano’: Arab grievances in Syria’s Deir Ezzor pit US allies against each other
Because Iraq is the logistical hub for US forces in Syria, a pullout there could make the US presence in Syria untenable, former senior US officials previously told MEE.
One contingency plan being floated by Department of Defence officials would leave US troops in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, a US defence official told MEE, preserving the US’s access to Erbil airport.
“Basically we would pull out, arm the shit out of the Iraqi Kurds and still support our guys in northeast Syria,” the official told MEE on condition of anonymity.
Kurds in Iraq’s northern region have called on the Biden administration to supply it with air defence systems, but Washington has been reluctant to do so, with the demand for advanced systems from Ukraine being a contributing factor.
While that plan resonates in some quarters of Washington, it may not be practical. The US has cut the salaries of the semi-autonomous region’s Peshmerga forces, and Erbil is increasingly cash-strapped because of a feud with Baghdad over oil revenue.
“Iraqi Kurdistan is also extremely weak right now,” Ford said. “They need Baghdad’s approval to pay civil servants’ salaries.”
‘Violent free-for-all’
US troops arrived in northeast Syria in 2015 as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. The SDF was their main partner in pushing back IS after it swept through vast swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
The so-called “caliphate” was territorially defeated in 2019, but roughly 900 US troops remain in the area.
Officially, their mission is to conduct raids against IS sleeper cells. But they have become a chip in the region’s geopolitical chessboard, with some US officials viewing them as leverage to deprive Assad’s Russian and Iran allies of a valuable chunk of Syrian territory.
Some US officials, like Brett McGurk, Biden’s top White House Middle East advisor, hope Washington can seal a deal for broad US withdrawal from the northeast, following an agreement between the SDF and the Syrian government.
Reports in February that the Pentagon was reviewing those long-standing plans sparked panic among supporters of a continued US troop presence. The debate in Washington between those in favour of remaining and a withdrawal has played out since the Trump administration made an abrupt exit in 2019, which was partially reversed.
“If the US were to pull out, it would be a violent free-for-all. The Turks will advance, the Syrian regime will advance, the Iranians will advance and IS attacks will surge,” Khalifa told MEE.
But Ford, a longtime critic of what he dubbed America’s “forgotten forever war”, said the US has two choices.
“They either stay in Syria indefinitely or they figure out a transition where the SDF goes to the Assad government,” adding that the pullout would likely cement Russia’s role as Syria’s powerbroker.
Besides facing a Turkish assault and economic crisis, the autonomous region is grappling with sectarian tensions.
In August last year, Arab tribes, some with links to the Assad government, revolted against the SDF in Deir Ezzor province. As the war in Gaza drags on, Iran has sought to exploit those tensions. Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Commander Hajj Mahdi is in charge of Tehran’s operations in Deir Ezzor and has been actively recruiting the tribes.
Fabrice Balanche, a Syria specialist at the University of Lyon II, said Arab tribal leaders and the SDF would have no choice but to cut a deal with Damascus if the US pulls out.
“There is a sense of ‘when, not if, the US leaves.’ I don’t see how the SDF can survive another year, maybe two,” Balanche said.
“Northeast Syria is collateral damage of Gaza. I wouldn’t have too much hope about its future.”
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Turkey’s attacks on Rojava killed more than 140 people in 2023
Most recent offensive, in last two weeks of year, destroyed infrastructure and left 90,000 children without school
02.01.202412.45h
Funeral, on December 26, 2023, of several of the people killed in the attack against Qamislo. Author: YPJ Information @ Twitter
Several waves of attacks by the Turkish army against the Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria (AANES) during 2023 have killed 146 people and destroyed civilian and military infrastructure in the region, according to the latest tally by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Of these deaths, nine were recorded in the last week of the year. This was when Turkey launched a fresh offensive against the autonomous area led by the left-wing Kurdish movement in Rojava.
Also, according to SOHR data, 10 Turkish soldiers lost their lives in Syria during the year.
Between 23 and 31 December, Turkish air and artillery attacks targeted civilian and military facilities along the Syrian-Turkish border. These targets included Qamişlo, Amûdê, Tirbespî, Kobanê, Tel Rifaat and other smaller settlements. In Qamişlo, nine civilians —initially six— were killed, and dozens more were wounded.
According to AANES officials, the latest Turkish offensive has had a serious impact on civilian infrastructure in the territory. The government in northern and eastern Syria said the airstrikes hit hospitals, energy production plants, gas stations, warehouses, garages, and farms.
The AANES Education Ministry added that about 90,000 pupils have been prevented from getting to their classes due to the pre-emptive closure of 712 schools.
The AANES is the federal autonomous system that the left-wing Kurdish movement proclaimed in northern and eastern Syria in 2018 on the basis of several self-governing cantons that had existed since 2013. It includes the territories traditionally attached to Western Kurdistan, or Rojava, as well as other surrounding Arab-majority regions. However, its armed forces, the SDF, do not control some Kurdish-majority areas, such as Efrîn, currently under Turkish occupation.
Criticism of US attitude Although the US is the SDF’s main international supporter —to varying intensity, depending on the moment—, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi has criticised Washington’s attitude to the recent offensive. Abdi said that the US government’s “silence” amounted to “unofficial approval” of the Turkish attacks.
US military assistance was key to enabling Kurdish forces to resist Islamic State’s Kobanê siege between 2014 and 2015. After that, however, Washington has not prevented another of its allies in the region, Turkey, from launching several offensives against Rojava and occupying several regions.
Turkey says attacks are part of fight against PKK
While the AANES authorities believe that Turkey’s ultimate motive for repeatedly attacking northern Syria is to destroy Kurdish-led self-rule, Turkey’s Defence Ministry claims that the offensive targeted members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Defense Units (YPG). The ministry claims that Turkey has “neutralised” (i.e. killed or detained) more than 2,200 members of these Kurdish groups during 2023 in the north of Syria, Southern Kurdistan (Iraq) and Northern Kurdistan (Turkey).
The Turkish government added that the offensive in the last two weeks of the year followed a PKK attack on a Turkish base in South Kurdistan. In that attack, 12 Turkish soldiers were killed.
YPJ Commander killed in Turkish attack in Qamishlo laid to rest in Kobanê
Sorxwin Rojhilat, one of the YPJ commanders martyred in a Turkish drone attack in Qamishlo two days ago, was laid to rest in Kobanê with vows of revenge. % buffered
ANF
KOBANÊ
Tuesday, 13 Feb 2024, 16:06
The invading Turkish state carried out a drone attack on a facility of the Federation of the War-Disabled in Qamishlo on 11 February, killing two commanders of the Women’s Defence Units (YPJ), Sorxwîn Rojhilat and Azadî Dêrik.
Sorxwîn Rojhilat was one of more than 20,000 people wounded in the fight against ISIS in northern and eastern Syria. She was born in 1985 in Makû, a city in eastern Kurdistan (western Iran) and came to Rojava in 2014, when thousands of people from many different countries flocked to Kobanê to take part in the defence of the city besieged by ISIS. In the course of the offensive, she became part of the YPJ Command and played an important role in the Kobanê resistance. She was seriously injured in an attack by the jihadist militia and lost most of her sight. After a long period of recovery, she helped to set up structures for the war-disabled and was also a co-founder of the Federation of the War-Disabled. Sorxwîn Rojhilat did not limit her work to helping the war-disabled, but also devoted herself to solving social problems and was involved in projects to promote the equal participation and development of women and girls.
Hundreds of people from the Euphrates Canton and other cantons of North and East Syria flocked to the Şehîd Dicle Cemetery of Martyrs in Kobanê to bid farewell to the fallen YPJ commander. Members of the YPJ were also present at the ceremony, as well as members of civil society organizations and representatives of political parties.
Rojda Felat, one of the YPJ commanders, said, “We will avenge our martyrs, we will not let the enemy go unanswered. One of Martyr Sorxwîn’s wills was to be buried in the Şehîd Dicle Cemetery of Martyrs in Kobanê. She fought in every field with her humble personality. As Sorxwîn’s comrades, we reiterate once again that we will take revenge on our comrade.”
Speaking on behalf of Martyr Sorxwin’s family and the War Veterans of North and East Syria, Nucan Rojhilat said the following:
“The occupying forces resort to all kinds of ways and methods to destroy the guerrillas in the free mountains. They want to destroy our nation in the person of Leader Abdullah Öcalan. Comrade Sorxwîn said, ‘We have a country and we must protect it’. Sorxwîn took part in the battle of Kobanê on the same fronts as Gelhat, Sorxwîn and Abu Leyla. Comrade Sorxwîn said, ‘Let’s protect our society, our country and our nation’. We will also embrace the dreams of Comrade Sorxwîn.”
The crowd also commemorated Çîçek Kobanê, who was martyred along with 4 of her comrades in a retaliation action carried out by HRE against the military point of the occupying Turkish state gangs in Basilê village of Afrin city.
Speaking at the commemoration, Martyr Çiçek Kobanê’s brother Berxwedan Berekat said, “Let the enemy hear our voice, we will avenge our martyrs. We are the fighters of Leader Abdullah Öcalan.”
After the speeches, the martyrdom certificates of the two YPJ commanders were read and handed over to their families before the burial took place.
Turkish warplanes and drones targeted the infrastructure of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) 73 times on January 12, wounding at least six civilians and cutting power to nearly 2 million residents. The AANES announced the strikes disabled seven oil refineries and seven power plants, destroyed five checkpoints manned by the Internal Security Forces (Asayesh), and damaged 45 other facilities. The AANES also said Turkey has been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in northern Syria for years. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) refuted Turkish claims that SDF personnel were killed in the strikes and called the attacks a “systematic destruction of basic service institutions and the deliberate targeting of the necessities of life for millions of people.” The attacks started after Turkish Minister of National Defense Yaşar Güler announced nine Turkish soldiers in Iraqi Kurdistan were killed by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Separately, Iranian-backed militias claimed responsibility for several additional attacks on facilities housing U.S. personnel in Syria. On January 12, the SDF said it seized “platforms for rockets and mortars” that belonged to “terrorist groups” plotting to attack the SDF, U.S. forces, and civilians.
Turkey
The Turkish government detained 165 people across the country, with police raids taking place in various locations, including the Kurdish province of Diyarbakir (Amed) and Istanbul. A significant number of those detained are affiliated with the Pro-Kurdish Dem Party, and many of them face charges related to their social media posts critical of the government. Concurrently, as part of preparations for the upcoming local elections, leaders of the Dem Party held discussions with Turkey’s primary opposition group, the People’s Republic Party (CHP). In a statement issued by the Dem Party’s leaders, they firmly opposed the government’s policy of appointing trustees to replace elected mayors. The party urged all political parties and civil organizations to collaborate in safeguarding the collective future of the country. Notably, the municipal elections in Turkey are scheduled for March 31.
Iraq
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed credit for several ballistic missile attacks on Erbil that killed at least four civilians and wounded 17 late Monday. The victims of Monday’s attack included a famous Kurdish businessman named Pishro Dizayee and his one-year-old daughter, alongside his business partner from Baghdad. Dizayee’s two sons and wife remain in critical condition. The IRGC declared it targeted “three Mossad bases” housing “anti-Iran groups.” Still, the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) asserted the attacks targeted civilian areas and called the IRGC’s declaration baseless. “This is a blatant violation of the sovereignty of the Kurdistan Region and Iraq, and the federal government and the international community must not remain silent about this crime,” said the KRSC. Kurdish leaders and parties condemned the attacks and considered it a violation of Iraq and Kurdistan’s sovereignty. On Tuesday, a large gathering of Kurds staged protests against the Iranian regime, holding up posters adorned with images of the victims. Simultaneously, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken held discussions with Masrour Barzani, the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Barzani’s office conveyed that both the US and President Joe Biden perceive these attacks as a “serious threat.” They are committed to taking “necessary measures” to uphold regional security and stability. The missile attacks did not specifically target the US presence. However, one-way drones of the Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, directed towards Erbil airport, aimed at a US facility, resulted in no reported casualties.
Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder responded to Iranian-backed parties’ efforts to expel U.S. forces from Iraq by stating U.S. personnel are focusing on the anti-ISIS (Da’esh) mission and are in the country at the invitation of the Iraqi government. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al Sudani told Reuters the Iraqi government is seeking a quick U.S. exit but has not set a deadline for such a withdrawal yet. That said, Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs Fuad Hussein told al Arabiya that Iraq does not want to create a “chaotic situation regarding its relations with Washington” and emphasized the importance of “internal preparation before the start of negotiations.”
Iran
Iranian authorities executed seven Kurds in Karaj prison on “drug” charges in one week, according to the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights. Another execution was reported on Tuesday, bringing the total number of Kurdish executions in 2024 to twenty. Simultaneously, the Iranian regime continued its crackdown on activists and civilians, detaining several Kurds in Mehabad, Piranshahr, Bokan, Baneh, Sardasht, Ilam, and Dewalan. At the same time, two Kurdish men died under torture in prison after months of detention, identified as Iman Hassanwanad and Paiman Abdi. Separately, the regime’s border guards and the IRGC wounded at least 18 Kurdish border porters (kolbar) and killed two in the bloodiest week of 2024, near Nowsud and Baneh.”
Iranian Kurdish opposition parties condemned the recent rocket attacks on the Kurdistan Region by the IRGC, labeling them as acts of terrorism. The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) attributed the attacks to the IRGC, alleging that they were carried out in response to the IRGC’s losses in Syria. Abdullah Mohatdi, the leader of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, questioned why the IRGC has not been designated as a terrorist organization by the world despite such actions. Both parties have experienced similar attacks in the Kurdistan region in 2018 and 2023.
Paul L Dawson, The Battle Against the Luddites: Unrest in the Industrial Revolution During the Napoleonic Wars (Frontline Books 2023) 200+ pages, £25.
Any book that arouses interest in the Luddite story is to be welcomed. Especially one that argues the relevancy of Luddism to the present day. Paul Dawson’s book certainly does that, as he punctuates his narrative with parallels to the miners’ strike of 1984/85. The author is therefore coming from a position with which I have perfect sympathy. Sadly, defects in the presentation of the book and, more importantly, its’ fundamentally flawed central argument, prevent Mr Dawson’s work becoming the important contribution to working class historiography that, given his knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject, it could have been.
No books (my own included) are free from errors, whether of omission (missing out evidence), commission (stretching the evidence) or interpretation (misunderstanding the evidence). Rarely too do books entirely avoid misprints, typesetting errors and other gremlins in the text. However, this book has more than its fair share, which, since it is from an established main stream publisher, is surprising. It is as if the author has not had any support from proof reader or editor, nor the chance to check galley proofs before publication. The book is riddled with repetitions and misprints to such an extent that in places it both detracts and distracts from the narrative. For example, Mr Dawson describes the Luddite attack of 23/24 March 1812 on the premises of William Thompson of Rawden and Dickinson, Carr and Shand [sic] of Leeds. Then, in the paragraph immediately following we are told that ‘a day later’ there was an attack on William Thompson & Brothers of Rawdon and Messrs Dickinson, Carr and Shann [sic]. (p.92) These are clearly references to the same events. Similar repetitions, if not so evidently juxtaposed, recur throughout the book to such an extent that some sections, particularly the account of the process of industrialisation in the woollen industry, become garbled.
The loss of clarity resulting from repetition is compounded by some outright contradictions. On page 45 we learn that the Gig Mills were stopped by ‘intimidation by the croppers and clothiers’, while the next but one sentence informs us that ‘The clothiers afraid of losing the shipping season…gave in to the demands of the workers.’ Obviously ‘the clothiers’ had not suddenly changed sides. It is Mr Dawson’s failure to clearly define what clothiers were and their ambiguous role in the transition from the domestic system of manufacture to factory production that is the problem. Regarding conditions in Nottinghamshire it is claimed, on the one hand, that traditional stockingers ‘were being squeezed out of the market by the increasing use of new machines’ and a ‘major shift in technology’ but, on the other, that the machine in question, the wide stocking frame ‘was not a new technology’. (p.74)
Misprints are usually not a serious problem since their sense is often apparent, but those that appear in the very last sentence of the book rob Mr Dawson’s emphatic concluding remark of some of its gravitas, ‘The battle of unions against the government, or in simpler terms, capitol [sic] verses [sic[ labour is as much part of life in 2023 as it was in 1812.’ (p.190)
Mr Dawson shows little reliance on secondary sources. Whether this is because he hasn’t read them, or is dismissive of them (or both) is not clear. He is certainly contemptuous of those historians who regard Luddism as mainly a machine breaking movement, although he is also reluctant to acknowledge those who share his views that Luddism was part of a wider movement with political and even revolutionary elements. Our own book, Liberty or Death, supports and develops E P Thompson’s thesis with a detailed local case study showing the continuity of Jacobin influenced revolutionary Republican ideas from the 1790s, through the wars with France and beyond, culminating in the attempted uprising of 1820. The Huddersfield area in fact illustrates that continuity better than anywhere else, since it is the only area in the country where there is evidence of radical working class activity at each key moment – Jacobinism, the Luddites and the abortive uprisings of 1817 and 1820. However, I am not merely complaining that Mr Dawson glosses over our humble volume, but that he appears to ignore all Luddite research less than 20 years old – and much of it from before. The more recent important work of Katriona Navickas and Kevin Binfield receives no acknowledgement. The Luddite Bicentenary website, which provides a large archive of transcribed Home Office and other manuscripts from 1811 to 1817 has only one citation. Consequently many of Mr Dawson’s readers may not be aware of the extent of Luddite studies and the fact that his conclusions should be set in the context of a wider academic debate. Without this context it is not possible to judge whether Mr Dawson’s account is as original and insightful as he suggests that it is. An insistence on re-inventing the wheel from the raw materials (ie quoting the primary sources almost to the exclusion of any other research) without taking into account the knowledge and insights of experienced wheelwrights, is a risky venture. The wheels may fall off at any bump in the road – and this is what happens as early as the introduction, where he first re-ignites the long extinguished ‘Black Lamp’. (p.xiv)
The ‘Black Lamp’ is invoked as the ‘West Riding derivative’ of the revolutionary republican organisation the United Englishmen, a connection that he makes central to his interpretation of Luddism. But by conflating clandestine Republicanism, machine breaking, illegal trade unions, parliamentary reform and food riots – that is every manifestation of popular resistance in the period – he in fact obscures real events. The ‘Black Lamp’, far from illuminating the real interrelation of different working class activities, casts a shadow over our perception of Luddism.
The ‘Black Lamp’ first saw the light of day when it appeared in print in 1949 in a collection of Home Office and other documents edited by the historian Arthur Aspinall and entitled The Early English Trade Unions. The term appears in a letter from the Leeds mayor and manufacturer, William Cookson, to Earl Fitzwilliam. Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding dated 18 August 1802 (p.53) in which Cookson relates the account of an anonymous informant who tried, unsuccessfully, to penetrate a nocturnal outdoor meeting in a valley a couple of miles from Birstall. All the witness could ascertain was that the gathering appeared as a ‘Black Lamp of men’. Another source told Cookson that the meeting was of a committee of about 200, organised in groups of ten who sought ‘Abolition of all taxes and full enjoyment of their rights’, anticipating a rising towards those ends before Christmas. Cookson himself thought that the meeting was of ‘those who profess to raise the price of labour and lower the price of provisions.’ He did not portray it as a Republican conspiracy and Aspinall obviously saw it in the context of the current dispute between Leeds manufacturers and illegal combinations of workmen, hence its inclusion in the book.
There the ‘Black Lamp’ might have flickered out had it not been revived by E P Thompson in his 1963 The Making of the English Working Class, wherethe opening section of Chapter 14, describing revolutionary republicanism and the thwarted Edward Despard uprising of 1802, is entitled ‘The Black Lamp’. However, his only evidence for an organisation of that name is the same letter from Cookson which he quotes at length from Aspinall (pp.520-21). Unlike Aspinall he therefore bases it not in the context of illegal combinations, but of Jacobinism. Although regarding the ‘Black Lamp’ as part of a national revolutionary organisation is nothing more than an assumption, it is an assumption that is still a possibility. Unfortunately, the problem for E P Thompson, and more so for Mr Dawson, who stretches that assumption to underpin his whole theory of Luddism, is that the very existence of the name is extinguished by a careful reading of the original document transcribed by Aspinall.
Mr Dawson’s apparent disdain for secondary sources results in his apparent obliviousness to the debate on ‘The “Black Lamp” in Yorkshire’ conducted in the journal Past & Present as far back as 1974. (No.64 Aug pp.114-123 and Ibid.124-132) Here J R Dinwiddy questioned whether Thompson’s ‘evocative phrase “The Black Lamp”’ was based on evidence that the Birstall meeting was ‘of a political nature’, pointing out that the Hammonds in their 1917 The Town Labourer had concluded, like Aspinall, that it was a trade union meeting. He argued that ‘the existence of the “Black Lamp” as an extensive political conspiracy…must remain hypothetical’. Replying to J R Dinwiddy’s doubts that the ‘Black Lamp’ revealed the existence of Jacobinism in the West Riding, John Baxter and Francis Donnelly, who had researched the issue in some depth, challenged his conclusions that there were no links between trade unionism and subversive political activity. But, while they asserted that the Birstall meeting was ‘probably’ composed of United English supporters, they totally demolished the idea that there was any West Riding organisation called the ‘Black Lamp’ ! Their reading of the original manuscript revealed that the expression was in fact ‘a Black Lump of men’ which was ‘a purely descriptive term meaning “a sinister grouping of men”. It would seem that Professor Aspinall’s original error of transcription played upon Mr. Thompson’s receptive literary mind.’ Since this revelation anyone studying the topic goes to the original source to check the spelling, which indeed, clearly says ‘Lump’ rather than ‘Lamp’ denoting a dense mass’ of men. In his rejoinder Dr Dinwiddy congratulated Baxter and Donnelly on their discovery (P&P No.64.p.135) and expressed his own doubt that the name of a secret organisation could be known to an outside witness who admitted that he had not actually got near enough to hear anything that was being said.
Thompson’s promotion of the term has however inspired Mr Dawson to construct a whole edifice of speculation about the influence of an organisation for which there is no evidence, now not even a name and a meeting the purpose of which we can not confirm. Despite the fact that the ‘Black Lamp’ was snuffed out almost 50 years ago, Mr Dawson devises an etymology for it, claiming that it stemmed from the practice of the ‘underground movement’ putting out street lights ! (p.43). His book contains at least 13 direct mentions of the ‘Black Lamp’ and numerous other references to the Jacobin organisation of which it was the synonym. We are told that ‘many hundreds of Black Lamp members were at work among the clothmakers [sic]’ in 1801-1802, although the context makes clear that this refers to the campaign of machine breaking in the West of England and the role of the illegal cloth dressers’ ‘Institution’ – not Republican activity. This period produces little evidence of Jacobin activity in Yorkshire outside of Sheffield, which was not a clothmaking area. (p.47) The Huddersfield magistrate Joseph Radcliffe is described as convinced of the danger from ‘secret meetings’ of the ‘Black Lamp’ (p,48), although Radcliffe makes no mention of such an entity and, while he discovered a small group in Almondbury and a few other individuals with links to (or at least sympathy with) the United Englishmen, there is no evidence that they had the mass support claimed by Mr Dawson. ( see Liberty or Death pp.18-21). Despite this, he claims that the events of 1799-1802 constituted a ‘Black Lamp rebellion’ (p.90)
Moving on to 1812, when Luddism was at its height, Mr Dawson refers to an anonymous ‘Luddite’ letter calling for a revolution following the French example, which he describes as ‘making us immediately think of the United Englishmen’s radical activism known locally as the Black Lamp’ (p.88). Mr Dawson may think of this connection, but there is no evidence of the source of the letter and its claim to have the backing of ‘40,000 Heros’ ready for an uprising cannot be substantiated. Even if the writer was a Luddite and even if he had Republican beliefs, this does not allow us to ‘think’ into being a widespread Republican movement for which there is no corroborative evidence. Unfortunately, in his eagerness to inflate the role of Republican organisations and the fictional ‘Black Lamp’, Mr Dawson places too much uncritical reliance on such anonymous sources as the letter to Mr Smith of Hill End and unreliable informers such Joseph Barrowclough. (pp.125-127)
By bestowing a vital, central role to the ‘Black Lamp’, Mr Dawson loses sight of the real character of Luddism, leading him to claim that after the disastrous attack on Rawfolds Mill in April 1812 ‘Luddism evolved into an underground revolutionary army’ (p.120). Although there is evidence of sympathy with Republican ideas and the tradition of the United Englishmen it is nowhere enough to make this bold assertion. Printed United English/United Briton documents found in the vicinity of the attack on Foster’s Mill at Horbury were produced as evidence of a revolutionary involvement. There is also the more convincing, since provenanced, claim that UE/UB membership cards were found at Taylor Hill near Huddersfield – but still this is not enough to conjure up ‘an underground revolutionary army’. In both cases the documents could just as well have been planted by alarmists like the Taylor Hill manufacturer Francis Vickerman who, like Cookson in 1801-02, had a vested interest in spurring the authorities into taking a harder line against the cloth dressers. There are certainly no grounds for Mr Dawson’s absurd claim that ‘the high degree of similarity between the United Englishmen of 1795-1803 and Luddism indicates that Luddism was the United Englishmen rebranded’ (p.121). The supposed similarity between the UE oath allegedly found near Foster’s Mill and the Luddite oath, provided by the informer Thomas Broughton of Barnsley, also holds no water since the introduction ‘I AB etc…’ was a standard formula (p.121). The rest of the text is quite different. There is simply no evidence for an ‘underground army’, let alone one composed of many thousands of members who had participated in the failed Despard plot of a decade earlier.
Luddite oath as passed to the authorities by Thomas Broughton
Oath of the United Englishmen/United Britons and, according to Mr Dawson ‘The Black Lamp’
The absence of any evidence of this revolutionary activity at the York Luddite trials is attributed by Mr Dawson to the fact that ‘the Crown downplayed the seriousness of the threat from the Black Lamp and other groups’ (p.177). Why, when Luddism was defeated and the danger of a French invasion had receded following Napoleon’s Russian disaster, the state needed to do this is not explained. The simple explanation that there was no serious Republican threat and that the ‘Black Lamp’ did not exist does not enter Mr Dawson’s consideration. While there is evidence of sympathy towards Republicanism among Luddites and the involvement of people, possibly involved in earlier Jacobinism, who still retained illusions of sparking a revolution after the failure of the Rawfolds Mill attack (Liberty or Death pp.32-34) there is no evidence for the grand nationwide conspiracy that belief in the ‘Black Lamp’ demands.
The conclusion that we reached in Liberty or Death (which analysed events in the Huddersfield area, but was based on a wider appreciation of Luddism) was that, while ‘Luddism was a popular resistance movement opposed to the growing domination of industrial capitalism and its’ political guardians’ and although Luddites acted as a paramilitary force, the organisation lacked real central leadership and direction. (pp.39-40) There was certainly no unified Jacobin control and absolutely no illusionary ‘Black Lamp’ in Yorkshire or anywhere else. In fact the main characteristic which gave Luddism the semblance of being a coordinated cross-county movement was merely the name of its mythical eponymous leader. Mr Dawson’s creation of a central revolutionary organisation robs Luddism of its real history and attributes. In his narrative the true nature of Luddism is lost sight of and it becomes of such secondary interest that the use of the term ‘Luddite’ becomes a loose anachronism, applied not only to the years around 1800 but even to 1770s machine breakers who were ‘calling themselves Luddites’ (p.9) – despite the fact the term does not appear until 1811 !
By conflating Luddism and homegrown revolutionary Jacobinism and squeezing the amalgam into the procrustean bed of the ‘Black Lamp’ Mr Dawson seriously distorts the working class history of this period. By exaggerating and so discrediting the argument Mr Dawson gives ammunition to those who would still rob Luddism of any political content and reduce it to militant trade unionism. It is a book still worth reading for the factual matter and source material it contains – but its assumptions and conclusions require a serious health warning. Luddism was indeed far more complex than machine breaking (p.188), but machine breaking and opposition to industrialisation remains at its heart. Subordinating it to Jacobinism and the mythical ‘Black Lamp does not aid our understanding of this profoundly important episode one iota.
I have offered Mr Dawson the right to reply on this page if he so wishes.
….AND HERE IS HIS (UNEDITED) REPLY AND MY IMMEDIATE RESPONSE:
MR DAWSON’S REPLY
I notice you mention Despard, and the absence of a central organisation. Despard was recruited into the French service in late 1797/early 1798, and was handled by Leonard Bourdon out of Hamburg. Despard was one link in a chain, that organised the rebellion in Ireland in 1798 and the French invasion. Therefore seeing Despard as lacking a central organisation is in error. The evidence from 1801-1803 in UK and French archives, does indicate a degree of co-operation between republican groups, just like 1792-1794 – where we see Henry Redhead Yorke and others taking an active part in central organisation – where French agents operated freely accross the UK. Indeed, French agents directly influenced the outcome of elections, with support from like minded groups. So to say no form of organisation existed is an error, judging by the correspondence in French archives. Moving to 1812, the threat from Republican elements to release French POW’s who would then unleash ‘terror’ was of sufficient magnitude as to warrant Dartmoor and other POW camps being emptied and the inmates moved to Scotland. This corroborates Barrowclough. Admiralty papers, and again French archives support what ‘unreliable’ Barrowclough and others state that you dismiss. So yes, evidence certainly exists of a strong Republican element that co-existed alongside Luddism if not coalesced with Luddism. If the Luddites had no Republican sentiments for radical reform: why the arms raids? This is not easily explained or discussed in your review. Further, the review concentrants purely on demolishing any suggestion of a Republican/Poltical stance to Luddism: you fail to mention I also discuss other factors such as religion, and the improtance of community and tradition to the emergance of Luddism in seeking to preserve woollen trade as it then operated: you also with a degree of vehemance/relish, seek to demolish/destroy my work as you believe that the poltical element of Luddism has been over played in my work. That is of course your perogative. I note you are very defensive of your work, and establish yourslef as ‘the expert’ on Luddism, the sole authority on the subject, whose interpretations are the ‘the truth’ and are overtly defensive/aggresive of others with whom you do not agree. My work, sought to bring out primary sources and not the ‘tried and tested same old secondary and tertiary material’ and in doing so provided new eye-witness accounts of Luddism from the press and diaries which you do not acknowledge and are indeed scathing of my use of primary sources. You are also dismissive to the months of work taken to trasncribe primary sources, the bulok of which have not appeared in print to any degree, and prefer to promote the work of others on this matter. The purpose of research is to go back to the original sources rather to be reliant on other histrorians thinking and to make my own judgements from by broader research in archives in UK and Europe. Certainly the link between Irish militants, Luddism and Napoleon needs further research in Dublin and Paris, and could offer a transformative understanding of those events within the political sphere, which you dismiss. It seems to me, and I may be wrong, you take offence to my promotion of a polticial element behind Luddism, and therefore seek to ‘rubbish’ my work because papers from 50 years established the truth of the matter and historical interpretation cannot be revised: of course as I said earlier you are entitled to your views and demolish my work. I had hoped we could enter into a mutual discussion over Luddism.
MY REPLY
Have you read the review ? Have you read Liberty or Death ? I am not denying that there were republican elements in Luddism. I have described it in detail in the book. I repeat it in the book review. What I am denying is that there was a large scale revolutionary movement of the kind that you portray. I am saying emphatically that there was NO ‘BLack Lamp’ a subject that you have avoided in your reply – though this error blows your theory out of the water, since it removes any evidence of a widespread Jacobin plot involving thousands of people in 1812. I do not dismiss links between the United Irishmen, the United English (including Despard) and French agents. I have written of these before going back over 40 years. I am NOT ‘taking offence’ at your suggestion of a political element in Luddism. Go again to our book and it makes clear that we support the Thompson thesis. Your ignorance of the book again reflects your contempt for secondary sources and existing work on the Luddites. The purpose of research is not simply to go back to the original sources (if indeed you have done that and not taken the texts from existing transcriptions) but to give a rounded picture of the interpretation of those sources and analyse them critically in the light of other people’s work. That is how the science of history is applied. You state that>>>I note you are very defensive of your work, and establish yourself as ‘the expert’ on Luddism, the sole authority on the subject, whose interpretations are the ‘the truth’ and are overtly defensive/aggressive of others with whom you do not agree<<<<< Nowhere in the review or anywhere else, including this website, have I attempted to establish myself as ‘THE expert’ on Luddism. I express no vehemence/relish in ‘demolishing’ your work. My review is objective and critical within the bounds of reasoned debate. Nowhere do I get ad hominem which your remarks certainly are and the accusations levelled at me apply more appropriately to the tenor of your response.
A social contract amid Syria’s ruins – a weekly news review
On Tuesday, North and East Syria ratified a new Social Contract for the region, which they would like to see form the basis of a new constitution for the whole of Syria. It is a blueprint for radical bottom-up democracy, in line with Öcalan’s philosophy, but it is being constructed amid the ruins of Turkey’s attacks on the region’s infrastructure; alongside destabilisation threats from Turkey, ISIS, the Syrian Government, and pro-Iranian militias; and under fears of greater regional conflict.
On Tuesday, the renamed General Council of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria ratified a new Social Contract for the region, which they would like to see form the basis of a new constitution for the whole of Syria. War and epidemic – as well as the desire to maximise consultation with the people of this extensive and varied area – ensured that it took many years in the drafting, but this new Contract – effectively a constitution for the autonomous region – now replaces the original Social Contract adopted in 2014, which itself was revised in 2016. The contract is a blueprint for a radical bottom-up democracy, in line with Abdullah Öcalan’s philosophy of Democratic Confederalism. This democracy is being constructed amid the ruins of Turkey’s attacks on the region’s infrastructure; alongside destabilisation threats from Turkey, ISIS, the Syrian Government, and Syria’s allied pro-Iranian militias; and under fears of greater regional conflict as tensions build between the United States and Iran under the shadow of Gaza.
The Contract begins by enshrining broad general principles for an “ecological democratic society” with “justice and equality among all peoples” and women as a “fundamental pillar”. The greater part of the document is devoted to the mechanics of the democratic system and its different tiers, from the local commune upwards. Rojava Information Centre (RIC), who have translated the Contract into English, comment that this new version gives less importance to the central executive council and allows scope for local referendums – provided these don’t compromise basic principles – and it also explicitly allows for incorporation into a future democratic Syria that would preserve regional autonomy. The Syrian Government has, however, shown no sign that they are willing to negotiate any reduction of their former centralised power, and United Nations talks on the future of Syria – which Russia is trying to restart – are so concerned to appease Turkey that they don’t even allow the Autonomous Administration a seat at the table. Within the region, the Contract will now form the basis for much-delayed elections.
The attention given to the democratic structures – including structures to build and maintain women’s rights – and also the attention to ensuring cultural freedom and political representation of different ethnicities and religions, is not matched with detail on how other principles should be put into practice. It is not stipulated how an economic system “based mainly on environmental, participatory and community economics” translates into law, or how private investments will be prevented from “harm[ing] the environmental societal economy”. While the Contract states that “Natural wealth and resources are public wealth for society”, this does not include land, and private property is protected.
The Charter commits the Autonomous Administration to “liberating the occupied territories and returning their people to their regions.” This would not be a simple process even if Turkey could be made to leave.
North and East Syria today
The forward-looking Charter has to be made real in the most difficult circumstances. RIC has also just published a dossier looking at the damage done to North and East Syria (NES) by Turkey’s October airstrikes. It concludes, “Turkey’s October campaign shattered NES’ fragile humanitarian infrastructure and has left the population heading into winter without adequate fuel, electricity or water. The impacts on civilians are cascading and – given that the AANES [Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria] cannot carry out the necessary repairs – will be long lasting. As emphasized in this dossier, the effects of Turkey’s airstrikes are as debilitating as they are because the underlying humanitarian and infrastructure situation in NES was already bad prior to Turkey’s escalation… [W]hile NES today still manages to be the most stable region in Syria, the humanitarian situation is dire. Turkey’s recurring attacks compound this situation, engineer insecurity and hamper the AANES’ progressive steps.” With the whole region struggling, IDP camps are finding themselves under extra strain. NGOs and the United Nations provide only a fraction of the help needed.
The only thing preventing further invasion and occupation by Turkey is the presence of Russian and American Troops. Turkey’s last invasion was enabled by Donald Trump’s withdrawal of US troops in 2019. America still maintains 900 troops in Syria, and a motion to remove them was firmly rejected in the US Senate a week ago by a vote of 84 to 13. The Americans do nothing to prevent Turkish air attacks and cross-border bombardments, claiming that they are in Syria solely to fight ISIS in alliance with the Autonomous Administration’s Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). However, as the Senate debate made clear, America is also in Syria to attempt to restrict the growing influence of Iran. US support for Israel continues to put US bases in Syria and Iraq in the sights of Iran-backed militias – they have been targeted 97 times since 7 October – and America’s stance also makes the US the object of more general opprobrium. The SDF may find that their tactical alliance against ISIS brings new dangers that overweigh America’s distinctly limited protection.
The Syrian Government and allied pro-Iranian militias continue to cross the Euphrates in Deir ez-Zor in an attempt to stir up local discontent and to attack SDF bases. And ISIS is always ready to attack in areas such as Deir ez-Zor where resources are already stretched.
Meanwhile, the siege imposed by the Syrian government on those parts of the Autonomous Administration that are geographically separated from the rest continues to turn everyday life into a struggle for survival. Basic supplies of food, fuel, and medicine are all severely restricted. Hospitals are unable to function, schools are closed, and bakeries barely operate. For a young boy in one of the camps in Shehba that is inhabited by families displaced by the Turkish occupation of Afrîn, the struggle was too much. Sozdar Hesen died of cold on 2 December.
Syrian Government and Russian forces are also carrying out a major attack on Idlib in northwest Syria, which is under the control of Al Qaeda offshoot, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and is protected by Turkey. There are fears that Russia and Turkey might make an agreement whereby Turkey would allow Russia to destroy HTS in exchange for Russia letting them attack the SDF and assert control over the predominantly Kurdish northern areas of Syria. This only accentuates the need to persuade President Assad to enter serious negotiations with the Autonomous Administration.
Washington Kurdish Institute By: Dominic Nozeralla | November 28, 2023 The people of Rojava, residing in the Kurdish-majority region of northeast Syria, historically faced oppression under the Baathist regime in Damascus before the 2011 Syrian Civil War. Kurdish rights were severely curtailed, a reality shared by Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran under their respective national governments. In response to the civil war, Syrian Kurds formed a multiethnic, democratic confederation in northeast Syria for self-defense and mutual aid. During the war, they confronted an existential threat from ISIS, notably during the 2015 battle of Kobani. U.S. intervention provided crucial assistance to the Kurdish-led Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), leading to a successful counter-attack against ISIS and the reclamation of seized territory. Since then, the Syrian Kurds, organized under the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), have been key partners with Washington in combating ISIS. Despite the four-year effort to eliminate ISIS’ territorial gains, the Syrian Kurds faced a northern invasion by Turkey. In 2018, Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, conducted “Operation Olive Branch,” resulting in the occupation of Afrin Canton by Ankara-backed Islamist Syrian militias. Afrin Canton has remained under Turkish-backed occupation, causing significant suffering to its people. The Turkish government views the YPG and the Kurdish-led administration as the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and has consistently opposed the U.S.-YPG anti-ISIS partnership. Former President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American forces from AANES territory prompted another Turkish invasion, which was reversed after domestic backlash. Unclear Future The White House has consistently faced pressure from certain domestic elements and Ankara to abandon the Syrian Kurds in favor of supporting their NATO ally’s position. Washington’s unwavering disapproval of further Turkish incursions into northern Syria and the presence of American soldiers in AANES territory pose the most significant obstacle to Erdogan’s military ambitions in dismantling the Kurdish-led administration on his border. The Kurdish question remains a lingering concern in Washington, particularly given the potential for a second Trump presidency and the adoption of an isolationist “America First” foreign policy. The fate of the U.S.’ relationship with the AANES is uncertain, and it is unclear whether the autonomous zone can withstand the current external and internal aggression without U.S. support. The AANES not only faces constant threats of ground incursion from Turkey but also experiences continuous bombardment by the Turkish military and its Syrian proxies using drones, airstrikes, and artillery. This devastating campaign targets the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and civilian infrastructure, with a significant escalation in the latter half of 2023, resulting in mass destruction and civilian deprivation in Rojava. By the summer of 2023, the Assad regime and its patron Iran have heightened their antagonism toward the AANES. Pro-Assad and pro-Iran forces have repeatedly infiltrated, attacked, and bombarded the SDF-held portion of the Deir ez-Zor province, attempting to incite an Arab tribal rebellion against the AANES in the hope of restoring northeast Syria to Damascus’ control.The AANES confronts a blockade, internal strife incited by outside powers, an active ISIS insurgency, and a growing Turkey-Syria-Russia-Iran consensus hostile to Washington and intent on dismantling the Kurdish administration. Abandoning the AANES would not only betray the Syrian Kurds, subjecting them to the tyrannical rule of regional actors, but it would also severely hinder the U.S.’ ability to combat the still-existing and dangerous Islamic State. Washington’s ImperativeThe Syrian Kurds played a pivotal role as the primary fighting force against ISIS, achieving success with U.S. support while maintaining a democratic, secular, multi-ethnic administration in the conflict-ridden heartland of the Levant. Turkey’s anti-Kurdish ambitions are in stark contrast to the Syrian Kurds’ endeavors and contradict the U.S.’ commitment to universal human rights and liberty. In Afrin, international observers consistently characterize the Syrian rebel and Turkish military occupation as brutally oppressive and exploitative, involving ethnic cleansing against the Kurdish majority. Recent demographic changes imposed by Turkey have resulted in Arabs outnumbering Kurds for the first time since the Crusades. Forced deportations of Syrian Arab refugees to Turkey and the actions of Turkish-backed militias, including exploitation, drug peddling, kidnapping, human trafficking, and killings of Kurdish civilians, paint a grim picture of a reign of terror. Erdogan’s promises of similar circumstances for the rest of northern Syria, including resettling deported Arabs to create an “Arab belt,” threaten Kurdish national cohesion. Without U.S. intervention, Rojava may face occupation marked by brutal oppression and ethnic cleansing, while the international community and NATO potentially turn a blind eye.Although the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces territorially defeated ISIS in the Levant, the terrorist group persists in the deserts and countryside of northeast Syria, conducting an insurgency to rebuild its capacity for regional and global threats. The constant aggression and pressure on the AANES have hindered its ability to counter the ISIS insurgency, but the SDF remains the U.S.’s most reliable partner in the region for counter-terrorism. Withdrawal from Rojava would jeopardize U.S. efforts against ISIS, diminish the ability to combat the terrorist group directly, and create opportunities for ISIS to resurge. Additionally, Rojava’s presence impedes Tehran’s efforts to solidify control over the Levant and Iraq. Iran’s anti-Kurdish stance seeks to maintain influence and suppress unrest in Iranian Kurdistan. Abandoning the Syrian Kurds and their democratic, multi-ethnic experiment risks occupation and subjugation, undermining the U.S.’s ability to combat ISIS. Such abandonment would represent a betrayal of the nearly decade-long U.S.-AANES partnership and the values of universal liberty and self-determination that the U.S. upholds. The U.S. must prevent its reliable anti-terror ally from being subjected to ethnic cleansing and exploitation by the autocratic Turkey-Syria-Russia-Iran consensus. Dominic is a research assistant at the Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI).Disclaimer: The views expressed here represent those of the author and not necessarily those of the WKI.Webview
Kurdistan’s Weekly Brief | November 28, 2023
A weekly brief of events occurred in the Kurdistan regions of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Iran Several protests erupted in various cities, including the Kurdish city of Kermanshah, as well as Isfahan, Ahwaz, and Shush, denouncing the social security laws and dismal living conditions on both Sunday and Monday. The demonstrations were coordinated by labor unions representing diverse industries, including steelworkers, public employees, nurses, oil company workers, and municipal employees. In parallel, security forces, particularly the border guards, intensified their crackdown on Kurdish border porters (kolbar), resulting in the deaths of two individuals, including a teenager, and the injury of over a dozen near Baneh, Nowsud, and Urmia. Additionally, two kolbars tragically succumbed to freezing temperatures in Piranshahr and Urmia. The U.S. Department of State condemned Iran’s deceptive execution process targeting Kurdish singer Saman Yasin. Yasin, who has been imprisoned by the Iranian regime for over a year following the Zhina Amini’s uprising last year, faced a fake execution as part of psychological pressure tactics due to his song against the regime. The Farsi Twitter account of the U.S. Department of State emphasized, “The use of mock executions, torture and death sentences without a fair trial not only violate human rights, but also go against basic respect for human dignity.” Yasinn is now confronting a life sentence following the annulment of his execution sentence, awaiting a retrial. On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights published a special report revealing that the Iranian regime executed 16 women, with 128 female activists sentenced to varying prison terms since the beginning of 2023. Meanwhile, authorities arrested two Kurdish men in Naqadeh and Baneh, while the fate of dozens of others remains unknown since their detention in the past weeks across the Kurdistan Region. Iraq Following claims by Iranian-backed militias of an attack on a US facility at Erbil International Airport on November 22, a security official rebuffed the militia’s claims to Rudaw. In response to militia attacks on Ain al Assad base, involving the use of drones and mortars on US forces on two separate occasions last week (Wednesday and Thursday), the US conducted airstrikes. The retaliation resulted in the death of eight militants from the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah. Notably, there have been no further attacks on the US since the truce deal between Hamas and Israel. A delegation from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) journeyed to Baghdad, engaging in discussions with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al Sudani. The talks centered on Kurdistan’s budget, specifically addressing public employee salaries and the resumption of oil exports. The KRG is urging the federal government to disburse 2.1 trillion Iraqi dinars for the months of October, November, and December to cover these salaries. It remains uncertain whether Baghdad will consent to the release of Kurdistan’s budget. Regarding the provincial council elections in Kirkuk, the Iraqi Supreme Court has postponed a verdict following discussions on Sunday. The Turkish-backed Turkmen Front and Sunni Arab parties had filed a lawsuit seeking the postponement of the elections, aiming for a “review” of voters’ registration due to concerns about potential Kurdish victories. Despite these concerns, the Head of the media team at the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), Imad Jamil, affirmed to Shafaq News that Kirkuk’s voter registry process was completed in a legal manner. The Kurdish majority Kirkuk province has been under the governance of an acting governor since 2017. Syria The Syrian Arab Army’s Fourth Division maintains a blockade on the Kurdish-majority area of northern Aleppo countryside, jointly governed by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Assad regime. The Fourth Division has a history of imposing blockades and levying fees on goods entering the area, including fuel. The blockade has led to the shutdown of public transportation and schools due to fuel shortages, and there are concerns about potential disruptions to water sources and bakeries. The blockade particularly affects around 100,000 internally displaced people from Afrin who fled following Turkey’s invasion of northwest Syria in 2018. The Internal Security Forces of North and East Syria (Asayish), Rojava’s main police force, have arrested four individuals allegedly linked to the Syrian regime. These individuals are accused of engaging in sabotage and insurgency against the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). The arrested men were found in possession of weapons, including an AK-47 rifle, three hunting rifles, a grenade, knives, and ammunition. The AANES-held portion of Deir ez-Zor has experienced instability and insurgency, primarily instigated by pro-Iran and pro-Assad forces, following an Arab tribal rebellion in the summer. This unrest has involved bombings, assassinations, and gun attacks on SDF personnel, coupled with artillery and mortar attacks from Syrian government and Iranian forces across the Euphrates river. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), ISIS (Da’esh) attacks in the Syrian desert over the past month have resulted in the deaths of 67 pro-Assad government forces. Thirteen ISIS militants are also believed to have been killed, reportedly due to Russian air attacks. The main centers of violence include Homs, Deir ez-Zor, southern Raqqa, and Aleppo. These attacks follow a pattern of successful ISIS incursions against pro-Damascus forces, posing a persistent threat despite the territorial defeat of ISIS by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The extremist group continues to pursue an insurgency to restore its “caliphate” and gain control over the region. Turkey The spokesperson for the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (HEDEP) has announced the party’s intention to change its acronym. This decision follows objections from one of Turkey’s top courts due to its resemblance to the dissolved People’s Democracy Party (HADEP), accused of ties to the PKK. The party aims to avoid complications ahead of the upcoming March local elections by modifying its acronym to comply with the court’s concerns. The HEDEP is the successor to the Green-Left party, under which candidates from the historically pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) ran in 2023, amid the HDP’s threat of closure by the Turkish government. Despite facing pressure and hostility from Turkish authorities, the HDP/Green-Left Party aims to regain popularity after performing below expectations in the recent elections. Turkish police detained 98 people, primarily from the Kurdish region, in a single day, with the interior ministry alleging their links to the outlawed PKK. Most of the detainees are accused of disseminating “pro-PKK propaganda” on social media. This follows a pattern of escalating anti-Kurdish actions both within and beyond Turkey’s borders. Turkey has increased bombings and violence in Kurdish Syria and Iraq in recent months, along with numerous mass arrests of Kurdish activists accused by the government of PKK connections. Several Kurdish political prisoners in Turkish jails have declared a rotational hunger strike, advocating for the release of Abdullah Öcalan and a political resolution to the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. The strike is scheduled to continue until February 15, 2024, marking the anniversary of Öcalan’s capture and return to Turkey from Kenya. This action is part of a broader transnational campaign drawing attention to Öcalan’s imprisonment conditions on İmralı Island. Despite his limited ability to communicate with the outside world, Öcalan remains a crucial figure in the collective consciousness of Kurds worldwide, and advocacy for his freedom remains a central aspect of pro-Kurdish politics.
Turkish occupation forces and their mercenaries continue their attacks in areas of Manbij camp, where yesterday, Thursday and last night, mercenaries attempted to launch several attacks, on several fronts of the northern and western Manbij camp. The mercenaries launched an attack on the front of the river “Al-Sajur” and from the axis of the village “Al-Tokhar”, and our forces confronted them, where clashes occurred that resulted in the death of one of the mercenaries, which caused the others to flee the front. The mercenaries also attempted to launch an attack from the axis of the village of “Al-Daraj”, and encountered great resistance from our fighters, which forced them to withdraw. Our forces also ran into clashes with mercenaries as they tried to attack. launch an attack against “Al-Hushriya” village line and even against “Al-Jatt” village to be able to advance in that area. The Axis, as a result of the violent resistance of our fighters, was forced to retire and retire.
In front of the village of “Mohsenli”, mercenaries tried to advance there, gathering their forces at one of their checkpoints, but our forces attacked them with a burst of fire, directing the destruction of a mercenary vehicle carrying the “Dushka” weapon. The attack also resulted in the death of a mercenary and two others injured. With her, the other mercenaries retreated from the front.
On the “Mohsenli-Jerada” axis, mercenaries tried to launch another attack against our strong points, but our fighters frustrated the attack, and the attempt was also repeated on the “Arab Hassan” villages axis, which were also attacked by our forces and turned around. On the “Al-Sayyada” front and on the axis of the village “Umm Adas”, mercenaries tried to launch a major attack against our military points and the village, and our fighters responded forcefully, causing dead and injured. of several of them. The bodies of their dead remained on the battlefield and they were not able to be removed until late hours of the night. Since last night it was later confirmed that five mercenaries were killed.
On the axis of the village of “Umm Jaloud”, mercenaries tried to launch a surprise attack, but our fighters frustrated the attempt and forced them to retreat under their rain of fire. After the failure of all attempts of mercenary attack on our strong points; Deliberately attacked the area through violent artillery shelling, especially on the outskirts of “Al-Tokhar, Umm Jalud and Umm Adas” villages, which caused material damage to civilian properties.
In the front “Al-Arima” and in the axis of the village “Al-Bugaz” mercenaries met, but they did not initiate any attack, they only went to bomb it with heavy artillery. On the axis of the village “Al-Hamran”, which is opposite the village “Umm Jaloud”; A mercenary point was attacked with mortar grenades, injuring four mercenaries. The fronts then witnessed relatively calm and caution Friday morning, except for some projectiles that fell occasionally on some axes. The escalation of the Turkish occupation forces and their mercenaries on the Manbij fronts coincides with the launch of Operation “Improve Security” in the Deir ez-Zor camp by the Syrian Democratic Forces, to pursue the remains of the terrorist organization ISIS, fight the drug. traffic and arrest of elements that sow chaos in the region.
Rojava as Mesopotamia: Building Solidarity through Mythology
By Katia Lloyd Jones
On Aug 28, 2023
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In the shadows of the global media, the Kurdish freedom struggle continues. Muted by mainstream narratives that favour more palatable resistance movements, the extremity of Turkish violence goes on without condemnation from world leaders. While the steadfast and unwavering resilience of the Kurdish people is undeniable, it may not be enough against NATO’s second-largest army. With daily drone strikes, bombings, and assassinations occurring in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), hereon referred to as Rojava, it is becoming increasingly important for the Kurdish movement to find its way back into the spotlight and reignite international solidarity.
There is an extensive amount of literature that has been published about the emergence of Rojava, and the nature of its Democratic Confederalist political ideology. This is accompanied by detailed analyses of the re-emergence of Kurdish nationalism following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the decades of armed struggle by the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) against Turkish occupation. However, since the West largely deems the threat of ISIS as over, the media and academia have largely abandoned Rojava. As such, little attention has been placed on the emerging discourse of Kurdish indigeneity and the strategic imperatives such a claim has for the contemporary Kurdish resistance movement, nor has attention been granted to the escalation in violence being employed by Turkey.
The Orientalist tendencies of the West in its attempts to sympathise with the Kurdish cause have thus contributed to their ongoing marginalization, as there is a sizeable gap in the discussion of what motivates the decades-long Kurdish resistance and how they are dealing with new pressures. For many Western audiences, the Kurdish fighters of the YPJ (Women’s Protection Units) and YPG (People’s Protection Units) emerged out of nowhere, and their attempts to promote their radical political experiment in Rojava have been overwhelmed by celebrating only their military prowess. Therefore, it is up to the political leaders in Rojava to successfully export a new image of Rojava.
For decades the regimes of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria have framed their occupied Kurdish minority communities as direct threats to stability through the dissemination of national mythologies which posit them as “barbaric killers or radicalised terrorists.” Turkey’s racist myth that the Kurdish people are nothing more than ‘Mountain Turks’, also referred to as the ‘narrative of denial’, has similarly been employed as a means of eradicating Kurdish identity. However, utilizing the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan’s written guidance, this same tactic of purposefully promoting certain historic narratives and mythologies has become an important part of Rojava’s ‘rebrand’. Showcasing the antiquity of Kurdish culture and the paramount role the community has had in regional peacekeeping allows the political elite in Rojava to prove that to be Kurdish is to be distinctly different to the Arab, Persian and Turkish neighbours that surround them. In particular, the Kurdish cultural institutions of Rojava have begun emphasizing their historic presence in Mesopotamia, framing mythological Mesopotamian figures as Kurdish and drawing parallels between these heroes and the martyrs of the contemporary Kurdish freedom movement.
The Arab Spring and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, alongside the subsequent Western intervention, has seen the Middle East become a hotbed for non-state armed actors. However, given the multitude of groups seeking to exploit the resultant power vacuums, it is crucial that Rojava receives international support to ensure its survival. Thus, great attention has been placed on reforming the Kurdish reputation of separatism and situating Democratic Autonomy as the best solution to the ongoing instability, despite its radical nature.
As a result, the Kurdish armed resistance against ISIS has been transformed by the West as an asset in its ongoing involvement in the Middle East. But this evolution has created an awkward hypocrisy from Western states, where the same Kurdish fighters are celebrated for defeating jihadist terror, but then allowed to be struck by NATO-member Turkey’s armed drones without much protest. In this way, Western leaders rarely push back against the framing of ‘Kurdishness’ as synonymous with terrorism when it is done by the Turkish state – despite the fact that Rojava’s Kurdish fighters have been the most trusted and reliable allies of the International Coalition to Defeat ISIS. For their part, the recent emphasis by Rojava’s political leaders on the peacekeeping and protectionist nature of YPG and YPJ Kurdish fighters has come to improve their international standing greatly and they have received significant support from the US as well as a far larger network of global solidarity.
The Yezidi community have also been central in this attempt to reform perceptions of the Kurdish armed resistance. The narrative of how the ancient Kurdish-speaking Yezidis (most of whom consider themselves ethnic Kurds) were rescued from ISIS genocide by Kurdish guerrillas of the PKK and YPG in August of 2014, serves to frame this relationship as a brotherhood in existence for thousands of years.
While it may initially seem merely logical that the Kurdish freedom movement perceives the Yezidi community, another heavily oppressed group, as intrinsic to their cause, it has incredibly pertinent strategic political objectives. The Yezidis are deemed one of the oldest religious groups in the Middle East, with connections to Zoroastrianism. By situating themselves as the oldest allies to the Yezidis, the Kurdish movement has been able to place their defensive capabilities as evidence of them being the ancient caretakers and protectors of the land. This is an extremely potent storyline and the recent attempts to highlight this relationship are indicative of Rojava’s commitment to shifting the media’s perception of Kurdishness.
Kurdish Women YPJ fighters stand at attention overlooking the Euphrates River separating Rojava from Iraqi Kurdistan.
Another key example of the Kurdish use of mythology as a political tool can be seen in the evolving symbolism of Ishtar. Ishtar is the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war and she was considered one of the most formidable of the Mesopotamian deities. In Rojava today, she is shown to be a representation of traditional Kurdish values by associating the sacrifices of the YPJ with her legacy of the divine feminine. The exportation of the Kurdish female as a ‘mother-goddess’ narrative was highly successful, revolutionising gender dynamics within Kurdish society and achieving international applause for the movement. Through the promotion of this ancient figure as central to the Kurdish culture, Öcalan was able to present the Kurds as both an ancient ethnic group and a matriarchal society, fundamentally different from its patriarchal neighbours. This perception of the Kurdish community as a feminist utopia in a heavily patriarchal region then put Rojava in a position of being an acceptable ally in the eyes of the international community post 2014, despite female fighters having existed within the PKK since the 1980s and various other Kurdish armed groups since the 1960s and 1970s.
While Ishtar acts as the female emancipatory figure for the YPJ, Kawa the Blacksmith can be perceived as representing the other half of Kurdish liberation. In the legend of Kawa, he leads a rebellion against the tyrannical King Zuhak, in response to his genocidal attacks against the Kurdish people. Prior to the defeat of the tyrannical King, the children of the village had retreated to the mountains and according to the legend became the first Kurds. Once the King was killed, Kawa lit a bonfire to show the newly liberated Kingdom it had been freed, this gave way to the tradition of Newroz, an event still celebrated today that symbolises freedom from oppression and hope for Kurdish self-determination. The legend of Kawa has become one of the key foundational myths of the Kurdish self-determination movement, representing sacrifice and loyalty to the Kurdish cause, but similarly marking a sense of pan-Kurdish unity. Like the myth of Ishtar, the story has been modernised by the Kurdish political leadership by comparing the martyrs of the PKK (such as Mazlum Doğan) who have participated in self-immolation on Newroz to Kawa, the provider of Kurdish freedom. The legend of Kawa is now jointly relied upon with the story of the goddess Ishtar as key examples of Kurdish antiquity, Kurdish rejection of patriarchy, and the Kurdish ability to bring peace when freed from the bonds of oppression.
While Mesopotamian folklore is being utilised to improve the Kurdish reputation and to encourage reform within the Kurdish community in regard to the social ideals of Democratic Confederalism, it is similarly relied upon to allow for the Rojavan rejection of a nation-state to be seen as logical and viable. The rejection of the Westphalian nation-state model is a significant part of the theory of Democratic Autonomy, yet the centrality prescribed to the nation-state in international relations places this rejection as a threat to regional stability. In order to ensure international support is maintained in the face of such radical politics, Mesopotamian mythology can be seen as being used to present contemporary Kurdish ideals as a return to traditional values, rather than a radical re-articulation of societal norms. In a sense, it shows the Kurds as pre-dating the idea of a nation-state, hence why autonomy is the more logical solution to the Kurdish question.
Furthermore, the notion of sovereignty and the nation-state was imported to the Middle East through European imperialism, yet the division of the land without consideration of the complex geopolitical relationships between ethnic groups has meant its foundations have always been vulnerable. What we have seen in the Arab Spring and subsequent Rojava Revolution is the rejection of these European ideas. The international framing of Syria as ‘weakened’ allowed for the Kurdish leadership of Rojava to showcase how the infancy of the nation-state system was incompatible with the geopolitical realities of the region. They were then able to situate Democratic Autonomy’s rejection of the nation-state as a return to the Mesopotamian social system which had allowed for peace across the region. In addition, through the emphasis on Democratic Autonomy as being an ancient, and therefore a more natural system, the Rojava Administration is able to present the movement as less radical than the other challenges to the nation-state in the region, such as the formation of an Islamic caliphate.
Through the dissemination of Kurdish myths, Rojava has been able to explain the history of the Kurdish community in a far more relatable way, increasing solidarity by humanising the movement. Furthermore, the recognition of the Kurdish people as indigenous to the lands of former Mesopotamia that is beginning to occur has the potential to fundamentally transform the way the international community mitigates conflict in the Middle East. Art, literature, music, and other forms of cultural expression serve as bridges that connect the world, and leaders in Rojava should continue to use their mythology and folklore to provide insight into the essence of the Kurdish struggle. By showcasing the rich heritage, vibrant traditions, and creative endeavours of the Kurdish people, the Kurdistan freedom movement can not only counteract misrepresentations but also foster a deeper appreciation for its aspirations.
Recognising the depth of Kurdish culture is not just a matter of acknowledging their historical precedence but also a testament to the enduring quest for self-determination, cultural preservation, and the affirmation of their right to freedom. This strategic use of national myths is representative of a significant shift towards pragmatism by Kurdish leaders. And, despite the lack of critical engagement with these narratives of resistance from the rest of the world, the curated dissemination of national myths situating the Kurds as protectors, victims, and supporters of gender equality since the Mesopotamian era, has allowed the movement to subtly generate broad international solidarity.
The Kurdish resistance is not defined solely by the ebb and flow of media coverage. It is sustained by the courage of its people, the power of their stories, and the strength of their determination. Yet, a concerted effort to publicise the stories of Kurdish mythology, history, and culture is needed by leaders in Rojava because unfortunately, the global media will only elevate the Kurdish movement if they see it as a story that will capture attention for their organisations. We are living in a digital age, where winning wars are dependent on which side gets the support and sympathy of the masses. The leaders of Rojava need to ensure they continue to utilise this tool and plant Rojava firmly back into the humanitarian spotlight.
Author
Katia Lloyd Jones Katia Lloyd Jones is a photojournalist originally from Sydney, Australia. In 2021 she completed an Honours Thesis at the University of New South Wales that focused on the use of national mythology and folklore for political strategizing in the context of Rojava. Following this, she travelled to Basur in 2022 to take part in the second Rojavan Working Brigade where she assisted with the production of a documentary on the program. Upon returning back to Australia, Katia and her colleagues held an exhibition showcasing images and video from their time in Basur, this exhibition raised over $2000 to send to Kurdish communities struggling in the aftermath of the Syrian-Turkey earthquake. She remains passionate about the Kurdish cause and is dedicated to encouraging conversations about the Kurdish question to the world. View all posts
Syrian Kurdish official decries US position on Afrin’s demographic changes
“We also see that the most recent statement that was issued by the US State Department that said that the deportation operation of refugees to the region does not constitute a demographic change in Afrin is incorrect.”
The co-chair of the External Relations Department of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria AANES, Bedran Çiya Kurd (Photo: Kurdistan 24)
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Co-Chair of the External Relations Department of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) Bedran Çiya Kurd on Friday criticized a statement of the US State Department spokesperson on Afrin’s demography.
“We also see that the most recent statement that was issued by the US State Department @StateDept that said that the deportation operation of refugees to the region does not constitute a demographic change in Afrin is incorrect,” Bedran Çiya Kurd posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
He said this will further contribute “to the creation of further complexion of the conditions in clear consistency with Turkish demands.”
On Wednesday, US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller rejected the notion of Turkey having any intention to manipulate the demography in Afrin, in response to a question raised by a reporter.
Moreover, Miller noted that “refugee returns to Syria should be voluntary, safe, dignified, sustainable, and coordinated with [the] UNHCR.”
“And while we do not oppose individual voluntary returns, the conditions in Syria today do not allow for organized large-scale returns, and we have been very clear about this with our foreign partners, including Türkiye,” he told reporters.
In May 2018, Heather Nauert, the spokesperson for the US State Department, expressed concern that the Turkish assault had led to the displacement of 140,000 individuals that were “not being allowed back into their homes.”
Turkey recently stepped up the deportation of Syrians to northwestern and northeastern Syria.
Bedran Çiya Kurd in his tweet also called this a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and the rights of refugees.”
The Syrian Kurdish official called on the US to take “a deterrent stance towards these Turkish practices, and stop the processes of demographic change in Afrin.”
On March 18, 2018, Turkey and Turkish-backed rebels occupied the Kurdish enclave of Afrin during the Operation Olive Branch.
At the beginning of the offensive to capture Afrin, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed that 55 percent of the population was Arab and that the Kurds there were from elsewhere. The operation had significant changes in Afrin’s Kurdish demography.
Kurds made up 96 percent of Afrin’s population before 2011 but now represent about 25 percent, read a statement cosigned by 25 organizations and published by Human Rights Organisation – Afrin-Syria (HRO) in 2021.
Moreover, a report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published in June 2018, suggested that “permitting ethnic Arabs to occupy houses of Kurds (in Afrin) may be an intentional attempt to change the ethnic composition of the area permanently.”
In May 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he is working on a new project that will allow the voluntary return of a million Syrian refugees to 13 regions in northern Syria currently under Turkish control
At the time, the Kurdish National Council (KNC) expressed worries over his statement, and called on Turkey to abandon its plan to return one million Syrians, expressing fears over demographic changes in northern Syria.
Nadine Maenza, the former Chair of the official US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), told Kurdistan 24 that “clearly State Department Spokesperson Matt Miller must be uninformed about Turkey’s intentions. I believe most in the Administration are well aware.”
“Even President Erdogan admits he is seeking demographic change in Afrin, [and he] indicated earlier that he was returning Afrin to what he called “its rightful owners.”
“Will these refugees be allowed to move into homes of Kurds, Yazidis, and Christians who were forced to flee during the Turkish invasion, or had their property forcefully taken by the Islamists militias that run Afrin?”
A Consensus Document was agreed by the Syrian Democratic Council and the National Coordination Body
Nowadays, Syria is facing escalating and successive dangers and crises as a result of the destructive policies pursued by the authoritarian regime and its security foundations, which have brought the country to a disturbing situation that threatens its future and the fragmentation of its unity, both its territories and people.The immense destruction, the absence of state institutions, the economic collapse, the indications of weakness of the national fabric, the loss of essential elements of life, and all of these bad conditions and the deterioration require the mobilization of all the energies of the Syrian nation and its people in a mission of change and salvation, transitioning from the state of authoritarian rule to a state of democratic national rule. This would enable Syria to enhance its independence and unity and empower its people to address own affairs and manage them freely. We sense that the current moment imposes a patriotic and responsible stance to lift the country out of the catastrophic situation it is experiencing and spare it existential risks. So, Syria urgently needs the concerted efforts of all its people to confront the challenges of war and peace.Therefore, representatives of the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change and the Syrian Democratic Council have come together and held several meetings to discuss ways to resolve the crisis existing within the regime’s structure and to overcome the national crisis resulting from authoritarianism and its security and military choices. The regime refuses to recognize the reality, nature, and dangers of this crisis, and it rejects all internal and external calls for a political resolution.The following principles have been agreed upon:
1- Establishing a broad Syrian democratic national front for the powers of the revolution and the Syrian opposition in which they adopt the project of a democratic national change and the transition from authoritarianism to democracy. Nowadays, this represents an urgent necessity to rescue Syria from the catastrophe it is going through.
2- Both parties believe that the success of the national political resolution for the Syrian crisis can be achieved by the participation of democratic national political powers in the political process, without an exclusion, in accordance with Resolution 2254 of 2015 and all relevant international resolutions. This should guarantee the realization of the political transition, transitional justice, the end of the authoritarian regime and its outcomes, the eradication of terrorism in all its forms, and the contribution to achieving a democratic national change and building a democratic state that is politically pluralistic and decentralized, as it is agreed upon by Syrians on the constitution of the future and in all Syrian territories. This state will be based on the principles of a modern democratic state; a state of law, elected institutions, separation of powers, peaceful transfer of power, the neutrality towards religions, sects, components, and all social categories, ensuring equal citizenship rights and duties for all individuals and components of the Syrian people, without discrimination or exclusion based on nationality, religion, sect, class, gender, or a political orientation. This state, which is sovereign and where power is vested in the people. This state will be capable of facing all challenges, reclaiming its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and securing the requirements of a dignified and free life for Syrians in accordance with a new national constitution.
3- The National Coordination Body and the Syrian Democratic Council adopt the democratic national project that ensures the preservation of the political unity of Syria and its territories. This project rejects all divisional and separatist plans that threaten the unity of Syria, both its territories and people. They also work towards the withdrawal of all non-Syrian armed factions and militias, as well as foreign forces present on Syrian territories, emphasizing the non-reliance on any external party.
4- The national political resolution for the Syrian crisis is the only resolution that safeguards our country from risks, and fulfills the aspirations of our people as the safe path to preserving the unity and sovereignty of the nation. In line with this position, it is necessary to halt the war and end violence in all its forms, including military operations on Syrian territory, foremost among them the security and military resolution led by the Syrian regime against the Syrian people. This measure should be accompanied by the release of all prisoners of conscience who are in the Syrian regime’s prisons and other prisons throughout Syrian territory, the cessation of all forms of persecution against politicians inside and outside Syria, the determination of the fate of those who have been tortured, disappeared, and forcibly detained in detention centers and prisons, and the rejection of all forms of demographic change. Additionally, steps should be taken to ensure the safe and voluntary return of all internally displaced persons and forcibly displaced individuals outside Syria to their original areas of residence.
5- Combating corruption in all its forms, emphasizing the promotion of the national economy, and considering national resources as the property of the Syrian people, all for the sake of a better life for citizens. Efforts should be made for justice to be prevailed, and the independence of the judiciary should be upheld in order to safeguard the rights and dignity of individuals. Women should be empowered to play their roles in the state and society, and support should be provided to the youth to do their leadership roles in the present and future.On June 24th, 2023The Syrian Democratic Council and The National Coordination Body for Democratic Change Powers
Bedran Çiya Kurd, Co-Chair of the Department for External Affairs in the AANES.
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“We can no longer keep these prisoners without an indictment or trial. These people must be held accountable for their crimes. They remain a danger not only to the region, but to the entire world. These are thousands of the most brutal ISIS fighters. We cannot keep them anymore. It is creating a security problem for our region.”
— Bedran Çiya Kurd
On the evening of June 15th, 2023, The Kurdish Center for Studies held an exclusive press conference with Bedran Çiya Kurd, Co-Chair of the Department for External Affairs in the Autonomous Administration for North and East Syria (AANES) in Rojava. Journalists and academics were invited to attend the panel via Zoom and around 100 did, while simultaneous translation of his remarks was offered in English and German.
The subject for discussion was the upcoming trials of foreign ISIS fighters that were recently announced by the AANES, which has drawn immense interest from around the world. Çiya Kurd opened up his remarks by reviewing some of the daunting figures up to this point, showing the challenge ahead. He stated that there are currently over 2,000+ foreign fighters who were captured by the SDF in the final battle of Baghouz, and 50,000+ family members (primarily wives and children) of ISIS held in AANES camps.
Çiya Kurd stressed several points during the one-hour press conference, which featured a question-and-answer period from attendees. The following are some of his most poignant remarks:
“We gave more than 13,000 martyrs in this fight to defeat ISIS. And we have thousands of wounded, injured, and disabled, who have sacrificed. This is why it is important to get justice. But we also want to keep international standards for these trials.”
“ISIS is reorganizing itself and getting stronger day by day. Two years ago, we had had to carry out 113 operations against ISIS sleeper cells and we arrested 260 ISIS members. But in the previous year, we have had to carry out more than 2,000 such operations. This is because ISIS is trying to revive itself and get stronger. If we do not prevent this, ISIS will rise again and threaten the entire region and indeed the world.”
“We have called up the international community and asked them for support. But they have all failed to respond or assist us with these ISIS trials. The struggle against terror cannot only be carried out literally on the battlefield, but it must be confronted in a court of law. So far, the fight and struggle against terrorism was only on the military level. But this is not sufficient. We need to address it on the security and judiciary level but also understand its social origins. We must defeat terrorism holistically.”
In addressing the practicality of the upcoming ISIS trials, Çiya Kurd clarified a number of logistical matters, they are as follows:
‣ The official starting date could not be announced right now for security reasons and fears that ISIS sleeper cells might launch attacks to help their brethren escape.
‣ The trials will be held in the three official languages of the AANES: Kurdish, Arabic, and Syriac, but also interpreters would be provided for ISIS detainees who speak other languages.
‣ The foreign ISIS fighter detainees will be charged for crimes against humanity and genocide, including large terrorist attacks and war crimes in Kobanê, Heseke, and Deir ez-Zor.
‣ It is possible that women could be tried if there is evidence to implicate them as active participants in ISIS crimes.
‣ No death penalty will be imposed as punishment since the AANES forbids it in their Social Contract.
‣ The trials will not be held with the coordination of the Assad regime in Damascus.
‣ Foreign fighters will need to be tried first before they can be repatriated back to their countries of origin. If there are bi-lateral agreements with such countries, then AANES may transfer the convicted.
‣ Filming of the trials will be allowed, and they will be open to the international press and observers.
‣ Public monitors, experts, and international lawyers are invited and welcome to participate in the trials, which will be “fair and transparent”.
‣ The AANES welcomes any and all evidence collected from other countries, organizations, and international researchers to determine the truth.
‣ The Yazidi community has collected a large amount of evidence and women Yazidi victims will be integral to these trials and achieving justice against ISIS.
‣ So far, the reactions have been mixed from ISIS fighter detainees, with some of them showing regret and remorse, while others are still unapologetically committed to the ISIS ideology.
‣ The speed of the trials will be based on the work of the judiciary and when certain cases have all of their documents and evidence properly collected.
‣ Foreign countries refusing to repatriate the wives and children of ISIS also affects the resources available to try the foreign fighters themselves.
‣ Security for these trials must be shared by the International Coalition and negotiations are currently being held with them on how to ensure that.
‣ Neither the US or Russia has yet to guarantee safety from Turkish drone attacks during these trials, and Turkey’s continued attacks are an “ongoing problem” which place the entire process at risk and are helping ISIS reemerge.
‣ Both the US and Russia have a responsibility to rein in Turkey’s military so that legal justice can finally be served against ISIS.
‣ There is already a blueprint on how to do conduct these trials, as since 2014, more than 8,000 Syrian ISIS fighters have been tried and convicted. The guilty are currently in AANES prisons and serving their sentences.
‣ The ISIS foreign fighter trials will be a “very long process” and a “very heavy burden” on the AANES, but they are confident they will succeed.
In summary, with the parameters of the upcoming trials against ISIS fighters set in place, the ball is really in the international community’s court, including the US-led International Coalition to defeat ISIS and Russia, who both have a solemn responsibility to guarantee the safety of the Rojava region during these proceedings. It will not be possible to conduct lengthy professional trials with foreign observers and global media present if there is a state of war where Turkey’s Bayraktar killer drones can strike vehicles without notice and terrorize the public as they continue to do across Rojava.
Defeating ISIS required a global solution, though the defense forces in Rojava (SDF/YPG/YPJ) bore most of that burden. Now, with the legal aspect of their demise requiring attention, the world can help repay their gratitude by supporting the AANES and their noble effort to seek justice for the thousands of victims which ISIS terrorized. These trials of foreign ISIS fighters are not about vengeance but justice, as there are still thousands of Yazidi girls and women missing, and thousands more of every group scarred for life based on the reign of cruelty which the ISIS Caliphate carried out.
Ideally, these trials will bring to light all of the facts so that these fighters can be held responsible, but also any states who may have helped coordinate their growth or actions, in particular Turkey, from which nearly all of these foreign ISIS fighters travelled into Syria from. Justice is truth in action and trials are the best ways to find out all of the facts.
“Democratic nation alone is the solution to the Syrian crisis
Components from Qamishlo canton affirmed that the democratic nation project is the ideal solution to the Syrian crisis, to which the world has not been able to find a solution for 12 years, and called for rallying around the project.
The democratic nation project proposed by the leader Abdullah Ocalan has proven its worth in strengthening the unity of the components of North and East Syria, as it presents common goals that bring together all peoples, races and religions, under one umbrella to build a free and democratic homeland.
In this context, citizen Mohammad al-Faris of the Arab component called for the need to strengthen national ties, through cohesion and solidarity among all components on the basis of the project of the democratic nation and the brotherhood of peoples to achieve victory over conspiracies and plans that target all components in North and East Syria.
He added, “The Turkish attacks on North and East Syria aim to undermine the will and solidarity of the components, as well as to revive Salafist groups such as ISIS mercenaries and others, to drag the region into long-term chaos in order to achieve its colonial ambitions.”
In her turn, citizen Siham Ahmed of the Arab component praised the importance of the project in protecting the region and its components, and continued: “The model of the democratic nation and the brotherhood of peoples removed from the hand of the Turkish occupier the option of creating contradictions and conflicts between these peoples.”
She also called for caution against the schemes that are still being planned against the will of the components in the region and targeting women’s freedom in society in particular.
Citizen Zubaid Omar of the Kurdish component stressed that the democratic nation alone is the ideal solution to the Syrian crisis, which has eluded the world.
Citizen Souad Yunis, from the Kurdish component, agrees with citizen Zubaid in his opinion, and pointed out, “The project of a democratic nation based on the brotherhood of peoples is our only way to reach our freedom and dignity to confront the plans of the Turkish colonial occupation state.
An SDF soldier looks at a surrendering ISIS fighter outside Baghouz (2019).
On March 23, 2019, the General Command of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which includes the YPG (People’s Protection Units) and YPJ (Women’s Protection Units) – announced the defeat of ISIS and their so-called ‘Islamic State’ (in the territorial sense of the word) following the capture of the group’s last enclave in the Syrian hamlet of Baghouz, on the border with Iraq. This town would later be immortalized by their adherents as the place where ISIS made their ‘last stand’.
Many were hopeful that ISIS losing all of their territory would heal wounds, restore security, and usher in a new era of stability and safety in the region. Regrettably, that did not take place, as the radical Salafi jihadist group remains active and lethal in a number of areas throughout Syria. The reason is that although the group geographically no longer exists as a proto state, it still ideologically garners sympathy and support in many areas it once controlled. To understand why, one must look at how ISIS emerged years before in Iraq and evolved throughout the Syrian crisis which began in 2011.
Zarqawi to Baghdadi
Although ISIS had peripheral roots in Iraq since 2006, it did not garner world attention until April 2013. More broadly however, the origin of the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” dates back to existing jihadist groups in the 1990s, led by the Jordanian Islamist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who came to prominence in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Structurally, Zarqawi gave the pledge of allegiance to al-Qaeda’s Osama Bin Laden adopting the name ‘al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).’
In 2004, the man who would later lead the Islamic State – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – was captured by the US military in the Iraqi city of Fallujah and was detained in Camp Bucca, where he was introduced to other detained jihadists who had fought US forces in Iraq. In June 2006, Zarqawi was allegedly killed in a US air raid and was replaced by Abu Ayub al-Masri. In October of the same year, some jihadist factions created the “Islamic State in Iraq” (ISI). Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was put in charge of the Sharia Committee, while the group’s leadership was assigned to Abu Umar al-Baghdadi.
In 2010, after the death of al-Masri and Abu Umar in a US aerial bombardment, Abu Bakr took over the leadership of ISI. Two years later, the barely known Abu Bakr would command one of the most extremist groups in world history (ISIS). At its furthest extension, the flag of the Islamic State was fluttering from Aleppo in north Syria, up to Diyala in north Iraq. A vast territory of terror, that shocked many around the world. But understanding how this de facto state arose remains instructive on how to prevent its reemergence.
Rising Discontent
In late 2010 and early 2011, and within the false dawn of the supposed Arab Spring, a number of Arab countries were swept up by popular upheavals (largely peaceful) against ruling regimes, which ushered in new waves of turbulence and violence in both the Middle East and North Africa. Syria under the Assad regime had the lion’s share of violence, as the country which was once dubbed the ‘Kingdom of Silence’ would soon become a breeding ground and a magnate for Islamist extremists converging from all corners of the globe. Exacerbating the situation, regionalism and sectarianism in the Syrian conflict would lead to the emergence of a number of Islamist groups, including the Islamic State.
The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and eventually in Syria was not by accident. In late 2011, Baghdadi – while still in Iraq – sent a contingent of fighters to Syria to form a jihadist group. The ‘Al-Nusra Front’ soon gained ground and garnered Syrian’s sympathy in the fight against the Syrian regime.
In an audio statement aired on April 9, 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the intention to officially expand the Islamic State to ‘Sham’, or Greater Syria, noting at the same time that the ‘al-Nusra Front’ was an extension of the ‘Islamic State in Iraq’. He, therefore, annulled both groups in the same audio and retitled and merged both into the “Islamic State of Iraq and Sham” (hence the letters I-S-I-S, as they would come to be known). However, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who had been an affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and was sent to Syria with a number of colleagues on a secret mission in 2011, refused to grant Baghdadi a pledge of allegiance. Of note, al-Julani, currently heads Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group similar to ISIS which controls Idlib and coordinates with Turkey, while acting as an enforcer group against the other Turkish-backed jihadist factions.
Consolidation Amidst Chaos
At some points during the Syrian crisis, there were allegedly over 1,000 separate groups and factions opposed to the Assad regime throughout Syria. These all widely varied in size, scope, capability, and resources. Exceptionally, ISIS soon had the capacity to impose its tenets and governance on many of these opposing armed factions and sweep them away under their black flag of fear. Alongside terror, the Islamic State invested successfully in many isolated tribal areas, whose control remained contested among anti-Assad opposing rebel factions. Out of this anarchic and chaotic situation, ISIS emerged as the most dominating and beneficiary force.
By this time, in the Kurdish north of Syria (Rojava), the Kurds had announced three autonomous yet non-contiguous cantons of Afrin, Jazira, and Kobanê as a transitional Kurdish government (administration). Notably, this emergence of a Kurdish entity would catch the attention of Erdoğan’s regime in Turkey, who would begin considering plans to weaponize Islamists with similar worldviews to himself against the Kurds (which would include ISIS themselves). However, a few years later by 2016, these small cantons would be transformed into a large multi-ethnic Federated Region comprising Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians, and Circassians, alongside other religious and ethnic minorities. Though, this achievement would only come after years of fighting and sacrifice, where the YPG and YPJ would bear the brunt of ISIS brutality, and lose over 10,000 martyrs to defeat ISIS.
From Raqqa to Mosul
Elsewhere in Raqqa, the hot and unsolved theological debate between the al-Nusra Front and ISIS developed into violent encounters on the ground. On January 14, 2014, the Islamic State announced it had fully wrested control over the city of Raqqa. The takeover of Raqqa was both symbolic and strategic. Added to its strategic position on the Euphrates River at a juncture that leads to Hasaka, Manbij, Tabqa, Kobanê, Deir Ezzor, and Aleppo – Raqqa was the very first Syrian governorate to expel Syrian regime authorities in March 2013. It was a prelude to a new dark and gloomy era for the largely tribally led Syrian city.
While Raqqa remained the de facto ISIS capital, the blitzkrieg-styled capture of Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul, was fundamental to the longevity and expansion of the group. In late June 2014, and following the capture of the strategically important city of Tal Afar and Mosul, the Islamic State announced its self-styled caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq.
Footage soon emerged of horrific violence committed against Iraqi cadets in Camp Speicher and Syrian soldiers at the headquarters of the 17th Division and 93rd Brigade garrison, among many others. In the grand spectacles to follow, ISIS would commit every atrocity imaginable, including mass beheadings, group executions carried out by children, and burning people alive in cages. Their growth was also spurred by large amounts of weapons seized from Iraqi military bases and depots, which helped the group trundle across large swathes of Syria and Iraq and dissolve the porous and unbridled colonial border between Syria and Iraq, laid down by the terms of the forcibly imposed Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916.
In a religious sermon delivered in the Nuri Mosque in Mosul, ‘Caliph Ibrahim’ called on all Muslims to pledge allegiance to the newly announced caliphate. With the declaration of the Caliphate, ISIS surpassed all the other Islamist-leaning groups in Syria. Not only this, but obligatory jihad was also announced against the enemies of the Islamic State, placing all Muslim apostates, and ‘infidel’ Alawites, Shi’ites, and Yazidis in the crosshairs of ISIS.
Turkey, Yazidis, Kobanê
The re-installing of the ‘Caliphate’ – a Muslim system of governance which dates to the early dawn of Islam – was tactical and strategic. The last Caliphate had ironically been abolished by Ataturk on March 3, 1924, following the creation of the secular-oriented Republic of Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. Yet now, Turkey led by Erdoğan – an Islamist with expansionist neo-Ottoman aspirations – would soon be assisting, arming, and funding ISIS fighters as a means to counter the Kurds.
In a chaotic battleground where jihadists from all around the world soon converged on Syria to live under the mythical theocratic caliphate, ISIS was the most credible force to channel those fighter’s delusions to serve its ends. While al-Nusra Front remained largely Syrian, ISIS became a trans-national group, who began funneling through Turkey with Turkish MİT (intelligence) assistance.
Within their campaign ‘Expanding and Remaining’, ISIS gained ground and devoured large territories early on without much resistance, or through sowing terror with their massacres. For instance, ISIS killed nearly 700 people of the Syrian Arab tribe of al-Shaitat in east Deir Ezzor.
On August 3, 2014, the group then converged on the Yazidi stronghold of Şengal (Sinjar) in the Nineveh Province of northwest Iraq, where it killed hundreds of people and abducted many more over the course of a few days. Notably, ISIS could have killed over 40,000 Yazidis who had fled to Mount Sinjar (Çiyayê Şingalê), but they were rescued by groups of Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) guerrilla fighters, who came to repel ISIS’s advance and prevent their wholescale slaughter.
Not only this, the following month on September 13, 2014, ISIS mounted an attack to capture the Kurdish city of Kobanê on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River in Rojava. Eight days later (September 21), the group’s spokesperson Abu Mohamed al-Adnani called on all supporters and adherents of the group to kill Westerners and their allies (both civilians and military personnel) arbitrarily throughout the world. The threat was ostensibly a reaction to US President Barrack Obama’s ordered air strikes against the group in Şengal initiated on August 7. Soon, the beheadings of American photojournalists James Foley in late August and that of Steven Sotloff in early September, were clear messages of retaliation sent by the group.
Back around Kobanê, by early October, nearly 350 villages were captured by ISIS. However, the tide soon turned, thanks to the heroic actions of the Kurdish resistance, which galvanized public support from all around the world. After months of fierce street by street fighting amidst rubble, by January 2015, with air support from the US, Kurdish forces (YPG & YPJ) began to liberate the city. The ISIS assault on Kobanê, and the Kurds’ recapture of the now symbolic ‘Kurdish Stalingrad’, was a turning point not only in the fight against the radical group, but also in the Syrian conflict whose map would now be drawn and re-drawn.
It was in the aftermath of the battle of Kobanê when the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS was first forged, once they realized they now had a capable partner who would fight ISIS (the Kurds), since their NATO ‘ally’ Turkey – who was doing the opposite – clearly would not. In October 2015, the multi-ethnic and multi-religious coalition of the Syrian Democratic Forces was announced. With YPG and YPJ fighters forming the main component, the newly formed SDF also brought onboard Arabs, Syriacs, Assyrians, and Armenians alongside symbolic Chechen, Turkmen, and Circassian fighters.
As an interesting aside, the Islamic State onslaught mounted against the Kurdish city of Kobanê remains a mystery. Detained high-profile commanders of the group later revealed the decision to attack Kobane was taken haphazardly (and many have speculated at the behest of Turkey) as the group was supposed to head to Damascus to topple the Syrian regime. However, Turkish MİT was already embedded within ISIS and it is possible that Turkey’s Erdoğan prioritized stopping what he saw as an emerging Western Kurdistan (Rojava) more than bringing down Assad.
ISIS family members flee the town of Baghouz, before being transferred to the al-Hol refugee camp.
Crumbling Caliphate & Turkish Rebranding
At the height of its power and expansion (in late 2014 and early 2015), the ISIS Caliphate held about 60% of Syria and 40% of Iraq, making it the size of Great Britain. Functioning as a proto state for over four years, the group was able to amass nearly 40,000 foreign fighters (mostly through Turkey’s ‘Jihadi Highway’ via Istanbul to Gaziantep), representing more than 130 countries from all corners of the globe.
However, by 2017, the Islamic State was on the decline, and by December the group had lost 95% of its territory, including its two biggest cities: Mosul and Raqqa. At the end of 2018, the group was squeezed into separate areas in Deir Ezzor. By March 2019, the battle of Baghouz in east Deir Ezzor brought to a close the territoriality of ISIS, but that did not bring the dilemma to an end.
Prior to the final days of Baghouz, while thousands of ISIS fighters and families were given safe passage by the Syrian Democratic Forces to secure holding areas in Hasaka, many other fighters dispersed deep into the desert. The others headed towards the Turkish-backed opposition factions of Turkey’s ‘Syrian National Army’ (SNA) in the north (Jarablus, al-Bab, Azaz, Serê Kaniyê, and Girê Spî) and northwest Syria (Afrin), to trade out their ISIS patches for new allegiances.
As proof of how the Turkish occupation essentially converted many of these ex-ISIS militants into their own rebranded mercenaries, one only needs to look at the most recent March 20, 2023, murder of a Kurdish family in the occupied Afrin village of Hakicha. They were murdered for lighting a Newroz fire and trying to celebrate the Kurdish New Year, by members of Ahrar al-Sharqiya – one of the many jihadist factions that now call Turkish-occupied Syria their home, with Ankara’s blessing.
Ahrar al-Sharqiya is also an notorious faction of Turkey’s ‘Syrian National Army’ (SNA) which has been operating in the region since 2019. The group, whose fighters are mainly from Deir Ezzor, have a history of malice, hatred, and grudges against the Kurds. In October 2019, fighters of the same group killed the Kurdish female politician Hevrin Khalaf on the Aleppo-Hasaka highway, commonly referred to as M4. Khalaf was serving as head of Syria’s Future Party at the time, and was dragged from her car and abused before being riddled with bullets.
Remarkably, ISIS remained mostly silent in 2019 and 2020 – a combination of having suffered so many defeats from the SDF/YPG/YPJ and owing to the fact that many of them had swapped out their ISIS uniforms to join other Turkish-backed factions in the northwest of Syria. But the years 2021 and 2022 were marked by a reemergence in the group’s activities.
In January 2021, the woman co-chair of Hasaka’s Tal al-Shayer Council, Saada al-Hirmas and her deputy Hind al-Khideir were killed in an appalling manner by the group’s sleeper cells in the southern countryside of Hasaka. The ISIS-style decapitation of both al-Hirmas and al-Khideir was an indication that the group still possessed the capacity and desire to sadistically strike targets.
Again, in January 2022, sleeper cells of the group (emboldened by the threat of a Turkish invasion to rescue them) attacked the heavily fortified Ghweiran Prison located in the city of Hasaka, where fighters of the group were held by the SDF. Although the attack was quelled following long days of battles which necessitated the engagement of the US-led Coalition, it was a clear indication how the group could still cause bloodshed.
Moreover, gruesome and appalling photos of decapitations which emerged later from the prison were evidence that the mentality of ISIS adherents had not changed and could still germinate if not fully defeated. Inside the prison and during the ensuing battles, 121 SDF fighters and prison personnel (including civilians) were killed. Later, while the year 2022 was coming to a close, another daring attack was mounted by the group’s sleeper cells, this time in its former capital of Raqqa.
Repeatedly on a weekly (or sometimes daily basis) the SDF supported by the Global Coalition have mounted campaigns against ISIS sleeper cells throughout Rojava and southeast Syria, yet the group still remains.
A Twisted Ideological Salafism
The rapid expansion of ISIS owes not only to the highly advanced weapons the group seized from Iraqi Army bases (which had been supplied to Baghdad by the West), or to the support it received from Erdoğan’s regime in Turkey who wanted to utilize it as a proxy force against the Kurds of Rojava. Accompanying their savage brutality towards foes, was also a strict ideology that demands blind subordination to the group’s dictates. ISIS then crafted its own medieval and outdated institutions to shape every aspect of modern life inside their ruled areas. Paradoxically, these rigid restrictions brought a semblance of ‘order’ and ‘calm’ (through fear) to the areas they ruled, which previously had been scenes of chaos and disorder.
The group also controlled vast oil resources in Syria and Iraq that made its caliphate one of the richest organizations in modern times. Border crossings, livestock in the largely tribal areas, and cereal products from eastern Syria, all had their role in making the group a thriving one economically, which helped fund its security grip and gave them the resources to convince followers that they were crafting a ‘paradise’ (simultaneous to the hell being inflicted on their Yazidi slave women).
Additionally, ISIS jurists introduced their educational curricula in order to hold sway over future generations of the caliphate. With special textbooks ISIS could instill its ideology into the brains of their “Cubs of the Caliphate” (a demented form of jihadi Boy Scouts), who would grow up to become the future fighters of the group. There were two basic aims sought by ISIS jurists running the education system of the caliphate. The first was the complete jihadization of Islam and the second was the ISIS-azation of Salafism.
Salafism is a fundamental Sunni movement adhering to theological views of early Salafists or companions (Sahaba) of the prophet, their followers (Tabi’un), and all those adhering to their beliefs. The scholar and theologian Ibn Taymiyyah (died in 1328, Damascus), best known for his monotheist views of Islam occupies a colossal position in the jihadist ideology. To the ‘Sheikh of Islam’ and ‘father of Salafism’ attributes a famous saying that: “Religion is based on two pillars, a Quran that guides and a sword that attains victories. It is God that all guides and all supports.”
In the lands of the Islamic State, showing any independence of thought or saying no was also deadly. This could be ascertained in the case of the mass murder of the Arab tribe of al-Shaitat in east Deir Ezzor, when ISIS judge Abu Abdullah al-Kuwaiti issued a fatwa (religious binding decree) against the al-Shaitat. The fatwa sanctioned their lives and allowed their properties to be taken forcibly since they were “misguided and disobedient” to the rightly guided ISIS caliphate, which was supposedly God’s representation on earth.
Ideologically, ISIS also adopted a more exclusionist view compared to other jihadist groups, being less tolerant of those considered to be “deviant” Islamic sects. In 2014, and prior to the genocidal attacks against the Yazidis, Sharia Law jurists of the group met and studied thoroughly how they could deal with Yazidis in case Şengal was captured. After many deliberations and research based on their strict interpretation of Islam, a conclusion was reached that since Yazidis were in existence prior to the Muslim conquest of the region, and since they had never embraced Islam, they could not be viewed as reneges or apostates, but rather as polytheists. The hypothesis concluded that since Yazidis had never embraced Islam; and they do not believe in ‘God’ (Allah), they had no souls and could be killed and their properties seized.
ISIS applied a similar religious view to justify their murder of the ruling Syrian Alawite minority (which they derogatorily deemed “Nusairian”) and the Shi’ite regime in Iraq (which they demonized as “Rafida”). These distorted and extremist interpretations of Islam also meant that alongside Yazidis, ISIS began killing large numbers of people who saw themselves as ‘fellow Muslims’.
Foreign Women of ISIS
There remains one more aspect by which ISIS dominated society and the psyche of people: women. On the surface, women have been depicted as being subjugated by the misogynistic organization – which was certainly true of Yazidi women captives who would be enslaved and raped by ISIS men. Moreover, women believers in ISIS, were seen as possessing a “sublime” mission in the home, consisting of procreation, childbearing, and raising “Cubs of the Caliphate”. This was true of Syrian and Iraqi women (Ansar) who were expected to remain confined to the home. But an added nuance, is that foreign ISIS women were given positions in both civil affairs and military arenas. While the group was in its prime, a female al-Hisba structure (governing the ‘community morals’) was assigned to regulate the feminine aspects of the caliphate. Interestingly, and contrary to all other jihadist groups, ISIS also employed women on the front lines, specifically when the group was on the decline and losing ground in 2018 and 2019.
While this move or rather precedence of women taking a role in ISIS could be viewed as desperation amid impending defeat, it has turned out to be more than just strategic, following the territorial collapse of the caliphate since 2019. Today, the main ISIS enclave in east Hasaka; the al-Hol Camp, is actually run by women (largely foreigners). In the Annex in the al-Hol Camp, women of the caliphate hold sway over the rest of the camp’s residents and rule it with a calculating brutality. They are also very hostile to the periphery they live within and refuse to remove their full black burqas that conceal them entirely. This creates not only a security challenge to the SDF guarding the camp (who they often attack), but also symbolically keeps alive the caliphate visually, as these rounded black shapes (with no identifiable human characteristics: eyes, face, arms, legs etc) all seemingly glide in mass unison around the camp.
Containment & Assisting Kurds
In the aftermath of the territorial dismantlement of the group in Baghouz, ISIS fighters have resorted to hit-and-run military tactics, garrisoning in the endless and topographically rugged Syrian Desert extending from Raqqa, Hama Homs, and Deir Ezzor up to Sweida in the south. In addition, the Syrian-Iraqi border area remains a breeding ground for fighters of the group, which still garners supports in many isolated forgotten areas in both Syria and Iraq.
For their part, male captives of ISIS are held in a number of detention centers throughout Rojava (north and east Syria) run by the SDF, and families of the group (including children driven by ISIS exclusionist ideology) are mostly held in the notorious al-Hol Camp some 45 kilometers east of Hasaka.
Recently published studies indicate that ISIS still has the capability to mount attacks wherever and whenever it wants. It is also beyond doubt that the ideology the group instilled into the brains of its rabid devotees remains inflexible and impervious to erosion with the passage of time. Especially because many of them perceive their extremist ideology as the only antidote to domination from fundamentalist Shi’ite groups.
And while it is true that the state ISIS constructed no longer exists, the ideology remains, and many of the jihadist factions in Turkish-occupied areas are mostly ISIS in everything but name only. While their beards may be slightly shorter, and their beheadings not held in public, their torture, targeting of women, and war crimes (especially in places like occupied Afrin) often times have the same effect.
In stark contrast, the Kurds have made colossal sacrifices in first defending their areas and secondly liberating others from the rule of the Islamic State. Today, Kurds of the YPG and YPJ point out that they fought ISIS on behalf of the whole world, and that the world should in turn acknowledge and recognize their contributions.
Additionally, the Kurdish administration in Rojava requires more assistance from the international community to hold ISIS war criminals. As it should not be the responsibility of the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration to house tens of thousands of ISIS sympathizers in perpetuity, only because Western states fear housing their ISIS nationals in their own prisons.
Time and again, officials of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) have appealed to the international community to either repatriate foreign fighters of ISIS to their countries of origin or set up special tribunals in Rojava to prosecute perpetrators of the genocidal acts against the people of Syria. Up to now, largely only children have been repatriated, while appeals and calls of the Kurdish authorities for prosecutions seem to fall on deaf Western ears.
But the squalid al-Hol camp only perpetuates and incubates the Islamic State as an ideology. Which is why it should be dismantled and its residents face justice in a court of law. That is what separates ISIS from their enemies, as Kurds have abolished the death penalty in Rojava and will give them a fair hearing and render impartial judgement, something they would never have received in kind.
Author
Lazghine Ya’qoube Based in Rojava, Lazghine Ya’qoube Atteh is a translator, author, and researcher on the modern history of Mesopotamia with a special focus on Kurdish, Yazidi and Assyrian affairs in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq prior to, during, and in the aftermath of World War I. His articles have appeared on Hawar News Agency, Rudaw English, Kurdistan 24, North Press Agency, and Levant News. He has written on the Islamic State’s 2014 Yazidi Genocide, Hasaka’s al-Hawl Camp, the October 1998 Crisis, the Adana Agreement of 1998, and Syrian-Turkish relations prior to and following the Syrian Crisis. He can be reached at lazghinea@gmail.com
A humanitarian aid convoy of the Kurdish red crescent is blocked by the Syrian regime just outside of Aleppo. The regime is demanding to hand over half of all the aid material, including an ambulance. This is the condition of the regime to give permission for the rest of the convoy to continue to Aleppo and the region of Shehba. The negotiations are taking place over phone calls, the convoy is still at the last Kurdish checkpoint, waiting for permission to pass through the regime controlled area. The AANES and the Kurdish red crescent are planning many more aid convoys, but it will need pressure from outside to ensure the materials reach the places where they are needed. The syrian regime already made an announcement that all NGOs that want to work in the Kurdish areas and are coming from the north east of syria (rojava) will have to surrender half their aid materials without any control over how and where they will be used.
This is unacceptable! We will not tolerate this kind of coercion! Please help us to spread this information and put pressure on the Syrian government to immediately drop these outrageous demands and open the roads for the convoys. The suffering of millions of people is not a political game.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The media center of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said in a statement that 40 ISIS suspects were arrested during its ongoing Operation Al-Jazeera Thunderbolt on the third and fourth day.
This included the “facilitators of terrorist acts, recruiters of potential terrorists, and logistical suppliers.”
The SDF resumed Operation Al-Jazeera Thunderbolt on Dec. 29 in the Hasakah province, including al-Hol, Tal Hamis, and Tal Brak to prevent an ISIS resurgence.
“Today during the early morning hours of the fourth day (on Sunday) in Tal Brak, the forces managed to spot the movements of a terrorist cell trying to flee the area, to hide in remote areas.”
“However, joint forces successfully raided the hideout, immobilized them, and arrested six wanted terrorists involved in acts of terror in the al-Hasakah area,” the SDF said.
The SDF said the operation prevented “ISIS operative cells from carrying out terrorist acts during the New Year’s celebrations which passed off peacefully thanks to the security measures and pre-emptive strikes.”
Although the SDF and the coalition forces announced the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria in March 2019, sleeper cells continue to carry out attacks in northeastern Syria.
On Dec. 26, six SDF-linked security forces were killed in an attack on the headquarters of the Internal Security Forces in Raqqa, near a security prison. Also on Dec. 29, another Asayish member was killed in the countryside of Raqqa.
Moreover, on Dec. 30, 10 oil workers were killed and 2 others injured in a suspected ISIS attack in a Syrian government-held area in Deir ez-Zor.
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HUMAN RIGHT WATCH SLANDERS AANES AUTHORITIES
Syria: Repatriations Lag for Foreigners with Alleged ISIS Ties [EN/AR]
More than 42,400 Adults and Children Held in Life-Threatening Conditions
(New York) – More than 42,400 foreigners accused of Islamic State (ISIS) links remain abandoned by their countries in camps and prisons in northeast Syria despite increased repatriations of women and children in recent months, Human Rights Watch said today. Kurdish-led authorities are holding the detainees, most of them children, along with 23,200 Syrians in life-threatening conditions.
Recent Turkish air and artillery strikes have compounded the danger. But even before Turkey’s attacks, at least 42 people had been killed during 2022 in al-Hol, the largest camp, some by ISIS loyalists. Hundreds of others were killed in an attempted ISIS prison break in January. Children have drowned in sewage pits, died in tent fires, and been run over by water trucks, and hundreds have died from treatable illnesses, staff, aid workers, and detainees said.
“Turkey’s attacks highlight the urgent need for all governments to help end the unlawful detention of their nationals in northeast Syria, allowing all to come home and prosecuting adults as warranted,” said Letta Tayler, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “For every person brought home, about seven remain in unconscionable conditions, and most are children.”
Turkish air strikes since November 20 targeting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the region’s armed force, struck perilously close to al-Hol camp and Cherkin prison, which together hold thousands of the detainees. The strikes, which reportedly killed eight guards, temporarily cut off power, stopped water, fuel, and bread deliveries, and reduced already limited medical and other services in al-Hol and Roj, a smaller detention camp, detainees, relatives, and aid and family groups told Human Rights Watch.
During a trip to northeast Syria in May 2022 and subsequent calls and text messages, Human Rights Watch interviewed 63 foreign ISIS suspects and family members in camps, prisons, and other detention centers. Human Rights Watch also spoke with 44 camp and detention center administrators and staff, aid workers, foreign government officials, and relatives in detainees’ countries of origin.
Medical care, clean water, shelter, and education and recreation for children were grossly inadequate, Human Rights Watch found. Mothers said they hid their children in their tents to protect them from sexual predators, camp guards, and ISIS recruiters and killers.
In Roj, six women said guards had transferred them to detention centers for weeks or months, in some cases physically abusing them and leaving their children to fend for themselves. Boys and their mothers said guards had forcibly disappeared adolescent boys from the camps and placed them in detention centers, where they lost contact with relatives for months or years.
In al-Hol, an Iraqi man said that ISIS loyalists killed several of his close relatives in the camp in 2022, calling them “spies.” Then, he said, “they left me a [written] message with a knife struck through it: ‘Allahu Akbar [God is greatest], the Islamic State remains. Your slaughter is near.’”
In Roj, a woman said guards held her for days in early 2022 in a toilet stall where they interrogated her and subjected her to electric shocks, accusing her of involvement in a camp protest. “I kept telling them I wasn’t involved, but they kept torturing me,” she said.
In Alaya prison, a wounded French teen whom guards snatched from his family and placed in a crowded cell for 23 hours a day pleaded for care for his disabled arm but said that most of all, “I just want to see my mother.”
The foreigners come from about 60 countries. Most were rounded up by the SDF, a Kurdish-led, US-backed regional armed force, when it routed ISIS from its last physical holdout in Syria in early 2019.
None of the foreigners have been brought before a judicial authority in northeast Syria to determine the necessity and legality of their detention, making their captivity arbitrary and unlawful. Detention based solely on family ties amounts to collective punishment, a war crime.
The foreigners are held in northeast Syria with the tacit or explicit consent of their countries of nationality. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom and Denmark, have revoked the citizenship of many or some of their nationals, leaving several stateless in violation of their right to a nationality.
Governments that knowingly and significantly contribute to this abusive confinement may be complicit in the foreigners’ unlawful detention, Human Rights Watch said. Unlawful detention committed as part of a widespread or systematic “attack directed against any civilian population,” meaning a state or organizational policy to detain people unlawfully, can amount to a crime against humanity.
Since 2019, at least 34 countries have repatriated or allowed home more than 6,000 foreigners, including nearly 4,000 to neighboring Iraq, according to figures from the Administration of North and East Syria, the region’s governing body, and other contacts. Repatriations increased in 2022 with more than 3,100 foreigners taken home as of December 12, the Autonomous Administration said. Since October, at least eight countries have brought nationals home: 659 to Iraq, 17 to Australia, 4 to Canada, 58 to France, 12 to Germany, 40 to the Netherlands, 38 to Russia, and 2 to the UK. In November, Spain said it would repatriate at least 16 nationals by year’s end. Most countries have brought back few, if any, men. Many repatriated children are successfully reintegrating in their home countries, Human Rights Watch found.
In a written response to Human Rights Watch requests for comment on the detainees’ treatment, the Autonomous Administration said it was trying its best to uphold human rights law. “This does not mean that there are no mistakes here and there on the level of individuals or some small groups within the military forces,” it added. The Autonomous Administration “takes into account” any reports of detainee abuse, it said.
The Autonomous Administration has repeatedly urged governments to repatriate their nationals and in the meantime to increase aid to ensure the detainees’ humane treatment. They have also called on governments to help regional authorities prosecute foreign ISIS suspects. “It is very difficult for us to carry this burden on our own,” Abdulkarim Omar, the administration’s European envoy and former foreign relations co-chair, told Human Rights Watch.
The United States and the UK, members of the Global Coalition Against ISIS, have spent millions of dollars on prisons to hold the detainees in northeast Syria. But foreign governments have not taken steps to provide the detainees with judicial review.
“While better conditions are essential, indefinite detention without judicial review is unlawful even in the best of prisons,” Tayler said. “Countries risk complicity in this abuse if they enable detentions that violate basic rights or that create direct or indirect obstacles to their nationals’ returns.”
Security Concerns
Governments that have stalled on taking back their nationals cite security concerns and public backlash. In addition, officials from five governments with nationals detained in northeast Syria have told Human Rights Watch that the authorities there had at times set repatriation conditions that compounded the already challenging task of extracting their nationals.
But top United Nations and US officials have urged countries to repatriate their nationals, saying the detainees represent a greater threat if left in northeast Syria, where hardliners among them could escape, particularly while the SDF is diverted to responding to Turkey’s attacks, and children could be vulnerable to recruitment. The US, which leads the 85-member Global Coalition Against ISIS and has brought back 39 nationals – nearly all its citizens detained in the region – has helped several countries extract their nationals for repatriation.
At the same time, the US military was spending $155 million in 2022 and requested $183 million for 2023 to train, equip, and pay thousands of SDF and Asayish, a regional security force that also guards the detainees. The US is also using the funds to increase security at al-Hol camp and to build a new prison in the town of Rumaylan and refurbish at least three existing detention centers, including for boys.
The detention centers are a stop-gap effort pending repatriations to “improve the SDF’s ability to securely and humanely” detain the ISIS suspects, the US Department of Defense told Human Rights Watch. They also will improve conditions for those who at risk of serious harm if they were sent home, according to the department’s reports. Several thousand detainees come from countries with records of counterterrorism abuse.
As of December 12, the SDF and Asayish were holding roughly 65,600 men, women, and children as ISIS suspects and family members in camps, prisons, and other detention centers in northeast Syria, according to the Autonomous Administration and US government figures.
More than 37,400 foreigners, including more than 27,300 Iraqis, are detained in al-Hol and Roj camps. Nearly two-thirds of foreign camp detainees are children, most under age 12. Nearly one-third are women. The camps also hold about 18,200 Syrian men, women and children whose conditions are dire although they have more freedom of movement than the foreigners.
The SDF is also holding about 10,000 men and boys in prisons and makeshift detention centers –about 5,000 Syrians, 3,000 Iraqis and 2,000 from more than 20 other countries, according to the US Department of Defense and other sources. They include as many 700 Syrian and foreign boys, four sources with knowledge of the facilities estimated, and hundreds of young men held since they were children, according to the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria. Humanitarian access to these detention centers is highly restricted.
At least 180 other foreign boys are estimated to be locked in detention facilities that regional authorities inaccurately describe as “rehabilitation” centers, including the Houry Center, Alaya prison, and a new center called Orkesh, five sources said.
In January, ISIS fighters attacked al-Sina’a Prison in the Ghweran neighborhood of al-Hasakah city in an effort to free about 4,000 men and boys detained for alleged ISIS links, sparking a 10-day battle with the SDF, backed by US airstrikes and US and UK troops. The SDF said that more than 500 ISIS attackers, detainees, guards, and their own forces died before they recaptured the prison but did not say how many of the dead were detainees. Detainees inside the prison during the battle told Human Rights Watch that several children were among those wounded and killed.
Citing security concerns, northeast Syrian authorities declined repeated Human Rights Watch requests to inspect prison cells holding foreign men, women, and boys.
Human Rights Watch is using pseudonyms and withholding other identifying details of most detainees, who said they feared reprisals by pro-ISIS detainees or camp authorities.
Violence and Death in Camps
During two visits to Roj and one to al-Hol in May, detainees begged for help, saying they were living under the constant threat of violence and death. At al-Hol, mangers only allowed Human Rights Watch to enter two small areas, saying armed ISIS members controlled entire sections of the camp.
Human Rights Watch separately interviewed 10 detained Iraqis and Syrians at al-Hol who said that ISIS members in the camp had killed their relatives, or robbed, threatened, or harmed them, accusing them of cooperating with camp authorities.
One man showed Human Rights Watch a wound on his chest that he said was from pro-ISIS detainees who shot him because they considered him an informant. A woman who had worked at a kindergarten camp said two ISIS members robbed her, pointed a gun at her, and warned her: “This is the last day you work at the kindergarten, or we will kill you.” She immediately quit.
The 42 people killed in al-Hol from January to mid-November included 22 women and 4 children, and 83 people were killed in the camp in 2021, the UN Human Rights Office said. From 2019 to 2021, at least 972 detainees in al-Hol, many of them children, were reported to have been killed or died from other causes, including accidents, malnutrition, and hypothermia, according to the World Health Organization and Kurdish Red Crescent.
In May, an 8-year-old Iraqi boy drowned in one of the many open sewage canals crisscrossing al-Hol, camp managers said. Days later, Human Rights Watch saw children playing in a camp sewage canal. The bullet-riddled body of an Iraqi woman was also found that month in an al-Hol sewage pit, camp managers said. In November, two Egyptian sisters, both under 15, were found dead in an al-Hol sewage canal after being raped and stabbed.
Aid workers have also been threatened, robbed, or even killed, in some cases forcing them to suspend operations, sources including two aid organizations operating in the region said.
In September, the SDF, aided by US military intelligence, carried out a three-week sweep of al-Hol, arresting 300 alleged ISIS operatives, confiscating explosives and hand grenades, and freeing six women who were found chained and tortured, including a Yezidi woman whom the US military said ISIS captured in 2014 at age 9.
No murders have been reported in Roj but more than a dozen women there said that pro-ISIS women had threatened or targeted them and their children. “They throw rocks at me and my son, saying I need to wear the veil,” a French woman said.
Camp managers at Roj and al-Hol, aid workers, and women held at Roj said that detainees, both children and adults, at times sexually abused other detainees, including children. Some women resort to sex work to buy food and medicine for their children, risking execution by ISIS enforcers for doing so, and children often work or beg for food, making them vulnerable to exploitation, aid workers said.
Among other case, an aid worker said, two pregnant women held in the camps alleged they had been raped in 2022 by masked men they believed to be camp guards. and a man held in the camp had raped a young boy.
“When we were under the Islamic State, we had to find a safe place to protect our children from the bombs, one Canadian mother in Roj said. “Now we have to find them a safe place to protect them from other people in the camps.” Like many women, the mother said she also needed to protect her children from increasing traumatization as the years passed by in the camps. Days earlier, she said, her young son had tried to hang himself with a tent rope.
Inadequate Medical Care
In both camps, detained women said shortages of medicine and medical care were severe. Many mothers in Roj said their children suffered from severe asthma exacerbated by fumes from an adjacent oil field but that they could not obtain sufficient oxygen or other medicine. Three women said that their children required surgery that they would have to pay for themselves, but they had no way to earn money inside the camp.
Women held in both camps said that guards delayed or denied requests to bring women or severely ill or injured children to hospitals for emergency care, and that some had died. A Doctors Without Borders report on al-Hol in September described camp authorities waiting so long to transport two young children needing emergency care to hospitals – two days in one case and hours in another – that both died en route, without their mothers.
Amira, a 32-year-old Egyptian widow held in Roj with her two young children, said she wanted to return to Egypt, a country with a record of mass abuses of terrorism suspects, if her children could receive medical care and start new lives there:
I have two kids, all of the time they are crying. They are asking, “Why we are in here?” My son is sick. He has a problem breathing. At night he goes, “hnghhh, hnghhh.” He needs surgery or something to help him breathe. [I say] “It’s okay, it’s okay, you will be fine… tomorrow we will go out.… And tomorrow comes and we do not leave. … Please, anyone [who] see this message, anyone responsible… please move. For the children, for kids. To get their rights.
Sources including aid groups estimated that hundreds of detained boys and men transferred from al-Sina’a to Panorama prison after ISIS’s attempted prison break in January have tuberculosis that was untreated for months, and that dozens need specialized surgery or advanced treatment for wounds or other medical conditions.
Food and Water Shortages
Food and clean water shortages, particularly in al-Hol, are recurrent. For two months over the summer, al-Hol detainees did not receive their basic food rations, an aid worker told Human Rights Watch. For several days during that period, authorities in al-Hol prevented all detainees in the “Annex,” the sections holding non-Iraqi foreigners, from going to the camp market to buy fresh food, milk, and bottled water, two detainees said. The authorities cut off the market access after a group of women complained of mistreatment by guards and interrogators, the two detainees said.
In Roj, one woman said that guards had entered a section of the camp in June and threatened to “take all boys ages 7 and up” if a woman did not return food she had stolen from the market.
Al-Hol also suffered water shortages after camp managers suspected that ISIS was smuggling arms into the camp with water deliveries, aid workers said.
Transfers of Women and Children to Other Detention Centers
Seven women in Roj described being detained in late 2021 and early 2022 by camp guards, two of them after several detainees staged a protest. Guards held about 20 women for periods between a few days and four months, leaving about 45 children behind, according to three women. One French mother with young children said that she was held for four months, first in a toilet stall, then in a prison:
They closed us into toilet stalls and interrogated us. I was there for two days, other women for many more. They told us, “You will never get out. You will never see your children. These days will be your last.” Please let me come home with my children, even if I have to go to prison. For the sake of my children. We have no rights here.
Women whom regional authorities allege are ISIS morality police are periodically transferred from the camps to a prison in al-Hasakah. Since October 2021, up to 55 of the women’s children have spent nights with them in prison and eight hours a day in a heavily guarded day care center inside the prison compound called Helat. The children are 18 months to 13 years old, Helat director Parwin Hussein al-Ali told Human Rights Watch in May.
Helat has Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck painted on its high walls, trailers that al-Ali said were donated by the US military that the children use for naps, movies, and other activities, and a swimming pool and flush toilets, though neither had water on the day that Human Rights Watch visited. Children from countries including France, Russia, Tajikistan and the UK played in a courtyard. Al-Ali said the center lacked funds for fresh food and toys.
Several of the 10 children Human Rights Watch spoke with there said they would rather live in the locked camps than spend nights in prison.
“Why are we in prison?” asked an 11-year-old boy from Tajikistan, who had a scar on his skull that he said was from an airstrike. “When will we get out?”
“In prison we just sit and do nothing and nothing and nothing,” said a 12-year-old girl from Azerbaijan.
During the January attack on nearby al-Sina’a prison, two ISIS suicide bombers tried to scale the walls of Helat but were killed by guards, al-Ali said.
Boys Detained Apart from Their Families
Scores or possibly hundreds of boys have been forcibly removed from al-Hol and Roj camps by Asayish and SDF forces and held in separate detention centers when they reach or approach adolescence, said mothers, boys who were taken, and several camp and aid workers. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria reported in September that those taken included “scores of boys ages 10 to 12” from al-Hol camp. A Doctors Without Borders report in November called the practice “routine and systematic.”
In many cases, guards took the children without informing their mothers and camp authorities did not respond to mothers’ pleas to know where their sons were held for weeks or months, mothers said, which would make their removals enforced disappearances.
Northeast Syrian authorities acknowledged that boys were taken but declined to say how many or where all of them were held. They said that nearly 110 boys are held at the Houry Center, a locked building with a courtyard that the Autonomous Administration calls a recreation center, and that older boys are then transferred to military prisons for men. Those prisons also hold boys who were immediately separated from their parents by the SDF upon their capture in 2019 or earlier. Several aid and camp workers and organizations said that they do not know all the places where the boys are taken.
Bawarmand Rasho, a regional official overseeing al-Hol and Roj, said that the authorities only took boys they considered a security threat. He denied accusations that the authorities did not inform mothers of the transfers. “We don’t kidnap them,” he said. “We say, ‘We are taking your child to a rehabilitation center.’”
“Abar,” an Egyptian mother held in Roj burst into tears as she said her son, then 14, was among four boys who had been taken without warning eight months earlier. “Please, please, can you help me find him?” she begged. “I know nothing about him.” Camp officials later told the mother that her son was brought to Ghweran, the prison that ISIS attacked in January. For months, Abar thought her son might be among the dead.
In July, camp officials gave the mother a brief audio message and photo of her son in which he said he was fine but looked gaunt and wore winter clothes although it was summer, a family member told Human Rights Watch. As of December, 14 months after her son was taken, Abar had still not seen her son.
“Bader,” a boy at the Houry Center who said he was 15 and a US citizen, said that armed guards took him from al-Hol in December 2020, when he was at the camp market, “without my family even knowing.” He said his captors detained him for a month incommunicado in a latrine with 18 other boys and men, then took him to the Houry Center:
I went out shopping and they just picked me up from the middle of the store. We were four kids. They sent us to little jails, two rooms. It was a toilet [latrine]… They kept me there for one month. … We told them, “Why? We didn’t do anything.” And they said, “If you guys are bigger than 12 years old, 13 years old, you are not allowed to stay in the camp.” It was actually cold in that time, and they didn’t let us get our bags or anything, our clothes. And then they brought us here.
Bader said his father had brought him, his eight siblings, and his mother to Syria to live under ISIS in 2016, telling them they were going camping. He said the authorities have only allowed two visits, from one family member, since he was taken to the Houry Center.
During Human Rights Watch’s visit, boys from about two dozen countries including Algeria, France, Germany, Morocco, Trinidad, and Russia milled around the Houry Center courtyard or sat on cots in dormitories with vacant stares. An aid organization provides basic limited instruction in subjects such as English, Arabic, math, and music but the center lacks sufficient resources, said Khadija Mussa, the camp administrator.
Like other boys whom Human Rights Watch interviewed at the Houry Center, Bader said that most of the time he does nothing:
You know how in our age outside, in schools, how we’re supposed to be like, eating, and walking around, and playing, and soccer, and bicycle, and learning, and stuff like that. It’s not only me it’s a lot of kids.… No one wants to stay, growing up here, doing nothing.
At least 60 other foreign boys and young men are held at Alaya military prison, two sources said. The foreigners are in separate cells from the other 800 detainees, most of them Syrians convicted of terrorism. When Human Rights Watch visited Alaya in May, 30 foreign boys and young men were held there. The number swelled during the security sweep in al-Hol, the two sources said.
The youths are held separately from the men in a “rehabilitation center,” the prison manager, Farhad Hassan, said in May. The boys come from more than a dozen countries including Afghanistan, France, Morocco, Pakistan, and Russia, he said.
Four youths interviewed said that all 30 boys and young men were confined for 23 hours a day to one crowded, locked cell with one shower and one toilet, with minimal activities. They said they spent the remaining hour in a courtyard that was too small for them to all play at once. For over a month, one boy said, they hadn’t had a football. The boys said they lacked adequate medical care and fresh food.
“Yasir,” a 19-year-old from France who said his parents brought him to Syria in 2014, said that armed guards took him from al-Hol camp in 2020, bringing him first to Houry and then to Alaya:
I was sitting in my tent and they came, the armed men. They said, “You’ll be coming back in two minutes.” But they never brought me back. Psychologically, I’m tired to death. I just want my mother. … I also need a doctor. I can’t move my left hand. My hand is dead.
Yasir’s left arm dangled limp by his side and a scar crisscrossed the back of his head – wounds he said were from a 2018 airstrike. Surgeons operated on his arm, but he needs special surgery that is not available in northeast Syria, a prison doctor said.
“Kemal,” a 20-year-old from Germany who was brought to Syria by his stepfather when he was 11, said armed guards snatched him from Roj in late 2019 in the middle of the night and brought him and three other boys to the Houry Center.
In May 2022, Kemal said, he was brought to Alaya. “Other boys get moved, too,” he said. “It’s scary to be here. Sometimes they [guards] come by surprise and we don’t know what’s going to happen.” Since being taken from Roj, he said, he had only seen his mother and three young siblings once, in 2020. “I can’t call my mother,” he said. “I hope she gets my letters.”
Some detained boys at Alaya and Houry said they sometimes did not receive family members’ letters for months. Delays were similar or longer in other prisons, family members said.
“Mum, more than a year has passed since the Red Cross came so I was surprised not to find a new letter,” Jack Letts, 27, a Canadian-British national until the UK government revoked his citizenship in 2019, wrote his mother in a September 2021 letter from a prison in northeast Syria. Letts’ mother, Sally Lane, received the letter seven months later.
Information from governments about detainees has also been scant or nil, several family members with relatives imprisoned in northeast Syria said. “It’s now four years that I’ve been asking you to clarify the state of my brother’s physical and mental health,” a Canadian woman wrote to Canadian authorities about her brother, whom she said was “very sick” when she last visited him in a prison in northeast Syria in 2021. “Do you have a medical report on his health?”
In October 2022, Germany repatriated Kemal along with 11 German women and children. When Kemal arrived, the federal public prosecutor’s office immediately detained him, saying they suspect he fought with ISIS at age 14 and 15 and that after being taken from Roj he had beaten and threatened other boys to try to make them support ISIS.
Abdulkarim Omar, the northeast Syria official, said that the Autonomous Administration was seeking international funding for 15 or 16 rehabilitation centers for boys and potentially girls as they become adolescents. In 2021, Fionnuala Ní Aolaín, the UN special rapporteur on countering terrorism, denounced the boys’ detentions at Houry and in prisons as “the de facto culling, separation, and warehousing of adolescent boys from their mothers” in “an abhorrent process inconsistent with the rights of the child.”
International Legal Standards
Countries have a responsibility to take steps to protect their citizens when they face serious human rights violations, including loss of life and torture. This obligation can extend to nationals in foreign countries when reasonable action by their home governments can protect them from such harm. International human rights law also provides that everyone has the right to a nationality. Governments have an international legal obligation to provide access to nationality as soon as possible to all children born abroad to one of their nationals who would otherwise be stateless. Everyone has the right to adequate food, water, clothing, shelter, mental and physical health, and fair trials. All children have the right to education.
Detaining people in inhuman or degrading conditions such as those in the camps and prisons in northeast Syria is strictly prohibited under international human rights law and the laws of war. Enforced disappearances, which include the refusal by authorities to provide information on what became of a person they detained or where they were being held, are also strictly prohibited. If widespread or systematic, enforced disappearances are crimes against humanity.
The Autonomous Administration’s indefinite detention of foreigners without providing them with the opportunity to challenge the legality and necessity of their confinement is arbitrary and unlawful. The blanket detention of ISIS suspects’ family members amounts to collective punishment, a war crime.
Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children should only be detained as an exceptional measure of last resort. Criminal liability should only be sought for children transitioning to adulthood in rare circumstances. Children should not be separated from their parents absent independent evaluation that separation is in the best interests of the child. Children associated with armed groups should be considered first and foremost as victims.
In separate rulings in February and October, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child found that France and Finland violated the rights to life and to freedom from inhuman treatment of children they had not repatriated from northeast Syria. In September, the European Court of Human Rights found that France violated the rights of women and children seeking repatriation by failing to adequately and fairly examine their requests for repatriation.
UN Security Council resolutions, including Resolution 2396 of 2017, emphasize the importance of assisting women and children associated with groups like ISIS who may themselves be victims of terrorism, including through rehabilitation and reintegration.
Recommendations
Countries should repatriate or help bring home detainees, prioritizing the most vulnerable including children and their mothers. UN entities, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and UNICEF, as well as the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and donor countries, should work to safely resettle abroad foreigners facing risks of death or torture and other ill-treatment at home. Governments should provide those repatriated or resettled with rehabilitation and reintegration services and prosecute adults when warranted.
In the meantime, these countries, donors, UN entities, and the Coalition to Defeat ISIS should immediately increase aid to end inhuman and other degrading treatment through efforts that include improving food, shelter, medical services, and education for children. They should maintain family unity when in the best interests of the child and help local authorities remove boys and young men from military detention. They should increase communication between detainees and family members in northeast Syria and in countries of origin, including proof of life.
These governments and entities should also promptly resume stalled efforts to create a judicial process in northeast Syria or elsewhere to allow all foreigners to fairly contest their detention, allowing the immediate and voluntary release with safe passage of all those who will not be criminally charged or do not pose an imminent security threat.
Northeast Syrian authorities, including the Autonomous Administration, the SDF, and the Asayish, should cooperate with these efforts, allow aid groups and independent observers unfettered access to all detention sites, and ensure prompt treatment for detainees needing advanced and life-saving medical care.
Last Saturday night, less than a week after Turkey’s Home Minster, Süleyman Soylu, defied evidence and logic to announce to the world that the bomb attack in Istanbul was carried out by the PKK and Rojava’s People’s Protection Units (YPG), Turkish jets began to bomb the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, launching an air assault that exceeds anything in their previous attacks. And President Erdoğan has repeated his warnings of an imminent ground assault. As many people had predicted, Erdoğan, who has long made clear his desire to launch another major attack on the region, has used the Istanbul bomb as a casus belli.
Erdoğan has publicly declared his intention to control a 30 km strip of Syria territory along the length of Turkey’s southern border, combining his dreams of a greater Turkey with the destruction of Kurdish communities and of the multi-ethnic, feminist, radical democracy that they have created. Early in the Syrian civil war, the chair of the Turkish Intelligence Service, Hakan Fidan, said, “If necessary, I will send four men to Syria. I will fire eight missiles at Turkey and produce a justification for war.” Today, with Turkey’s general and presidential elections due to take place by next June, and with a large part of the Turkish population suffering from poverty wages, Erdoğan wants to reap his carefully cultivated popular nationalist support. He is planning for a kaki election, or, better still, a victory. As the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Foreign Affairs co-spokesperson, Hişyar Özsoy, points out, Erdoğan has made a habit of carrying out invasions prior to elections.
The fact that Soylu’s accusation was never credible, and that it has been contradicted by every new piece of evidence, has not prevented international governments from responding as though it were legitimate. Even an incredible claim can be used as an excuse for inaction.
The Istanbul bombing
Last week I looked at some of the contradictions that had already begun to appear in the official narrative. I argued that neither the PKK nor the YPG had a motive to carry out the bombing – in fact, as Turkey’s violent and predictable reaction demonstrates, quite the opposite – and that neither organisation participated in this kind of action against civilians. And I noted that the beneficiaries of such a bombing would be Erdoğan’s government, who have a history of wrongly accusing the PKK, and the militant Islamists they work with, who have shown no compunction about targeting civilians
Before looking at the bloody, traumatic, and destabilising events of the last few days, and at reactions to them, I want to add the latest pieces of evidence that undermine Soylu’s claims.
The people who have been arrested for the bombing are Arab, not Kurdish, and last Saturday, before Turkey launched their attack, we learnt that a man who has been accused of organising the bombing had said in his police statement that his brother died fighting in the Free Syrian Army (FSA – the mercenary groups that fight for Turkey). Then, on Wednesday, Mazloum Abdi, the Commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which includes the YPG, told Amberin Zaman in an interview for al Monitor that the SDF had established that “the woman who was arrested for planting the bomb comes from a family linked to the Islamic State. Three of her brothers died fighting for the Islamic State. One died in Raqqa, another in Manbij and a third died in Iraq. Another brother is a commander in the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition in Afrin. She was married to three different Islamic State fighters and the family is from Aleppo.”
This comes on top of the discovery that the woman’s phone had received calls from Mehmet Emin İlhan, a district president of the National Movement Party (MHP), the far-right party that is in alliance with Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). İlhan claimed that this was a case of stolen identity. The Peoples’ Democratic Party has now called for a full investigation into the phone records.
North and East Syria
Turkey announced their attacks as “payback time”. They were carried out by a combination of warplanes, drones, and shelling. By Thursday evening, after five days, the death toll stood at: 16 civilians, 18 SDF soldiers, 24 Syrian regime soldiers, five members of the Afrîn Liberation Forces, one member of the local security forces (Asayish), and two Administration guards. Many more people are injured, both physically and psychologically,
Attacks have taken place right across the north of the region, but also in Deir ez-Zor, 70 km from the border. In Kobanê, a hospital, a school and a medical centre have all been hit. Many of the attacks have targeted energy infrastructure – electricity stations and oil sites. On Thursday, the city of Qamishlo was plunged into darkness. Ekrem Suleyman, who works in Jazira region’s Office of Electricity, told Rojava Information Centre, “these places which have been attacked… are very well-known spots and have been precisely targeted. Turkey knows how to make instability here… if the fields and power stations are gone this is a massive problem. It will cause displacement and force migration. It is also a big economic problem”.
One of the targets on the first night was a power station near Derik, that had been hit several times before, despite not having any military function. This latest attack was a double tap: when local people came to help the wounded, the bombers struck again, leaving 11 people dead.
Attacks on civilian infrastructure are considered a war crime – but not, it seems, if you are a member of NATO.
By destroying the possibility of any form of normal life in the region, Turkey aims to turn the population against the administration, and also to drive people to leave the area altogether. They would then be replaced by refugees from other parts of Syria, who Turkey plans to send “back” and by the families of Turkey’s Islamist mercenaries. The instability Turkey creates provides fertile soil for the growth of ISIS, while their occupied areas provide ISIS with safe havens.
Another attack narrowly missed a prison housing captured ISIS fighters outside Qamishlo, and, on Wednesday, a Turkish drone attack hit an SDF security checkpoint for Al-Hol detention camp, which houses ISIS wives and families, many of whom remain committed to the group’s violent ideology. Six escapees have been recaptured, but it is not clear if there were more. Eight members of the SDF lost their lives.
YPG spokesperson, Nori Mahmoud, puts it bluntly: “Erdoğan is preparing to use Syrian Daesh for a ground attack with attacks on the Al-Hol camp and the prisons where ISIS is held in the north and east Syria. Erdoğan has allied with ISIS from the start against our forces.”
On Wednesday night, Mazloum Abdi stated that the SDF had to pause its anti-ISIS operations. He explained that, “due to our forces’ preoccupation with addressing the Turkish occupation, they cannot continue their mission of pursuing ISIS cells. Currently, we’re forced to be preoccupied with confronting Turkish aggression.”
Besides the threat of a resurgent ISIS, Turkey has put day to day control over the occupied areas in the hands of other militant jihadi groups, including, increasingly, of Al Qaeda descendent, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Abdi told al Monitor that the most likely target of a ground invasion would be the symbolically important city of Kobanê, that this would not require much preparation, and that, “Unless there is a serious effort to deter Turkey, especially on the part of the United States and Russia, [Turkey] will do it.” He was clear that the statements put out by the US and Russia were “absolutely not strong enough when compared against Turkey’s threats and certainly not enough to deter further Turkish aggression. They need to do more”. And he agreed that without permission from the US and Russia, Turkey would not carry out a ground offensive: “If there is a ground invasion it will be because such permission was accorded or because they chose to remain silent.
Russia and the United States both have troops on the ground, and, between them, they control the airspace, and both are guarantors of ceasefires with Turkey agreed after their last invasion in 2019. Both have tolerated Turkey’s daily breaches of those ceasefires, and it appears that both have chosen not to stand in the way of Turkey’s air attacks. Abdi notes that the war in Ukraine has made both more ready to appease Turkey, and that Russia wants the Autonomous Administration to come to an agreement with the Syrian regime in Damascus, but is not applying enough pressure on President Assad. He adds that US failure to formulate a clear policy “makes it harder for us to negotiate successfully with Damascus.” Russia also wants to see a reconciliation between Assad and Erdoğan, which would effectively suffocate North and East Syrian autonomy. At the same time as killing Syrian regime soldiers and threatening invasion, Erdoğan has again expressed interest in a meeting with Assad, though there are still many problems in the way of any agreement, which would be opposed by the Islamist militias.
International response
At this time of existential crisis, the so-called international community is notable largely for its absence.
NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, called for Turkey’s “response” to the Istanbul bomb to be “proportional”, and this has been a repeated theme. But, as far as the YPG and PKK are concerned, there is nothing to respond to. Any proportion of zero is zero.
Statements from the United States display an extraordinary callousness towards their allies in the fight against ISIS. The Department of Defence condemned “the loss of civilian life that has occurred in both Turkiye and Syria as a result of these actions” while recognising “Turkiye’s legitimate security concerns”. What loss of life has there been in Turkey as a result of these actions? What about the deaths of their SDF allies? And why should Turkey have any security concerns from North and East Syria? “Justified security concerns” is another much repeated and deeply insidious phrase.
There have been statements of condemnation of various strengths from left groups and politicians, but little from those actually in power. Although the chair of Germany’s Defence Committee was clear that the attacks lacked justification or evidence, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson stated that “The German government takes the suspicion that the PKK or groups close to the PKK are responsible for the Taksim attack very seriously”, and merely called on Turkey to act “proportionately”. And the interior Minister met with Soylu in Ankara on Monday to discuss, among other issues, cooperation in the “fight against terrorism”. MEPs from the Kurdistan Friendship Group, including MEPs who had recently visited North and East Syria, gave a press conference at the European Parliament, but the emergency statement made by the Parliament’s president only called on the Turkish authorities to “show restraint and respect international law and standards”. A session has been timetabled to debate the airstrikes – but not until mid-December.
Iran
While bombs have been falling on North and East Syria, the revolution in Iran has only intensified – and so has the violence of the regime’s crackdown. Internet blackouts make it difficult to comprehend all that is happening, but government forces are shooting to kill and wound, as well as carrying out abductions and torture. On Thursday, Iran’s exiled Kurdish political parties called a general strike, shutting down city centres across Rojhelat (East or Iranian Kurdistan). By the end of that day, Hengaw Organization for Human Rights had recorded 112 civilian deaths in Rojhelat since the beginning of the protests in September, and more than 5,000 arrests.
The crackdown has been especially severe in Rojhelat, the epicentre of the revolution, and in the province of Sistan and Baluchistan, where Human Rights in Iran has recorded 126 deaths. Like the Kurds, the Baluchis have suffered severe ethnic-based oppression, and the two communities have shown solidarity towards each other despite being at different ends of the country. Total deaths in the whole of Iran are now at least 416, of which 40 were in Tehran.
Abdurrahman Gok, for Mesopotamia Agency, reports, “Everyone states that ‘young women and men’ lead the actions that started on September 17, adding: ‘However, at this stage, their families, who tried to keep those young people off the streets at first, are now shoulder to shoulder with their children.’ With this situation, it is emphasized that the demonstrations are now at the point of no return.”
The Human Rights Council of the United Nations has voted, in a special session called by Germany, to set up a fact-finding investigation into Iran with a view to potential prosecutions in international courts. While this can be welcomed, it is highly unlikely to make the Iranian government moderate its behaviour, let alone step down.
On Monday, Iran carried out another airstrike on the Iraqi bases of two Rojhelat parties – Komala, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran – and also on one of their refugee camps, where one person was killed.
Tanks and armoured vehicles are being moved towards the Iraqi border. Iran claims that these are to prevent the exiled groups accessing Iran, though they can also be seen as a threat to Iraq for hosting the Kurdish opposition groups. Meanwhile, Iraq is redeploying federal guards along its borders with Iran and Turkey. In the Iranian case, this appears to have been requested by Iran to control cross border movement.
Turkey
Within Turkey itself, the main “opposition” party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which is founded on ethnic nationalism even while it claims to be a social democratic party, is cowed into silence. As Öszoy explains, “They realize the scheme Erdoğan put forward, but they remain silent because they are either nationalists themselves or are afraid of a nationalist wave.”
And the usual round of oppression continues. Many people have been detained for protesting against the attacks on North and East Syria, and for attempting to commemorate the Suruç bomb attack, when ISIS killed 33 young people who were on their way to help reconstruct Kobanê in 2015, after the city had broken the ISIS siege. Women were battered and detained while campaigning against violence against women. And the Kobanê case moved onto its next session. This is the case in which 108 people, including leading members of the HDP, face potential life imprisonment without parole for calling on people to protest against the ISIS attack on Kobanê in 2014, and against the Turkish Government’s refusal to help the defence or even to allow individuals to cross the border to defend the besieged city.
On the European Street
In Europe, Turkey’s attacks drew people onto the streets in spontaneous demonstrations, and bigger planned demos have followed. Demonstrators want to show their solidarity with those under attack and to put public pressure on their own governments to stop ignoring Turkish aggression and authoritarianism. There are many actions that governments can take without resorting to sanctions that harm the wider population – beginning with an end to arms sales. Protestors in Hamburg were met with teargas and police truncheons because they insisted on their right – recently confirmed in court – to carry YPG flags. PKK flags are firmly banned, as they are now in the UK. The campaign to remove the PKK from the European Union’s Terrorist list recognises how this listing, which was clearly made for political reasons rather than legal ones, is being used to delegitimise the Kurdish Struggle and allow Turkey to oppress the Kurds with impunity. It needs to be accompanied by a drive towards resumption of peace talks.
Sarah Glynn is a writer and activist – check her website and follow her on Twitter
For the first time information about the woman who did the explosion in Istanbul, Mazlum Kobane reveals her identity.
Anbarin Zaman, Almonitor, interview with General Mazlum Kobane,
– You are one of those demanded by Turkey, were you the target of the recent attacks?
– Mazlum Kobane: I can’t definitely confirm what I was aiming for this time, but Turkey once wanted to kill me, but here I am.
– Is it of the belief that Turkey warned America before the attacks, especially American troops existed in that area and besides your general commander?
– Mazlum Kobane: The Turks know that the Americans are here, we have shared institutions together, we have shared training. Do you have to ask the American self this question whether Turkey has warned them or not? According to my knowledge, they have defacted Americans, or put America into real America.
– what do you mean?
– Mazlum Kobane: I don’t believe the Americans were aware of this attack. We can say the attack happened, their existence (Americans).
– I know for sure why Turkey’s threats to invade the American people. Did they tell them they wouldn’t allow this invasion?
– Mazlum Kobani: That’s the attitude of those so far. They say they don’t agree to do such a thing in Turkey, they will oppose it. After today’s attacks we spoke to our opponents at Americans, but the current situation is very different so we will evaluate the situation together.
Now I am in Erbil, here the officials say if you put a separate line between you and the PKK, Turkey is ready to deal with you, what is your answer?
– Mazlum Kobane: I don’t think this is the main problem, it’s just a passage, Turkey is against any achievement of Kurds, if it was to come, the Ank would have run here, Turkey would have been against it. Turkey is against the Kurds.
Some of the terrorists in Turkey say: the explosions were done by the members of the deep state to re-elect Erdogan’s efforts against the Kurds, especially the president of PKK Ojalan. Do you see it by logic?
– Mazlum Kobane: We heard those talks. Actually before the election, there are two ways before Erdogan: either he should agree with the Kurdish survivors Bizavi, which will make him strong, or to raise a fight, Erdogan chose a fight.
In your opinion, who did the explosion in Istanbul?
– Mazlum Kobane: I think it was a destructive act to make way for a war against us. We did a lot of investigations and found out what caused the explosion, the Red Opposition groups operating under Turkey’s authorities. For example, we proved and declared for the first time to the media agencies, that women came from a family related to ISIS terrorist organization, three brothers killed in ISIS lines, one of them killed in Rqqqa, the second in Manbaj and the third. Inside the lines of ISIS in Iraq, he was killed.
One of the other brothers is the commander of the Syrian opposition forces in Afrin which are supported by Turkey, in a family living in Halab. This action is not related to us at all and we never have such a policy.
Turkey launches Operation Claw-Sword against SDF, PKK, YPG
By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies + Al Mayadeen Net
20 Nov 09:45
Reports that Turkey has carried out several raids on the armed opposition faction Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) sites in Raqqa and the two countrysides of Hasakah and Aleppo in Syria, as well as Sulaymaniyah and Erbil in Iraq.
Turkey has launched Operation Claw-Sword with air raids targeting the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in both Iraq and Syria according to Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar, while Al Mayadeen’s sources noted attacks against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as well.
“We are starting Operation Claw-Sword from now on,” Akar said before the planes left their bases to hit the targets.
Furthermore, Akar said “Terrorists’ shelters, bunkers, and caves were cracked down,” adding “The claws of our Turkish armed forces were once again on the top of the terrorists.”
According to Al Mayadeen sources, the raids also targeted positions of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Mount Karachuk and a power station in the vicinity of the city of Al-Malikiyah, northeast of Al-Hasakah.
“Turkish raids were carried out on silos in the town of Dahr al-Arab in the Darbasiyah countryside, northwest of Hasakah,” the sources noted.
In a related context, Turkey carried out air raids targeting sites of SDF militants in the northern countryside of Aleppo.
The Turkish warplanes also targeted a site of the SDF in Khafiyyat Al-Salem silos, west of Ain Issa district, north of Raqqa.
Al Mayadeen’s correspondent in Syria reported that a Turkish military convoy entered the northern countryside of Aleppo, after Turkish raids on SDF positions in the countrysides of Aleppo and Raqqa, while our correspondent in Iraq said that the strikes launched by Turkey this morning targeted regions in Sulaymaniyah and Erbil.
For its part, the SDF accused Turkey, on Saturday night, of launching airstrikes on the city of Ayn al-Arab. The raids come days after Ankara accused the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) of being behind the Istanbul attack.
The People’s Protection Units (YPG) denied any connection with the Istanbul bombing bomber, and described the Turkish state’s allegations as a “play prepared by the Justice and Development government and Erdogan.”
NEWS 14 Nov 2022, Mon – 19:20 2022-11-14T19:20:00 Newsdesk
This came in a statement to the spokesperson for the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in response to the allegations of the Turkish state regarding the bombing that took place yesterday in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
The body of the statement stated:
Yesterday, Sunday, the city of Istanbul witnessed a terrorist explosion in the middle of Istiklal Street, which killed unarmed civilians.
We completely deny any relationship or role that we have with the perpetrator of the terrorist operation, Ahlam Al-Bashir.
The world has become aware enough that the method of our forces in defense of the rights of our people and the war against terrorism. We denounce any operations targeting civilians.
Our forces work on the scope and basics of democracy, women’s and human rights, and the fight against terrorism and dictatorships.
The statement that the perpetrator of the attack, Ahlam al-Bashir, headed from the Afrin region, which has been occupied since 2018. Since that time, it has been completely under the influence of the intelligence of the Justice and Development Party, the Turkish National Movement, and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Al-Qaeda) towards Turkish territory to carry out the attack; we confirms that this play is prepared by the government of Justice and Development and Erdogan.
The crisis that Erdogan’s government is experiencing, especially due to the approaching elections next year, Erdogan is trying before heading to Indonesia to participate in the G20 summit to find a reason to get international approval to launch an attack on the areas of Rojava and northeastern Syria. This operation that will be a life card for him in the next elections.
While the women in our forces continue to achieve heroic achievements in the fight against ISIS terrorism and through the slogan “Woman, life, freedom – jin, jiyan, azadi” clearly influence even the women’s revolution in Iran, Afghanistan and the world. This constituted a clear concern for the Erdogan government and the Justice and Development Party. They began to slander, lie and make plays to save their personal interests at the expense of the freedom of their people and stability in the Middle East region.
But we assure our people and the world that we are committed to the values of our people and our revolution, and we will always fight against dictatorships and terrorism.
A weekly brief of events occurred in the Kurdistan regions of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Iran
Iranians continued protesting the death of a Kurdish woman named Zhina Mahsa Amini last week. Amini died after being taken into custody by Iran’s morality police on September 16. Iranian security forces have responded to the unrest by killing at least 50 demonstrators, including 18 in Iranian Kurdistan, where the unrest began. Additionally, the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported that Iranian security forces wounded at least 898 Kurds in Oshnavieh (Shinno), Urmia, Kermanshah, Divandareh, Saqqez, Ilam, Dewalan, Piranshahr, and Eslamabad-e Gharb. Iranian authorities have also detained over one thousand activists and civilians. Concurrently, the Iranian regime shut down the internet across Iran and imposed curfews on Kurdish cities after protesters took control of Shinno. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken called for the Iranian regime to “end its systemic persecution of women and allow peaceful protest.” High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Joseph Borrell criticized the regime’s use of force. Simultaneously, the US sanctioned several Iranian security officials and issued Iran General License D-2 to facilitate Iranians’ access to the internet.
Iranian artillery bombarded several areas near Bradost in Iraqi Kurdistan on two consecutive days. The attacks caused no reported casualties and targeted several Kurdish opposition groups in retaliation for the ongoing unrest in Iran. Meanwhile, the exiled Cooperation Center for Iranian Kurdistan’s Political Parties (CCIKP) expressed support for the protests but rejected their militarization and advocated they remain part of the “civilian struggle.”
Iraq
Most of Iraq’s political parties agreed to form a government led by the Iranian-backed Coordination Framework. Several unconfirmed leaked articles from the agreement claimed Iraq’s Sunni and Kurdish parties agreed to join the Coordination Framework in forming a new alliance known as the State Administration Coalition. The parties also agreed on 28 points, including the adoption of new oil and gas laws, abolishing the Accountability and Justice Commission and transferring its files to the judiciary, moving the military and militias out of cities, and resettling those displaced from Sunni areas. The Coordination Framework commemorated the agreement by announcing, “With God’s blessings, the ship of the State Administration Coalition has sailed.” Muqtada al Sadr’s bloc had no say in the process because it has rejected all political participation since al Sadr “quit” politics and his followers resigned en masse from the Council of Representatives. A former lawmaker from al Sadr’s coalition responded to the Coalition Framework’s announcement by saying, “The ship will sink on its first voyage.” Concomitantly, it remains unclear if the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have agreed on a presidential candidate.
Turkish warplanes struck six locations in Sulaymaniyah Governorate’s Mawat District and terrified the residents of several nearby villages on Monday. Turkish jets also hit several areas in Dohuk Governorate’s Amedi District on Sunday. Turkish airstrikes have killed dozens of civilians during Turkey’s ongoing incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan that it claims is targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Celeste Wallander visited Iraqi Kurdistan and renewed a memorandum of understanding between the Department of Defense and the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs. The memorandum was initially signed in 2016 to support the Peshmerga’s efforts to combat ISIS (Da’esh).
Syria
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria’s (AANES) internal security forces (Asayesh) killed three Da’esh terrorists who were plotting to attack the al Hol camp with two car bombs and launch a follow-on assault to free imprisoned Da’esh operatives. Meanwhile, despite the Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF) most recent clearing operation, Da’esh sympathizers hoisted the organization’s flag in the camp on Sunday. Separately, the SDF arrested 12 Da’esh terrorists in Deir Ez Zor and Raqqa. Lastly, a Turkish drone struck an administration office in Kobani on Monday, causing no reported casualties. The Rojava Information Center asserted the attack was the 80th Turkish drone strike on the AANES in 2022.
Thousands of Kurdish women rallied in support of Mahsa Amini in Qamishli and the rest of the AANES. The women denounced Amini’s death and demanded her killers face justice.
Turkey
The jailed Kurdish politicians Selahattin Demirtas and Selçuk Mızraklı shaved their heads, protesting the death of a Kurdish woman in Iran, Zhina Mahsa Amini. “Resisting oppression and oppression is not only the responsibility of women. My cellmate Dr. Selçuk Mızraklı and I shaved our hair today to support the struggle for equality and freedom that women are bravely leading and to state that we stand with the people who resist freedom in Iran,” read Demirtas’s statement.
The Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) called upon several international rights organizations to appeal to the Serbian government and halt the extradition of a Kurdish politician back to Turkey. The Kurdish politician Ecevit Piroğlu fled to Europe, escaping imprisonment by the government, but the Serbian government jailed him and planned to deport him. Separately, the Armenian government handed over two members of the PKK to the Turkish government last week, despite opposition by some lawmakers. The move raised anger among the European Kurdish organization and was described as a “betrayal.”
The Turkish police arrested three soccer fans for waving the Kurdistan flag during a match in Diyarbakir (Amed). The Amed Bar Association voiced opposition to the detention and said the Iraqi constitution recognizes the Kurdistan Region flag, calling for their immediate release.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) claimed on Thursday that its forces killed 23 Turkish soldiers in northeast Syria (Rojava) earlier this week, amid renewed calls from the Turkish president to launch a fresh offensive on northern Syria.
“Our forces carried out on the eighth of August three qualitative and effective operations targeting the movements of the Turkish occupation army on the borders adjacent to the city of Mardin,” the SDF statement reads, adding that the operations were in retaliation to Turkish attacks on its fighters.
The SDF operations were conducted through three separate attacks, which targeted Turkish troops as well as their vehicles.
Turkey has not commented explicitly on the operation, but on Thursday said it had killed six SDF fighters who fired at them along the Mardin border without specifying the date.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed his calls for launching a fresh offensive in northern Syria, saying “we will continue our fight against terrorism,” referring to Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) which Turkey seeks to expel from the areas of Manbij and Tal Rifaat and establish a 30 kilometer deep safe zone along its southern border.
The YPG, the backbone of the SDF, is considered by Turkey as the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and both groups are firmly placed on the terror blacklist by Ankara.
The threat of a Turkish invasion into northern Syria has recently gained momentum, with Ankara targeting key leaders of the SDF and launching an influx of drone attacks against the force.
The SDF late last month confirmed the death of one of its commanders and two other fighters who were targeted by a Turkish drone the day before. The forces’ General Commander Mazloum Abdi vowed to avenge their deaths.
A hundred French MPs denounced Erdogan’s “policy of war” against Kurds in northern Syria in July, as they called on Western countries to shift their attention to the Turkish president’s strategy of taking advantage of Turkey’s status as a NATO member on good terms with opposing sides of Russia’s invasion on Ukraine to attack northern Syria without consequences.
Rumors said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions of launching a new military operation against Syrian Kurds were put down during his visit to Tehran, but the reality on the ground shows otherwise.
While Russia and Iran remain staunch supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, both countries urged Turkey against conducting further military campaigns in northern Syria during their trilateral summit last month.
Turkey has recently renewed threats to carry out a new military operation against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria’s Manbij and Tal Rifaat towns in a bid to complete the 30 kilometer “safe zone” it began creating along its southern borders in recent years.
However, reports emerging from the summit claim that Russia has pledged to remove Kurdish fighters from the Aleppo-Hasaka highway, also known as M4, and to hand them over to the Syrian regime forces.
M4 is seen as the de-facto border between the Syrian regime forces and the SDF on one hand and the Turkish armed forces backed by Syrian proxies on another. With variances at different points, it categorically corresponds to Erdogan’s 30 km security zone.
However, an unprecedented number of airstrikes and drone attacks targeted Syrian Kurds following the summit. The life of a senior Kurdish commander was claimed in a Turkish airstrike, making July the deadliest month for the Kurdish fighters in 2022. Ankara seems to have been granted the green light to use the airspace.
Turkey is said to have struck a conciliatory deal with Tehran.
”Iran made a deal with Turkey at the Tehran conference. The deal is that Turkey can conduct unlimited airstrikes against the PYD [the ruling Kurdish party in Rojava]. In exchange, Turkey will not invade Aleppo,” US Middle East researcher Nicholas Heras said via WhatsApp.
”Iran is willing to trade the PYD to further its war with Israel”, Heras added.
Previously used in Nagorno-Karabakh, Libya, Ukraine, and recently – notably intensively – in northeast Syria (Rojava), Turkey’s strategy of drone strikes against the Kurdish forces is lethal.
The highly advanced airspace technology of Bayraktar TB 2 results in heinous damage on the ground.
Drone strikes seem to be an alternative for Ankara which is still longing for the green light from Tehran and Moscow to launch its full-scale invasion. Undeniably, the impact made by the armed drones in Rojava is substantial.
On 20 July, a Turkish drone struck a car some 40 km deep in Syrian territory. Earlier in the day, two SDF members were killed by Zor Maghar in western Kobane in a similar act.
Another attack in eastern Qamishli on July 22 killed three members of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), an SDF-affiliated force. The strike was resounding for a set of reasons.
First, one of the targeted YPJ members was high-profile field commander Salwa Yusuf. She was a deputy commander of the SDF and played a major role in leading the force in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) since 2017. While the Global Coalition offered condolences, failing to mention the perpetrator, the SDF in a statement pledged retaliation.
Second, Qamishli’s airspace is protected by Russia or believed to be. Third, the attack occurred at the eastern entrance of the city which was namely excluded from the joint Turkish-Russian patrols enshrined in the Sochi agreement of 2019. The attack came just after the three fighters exited a meeting held in the city.
Back in Kobane, where the US-led Global Coalition and the Kurdish partnership was first forged, Sahin Tekintangac, a local commander of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), was reported “neutralized” by the Turkish Intelligence Services (MIT), on July 23.
On the same day, 19 villages underwent Turkish bombardment in Tal Tamr.
Three members of the Assyrian Khabur Guards were reported injured.
On Monday, an SDF commander was reported killed in Ain Issa. On the following day, a Turkish drone in northern Raqqa killed another soldier marking the third death in less than 24 hours.
Two Turkish soldiers were reported killed by Kurdish fighters in Euphrates Shield zones on Wednesday. Seven people were injured on a separate occasion in Tal Rifaat.
On the following day, four members of the internal security forces (Asayish) were killed near Tal al-Semin camp in northern Raqqa.
From another point of view, recent escalation seems to be used as a pressing card by Russia against the Kurdish forces to acquiesce.
This has a foundation to build upon in the sense that the Turkish threat has pushed the Syrian Kurds to the lap of the Syrian regime. This, ironically, plays into the hands of the parts involved in the Astana talks.
Recently, Syrian regime forces were heavily deployed to posts held for years by the SDF. The Syrian army has been deployed to Tal Rifaat, Manbij, Kobane, and Ain Issa.
The US expressed its deep concerns, called for immediate de-escalation, and urged all parts to respect the ceasefire agreement.
This being the case, the Kurds seem to possess few options that could entail making painful concessions.
It was in May when Erdogan announced his country would carry out a military incursion against the Kurdish fighters.
Erdogan seeks to push the SDF some 30 kilometers deep in Syrian territory to create a ”security zone.” However, the latter, maintains that any Turkish operation will undermine the fight against ISIS.
Turkish officials say they do not need permission from any country to carry out its military incursion that “could start any minute.”
Strikingly, Russian military police patrolled eastern Qamishli areas for the very first time with a depth of 30 km.
Amid this uncertainty of the affair, Erdogan is scheduled to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin in the city resort of Sochi on August 5 with northern Syria expected to put forth on the table of discussion.
Lazghine Ya’qoube is a translator and researcher focusing on the modern history of Mesopotamia, with a special focus on Yazidi and Assyrian affairs in Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
Turkish drone attacks in 48 hours | Nearly 15 people killed and injured in four attacks on SDF-held areas
On Jul 23, 2022
As Turkish forces continued to escalate their aerial operations on areas under the control of the Autonomous Administration in north and north-east Syria, SOHR monitored four drone attacks carried out by Turkish Airforce in the past 48 hours. Turkish forces waged two attacks on Ain Al-Arab (Kobani) in Aleppo, while two drones hit Al-Qamishli in Al-Hasakah province.
Turkish drone attacks left six military personnel, including four women, dead and at least eight others injured. The death toll is believed to rise.
This comes in light of ongoing Turkish propaganda of an imminent military operation in Syria, following the tripartite summit between Iran, Russia, and Turkey presidents.
Here are further details of the Turkish drone attacks that occurred in the last 48 hours:
• July 20: A Turkish drone hit the entrance to a tunnel in a tree reserve near “SDF” academy, in the countryside of Ain Al-Arab (Kobani), east of Aleppo, leaving three SDF fighters, including a woman, dead.
• July 21: A Turkish drone hit a SDF military vehicle in Qira village, nearly 40 kilometres from Syria-Turkey border south-west of Al-Qamishli, leaving causalities.
• July 22: A Turkish drone fired two missiles around a regime forces military post in Zur Maghar village in the western countryside of Ain Al-Arab/Kobani, east of Aleppo, leaving no casualties.
• July22: three women of Women’s Protection Units were killed due to a Turkish drone attack on their car on Al-Qamishly-Al-Malkiyah (Direk) road in Al-Hasakah province. Other people were injured by shrapnel while they were passing in the area.
Accordingly, the number of attacks carried out by Turkish drones on areas controlled by the “Autonomous Administration in northern and north-eastern Syria, AANES” since early 2022 has reached 38. These attacks left 27 people dead, including two children and nine women, and over 74 others injured. Here is a monthly distribution of attacks by Turkish drones in 2022:
• January: Three attacks left three people dead and 13 others injured.
• February: Ten attacks killed eight people, including two children and a young female fighter, and injured 21 others.
• March: Two attacks injured two people.
• April: 11 attacks left six people dead, including three women, and 19 others injured.
• May: Four attacks left three people dead, including a woman, and seven others injured.
• June: Three attacks left a combatant dead and five others injured.
• July: Five attacks left seven people, including four women, dead and nine others injured.
July 19 marks the tenth anniversary of the start of the Rojava Revolution. To prepare and position itself in times of change, Kon-Med suggests looking to this beacon in the search for alternative models of society.
ANF
DORTMUND
Wednesday, 6 Apr 2022, 11:53
July 19, 2012 marks the beginning of one of the most significant revolutions of the 21st century: the Rojava Revolution. On that day, the uprising in Kobanê gave birth to an emancipatory and social project that is a beacon of hope not only for Syria and the Middle East, but ultimately for the entire world. The people of the Democratic Federation of Northeast Syria have not only succeeded in beating back the barbarism of the so-called ISIS. Their newly organized coexistence opens up prospects for a more just, peaceful and free world.
In view of the tenth anniversary of the revolution, Zübeyde Zümrüt and Engin Sever, the co-presidents of the Kurdish umbrella organization Kon-Med, have now presented an appeal entitled “What to do?” with suggestions on how to mark this day. Furthermore, in view of the current crises, they propose to start looking for alternative models of society in order to prepare and position themselves in times of change. The Rojava revolution could be a shining example in this regard.
“On July 19, 2022, the revolution in Rojava will celebrate its tenth anniversary. A revolution prepared by decades of preliminary work by the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan was able to emerge and blossom ten years ago during the Arab Spring and in the midst of the Syrian civil war. State forces withdrew from the region and the self-defense forces that had been formed began to beat back the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) piece by piece. Meanwhile, people began to create self-governing structures that included all ethnicities and all faith communities on the ground. The further ISIS was pushed back, the broader the social organization in Rojava became.
What is the situation of the revolution in Rojava after almost ten years?
Neither the constant attacks by ISIS and the Turkish state nor the comprehensive economic embargo faced by Rojava have been able to intimidate the people. Defying all these aggressions, the people of the region built, step by step, a self-government based on the idea of the non-state concept of democratic confederalism.
Always keeping in mind the three pillars of democratic confederalism – women’s liberation, social ecology and grassroots democracy – all areas of life were reorganized. An alternative educational, health and legal system was created. An alternative economic model, which places the establishment of cooperatives at its center, is also spreading more and more. The right of every citizen to have a say is ensured by the communities and councils that have been created. Last but not least, organized self-defense is an important factor in protecting self-government in northern and eastern Syria.
What does the revolution in Rojava mean for us?
Rojava became known primarily for the fight of the YPG and YPJ (People’s Defense Units and Women’s Defense Units) against ISIS. But the importance of this region goes far beyond the armed resistance that has been waged there. In Rojava, not only was the world protected from jihadist terror, but also a democratic model was created there that represents hope for people worldwide. The Rojava revolution may have its starting point in the Middle East, but it is a system that can be thought of and lived globally.
Today we live in times when one crisis is followed by another. Almost every day, new threats seem to emerge that endanger all of humanity. We are indeed on the verge of changing times. It is precisely against this background that it is important to embark on a search for alternative models of society. The revolution of Rojava can serve as a shining example for all of us in this regard.
What to do?
The revolution itself and its ten years of resistance have only been possible because of the international solidarity that has accompanied it from the beginning and that it still experiences today. Accordingly, we as Kon-Med call for July 19, 2022 to be taken as an occasion to celebrate here in all cities, in all villages and everywhere, this day, as the day of the revolution. Organize large and small street festivals, concerts or other events. Network with local structures to existing soli committees and establish contact with our local associations and council structures. If you need help, you are also welcome to approach us. The revolution of Rojava is our common revolution! Therefore, its tenth anniversary is also reason enough to celebrate together! Bijî Şoreşa Rojava!”
AANES official among those killed in Turkish drone attack in South Kurdistan
The deputy chairman of the Executive Council of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria was martyred in the deadly Turkish drone attack in the countryside of the Sulaymaniyah city in South Kurdistan on Friday.
ANF
SULAYMANIYAH
Saturday, 18 Jun 2022, 11:57
Four people were killed and another person injured in a drone attack on a car near the village of Berlut in the north of the Kelar town near Sulaymaniyah city of South Kurdistan (North Iraq) on Friday morning. It was not initially known who the victims were, and which state the drone belonged to. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) announced today that one of the four victims was Ferhad Şiblî, the deputy chairman of the AANES Executive Council. Turkey reportedly bombed a civilian vehicle from the air. No information is yet available on the identities of the other dead and injured.
Ferhad Şiblî was in Sulaymaniyah for medical treatment and talks, the AANES stated: “The attack aims to systematically destroy the Autonomous Administration and our people. The Turkish state is disregarding all international legal standards and is carrying out a genocide. The Autonomous Administration calls on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) government and Iraq to fulfil their responsibilities and take a clear stance on the Turkish terrorist attacks.”
Iraqi airspace is controlled by the USA. On Wednesday, a Turkish drone bombed the Sinune town in Shengal (Sinjar), killing one child and injuring seven people, some of them critically. Shengal is the last contiguous settlement area of the Yazidi people.
A patrol of the Global Coalition forces in northern Syria – North Press
Raqqa, Syria (North Press) – The return of the Global Coalition to the Kobani region, north Syria, for the second time after its withdrawal from it in October 2019 is a source of relief and welcome from the residents of Kobani and its countryside.
The Global Coalition stationed in the French cement manufacturer Lafarge near Kobani. It was the main base of the coalition in Syria, but it withdrew during the Turkish invasion of the cities of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Tel Abyad in October 2019.
On Wednesday, two helicopters of the Global Coalition landed at nine p.m in the Lafarge company. Four hours alter the helicopters took off, said Abdulrahim Ahmed, a resident of the town of Jalabiya, 40 km south of Kobani.
Civilian activists circulated a video clip showing the Global Coalition planes taking off from Lafarge company.
For a month, the company’s outskirts have witnessed noticeable movements by the Global Coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which makes the local residents believe that they are working on establishing a military airbase.
After the withdrawal of the Global Coalition in 2019, the Russian forces and the Syrian government entered the areas of Kobani, Manbij, the countryside of Tel Abyad and Sere Kaniye, in coordination with the SDF to stop the Turkish incursion.
The Russian forces stationed in most of the military bases and posts of the coalition forces, which US officials considered at the time to be a Russian occupation of American bases.
However, the base of the Global Coalition in Lafarge remained under the control of the SDF.
The withdrawal of the Global Coalition in October 2019 from its bases in Kobani and Sere Kaniye, was a shock to the residents of the region. It opened the way for the Turkish forces and Turkish-backed opposition SNA factions to occupy the cities of Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad, which caused the displacement of nearly 300,000 people, according to UN reports.
This is the second time for the coalition’s helicopters to return to carry out operations against ISIS members in the area under the control of the SNA. The first operation targeted the leader of ISIS, Abdullah Qaradash, in Idlib, while the second one targeted Hani Ahmed al-Kurdi, the Wali (governor) of Raqqa in Jarablus.
Ahmed says that the residents were happy on the nights of the second and third of last February when 6 helicopters of the Global Coalition landed at Lafarge base south of Kobani, for the first time after the withdrawal. The residents believed that the coalition begun to return to its bases in their areas.
In his interview with North Press, Ahmed expresses his satisfaction with the Global Coalition’s use of Lafarge, which is only hundreds of meters away from his home to launch operations against ISIS. This use comes in tandem with Turkish threats to launch a new military operation in northern Syria.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said May 23 that Turkey would soon launch a new military operation into northern Syria to create a 30-kilometer (19-mile) security zone along the border.
Late on Wednesday night, the Global Coalition announced the success of an operation that resulted in the arrest of a prominent leader of ISIS in the city of Jarablus, northern Syria
U.S. officials identified the suspect as Hani Ahmed al-Kurdi, whom they said also was known as the Wali of Raqqa, Washington Post newspaper said.
On June 1, Mahmoud Kobani, a leader in the Kobani Military Council, which is affiliated with the SDF, told North Press that they have permanent coordination with the Global Coalition forces to oversee the implementation of the ceasefire agreement with Turkey.
Following the Turkish invasion of the cities of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Tel Abyad in October 2019, Turkey signed a ceasefire agreement with the Russian and American sides.
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – On Thursday, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi showed concern about recent Turkish threats saying they pose high risk on northern Syria.
“We are concerned about new Turkish threats which pose high risk on northern Syria,” Abdi said in a tweet.
Mazloum Abdi’s tweet comes following Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement in which he said that Ankara would soon launch new military operations along its southern borders to create “30-km deep safe zone in response to threats coming from these regions.”
The SDF Commander-in-chief added that any Turkish attack will divide Syria and cause the displacement of the inhabitants.
“Any offensive will divide Syrians, create a new humanitarian crisis, and displace original inhabitants and IDPs,” he noted.
During the past days, Turkey has promoted for a new military operation against north and northeast Syria, geography held by the Kurdish-majority Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
Mazloum Abdi stressed that any “New escalation will also negatively affect our campaign against ISIS.”
On May 31, the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned Chief Advisor to the Turkish President, Ibrahim Kalin against any further escalation in Syrian north.
Sullivan reiterated the importance of refraining from escalation in Syria to preserve existing ceasefire lines and avoid any further destabilization.
Emine Osê, is the deputy co-chair of the Executive Council of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), commonly referred to as Rojava. In this interview, she was asked about an array of topics from women’s rights, the fight against ISIS, ongoing Turkish attacks, and internationalist volunteers. As one of the Kurdish women leading the most inspiring democratic experiment in the Middle East, her remarks help illuminate the struggles and successes taking place throughout Western Kurdistan, which have relevance to America and the entire world.
Q:For those Americans who are not familiar with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria( AANES), can you briefly describe what it is?
A: We are the democratic governing body of north and east Syria, which ensures all people’s rights are protected. For Americans, they should also know that we have been the main player in the international coalition led by the United States to defeat ISIS terrorism and we have sacrificed thousands of heroes to end their reign of terror. The American people should support us and push their government to strengthen their political and economic ties with our Administration, as we have been loyal partners against defeating ISIS terrorism.
Q: The AANES recently made International Women’s Day (March 8) a national holiday in Rojava. Can you explain the significance of that move and how women are freer in north and east Syria than in other parts of the country?
A: Women’s Day for our people is a national and community holiday. Because our revolution is first and foremost a revolution of women. A revolution led by free women, who embody all the historical responsibilities that come with such a sacred cause. One of our main goals is strengthening the moral and political leadership of women. Through the experiences of previous years, from 2012 until now, women in Rojava have become an inspiration to the entire world.One main reason is the YPJ, who played a pivotal role in the defeat of ISIS. Another is our governing Administration co-chair system that guarantees equal participation of women in every department and institution. Women in Rojava are the ones who decide their own fate and destiny.
Q: Since the start of 2022, the Turkish military has carried out 30 drone strikes and artillery shelling on places like Ain Issa, Manbij, and the Shehba Canton – killing 9 and injuring 28 people. Can you discuss the ways that these attacks affect the people in AANES areas?
A: Yes, this is true. In fact, the Turkish occupation army has been committing war crimes for years since the beginning of the Syrian crisis. Turkish-backed forces commit one crime after another in Afrin, Ras al-Ain, Tal Abyad and all the areas that they occupy and oppress.Even inside the de-escalation zones, we find many human rights abuses. This shows the flaws in theso-called cease-fire and memoranda of understanding that Ankara made with Washington and Moscow. Ever since October of 2019, when Turkey occupied Ras al-Ain and Tal Abyad, their grand plan has been clear. They want to fulfill the 1920 Misak-ı Millî Ottoman Oath, that views the lands of northern Syria and northern Iraq (from Aleppo to Mosul) as part of Turkey. To do this, Ankara is targeting our region with attacks to destabilize society and create an atmosphere of horror, which forces civilians to flee.
Q: Turkey recently launched an invasion of Southern Kurdistan (north Iraq) and has threatened to attack Rojava as well. Has Russia or the United States given your Administration reassurances that they would prevent a Turkish land invasion of AANES areas? And what actions would you like to see Moscow and Washington make to prevent that?
A: It must first be acknowledged that the Turkish invasion of Southern Kurdistan (Kurdish region of northern Iraq) and the constant attacks on our regions are clear violations of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter related to legitimate self-defense. They are illegal under international law and should be viewed as such. As for reassurances, we have not received any from Washington or Moscow, who both bear partial responsibility for Ankara’s actions, since they have reached agreements with Turkey to related to their assaults on these areas. In the end, if the US or Russia continues to fail at stopping Turkey’s war crimes, we will have to unilaterally defend our gains and ensure our security militarily by expelling Turkish forces. However, we would like to solve these issues diplomatically without bloodshed, and we are open to dialogue, but it is important that Turkey first stops its systematic intimidation and withdraws from all the Syrian areas it illegally occupies.
Q: The Al Hol Camp is currently housing 56,000 prisoners with connections or loyalty to ISIS (with half of them being minors). How is the AANES ensuring that these youth will not become the next generation of ISIS fighters? And what are some ways that the AANES would like the US and EU to help with this large problem?
A: Al Hol is a dangerous ticking time bomb for the entire world. Everyday we are faced with frightening dangers from this camp. The most recent incident was an attempted escape of the industrial prison in Hasaka, which could have unleashed thousands of ISIS criminals upon the globe. As an Administration, we have repeatedly stated our solutions: (1) Each country should accept the return of all detainees who hold their nationality. (2) The anti-ISIS coalition of nations should help construct an international terrorism court, so that ISIS militants can receive a fair trial and their victims can receive justice. (3) The Administration needs international assistance to help in the rehabilitation of ISIS-related children, so that they can eventually be reintegrated into society.
Q: In January, ISIS attempted to rescue thousands of their prisoners from a prison in Hesekê. In what ways is ISIS making a comeback in North and East Syria?
A: Turkey is trying to resurrect ISIS to use them as a proxy against us like they have previously. Since the liberation of Baghouz, we have discovered hundreds of passports held by ISIS fighters with stamps from Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul. Turkey should be considered the primary party that is most responsible for organizing, assembling, training, and directing ISIS throughout Syria. We have released many reports with full evidence documenting this issue.
Q: On April 17, the AANES wished all Christians a happy Easter. What are some of the ways that the AANES ensures protection and full rights for Christians in North and East Syria?
A: Guaranteeing the religious rights of all people is a crucial component of our Administration. We affirm that the self-management of all ethnic and religious groups is of primary importance to us, to ensure that all cultures of our community in north and east Syria feel represented and secure. If you go back to the original Social Contract which gives our Administration its mandate from the people, you will see that the rights of Christians are fully protected. To guarantee this we have adopted a democracy which seeks to guard the rights of all geographical areas, all religious groups, and all ethnicities. To accomplish this, we have both elections and agreed upon quotas to make sure all groups are represented and heard, despite their size. No group is excluded from our democracy. We do not allow the majority to suppress the rights of the minority.
Q: Internationalists from around the world recently held their First Internationalist Conference of Rojava and spoke of how they have been inspired by the Rojava Revolution. What are some ways that people around the world can help Rojava and if they want to travel there to help, how can they do that?
A: There are several ways that our international supporters can help. (1) Organize conferences around the world that display the pivotal role that Rojava and its revolution has played in defeating ISIS terrorism and creating gender equality. (2) Support the security and stability of the Autonomous Administration by pushing for all sanctions on the Syrian Regime to be lifted from our areas and encourage nations to form direct economic partnerships with us. (3) Increase the representation of internationals in our region by travelling here and joining in the cultural, civil, and economic work of our project. (4) Putting pressure on Turkey to end its brutal occupation and stop threatening our region. (5) Putting pressure on the Assad Regime to accept a serious dialogue to fully end the war in Syria and establish autonomy in our areas.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here represent those of the interviewee and not necessarily those of the Washington Kurdish Institute
Syrian Kurdish unity talks crumble as Turkey escalates anti-PKK campaign
The breakdown between sides serves Turkey’s agenda of keeping its Kurdish foes divided and weak.
Syrian Kurds demonstrate on June 10, 2021, in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli against the Turkish offensive on Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) areas in northern Iraq. – DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images
Turkey’s military escalation against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has deepened the gulf between Syrian Kurdish groups and put the kibosh on US-mediated talks that were aimed at forging unity in northeast Syria between the ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD) and an array of opposition parties known as the Kurdish National Council (KNC).
In a series of interviews, each side blamed the other for the hiatus, which serves Turkey’s agenda of keeping its Kurdish foes divided and weak. It also discourages the United States from deeper political engagement in the affairs of Kurdish-led northeast Syria, where an estimated 900 special operations forces are deployed to aid in efforts to prevent the Islamic State from staging a comeback.
The finger-pointing comes amid a spate of arson attacks against KNC offices across the northeast that the latter has blamed on the Revolutionary Youth Movement (Ciwanen Soresger).
The organization sees itself as an enforcer of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s ideals and operates on the margins of the autonomous administration in northeast Syria in a gray zone outside its direct control. The KNC says at least eight of its offices, including those of parties operating under its umbrella, were targeted last month alone. PYD officials deny all responsibility, saying investigations into the attacks are ongoing and several suspects have been arrested.
The launching of the attacks coincided with Turkey’s latest offensive against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan called Claw-Lock, which aims to cut off the guerrillas simultaneously from the Turkish and Syrian borders as well as from their main headquarters in Qandil, which abuts Iran.
Salih Muslim, a top-ranking member of the PYD’s presidential council, told Al-Monitor, “We don’t know who these people [attacking KNC offices] are, but there is immense popular anger over Turkey’s attacks and there is a widespread perception that the KNC and their Roj peshmerga (forces) are fighting against the PKK together with the Turkish army.”
Muslim said at least 20 Syrian Kurds fighting within the ranks of the PKK had died in the Claw-Lock campaign so far. “We also hear of wounded Roj peshmerga being treated in [Turkish] hospitals in Hakkari and Yuksekova.”
Muslim repeated his claims from an April 20 interview with Al-Monitor that the autonomous administration had offered to provide security to guard the KNC offices, but that those offers had been spurned.
Sleman Osso, a member of the KNC Presidential Council, who is also secretary of the Yekiti Kurdistan Party-Syria, rebutted Muslim’s account. “The media noise that happened during the last campaign last month — there was a lot of noise from the American side and international bodies. So they tried to give the international community and press the idea that they put guards in front of our offices as if they don’t know who is burning these offices. But we know, and they know, that the Revolutionary Youth are the ones committing these violations,” Osso told Al-Monitor.
“The violations are ongoing from time to time. When there’s pressure on them, the violations stop. Then they feel freer and the violations start up. The goal is to scare Kurdish citizens, the KNC, and push them toward refusing negotiations,” he claimed.
He denied that Roj peshmerga, a Syrian Kurdish force that is linked to the KNC parties and based in Iraqi Kurdistan, were participating in battles against the PKK. “A few days ago, the peshmerga-Roj families in Kobani were summoned and threatened and pressured — asked to pressure their kids to leave the peshmerga,” Osso added without specifying by whom.
The unity talks were initiated by Mazlum Kobane, commander in chief of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in the wake of Turkey’s 2019 ground invasion of a swath of territory lying between the northern border towns of Ras al-Ain and Tell Abyad. The purpose from his vantage point was threefold. The first was to win broader legitimacy for the autonomous administration; the second to present a common front with the KNC in future talks with Damascus; and the third to weaken Turkish claims that the PKK is in charge of the area, with a view to fending off further attacks and ideally to developing amicable ties mirroring those between Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. The latter reason served as an incentive for the US buy-in.
Washington’s own relations with Ankara were in a downward spiral because of continued American support for the SDF, which Turkey claims is also dominated by the PKK. A deal between the SDF and the KNC, which has close ties to the KRG as well as the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition, would help ease tensions, or so Washington believed.
But US policy now looks caught up in its own contradictions, as it silently endorses Turkish moves against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan while apparently hoping that Turkey’s attitudes toward Ocalan-aligned cadres, including Kobane, a former PKK commander, can change. Kobane is on Turkey’s “most wanted” list, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is growing more hawkish by the day.
As things currently stand, the most obvious parallel between Iraqi Kurdistan and Rojava (the Kurdish name for the Syrian Kurdish region) are the seemingly endless divisions besetting the main political groups, which play into their greater enemies’ hands.
SDF commander Kobane, however, has cut a very different figure, outgrowing his guerrilla fatigues to emerge as a political leader respected by Syrian Kurds, Arabs and Christians alike — one who is seen as the best guarantee for the continued presence of US forces in Syria.
“We all depended on him at the beginning of the dialogue. I see him now weakened,” said a senior KNC figure who asked not to be identified by name.
“General Mazlum is a highly effective diplomat who is endlessly pragmatic and open to compromise. This not only makes him a leader, it makes him an invaluable partner to the United States,” said an NSC official speaking on background to Al-Monitor.
In fact, the talks did get off to a good start with the PYD making most of the concessions at Kobane’s urging, as previously reported by Al-Monitor. Osso, who is a member of the KNC’s negotiating team, acknowledged that “the reason for the success was that the American side, and the SDF leadership, were serious about pressuring the other side to reach an agreement around a political vision acceptable to all Syrians.”
Sources with close knowledge of the talks said it was the KNC that “got cold feet” with many speculating that they walked away in October 2020 under pressure from Turkey. This was mainly exerted via the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP), which dominates the KRG and whose forces control the main border crossings between northeast Syria and Iraq through which coalition forces and critical aid are supplied.
It did not help that the KNC insisted that a final agreement should stipulate that the autonomous administration commit to purging all PKK elements from within its ranks.
“Why do we say the PKK and PYD need to be disconnected? Because we know that we can agree with the PYD when the PKK’s dominance of the PYD ends,” said Osso.
The KNC stance fed PKK suspicions that the talks had become a vehicle for its destruction.
Osso claims it was the PKK that sabotaged the talks. “After they noticed there was seriousness in reaching an agreement, at that point, PKK symbols started to [reappear] openly in Kurdish cities and towns. Provocations began in an attempt to tank the talks.”
Despite the setbacks, in June 2021, Kobane and David Brownstein, the State Department’s then resident envoy in northeast Syria, co-signed a document in which the sides committed themselves to continuing to serve as guarantors for the unity talks. (Kobane signed the document as “Mazlum Abdi,” the other name he goes by.)
The document, a copy of which was seen by Al-Monitor, stated that a new round of negotiations “begins from the point at which it stopped.” It also calls for ensuring “the non-repetition of violations against the Kurdish National Council in Syria, including encroaching on or burning its offices, and guarantee the non-arrest of its members for political reasons.” Osso, Muslim and a Biden administration source confirmed the document’s authenticity.
Osso said Kobane and Brownstein “promised to release this document to the media and then begin negotiations again. But the document was not published because of [the PYD’s] continued violations, and the document lost all of its meaning before it was announced to the public.”
The SDF did not respond to Al-Monitor’s request for comment.
In breaking their silence, the KNC appears to be drawing on the last and sixth article of the document, which entitles the side to publicly name and blame the other in case of any breaches. Osso said the KNC will not resume the talks unless the document is made public.
The fact that it is even willing to consider doing so points to several things. One may be that the KNC feels increasingly sidelined as the autonomous administration continues to lay the ground for elections in the northeast through a series of consultations with other stakeholders that are meant to culminate in the declaration of a new social compact. Another may be a shift in KRG’s own calculations.
But it’s the PYD that is now dragging its feet. A PYD official called Khabat declared recently that his party had paused the negotiations “because of the KNC support for the occupiers.” He was referring to Turkey. “If the KNC doesn’t stop supporting Erdogan’s [Justice and Development Party] and supporting the occupiers, and opposing Rojava — without stopping those things, the negotiations won’t continue.”
The State Department’s new resident envoy, Matthew Pearl, has met with the sides in a bid to restart the talks but has made little headway. “In the talks, he carries messages from one side to the other. But he has no strategy,” the senior KNC official complained.
In March, a delegation led by the State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs with responsibility for the Levant Ethan Goldrich, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran and Iraq Jen Gavito, and the National Security Council’s Director for Syria and Iraq Zehra Bell traveled to Rojava to meet with Kobane.
“The United States government strongly supports Kurdish unity talks, and we remain in contact with parties on the best way forward to advance intra-Kurdish dialogue, including through our diplomats on the ground in northeast Syria,” a state department spokesperson told Al-Monitor.
“The Department of State condemned attacks on the KNC offices on April 21 and continues to play an active role in addressing grievances by both sides in order to increase stability in the northeast,” the spokesperson said.
The KDP is encircling Rojava and Şengal. On the border with Rojava, the number of military bases has been increased from eight to 66. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is building a wall on the border between Şengal and Rojava. % buffered
ANF / BÊRÎTAN SARYA
DÊRIK
Friday, 29 Apr 2022, 16:22
In the past two years, South Kurdistan’s ruling party KDP has transformed the border with Rojava into a fortress. Under Turkey’s direction, a siege situation has been created against Rojava similar to the one against the Medya Defense Zones. On the 33 kilometers of border between Rojava and South Kurdistan, 66 military bases of the KDP, which collaborates with Turkey, were created. In addition, there are hundreds of military positions. Special units of the KDP are massing armored vehicles in the region and thermal cameras are being installed. However, the bases are not used by the KDP alone, but also simultaneously by the Turkish intelligence service MIT and the Turkish army.
Before the Syrian war, the border between West Kurdistan and the KDP-controlled areas in South Kurdistan extended from Pêşxabûr (Sêmalka) in the tri-border area of Syria, Turkey and Iraq to the village of Şihêla. The area from there to the Rabia (al-Yaroubiya/Til Koçer) border crossing was controlled by the Iraqi army. There were only eight Saddam-era military posts on the border until 2012, which were then taken over by the KDP. With the beginning of the Rojava revolution in 2012, the KDP increased the number of border outposts to around 20. But that was not enough; between April and May 2014, the KDP began digging trenches between southern Kurdistan and the canton of Cizîrê in Rojava.
The Iraqi side of the border was also liberated by YPG and YPJ
With the ISIS attacks on Mosul beginning in June 2014, the Iraqi army withdrew and fled from the entire line, from the Şihêla area on the border with Dêrik to the Rabia border crossing. KDP troops and very few PUK troops were deployed in the area.
When ISIS began its onslaught on the Yazidi town of Şengal on August 3, 2014, the KDP withdrew its 12,000-strong force from this region as well in flight, leaving the Yazidis to face genocide. The area between Şengal, Til Koçer and Rabia was occupied by ISIS. Just like the Iraqi army, the peshmergas also withdrew from this line. The YPG and YPJ, in order to save the Yazidis from genocide, began to open a corridor from Til Koçer to Şengal in a fierce battle with ISIS. By the afternoon of August 3, 2014, the fighters had liberated the villages of Tawis, Kail and Mahmudiyê from ISIS, about 15 kilometers from Rabia. In Rabia, fighting with ISIS continued for a long time. Rabia and the border crossing were completely liberated on September 30, 2014, with the participation of a part of peshmerga from the PUK and KDP.
Rabia was liberated and handed over to the peshmerga
The YPG and YPJ bore the brunt of the liberation of Rabia and therefore controlled a large part of the settlement. However, they retreated across the border into Rojava and handed over the strategically important settlement to the peshmerga. In this way, an 86-kilometer-long border strip from Pêşxabûr to the Rabia crossing came under the control of the peshmerga.
KDP withdrew for the second time
Due to the distribution of territories between the PUK and KDP, the border once again passed completely to the KDP and the PUK withdrew. As part of the KDP-initiated independence referendum, the Iraqi army was mobilized in October 2017 and marched into many disputed areas, including Kirkuk. The KDP left the border strip between Dêrik and Til Koçer and retreated to the village of Mahmudiyê, 15 kilometers from Rabia.
33 kilometers of border under KDP control
From mid-October 2017 until today, the KDP has controlled an area in the Pêşxabûr Triangle near Dêrik to the village of Mahmudiyê near Til Koçer. The borderline between Rojava (Qamişlo region) and Şengal was controlled by Hashd al-Shaabi between 2017 and 2021 and then by the Iraqi police. This border line begins at Derîk and extends to Rabia and from there to near Şengal.
After talks with Turkey
After the KDP’s relations with Turkey deteriorated in connection with the “independence referendum,” the Barzani party attempted to compensate for the discrepancy through hostility toward the PKK, the Rojava revolution and the Kurdish freedom struggle. With regard to border policy toward Rojava, Turkey and the KDP pursued a common approach. After Nechirvan Barzani was summoned to Ankara and held talks with Turkish regime leader Erdoğan and his foreign minister Çavuşoğlu, military bases and observation posts were established along the border with Rojava. New military forts and checkpoints were established in the hills around Pêşxabûr up to the village of Mahmudiyê. Troops and heavy weapons were deployed to these bases. The bases were equipped with technological equipment, including thermal cameras. In particular, the bases of Xanikê and Şilikiyê were upgraded.
Stationing of MIT and KDP Intelligence Service
The MIT and the KDP intelligence service “Parastin” were stationed primarily in the bases of al-Qale and Şilikiyê on the Tigris River. They began interrogating travelers from Rojava to southern Kurdistan, especially members of the Self-Defense Forces. A runway for Turkish reconnaissance aircraft was established on Bêxêr Mountain, which faces the border with Rojava.
Complete encirclement after the Şengal agreement
On October 9, 2020, an agreement was reached between the Iraqi government and the KDP, under the direction of the Turkish state, to dissolve the self-government of Şengal and divide control of the region. The agreement was signed under the supervision of former Dutch Defense Minister and UN Special Rapporteur Jeanine Antoinette Hennis-Plasschaert and had the support of the U.S., British and German governments. As early as December, the KDP again deployed special forces to the border area and increased the size of outposts. In the past two and a half months, three new bases have been established near the village of Mahmudiyê. Together with these outposts, this means that at least 66 bases and hundreds of positions have been established along the 33-kilometer border of the KDP area with West Kurdistan. This means that the border to Rojava is de facto completely sealed off.
Economic embargo prevails
Time and again, the KDP closes the Sêmalka/Pêşxabûr border crossing and practices an embargo against Rojava. After the al-Kadhimi government in Iraq joined the KDP’s and Turkey’s anti-Kurdish policies, the al-Walid border crossing near Şengal was also repeatedly closed. People from Rojava who want to cross the Sêmalka border crossing into South Kurdistan have to apply months in advance and obtain permission from the KDP’s intelligence agency Parastin.
Iraq builds wall
To increase pressure, the Iraqi military began building a wall along the border between Şengal and Rojava in March. The construction was prepared with the laying of barbed wire and the installation of camera towers. The aim is to build a wall 3.75 meters high and 250 kilometers long, which will isolate the Şengal region and make it dependent. Since 2019, the KDP has already tried to encircle the Medya Defense Zones with its special forces and repeatedly laid deadly ambushes against the guerrillas.
Triple encirclement serves Turkish expansionism
The triple cut-off is intended to effectively sever the link between Şengal, Rojava and the Medya Defense Zones. For this purpose, the AKP/MHP regime has enlisted the KDP and the Iraqi government.
Infighting between a number of SNA groups in the Turkish-occupied city of Afrin has left several dead & more injured. Clashes between Mu’tasim Billah & the 9th Division left 2 militia members of the former group dead & 10 others wounded.
Concurrent clashes also occurred between al-Jabhat al-Shamiyah & the 51st Division. Turkey has reportedly closed its borders to members of the SNA, particularly of al-Jabhat al-Shamiyah.
U.S., Russia Allies Witness Friction in Northeast Syria
Friday March 4th, 2022 by ASHARQ AL-AWSAT (London-based pan-Arab)
Clashes between the Syrian regime and the SDF occurred in al-Hassakeh, according to Asharq al-Awsat.
Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) deploy outside Ghweran prison in Syria’s northeastern city of Hassakeh. (Photo by – / AFP)
Syrian government forces used automatic weapons to attack a military checkpoint in the village of Kozliya in the northern countryside of al-Hassakeh governorate. The outpost was run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is backed by the Washington-led International Coalition. The attack resulted in the death of a government officer and soldier and two SDF fighters. “Damascus has launched a provocative attack against the SDF in the vicinity of Kozliya, which is located west of Tal Tamar,” said a commander in the Tal Tamar Military Council which operates under SDF rule. “Our forces immediately responded to this attack, as a result of which two of our fighters were martyred and another was wounded, while two soldiers from the regime forces were killed, and two others were wounded,” revealed the commander who requested anonymity.
The clashes that took place on Tuesday resulted in four deaths, including an officer with the rank of first lieutenant. The commander indicated that the command of the forces “is following up the investigation to clarify the cause of this serious incident, and based on the results of the investigations, necessary action will be taken.” The official SANA news agency said that a “patrol of U.S. forces accompanied by members of the SDF militia tried to penetrate points controlled by the Syrian army” in the Hassakeh governorate. It did not mention whether there were victims but said the SDF attacked after soldiers blocked the patrol’s passage. The SDF confirmed the toll in a statement. It did not mention the presence of U.S. personnel and called the incident “a dangerous provocation by the Syrian regime.” The war in Syria is estimated to have killed nearly half a million people and displaced millions more since it began with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in 2011. It quickly spiraled into a complex conflict that pulled in numerous actors, including jihadist groups and foreign powers. Russia intervened militarily in Syria more than six years ago to shore up President Bashar al-Assad. Neighboring Turkey views some Syrian Kurdish fighters as “terrorists” and has launched several operations against them.
This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The New York-based rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Friday voiced major concern about the fate of recaptured Islamic State (ISIS) detainees following the Hasaka prison siege around two weeks ago.
Five days since the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced complete control over the al-Sina’a prison in Hasaka, northeast Syria (Rojava), HRW expressed concern over a lack of transparency from the Kurdish-led force over the fate of the detainees and their whereabouts in the aftermath of the assault, and has called on the force to permit international humanitarian groups to visit the detainees and provide them with care.
“The Syrian Democratic Forces began evacuating men and boys from the besieged prison days ago, yet the world still has no idea how many are alive or dead,” Letta Tayler, Associate Director of the Crisis and Conflict Division at HRW said in a statement published on Friday.
Tayler added that, “the detaining authorities in northeast Syria should end their silence on the fate of these detainees, including hundreds of children who were victims of ISIS.”
Sources have told HRW that the detainees are being held in a new, more secure, UK-funded prison facility near al-Sina’a.
Siyamend Ali, head of media for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), a core component of the SDF, told HRW that “everyone is in safe places,” and “they received good care.”
The SDF accused ISIS of using the detained boys as human shields, adding that measures were taken to ensure their safety as the Kurdish force advanced deeper into the facility.
ISIS attempted to break thousands of its affiliates and members out of al-Sina’a prison, known to locals as Ghweran prison. The SDF arrested 26 people who were “active in smuggling and transferring detainees out of Ghweran prison,” it said in a tweet on Sunday.
On Monday, the SDF raised the death toll from the brazen prison break attempt to 495 people, with 121 SDF fighters, prison guards, and civilians, as well as 374 ISIS members.
According to the rights organization, the now-defunct prison facility in Hasaka housed around 4,000 male ISIS suspects, including 700 boys, most from Syria and Iraq and the rest from dozens of other countries.
SDF officials have placed the figure at around 5,000 prisoners.
The Kurdish force last week called on the international community to accelerate repatriation efforts of their ISIS-affiliated nationals.
On Thursday, the Netherlands repatriated five Dutch women and eleven children from Roj camp, which holds thousands of suspected ISIS-affiliated members and their families. Tayler welcomed the news, commenting that, “16 more Dutch home; many more to go. As Netherlands demonstrates, adults can be prosecuted upon return.”
As we reach the four-year anniversary of Turkey’s sadistic occupation of Afrin in Rojava, it is helpful to look back at how this terrifying reality came to be. Not only is the state of Turkey illegally establishing their own terrorist vilayets throughout northern Syria, which feature every human rights abuse the mind can conjure up, but they are doing so as a NATO member and with the acquiescence of Western states who claim to be fighting a “war on terror” against the very thing which Turkey represents. And since it is in the Kurdish city of Afrin where Turkey’s sociopathic barbarism and pathological hatred of Kurds is most on display, this open-air crime scene is a helpful case study. As if you want to diagnose an illness, you must first understand its symptoms.
Why Turkey invaded Afrin
The city and lush mountainous area around Afrin has been a Kurdish cultural hub for more than a millennia. Over the centuries, Afrin developed as the center of a distinctive Sufi “Kurdish Islam”, which was less conservative, and more secularly tolerant than surrounding regions. In fact, Afrin has always had the fewest mosques of any place in Syria and its inhabitants were typically not strict adherents to religious conventions. Consequently, vibrant Yazidi, Alevi, and Christian communities historically thrived there as well. This embedded culture of accepting diversity was rooted all the way into the present, when Afrin became a welcoming haven for refugees fleeing the violence throughout Syria’s Civil War.
In the spring of 2012, the Syrian Government pulled out of Afrin, which laid the foundation for what would later become the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) to take over in January of 2014. From 2014, until Turkey’s military invasion in January of 2018, Afrin blossomed into a flourishing and peaceful Canton of around 700,000 people. Because of the lack of sectarian tensions and area’s reputation for being accepting of cultural and religious differences, around 400,000 refugees and IDPs of all ethnicities within Syria escaped to Afrin. As such, although Afrin was a majority Kurdish city and Canton, it was also home to Arabs, Assyrians, and Turkmen.
Unfortunately, the harmonious social fabric that was being constructed in Afrin was seen as an existential threat by the Turkish regime of Tayyip Erdogan across the border, for two reasons. For starters, it showed that the Kurdish-led Democratic Confederalist experiment taking place throughout Rojava / northern Syria was a viable model for the entire Middle East region. And, secondly, this progressive-minded philosophy was a direct rebuke of the ultra-conservative and nationalist AKP & MHP alliance of Erdogan’s coalition, which was centered around Turkish ethnic chauvinism against Kurds and a fascistic re-interpretation of Salafi Islam, that was embodied by groups such as ISIS and other radical jihadist proxies—who by 2018 were the only allies Turkey had left in Syria.
Thus, Erdogan decided that he would use the Turkish military alongside a coalition of Islamist jihadists to invade, encircle, destroy, ethnically cleanse, and occupy the Canton of Afrin in January of 2018—with the goal of establishing a semi-annexed Turkified quasi-colony, with outside settlers who were indebted and thus loyal to his regime.
How Turkey invaded Afrin
The Turkish invasion was cynically carried out under the pretext of protecting its national security from the local forces in Afrin. However, the Turkish Government never provided evidence about the existence of any threats to its national security from Afrin, as none had occurred. Nevertheless, because Ankara was averse to risking the lives of their own soldiers, they contracted out Afrin’s invasion to a coalition of radical Islamist groups numbering upwards of 25,000 – that were trained, armed, and paid by Turkey. These groups included various jihadist militants such as Ahrar al-Sham, the Sham Legion, and ex-ISIS fighters—as was reported by The Independent. Behind them were around 6,400 soldiers of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and members of the neo-fascist Grey Wolves from Turkey, who relied mostly on artillery shelling, a relentless bombing campaign from Turkish jets—since Afrin had no anti-aircraft defenses—and heavy armor salvoes, since Afrin’s defenders also lacked tanks.
Turkey’s illegal military invasion of Afrin—which was absurdly named “Operation Olive Branch”—officially began on January 20, 2018, and was a flagrant violation of international law, i.e. attacking the territory of a sovereign state without the authorization of the official authorities. To achieve victory, Turkey’s military deliberately targeted densely populated cities and towns, killing around 500 innocent civilians, including women, children, and the elderly in the first weeks. Turkey also indiscriminately shot refugees fleeing from conflict areas and used chemical gas to attack Kurdish resistance fighters. In doing so, Turkey and its affiliated Islamist extremist groups breached the Geneva Conventions and committed a litany of war crimes—as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The ideological motivations of Turkey’s invading force was soon evidently clear, as the jihadists who comprised the vast majority of ground troops viewed the Kurdish population of Afrin as “atheists” deserving of death. This was portrayed in a series of videos where the Turkish proxies threatened to cut off the heads of Kurds who they described as “infidels”; or another where several international Islamists sung praises of previous battles where they had fought, including Tora Bora (the former headquarters of Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan), Grozny in Chechnya, and Dagestan in Russia. This aforementioned video was concluded by them declaring “And now Afrin is calling to us”.
Then as the fighting began, several videos soon emerged showing Turkish-backed militants mutilating and posing for selfies with the bodies of Kurdish YPJ women fighters, with one in particular portraying a young woman codenamed Barin Kobani, who had her breasts cut off – followed by chants of “God is great”. With such heinous beliefs as their driving force and coupled with overwhelming military superiority, Turkey’s military would encircle and fully occupy Afrin after sixty-three days of bombardment.
During those attacks a number of credible observers would warn of Turkey’s abuses, such as The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, who cautioned, “In the city of Afrin, which was captured by Turkish forces yesterday, scores of civilians have been killed and injured due to airstrikes, ground-based strikes, and explosive hazards, and thousands have been displaced.” This matched the diagnosis of Human Rights Watch (HRW), which criticized Turkey for having, “failed to take necessary precautions to avoid civilian casualties” during the offensive, with HRW’s deputy Middle East director Lama Fakih opining how, “It appears that vulnerable civilians are facing displacement and death because of the way Turkey’s latest offensive is being conducted.”
What Turkey has done since occupying Afrin
Turkey’s occupation of Afrin and its surrounding 282 towns and villages officially began on March 25, 2018, and the brutal policies and actions of their subjugation in the four years since have turned this once thriving oasis of ethnic and religious solidarity, into a dystopian nightmare where over 300,000 mostly-Kurds have been displaced.
The oppression was foreshadowed from the moment the city fell under Turkish control, as the first action of the invading Islamist forces was to destroy Afrin’s statue of the mythical Kurdish figure Kawa the Blacksmith, which is central to the Kurd’s Newroz (New Year) festival, and according to legend symbolizes the struggle for freedom against tyranny. Fittingly, from that day forward, Erdogan’s regime, the Turkish Army, and their allied militant proxies have carried out a systematic campaign of unrelenting state terrorism.
As I previously noted in my September 2019 speech before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Afrin’s Kurdish population are suffering social oppression, economic robbery, and cultural annihilation.
Socially, the Kurds of Afrin are suffering arbitrary arrest, assaults, torture, rapes, human trafficking, sexual enslavement, assassinations, enforced disappearances at checkpoints, late-night abductions by criminal gangs, burning down of their villages, and neighborhood demolition to build walls around the city.
Economically, the Kurds of Afrin are suffering looting of stores, seizure of homes, stealing of cars, pillaging of livestock, confiscation of land, forced sharia taxes, extortion of businesses, over 5,000 kidnappings for ransom, deliberate arson of over 11,000 hectares of forest, and the systematic theft of Afrin’s olive oil industry – which is then illegally sold in Europe.
Culturally, the Kurds of Afrin are suffering demographic ethnic cleansing, Turkification of the education system and street names, destruction of Kurdish cultural monuments, vandalism of tombs, pillaging of grave sites, desecration of Alevi and Yazidi holy shrines, cutting down of sacred ribbon trees, and the archaeological excavation and smuggling of over 16,000 historical artifacts – which are then illegally sold to museums in Turkey.
On other occasions, Afrin’s residents are threatened by gangs of “brokers” into obligatory land sales at set prices, which are supervised by MIT Turkish intelligence with the goal of transferring legal ownership to new settlers. Meanwhile, the largest and most luxurious homes are often commandeered by mercenaries under the pretext of turning them into military headquarters or torture chambers, as SDC US representative Sinam Sherkany has written about with regards to her own family home.
Moreover, a 2019 report to the High Commissioner’s Office of the United Nations Human Rights Council noted how, “The victims of abductions by armed groups and/or criminal gangs were often of Kurdish origin, as well as civilians perceived as being prosperous, including doctors, businesspersons and merchants”, while also noting how, “young men arrested on suspicion of being affiliated with Kurdish structures were forced to pay a fine of $400 in order to be released.”
The motivations for all these actions are: terrorizing Kurdish residents to incentivize them to leave in order to accelerate resettlement plans, accruing financial gain to pay off Turkey’s many radical Islamist militias who are motivated by state-sanctioned “jihad”, and obliterating Kurdish cultural identity and archaeological multi-ethnicity to enable a Turkification strategy for a de-facto annexation of Afrin.
With regards to resettlement and population transfers, from the start of Afrin’s occupation the Turkish Army and its allied militants began emptying all Kurdish villages with the goal of bringing in loyal Arab outsiders from other parts of Syria. At least half of these mercenary families numbering over 40,000 were brought to Afrin from eastern Ghouta, eastern Qalamoun, and southern Damascus, and have connections to jihadist factions such as the Al Rahman Legion and the Army of Islam. In other instances, families from Idlib, belonging to the al-Nusra Front and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have been resettled in Afrin, while families from other Turkish-occupied Syrian cities such as Azaz, al-Bab, and Jarablus were given abandoned villages that persecuted Yazidis were forced to flee from. In many of these instances, markings were painted on the outside of stolen homes, which was reminiscent of what ISIS did to the Christians of Raqqa and Mosul.
With regards to funding Turkey’s state-sanctioned “jihad”, at the onset of Afrin’s assault, Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (aka Diyanet) called all mosques in Turkey to read The Quran’s chapter 48 on conquest (Al-Fath) and asked that all Muslims pray for invading Turkish soldiers. Fatwas were then issued by the Istanbul-based Syrian Islamic Council supporting various war crimes, such as one in February of 2018, defending the looting of private property as “jihad for the sake of Allah” and merely the “spoils of war”; and ones in May and June of 2018, which describe the mostly-Kurdish PYD as “spiteful”, “secular”, “corrupt”, and “deviant”—thereby justifying a range of mistreatment and theft in relation to them.
Turkey’s Diyanet is also overseeing a coordinated effort to impose Sharia law and strict Islamic dress (veil) on women, similar to what ISIS did, while destroying ancient religious Alevi and Yazidi shrines and replacing them with private mosques—as the first step to forced conversions. At one point it became so egregious that a retired Turkish General himself spoke out, decrying afterwards how, “It is as if we are preparing the region for militant jihadists [like ISIS], and my colleagues who served in the area suffer from the moral humiliation of the way the operation evolved.”
With regards to Yazidis—who ISIS tried to eradicate themselves through genocide—their shrines named after Barsa Khatum, Jil Khaneh, King Adi, and Qara Jerneh, plus Sheikhs Hamid, Gahrib, Barakat, and Manan, have all been destroyed under Turkey’s occupation; while the Yazidi villages of Qastel Jindo, Alqino, Bafalon, Sinka, Qatma, Basoufan, Ghazawiyeh, Iska, Arsh Qibar, Ishkan Sharqi, Shih Al Dir, and Ain Dara have been completely uprooted and emptied.
As for Alevis, the shrines at Yagmur Dada, Ali Dada and Aslan Dada in the Bulbul district were looted and destroyed. In both cases of Yazidis and Alevis, gravesites were vandalized and destroyed, because authorities said they violated a new law requiring a lower height, which mimics the legal justifications that ISIS used against idolatry as well. The discrimination and desecration has even extended to the sacred perennial trees in many villages where Alevis tie little ribbons to and make wishes, which Turkey’s Islamists have cut down as a result.
Turkey’s desecration extends to the archaeological realm as well, which began during the invasion when Turkish airstrikes destroyed many ancient buildings including the Julianus Church—which is one of the oldest Christian sanctuaries in the world, the famous Iron-Age Ain Dara Temple, the Syriac Maronite tomb of Saint Maron, and site of Brad (which were UNESCO World Heritage Sites). Less notable Roman-Era Byzantine monasteries and cemeteries were also destroyed, ostensibly because they pre-dated Islam to the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE.
This practice coincides with how Turkey has pillaged through 35 historical mounds in various parts of Afrin including Ereb Shexo, El-Didriye, Zivinge, Ibedan, Sewan, Qurbe, Ster, En Hecere, Kefer Rume, Cumke, Sindiyange, Durumiye and Meydanke. In these situations the grave areas are bulldozed and exhumed in search of gold and precious objects. Politically, Turkey also destroyed the shrine dedicated to the Kurdish revolutionary and writer Mehmet Nuri Dersimi (1893-1973) alongside his wife Farida, showing the ethnic connection to such symbolic defilements.
Lastly, with regards to Ankara’s Turkification strategy, the claim of them liberating “Syrian” territory was called into question from the first moment of conquest in Afrin, when the Turkish military raised the Turkish flag over government buildings and not the flag of their so-called “Free Syrian Army”. The Turkish state then began forcing schoolchildren to carry the Turkish flag in propaganda videos, while praising pictures of Erdogan. This was followed up by changing the official names of places from Kurdish into Turkish, banning the Kurdish language, issuing Turkish ID and temporary residence cards, and appointing a Wali (Custodian) and Qaim Maqam (Governor) in Afrin and linking it to the Turkish province of Antakya.
All of these point to the unfortunate reality that the Turkish state has no intention of ever leaving Afrin, as they intend to permanently occupy it, similar to how they have Hatay (Liwa Iskenderun) since 1939 and northern Cyprus since 1974. Which is all the more reason why the international community must stand up now and demand that Turkey leave Afrin and all the other areas of Syria they have terrorized and seized.
SDF operation continues after ISIS prison attack in Heseke
The circle around ISIS has tightened as the operation against members of the mercenary organization continues in Hesekê after an attack and mass outbreak attempt at Sina prison.
ANF HESEKÊ Saturday, 22 Jan 2022, 13:56
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which had arrived in the evening to provide support, sealed off the neighbourhood and the area around Sina prison with a wide security corridor. After the attack, the SDF and Asayish maintained control around the prison. The SDF announced on Friday that 89 mercenaries who tried to escape from prison have been captured.
Sporadic clashes continue in the Ghweiran neighborhood between the Asayish, SDF and the ISIS mercenaries. The siege around the group has been tightened and particular attention is paid to civilian safety in the ongoing operation.
According to reports from the ground, many ISIS members have been killed and another group has been captured. The international anti-ISIS Coalition jets and helicopters have carried out strikes in the area since yesterday. In the meantime, the General Command of North-East Syrian Internal Security Forces released a statement on Saturday, saying that they have foiled the attacks with the support of the Syrian Democratic Forces and a number of terrorists have been captured. In addition, a search operation has been launched for the mercenaries hiding in the neighborhoods around the prison.
“7 of our members were injured and our comrade Xalid Ilêwî martyred during the events. Three civilians who did not allow ISIS mercenaries to enter the neighborhood have also fallen as martyrs,” said the statement.
The statement by Internal Security Forces added, “Our forces have completely encircled the Ghweiran neighborhood. The operations launched to capture the mercenaries in the neighborhood continue unabated. We promise to follow in the footsteps of our martyrs to ensure security in the entire region.”
YPG International: With the spirit of the resistance of Afrin, against all occupation in Rojava
The YPG international released a statement to pay tribute to the resistance of Afrin and the fallen fighters, including international martyrs Şehîd Hêlîn Qerecox, Şehîd Kendal Breizh, Şehîd Baran Galicia, Şehîd Şahîn Huseynî.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Thursday, 20 Jan 2022, 10:31
Today is the fourth anniversary of the day the Turkish state launched its invasion of Afrin (Efrîn). The YPG International released a statement and paid tribute to the resistance of Afrin and the fallen fighters, including international martyrs, Şehîd Hêlîn Qerecox, Şehîd Kendal Breizh, Şehîd Baran Galicia, Şehîd Şahîn Huseynî.
The statement reminds that Afrin is “a region which local comrades call ‘the heart of the revolution’. Together with its jihadist mercenaries (many affiliated with Daesh or Al Qaeda) the Turkish army began its campaign of terror and occupation against the people of Efrîn and the democratic revolution being built by the people of Rojava. For two months the brave fighters of the Women’s protection units (YPJ) and the people’s protection units (YPG) defended the freedom of their homeland with an immense resistance.
Shoulder to shoulder with the people of Efrîn were our Internationalist comrades, participating in the defence against the fascist attacks. The hope which the revolution in Rojava represents makes the building of a truly free society worth all sacrifices. A revolution in which genuine democracy, ecology and the liberation of women are the foundations which our comrades strive towards. As internationalists, we join in the struggle against fascism and for an alternative way of life to capitalist modernity.”
The statement added: “YPG International has been present since the war of liberation against Daesh and the aggression of the Turkish state and its Islamic gangs. We continue to defend Rojava against all threats and play our role in the growth and success of the revolution. Shining examples and sources of constant inspiration are the comrades who gave their lives in the defence of Efrîn. Our international martyrs, Şehîd Hêlîn Qerecox, Şehîd Kendal Breizh, Şehîd Baran Galicia, Şehîd Şahîn Huseynî are amongst the many brave comrades who sacrificed everything. Their willingness to fight far from home against a ruthless and highly equipped enemy for our common ideals is still today, four years later, a huge source of motivation for all comrades here in Rojava, and abroad. We follow the path that our martyrs have paved for us; continuing our struggle is the way in which we remember and honour our fallen friends.”
The statement continued: “Now, after four years of occupation by the Fascist Turkish state and its jihadist gangs, the people of Efrîn still face atrocities on a daily basis. A system of ethnic cleansing of the region is being carried out, alongside disappearances, tortures, rapes, and the destruction of the graveyards of our martyrs. The Fascist Turkish state acts as a colonising power, forbidding and destroying the Kurdish culture, plundering resources, displacing the local population, and politically and economically annexing the region. Despite acknowledging the crimes against humanity being carried out by the occupiers, the international state community refuses to act. With new threats of invasion from the Fascist Turkish state, the freedom of Rojava is once again in danger today.”
This is why, said the statement, “we as an internationalist force place our trust and effort in solidarity and comradeship from people across the globe to assist in our fight, whether that means coming and joining the struggle here in Rojava, or supporting it from afar – there are many frontlines in the fight for a free society. The revolution in Rojava represents more than just the freedom of North and Eastern Syria, but is an example of hope and inspiration for all oppressed and exploited people across the world. All comrades of YPG International are dedicated to put action behind our words, and will remain a fighting force to defend the revolution from fascist attacks in all its spheres. Whilst the states do not act when confronted with the crimes in Efrîn, it is the people of the world who take action, sacrifice their lives, and make a difference in the defence of freedom.”
The statement concluded: “The anniversary of the war on Efrîn is for us once more a reminder of what misery and pain such an occupation brings to the people. We especially also remember and seek strength from our fallen friends – as we say in Kurdish, Şehîd namirin (Martyrs never die). As YPG International we make a promise to the people of North and Eastern Syria and to all of our comrades across the globe – We will defend the success of the Rojava revolution at all costs.”
Northwest Syria witnesses shelling between government and opposition
2022-01-02
IDLIB, Syria (North Press) – The de-escalation areas in northwest Syria witnessed military escalation and exchange of shelling between the Syrian government forces and Turkish-backed opposition factions on Sunday.
The opposition factions’ sites in the villages of al-Enkawi, Qalidin, al-Daqmaq, al-Hamidiya and Khirbat al-Naqus in the Ghab Plain, west of Hama, were bombed by the heavy artillery shelling and missiles of the government forces ,North Press reported military sources of the opposition.
“The opposition sites in the villages and towns of Fatterah, Kafr Oweid, Sfuhen, Kansafra and Fleifel in the Zawiya Mountain area, south of Idlib, were bombed. The government bombardment also hit the opposition’ sites in the area near al-Kabina in Jabal al-Akrad, north of Latakia,” the sources added.
The bombing coincided with intense flight of Russian reconnaissance planes over the region, according to the same sources.
“The opposition factions announced targeting the Syrian government forces’ sites near Khan al-Sabil ,southeast of Idlib. The Syrian government forces’ sites in Jabal Abu Ali, north of Lattakia, were also hit with while mortar shells by the opposition factions ” according to the sources.
For about a week, separate areas in northwest Syria have witnessed military escalation, which left dead and wounded from both sides.
Although the de-escalation zone in northwest Syria is subject to a Russian-Turkish ceasefire agreement signed in March 2020, the area witnesses frequent mutual bombardment despite the entry of the ceasefire into force.
The YPJ General Command said in its New Year’s message that they are ready to fulfil all their responsibilities “for a free and dignified life”.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Saturday, 1 Jan 2022, 09:52
The YPJ (Women Protection Units) General Command said in its New Year’s message that they are ready to fulfil all their responsibilities “for a free and dignified life”.
The YPJ General Command especially called on women to organize and build their self-defense forces.
The message said: “We will fight for the freedom of women and society to be guaranteed, whatever the cost.”
The message added:
“In 2021, occupation and all kinds of enemy attacks continued uninterruptedly in Northern and Eastern Syria. Many valuable patriots lost their lives in these attacks. Likewise, our esteemed commander Sosin Bîrhat and other comrades fell as martyrs. But thanks to our esteemed martyrs, the resistance, the will of our people, and the self-sacrificing spirit of our freedom fighters, the enemy’s plans will not achieve their goal. With this in mind, we commemorate our martyrs with respect and renew our promise that we will follow their path. Again, we salute the work and sacrifice of our people led by women.
In addition, in 2021, especially in the Middle East and all over the world, women were subjected to all kinds of oppression, violence, massacre, rape and other attacks. The male-dominated system has turned women’s lives into hell with such violence against women. Women all over the world have stood up to these attacks and have demonstrated unparalleled resistance. Women in Northern and Eastern Syria, especially Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and Armenians, fought relentlessly against the invasion attacks and the patriarchal mentality.”
The statement continued: “Women all over the world need to build a legitimate defense system in order to be able to wage a permanent struggle against the understanding of power and the occupying fascist system. Now we call women freedom time. Women now have an organization and an army. The reality of the revolution in Northern and Eastern Syria has shown that women can lead a democratic and free society.
Our self-defense system has reached a level thanks to the heroism of thousands of martyrs, creating great hope for all women in the region and the world. From today on, whatever the cost, we are ready to fight for a free and dignified life for free women and society, and we will fulfil our responsibilities.
We call on women whose hearts beat for freedom to organize themselves and build their self-defense forces.
In 2022, we celebrate the new year of all humanity and working women and say JIN JYAN AZADI.”
The first limited edition of Ron Riley’s ‘Yorkshire Rebel’ appeared in 2013 , the year of the 50th Anniversary of E P Thompson’s seminal ‘Making of the English Working Class’, in which he set out to rescue early working class radicals from ‘the condescension of posterity’. The present revised, updated and new format edition was launched in 2020 to mark the bicentenary of the Yorkshire Radical uprising, which is the central theme of the book. Ron Riley’s work is therefore very timely as he sets out to rescue one of those revolutionaries, not only from condescension but also from obscurity, vividly locating him in that time of profound economic, social and political changes which have become subsumed under the title of the Industrial Revolution.
The picture Ron Riley paints is in stark contrast to the Jane Austen view of the period. He describes the trials and tribulations of working class life and work in careful detail, reconstructing conditions in the West Riding communities which shaped Lindley’s view of the world. The reader can almost feel the heat of the nail-makers workshop where Lindley learned his trade.
The wider backdrop of movements and ideas is also clearly described, bringing to life the political ferment which influenced Lindley’s ideas and set him and hundreds of others on a course of action which could have proved fatal. Although we have no record of Lindley’s personal thoughts, the milieu in which he circulated gives us some idea of what his concerns and ideals must have been. Ron Riley again depicts this with precision – the mounting anticipation of the insurrection, the disillusionment of defeat and the anxiety of the treason trials.
Ron Riley also follows Lindley on the convict ship and into exile in Van Diemen’s Land showing that he was no ordinary convict, but a man with some standing and respect both in the community he left and, as his early return home testifies, the one he was transported to.
The immense changes during Lindley’s remaining lifetime are also brought into the picture. ‘Yorkshire Rebel’ is not merely the story of one man, but an account of the working class in the West Riding as a whole. Ron Riley has not been content to rest with John Lindley as a small twig on a family tree. He has generated not only a rich foliage and colourful blossoms but also described the ecology in which John Lindley and other working class radicals flourished. ‘Yorkshire Rebel’ is an important contribution to our working class heritage and a valuable reminder of the struggles for freedom which still have a resonance today.
It has been a tough twelve months for bricks and mortar bookshops so I would love to think that potential readers would like to put orders their way. If you want to read the book but money is tight, you can also buy a paperback edition on Amazon for a bit less than the hardcover. £19.99 for the hardcover and £15.99 for the paperback.
Zagros Hiwa: ‘Human values, natural rights and law should not be a turned into a bargaining chip’
KCK’s Zagros Hiwa spoke for the first time to Medya News, for all those readers who are not only interested in reading but also listening to what he had to say on key matters, uncensored.
In response to the questions we sent, Zagros Hiwa, spokesperson of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella organisation that includes the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), talked to Medya News in this exclusive interview.
Aged 45, Zagros Hiwa was born in the Kurdish region of Iran and studied English language and literature from the University of Sanandaj before he earned his Masters degree in teaching English as a foreign language.
Hiwa joined the PKK in 2001 following the arrest of Abdullah Öcalan in 1999. As he reportedly said in an interview in 2016, Öcalan’s arrest “spoke volumes about the abandonment Kurds have historically been subjected to.” He said that after reading Abdullah Öcalan’s books and discussing his ideas with fellow Kurds, he decided to join the Kurdish movement in 2001,’
What does the increasing flow of asylum-seekers from Iraqi Kurdistan in the past few months and the recent student protests in Sulaymaniya and other cities indicate? How do you assess the economic and political situation in Iraqi Kurdistan with a debt crisis going on for at least seven years, and the Kurdistan Regional Government’s compliance with Turkey’s aggressions for years and the maintenance of its negative stance against the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria? The KDP has recently issued a statement, saying Turkey does not have a problem with the Kurds but with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and that Rojava has to cut off its relations with the PKK. How do you evaluate this statement in particular and the general debate it refers to, that draws a line between the Kurds and the PKK?
Well, there are two main reasons for the situation on the Belarus and Poland border. Many of those stranded on the border are Kurds from South Kurdistan [preferred usage of the KCK spokesperson in addressing Iraqi Kurdistan]. Instead of discussing the everyday politics of Belarus and Poland, or Russia or Europe we have to go to the root causes. Where do these people want to go?
They want to go to Europe and the West. Why Europe? Because they think that they can have a better life there, much better from that of their own country. Here we come to the first root cause. The forces of capitalist modernity have for hundreds of years looted the resources of the countries of Middle East, Asia, and Africa, and carried them to the West.
They have built a paradise-like life for themselves in the west, at the cost of turning life into hell in other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The luxury life in Europe cannot be built based on the continent’s own resources. Unless they loot the resources of the countries of the Middle East, they cannot build such a life there.
Evading hell and going to paradise is a dream of humanity. We have this in sacred books. We cannot criminalise this intention. When you build a paradise on earth at the cost of turning the life and land of others into hell, it is quite normal that people would want to desert hell and enter paradise.
People from all walks of life, be they old or young, men or women, sell all the properties they have, risk their own life, risk drowning in the oceans and freezing to death in the forests in order to reach paradise in Europe. So, the forces of ‘capitalist modernity’ are responsible for this exodus, for they have set the ground for it. Therefore, they are the first to be held responsible for this situation.
Secondly, the dictatorial regimes of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, and Latin America have confiscated and monopolised what has been left behind of these stolen resources. They use these remnants to live a posh life for themselves and deprive other people of living an honourable life. They deprive people of all the opportunities and resources of their countries. People are left hungry and jobless. They destroy the dreams of the young for a better future, for they are so indulged in corruption. They curtail freedoms, oppress any voice of dissent, build their own network of nepotism, favouritism, and kleptocracy. They are not democratic.
As far as Kurdistan is concerned, these two factors ruining the fabric of society are at full force. Also, there is an additional factor in Kurdistan. The Kurdish land has been occupied by four states and the Kurds have been subjected to cultural and political genocide.
Forcing people to leave Kurdistan and replacing them with jihadist Arabs is one dimension of this genocide. Particularly, South Kurdistan has been turned into a laboratory for implementing capitalist modernity and imposing it on the people’s life via an undemocratic KDP-led administration which is a collaborator with the main enemy of the Kurds, that is, the Turkish state.
Turkey and the KDP are working together to deplete the Kurdish land from its own human and economic resources. The KDP has made a 5-year security and economic deal with Turkey and has totally become a part of Turkey’s long-term genocidal policies against the Kurds.
The KDP has let the Turkish army build around 70 military bases in South Kurdistan, from Zakho in the north to Mosul in the south. It also gives full support to the intelligence and espionage activities of the Turkish secret service MIT [the National Intelligence Organisation] in South Kurdistan and Iraq.
So, when the youth see that their land has been occupied by Turkey, their resources looted by tribal rulers, and they have been left jobless without a future, they decide to leave their own land and go to Europe. Forces of capitalist modernity, the occupiers of Kurdistan and collaborators like the KDP have turned the land of paradise, have turned Kurdistan, into a hell. And people from all walks of life want to leave this hell.
The recent protests in Sulaymaniyah are concerned, the students’ reaction against this system of corruption and kleptocracy which has deprived them of their stipends for nearly seven years. University students observe that, on the one side, there are the teenage sons of KDP rulers who own universities, companies, private jets, and oil wells and on the other side, nearly half a million students cannot afford paying the bus and taxi fees. They see this great injustice. That’s why they have decided to stage protests.
Do you think there is a chance of having a consensus between the Syrian administration and AANES, when the former is trying to bring back the past and the latter is trying to build something new? The US administration still hasn’t formally recognised AANES and consequently the ‘international community’ has followed its lead, with all its attendant consequences. Do you believe the Biden administration will recognise it this or next year?
Much has changed since the start of the uprising in Syria in 2011. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives. Millions of people have been either internally displaced or been forced to leave their country. The social and economic fabric has to a large extent been ripped apart. The country’s infrastructure has been destroyed. This has direct implications for the political system too.
President Bashar Assad had already declared that getting the country back to the pre-2011 era is impossible. He had posed the idea of decentralisation. We think this is a good starting point. Syria is like a mosaic of different peoples, different ethnic and religious identities. We think it is high time the authorities in Damascus appreciate these diversities and show tolerance towards a political and administrative system which foresees some degree of self-rule and local administration for these components.
So, Damascus must refrain from imposing Arab nationalism on the peoples which are of other ethnic and religious origins. All the peoples of Syria can get united under the broader idea of Syrian identity.
The US-led international coalition has narrowed down its mission to only fighting ISIS and cooperating with its partners to this end. They have not yet been fully engaged politically with the administrative body of Northeast Syria. Also, the United Nations-led Geneva talks, after many meetings, failed to incorporate Autonomous Administration of North East Syria.
Excluding AANES from the Geneva talks means that big powers, including the USA and Russia, prefer their own interests over the interests of the Syrian peoples. So, the AANES represents a model for the Syrian crisis. This model is based on fraternity between the peoples, democracy, and the freedom of women within the framework of territorial integrity and unity of Syria. If anyone wants a solution for the Syrian crisis, they have to take this model into account and work to ensure that it is represented in international platforms for the solution of the Syrian crisis.
Also, Turkey poses a threat to the solution of the Syrian crisis. There will be no real solution to this crisis as long as Turkey continues its occupation of Syrian lands and its support for radical jihadist terrorist groups. The United States of America and Russia both have competing agendas about the role of Turkey in the Syrian crisis.
The United States uses Turkey to put pressure on the Assad regime and Russia. It turns a blind eye on Turkey’s accommodation of ISIS and Nusra leaders in the areas it has occupied, from Idlib to Serêkaniyê. On the other hand, Russia uses Turkey’s threats of more invasion as a leverage against AANES and tries to take more concessions from it. One wonders why an occupier like Turkey is given a role in Geneva, but an administration which represents nearly all the peoples of Syria and governs one third of Syria is shunned away from Geneva.
The Biden administration’s dealings with the AANES politically will depend on its larger Middle East and North Africa policies. If they want an end to the Syrian crisis, they will deal politically with AANES, but if they want the crisis to continue, they will restrict their interaction only to military matters.
Whatever the policies of big powers may be, the peoples of Northeast Syria and Rojava should know that their own self-organisation, the own self-defence and education is the most crucial factor in bringing about a solution to the Syrian crisis. Having achieved this level of organisation and awareness, they should look for ways to reach an agreement with the authorities in Damascus, based on the democratisation of Syria, based on freedom, and justice. The future of Syria is spelled by the fraternity between Kurds and Arabs, Christians and Muslims, Shiites and Sunnis.
What do you think the economic and political situation in Turkey will be now, as the crash of the Turkish currency and the slide towards hyper-inflation signals a severe economic crisis?
The key words to answer this are Erdogan’s remarks on 9 February 2019, when he lamented those who criticised his government over the rising prices of basic goods, particularly vegetables and fruits. In front of a pro-AKP crowd, he called on his critics: “Do you know how much a bullet costs?”
Well, this question explains the underlying reason for the current economic crisis in Turkey, reasons for high inflation, for the free fall of the Turkish Lira. The AKP-MHP fascist rule has invested a lot in their genocidal war in Kurdistan. They have usurped all of Turkey’s resources to fight the Kurds, to evict the Kurds from their ancestral lands, on which they have lived for more than 12,000 years.
They have given many political and particularly economic concessions to foreign powers in order to get their support for their genocidal campaign against the Kurds. According to the findings of the London-based Democratic Progress Institute, the Turkish state’s war on the Kurds has cost the country three trillion dollars.
Well, to quote from state authorities, we can refer to the Parliament’s speaker, Köksal Toptan, who had stated, in 2007, that this war has cost the country 250 billion dollars. He was followed by Cemil Çiçek, who said a year later that the amount was 300 billion dollars. Three years later, in 2011, Faruk Çelik stated that the cost has been 400 billion dollars.
Erdogan himself kept the figure at 300 billion dollars in his 2013 speech. Now, at a time when Erdogan reaches out to the United Arab Emirates for a 10 billion dollar loan to slow down the fall of the lira, you can imagine the status of the Turkish currency had Turkey not used all this money for its genocidal war against the Kurds.
As long as the Kurdish question is left unresolved, the economic crisis in Turkey will further deepen and people will face high inflation, they will face unemployment more than any time before. We can say that the political and ideological mind-set of Turkish authorities and of the Turkish state are the main cause of the economic problems and the lira’s collapse.
The only cure to the current economic crisis is a change in the mind-set and mentality of Turkish authorities towards democratisation, human rights, women’s rights, and more importantly, towards the solution of the Kurdish question. They have to abandon the policy of denial and genocide against the Kurds.
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CoE) has been called upon to take the aggravated life imprisonment sentence given to the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan as an item in its agenda. Do you believe that the CoE may push Turkey more to comply with international laws and the decision of the European Court of Human Rights? How do you evaluate international ‘silence’ regarding the ‘special law’ applied in Imralı Prison for 23 years?
The Kurdish question in its modern form is the making of European countries. The Treaty of Lausanne sacrificed the Kurds, their identity, their existence, politically and socially, for the interests of big powers and regional states.
The land of the Kurds was divided into four parts and the Kurds were left with a destiny of denial, assimilation, and genocide. Great European powers like Britain, France and Germany are party to this treaty and are therefore responsible for the plight and sufferings of the Kurds.
Leader Apo [Abdullah Öcalan], as the leader of Kurds, took the problem to the European political platform after 76 years and called on the EU-member states to contribute to the solution of the problem they had created for the Kurds and the whole Middle East. But his call not only fell on deaf ears but also these states denied him a safe stay in Europe. Europeans states which claim that they are the cradle of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law failed in the face of a real test to these values.
In order to deny Leader Apo a stay in Germany, German courts cancelled the arrest warrants they had issued for him some ten years earlier. Germany violated and trampled its own laws and denied Leader Apo entry to the country. Their aim was to deprive him of any platform to express himself, even in German courts.
Like Germany, many EU countries paved the grounds for his kidnapping by the CIA by not recognising his asylum rights. So, they are accomplices in his illegal abduction by the CIA. In fact, by travelling to Europe, Leader Apo wanted to give Europe a leverage over the USA with regard to the Kurdish question.
Playing a positive role in the solution of the Kurdish question would have given Europe more leverage in the Middle East policies. It would have been a win-win solution project for the Kurds and Europe. Leader Apo’s abduction is a violation of the laws of Europe. If there is any trial in this case, EU member-states should sit in the dock, not in the bench. They have violated all legal and humanitarian values by abetting in the handing over of Leader Apo to Turkey.
There is an arbitrarily designed special law applied to an illegally kidnapped leader, a regularly updated detention regime for a person taken hostage. The hostage-takers are always bringing about new rules and arbitrarily putting forward new ransoms. They are taking revenge on him on a day-to-day basis.
There are arbitrary punishments and bans on visits. For example, pacing up and down a courtyard, an activity which is the most natural right of a detainee, is used as an excuse to dictate more punishments on him, be it a ban on family visits or lawyer visits.
Lately, his lawyers have been informed that they have imposed a 6-month-long visit ban on him. He himself describes the detention regime in Imrali as resembling that of Guantanamo, or even going far beyond it.
All these facts show that Leader Apo is treated as a hostage. He is a political hostage, abducted by the conspiracy of international powers, particularly the USA, Britain and Israel. In his person, society has been taken hostage by the state. He is the beating heart and thinking mind of society. And what they want as ransom is his abandoning of his struggle for freedom, democracy and women’s liberation, and ecology.
The 23-years long solitary confinement regime imposed on him is a crime against humanity, against free humanity. It cannot be justified by any national or international law. Leader Apo’s imprisonment situation represents sheer lawlessness and the infringement of all universally-accepted human values and international law.
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe should handle the case as an urgent matter of law and human rights, of the communal and political rights of the Kurdish people. Leader Apo is the leader of the Kurdish people, he is no ordinary hostage.
Until now, the Council of Europe has adopted politically motivated stances with regard to the case. They have made it a matter of a political bargain with Turkey. Human values, natural rights and law should not be a turned into a bargaining chip.
On 3 December, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe determined that Turkey has not fulfilled the requirements of the `right to hope`, a decision taken in 2014. That is, Turkey has violated the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Committee of Ministers. This means that Turkey has acted against the laws of the Council of Europe and the Council of Europe has failed to enact and enforce its own law.
Also, three years ago, the CPT ruled that Leader Apo and the other three detainees’ detention situation amounts to that of torture. But nothing has been done.
The last ruling of the Committee of Ministers is important and we have to follow whether they will honour their own decision or not. Also, this ruling is far from sufficient. It is a delayed and belated decision. Instead of calling on Turkey to act immediately to improve the situation in Imrali and work for the freedom of Leader Apo, it has given Turkey one more year.
The Kurds cannot wait for one more year. We have to step up our struggle. At issue is the destiny of a people and the torture regime and solitary confinement imposed on its leader. This torture and solitary confinement must end. The CPT should visit Imrali and investigate the situation there, they should update the Kurdish people about what is going on in Imrali.
In fact, when it comes to defending human values and human rights, especially defending the rights of the Kurds, the peoples of Europe, the intellectuals, academics, journalists, human right activists are ahead of the states and official bodies. The peoples have always stood in solidarity with the struggle of the Kurdish people and have identified with the aggravated solitary confinement imposed on Leader Apo.
As in the last years, this year, too, 700 representatives who had joined the conference of Unite, the Union in Britain, called on the Turkish state to free Leader Apo and start peace talks with the representatives of the Kurdish people.
On behalf of our movement I would like to salute and thank all the members and representatives of Unite the Union. The Kurdish people will never forget their sense of solidarity, freedom and justice. Their campaign is highly appreciated.
The KCK’s Committee of Health has previously appealed to the international organisations such as the OPCW, the CPT and Doctors Without Borders to launch an investigation into Turkey’s use of chemical warfare against the Kurdish fighters in Iraqi Kurdistan. Why do you believe your calls have not found any correspondence with these institutions to date? How would you assist these organisations if they ever decide to form an independent committee to investigate the use of chemical warfare?
Unfortunately, the Kurds have been one of the prime victims of chemical gas attacks in the world. These attacks have either been abetted by or neglected by the international powers. In 1938 during the massacre of Dersim, the Turkish state used gas to kill those civilians who had taken refuge in the caves. The documents of Germany’s role in providing the Turkish army with those chemical gases have just recently begun to emerge.
Also, we have the 1988 chemical attack by Saddam, against Halabja. The international mainstream media and international powers highlighted the matter only when they had changed their policies towards Saddam. Saddam did that massacre before their eyes, with those gases these powers had given to him.
Turkey has been using chemical weapons against the Kurdistan Freedom Guerrillas since the 1990s. Particularly, since 23 April of this year, it has used chemical weapons, of five different types, against the Kurdistan Freedom Guerrillas, it has used them 323 times, resulting in the martyrdom of 38 of our comrades.
Despite the many facts and data documenting these war crimes, and despite the many calls by the Kurdish people on international powers and international institutions to investigate the use of chemical weapons, unfortunately, no international or regional actor, particularly bodies responsible for the prohibition of chemical weapons, e.g. the OPCW, have batted an eyelash at the widespread use of these weapons by the Turkish army.
Their silence and lack of action are a sign of their complicity in the use of chemical weapons. We know how Turkey bribed the OPCW during its October 2019 attack, two years ago, on Serêkaniyê in Rojava Kurdistan, to ensure its silence over the use of white phosphorous and chemical weapons against the civilians and freedom fighters there.
Hereby, we call on all responsible international bodies, particularly the OPCW, to come to the areas that have been attacked with chemical weapons and conduct independent investigations. We are ready to make all the contributions that are needed for such an investigation. We call on world public opinion to put pressure on their respective governments not to provide Turkey with chemicals and the technology that can be used in chemical attacks on the Kurds.
What is your message to those countries who have placed the PKK on proscribed lists after requests from Turkey? Why should the PKK be taken off the list of proscribed organisations in the EU and US? Does the listing of the PKK as a ‘terrorist organisation’ frustrate any meaningful peace initiatives that could be initiated to resolve the ‘Kurdish question’ in Turkey?
The PKK is a movement which struggles to defend the existence of the Kurdish people and ensure their freedom.
Waging this struggle, the PKK has developed its own paradigm of democratic, ecological and women emancipatory society. The PKK is the most legitimate and just struggle of a people whose very existence has been denied, language has been banned, and whose cultural and political identity has been subjected to genocide.
Since the Lausanne treaty, Turkey has been spearheading this policy against the Kurds. So, the PKK is the name of resistance against this policy. The PKK is the freedom movement of a people struggling against state terror.
Putting the PKK on the terror ‘list’ is an arbitrary decision taken only to appease the Turkish state. This designation has no legitimate and legal base, but only serves the economic and political interests of NATO member countries.
The Belgian court ruled against such a decision in January 2020, but it fell on deaf ears.
Keeping the PKK on that ‘list’ means giving legitimacy to the denial and annihilation policies against the Kurds, as lately articulated by Hulusi Akar, who said that there was no place in the world called Kurdistan. So, this means abetting, being an accomplice to all those crimes that have been committed by the Turkish army, intelligence, and junta against the Kurds. From 1993 on, the PKK has declared 10 unilateral cease-fires to facilitate the solution of the Kurdish question and the democratisation of Turkey.
But Turkey has responded to these cease-fires by escalating its military operations against the guerrillas and the detention, imprisonment and killing and forced disapperence of political activists and civil society members, journalists, human rights defenders and civilians.
The developments of the last 10 years in the Middle East have completely proved the invalidity, illegality and illegitimacy of NATO’s designation of the PKK as a terrorist organisation. Everybody knows that Turkey was, and still is, the main sponsor and supporter of radical jihadist groups from the Nusra Front, to ISIS and to the Taliban. Turkey was the main route for ISIS members to enter Syria and Iraq and Turkey still harbors thousands of ISIS and Nusra and Al-Qaida members either on its soil or in the territories it has occupied in Syria.
Everybody knows where Baghdadi was killed, just 5 km from the Turkish border in an area controlled by Turkey! The PKK is the organisation which has spearheaded the struggle against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. It was the PKK which rushed to the defence of Sinjar and Kobani, in Iraq and Syria.
6,000 PKK cadres have sacrificed their lives in the fight against ISIS and the Nusra Front in Iraq and Syria. These are undeniable facts.
But at the same time, the PKK is on the ‘terror list’ of NATO, while Turkey is still considered a strategic ‘partner’ and valuable ‘ally’ of NATO. How come the main supporter and sponsor of ISIS is a NATO ‘ally’ but an organisation which has fought most against ISIS is kept on the ‘terror’ list? This fact shows the degree to which this designation is arbitrary, it is interest-driven, and it is illegitimate, devoid of any political, social, cultural, historical, and legal grounds. It shows the hypocrisy and double-standards of NATO member countries.
Now, all the peoples in the Middle East and all around the world are coming to understand the injustice made against the Kurds by designating the PKK as a ‘terrorist’ organisation. More and more people are campaigning in different forms and platforms to draw attention to this injustice and delist the PKK.
Recently, a campaign on social media was run by the Kurds and their friends all around the world, calling on related authorities to delist the PKK. This campaign garnered huge support from 30 countries.
Also, 54 organisations have established the `lift PKK ban` initiative and on 27 November, thousands of Kurds, socialist, ecologists, anti-fascists, and libertarians gathered and marched in Berlin to lift Germany’s 28-year old-ban on the PKK. We salute and appreciate all those activists participating in this march. We appreciate their valuable efforts.
Also, in France, 120 intellectuals, academics, politicians, unionists, journalists and civil and political activists. They wrote a letter to President Biden and called on him to delist the PKK. This was a very important and meaningful campaign. We salute and thank all the signatories and appreciate their efforts.
Syria: An Investigation on the Attack on Afrin’s Al-Shifaa Hospital
In an investigation into the perpetrator of 12 June and 25 July attacks on al-Shifaa hospital, an analysis of the armaments used in the attack constitute evidence that Russian and Syrian government forces were responsible
On 12 June 2021, at approximately 7:00 PM Syria local time, several artillery rockets struck al-Shifaa Hospital[1] in the city of Afrin, controlled by Turkey and allied Syrian opposition armed groups of the Syrian National Army (SNA). The attack resulted in 15 deaths and 40 injuries, including staff, as well as devastating damage to the hospital and surrounding buildings. In the days following the attack, Turkish authorities and allied SNA groups prevented journalists from entering the hospital to cover the attack, and conflicting reports emerged alleging who was responsible for the crime.
The attack on al-Shifaa Hospital was part of an offensive against Afrin. Other attacks targeted civilian sites in the city on the same day at approximately 6:00 P.M., killing at least one person and wounding others. Tragically, many of the civilians injured in attacks earlier in the day sought treatment at al-Shifaa hospital before being killed in the strikes on the hospital itself.[2]
The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) reported the attack against al-Shifaa Hospital on its Facebook page and posted photos of the resulting damage.[3] SAMS claimed that the strike was a ground attack and testified that two members of its medical staff were killed. On the same day, SAMS released a press statement condemning the attack and providing additional details on the attack.[4]
Subsequently, the White Helmets, officially known as Syria Civil Defense, published a field report on the attack against the al-Shifaa Hospital. The report cited a provisional count of causalities: 15 deaths, including four women, a child, seven men, and three unidentified people. The report also stated that the rockets were fired from areas jointly controlled by the regime and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).[5]
Immediately after the attack, military and political authorities in the area made differing claims on who was responsible for the strikes. The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) of being responsible while Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Turkish national mass media accused the People’s Defense Units (YPG) of conducting the attack with BM-21 Grad rockets and artillery shells.[6] However, the SDF refuted the accusations through the director of its media centre, Farhaad Shami, who denied the SDF’s presence in Syria’s northwest.[7]
Mazloum Abdi, the SDF’s commander-in-chief, echoed Shami’s refutation in a post on his Twitter account.[8] Furthermore, a Facebook page, using Abdi’s name, accused Russian forces of carrying out the attack against al-Shifaa hospital. Importantly, this Facebook page does not belong to Mazloum Abdi and is a fake account, even though it has been cited in numerous articles on the incident.
Since the attack on al-Shifaa Hospital and as of the completion of this report (the last week of August 2021), the Turkish Army and its allied Syrian rebels (present in Afrin and Euphrates Shield area) and the Syrian Army, allied militias, and the YPG (present mainly in the Shahbaa region and rural Aleppo) have continued to exchange fire.
Locating al-Shifaa Hospital
The al-Shifaa Hospital is located on the western edge of Afrin city, among civil and military buildings of the Turkish government and the SNA. According to STJ’s field researchers and other credible sources, al-Shifaa Hospital is surrounded by the Afrin Security Directorate/Criminal Security Investigation, the Political Security Building, the governor’s guesthouse of the Hatay Wali, the Turkish Intelligence/the Public Security Directorate (in Turkish: Kent Güvenlik Yönetim Sistemi Binası), a Turkish security base (formerly Azhar Afrin School), and the Palace of Justice of Afrin/Civil Court.[9] It should be noted that the hospital’s back door is connected to the building of the Afrin Security Directorate/Criminal Security Investigation.
Image 2 – A satellite image shows locations of the civil and military buildings around al-Shifaa Hospital. Taken on 5 August 2021. Credit: Planet Labs Inc.
STJ investigated the attacks targeting al-Shifaa Hospital between 12 June 2021 and the last week of August the same year. Relying on visual evidence and testimonies from witnesses, survivors, and medical staff, the investigation analyzed the conflicting accounts of events and played out multiple eventualities to identify the perpetrator.
Due to the limited amount of evidence available, STJ cannot definitively identify the perpetrator responsible for the al-Shifaa Hospital attack on 12 June 2021. However, after thoroughly investigating evidence of the case, STJ’s team of researchers concluded that the Syrian regime and, indirectly, Russia are the most likely culprits of the hospital attack, which killed 15 and injured dozens more — many of them civilians and medical workers.
[1] The al-Shifaa Hospital coordinates: 36.509754927708514, 36.85811570072415.
[2] The “double tap” is a bombardment tactic in which a location is struck twice; the second time occurring after first responders have arrived at the scene of the strike and that results in the largest number of dead and injured. Syrian and Russian forces are the main parties who have utilized this tactic throughout the ongoing Syrian war.
[8] The full tweet: “The SDF categorically denies that any of its forces were responsible for/or involved in, the tragic attack in hospital in Afrin. We are deeply saddened by the loss of innocent life. We condemn the attack without reservation. Targeting hospitals is a violation of international law.”
[9] Some facilities and buildings have both official and street names.
For Turkey’s President Erdoğan, every problem merits the same solution: launch an aggressive military campaign and blame the Kurds. If that campaign is against the Kurds, so much the better. As support for his Justice and Development Party (AKP) government plummets, along with the value of the Turkish Lira, and a struggling economy with rising inflation leaves households struggling and people drained of hope, this week’s bellicose statements directed at North and East Syria were sadly predictable. It need not have been this way. Between 2013 and 2015, peace talks with Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) offered a window of opportunity and optimism. But, since Erdoğan ended the peace talks in response to HDP election success and the Kurdish victory over ISIS in Kobanê, he has dug himself into a hole of perpetual war, and at every setback, his response has been to keep on digging. He aims to fuel a surge of anti-Kurdish nationalism, and to use war conditions to hem in opposition forces and centre himself as national leader.
The resilience of the PKK guerrillas has ensured that Turkey’s attempts to expand their military occupation in the mountains of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has failed to bring Erdoğan the rallying victory that he craves, so the Turkish military is resorting to a systematic use of chemical weapons to attempt to suffocate the guerrillas in their rock-cut tunnels. And now, Erdoğan is attempting to manufacture a case for further Turkish aggression against the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. I will concentrate this week on the Turkish threats against Syria, but I want to begin with their growing use of chemical weapons, which has been enabled by an almost total lack of international response and censor.
The PKK is reporting daily chemical attacks, with gas forced directly into tunnel entrances and gas bombs lowered down on ropes. Since 20 September, they have reported bigger explosions and new types of gas. The chemical attacks have also affected local residents – those who have tried to remain with their homes and land despite the fighting. In an area close to Turkish attacks, 548 people had to go to hospital with ‘excessive tearing of the eyes, blurred vision, sudden headaches, nosebleeds, difficulty in breathing and rashes’. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which dominates the Kurdistan Regional Government and is dependent on Turkish support, has tried to limit knowledge of what is happening, even, it is claimed, threatening to punish village headmen if they speak out about the attacks.
In contrast to the international outcry over reports of chemical weapon use by the Syrian regime, use of chemical weapons by NATO-member Turkey has gone almost unremarked. Swedish MEP, Malin Björk, raised concerns in a written question to the EU Commission, but this was brushed off in the reply by High Representative Josep Borrell. Die Linke’s Gökay Akbulut has also put a written question into the German parliament – answer awaited.
Every day sees the Turkish government and its mercenary militias break the ceasefires negotiated by Washington and Russia that ended Turkey’s last major attack on North and East Syria. Just over a week ago, in the approach to the second anniversary of the launch of that attack, a spokesperson for North and East Syria’s Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) claimed that in those two years Tel Tamr, Zeran and Ain Aissa had come under 433 ground attacks with heavy weapons and drones, while the SDF had had to repel 86 attempts to advance over the ceasefire line. He claimed that the attacks were aimed at causing instability and population displacement and that they also hampered the continuing fight against ISIS. There has been no visible attempt to censor or restrain Turkey, despite protests at the lack of action outside Russian military headquarters.
Despite all these attacks, which are well-documented by the Kurdish media, Turkey is attempting to present themselves as the aggrieved party. Last Sunday, a missile hit a Turkish armoured vehicle in occupied Syria, killing two Turkish police officers and wounding three others. Munitions also hit Turkish-occupied Jarablus and an area across the Turkish border. Turkish media and the Turkish Interior Minister were quick to blame the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), which are now incorporated into the SDF.
On Monday a car bomb exploded in Afrîn. People on the ground reported that it “was coming from the city of Idlib from the areas controlled by HTS [Hayat Tahrir al-Sham] and was monitored by several cameras and was destined to detonate a building containing members of Jaysh al-Islam of the Turkish occupation forces” But Turkish media blamed the YPG and this was repeated by Russia’s Sputnik News.
The SDF categorically deny involvement in these attacks – and have always attempted to avoid any action across the border, which would clearly be dangerously provocative. A statement made by the SDF on Friday concludes, ‘Although it is the Turkish occupation that is constantly attacking our safe areas, it is trying to twist the facts by showing our forces as attackers. We call on the international public opinion, and first and foremost the Turkish people, to verify facts and expose lies.’
It will have come as no surprise when, following Monday’s cabinet meeting, Erdoğan warned, “The latest attack against our police and the harassment targeting our lands have reached the bottom of the glass. We will take the necessary steps as soon as possible. We have no patience for some places that are the source of terrorist attacks against our country from Syria. We are determined to eliminate the threats arising from these places either together with the forces active there or by our own means.”
Erdoğan’s threat was reinforced by his Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who told press on Wednesday, “We will do whatever is necessary to clear these regions of these terrorists.” In Çavuşoğlu’s propaganda-speak ‘Each of our actions against PKK/YPG, like our actions against ISIS, is also important for Syria’s border and territorial integrity.’ Thus he not only equates the PKK and the Syrian-based YPG (and classifies both as terrorists) but also presents Turkey as against ISIS when they have been shown to have assisted them, and tries to portray Turkey’s invasion and occupation of parts of Syria as somehow preserving Syria’s territorial integrity.
As Ferda Çetin explains in Yeni Özgür Politika, the current rhetoric is very similar to that used by Turkey before their last invasion. The target this time appears to be Tel Rifat. Russia has been putting pressure on Turkey to keep their agreement to withdraw from Idlib and the adjacent M4 highway, and the suggestion is that they could allow Turkey to move into Tel Rifat in exchange. Turkey has already built up their troops in the area.
What happens will depend on the whether Russia and the United States allow Turkey access to the airspace. Both want to keep Turkey on side. Russia, as allies of the Syrian regime, does not want to see more of the country under Turkish occupation. They have used Turkish pressure as a tool to force concessions from the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, but in recent weeks, Russian forces have increasingly targeted Turkish-occupied areas. After Donald Trump’s withdrawal of US troops allowed the last Turkish invasion and produced widespread accusations of the betrayal of the Kurds, the withdrawal was partially reversed. The 900 US troops now in the region are expected to function as a guarantee against further invasion, but it hasn’t stopped the constant low-level attacks. Both the US and Russia allowed the 2018 invasion of Afrîn.
The military alliance between the United States and the SDF has provided a major source of tension between the US and Turkey, and the US has never given whole-hearted support to the Kurds. Asked about Erdoğan’s threat, the State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, told the press that they ‘condemn[ed] the cross-border attack against our NATO Ally, Turkey’, and observed – in an example of the dangers of false equivalence – “It is crucial for all sides to maintain and to respect ceasefire zones.”
In an interview with Mezopotamya News Agency, Hişyar Özsoy, Foreign Affairs co-spokesperson for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), injected a more optimistic note, “Turkey may soon find the USA and Russia against its policies that prolong this war and deepen the contradictions. Syrian authorities have begun to speak loudly for Turkey to leave the region. It seems that there is an agreement between the great powers in Syria. This has significantly reduced Turkey’s range of action,”We must hope that, this time, diplomats are working hard for a peaceful solution.
With Turkey’s previous incursions into Syria, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was an enthusiastic cheerleader, but the pro-Kurdish, leftist HDP have been quick to make public condemnation of Erdoğan’s threats. HDP co-chair, Pervin Buldan, told a party meeting, “There is a power that clings to war as it loses power… The economy has collapsed, the government says war. People say elections, power says war. People say livelihood, they say war. We say; The people don’t want you, they don’t want your war policies.
In a timely reminder of what the Turkish occupation of Syria has brought, an Afrîn human rights organisation has announced that for the months of August and September they documented 291 abductions and five murders in occupied Afrîn.
In parallel with their external aggression, Turkey continues an internal oppression that somehow manages to keep finding new ways to inflict cruelty. Sunday was the anniversary of the suicide bombing of a mass peace rally in Ankara in 2015. The rally was called by the HDP and Trade Unions – three weeks before the November election – to protest Turkey’s ongoing war against the Kurdish towns in the country’s south-east. The bombs killed over a hundred people and wounded over five times that number, and while blame for the actual bombing is generally agreed to lie with ISIS, the EU intelligence unit has concluded that, “Given the circumstances such as the lack of search of the buses carrying the demonstrators and the almost complete absence of police at a massive rally, there is reasonable reason to believe that the AKP forces specifically deployed Daesh militants in this case.”
Police tried to prevent people attending the commemoration of the massacre, which was held outside the railway station where the bomb went off, and people who wouldn’t be turned back were detained. One journalist who had gone to record the event reported that he was threatened by police, with one policeman declaring ‘I will cut you into four pieces’.
This week saw more round-ups of politicians and activists, and more people imprisoned. Yakup Almaç, deposed HDP co-mayor of Van’s Özalp district was sentenced to eight and a half years. Film maker, Veysi Altay, was sentenced for a year for the poster for his film on three women fighters in Kobanê, which included a YPG flag. And police raided an Ankara wedding on the grounds that some of the guests were wearing traditional Kurdish clothes. The mistreatment of prisoners is growing, with prisoners increasingly isolated. Seriously ill prisoners, such as the former mayor of Cizre, are denied medical treatment.
Meanwhile – and much more in the international public eye – there has been a general election in Iraq. Although this was held early as a concession to the major demonstrations against the government in 2019, there was little faith that it would be able to bring the needed changes, and many people did not vote. The official turnout was 41%, but many people did not even put their names on the register. This low turnout enabled the well-organised party of populist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to make substantial gains – despite their brutal role in suppressing the 2019 protests. While Sadr is sympathetic to Iranian religious politics, he is against any external interference in Iraq – from Iran or the US. The biggest losers in the election were the pro-Iranian groups linked to the pro-Iranian militias. Among the Kurdish parties, the KDP gained seats – though on a lower total number of votes – the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) – which has been undergoing internal power struggles – lost seats, Gorran, which had once posed as an alternative to the latter two, ended up with nothing, and the New Generation Movement of businessman Shaswar Abdulwahid gained seats. As before, bigger parties were able to manipulate the system that is supposed to give representation to minorities, and use it to get in candidates that they backed. Coalition negotiations are expected to take months.
The Yazidi Freedom and Democracy Party (PADÊ) has called for the Şengal result to be cancelled. They claim major problems with unrecognised registrations, polling station locations, and coercion.
This has been a worrying week for what has happened, for what could happen and – yet again – for the silence of international organisations and world powers. Last weekend, people across the world demonstrated their support on social media for Abdullah Ocalan and the Kurdish freedom movement. This support will need to be converted into action if that silence is to be broken.
YPG Spokesperson: Erdoğan wants to attack Rojava to save himself
YPG spokesperson Nûrî Mehmûd responded to the latest statements from Turkey’s president Erdoğan signalling a new operation against North and East Syria: “Erdoğan is preparing a new ‘invasion’ against our lands to save himself from the crisis he is in.”
“The Turkish government sees the Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria (AANES) as an obstacle,” said YPG spokesperson Nûrî Mehmûd to Yeni Özgür Politika in an interview.
Medyanews has already reported the controversial statements made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last Monday and the message he sent about a possible operation. Speaking to the media after a cabinet meeting in Ankara, Erdoğan signalled a new military operation in Syria.
“We have run out of patience. Turkey is determined to eliminate the threats from northern Syria, either together with forces active there, or by our own means,” he said.
Nuri Mehmûd, spokesperson for the People’s Defence Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel – YPG), discussed Turkey’s possible new attacks on North and East Syria and the latest developments in the region. In response to Erdoğan’s threats, Mehmûd stated that the YPG sees the people of Turkey as separate from President Erdoğan, but pointed out that Erdoğan has seized control of all the institutions in Turkey.
“Recently, Erdoğan’s statements have been accepted as law. He acts alone in Turkey’s name, leaving all institutions dysfunctional,” he said.
Noting that Turkey is becoming increasingly isolated due to the economic crisis it is struggling with internally and its loss of standing in external diplomacy, Mehmûd said, “Erdoğan did not get what he wanted from Biden or Putin either. With his latest statements he plans to create grounds for attacking Rojava in order to secure his power.”
Mehmûd stated that the deep crisis created by Erdoğan affected the Middle East as well as Russia, Europe and the US.
“I don’t think the US will listen to Erdoğan much any more. And Russia will not give up its interests,” he stated.
Nuri Mehmûd said that for a long time, everyone has been aware that Erdoğan’s plans A, B, C, and D are all to expand Turkey’s borders and in this context eliminate the status of the AANES.
“When he saw recently that ISIS had failed in this, he himself entered the field using the recources of the Turkish state. Erdoğan is using Turkey for his own aims. He sees it as a tool. Turkey’s internal security and external security are mere tools to Erdoğan. He seeks to establish the ‘Sultanate of Erdoğan’. He aims to increase his influence in the Middle East and strengthen his domination of the region.”
Mehmûd also gave examples from the two operations launched by Turkey in the previous years.
“Erdoğan is constantly looking for reasons to attack the Autonomous Administration. He has gathered around himself the remnants of ISIS and other gangs. He aims to finish the business quickly as he did in Afrin (Efrîn) and Ras al-Ayn (Serêkaniyê).”
Mehmûd reiterated that “the threats Erdoğan talks of from time to time, such as refugees and terrorism, have never been an issue at the border with Rojava”, though he mentions them occasionally, trying to convince the world, ready for further attacks.
He defines the operations as an invasion:
“Rather than aiming at Turkey’s interests and those of the Turkish people or destroying terrorism, he is conducting this invasion in order to save himself. Erdogan’s main purpose is to increase his votes and maintain his power by creating turmoil and an extraordinary situation.”
Explaining that it is Turkey that lays the plans for the actions of armed groups in the region, Nûrî Mehmûd said: “Gangs that are not accepted in Libya and Tunisia are protected by Turkey in Idlib and Aleppo in the Middle East, and used against the people of the region. Erdoğan is trying to make himself prominent through guarantorship, using the diplomatic weight of the Turkish state internationally. However, in practice, he is committing crimes against humanity.”
He also criciticised Russia and the US for remaining silent in the face of crimes committed by Turkey.
“As guarantors, the attitude of America and Russia is highly inadequate. They do not want to see what Turkey is doing in Efrîn, Jarablus, Ras al-Ayn and Aleppo. They are not fulfilling their role as guarantors against Turkey’s attacks.”
Finally, Mehmûd emphasised that Turkey does not like the idea of the establishment of national unity among the Kurds.
“Turkey aims to break the connection between Rojava and Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey does not like the idea of national unity among the Kurds” he said, but added that Turkey cannot launch any attacks without NATO granting permission for the operations.
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Joe Biden’s pledge of support reassures Syria’s embattled Kurds
October 1, 2021 4.26pm BST
Author Cengiz Gunes Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Social Science, The Open University
The hasty and badly organised US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August prompted fears among Washington’s other allies about the durability of US friendship. Kurdish troops in northeastern Syria, facing multi-pronged opposition from Islamic State fighters as well as the Assad regime and the prospect of Turkish incursion, have felt particularly vulnerable.
So recent meetings between senior US officials and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which resulted in a pledge by US president, Joe Biden, that the US would not abandon them have gone a long way to allaying those fears.
There are about 35 million ethnic Kurds living in Kurdistan, an area comprising parts of northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey and western Iran. At various times groups in different parts of this area have pressed for independent statehood, but on the whole the majority – at present, at least – are relatively content to occupy autonomous regions. In Syria this is the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) otherwise known as Rojava.
US involvement in Syria and military support for the Kurdish-led forces has paid significant dividends for both sides. Supported by around 2,000 US troops on the ground and an air campaign, the SDF has proved to be an most effective buffer against Islamic State in Syria and played a decisive role in ending its territorial control in March 2019. But there has been an ever-present fear that the US will pull out, leaving them at the mercy of their enemies. This fear was stoked in October 2019 when former president Donald Trump ordered US troops to withdraw from the region, effectively giving the green light to a Turkish invasion and capture of a large area of AANES territory. In the event, Russia brokered an agreement between Turkey and SDF. Turkey got a safe zone along the border and SDF agreed to withdraw 20 miles south of the border. The US, meanwhile, maintained enough of a military force to continue supporting the Kurds’ efforts to stabilise the region. But the possibility of an abrupt US withdrawal has been shaping Kurdish actions ever since.
The election of Joe Biden in November 2020 raised the hopes that the US would adopt a steadier approach in its dealings with the Kurds in Syria. And it seems that, on appearances at least, the US is willing to do so. Meetings between US state department officials and the SDF leadership in August and September 2021 ended with the US emphasising its “commitment to the campaign against ISIS and stability in the region” and assuring the SDF that “there will be no changes in Syria” in the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
What’s in it for America
The US military support and security umbrella it provides may have been a critical factor behind the Kurds’ success, but safeguarding Kurdish gains is not the reason behind the Biden administration’s decision. There are several other factors at play. Firstly, the threat posed by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria continues, despite the group’s loss of its territorial control. Iraq’s short and medium-term security and stability remains a key US priority and an abrupt withdrawal from Syria would aid the resurgence of IS in Iraq.
The US military presence in Syria is also needed to curb Iran’s influence in both Iraq and Syria and address the security concerns many US allies – particularly Israel – in the region feel as a result.
Victory for the SDF: thanks to help from the US. EPA-EFE/Ahmed Mardnli
The continuation of the US military support and financial aid is crucial to the region’s stability and could act as a springboard for accommodating Kurdish rights and the inclusion of the AANES into Syria if political pluralism and a decentralised governance model is accepted.
AANES’s prospects are closely tied to its inclusion in the UN-led peace process for ending the civil war in Syria. So far, its efforts have not managed a seat at the table. A more concrete commitment from the US in the form of political support for the inclusion of AANES representatives at the UN peace talks could change the situation in its favour.
Thwarting Turkey’s plan
But AANES has more urgent concerns. Turkey continues to threaten, seeing the SDF as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas that it has been battling in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan since 1984. Turkey invaded the Kurdish-controlled regions of Syria in 2018 and 2019, and small-scale attacks by Turkey and Turkish-backed Syrian groups on the rural areas of AANES territory continue daily, as do the human rights violations committed against the Kurdish civilians in the areas under the control of the Turkish-backed Syrian groups. On August 19, drone attacks by Turkey killed three SDF commanders and two fighters.
Eliminating the influence of the SDF in Syria remains a key objective for the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. But the US presence, and its commitment to the region’s stability, will act as a deterrent against a new large-scale Turkish military operation. Previous Turkish attacks in the AANES territory were made with Russia’s tacit support and encouragement, something which is thought less likely to be granted now the US has clearly stated its support for the SDF. And US troops on the ground in eastern Syria will also deter the Assad regime from destabilising AANES in a bid to take its territory back under full control.
US military support means Turkey’s attempts to label the SDF as “terrorists” are less likely to succeed. Erdoğan has used Turkey’s military operations against the Kurds in Syria as a sop to his strongly nationalist base – and he has repeatedly used western support for the Kurds as an example of the west’s antipathy towards Turkey.
With the likelihood of a Turkish military operation lessened, Erdoğan’s ability to please nationalists with an easy victory against the Kurds is less likely. Erdoğan retains a firm grip on power in Turkey, but there are reports that Turkey’s opposition parties are working with Kurdish groups. If a united opposition can inflict defeat on Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party in the next election in 2023, then this would be one more step towards a peaceful future for the Kurds
Ilham Ahmad uncovers SDC policy in Washington Institute
2021-09-27
President of the SDC Executive Committee, Ilham Ahmad – North Press
WASHINGTON, US (North Press) – On Monday, the president of the Executive Committee of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), Ilham Ahmed, uncovered several political titles that the SDC will follow for the next stage, most notably the openness to dialogue and the holding of general elections in the areas of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
Ahmad’s speech came at a conference hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington D.C, where an SDC delegation is visiting it.
An SDC delegation had held meetings in Washington with members of the Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress and officials in the US administration.
Dialogue with Turkey and the “Syrian regime”
Ahmad expressed the Syrian Democratic Forces’ readiness to dialogue with Turkey and to resolve all disputes with it through peaceful means and dialogue.
She added that this is in exchange for ensuring the handling of issues related to the Kurdish people and the occupied Syrian territories by Turkey, such as Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain), Tel Abyad and Afrin.
The SDC official urged the international community to ensure an open and inclusive dialogue between the Kurds in Turkey and the Turkish government, pointing to the ability of such an understanding to establish a long-term stability and security in the region.
Answering a question by North Press about the US administration’s vision of the relationship with the Syrian government, Ahmad said that the Autonomous Administration officials reiterate that they do not oppose any dialogues in the interest of the political solution in Syria.
She pointed out that they share the US administration’s fears of “the strict positions of the Syrian regime and its adherence to the centralization of Syria.”
She considered it necessary for the US and Russia to cooperate in the matter of dialogue with the “regime” and to push it to accept the involvement of other political parties.
American presence
Ahmad stated that she had high-level meetings with officials of the US administration who confirmed that the US will remain in northeast Syria, contrary to what was rumored in Washington after the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“We heard pledges from the administration officials regarding the continuation of the US presence in north and east Syria, and providing economic support to the region.”
She noted to the symbolism of the US presence in Syria, which “establishes a kind of positive balance in the Syrian issue” and its difference from the war in Afghanistan.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)
Responding to a question by David Pollock, the symposium organizer, about the SDF’s relationship with the PKK, Ilham Ahmad said that it is important to remember that the PKK was originally established to defend the rights of the persecuted Kurds in Turkey. “Its goal was also to establish a kind of democracy in Turkey so that the Kurds and other communities, that suffer from oppression, enjoy it.”
“The PKK confronted terrorism and extremism in several areas where the Kurds are present, sacrificing everything including the death of its fighters,” Ahmad added.
She believed that this puts them in front of a “moral attitude towards the party.”
“We, as peoples of northeast Syria, are Syrians of different backgrounds and orientations. We rule part of the territory of Syria, and we have no enmity towards Turkey,” she noted.
Electoral process
The SDC official indicated that they intend to hold an upcoming electoral process that “will be open to all communities of the region to participate in.”
She confirmed that the Autonomous Administration welcomes an “neutral international monitoring to ensure the democracy and transparency of the elections.”
Regarding the intra-Kurdish dialogue, she said that its suspension will not push the Autonomous Administration to stop or postpone the elections.
She explained that it is not fair to make the communities of the region, such as the Arabs, who constitute a large part of the region’s population, waiting for elections and their democratic representation until the Kurdish parties come to an understanding.
Ilham Ahmad stressed that “we decided to hold the elections and make it open to every party that wants to participate.”
People of Tirbespiyê praise work of Autonomous Administration
The people of Tirbespiyê said that communal life has developed with the cooperation and social participation of institutions affiliated to the Autonomous Administration.
ANF
QAMISHLO
Saturday, 4 Sep 2021, 12:24
The Syrian crisis has had an impact on all of Syria, especially Northern and Eastern Syria. The war that started in March 2011 has meant destruction and plunder for the past ten years.
The Autonomous Administration, which was established in the Jazira Canton on 21 December 2014, started organization and service projects based on the commune system. As a priority, it started to work to meet the basic needs of society, such as services, bread, water and electricity.
In the villages of Tirbesipê, work was carried out to ensure the participation of the people in social activities. The people, in solidarity with each other, established condolence houses in more than 50 villages and football fields in more than 10 villages with the support of the Autonomous Administration.
At the same time, the people supported the public municipality to work on road maintenance and sewer infrastructure. In some villages, such as Beyandor, the Autonomous Administration provided assistance to families in need through committees affiliated with the communes.
Fesîh Hisên, a resident of Tirbespiyê district, pointed out to ANHA the importance of social work and said that they will continue their efforts to find solutions to the current problems in all provinces and districts.
Giving an example of the projects and service works they have realized through social participation, Fesîh Hisên noted that the people living in the villages of Sîtka and Etbê helped the institution to solve the electricity problem experienced after a storm in the region. Hisên called on all segments of society to participate in social life activities in order to solve their problems and develop service and economic projects.
Another citizen named Kadar Hisên, who lives in the village of Şîtka, said that they helped the institutions affiliated to the Autonomous Administration and worked day and night to rebuild the football field. Hisên added that, after the success of the first project, they are now trying to open a park and a culture-art center in their village
The main source of income for the Turkish occupation regime in Afrin is the theft of the olive harvest. The “yellow gold” from the Kurds’ mountain is brought directly from Turkey to the world market. Germany serves as a cornerstone for distribution.
MAXIME AZADI
NEWS DESK
Monday, 2 Aug 2021, 12:49
Since the occupation of Afrin in March 2018, the Turkish state has established a regime of looting and exploitation. Olive and olive products were the main source of income in the region before the invasion. With the Turkish invasion, Afrin’s olive groves have been plundered and have become a source of funding for militiamen from the Turkish-established mercenary “Syrian National Army” (SNA). The SNA militias loot the region’s olive production and bring it to the world market via Turkey. The pirated goods range from “organic products” such as the so-called Aleppo soap from Afrin in health food stores and drugstores, to olive oil in German supermarkets. While the resellers do not respond to press inquiries on the issue, the German government admitted that there are no hurdles for the official import of olive products looted from Afrin. Aleppo soaps are joined in Europe by new products from the occupied territories, most of which are sold in Arab-, Turkish- or Kurdish-owned supermarkets. On many of the products, the place of production is directly named as “Afrin”, countless other looted products from the formerly self-governing canton go on sale under other labels.
The wealth of Rojava in the eyes of the colonialists and occupiers
Before the war began, Rojava had represented the breadbasket of all of Syria and was exploited by the Baath regime in a colonial manner. While the regions in Cizîrê served wheat monoculture, mainly olives were cultivated in Afrin, as well as fruit for the Syrian market. Before the war that began in 2011, Rojava had supplied 40 percent of agricultural production in general and 60 percent of cereal production in Syria. Today’s autonomous region of northern and eastern Syria has 80 percent of the country’s oil reserves. The colonial relationship is exemplified by the wheat monoculture imposed by the regime. For example, the wheat produced in Cizîrê was not processed in the region, but in the Syrian metropolises, only to be reimported to Rojava, sometimes more expensively, as flour. Therefore, despite the vast quantities of grain, the lack of grain mills posed a serious problem for Rojava after the revolution. However, not only the regime laid claim to the exploitation of the wealth, but also the neighboring states, first and foremost Turkey, which is trying to claim all of northern Syria for itself on a line drawn roughly at the level of Aleppo.
Thus, it was Turkey that first invaded Syria with the aim of occupying it. To this end, Ankara initially supported groups such as ISIS, al-Nusra and other jihadist militias and then intervened in the war itself after their military defeat. Afrin was bombed by over 70 warplanes in early 2018, only to be occupied and looted by the Turkish army and a conglomerate of far-right and jihadist mercenaries. Since then, the Kurdish population has been systematically displaced and those who remain are exploited through robbery, protection and ransom extortion.
Robbery worth hundreds of millions of euros
There were at least 18 million olive trees in Afrin before the invasion. In addition, the region’s olives are used to produce the world-famous “Aleppo soap.” For centuries, Afrin’s olive oil has been considered the “yellow gold.” Ankara and its mercenary troops share the revenues, while the families who remained in the region after the invasion can keep only a fraction of the proceeds for themselves. The value of the looted “booty” was put at about 90 million euros. This included the cannibalization of soap production facilities and the extortion of ransoms through countless kidnappings. The actual amount is therefore likely to be much higher.
According to economists, olive oil production in 2018 in Afrin was around 50,000 tons and was estimated to be worth 130 million euros. The French magazine Le Point published a research report on the subject in January 2019, stating that 20,000 tons of olive oil from Afrin worth 60 million euros had been sold in Turkey.
Entire factories put at the service of the occupation regime
In November 2018, ANF published documents showing that the Turkish state and its mercenaries had concluded an agreement on the looting. This protocol promised the mercenary groups the revenues from olive oil production in 2018 and 2019. Thus, $22 million in revenue was to be generated for the mercenaries from the sale of olives to Spain alone. Thus, the exploitation gained its international level, which is still prevalent today. The looted factories in the city were put at the service of the occupation regime. A June 28, 2021, ANF report noted that the owners of 50 of the city’s 100 olive oil factories remaining in Afrin fled to Shehba and Aleppo. Their factories were confiscated.
Necib Şêxo, who owned one of the olive factories and formed an interest group with other displaced olive oil producers, told ANF in June 2021, “They put pressure on the population and force them to sell the olive oil produced in Afrin at a very low price. It is collected at the Nûri Arap factory in Jindires. From there, it crosses the border into Turkey through the opposite crossing in the village of Hamam in the Turkish province of Hatay.”
Germany is cornerstone in distribution of looted products
Today, olive oil stolen from Afrin is sold in almost all European countries and in the United States and Canada. Germany is one of the main pillars of the looting and thus the financing of mercenary groups of the SNA. This is not by chance, because Germany is also the most vehement supporter of Turkish fascism.
Looted olive oil is distributed from Magdeburg
Germany is the hub for the distribution of oil via the Internet, virtual media and markets. Thus, “Zêr Afrin” (gold from Afrin) is openly offered in Germany. The olive oil is collected and distributed from a large depot in Magdeburg. The products looted from the occupied Kurdish region are first brought to Turkey and transported to Europe by the Turkish Standards Institute (TSE). “Syria” is stated as the country of origin of the products. The company, located at Liebknechtstraße 99 in Magdeburg, did not respond to inquiries.
The Wuppertal-based company Salet Al Ghouta also sells olive oil stolen from Afrin. Here it is sold under the name “Jibal Afrin” as “olive oil from the mountains of Afrin” for 15.28 euros in two-liter canisters.
Robbery through official channels
The olive products are brought to Europe on trucks and ships. They appear to pass through customs through official channels.
The answer of the German government to corresponding inquiries to the Ministry of Agriculture confirms this. The answer says that companies from third countries exporting to the EU do not need a permit to import non-animal food products. Customs and state authorities alone make “assessments” in individual cases. Statistically, the imports are not recorded.
Similar inquiries to the French and Belgian authorities were not even answered. None of the companies selling olive oil responded to corresponding press inquiries either.
Sales in Canada, Denmark and France
The “Jibal Afrin” brand products looted from Afrin are also sold in Canada. Syria is stated as the country of origin. The products bear the seal of the Turkish standards authority TSE and the label states a company called “Mir Paketleme İTH. İHR. VE TİC. LTD. ŞTİ.” This group is based in Hatay, a Turkish border province with occupied Afrin. On the website of “Jibal Afrin,” olive oil looted from Afrin is offered for $13 per liter. Nine kilos of “organic, green soap” are said to cost $75.
In France, olive oil stolen from Afrin is sold under the name Yaman on a website called Mira. “Syria” is given as the place of production of the oil. The description speaks of “first-class natural olive oil of the Yaman brand (Afrin-Aleppo),” where 13.50 euros for three liters, 22.50 euros for five liters and 81 euros for 18 liters of olive oil are demanded.
Another company is “Jobri Food“, which operates in Denmark with headquarters in Viborg. This company sells “Afrin products” and also has a German network. The products are packaged and tested in Turkey. From the presentation of the company, it appears that it has representatives throughout the European Union and its owner is from Afrin. Jobri Food presents itself as one of the leading companies in the EU. A note states, “We are proud to offer food of the highest quality from well-known Afrin crops.”
All olive oils produced in Turkey are suspect
Similarly, olive oil products looted from Afrin have been found in the U.S. and many other countries in Europe. There are a large number of Internet users who advertise the purchase of such products on digital networks. Many products that do not bear the name “Afrin” also come from looting. This makes it difficult to determine the true extent of the export of looted goods. All olive-based products manufactured in Turkey or approved there should be considered suspect in this light.
EU states aiding and abetting terror financing
The failure of European states to take action against this makes them accomplices to the crimes in Afrin and helpers in terror financing. This is because the products stolen from Afrin finance both an oppressive regime and groups that commit the most serious war crimes, including members of the so-called ISIS, al-Nusra, and far-right and jihadist SNA militias such as Ahrar al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sharqiya, which was most recently placed on the U.S. sanctions list. Thus, the sale of these products may constitute both a war crime and a crime under national law.
Europe does nothing
Following a decision by the EU Court of Justice, EU states are obliged to label products from occupied Palestinian territories as such. This regulation aims to inform consumers correctly about the origin of the products. Since the same practice does not apply to products looted from Afrin, it is not difficult to imagine that many consumers are unwittingly supporting looting and occupation.
Lawyer Malterre: The crime can be charged
Jean-Louis Malterre, a lawyer with the Paris Bar Association, states that the looting and marketing of Afrin products violates the international law of war. He says, “It violates the conventions that regulate military actions; this is looting.” Malterre recalls the LafargeHolcim case. The multinational cement company had continued to operate its Çelebiyê site in southeastern Kobanê until 2014, paying money to third parties on the ground to negotiate deals with Islamist groups to keep production going. Thirteen million euros in baksheesh reportedly flowed between 2011 and 2013 alone. The bribes continued even when ISIS overran parts of Syria in June 2014 and proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate.
Against this background, LafargeHolcim is accused of “complicity in crimes against humanity” for its activities in Rojava. According to lawyer Jean-Louis Malterre, the sale of the looted olive products could have similar consequences.
Malterre explains that the products brought into the EU from Afrin are also “products of looting and theft,” adding that “those who directly participate in the looting and those who profit from the looting can be prosecuted.” To get the process rolling, however, he said, criminal charges must be filed by those involved.”
Autonomous Administration of NE Syria demands recognition by the UN
The construction of a self-determined social model began nine years ago with the Rojava revolution. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria is demanding official recognition of the autonomous region by the UN.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Sunday, 18 Jul 2021, 13:26
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria is demanding official recognition of the autonomous region by the United Nations (UN) and signaling its willingness to work with all sides for democracy and justice in Syria.
The statement released by the Autonomous Administration on Sunday includes the following:
“Syria has experienced great pain due to the centralist system of government in the Baath period. In the last ten years, the people have been denied and displaced, and the country has been turned into a center of crisis and chaos by the regime. The people of Syria have been living in very difficult conditions for ten years. Terror and occupation have been increased, Syria has become the center of the third world war. The people’s desire for democracy and change remains an unfulfilled dream. There is no solution and no stability. Syria is an area where regional and international powers are trying to impose their interests.
On July 19, 2012, the revolution of Rojava began and spread to all areas in northeastern Syria as it progressed. This revolution is oriented towards democratic change in Syria, self-determination of society, defending the unity of the country through the project of fraternity of peoples and building a democratic nation. In order to realize the dreams of the Syrian people indiscriminately and initiate a peaceful change, this revolution relies on the development of a decentralized system, which it has presented as an alternative.
“Fraternity of peoples as a fundamental principle”
Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, the Rojava revolution has seen itself as a social revolution and has avoided power struggles. It is fighting for a united and democratic Syria and rejects all other options. Unfortunately, the regime and the forces calling themselves the opposition are pursuing a different path. Even today, they are against serving Syria and its people. Along with this, they are preparing plans that will increase the pain of the people of Syria and prevent a solution and stability.
The essential principle of the July 19 Revolution was the brotherhood of peoples and the building of a democratic system. Thus, it referred to the need of all peoples in Syria – first as the Democratic Autonomous Administration, and later as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Shortly after the Syrian crisis began, the people established their own system and fought terrorism. They have defeated ISIS and women have taken a leadership role in society.
“Until the occupied territories are liberated”
As the Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria, we dedicate the ninth anniversary of the July 19 Revolution to the entire population. We will continue to pursue the free and democratic revolution and the goals of the martyrs. We insist on defending the gains won at great sacrifice of the people and will continue to work to liberate the occupied areas around Afrin, Serekaniye and Gire Spi and to allow the return of the displaced people.
Just as we fought ISIS in the past years starting from the revolution of Rojava and thwarted all plans of destruction, we will succeed now. We call on the peoples of northern and eastern Syria to unite and defend the project of brotherhood. At the same time, we call on all parties in Syria to work for justice, democracy and the liberation of the occupied territories.
As the autonomous Administration of North and East syria, we are ready to cooperate with all Syrian parties for justice and democracy in Syria. We hereby state that we remain committed to the UN Decision No. 2254 to resolve the Syrian crisis. We appeal to the UN to recognize the region of northern and eastern Syria.”
Between the 31st of March and the 1st of June, violent protests erupted in Manbij, which left at least three civilians dead and over a dozen injured. Concurrently, Russian troops attacked a security point of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), and the Turkish army shelled and continues to shell the villages around Manbij. In its aftermath, the local administration established public discussions; a fact-finding committee to investigate possible misconduct by their security forces; and a higher committee, consistent of representatives from a variety of civil and military institutions, as well as tribal representatives, in order to discuss 17 demands the public had related to the Tribal Council. During a visit to Manbij in mid-June, RIC found relative calm in the city, where all institutions we spoke to, including the Tribal Council, were eager to work together to resolve the issues which lead to the protest. It also found that the protests were, to a large extent, directed and encouraged by outside forces – namely, the Damascus government (GoS). Nonetheless, the issues the protesters riled around are domestic and by no means entirely a construct of foreign actors. Issues surrounding conscription, high prices for basic goods, and arbitrary arrests of civilians are indeed present, though not insurmountable. More worryingly, RIC recorded an uptick in frontline attacks emanating from Turkish-controlled territory. It seems apparent that both GoS and Turkey are actively attempting to destabilize Manbij and undermine the AANES.
Background
Manbij region lies on the western banks of the Euphrates river and is home to no more than half a million people. The population is mainly Arab, though Kurds, Turkmen, Circassians and Chechens make up significant minorities. Besides the major city of Manbij, 8 small towns and 360 villages dot this region. Echoing its stature during the Hellenistic period, when ancient Ieropolis/Hierapolis served as a chief station of the Seleucid Empire, modern Manbij’s location is strategically appealing to all parties to the Syrian conflict.
As a nexus point between trans-Euphrates North and East Syria (NES) and the Kurdish-dominated regions of Afrin, Shehba, and the Aleppo neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsud and Ashrafiyeh in Syria’s northwest, as well as housing Tishrin dam to the southwest of the city, Manbij is of crucial importance to the Autonomous Administration. Likewise, the Damascus government and Turkey eye Manbij as a likely target for invasion, due to the aforementioned location and Arab-majority population. Uniquely, Manbij is beset by a double frontline: to the north and west, the Turkish-backed ‘Syrian National Army’ (SNA) constantly threaten the region, with Turkey proper not 12km behind. On the southern flank, the government of Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, seeks to widen its influence.
During the course of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, the Free Syrian Army controlled Manbij from July 2012 to the spring of 2013, when al-Qaeda offshoot al-Nusra Front took possession of the city. ISIS overran the region in January 2014 and remained in power until June 2016. During this time, Manbij served as the caliphate’s main marketplace for plundered antiquities, which were sent to the city and sold on to buyers in Turkey and the West. This lucrative business made up a large part of the group’s initial funding. Starting on May 31st, 2016, the newly-created Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by the Manbij Military Council (MMC) – a coalition of Manbij-native former FSA and Kurdish factions – liberated most of Manbij at great cost to their troops with the help of (US) Coalition forces. This initial sacrifice won the SDF, the MMC and the AANES widespread acclaim among the local population, who largely saw the soldiers as liberators.
Having been liberated the earliest – only a year after the defence of Kobane – Manbij region has seen the most reconstruction and development out of the four Arab-majority regions of NES (Manbij, Tabqa, Raqqa, and Deir ez-Zor). One of the Administrations greatest achievements has been the peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Manbij’s diverse communities, such as Kurds and Circassians, who had remained unrecognized and oppressed under both GoS and ISIS control, as well as the blending of its own democratic paradigm with an indigenous tribal system encompassing 64 different tribes. Women, too, have experienced autonomy and political freedoms unknown to them during the rule of Assad, let alone the years spent under brutal jihadi-salafist groups. The AANES has furthermore introduced multiple lasting civil structures, such as democratic assemblies and autonomous women’s institutions.
Yet problems were also soon apparent. Before ISIS rule, during the early stages of the Syrian Civil War, Manbij had elected its own democratic council and hosted Syria’s first independent trades union. Local activists complained that these gains were not restored, but rather replaced by the AANES’s own councils. The lack of adequate water and electricity provision due to Turkish-water blockage has also taken its toll. In addition, residents complain about high prices for fuel and other necessities compared to neighboring regions. Overall, a distrust of the new democratic paradigm is apparent among some residents.
Insurgents, SNA & Turkey
As with most of the Arab-majority regions, Manbij has experienced a spike of insurgency-style attacks following ISIS’ defeat, before the United States (US) withdrawal. The remnant of ISIS represent an ever-looming menace and it enjoys some popularity across certain parts of the Manbij countryside. Though less active than in other Arab regions of NES, ISIS sleeper cells are nevertheless present here. RIC recorded 8 confirmed sleeper cell attacks in Manbij in 2020.
Nonetheless, although US forces withdrew from the city in October 2019, local officials say Manbij has been relatively stable both before and after the Turkish 2019 invasion of northern Syria. Yet Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) militias in regions Turkey occupies in Al-Bab and Jarabulus often shell positions of the MMC, while the MMC regularly detains sleeper cell members with links to Turkish intelligence services and Turkish-backed militias. The fact that Turkey is looking to do more than destabilize the region is not a matter of conjecture. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had signaled Manbij as Turkey’s next target in Syria in 2019.
SAA & Russian Involvement
Following a 2019 SDF-Damascus agreement, Syrian Arab Army (SAA) troops numbering up to 10,000 have been deployed along the border; along the frontlines of the zone of Turkish occupation; in garrisons outside Manbij, Tabqa and Raqqa; and along supply lines leading from Damascus-controlled Syria up to the frontline with Turkey. SAA troops are banned from entering the cities themselves, and confined positions along the contact line outside Manbij and the Turkish border, and outside of the cities themselves.
MMC spokesman Sherwan Darwish told RIC that “coordination centers” have been set up with both Russian and SAA troops. Russian forces entered a former US base near Arima in October 2019 – formerly one of the Coalition’s largest – which has allowed “the same level of coordination” that the MMC enjoyed with the American forces. “Our joint efforts [with the Russians] have been positive,” Mr. Darwish said in 2020, while adding that locals remained fearful of further violence. Russia maintains three known military bases in Manbij region, all west of the city.
Location of Russian bases in Manbij region
Yet the relationship between AANES and Damascus/Russia, if ever truly cooperative, has recently deteriorated. Officials in Manbij accuse the GoS of attempting to destabilize the region by inciting the Arab population, especially Arab tribes, to reject the AANES’ system. A recent US intelligence report suggests this might be true. Likewise, the relationship with Russia has soured, as AANES officials believe the superpower is colluding with Turkey to expel the SDF. In February 2021, Russia had pulled its troops out of neighboring Ayn Issa, on the frontline with SNA-occupied territory, because the SDF refused to let SAA troops in to defend against Turkish-backed attacks. Russia soon redeployed its soldiers, though the threat of a Russian withdrawal, which would allow for a Turkish advance, remains.
Nonetheless, Manbij – away from the frontlines – has so far remained relatively undisturbed. Visitors to the city are witness to rapid reconstruction (though perhaps not as rapid as neighboring Kobane) and a lively downtown. Yet beginning on May 31st, the region saw protests demanding and end to military conscription, as well an improvement of the economic situation.
Chronology of the Events of Early June 2021
31.5
A week after Syria’s presidential elections, during which the AANES had cut access from NES to SAR (territory under Bashar al-Assad’s rule), 25 people in the city of Manbij congregated for a protest after prayer, and many more in Hedhud, a village more sympathetic to Assad, 7km northeast of the city. There, a military vehicle was attacked by protesters, which lead to a death and three injuries as the soldiers inside opened fire. The The Manbij Military Council (MMC) and SAA both allege the vehicle was the other side’s.
In the aftermath of these casualties, nearby villages came together and marched on the NES military recruitment center in Tal Rafay, next to Hedhud, and scorched it, a security point, and a nearby car. MMC consequently imposed a 48-hour curfew.
1.6
On the internal border between SAR and NES at Tahya, a thousand of SAA troops amassed at the border, though not further action was taken.
East of the city, in Mashrafah, up to 500 people overran an Asayish checkpoint and set fire to surveillance cameras and a car. On Facebook, a person claiming to be a relative of the car owner alleges it was a civilian vehicle. Yet the car’s blue license plate reveals it to be a military vehicle. A firefight ensued as protesters stormed the checkpoint, which Asayish and GoS security forces share. The MMC told us they are unsure who began the shooting – whether protestors, the Asayish, or GoS scurity forces. In footage of the event, prolonged and heavy shooting can be heard from multiple weapons, though it is not visible who the shooters are. This firefight left 2 civilians dead and 15 injured.
Using the unrest as justification, Russian troops entered the city in violation of their agreement with the AANES. In a consequent firefight between Russian and SDF troops, one SDF soldier was injured.
In the aftermath of the morning’s protest, people congregated once more to march on the hospital in which the injured were being treated, smashing storefronts and surveillance cameras along the way, as well as throwing rocks at Asayish forces. Videos show Asayish forces retreating from protesters so as to prevent a confrontation.
The MMC releases a statement condemning the “criminal cells attack on security and military headquarters, receiving instructions from external parties, which resulted in casualties and injuries.”
2.6
The Manbij administration met with tribal elders, who put forward a 3-point plan to end the protests. The demands were the halting of military conscription for the inhabitants of Manbij region, the release of some prisoners (including some arrested before the protests), and establishing an investigative committee to make clear what transpired. Special Forces (HAT) were deployed to the city.
The MMC allege that agitators connected to the GoS attempted to further incite mourners during funeral prosceedings.
3.6
In a press statement, the AANES’ Tribal Council called for peace and blamed the Damascus government for “wanting to fuel unrest in Manbij in the wake of the election, to destabilize the region.”
7.6
Tribal sheikhs and notables put together a list of 17 demands and submit them to the Civil Administration of Manbij. They are:
1. The need to satisfy the families of the wounded and martyrs materially and morally, and to hold the soldiers who attacked peaceful demonstrators accountable by a fair and public trial
2. Abolition of compulsory conscription in Manbij region and end to conscription of young men in all regions of northeastern Syria
3. Cancellation of the customs value on all pharmaceutical and medical supplies
4. Installing all the teachers’ agents and securing school supplies for the success of the educational process
5. Stop arbitrary arrest and limit it to the court’s decision, and inform the detainee’s family about the place of his arrest and the crime against him within a week of the period of his arrest
6. Ending the work of the political police and the phenomenon of masked soldiers
7. Effectively activating the role of the Health Committee, according to competencies, following up on drug prices, and securing medication for chronic diseases for free
8. Securing fuel and domestic gas and distributing electrical energy in a fair manner
9. Improve the material of bread and increase its quantity, knowing that at the present time it is not suitable for human consumption
10. Preventing the army from roaming with their weapons between residential communities and not using them as shields for them in the border areas
11. Facilitating the work of humanitarian organizations in Manbij and working with them to compensate the owners of buildings damaged as a result of the hostilities
12. Returning confiscated property, homes and real estate to their owners
13. Return of the people of the town of Al-Shuyoukh to their homes, properties and lands
14. Compensating the owners of buildings that were intentionally demolished by bulldozers in the recent hostilities
15. Return the documents confiscated by the SDF to their owners
16. Considering the guarantee valid without a specific period of time and reducing the burden of renewing it on citizens
17. Repeal all laws that conflict with Islamic law, such as the penalty for polygamy and inheritance
As a result, conscription was temporarily halted across NES. A 20-member higher committee to discuss the 17 points was assembled, including a representative each of the MMC, the Manbij Civil Council, the Legislative Council, the Asayish, the Committee of Religious Affairs, the Intellectuals’ Union, the Reconciliation Committee, and an elder chosen by the tribes, as well as the 12 representatives of the tribes. After almost two weeks of deliberations, the tribal leaders could not agree on the staffing of an investigative committee. Thus, the investigations will carry on without tribal involvement. Nevertheless, the full demands will be discussed by all parties in the higher committee.
In the week following the protests, a series of roadside IEDs led to a death and one injury among NES security forces. Since the protests, and especially in the past week (of late June 2021), the front with Turkish-backed SNA has seen a sudden spike in violence. The SNA has shelled various towns north of Manbij, as well launched recurrent land assaults against the region, which have all been repelled. The reason for this escalation is heretofore unknown, though some analysts have speculated that Manbij may be the sight of a coming invasion.
Green: Events of 31.5; Purple: Events of 1.6; Red: Turkish ground & aerial attacks 31.5-31.6; Red crescent: Turkish bases around Manbij; Light blue: Liwa al-Shamal base
Fact box: understanding the tribal system in NES
The tribal system is crucial for understanding the situation in the Arab regions of NES, since the tribes constitute the main building-bloc of local society. They are top-down and patriarchal in structure, with loyalty to the tribe and bloodline superseding other concerns, resulting in frequent and deadly feuds between tribes. Some tribes are close to the GoS, while others have long had an antagonistic relationship with the central government.
Particularly following the collapse of central government in Syria, tribes have played a key role as local power-brokers, maintaining their own armed forces and providing for their members, though ultimately most tribes have been forced to bow to more powerful state and non-state actors as they have gained and regained control over the tribes’ traditional territory. Weakness and competition within the tribal structure left the population extremely vulnerable to exploitation by jihadi Salafism, although ISIS was ultimately unable to rally lasting support from the tribes.
Tribes are a fact of life in Arab regions like Deir ez-Zor. Despite their top-down, patriarchal structure and conservative outlook, they can also play an important role in promoting ideas of local self-determination and community justice which are prioritized by AANES. In Manbij, representatives of the tribes sit in the executive, legislative and justice councils. If the AANES can bring tribal sheikhs onside, they will have a much easier time governing these challenging regions. Due to their size, many tribes have several components, and keep their cards close to their chest by negotiating with both the AANES and the GoS. Yet some tribal leaders are also persecuted and unable to return to GoS because of their cooperation with the AANES.
Tribes occupying the hinterland between Kurdish-majority and Arab-majority territories have helped to ensure continued practical contact between the GoS and AANES to keep utilities and oil flowing, while some major tribal militias (notably the al-Sanadid forces) have long been allied with SDF against ISIS and Turkey.
All institutions RIC spoke to in Manbij said the Tribal Council was critical in ending the recent protests. In Manbij, the 12 largest tribes sit in this council, out of a total of 64, though the two largest tribes, Bou Sultan and Bou Bena, have historically closer ties to Damascus and have a strained relationship with the Administration.
Investigation
RIC spoke to multiple institutions on the ground. MMC, Asayish and the SDF’s Military Conscription Office told us the conscription issue was used as a pretext for protests which were about economic issues, though also instigated by outside forces. The Damascus government, especially, they said, is using NES’ comparatively weak economic situation to sow discontent among the population. Conscription has been practiced in Manbij since 2017. The attempt at forcing the Administration to halt military conscription from among Manbij and other Arab areas is because “outside forces do not want the people to feel attached to this political project, they don’t want them to be able to defend themselves,” as per an official at the Conscription Office. He pointed out that, if Manbij were to come under Damascus’ control, more rather than less of its citizens would be forced into military service. Meanwhile, an Asayish official alleged that unspecified sleeper cells storm into houses in Manbij dressed in their uniforms in order to evoke hatred for the Asayish. All three institutions told us the people of Manbij have been disillusioned by what they see as the Damascus government’s apparent effort to manufacture discontent.
We also spoke with the leaders of Manbij’s largest tribes. They say their tribesmen are in fact worried by military conscription, as this interferes with many young men’s education, business and marriage. The root cause, they say, is that the presence of the AANES is still perceived to be temporary. “The Administration cannot provide Manbij’s residents with national identity cards or passports,” says one sheikh. Parents are thus reluctant to let their sons serve in their armed forces and lose the opportunity to access GoS services if the region were to come under Damascus’ control once again. If they can, parents send their children to GoS universities, but the AANES does not waive military service for students enrolled in these universities. In addition, the tribal elders tell us the people of Manbij tend to marry younger, and resent the fact that newly-wed young men must spent time apart from their wives.They also bring up the fact that, for families with only one son, having him conscripted can be detrimental to their business. “Solving the issue of conscription,” the tribal leaders tell us, “is the most important thing.”
Nevertheless, other factors do play a role. Manbij citizens were angered by AANES’ recent price increases for fuel and gas, though these were quickly walked back after widespread condemnation. Yet the cost of Diesel and cement remains high, compared not just to when Manbij was under GoS control, but also to neighboring areas of NES, where these goods are cheaper. “Cement goes for $140/t in Manbij, but only $115/t in Raqqa,” one sheikh told us. The tribes also reiterated the people’s other main demands: the release of prisoners held for unknown charges, having those killed be declared martyrs, and an official apology.
Yet the tribal leaders also pointed to outside interference. Of Manbij’s 64 tribes, 2 in particular are close to Damascus – Bou Sultan and Bou Bena. It is from these tribes, the leaders told us, that the protesters come from. Their homelands stretch east and south of Manbij city. Bou Soultan, in particular, is centered around Hedhud, the sight of the first major demonstration. “70% of the problems have been resolved,” one of the Council’s sheikhs said, “but they [Damascus] use the persistent problems to destabilize.” Disinformation plays a considerable role. For instance, one of the 17 demands outlined by the protesters called for revoking laws which conflict with the Islamic Shari’a, highlighting polygamy. Yet polygamy – a practice banned in the Kurdish areas of NES – is perfectly legal in the Arab areas, save for persons working in the AANES or their armed forces. Rather than betraying the Administration’s authoritarian intentions, the current legal status of polygamy in Manbij is a testament to the AANES’ democratic attempts to marry traditional local practices with their vision of women’s liberation. Similarly, contrary to the popular opinion, the MMC’s long-standing policy is that young men from families with only one male offspring are not conscripted into military service.
The rise of Damascus-linked sleeper cells has been a common denominator across all of NES’ Arab regions. Asayish officials in Ayn Issa tell RIC that the GoS is playing similar games in their city. For the moment, Manbij exists in a delicate tension between Damascus, Moscow, and Ankara. Both the GoS, as well as Turkey would like Manbij to come under its control. Russian and the SAR are unlikely to let Manbij fall into the hands of the SNA, though the sudden pull-out of Russian troops out of Ayn Issa in February demonstrates that they are not above gambling on the AANES’ fear of another Turkish incursion. All parties, including ISIS, see Manbij as ground ripe for intrigue and popular revolt. It is therefore likely that these outside influences will continue to effect sometimes violent rejections of the current democratic system. As we publish this piece, local protests are staged in the wake of every Friday prayer, demanding the SDF leave Manbij – most likely, internal sources tell RIC, at the behest of Turkey.
Nevertheless, it is also worth noting that, for all of the Administration’s shortcomings both before and during the protests, the number of people who took to the streets in the first week of June 2021 were anything but representative of Manbij as a whole. As previously stated, most protesters seemed to belong to one of the two defiant tribes. It is also worth pointing out that women, for the most part, did not participate. More importantly, in the aftermath of these protests, the AANES hosted a public dialogue, and continues to be involved in the investigative committee, as well as the higher committee to address the people’s demands, proving their commitment to a democratic resolution.
Invariably, the greatest hurdle facing the AANES’ democratic paradigm is the lack of belief in its longevity. Outside interference and attacks, even if not able to conquer the region, nevertheless disturb people’s confidence in the current political system. RIC finds a closer collaboration with tribal leaders is necessary, not only because they played a crucial role in ending the protests, acting as the bridge between the people and the Administration, but also because their sacrifice – some having lost their lives to ISIS sleeper-cell attacks, others persecuted in SAR for their involvement with the AANES – can be essential in instilling much-needed faith in the current political project. July 1, 2021/
Aldar Xelîl: Occupation of Iraqi Kurdistan will overwhelm Rojava
Aldar Xelîl, the Co-leadership Council member of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), has stated that Turkey’s operations in Iraqi/South Kurdistan pose a national security problem for the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria: “If South Kurdistan is occupied, Rojava will be overwhelmed.”
The Democratic Union Party (PYD) Co-leadership Council member Aldar Xelîl responded to questions from ANF regarding the detention in Erbil (Hewlêr) in South/Iraqi Kurdistan of Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) and PYD representatives and the reported presence of Turkish National Intelligence (MIT) representatives at their interrogation. He also answered questions about the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP’s) violations of border-crossings at the Simalka (Sêmalka) border point and the aims of Turkey’s ongoing military operations in the Zap, Metina and Avashin regions of Iraqi Kurdistan.
As Turkey’s attacks of occupation continue, why did the KDP feel it necessary to send the media to the defence areas, and how would losing in South Kurdistan affect the Kurds and Rojava?
The purpose of the attacks currently against South Kurdistan is occupation. Erdoğan wants to occupy South Kurdistan. Their plan is to occupy all of South Kurdistan including Rojava, north-east Syria before the end of 2023. The only reason this has not happened yet is because of the resistance. If we had not resisted, Erdoğan would have reached Mosul and Kirkuk by now.
One of the reasons that South Kurdistan has been protected so far is the resistance in Rojava, another is the resistance of the guerrillas in the mountains of Kurdistan. The resistance now in Avaşîn, Zap and Metîna is also the resistance to protect the achievements of South Kurdistan.
South Kurdistan struggled for years to liberate itself from Saddam’s regime. It sees that Erdoğan’s regime is coming for it, that this is still more dangerous and that it will annihilate the Kurds. However, the attitudes of the forces of South Kurdistan and of the government, who ought to stand against this, differ from each other. In particular, the KDP currently supports these attacks. When the Turkish state attacks, it does not raise its voice and complain to the United Nations, to Baghdad, to the Arab states, to international institutions and say, ‘Why is the Turkish state coming to our mountains? Why is it bombing our villages?’ Theirs is not an attitude worthy of Kurdistan. The national attitude of Kurdistan is to stand up for its people, its country and its soil.
Erdoğan, the President of the Turkish Republic, conducts military interventions in various regions, always with the excuse of ‘national security.’ All well and good, but does not the occupation of South Kurdistan and Rojava create a national security problem for the Kurds?
Why did Erdoğan go to Libya? Erdoğan says, ‘In my opinion, if the changes in Libya did not happen, it would be damaging for Turkey’s security,’ and for this reason, he goes and intervenes. He goes there and gets right inside. In Somalia … He even went to Sudan before the Sudan regime changed. He does the same thing everywhere. He says, ‘I am protecting my security’.
If we think of Rojava being North-East Syria, is our national security damaged when Erdoğan attacks the guerrillas in the mountains of Kurdistan? It is also a part of Kurdistan. So, our security is damaged. Basically, if Erdoğan gains in Europe, it is not good for us. If he gains in Africa, it is not good for us. If he gains in America, it is not good for us. It will damage us.
Erdoğan has occupied Afrin (Efrîn). He has occupied Ras al-Ayn (Serêkaniyê), Tell Abyad (Girê Spî), Jarabulus, (Cerablus), al-Bab (Bab) and Azaz (Ezaz). Erdoğan is threatening us.
First: He comes to South Kurdistan and attacks the guerrillas. Second: He evacuates the villages in South Kurdistan. Third: He shoots civilians. Fourth: He establishes military bases. Fifth: He expands these bases. South Kurdistan is, in any case, not a large area. What is the meaning of establishing 30 bases? It means that he is occupying South Kurdistan. There will be no government left in South Kurdistan tomorrow. If the South falls, is this in the interests of Rojava? We do not want the South to fall and be broken. We do not want it to be occupied by the Turkish state. We do not want the South to be occupied any more than we want Afrin to be occupied. If they are occupied Rojava will be overwhelmed.
The Autonomous Administration (AANES) and PYD representatives were detained in Erbil. They were detained two weeks ago. Why were they detained? They represent the Kurds and the people there. They have not done anything bad, anything wrong, they have not committed any offence. They have not interfered in anything. They have not meddled with any internal affairs.
On 10 June, KDP forces detained AANES and PYD representatives in Erbil, and they have not been heard from since. Why is the KDP organising special receptions for the enemies of Kurds and detaining Rojava’s representatives?
Rojava’s representatives are in custody and we do not know what has happened to them. In fact, according to information I have received (I’m not 100% certain), Turkish intelligence officers came and interrogated our colleagues. This is a dangerous situation. We do not know where our colleagues are now. We do not know what kind of interrogation they are under, what they are being asked.
What is happening at the Simalka border point, what practices have the KDP introduced there?
We are also experiencing great difficulties at Simalka. The questions prepared for people going to and fro are intelligence related questions. They are humiliating questions. People are shocked when, crossing a border, they are asked questions like, ‘How many people are there in your family? What are you thinking? What do you eat? Who are your relatives and tribe? What party are you involved with and what are your duties to them? When do you hold meetings? Who is your supervisor? What neighbourhood do you live in? What is the name of your [political] commune? Where is your assembly?’
They are using these questions to pressurise our people. The people do not accept this and are unsettled. The issue of Simalka is a serious problem. All the forces of Kurdistan should stand against this. The PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) is also there, and what the PUK are doing there, I don’t know. The PUK is also a partner in this government. The duties of the PUK are not just to make political speeches in Rojava and develop relations with the Rojava parties. It should have a role within the government. Why are the governments taking our people, why are they treating us like this at the border point?
Women going to and fro are searched in a way that is not done anywhere else. There is always respect for women. There is sensitivity in the searching of women everywhere. An attitude of unity and solidarity displays opposition to these violations. Anyone can create good sentences and pull them together in speeches, addresses and leaflets. The most important thing is the practical attitude.
The Simalka problem, the representatives detained in Erbil and the KDP’s support for the Turkish attacks on the guerrillas are all making us uneasy. We cannot normally see. We, the people of Rojava, Northeast Syria, are forced to see this reality and danger.
Mazloum Abdi appeals to International Coalition to repatriate ISIS families from camps in North and East Syria
Mazloum Abdi, the General Commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has appealed to the International Coalition to repatriate ISIS families from camps in North and East Syria.
Mazloum Abdi, the General Commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), shared a message he sent to the International Coalition that is meeting in Rome to discuss the nature of the struggle against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Abdi urged the Coalition to repatriate tens of thousands of ISIS members and their families who are currently being housed in North and East Syria. “The anti-ISIS Coalition will meet tomorrow to discuss progress towards the enduring defeat of ISIS. To ensure sustainable victory, we must not forget that tens of thousands of women, children and ISIS fighters remain in SDF and North and East Syria internally displaced people (IDP) camps and detention centres,” said Abdi onTwitter.
Abdi appealed to the Coalition to help return the ISIS families and members to their home countries as well as to “fund education and de-radicalisation programmes, and support stability and strong economic recovery in the liberated areas to address the root causes of extremism.”
Italy will co-host and co-chair (with the US) the Plenary Ministerial meeting of the Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh/ISIS alongside the United States on Monday in Rome. Hosted by the Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Luigi Di Maio, the meeting primarily aims to discuss how to sustain pressure on the remnants of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and how to counter ISIS networks elsewhere, including in Africa.
More than half of the 83 members of the Coalition will be attending the meeting at ministerial level, two years after the last formal meeting took place.
A statement by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) on 18 March called upon the international community to continue with its repatriation efforts for children and their mothers from al-Hol Camp, which it deemed “insufficient”, Rojava Information Centre reported.
AANES furthermore reiterated the need for international expertise to assist in setting up a criminal court to try ISIS members. Netherlands on 5 June repatriated four Dutch citizens, a woman and three children from Roj Camp.
This was the second time that the Netherlands has repatriated citizens from camps in North and East Syria: two Dutch orphans had previously been repatriated in June 2019.
Uzbekistan on 30 April also repatriated 24 women members of ISIS and 68 children from AANES.
Kurdish authorities have called for an international tribunal to bring ISIS suspects into its custody. This proposal has never been taken seriously by the international community.
Having not been officially recognised, AANES – where the majority of foreign ISIS members are detained – has not been able to prosecut ISIS members. Although the Kurdish-led coalition has repeatedly appealed to countries to repatriate their nationals detained as ISIS members in AANES, most countries have refused to act.
A soldier, a staff member and 5 mercenaries were killed, while 3 mercenaries were injured in the actions carried out by HRE in Mare, Shera and Azaz.
ANF
AFRIN
Friday, 25 Jun 2021, 17:09
The Afrin Liberation Forces (HRE) reported that at least one soldier, one personnel and 5 mercenaries were killed, and 3 vehicles were demolished in their latest actions against the invading Turkish state forces.
The HRE statement detailing the actions between June 19-24 includes the following:
“Based on legitimate self-defense, our forces continue to respond to the attacks of the invading Turkish army and their mercenaries. Our troops organized actions against several targets in different regions.
On June 19, our forces organized an assault against a base of the invading Turkish army in Mare, which Turkey seeks to reactivate. A construction machine was destroyed, and another was hit in the action. Furthermore, a soldier and a staff member of the invading Turkish army were killed.
We carried out an effective action against a mercenary group in Mare on June 20. Multiple mercenaries were killed while several others were injured. Detailed information on the number of dead and injured could not be obtained.
On 20 June, an action against the mercenary group ‘Asif al-Shimal’ was carried out in Omer Simo village of Shera district. 3 mercenaries were killed, and one other was injured during the action. Moreover, a military base where the mercenaries are stationed, and a vehicle were demolished.
On June 24, an effective action was carried out against a group of mercenaries gathered in the village of Kefr Xoşer in Azaz. One mercenary was killed, and 2 others were injured during the action. The base where the mercenaries are stationed was also destroyed.
A soldier, a staff member and 5 mercenaries were killed, while 3 mercenaries were injured in the actions carried out by our forces in Mare, Shera and Azaz. In addition, 3 vehicles and 2 bases were destroyed.”
SOHR: 140 Turkish-backed mercenaries return from Libya to Syria
Back-and-forth transfer operations: 140 Turkish-backed mercenaries return from Libya to Syria, while 200 others leave Syria to Libya.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Sunday, 20 Jun 2021, 19:37
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that nearly 140 Syrian fighters of Turkish-backed factions have returned from Libya to Syria in the past few days. The sources of SOHR have also confirmed that the return of this batch has not been a part of a plan to evacuate Turkish-backed mercenaries from Libya, as nearly 200 other mercenaries have been sent to Libya instead.
The observatory noted that all the fighters of the batch transferred recently to Libya are of the factions of al-Amshat, Sultan Murad and al-Hamza Division. Accordingly, the withdrawal of Turkish-backed mercenaries form Libya has been still suspended, despite all international appeals and Libyan-Libyan understandings.
On June 7, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the return of a group of Turkish-backed Syrian mercenaries from Libya to Syria. In the previous 48 hours, nearly 95 fighters affiliated to the factions of “al-Hamzah Division, al-Majd Brigade, Sultan Murad, al-Muatasem Division.”
SOHR added that the return of those fighters was a part of back-and-forth transfer operations, as another group of 100 fighters from the same factions were dispatched by the Turkish government to Libya.
On the other hand, SOHR reported that al-Hamzah Division arrested several fighters who returned back with the latest patch after committing severe violations in Libya.
The back-and-forth transfer operations coincided with the international continuous demands to withdraw mercenaries from Libya. However, such demands met with Turkish government’s indifference, despite the considerable coverage by media, especially by SOHR.
This was the first time for the return of a large number of fighters since May 25, as the return process was limited only to individual returns under fraud medical reports.
On May 27, SOHR reported that foreign mercenaries were present in the Libyan territory, despite the Libyan-Libyan understandings, the ongoing international calls and the media coverage. Moreover, the return of Turkish-backed Syrian mercenaries was completely suspended, except for some individual returns by some mercenaries who provided falsified medical reports and bribed the leaders of Turkish-backed factions, amid widespread discontent among the Turkish-backed “mercenaries” in Libya over the suspension of their return and the unpaid financial dues in return for the services they provided for the Turkish government.
On the other hand, the Syrian mercenaries who were recruited by the Russian” Wagner” company for protecting and serving the Russian interests in Libya, haven’t retuned back, reported the observatory.
On April 28, SOHR reported that the return of Syrian mercenaries from Libya is still suspended, whether Turkish-backed “mercenaries”, or those who were recruited by the Russian “Wagner” company and sent to Libya.
SOHR said that only a small number of mercenaries returned to Syria, after they provided medical reports and falsified some of them by bribing the leaders of Turkish-backed factions, amid widespread discontent among the Turkish-backed “mercenaries” in Libya. Their return to Syria still suspended since March 25, since the return of last batch of fighters about five weeks ago, after a complete suspension of the return of these mercenaries since mid-November.
In mid-April, SOHR reported that fighters of Turkish-backed factions, who are in Libya, were paying bribes to doctors in order to falsify medical reports enabling them to return to Syria.
On March 8, SOHR reported the Turkish government sending patch of 380 mercenaries to Libya.
On the other hand, SOHR affirmed that the return of the Russian-backed Syrian mercenaries who had been recruited by the Russian “Wagner” company and sent to Libya, has been also completely suspended.
American internationalist: Fighting ISIS is not enough
US internationalist Sipan Van Spronson pointed out the necessity of fighting not only against ISIS, but also against Turkish fascism, and said that joining the YPG was an opportunity for him.
MUSTAFA ÇOBAN
HESEKÊ
Saturday, 12 Jun 2021, 08:51
The Rojava Revolution is a revolutionary process that embraces not only the peoples of the Middle East, but all the peoples of the world. Internationalists from all over the world have joined the revolution. One of those affected by the Rojava Revolution struggle is American internationalist Sipan Van Spronson. Van Spronson, who came to Rojava 15 months ago, spoke to ANF about his choice to join the YPG and his experience in Rojava.
Van Spronson said: “I came because I believe in the ideology of this movement, I believe in the establishment of a stateless democracy based on the liberation of women, and I believe in self-defense for the people of the middle east against ISIS and Turkish fascism.
When I first arrived in rojava its almost difficult to describe; there was such an intense feeling of freedom that I felt, being here with my comrades who I knew were here to fight for the same things as I, and even within the society it was clear that there was a much more democratic and liberated approach to life and it was truly wonderful to just be within a system and within a people who decide to live that way.”
The internationalist continued: “For me, joining the YPG was a wonderful and invaluable experience. It was an opportunity to fight for something I believe in. In opposition to such a violent and repressive way of life. This nationalism, this hyper religious approach, this idea of one flag one people one state. And, to be able to participate in a movement that instead fights for the liberation of women for the creation of an autonomous peoples, and an autonomous way of living.”
Addressing the American people Van Spronson said: “I guess if I were to say something to the American people, or all people in the west even, I would say that we are running out of time. The time for complacency is over, if we truly care about freedom, about liberation, about basic equality and basic democracy then we can no longer rely on the work and the blood of others; it must be done with our hands and our own blood. So if we want to call ourselves revolutionaries, fundamentally human, even, then the time is now to get out there, to work, to do something. You don’t have to join a military force but we can no longer be complacent. One other thing I would like to talk about is the importance of the ecological approach within this movement. Especially as a young person I really think a lot about climate change, about the horrible catastrophes that this will, and already is beginning to bring to the people around the world. And so that aspect of it is also really important to me, to fight against this capitalist consumption of the environment, of the land around us.”
The internationalist reminded that “the fight against ISIS is ongoing, and in spite of these frequent reports from the American government, the American military that “we’ve done it we’ve defeated ISIS” and so on, its not true. First off, a lot of the work that’s being done is by our forces, and the work is far from over. We still have sleeper cells that are beheading civilians and doing horrible acts of violence and so I think that what needs to be understood is that if we start a job, we have to finish it, and finish it in its entirety. And that includes our approach to the Turkish state as well, who not only in the past has actively supported ISIS but even now within the various chete groups, the various jihadist groups they support in northern Syria there are ex ISIS members that are just simply looking to to restart their movement, and you can see that within the free Syrian army and many of the other groups that turkey supports. I mean what’s important to understand is that this is a fight that’s ongoing, and we will fight to the very end.”
Van Spronson said: “I think one of the other things we’ve seen is a tendency for America to forget its allies, for instance in Afrin and Serekaniye, these places where the American army basically paved the way for Turkish invasion. And I think that from an international perspective, and an internationalist perspective I think it’s important to understand that if we as, for instance Americans, if we want to see freedom for the Kurdish people, for the people of the middle east then we need to come and actually do something about it because its clear that our states will continue to only work for themselves.”
Dr. Michael Wilk, a medical doctor from Wiesbaden, reports from the tent cities of Waşokanî and Serêkaniyê near Hesekê on the situation of the people in the autonomous region of northeastern Syria, which is characterized by Turkish attacks and lockdown.
ANF
HESEKÊ
Wednesday, 21 Apr 2021, 08:18
The Waşokanî camp for refugees houses 14,000 people in tents under the most adverse conditions. The second camp, Serêkaniyê, with 11,000 residents, is also located near Hesekê, a city/suburb with a population of approximately one million. The camp is named after the city of the same name, which was invaded by Turkish army and Islamist troops of President Erdogan in October 2019. Serêkaniyê was a beautiful, Kurdish-majority town located right on the border of Turkey. On the other side of the political demarcation line, Kurdish people also live, separated from their relatives in Syria by a border drawn by victorious powers after the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Example of social change
The Kurdish population was oppressed on both sides. However, with the increasing loss of power of the ruler Assad, starting from the Arab Spring, a self-determined autonomous movement was able to establish itself in the north of Syria, which declared grassroots democratic principles and the equality of men and women as its goals. It subsequently succeeded not only in driving out the terrorist Islamist ISIS at great cost, but also in asserting itself against the Assad regime. The expansion and consolidation of the area in northeastern Syria, the inclusion of all ethnic groups living in the area in the attempt to create a self-determined society and, above all, the changed social position of women developed positively. This is a much-appreciated example of social change in self-determination, in extreme contrast to the social structures of the surrounding countries and virtually a nightmare for the Islamists and the authoritarian autocrats of Erdogan’s ilk.
Alliance commitments to the Erdogan regime
Rojava’s badly damaged infrastructure was partially rebuilt, and houses, schools and even clinics were repaired, largely under the government’s own steam and with the help of international donations. State aid from abroad was almost completely absent, the high toll in the fight against ISIS with over 10,000 dead and 20,000 injured was not repaid with reconstruction aid, the alliance obligations to the Erdogan regime, the NATO partnership, the economy and above all Turkey’s gatekeeper function towards refugees weigh too heavily.
Germany and EU are complicit in Turkish crimes
The West’s ducking and stalling policy continued even when Erdogan invaded Rojava’s territories militarily several times. The invasion of Afrin in spring 2018 and that of the area between Serêkaniyê and Girê Spî in 2019 displaced hundreds of thousands of people from their ancestral territories, leaving many dead and seriously injured. The EU and the German government did nothing and not only made themselves complicit in the invasion and crimes by continuing to supply weapons. Thousands who could not find accommodation with relatives or have the means to build a new house are still living in schools, or worse, in tent cities. Like just here in the Waşokanî and Serêkaniyê camps with 25,000 people.
Economic burden due to lockdown
Next door, in the Corona Clinic of the Kurdish Red Crescent (Heyva Sor a Kurd), people are struggling to breathe. The nurses of the Kurdish Crescent are doing everything they can with scarce resources. The declared lockdown is necessary, but economically burdensome for the region, which is exhausted by the war and Erdogan’s attacks.
If nothing else, the use and distribution of the saving vaccine reflects the global relations of power, privilege and domination. So far, about two-thirds of the vaccine has been delivered to just six countries worldwide. Here in the Waşokanî camp, no vaccine has yet arrived, nor has it reached the rest of the region. Yet it is so urgently needed. https://www.youtube.com/embed/NoVm7juAFCM?rel=0
The following history complements all of the other more formal, Positivistic(1), aspects of the revolution. It paints a picture of an important and powerful aspect of the Rojavan revolution. It cannot be seen from outside. It cannot be held, defined or quantified. It has no process, no direct material certainty, no written system or rules. This history is an attempt to explain why the system of governance in Rojava is not, has not and will not develop in to an Oligarchy. It is the riddle of human kind, Michel’s Iron Law of Oligarchy(2), and for the second time(4) in history that I know of, it is being defied.When I use Woman™ and Man™ in this text it does not literally mean women and men. The Rojavan revolution, “The Friends”, Abdullah Öcalan, invites everyone equally, irrelevant of ethnicity, Class™, background, intelligence, wealth, men and women; to adopt the concepts that it gathers in its social construct Women™, and to reject the brutal ideas that it gathers in its social construct Men™. For example, it rejects Male™ concepts of superior and inferior, domination by anyone, competitiveness, individualism and insecurity, positivism(19), authority and especially the Nation States that men created. In Rojavan revolutionary networks men are just as welcome as women, there is no distinction or bias.
A dominant woman is rejected just as a dominant man is. As a man living and working in Rojava for a year now I can confidently report that this culture frees men and women together, it does not place them in competition in any way. This proposed method is especially relevant, welcome and effective in the context of the Middle East.Imagine a war happened in your country. Far away from you on the other side. And that all the State soldiers and police left your area leaving behind substantial amounts of weapons(1) and equipment. Your side of the country is also full of crude oil, hidden under endless dusty wheat fields, unprotected and unmanaged(23) now that the soldiers have left. Enough to sell, and independently power a society with(16).You and your friends take control of the oil fields. That is, the people you watch movies and eat popcorn( 8 ) with. Many friend groups do this, copy this, join in with you and you are all connected up, and growing as a huge friend group network. One of the friend groups buys 1000s of white people carrier cars, all the same, and distributes them to any friend group that is interested, with blue number plates to indicate that it is a vehicle belonging to “The Friends”.
No one sets up any official rules, no one gets elected, no one writes “Government” on any buildings, everyone meets only at everyone else house(15). The rest of Society with its free markets continues as normal, but without Nation State interference now. I often stand at the road as the sun goes down watching The Friends continually zoom back and forth(9) in their white people carriers. 1000s of them visiting each others houses, discussing, planning, thinking, reading, watching movies and eating popcorn.Rooms in the Middle East, rich and poor, are very minimal. Around the edges, patterned soft sleeping mats, generous cushions and big fluffy blankets where people sit to chat, and later sleep. Huge central shared trays appear with omelettes(20), roaming-goat cheeses and fresh spun breads. Olives from Afrin and oils from Kobane. The conversation is often loud, always curious and excited, occasionally with singing. The mornings often look like a party happened, with people scattered around all the rooms, crashed out.Some Friends are asked to take responsibility for some things by some other Friends. Sometimes life and death important things. No one ever votes. No one ever brings an agenda, on paper or in their minds. Everything is agreed between Friends, often with neighbors popping in and joining in, and must be agreed that way. So understandings slowly and gently assemble themselves, flowing through the symbols and constructs in the free and ever developing languages(3) uninhibited by the dictates of dictionaries. This is what Rojavans mean when they say Social-ism. This is how Woman™ organises.”Villages are noisy places Tekoşin!” – Heval BK explaining that real democracy is loud. It is necessarily human scale like a village or city small neighborhood, intimate and face-to-face, where people are always talking with each other, always in each others houses or between, always excited.
The Friends then begin developing relationships with economic infrastructural organisations: farms, engineering business, logistics, warehouses, shops, etc. When a business joins The Friends network, everything changes for them. The people working there get over-flowing Veg Boxes and all household necessities delivered to their homes every week, according to what they say they need(10). Their rent and bills are paid for them(11) and they get weapons(21) and free cigarettes(6). Other Friends across the network visit and work with them. Trust, positivity, intuition, intimacy, emotional intelligence and education replaces money and property within the networks of networks. “Accounts are a cold thing and building and organising is a warm thing” – Rojavan education 2021(18). So the revolution deals with all accounting needs for teams(7), leaving them to build, organise and create. Excited young women, fresh out of Rojava University, run around installing and teaching Open Source accounting software for engineering companies and farms alike. It virally spreads through the society. Communities and links strengthen in society generally and the economy runs more and more on friendship as the edges between the revolution and the society blur. This is how Woman™ carefully and patiently abolishes money and property.”There is only one law in Rojava Tekoşin. You must be our friend” – Heval AIn 2013, one year after the revolution, Heval H returned from technology work in Dubai to protect his family home in Qamishlo, Kurdistan and one of The Friends approached him to explain the revolution. He was easily convinced. He got some close friends together, armed themselves, and began convert operations surveying Turkish-ISIS military positions and activities using their own cars and false IDs to visit other cities under or near enemy control.
After a few months they found other friendly military units and started supplying them with information. The team also started buying, developing and using technology from the local Souke (market) to improve their capabilities. No one asked or told anyone, filled out any official forms, joined anything, asked for or received uniforms, because that is not how this society works. The information was extremely popular and Heval H’s division grew quickly, other groups helped fund it or joined in, and it became an integral part of the military operations here in Rojava. The SDF (Syrian Defence Forces) is the umbrella group for whatever it is that the people are doing to protect themselves. This is how Woman™ protects herself against the Nation States of Men™, in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society, aware of the chaotic reality of war.”Half the people in this şehid lik (graveyard) were my personal friends Tekoşin, all killed by Turks. I *hate* them. But I cannot allow myself this hate because we *must* go forward together” – Heval AAANES (Autonomous Administration of North East Syria) is the administrative umbrella group for all the activities civilian society is choosing to do.
Rojava has a thriving free-market economy. One that is progressively de-monopolising and moving away from money and property. The freedom of the market was never the problem in Capitalism. Rojavan business owners do not wake up with times, numbers and graphs in their minds. They do not “supply” “customers” with “services”. The have their community friends in their minds. The feeling of safety and happiness of their families is related deep down to their friendship in the community, not to their profit-loss account. Women™ can free Men™ from the pains of Capitalism.In 2019, after 8 years of revolution, The Friends did something unprecedented. They directly intervened in the economy. The Friends never forced people to stop using money under threat of jail. They never frightened landlords with violence. They didn’t frighten business owners and their families by forcing them to obey prices or forcibly taking their life long business ventures away from them.
All these things, that previous revolutions have done, require violence and create fear and conflict. It is not The Friends’ style. This is not the way Women™ do things.The Turkish embargo on Rojava had created a smuggler-trading class that was growing big and powerful. So The Friends reluctantly started trading and transporting products themselves as well and opening cheap supermarkets providing all basic needs to the people in all the major cities The Friends lived in. It was carefully and patiently introduced and widely welcomed. No one protested, no one attacked anyone, no opposition armies formed.”Social Construction is more powerful than any army or police Tekoşin.” – Heval SI arrived in Rojava a year ago in February 2020 with no understanding whatsoever of what I present in this article. Some theories from Bookchin, Öcalan and the like gave me better eyes, but no understanding of what it actually felt like in practice. During that year I have often sat in meetings next to people with enormous responsibilities in Rojava. I never realised because they don’t wear any medals, rarely say anything and they certainly don’t directly make decisions or proposals. A Friend with great responsibilities in the revolution often sleeps on my couch at the moment. He is there in his jeans and un-tucked shirt in the morning with a big smile, makes tea and asks me what I need. I was very surprised when Heval H told me what his responsibilities were. He is so calm. “You have a lot to learn about our culture Tekoşin…” It seems that the “higher up” people are in this society, the less they speak and the more attentive they are. They always make me so aware of my own spiralling, uncontrolled, embarrassing optimisation and egotism. Or “acis” as the Kurds say, which also means powerless. It will be a long time before anyone regards me as fit to take on responsibilities in this society.
It is like the reverse of the Capitalist system, where the higher up people go in Capitalism, even the first step, the more arrogant, dogmatic, charismatic, aggressive, confident and stupid people become. And the wisest people get thrown in jail at the bottom! The Capitalist democracy, where people vote for the wisest person, seemingly has the opposite effect to that intended.There is an intentional tacit power hierarchy in Rojava within The Friends movement. Each project or area has a “Responsible”, in both military and civilian works, and the Responsibles have Responsibles in a hierarchy. This hierarchy has substantial tacit power in it from the tops down. Many reasons, information and decisions are unknown to the people further down the hierarchy.Rojava works on Responsibility without Authority. A seemingly ridiculous and rude concept to my European mind. How can you fix something if you have no control over it?? Let alone be held responsible for the failures of people in your team who you have no control over?? But, as always, human beings do something completely different to what is expected. Responsibility *without* authority is one of the keys to ensuring attentive, humble, emotionally intelligent bottom-up democracy. Woman™ understands emotional psychology and the society organism very well. This is why millions of Woman™ were killed in the 15th century(5) to make way for Men™s Positivism(19) revolution.In Rojava it seems that the cultural keys(24) have been discovered to a good leadership hierarchy that gets things done patiently, changing and growing together into shared solutions, leaving no one behind or outside.
Democratic Confederalism is just the harmless summarising administrative patterned cloth that floats on top of this chaotic social activity. The endless, interweaving populism underneath is the intentional power system in Rojava. This is how Woman™ allows decisions to assemble themselves.”The European Anarchist idea of not having leaders is silly.” – School responsible, Rojavan Education 2021.After a year and much education, a sense of patience and endless curiosity toward others had strongly underpinned my psychology. I noticed myself naturally telling people stories instead of solutions I wanted them to adopt. I was sitting through entire meetings happily curious, completely free from the tyranny of my own ideas, interests or intentions. About 1 month ago the whole of Rojava suddenly opened up to me. Speeding around in cars with people excitedly introducing me. It really happened that abruptly and clearly. Somehow Rojava had decided that I was finally ready.”The problem is not the problem. Your attitude to the problem is the problem.” – Captain Jack Sparrow.
These vast flowing cultural under-currents(12) had always been widely and deeply present in The Middle East. Especially in rural agri-cultures like Rojava(13), excluded from Modernism. And, of course, these currents exist in many similar situations all around the world, un-suppressed still by the insidious tentacles of Nation States. Rojava had a Women™s revolution to bring forth these under-currents, formalise them into an ideology, and give them a name: Jineology, with Democratic Con-federalism as its anti-system protection network. They call this “jiyana xwezayî”, the natural life.”He is doing şerm Tekoşin!!!” – Everyone excitedly talking about my friend, the young wonderful Heval B, sitting humbly and not talking, refusing cigarettes, tea and food to demonstrate his sense of social humility in the presence of new friends arriving on the project. I miss him.The European Left has always had the right ideas with its cooperatives, communes, intentional communities, community vegetable growing and so on, but so much energy was consumed by conflict within the groups that their growth was stunted and they became much less attractive. Various painful positivistic attempts to make decisions, like Consensus decision making, failed to analyse the real fundamental epistemological(22) issue and, instead, just brought that cultural failure into sharper contrast.
Many 1970s European Feminist groups(17) did address this in a similar way to Rojava but they got lost in time as Capitalism steadily and meticulously neutralised the considerable threat they posed.”Men cannot be free until women are free.” – Abdullah ÖcalanRojava is reaching out to everyone across Europe and the world. Its new civil-society to civil-society Diplomacy sections want to talk with you. We are circumventing the dominant Men™ Nation States and talking straight to citizens and civil society groups. The path to change will be the same: to “kill the Dominant Male™” (quote from Abdullah Öcalan) within all of our personalities, men and women, to allow these cultural under-currents to blossom again. “95% of this war is against our own personalities, 5% is a mechanized war” – Rojavan Education 2021. “If our personalities are not good, we cannot create anything good.” – Rojavan Education 2021. The reverse is also true. Capitalism’s strength is inside us, and so is its downfall. Rojava will celebrate a decade of revolution next year.
A decade of survival against incredible material odds. A growing spreading society more and more devoted to its ideology as the armies of Nation States are rendered impotent against the gentle, patient, viral spread of its friendship, beauty, joy and rationality.If you are reading this then you are connected now(14). This revolution cannot and will not develop without you. Don’t worry if you do not have the same set of circumstances in your region that brought Rojava in to revolution. Every context is different, opportunities will come. Only preparation is necessary.
(1) – Some of the friend groups secure weapons. Weapons from the soldiers as they left, weapons from Lebanon, weapons from elsewhere. They call themselves the Peoples Protection Units (HPC) and they anchor themselves in the local communities they live in. They spring up everywhere, with different ethnicities, areas, uniforms sometimes, and ideas but all happy that the other groups exist and coordinating (SDF).
There are much more pressing dangers on the horizon than differences of opinion about number plate colours. Other more regional connected armies form (YPG/YPJ) over time. Some rules are created, some loosely followed, many rules are different and many rules are discussed over tea. Other groups setup “police” (Asayish) and begin making things safer. Other groups talk to them and make some arrangements for other different coloured number plates. Everyone is happy everyone else is doing stuff. ISIS-NATO try to kill everyone but fail. In the early years 40% of The Friends income was spent on security. This year finally it is substantially less. Source: The Friends
(2) – Michels’s theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise. Source: Wikipedia(3) – Kurdish and Rojava has many inter-connected and developing dialects without centralised dictionaries. So the people develop the language together naturally as concepts and society changes. Routinely, Rojavans feel free to pick and use words from ~
3 different and changing dialects (Afrin, Qamislo, Kobane for example) and 3 different languages (Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish for example) in any single sentence, depending on their audience and direction. Source: Personal experience. I speak Kurmanji fluently and bits of Arabic and Turkish.
(4) Ancient Athens was the other one. Surprisingly there are huge differences in the way they solved it, not least with the exclusion of women and slaves. They did it within a rhetoric of extreme superior and inferior, domination over slaves and women, loud aggression, wealth disparity and competition. But, nevertheless, with harsh competition, terrible punishments and grand social rewards the poor demonstrably dominated the rich leisure class for 200 years with only 1 very temporary coup and similar social contradictions to Modern Europe. One of the important similarities with Rojava was that it was active, widespread populism of an intimate human scale (limited to 20-40,000 men). Every citizen could expect to be on the 50 citizen inner circle of government “prytany” twice in his life and almost constantly involved in 1 or more groups. Obers book, Mass And Elite In Ancient Athens (1989), is especially good on this. It suggests that the decisions in Athens were really made in the swarming down-town barbers shops, not in the famous Assemblies. The assemblies really only summarised what had already been accepted in society with its development of language, symbols, social constructs and speeches through the system of Logographers (speech writers) who mingled with the people to ensure that their speeches would be accepted in the assemblies. Ober does an incredible job of demonstrating this with network and systems theories. Osborne also writes well on this subject especially about the social reasons how the Athenian revolution developed out of a fragmented warlord past. Source: Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Ober 1991, Athens and Athenian Democracy: Osborne 2010
(5) – This was the witch hunts. Reports of the Number of deaths vary greatly. The period before these hunts saw Monasteries of women actively researching and educating and their active involvement in community. It also saw the beginnings of Positivism, male science, the Nation States building on the structural foundations of hierarchical religions. Source: Rojavan Education, 2021
(6) – The revolution spends substantial amounts of money on cigarettes. This is an increasingly contentious issue as Abdullah Öcalan has demanded that revolutionaries stop smoking. He also stated that “… the un-necessary slaughter of animals must stop”. Many Cadros are becoming vegetarian as a result and there are positive signs that Cadros are also beginning to stop smoking. Source: The Friends
(7) – I have visited 3 “companies” now, all doing engineering infrastructure, to install their accounting systems for them. Different systems of course, lots of receipts and variation, no central repository. Source: Personal experience( – We do actually eat a lot of popcorn in Rojava. And, in fact, last week, myself and 10 life long Kurdish revolutionaries sat around and watched Ice Age II together laughing and chatting. Of course notwithstanding critiques of Hollywood, Positivist culture, food supply chains and so on. Source: Personal experience
(9) – The Friends have their own lane at all police road blocks which is usually empty. Fuel is free for The Friends. Source: Personal experience
(10) – I always ask for tubs of chocolate. It always comes, with big smiles. My logistic store has 10 tubs in it. I need to stop eating so much chocolate. Source: Personal experience
(11) – Landlords and the housing free market exist in Rojava although slowly reducing. Rents are increasing dramatically in Qamislo to the east as refugees flee the Turkish occupied cities of Aleppo, Kobane and Afrin. Source: The Friends(
12) – The writers Abdullah Öcalan and Murray Bookchin write well on this subject. Öcalan describes a history with 2 opposing flowing rivers of cultural philosophy beginning 5000 years ago in Sumeria. That of Nation Statism and Patriarchy, and that of Communalism and Jineology. Source: The Sociology of Freedom (2020), Prison Writings The Roots of Civilisation (2007): Abdullah Öcalan
(13) – Rojava was and is 70% agriculture, almost all wheat production. Kurds especially were formally excluded from many positions in society like governmental posts and are mostly a very poor subsistence society. Source: Revolution In Rojava: Pluto Press 2016
(15) – Interestingly the Alawi religion does this also, with no central church buildings, holding meetings only in each others houses. Source: Heval BK, head of Sterk revolutionary TV station, Rojava.
(16) – For a full list of The Friends expenditures the yearly accounting reports for AANES can be seen on RojavaInformationCenter.com. They are usually in the region of ~$120 million per year. The Friends fixed many roads, setup the RCell mobile Internet provider, and many other public services. Rojavan crude oil is sold at 10% of the market price because of the embargo.
(17) – Anecdotal. Comments ad research welcome!
(18) – Rojavan education 2021: In February this author, Heval Tekosin, attended 40 days of education, Jineology personality analysis, critiques and a platform. The process caused much self-analysis, awareness and changes in my personality and I feel much more free, patient and relaxed in my mind now. In short, the agendas, desperation to talk and impose, and optimisations in my mind have calmed. “Men cannot be free until women are free.”
(19) – Positivism is a complex term worthy of a book. In short, it is the physical, factual world, the world commonly understood in Europe as “science”. It excludes the meta-physical, that is morality, emotion, philosophy and so on. Anything that cannot be mathematically defined and measured is excluded. It allows only one human motivation, self-interest, which it regards as the single, and mathematically provable, evolutionary goal of each and every human. It turns people and society into robots and graphs, and life in to a series of numbers, TO-DO lists, times and categories. It reduces, categorises, homogenises and essentialises. The Positivist mind is caught in never ending spiralling mathematical optimisations of every aspect of its life, from time to money to happiness. The rejection of Positivism is central to Abdullah Öcalan’s and Jineology’s philosophy, where Positivistic thought and Technology are embraced as a tool rather than a master
.(20) – I am Vegan. Many many sheep wander the wheat fields in the outskirts of cities and countryside and there are many small farms with chickens, sheep, dogs and pigs. However, most of the eggs in Rojava still come from large industrial farming facilities at the moment. This is ugly to almost all of the Rojavans I have met so far and they want to move to small scale roaming free animal farms. Small scale production is also part of the Ecological ideology here. There is no understanding of the conscious state of animals yet in Rojava but there are local projects starting to try and address these issues, especially aimed at helping dogs initially.
(21) – One AK47 or M16 per person. These usually line the walls of bedrooms and work places
.(22) – Epistemological: The way we understand reality
(23) – The planned regional oil management town of Rmelan housed all the Syrian Regime management offices and staff for coordinating the regions oil down from the Northern Syrian oil fields through to Damascus by road. Once empty, taking over and re-coordinating the oil flows was clear for The Friends.
(24) – Share stories not personal conclusions, read emotions not only information, change and learn without ego and not be defensive, imagine themselves as part of a society not an individual, listen instead of waiting to impose, and consider themselves and everyone else as dynamic and capable of moral learning without needing to push.
Originally published under the title “Turkish-controlled Islamist Militia’s Ravaging of Afrin.”
Turkish-backed Syrian security forces patrol the highly secured market area of downtown Afrin. (New York Times)
Located in the northwest corner of Syria, the Turkish-controlled Afrin area is largely off limits to foreign journalists.
Turkish forces occupied Afrin in late 2018, in an operation dubbed Olive Branch, destroying the Kurdish authority which had previously ruled there.
Since that time, Afrin has been ruled by a coalition of Syrian Arab Sunni Islamist groups, with the Turkish authorities as the real power behind them. Significant Turkish investment in the infrastructure of the area, along with the frozen diplomacy of the Syrian conflict, suggests that the current situation will last for some time.
Global media and governments have ignored very grave violations of human rights in the Afrin area.
Evidence is emerging to suggest that very grave violations of human rights are taking place in the Afrin area, on a systematic basis. The situation remains largely ignored by both the global media and Western governments.
According to Jiger Hussein, a refugee from Afrin who now coordinates an investigation team looking into cases of kidnapping and abduction in northern Syria, “We have strong evidence indicating the involvement of the Turkish authorities and their client extremist militias in the international crime which is taking place in Turkish-occupied Afrin – including rape, trafficking, and torture to death.”
Operation Olive Branch began on January 20, 2018, and concluded on March 18, 2018, with the defeat of the Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) at the hands of the Turkish military and its Syrian Arab Islamist auxiliaries.
The Turkish takeover of Afrin led to the expulsion or flight of around 200,000 Kurds from the area.
The immediate result of the Turkish takeover was the expulsion or flight of around 200,000 Kurds from the area, reducing the Kurdish population from an estimated 350,000 to around 150,000 today.
The vast scale of population displacement as a result of the Syrian civil war (around 13.5 million Syrians from a prewar population of 22 million have left their homes in the last decade) has served to obscure the significance of this act of sectarian cleansing. It differs from other acts of forced movement of population from Syria in that it was directed not by a pariah regime under Western sanctions, still less by an unaffiliated militia. Rather, this large-scale forced movement of a population was conducted by a NATO member state and US ally.
Following the expulsion of more than 50% of the Kurdish population of Afrin, Turkey undertook the resettlement in Afrin of Syrian Arab refugees from the Ghouta area (close to Damascus), Deir al-Zor and from the Aleppo Governorate. Around 100,00 people have established homes in the area since the conclusion of Operation Olive Branch.
Turkey has resettled the Afrin area with around 100,000 Syrian Arab refugees.
Conditions of life for the remaining Kurdish and Yazidi population in Afrin under the rule of Turkey and its Islamist auxiliaries in the Syrian National Army remain precarious in the extreme.
A recent report by ACAPS (Assessment Capacities Project), an independent NGO, noted: “The Kurdish population… face constant harassment by local militia groups, putting them at risk of losing their livelihoods and access to food and shelter…. The Kurdish population of Afrin is at risk of personal threats, extortion, detention and abduction from local SNA factions present in the district…. Kurdish residents in Afrin are particularly vulnerable to problems related to shelter. Kurdish residents have experienced repeated and systemic looting of their property. Those who fled their homes in 2018 are reported to have had their homes occupied by fighters and their families and by displaced people from Syrian-government-held areas.”
The US State Department “2020 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Syria” confirmed that “The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria corroborated repeated patterns of systematic looting and property appropriation” by SNA members in Afrin and Ra’s al-Ayn, and that “after civilian property was looted, SNA fighters and their families occupied houses after civilians had fled, or ultimately coerced residents, primarily of Kurdish origin, to flee their homes, through threats, extortion, murder, abduction, torture and detention.”
The ACAPS report notes in particular confiscation of agricultural lands. The nonlocal origins of SNA fighters has resulted in widespread cases of serious misuse of resources. For example, according to a Voice of America report, no less than eight million of Afrin’s 26 million olive trees have been cut down by SNA fighters, in order to provide firewood or for trading purposes. Afrin was an area traditionally strongly associated with olive farming.
It is important to underline here that the SNA – “Syrian National Army” – despite its name, is not an independent Syrian military formation. Rather, this 70,000-strong force represents the remnants of the Sunni Arab insurgency in northern Syria, today organized, armed, financed and directly controlled by the Turkish authorities.
Kurdish and Yazidi women are systematically targeted by Turkish backed Islamist militias.
The widespread and apparently systematic targeting of Kurdish and Yazidi women is a particular feature of the activity of the Turkish backed Islamist militias.
According to the State Department Country Report, “The COI, STJ, the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), and other monitors documented a trend of TSO [Turkish-supported organization] kidnappings of women in Afrin, where some women remained missing for years.”
Noting “multiple firsthand accounts of kidnapping and arbitrary detention” by Turkish-supported militias in the area, the State Department report named the “Sultan Murad, Faylaq al-Sham, Firqat al-Hamza, and al-Jabha al-Shamiya, and the SNA’s Military Police” organizations as cited by human rights organizations for involvement in the kidnappings.
“Victims of abductions by TSOs [Turkish-supported armed opposition groups] were often of Kurdish or Yazidi origin or were activists openly critical of TSOs or persons perceived to be affiliated with the People’s Protection Units or previous Kurdish administration of Afrin,” the report continued.
The UN Commission of Inquiry reported the transfer of persons held by the SNA factions to official Turkish custody, “indicating collaboration and joint operations between the Turkish government and the SNA which could, if any members were shown to be acting under the effective command and control of Turkish forces, “entail criminal responsibility for commanders who knew or should have known about the crimes, or failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures to prevent or repress their commission.”
The Turkish government denied these reports.
Since the occupation of Afrin by Turkish-backed forces in March 2018, more than 150 women and girls have been kidnapped. (Missing Afrin Women Project)
An NGO specifically created to document the situation facing women in Afrin noted the kidnapping of 88 women by Turkish-supported armed groups in the course of 2020. As of January 2021, according to the organization’s website (missingafrinwomen.org), the whereabouts of 51 of these women remains unknown.
The organization notes that 14 of the cases involve direct allegations of torture, and three involve direct allegations of sexual violence carried out by militiamen in the employ of Turkey. Two of the alleged victims remain missing. The Hamza Division and the Sultan Murad Division are the organizations alleged to have been involved in these three cases.
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has called on Turkey to investigate these allegations. No investigation is known to be currently under way.
Syria has been witness over the last decade to some of the most heinous violations of human rights seen in recent history. The ethnic cleansing of Afrin, and the current and ongoing systematic harassment of the remaining Kurdish and Yazidi population, including the deliberate targeting of women, stand among the darkest chapters in this woeful story.
Jonathan Spyer is a Ginsburg/Milstein Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis.
German internationalist in Rojava: “I can only advise you: Come here!”
Internationalist Goran Kobanê is from Germany and lives in Rojava. He advises others to come to the autonomous region of northeast Syria themselves to get involved in the grassroots democratic project and learn from it.
MUSTAFA ÇOBAN
DÊRIK
Saturday, 1 May 2021, 18:48
Goran Kobanê is an internationalist from Germany and has been living in Rojava for six years. In an interview with ANF, he explains why he went to northern Syria in the summer of 2015 and what motivates him to stay there. He advises all people to come to the self-governing region of northern and eastern Syria to see and learn from the grassroots democratic project and the women’s revolution.
“I am originally from Germany and came to Rojava, to Kobanê, about six years ago, in the summer of 2015. The crucial point and motivation was the battle for Kobanê. That was in the media at the time, it was in the press in Germany, in Europe, internationally, and somehow everyone was aware of it. IS was at the height of its power at the time. They had taken so many cities in Syria, in Iraq, and Kobanê was something like the decisive battle. At the time, it was said that if Kobanê fell, ISIS would be well on its way to marching directly to Europe. And that motivated me at the time to come here and see how I could help.”
The fight for Kobanê: “It was madness”
The resistance in Kobanê was very impressive for him, says Goran Kobanê and continues: “The friends fought with simple, light weapons against tanks and a superior number of opponents. The courage that the friends had here, that was madness. They went into battle partly expecting to die, but they knew they were falling for a good cause and were willing to make that sacrifice. They knew that if they didn’t fight, then all of Kurdistan would be in danger, then Kobanê would be in danger. And who knows how many civilians would have been murdered.” Above all, he said, he was impressed that so many internationalists from different parts of the world wanted to resist.
Meanwhile, Germany continued to support the Turkish state, Goran Kobanê said, “And the Turkish state has demonstrably provided logistical support for ISIS. They took care of the wounded, they provided border crossings, and that was obvious to the world. And yet the German state continued to support the Turkish state. There was no military help, which the friends here would have needed to resist.
German society, it must be said, has already taken this on board. They followed it, they sympathized with the Kurds and with the resistance, but someone really stood up and said: I’m taking a risk, I’m taking a risk and maybe I’ll come here and help,’ that’s something very few people have done. That was another motivation for me to say: Now more than ever. I have two healthy hands, I can come here. I am healthy, why not. I have no excuse to say I can’t help here.”
The defeat of ISIS in Kobanê was like the breaking of a myth: “Until then, ISIS had only won, won, won. They were advancing and it was thought that they could no longer be stopped. And then, thanks to the heroic resistance of the Kurds and their friends, they were defeated and had to retreat. Later, they were pushed back further and further, and that was more or less the beginning of the end for ISIS. And if Kobanê had fallen, who knows how it would have turned out.”
“Germany has itself blackmailed by Erdogan”
Even after the ISIS has been defeated territorially, the Turkish state supports and protects Islamist troops, who today would only call themselves something else, the internationalist continues: “In my opinion, this has only one goal: to break the Kurdish resistance, ideally to wipe out all of Kurdistan and to destroy this really successful model of self-government. Germany nevertheless continues to support the Turkish state, even though it’s obvious that they’re committing human rights violations here, that they’re expelling people here, that they’re murdering people.”
“The German government is allowing itself to be blackmailed by the Erdogan government with the refugees in Turkey. That’s over three million. Turkey and Erdogan are constantly threatening to open the borders, and this allows Germany and the EU to be blackmailed. Pressure should be put on them very clearly and they should say: withdraw from Afrin, withdraw from Serêkaniyê, withdraw from the occupied territories, or our economic relations will be broken off. But unfortunately, the German state is not doing that. They don’t do anything. They cooperate with Erdogan as if nothing ever happened. German society could do more, it definitely has to do more. People have to go out on the streets, they have to put pressure on the politicians. What are the weapons financed by? They are financed by tax money. The bottom line is that it’s everyone’s fault that people are dying here because the weapons come from Germany.”
Germany supports Turkey primarily for economic reasons, says Goran Kobanê: “Germany makes billions with these arms deliveries. Turkey has bought dozens of tanks to use against northern Syria. Germany is making billions and doesn’t want to risk economic relations. The human lives in northeastern Syria do not count and it is accepted that hundreds of people would be killed and entire areas depopulated.
“Take to the streets, put pressure!”
Asked what he expects from people in Germany, the internationalist answers, “Take to the streets. Protest. Put pressure. Here, dozens of people are dying every day, displaced, and this is happening with Germany’s guilt. Show the politicians and those responsible what you think about it. It’s up to you, it’s in your hands.”
The German internationalist adds, “There are many internationalists in Rojava who have taken the risk of coming to the region. They are happy here and contribute their share. They can contribute a lot and learn an extreme amount here. They learn about the system of self-government, which is an example of how a democratic, good, equal world can work. How the role of women is promoted here in the Middle East, you don’t see that anywhere else. And that’s just a wonderful example of how it can be. I can only advise you to come here, check it out, even if it’s just for a few months. It’s incredible.”
The Kurdish-led administrations in both Syria and Iraq faced an existential threat from the savagery of ISIS fighters at the height of their power. Yet, in victory, the Rojava revolution in NE Syria seeks to defuse, through rehabilitation, the time bomb ticking away in the mini-ISIS caliphates being set up by cooped up prisoners – men, women and children – physically defeated but not necessarily ideologically shaken.
While across the border in KRG-controlled Iraq, the time bomb is defused by summary trials and execution.
The case for ISIS fighters to be treated humanely isn’t just future-proofing against the pent-up anger of ISIS generations to come although that would be a welcome side-effect, but is an example of what a justice system committed to transformation of society should look like.
Nassra Khalil, co-chair of the Justice Council in the Euphrates region of Rojava (AANES), explains poetically in an email interview, that their system is driven by ‘the aim of eliminating the soil in which grievances grow and working out solutions that address the root of the problems by tackling these problems and the social structure in which they arose.’ However these admirable aims are constantly undermined by the lack of resources.
British media’s frenzied interest in ‘jihadi brides’ shone a light on the dire conditions in the Al-Hol camp in Rojava which holds over 60,000 ISIS prisoners, women and children, particularly the infamous Shamima Begum who lost her last baby to pneumonia there. This fits in with public expectations of Syrian refugee camps but very few narratives dig deeper to reveal the true picture.
Many Western countries have refused to repatriate their citizens in a shortsighted case of political expedience leaving foreign fighters and the Rojava administration in limbo. Shamima Begum was stripped of her citizenship in a shameful decision by the Supreme Court in February.
Rima Berakat, Co-Chair of the Justice council, responsible for law and order in all of Rojava, outlined the scale of the problem in a Zoom interview. They have approximately 12-15 thousand ISIS prisoners (mostly Syrian and Iraqi, but including 50-80 foreign fighters) awaiting trial. Since 2014, they have tried 8000 Syrian nationals and there are 1000 prisoners on trial at this moment. There are simply too many detainees and too few resources for the overstretched Rojava administration to attempt ideological cleansing of ISIS fighters on a large scale. As ISIS fighters remain a huge security threat, with uprisings in overcrowded prisons and escape attempts, Rojava, ever-pragmatic, has been unable to put its rehabilitation programs into operation apart from the ‘most basic teaching of language, culture and philosophy’. They have adopted a conventional legal strategy of trial and conviction but with humane sentences recognizing differences between those who laid bombs or laid food on the table for ISIS.
They have introduced amnesties for low-level ISIS operatives who have served half their sentences. This is partly to avoid their further radicalisation in prison, living cheek by jowl, with hardened ISIS fighters. This does not include ISIS ideologues or those who were engaged in war crimes, drug trafficking, honour killings, and espionage. Their risk levels are assessed, which includes an assessment of theirs’ and their families’ ideological commitment to ISIS, before they are released into the community. It is also in keeping with Rojava’s ‘decentralized, confederal decision-making on the local level’ reports the Rojava Information Centre: those areas which were liberated by SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) from ISIS are mostly populated by Arabs who have historically been hostile to Kurds and also do not share their revolutionary ideals. A key demand that emerged in consultations with these communities was amnesty for low-level ISIS members.
Responding positively to that demand, according to the Rojava administration, promotes better community relations and is one way of countering ISIS ‘attempts to sow discord, sectarianism and violence.’ To date 4000 women and children and 630 odd men have returned.
Small scale rehabilitation is carried out for groups of up to 20 women who sign up voluntarily in the Al-Hol and Al-Roj camps by Waqfa Jin, a local women’s group. They undertake consciousness raising sessions which talk about women’s empowerment and education, subverting ISIS teachings indirectly. They also run sewing and handicraft making sessions to skill them up for life outside the camp. In the smaller, better resourced, Al-Roj camp, the women who attend must follow rules such as no ‘black clothes’ and no niqabs, the closest they get to challenging ISIS ideology head-on. Such sessions, of course, do not begin to encroach upon the consciousness of those ISIS women in the now infamous Al-Hol camp who have reintroduced the strict dress and moral codes of their previous lives on pain of death. The Rojava administration is keen to set up separate camps for those ISIS women who are showing signs of rejecting their ISIS history so as to complete their process of deradicalisation. But they lack the resources.
The limited resources that they do have, have been poured into the Huri Centre, where 100 young boys from the age of 11 upwards, known as the Cubs of the Caliphate, who were battle hardened fighters and suicide bombers are being rehabilitated. The decision to staff the centre with women with whom the boys refused to make eye contact or shake hands when they first came to the centre was their first indirect lesson in gender equality. Apart from providing a peaceful environment where misbehaviour is resolved through discussion, not punishment, the young men are exposed to music and the arts – subjects that were banned under ISIS. In fact, the biggest challenge for the administration is the diehard ideological commitment of the foreign ISIS members, be they men, women, or children. Local fighters often joined ISIS for financial reasons because of their attractive salaries or protection of their families and are generally easier to deradicalise.
Across the border in KRG (Kurdish Regional Government) which operates the same penal code as the central government in Iraq, many ISIS prisoners have been executed after a summary 15 minute trial according to Human Rights Watch. All ISIS suspects are tried under the counter-terrorism laws and no distinction is made in terms of severity of charges. The process by which they are identified as ISIS members is flawed, very little evidence is provided at trial, and confessions are extracted by torture. There are widespread allegations of ill-treatment. Human Rights Watch recommends a more conciliatory approach, similar to that in Rojava, to prevent problems in the future. It is well known that prisons have been the hothouse for incubating terrorists of the future: AQI, the predecessor of ISIS, was hatched at Camp Bucca.
The Iraqi system is corrupt: prisons are paid per inmate so there are financial incentives to delay trials; prisoners are made to pay for better food, visits from relatives and access to mobiles. Several hundred ISIS prisoners have been executed since the fall of Mosul in 2017. In November 2020 alone, 21 prisoners were sentenced to death. There has also been an unquantified number of extra-judicial killings of ISIS members by the Iraqi army, wreaking revenge after victory.
Yet the UK government has poured £31million into KRG/Iraq since 2016 via UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) but not Rojava, despite UK’s commitment to global security, its avowed opposition to the death sentence and the importance it places on stabilisation of areas liberated from Daesh’s control. The government website states ‘we will not consider providing any stabilisation assistance in Syria without a credible, substantive and genuine political process firmly underway.’ This makes no sense at all given that there is a substantive political process under way and the UK was part of the coalition which put boots, arms, and training on the ground in the battle against Daesh in Syria. That is exactly the point that Rima Berakat makes, ‘We fought against Daesh together, we captured their fighters together, we must prosecute them together also. One side cannot carry the burden alone.’
I asked the foreign office, ‘If Britain will not take back its ISIS citizens, please explain why it won’t fund the humane regime in Rojava?’ A Government spokesperson responded with an answer to a question I hadn’t asked, ‘Those who have fought for or supported Daesh should face justice for their crimes. We are clear that this should happen in the most appropriate jurisdiction, which will often be in the region where their offences have been committed.’
In fact Rojava is poised to do so. Berakat said it is ‘our right, as victims, to prosecute Daesh because they have violated the laws in this region.’ After years of calling for an international court to be set up in Rojava went unheeded, she announced their intention to put the foreign fighters on trial.
The ISIS fighters should consider themselves lucky as they are unlikely to face as humane a jurisdiction anywhere else. If they open their minds up to the Rojava democratic experiment on earth, they may find that they are no longer interested in 72 virgins in heaven.
Home/Reports/Northern Syria’s Armenians commemorate 106th anniversary of Armenian Genocide HomeReports
Northern Syria’s Armenians commemorate 106th anniversary of Armenian Genocide
2021-04-24 1 minute read
Armenians commemorate the genocide in Tel Goran village – North Press
HASAKAH, Syria (North Press) – On Saturday, theArmenian Social Council and Armenian military force commemorated the 106th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in Tel Goran, in the countryside of Hasakah city, northeast Syria.
24 April 1915 is held as the starting date of the genocide, since on that day Ottoman authorities arrested and deported from Constantinople (now Istanbul) to the region of Angora (Ankara) around 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders. Most were murdered.
The Armenian Genocide was the systematic mass murder and expulsion of more than 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turkey, according to historical documents.
Manuel Demir, the commander of northeast Syria’s Armenian military force known as the Martyr Nubar Ozanyan Brigade, said that “we, as an Armenian military force, celebrate this memory to deliver a message to the world that we have not forgotten and we will not forget what happened to our Armenian ancestors at the hands of the Ottoman Empire…we reject and denounce the ongoing Turkish aggressions, which are similar to the criminal policy of the Ottoman Empire of 1915.”
He added that the genocide was not committed against Armenians only, and that its massacres in Syria, whether by its occupation of Ras al-Ain (Sere Kaniye), Tel Abyad, or Afrin, and its continuous attacks on Ain Issa, confirm the restoration of Ottoman politics and its massacres.
Arif Qasabiyan, of the Armenian Social Council, says that “the extermination was committed against other peoples such as the Romani, Syriacs, Assyrians, and Kurds.”
“The Ottoman policy continues to exterminate the rights of other peoples and eliminate their cultures, histories and languages, as in Shengal, Sere Kaniye, Tel Abyad and Afrin.”
Its worth mentioning that the European Union parliament voted “by a wide majority” on 16th April 2015 overwhelmingly in favor of recognizing the mass-murder of Armenians by Ottoman Turkey as a genocide, commemorating the centennial of the genocide.
PYD member denounces international silence regarding Turkish attacks
The Member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), Berivan Hassen, denounced the international silence about the recent attack launched by the Turkish occupation state on the house in which the leader Abdullah Ocalan stayed, and asked whether community is satisfied with the crimes Turkey is committing against the peoples of the region?
In a repeated scene of the scenario of the Turkish hostility to north-east Syria, the attacks of the Turkish occupation state continue amid international silence that may open the way to a threat that may affect global security, according to political analysts’ point of view.
In addition to the continued bombardment of Ain Issa and al-Shahba, a reconnaissance aircraft belonging to the Turkish occupation army targeted the house in which Leader Abdullah Ocalan stayed in the village of Albalur, west of Kobane city in 1979, while crossing the borders of Northern Kurdistan to Rojava, known as the leader’s house, at dawn on the 16th of this month.
Concurrently, the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries stationed on the western bank of the Euphrates River in villages of the occupied city of Jarablus shelled with mortars Boraz village and the surrounding villages in the west of Kobane city.
The Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries continue their attacks on north-east Syria, amid the silence of the Russian guarantor and the international community, despite two separate ceasefire agreements between the Turkish occupation, Russia and America.
‘International silence is a green light for more crimes’
The Member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic Union Party, Berivan Hassen, said: “Turkey’s targeting of the house in which the leader stayed is a clear indication of Turkey’s fear of the thought and philosophy of Mr. Abdullah Ocalan and the idea of achieving democracy that poses a threat to its authority.”
Berivan Hassen indicated that Turkey was not content with imprisoning the leader Ocalan and imposing strict isolation on him, but also attacked every place that has a footprint or memory of him.
Berivan denounced the international silence regarding Turkey’s attacks on the region, and said: “We see Turkey continuing to launch its hostile attacks on the region and its people, in addition to imposing strict, illegal isolation on leader Abdullah Ocalan amid international silence from all world countries and human rights organizations.”
Berivan Hassen stressed that the world powers must take a firm stand towards the violations and crimes committed by Turkey against the region and its people.
At the end of her speech, Berivan Hassen asked in an indignant tone, “Are the international community satisfied with the crimes committed by Turkey against the people of the region?” Adding, “They give the green light to Turkey to commit more crimes through their silence.”
It is worth mentioning that an unmanned aerial vehicle of the Turkish occupation state bombed a civilian house south of Kobane city on the 22nd of last January, which resulted in the injury of a civilian, and preceded it the massacre committed by a Turkish drone in Helenj village on the 23rd of June of last year.
SYRIE / ROJAVA – Le régime syrien qui a suit une déroute dans le quartier Tayy de ville kurde de Qamishli où il voulait créer le chaos, veut se venger en s’en prenant aux quartiers de Sheikh Maqsud et d’Ashrefiye à Alep abritant une importante population kurde. Selon l’Organisation des droits humains d’Afrin, les forces des forces gouvernementales syriennes représentées dans la quatrième division et la branche de la sécurité de l’État ont décidé vendredi de harceler la population de Sheikh Maqsud et Ashrefiye à Alep, à la suite des affrontements intenses qui ont éclaté en la ville de Qamishlo entre les Forces de sécurité intérieure, les Asayish et le groupe de mercenaires du régime syrien depuis mardi dernier. Après que le quartier Tayy ait été débarrassé des mercenaires de la Défense nationale, la quatrième division a verrouillé le point de contrôle de Jazira menant à Sheikh Maqsud tandis que Awaridh est restés ouvert, ce qui a créé de longues filles d’attente au milieu d’opérations d’inspection et de contrôle. Des sources locales ont rapporté que des Kurdes ont été arrêtés à Bustan Basha, Ashrefiye, Midan, Catstello et près du carrefour Jendul où des voitures ont été immobilisées et des civils à bord arrêtés. Régulièrement, le gouvernement syrien a utilisé Sheikh Maqsud et Ashrefiye comme une carte contre l’Administration autonome du Nord et de l’Est de la Syrie (AANES) chaque fois que ses milices créent des émeutes et du chaos à Hasaka et à Qamishlo.
Clashes escalate between Asayish and pro-government National Defense in Syria’s Qamishli
2021-04-23
Members of Asayish Special Forces deployed in al-Tai neighborhood in Qamishli – North Press
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Al-Tai neighborhood, south Qamishli, northeastern Syria, has witnessed violent clashes with medium and light weapons between the Internal Security Forces (Asayish) and the pro-government National Defense forces (NDF).
Since the early hours of Friday morning, NDF snipers stationed in al-Tai neighborhood have intensified their targeting of civilian residential buildings surrounding al-Wehda roundabout in the city center.
According to field sources, late Thursday night, Asayish advanced and were close to the al-Tai roundabout.
Late Thursday night, Sheikh Hayyes al-Jaryyan, a prominent figure of the Bani Saba’a tribe, was assassinated, succumbing to his wounds after he was targeted by snipers from the pro-government NDF near his home northeast of the National Hospital.
On Tuesday, ten-year old Abdulsalam was killed by the targeting of the pro-Syrian government NDF near al-Wehda, Roundabout in Qamishli, while others were wounded.
Since Tuesday, Qamishli has been witnessing clashes between the Asayish and militants from the pro-government NDF.
On Thursday, Asayish found a quantity of weapons and ammunition in Lilo Detachment in al-Tai neighborhood, amid continuing clashes with the NDF.
The circle of clashes between Asayish and the NDF expanded to include Helko neighborhood as well, where before it was confined to al-Tai neighborhood.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are sharing control of the city with the Syrian government forces, who control a small part of it, while the SDF controls most of the city.
North East Syria Internal Security Forces: This operation aims at saving people from ISIS threats
The Internal Security Forces launched a ‘Humanitarian and Security Operation’ in Hol camp. The operation also aims at saving those living in the camp from the threats posed by ISIS members.
ANF
HESEKÊ
Sunday, 28 Mar 2021, 09:49
North and East Syria Internal Security Forces launched an operation called “Humanitarian and Security Operation” in Hol camp. The operation is being carried out with the collaboration of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the People’s Defense Units (YPG)
Spokesperson for the SDF Gabriel Kino, spokesperson for the YPG Nuri Mehmud and the Jazira Region Assembly General Command Member Ewinar Derîk attended the statement made on the operation. The statement was read by the General spokesperson of the Internal Security Forces, Elî El-Hesen.
The statement said: “The Syrian war has been going on for about 10 years. This war resulted in thousands of victims and millions of Syrians forced to leave their homes and to migrate around the world.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) defeated the ISIS terrorist organization on a territorial basis with the support of the International Coalition two years ago. However, ISIS continues to pose a great threat to the whole region and the world. Secret cells of ISIS still target civil society administrators and civilians in Northern and Eastern Syria every day. The Internal Security Forces continue to fight these terrorist organizations in cooperation with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Hol Camp has represented a serious threat to the region and the world for a long time. More than 60,000 people stay in the camp, with children making up the majority of the population in the camp. There are ISIS mercenaries or members of mercenary families. These people aim at defend the ISIS organization and revive it when the time will be deemed appropriate. They are doing so by establishing a special administration for them. ISIS policemen called Al Hesbe established their own special courts. At the same time, they teach children in the camp the Islamic State precepts. This represents a big threat as aims at creating a new generation of terrorists all over the world. Children must be saved from this fate.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria met all the needs of the camp within its own means. Internal Security Forces also ensure the security of the camp with the support of SDF. However, the Hol camp has turned into a center where ISIS is being reorganized. Civilians inside the camps are attacked, murders are carried out. This situation poses a danger to everyone inside the camp. There have been 47 murders in the camp just since the beginning of this year.
Today, with the SDF, YPG, YPJ, the Internal Security Forces launched an operation called ‘Humanitarian and Security Operation’ which aims at breaking the ISIS influence in the camp. The operation will continue to protect civilians. With this operation we aim at saving the camp residents from the threats posed by ISIS.”
Women’s Protection Units, the YPJ, indicated that putting fighter Çiçek Kobanê on trial is a breach to the international law, calling on the international community to condemn this action and to release all female detainees held in Turkish State jails, assuring perseverance with fighting for the sublime human norms and feminist emancipation.
WOMAN 26 Mar 2021, Fri – 11:32 2021-03-26T11:32:00 NEWS DESK
On the verdict given by the Turkish authorities to the fighter Çiçek Kobanê, General Command of the YPK issued a statement reads:
” another blatant breach against the international human law and the Law of Armed Conflicts is being committed by the Turkish Occupation State by putting member to the YPJ Çiçek Kobanê on trial that was captured on October 21st, 2012, in a Tal Ayad village in North Eastern Syria by a mercenary group affiliated to the Turkish Occupation Army, in the Turkish Occupation Operation in the region, on which she was transferred into Turkey illegally to be receive a life imprisonment by the Turkish court on March 23rd, 2021, without committing any offense or crime against Turkey or any Turkish individual or causing it any damages”.
” since our comrade that was captured in an armed conflict, this authorizes her to be treated in accordance with all agreements and norms relevant to prisoners of war that give her protection and proper treatment”.
”Since Syrian territories were occupied by the Turkish Occupation Forces and the affiliated mercenary groups in North Eastern Syria, Syrian citizens are systematically being transferred into Turkish territory, and detained illegally, that all have been proven and condemned by the UN and other human rights associations that called on Turkey to stop all these violations but it ignored that intentionally and put our comrade on trial and gave her a life imprisonment sentence, on which we call on all active and concerned associations more notably those members to the UN, to condemn the Turkish action and to release immediately all Syrians detained illegally in Turkey”.
All these actions will not deter us, rather they will make us more determined to proceed fighting against occupation and oppression as we well know that these actions are in revenge against ISIS defeat that was sponsored by the Turkish State that is still attempting to revive it’s sleeper cells in the region, the verdict given to our comrade is not an accidence as the whole world commemorates the ISIS Baghouz Defeat”.
”we call on all women to show solidarity via condemning this action that is a revenge against all women, the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention proves this, based on this, from this moment onward, we will increase our resistance and determination on the course adopted by our comrades and those in captivity in the Turkish State jails for thye sake of sublime human values and the feminist emancipation”.
Why has the Turkish state escalated its attacks on Ain Issa?
Baz Jindirêsê, one of the SDF commanders, stated that the Turkish state and its gangs had to retreat after suffering huge blows during the three-day attacks.
HÎVDA HEBÛN
AIN ISSA
Wednesday, 24 Mar 2021, 07:47
WHY AIN ISSA?
Since the invasion of Girê Sipî, Ain Issa has been bombed by the occupying forces again and gain. However, the attacks have intensified since November. The villages of Mışerfe, Cehbel, Mieleq and Seyda are especially targeted. What is the goal of the Turkish state in Ain Issa?
Ain Issa has a strategic location. It connects many cities. For this reason, there have been constant attacks. However, these attacks failed because of the resistance of the SDF fighters. The attacks have intensified in the last five months. They started to carry out intense attacks on the villages of Mieleq, Mişerfe, Seyda and Cehbel around Ain Issa. Because these villages are the closest to the M4 highway. Since they could not occupy Ain Issa directly, they tried to encircle the city by trying to occupy these villages at first. All of their attempts were frustrated by the great resistance of the SDF fighters every time.
The invaders launched another aggression on March 19th. It is of course significant that they carried out this attack especially during the Newroz process. The whole world knows very well that Newroz is important and sacred for all Kurds. March 21 is celebrated with great enthusiasm by the Kurds all over the world. The occupiers specifically chose this date to destroy the enthusiasm and demoralize the people.
ATTACKS FAILED
SDF fighters defeated them. The attacks were intense. They got very close to the Seyda village. As a result of the great resistance of our fighters, their attacks have been frustrated. They had to retreat, suffering a large number of casualties. During the attack on the 19th, two armored vehicles belonging to them were destroyed, they had 15 dead and many more injured. They attacked again on the second day. They suffered a great blow in this attack as well. Two of their vehicles were destroyed and they retreated with nearly 18 casualties. On the third day, they attacked again in the morning hours and this attack was repelled thanks to the heroic resistance of the SDF fighters. They also used fighter jets. However, despite all their attempts, the SDF fighters did not allow them to advance and occupy these villages.
TURKEY BUILT 5 BASES IN AIN ISSA
In November last year, three observation points were established under the supervision of Russia to prevent the attacks of the Turkish state and its gangs, but after the establishment of these, both the attacks and the number of military bases of the Turkish state in the region have increased. Russia remains silent as before. How do you evaluate this situation?
As we said, these attacks have been going on for a while. And their purpose was to occupy Ain Issa, take strategic road lines and separate cities from each other. However, when they failed to do so, they tried to take control by establishing military bases on the M4 international road. They have set up 5 military bases so far. The purpose of these bases is to control the M4 highway, to control transportation and to prevent the use of the road by intimidating the people.
Russia established three military observation points in partnership with the Ba’ath regime, supposedly in order to prevent the Turkish state’s attacks and to check whether the Turkish state remains committed to the 2019 agreement. However, after the establishment of these points, the situation has become even worse than before. The attacks became more intense, and the Turks increased the number of their military bases. Supposedly, these observation points were established to ensure the safety of the people and to enable them to live more comfortably in their villages. However, it was also seen in the attack on the 19th that this is by no means the aim. People fromthe Seyda and Mieleq villages wanted to return to their homes. We then tried to provide the conditions for them to return to their villages. The Russians also accepted this so that the people would not be harmed and that they could return home safely. While the people were going back to their villages, the Russians supposedly accompanied them. However, as soon as the people returned, they were attacked by the Turkish forces and allied gangs. Although the Russians saw these attacks, they remained silent.
EVERYONE SEES OUR RESISTANCE AND DEDICATION
Does Russia’s pressure to give the area to the Ba’ath regime continue?
Some time ago, news was disseminated by the Ba’ath regime and some media outlets close to Russia that the SDF would give Ain Issa to the Ba’ath regime. These fake news were made by Russian hand. Actually, this is what Russia wants. Our people and everybody know very well that the SDF would not easily hand over a place where it shed its blood. Russia’s aim is to strengthen the Baath regime in the field and to leave the control of the area to the regime. Russia wants to put pressure on us through these attacks. Thus, it wants to strengthen the regime’s hand in the field. Russia paves the way for these attacks and remains silent on the attacks of the Turks. However, whenever an attack is launched, they witness the resistance of the SDF fighters. They also see very clearly that our lands will not be given away so comfortably. Our resistance will continue until there is only one person left. We will continue to protect our people until the end. There have been attacks on the area for a long time and these attacks continue. Our attitude is clear. We will never back down. We will keep the promise we have made to our people until the end, and we will always continue to follow our martyrs, we will protect these lands.
SDF: 34 Turkish-backed mercenaries killed in Ain Issa
SDF published a balance sheet on the three days of fighting around the northern Syrian town of Ain Issa. According to the report, four SDF members were martyred, and there were at least 37 casualties in the ranks of the occupation forces.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Monday, 22 Mar 2021, 19:52
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) published a balance sheet on the fighting around the town of Ain Issa from March 18 to 20. According to this, at least 37 members of the Turkish and allied jihadist occupation forces were killed in the clashes. Another 18 attackers were injured.
“In an attempt to justify their attacks against Ain Issa, the Turkish occupation state and its mercenaries spread claims that they were attacked by our forces and heavy casualties were suffered in our ranks. These statements do not correspond to the facts in any way. The side that is both attacking and suffering heavy casualties is the Turkish state. Such statements serve the sole purpose of hiding their own losses and distorting the truth,” emphasized the statement by the SDF.
The SDF continued, “The Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries carried out intensive attacks on the M4 highway and on the north of Ain Issa in the period between March 18 and 20. Our forces displayed unprecedented resistance to the attacks carried out with heavy weapons and repulsed them in the spirit of Newroz.”
According to the statement, 16 mercenaries were killed and 7 others injured as SDF fighters responded to the attacks on the villages of Seida and Mealik on March 19. The occupation forces targeted civilians with heavy weaponry, killing a child and injuring five civilians.
Having suffered heavy losses during clashes, the Turkish forces and allied mercenaries carried out attacks with tanks, howitzers and mortars on March 20. The response of our forces left 10 mercenaries dead and another 4 injured in the Seida village. On the other hand, 8 mercenaries were killed and 5 others injured in the village of Mealik. In addition, 2 panzer vehicles were destroyed and another 2 damaged.
On the same day, sabotage by SDF fighters killed 3 mercenaries and injured 2 others.
On March 21, Turkish army heavily shelled the villages of Misherfa, Seid, Mealik, M4 highway and vicinity of ain Issa. Sporadic clashes took place till the noon.
During three days of clashes, 4 SDF fighters were martyred, and 4 others injured.
A+A- ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Sunday welcomed a recent European Parliament decision condemning Turkey’s military occupation in northeast Syria and abuses against the Kurdish population.
“We welcome the EU parliament’s resolution calling for the withdrawal of the illegal Turkish occupation forces from northern Syria and share the EU parliament’s concerns over ethnic cleansing attempts by Turkey against Kurds in Syria,” tweeted SDF General Commander Mazloum Abdi early Sunday morning.
He was reacting to a resolution adopted by the European Parliament on Thursday that called on “Turkey to withdraw its troops from Northern Syria which it is illegally occupying outside of any UN mandate.”
Turkey, with its Syrian proxies, has conducted three offensives into northern Syria since 2016. The first, Operation Euphrates Shield, saw Turkey seize control of territory in northern Aleppo province from the Islamic State group (ISIS). The goal of the operation was to push ISIS militants away from the border with Turkey and prevent Kurdish forces from taking control of the territory.
The second, Operation Olive Branch, was in 2018 against Kurdish forces in the northwest enclave of Afrin. The most recent operation, Operation Peace Spring, was also against Kurdish forces along the Syria-Turkey border between the towns of Gire Spi (Tal Abyad) and Sari Kani (Ras al-Ain). That offensive ended with ceasefires brokered by Washington and Moscow that gave Turkish-backed forces control of the territory seized during the operation with Russian and Syrian regime forces acting as a buffer along the border.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes because of Turkey’s military operations.
Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies are accused of committing human rights violations in the territories they seized. Charges include hostage taking, torture, rape, destruction of property, arbitrary arrest, and pillaging. A United Nations commission in September 2020 said these charges may amount to war crimes and called on Turkey to reign in its proxies.
The European Parliament said it is “worried that Turkey’s ongoing displacements could amount to ethnic cleansing against the Syrian Kurdish population” and stressed that “Turkey’s illegal invasion and occupation has jeopardised peace in Syria.”
Turkish-backed forces are also accused of illegally transferring tens of people to Turkey to face trial on alleged links to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish armed force that Ankara believes is a branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Human Rights Watch documented at least 63 cases of illegal transfers.
The European Parliament condemned the transfers as a violation of international law and urged “that all Syrian detainees who have been transferred to Turkey be immediately repatriated to the occupied territories in Syria.”
The parliament also condemned the Syrian regime’s “long-standing discrimination against Kurdish Syrians.” Under the regime, tens of thousands of Kurds in Syria were denied citizenship as part of systemic discrimination against the minority.
Why is Syrian military deploying in Kurdish-held areas?
The Syrian government seeks to strengthen its military presence in Ain Issa and the area overlooking the M4 international highway, which are under control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. A Russian soldier stands guard as troops escort a convoy of Syrian civilians leaving the town of Tal Tamr in the northeastern Hasakah province, to return to their homes in the northern town of Ain Issa in the countryside of the Raqqa region, via the strategic M4 highway on Jan. 10, 2021. The town of Tal Tamr is on the front line between the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian factions supported by Turkey. Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images. Khaled al-Khateb
@khaleedalkhteb
Mar 12, 2021
ALEPPO, Syria — The Syrian government, with the support of Russia, is trying to boost its military presence in the areas of northeastern Syria controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which can be considered a violation of the agreement signed by the regime with the SDF under the auspices of Russia in October 2019. The agreement provides for a specific deployment for the regime’s army and without heavy weapons along the Syrian-Turkish border to prevent a Turkish offensive.
The regime allegedly violated the agreement by sending in early March a military convoy heavily armed with weapons toward Ain Issa and the outskirts of the M4 highway connecting the governorates of Hasakah and Aleppo, which heralds the return of arrests and escalation between the two sides.
Khaled al-Homsi, a journalist who works for the opposition-affiliated Orient website in the Tell Abyad area near Ain Issa in the northern Raqqa governorate, told Al-Monitor, “The regime’s military reinforcements began to reach the area adjacent to the M4 highway in the countryside of Raqqa and Hasakah governorate in northeastern Syria since the beginning of March. These reinforcements have so far included some heavy artillery bases, missile bases and troop carriers. The regime forces have also implemented a new redeployment operation, and the largest force is stationed in the villages of al-Maalak, al-Hoshan and al-Khalidiyah, which are adjacent to the M4 highway. The regime forces are also stationed in the Electricity Company in the vicinity of Ain Issa.”
A military official in the SDF stationed in Ain Issa told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “The SDF leadership is not pleased with the Syrian regime bringing in military reinforcements with heavy weapons to the area even though these reinforcements are so far relatively modest. The regime cannot just change the balance of power on the ground. Some leaders in the regime forces said the reinforcements are to counter any attempt by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Turkish army [to attack the area], but the SDF fears that the regime will continue its policy of strengthening its military presence in the area with Russia’s support.”
It seems that the Syrian military is trying to pressure the SDF and impose a new military reality in the Ain Issa area, as long as it has not achieved — with Russia‘s help — what it has been aiming for since the end of 2020, which is forcing the SDF to withdraw from Ain Issa and preventing the opposition factions and the Turkish army from taking control. The regime strengthening its military presence near the M4 highway prevents a military operation by the opposition and the Turkish army in order to expand and control the area. The efforts of the Syrian regime reflect its interest in the vital and strategic roads that it cannot afford to lose in light of the stifling economic crisis.
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Col. Mostafa Bakkour, a defected Syrian regime officer, military analyst and researcher living in Idlib, told Al-Monitor, “The SDF will not respond to the pressure of the Syrian regime and will not allow it to expand and boost its military presence in its areas of control. If the regime continues to send reinforcements and heavy military equipment, tension will erupt between the two sides in the area. As a result, Russia would intervene as a mediator, despite its public support for the regime. Russia is pursuing a policy of mediation, or at least so it claims, to preserve its interests and at the same time exploit any action and disagreement between the conflicting parties.”
Ali Tami, spokesman for the Kurdish Future Movement in Syria, told Al-Monitor, “The regime’s military moves in the Ain Issa area and near the M4 international highway aim to further pressure the SDF to resume oil exports to the Syrian regime, which is trying to boost its military presence in the area in order to prevent oil exports from the SDF to the Syrian opposition areas in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib. The regime and Russia do not want the oil to flow to the opposition areas.”
On March 5, Russia struck the Hamran crossing linking the SDF with the opposition near al-Bab and the rudimentary oil refining stations in the countryside of Aleppo. The attack may also point to the regime’s plan to pressure the SDF to stop exporting oil to the opposition and resume exporting to the regime-held areas.
On March 7, the SDF resumed the supply of oil to the regime-controlled areas after a monthlong hiatus, which caused a fuel crisis in the regime-held areas.
Firas Faham, an Istanbul-based researcher at the Jusoor Center for Studies, told Al-Monitor, “The regime’s attempt to reinforce its military presence near the M4 highway comes in the context of pressuring the SDF to withdraw from Ain Issa. There seems to be a Turkish-Russian understanding; either Russia expels the SDF from Ain Issa, or Turkey launches a military operation.”
Faham added, “Yet it seems that Russia is trying to avoid a Turkish military operation because it does not welcome Turkey’s growing influence, especially since the Turkish army and the FSA making their way into more areas would pave the way to connect the Peace Spring area with the Euphrates Shield area in the countryside of Aleppo. This is why pressure is being exerted on the SDF to withdraw or at least reduce its military presence in Ain Issa, which will lead to the return of the regime’s institutions to the area.”
It seems that the SDF understands Russia’s intentions in northeastern Syria, and the Russians prefer to avoid the military option to keep channels of communication open with the Kurds and not allow the United States to use this against them and turn the Kurds into enemies. The SDF is also well aware that Russia does not welcome the expansion of Turkish influence and will thus not allow for any military operation. At this point, the SDF will show resistance to the regime’s demands regarding its control of Ain Issa.
Fighters of the Women’s Defense Units (YPJ) in Hesekê celebrated March 8 with an impressive military ceremony. The highlight was an address by YPJ General Commander Newroz Ehmed.
ANF
HESEKÊ
Sunday, 7 Mar 2021, 16:01
Fighters of the Women’s Defense Units (ku. Yekîneyên Parastina Jin, YPJ) celebrated International Women’s Day March 8 with an impressive military ceremony in Hesekê on Sunday. The spectacular performance by hundreds of female fighters was attended by numerous personalities from the military structures, civil society and the local population. The highlight was a speech by Newroz Ehmed, one of the general commanders of the YPJ.
Ehmed began by thanking Clara Zetkin as the initiator of International Women’s Day and all other women pioneers for women’s rights and equality. “But we don’t limit women’s struggle merely to celebrations like those of today,” Ehmed continued. “March 8 has become a symbol of all human values and an achievement for all humanity in the person of women. However, the attacks of the male-dominated mentality continue. However, it should not forget that women have fought for their rights at great sacrifice. March 8 is not a day that the patriarchal mentality has ‘graciously’ left to us.”
Capitalist modernity wants to destroy women’s liberation struggle through well thought out methods, said Newroz Ehmed and continued, “We as women in Northern and Eastern Syria know this approach from Afrin, Serêkaniyê and Girê Spî in the form of patriarchal violence, rapes and kidnappings by the fascist Turkish state and its mercenaries only too well and will not forget it. This fact underlines that a free life will not be possible as long as the male-dominated mentality continues to exist. In order to end the existence of the patriarchal mindset, we must continue to educate and organize based on the memory of our fallen companions who sacrificed themselves to defeat this mentality and defend the revolution in this way. As women, we are closer to freedom today than ever before. If there is to be a life, it must be a free life. This freedom can only be achieved with the participation of all sectors of society.”
“The fact that the YPJ’s paradigm – “Free women are the basis of a free society” – is the right path to a free life is also shown by the international support for this idea. The participation of women from all over the world in the resistance for free life, first and foremost friend Lêgerîn (Alina Sanchez), highlights once again the importance of women’s values in building a society. The struggle of the YPJ in northeastern Syria will pave and enlighten the way to freedom for all women of this world,” said Ehmed.
After the speech, there was a cultural program, including a theater performance, folklore performances and a performance by a choir. The celebrations were concluded with joint Govend dances.
Salih Muslim: The conspiracy against Öcalan and the Kurdish people has failed
Salih Muslim, a member of the PYD co-presidency council, said: “Every moment Leader Apo continues to remain under those conditions is a great shame for us.”
SILTAN TEMO
QAMISHLO
Saturday, 13 Feb 2021, 11:02
Reminding that the conspiracy forces wanted to destroy the Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan after 1990, PYD co-presidency council Member Salih Muslim underlined that “the Kurdish people have reached the mechanism to develop democracy in the Middle East. Those forces could not tear the head off the body. That is why the aggravated isolation imposed on the Leader has been going on since 2015. They do not allow a single word of the Leadership to come out, because under all circumstances he continued to lead the people and the Movement.”
PYD co-presidency council member Salih Muslim spoke to ANF about the anniversary of the international conspiracy which led to the capture of Öcalan.
What was the purpose of the forces involved in the international conspiracy?
First of all, we condemn the international conspiracy against Leader Apo once again on the 22nd anniversary. It is a dark day for the Kurdish people. The Kurdish people’s leader is still in their hands, and the conspiracy continues as long as his captivity continues. In this sense, we have to do everything we can. The conspiracy was made against all Kurds and peoples of the region in the person of the Kurdish people’s leader. In time, it became clear what the purpose of the conspiracy was and who planned it. In fact, it had already been mentioned and evaluated by the Kurdish people’s leader many times.
The peoples of the region needed democracy and freedom. Hegemonic powers wanted to rule these peoples as they wanted. In the 90’s they were talking about the redesign / restructuring of the Middle East. They were working on a restructuring plan in 1995 to consolidate their interests. These forces feed on conflicts and contradictions between peoples to achieve their interests. In this way, they would strengthen their rule over the peoples. The Kurdish people, on the other hand, were experiencing an awakening with the Kurdish Freedom Movement and was leading this process.
The Kurdish people actually served as a dynamo force for the people’s struggle for freedom and democracy. Of course, it was leader Abdullah Öcalan who provided all this and brought the people to this situation. Therefore, they wanted to eliminate him. The leadership was leading the peoples with his idea, philosophy, discourse and ideology. For this reason, it was an obstacle to the plans of the hegemonic powers.
After 1980, all peoples started to rise up and joined him. The Kurdish people tied all their hopes to this revolution and acted accordingly. There was both ideas and ideology and a force to mobilize this idea and ideology; and that force was the Kurdish people. For this reason, they first wanted to eliminate the Kurdish people’s leader and then dismantle the organizational unity formed within the Kurdish people. In this way, they would be able to rule the people as they wanted.
The biggest defenders of this conspiracy were international forces. The Turkish state was given the duty to be the guardian in this conspiracy. At that time, we remember Turkish Prime Minister Ecevit saying, ‘They dropped a bomb in our lap, we don’t know what to do’. The laws on Imrali today are neither the laws of the Turkish state nor the laws of Europe; are special laws. In fact, we cannot even speak of laws, because there is no law. The conspiracy was not successful. They could neither eliminate Leader Apo, nor split the Kurdish people. The conspiracy did not achieve the desired result, but it goes on. Of course, we also see this and we are fighting in this direction. The struggle of the Kurdish people continues.
How did the Kurdish people’s leader play the role of spoiling this conspiracy?
After 1990, their only effort was to destroy Leader Apo. The Leader, while protecting the movement and himself, carried the struggle to such a position that the Kurdish people have reached the mechanism to develop democracy in the Middle East. The Leader managed to send his defences to the people through its lawyers and courts. The enemy could not tear the head off the body. That is why the aggravated isolation on the Leader has been going on since 2015. They do not allow a single word of the Leadership to come out, because despite all circumstances he continued to lead the people and the Movement.
Therefore, the conspiracy is still going on. They want to prevent the Kurdish people from using their dynamism to lead the struggle for freedom and democracy, they want to eliminate this force. They can’t do that, however. The revolution taking place in Rojava is obvious. The leadership’s democratic nation project is being put in practice in Rojava. This project seems to be the best model for the people. For this reason, they are getting more and more nervous and increase their attacks. These attacks are against the democratic nation project. The democratic nation project will develop not only in Rojava, but throughout Syria and the Middle East.
What should be done to protect the Rojava Revolution and its achievements?
Of course, the more you claim, protect and struggle, the more success you will achieve. This is possible with the organization of the people. The victory of Kobanê was the result of this. Although there was not the level of organization we would like, there was some degree of organization. For this reason, the Kobanê resistance took place, it was claimed, it was successful. The more we expand this organization, the more we can include other peoples, the more successful will be this struggle.
However, there are many forces in Syria: America, Russia and other states and powers. We should never stay away from them. It is necessary to have a political experience and a political view. You have to meet and be in dialogue with them for your own benefit, just as they give and take for their own benefit. You will give and receive according to your own opinion and philosophy, but your door will also be open to everyone. The North East Syrian administration, has not interrupted dialogue with anyone until now. If we are to be hostile, let’s know why we are hostile, and if we are going to be friends, the same applies.
Our top priority task is the organization of peoples and change in mentality. If we can achieve this, it is possible to live within the framework of the democratic nation project with our own culture, beliefs and colours. At the same time, we should not forget that every moment that Leader Apo spent in such conditions is a great shame for us.
Syrian Kurds ready to accept U.S.-led talks with Turkey, commander says
Feb 26 2021 01:06 Gmt+3
Last Updated On: Feb 28 2021 04:00 Gmt+3
General Mazlum Abdi, commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) spoke to Mutlu Çiviroğlu of Voice of America about recent developments in North and East Syria, often referred to as Rojava.
The transcript below has been translated and amended from MedyaNews for clarity.
I would like to ask your opinion about the new U.S. administration and especially your relations with U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State (ISIS). I also want to ask about the operation you started against ISIS in Deir-Ez-Zor. And what situation is now in Rojava?
As you know, ISIS has not been defeated and their attacks continue. Recently, they targeted our civilian workers, and two women political leaders were martyred. As the attacks continued, we launched a major operation against ISIS.
The ISIS group consisted of six people and attacked our friends, we killed four of them, one of them managed to disappear and we caught the other one. Many other people were also arrested in the region. In general, I can say that the danger of ISIS continues and the terrorist organisation is trying to revive itself. They are coming from territory under the control of the Syrian regime, and Iraq. But with our operations with our allies from the US-led coalition against ISIS continue successfully.
The widespread opinion was that ISIS was defeated. Former U.S. President Donald Trump frequently made statements about the end of ISIS. What has happened now ISIS can launch attacks again? The U.S.-led coalition made statements that the alliance with you will continue. What role should U.S. politicians take against these attacks?
Coalition forces withdrew after Raqqa and Kobani were liberated from ISIS and the group benefited from this withdrawal and recovered. As I mentioned, they come to our region from territory under the control of the Syrian regime, and Iraq. The political future of the region has not yet been clarified, so ISIS benefits from that as well. In order to prevent the resurrection of ISIS, we need to first clarify the political future of the region. Coalition forces should continue their work. If they support the civilian administration in the region, we can wage a more effective fight against ISIS.
It is known that President Joe Biden and his administration are aware of the Kurdish problem. You said that the situation in Syria should be resolved politically. What are your political expectations from the new U.S. administration? What can this administration do differently from the past as part of the solution process in Syria?
We welcomed the new administration. We hope that the wrong policy in the past will be set right. We hope the United States will play an important role in the solution process in Syria. Following a solution, the Syrian regime should have a status in the regions we liberated from ISIS with the help of the coalition. The rights of the Kurdish people and the rights of other peoples in our region should be protected by law and the problems in Syria should be solved completely. We want Washington to conduct an effective policy on this issue.
You said that some mistakes were made under the previous administration. Trump’s desire to withdraw U.S. forces generated strong reactions in Washington and across America. What was the effect of the decision on you and on civilians?
There were some issues we dealt with during the previous administration. The people here, Kurds and Arabs, relied heavily on the U.S. forces, and this trust still exists. But this trust was damaged when the United States allowed Turkish forces to attack Serekaniye and Afrin.
We are trying to restore the trust between the U.S. forces and the people. Hundreds of thousands of people in Afrin had to leave their homes and now live as refugees. There were 90 to 95 percent Kurds in Afrin, but now that rate is around 30 percent. The Turkish state implemented demographic changes through Turkmen and Arabs.
Hundreds of thousands of people from Serakaniye and Gira Spa had to migrate during the attacks in 2019 and now they are staying in refugee camps and their condition is not good. They are waiting to return to their homeland. A new policy conducted in this new period should see people returned to their homes and regions returned to their natural state.
What can the new administration do concretely in a short time? If you had the opportunity to meet Biden, what would you request concretely?
We want the problems in the region to be resolved through dialogue. We ask the United States to assist this dialogue and to ensure peace in the region. We are waging a fight against terrorism here and they can support us against attacks from our neighbours, which is urgently needed. Unfortunately, the previous administration paved the way for threats to the region. This should not be repeated. In order for the struggle against ISIS to be effective, the United States has to provide support to the political administration here.
You talked about attacks from neighbours. Turkey says that Kurds in Syria pose a threat to its security. Are the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Syrian Kurds a threat to Turkey?
We have said this before, we pose no threat to Turkey. Turks know this better than we do. The Turkish state attacked our lands. We are not a party to the war waged by the Turkish state against other Kurdish forces. We want to solve the problems with the Turkish state through dialogue. I think the United States can play an effective role in advancing this dialogue, and we remain open to it.
So you are ready to respond positively to the Biden administration’s call for a dialogue with the Turkish state?
Of course. We have lands occupied by the Turkish state. We want to solve the problems with the Turks through dialogue, we are ready for dialogue and there is no serious obstacle to this. We want to solve problems without fighting.
White House National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan previously touched on the rights of the Kurds and called for a new settlement process between the Kurds and the Turkish government. Does the SDF see such a process positively? Would you take part in this process?
The truth is, the situation in all four parts of Kurdistan is interconnected. The Kurdish political movement has had a great impact in Turkey. It is difficult to have a solution in other parts without a solution in Turkey. The solution in Rojava is also related to the solution in Turkey. A solution initiated with (Kurdistan Workers’ Party leader) Abdullah Ocalan will have a positive impact on other parts, especially Rojava. This is the best method to solve the problem between the Kurds and the Turkish state.
Why do you think that such an initiative would be important for the safety of the American people? Why would the United States support a political solution in Syria?
If the problem is solved in our region, it will impact the world. We think that if the problem in northeast Syria is not solved, the problems in the whole country will not be solved. If there is no solution, ISIS and other elements will become stronger and continue to threaten the security of the American people.
I would like to ask about the situation of Yazidi Kurds and Christian minorities in the region. According to reports from Afrin, the situation is severe. What would you like to say about the current situation of Christians and Yazidis?
The representation of Christians and Yazidis in the SDF is high. ISIS and other Islamic radical groups attacked Yazidis and Christians. They were severely persecuted. They joined the SDF to protect themselves. Our people in Shengal were also subjected to persecution due to the attacks in Serakiniye and Afrin. Their villages were plundered and they faced the threat of genocide. Now they are living under pressure in other areas, some of them stay in refugee camps in our region. We know that Yazidi and Christian minorities are on the agenda of democratic organisations. They must protect the struggle of minorities.
You mention that the situation of the Kurds is interconnected. How are your relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government (in Iraq)?
We have a close relationship with (Iraqi) Kurdistan, including growing commercial relations. The Kurdistan Regional Government (in Iraq) can provide political and commercial support to Rojava. They have (autonomous) status there and have experience and opportunities. Of course, Rojava needs their support. Some negotiations are happening, we want a stronger relationship. We know that the Turkish state wants Kurds to fight against each other. The Turkish state wants clashes between the forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government and the (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) forces.
Despite this, the fact is that (Iraqi Kurdish) Peshmerga forces do not want to be part of such a game. We want the Kurdistan Regional Government to develop good relations with all parties, especially with Rojava.
How are your relations with the Syrian government? There have been some conflicts recently.
The Baathist regime has not changed its policy yet. They want the region to be same as before 2011 and don’t recognise Kurdish rights or the rights of other minorities. Our people immigrating from Shehba, Afrin, and Aleppo were encircled, placed under embargo, and had civilians arrested. We protected our people and then some problems occurred between us and the regime. We do not want to be at war with the Damascus government. We want to solve our problems through dialogue, for them to accept the rights of Kurds, and recognise our region.
Some criticised you and said you are unable to utilise the friendships of the United States and other great powers. How do you evaluate this criticism?
We get support from our American friends for the SDF and Rojava, and we are grateful for this. The United States has supported us in difficult times. U.S. politicians and soldiers supported our struggle. We are aware of some of our shortcomings. We want to be in close contact with the Unite States more frequently, especially in 2021. We want our political forces to negotiate with U.S. senators and other political forces. There were some bureaucratic obstacles in front of us, and we hope that those obstacles will be cleared.
Last year, the U.S. Congress invited you to visit. If there is an opportunity, do you have any plans to visit Washington?
We were at war at the time and there were some bureaucratic problems. But now is the time to discuss with the Americans. If I have the opportunity to meet with U.S. politicians, and if I can discuss the problems here with them face to face, I would of course be delighted to.
You were in contact with Trump several times. Have you ever had contact with Biden? Or do you expect contact in the coming period?
We talked with the new U.S. administration. I hope we will have a stronger relationship in the coming days and we can start talks at a higher level.
A new book titled”The Daughters of Kobani” was published recently. You also spearheaded the war in Kobani, which was important in letting the world know about Kurds. What would you like to say about these works and Kobani?
Many thanks to the author of the book, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. She also interviewed me when she came here. I told her my views on Kobani. Friends in the People’s Protection Units (YPG), Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), and SDF also helped her. She wrote a very important and valuable book. I think it is worthy of the women who resisted in Kobani. We are honoured with these works and wish them to increase.
The New York Times Whitewashes Turkey’s Occupation of Northern Syria: A Reality Check
by Debbie Bookchin
A recent article in the New York Times whitewashes the ethnic cleansing, displacement, and abuse of women that has brought misery to what was once a thriving, largely Kurdish region in Northern Syria. The Times piece was first published online as “Turkey’s Army Invaded Syria. Now, It’s a Lifeline for Millions There,” (February 16, 2021) before undergoing two headline changes and eventually landing on the front page of the print edition on February 17, 2021 as, “A Safe Zone That Can’t Protect Against Misery.” Violating basic principles of journalistic ethics—principles that include interviewing people on the receiving end of a war zone invasion—the article reads like a press release from the Turkish regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ignoring the enormous suffering endured by the thousands of original inhabitants of Afrin as a result of the Turkish-led occupation.
Prior to the Turkish invasion in January 2018, Afrin was part of the broader, Kurdish-led area known as Rojava or more formally, the Autonomous Administration of North and east Syria (AANES), whose fighters have been our best allies in the defeat of ISIS. The AANES, a region of about 5 million people, is a pluralist democracy that enshrines the rights of all ethnic minorities and has been especially effective in promoting women’s rights. Practices like forced marriage, polygamy, child marriage, and honor killings are outlawed. Laws mandate autonomous women’s councils, and the inclusion of at least 40 percent female representation in every legislative body, as well as female co-chairs in all administrative positions.
The invasion of Afrin by Turkey in January 2018, caused an estimated 180,000 people, mostly Kurdish, to flee their homes; most of them now live in internally displaced persons camps in other parts of Syria. Today, as Amnesty International has documented about those who remained: “Residents in Afrin are enduring a wide range of violations, mostly at the hands of Syrian armed groups that have been equipped and armed by Turkey (including) arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and confiscation of property and looting to which Turkey’s armed forces have turned a blind eye.” The intentional destruction of Kurdish and Yezidi religious and architectural sites, forced demographic changes including relocation of Arab families to Afrin from other parts of Syria, and compulsory use of Turkish language, even in schools, have been widely documented and signal Turkey’s intent to annex the region permanently.
The most egregious violations by Turkey have been against women. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria describes Turkey’s war on women in Afrin as creating a “pervasive climate of fear which [has] in effect confined them to their homes.” The 25-page report adds: “Women and girls have also been detained by [Turkish-backed] Syrian National Army fighters, and subjected to rape and sexual violence – causing severe physical and psychological harm.” To humiliate and demoralize the population, the Turkish-backed militias have engaged in such practices as forcing detained men to watch the gang-rape of a female minor, the report notes, saying it amounted to “torture.” Women’s rights researchers have documented that in 2020 alone, 88 women and girls whose identities are known were kidnapped by Turkish-backed armed groups, a rate of approximately one incident every four days. This included six minor girls of whom five were still missing as of January 1, 2021.
The Turkish invasion of Afrin has been a humanitarian catastrophe. No amount of propaganda from the authoritarian regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can erase the evidence on the ground of the grotesque human rights violations being perpetrated by Turkey, and it is shameful that the Times so completely missed the real story.
The AANES has long sought political recognition and autonomy within the borders of Syria. If the U.S. truly stands for human rights—and particularly women’s rights—it is time for the Biden administration to demand the withdrawal of Turkish forces from this area, grant the AANES political recognition, and press for the AANES to have a seat at the negotiating table on the future of Syria.
Debbie Bookchin, a long-time journalist and author, is a member of the steering committee of the Emergency Committee for Rojava. She was in Rojava in March and April 2019.
Medya News speaks to SDF spokesperson and Catholic Assyrian Christian, Gabriel Kino
January 29, 2021
Mark Campbell
Mr Gabriel Kino, spokesperson of the SDF, is a Catholic Assyrian and was a leading representative of the Syriac Military Council (SMC) during the early days of the Syrian Civil War. The SMC was established to protect the Assyrian Christian people from the attacks and persecution from the Islamic State and Jihadist groups that had established themselves in Syria.
He oversaw the formation of the Syrian Democratic Front, which included a wide section of Syrian society, including different Arab tribal and secular groups, Assyrian, Yazidi and Syriac groups, and the YPG and YPJ defence forces.He led military campaigns with the SMC and SDF and was one of the leaders that led the military offensive to liberate the ISIS HQ of Raqqa and went on to accept the defeat of ISIS at Baghouz in Deir Ezzor.
He very kindly agreed to an interview for Medya News.
Kino Gabriel has personally witnessed the sacrifice of his people and forces in the fight against ISIS in Syria and knows, first hand, the consequences of any invasion and attack by Turkey and their affiliated radical Jihadist gangs for the hard-won religious freedoms that the Autonomous Adiministration of North and East Syria (AANES) are respected for by religious rights groups around the world. I began by asking him about the threats to religious freedom following the ISIS attacks near Hasakah.
Following the murders of Hind Latif Al Khadir (Head of the Economy committee of Til Shayir) and Sa’da Faysal Al Hermas (Co-president of Til Shayir People Council) by forces affiliated to ISIS, what threat does Turkey’s continuous attacks on North and East Syria pose to the religious freedoms enjoyed by the people of the SDF-controlled Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES)?
Gabriel Kino: I think the threats that Turkey is making and the military operations that Turkey has launched so far in areas such as: Northern Syria; Afrin; around Manbij; the Northern countryside outside of Aleppo, and the area between Tal Abiyad and Ras al Ayn, has already threatened and reduced the religious freedoms of the peoples in these areas.
This reduction in religous freedoms is something they are already living through. The situation has already deteriorated for several religious groups in those areas occupied by Turkey including the Yazidis and the Christians including other prominent groups living in those areas, especially the Yazidis in the areas around Ras al Ayn and Afrin. And also the other Christian communities and groups based around Ras al Ayn and also other Kurdish Christian groups who were living in Afrin.
Of course, the continous threats made by Turkey are adding to the problem of people’s fears of a new military operation. And yes, I think, those threats is mostly problematic for those groups such as the Kurds, the Christians, the Yazidis the Armenians, and others who live in North and East Syria.
Of course, it also affects the Arab population also, although the other groups are mainly feeling more threatened because the Turkish military threats are directed specifically against them. On the other hand, the groups who are supported by Turkey, which are known for their terrorist and extremist radical mentality, they pose a threat for those groups in particular of North and East Syria in particular, we have witnessed what they have done. We have seen how these groups, including Jabat al Nusra and ISIS have been part of the military operations and attacks launched by Turkey and part of the groups and militias supported by Turkey.
It is widely recognised that the AANES has been able to build a tolerant inclusive society in NE Syria, unparalleled in the Middle East, promoting and enjoying religious freedom, gender equality, and human rights. Do you think that this model could be a positive example for the wider region?
Gabriel Kino: I think the democratic administration is really a unique example and experience in the Middle East. Different groups that previously had problems with each other have been able to come together, work together in order to make this administration work. This is completely unique, and I think we can take this positive example and look for where we can apply it to other parts of the Middle East and other parts of Syria so other groups can benefit.
I think this way of administration could potentially be a solution for the Syrian crisis in general. Of course, I think we need more work and more support in order to be more inclusive and more able to develop our political and administration experience, but again I think the work that has been done is great.
And with the support from democratic countries and Europe I think we can make the administration even better than what we have now.
Despite almost daily attacks by the Turkish state on NE Syria, especially recently around the town of Ain Issa, and the recent indiscriminate bombing of Tel Rifaat with civilian deaths, we do not hear condemnation from any of the anti-ISIS coalition members that the SDF have been fighting with, nor from Russia, which is supposed to be a guarantor of the ceasefire agreed last year. How do you interpret this silence?
Gabriel Kino: I think it is safe to say that it is not just about North and East Syria. I think it is the worst Syrian situation that has been governed so far by complicated relations and complicated intersections of global and regional interests/powers and governments involved in the Syrian crisis.
I think this is one of the main reasons there is so direct condemnations of Turkey for their attacks on North and East Syria.
Lastly, are you able to give us any indication on the progress of any talks with the Syria government on any possible negotiated agreement on autonomy and protections of religious freedoms, hard-won since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War?
Gabriel Kino: I think mainly and have to say that this is not my area of expertise or knowledge. I think it is a question for the political administration, but as far as I have information there isn’t really any progress in the talks.
There have been several attempts to have mutual talks or talks that were to be mediated by Russia but I think so far they have not worked out.
I think in the future we will see more progress and development but again I think this question is better suited for the Syrian Democratic Council or the Executive Council of the Administration of North and East Syria.
Syria: Are water supplies being weaponized by Turkey?
Water outages in Syria’s northeast are often leaving around half a million people without potable water. Is Turkey using the outages as a weapon to destabilize the region, as some claim?
Around 1 million people are suffering from water outages in the Al-Hasakah region
Around 1 million people in the Kurdish-governed region of Al-Hasakah in Syria’s northeast have again had their water supply cut off — as they have around 20 times in the past 12 months.
“This is a humanitarian disaster,” Sara Kayyali, a Syria researcher at Human Rights Watch, told DW. As of this Sunday, some parts of the region are experiencing the eighth straight day without water.
Problems with the supply from the nearest water station, Alouk, have been growing since Turkish forces and their Syrian rebel proxies took charge in October 2019, after the so-called Operation Peace Spring that targeted the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the region. While the water station has been under Turkish control since then, it relies on the SDF-controlled Mabrouka Electricity Station for its power. Turkey’s objective behind Operation Peace Spring was to create a 30-kilometer (19-mile) wide “safe zone” under Turkish control inside Syria.
Water from tanks is not only up to three times more expensive but also of inferior quality, leading to diseases
“Since then, a cornerstone of humanitarian capabilities has been repeatedly cut off, and water outages create ramifications across the entire population,” Kayyali told DW.
Syria claims that Turkey is behind the water outages, and accuses Turkey of having a major interest in destabilizing the region with the (mainly Kurdish-Syrian) population of around 1 million in cities such as Al-Hasakah, more than 45 villages and many official and unofficial refugee camps. Officially, Turkey doesn’t take any responsibility for the repeated outages and claims they are due to technical issues.
“I have to note that Turkey denies the accusation of cutting water to the region and says the Alouk station has merely been under maintenance and faces a lack of electricity from a dam not under Turkish control,” Guney Yildiz, a political analyst and IPC-Stiftung Mercator Fellow at the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told DW.
“On the other hand, Turkey openly declares its intention [in Turkish media — Editor’s note] to eradicate the administrations set up in northeast Syria and is most probably willing to use various means to accomplish that. Destabilizing the region is part of that strategy,” Yildiz added. Watch video 02:08
Turkey’s public position on the northeastern Syrian administrations remains unclear. DW contacted the head of media and communications for the Turkish presidency, Fahrettin Altun, for clarification, but has received no response so far.
“The threat of an independent Kurdish region near Turkey is an idea that may encourage more uprisings from within Turkey’s sizable Kurdish population, so Erdogan is looking to prevent a Kurdish state in Syria,” Charles Flynn, a researcher at the region’s Rojava Information Center, told DW.
Flynn considers fears of an independent Kurdish state as one of three reasons. “With the creation of Turkish-backed militias that recruit from extremist groups such as ISIS, Erdogan can’t have these militants come home to Turkey and start operating. And economically, war is always good for the economy, and the Turkish economy hasn’t been doing so well with the US sanctions and the COVID-pandemic,” he said.
Humanitarian crisis amid pandemic
The latest overview from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Syria, dated January 12, reported 12,462 COVID-19 cases. Some 8,227 cases were reported from northeast Syria, as of January 9.
“Access to water is all the more critical in [the] context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The UN continues to advocate to the relevant parties to ensure the provision of water from Alouk in line with international humanitarian law, and across Syria, to ensure that all civilians have access to basic services,” Danielle Moylan, OCHA’s spokesperson, told DW. Watch video 09:44
As early as last March, UNICEF’s representative in Syria, Fran Equiza, warned of the consequences of leaving 1 million people without water and relying on temporary solutions, particularly in times of a pandemic. “The interruption of water supply during the current efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease puts children and families at unacceptable risk. Hand-washing with soap is critical in the fight against COVID-19,” he said.
Temporary responses organized by local authorities and human rights organizations, such as tankers carrying water to surrounding villages, are no real substitute. The water is more expensive, of a lower quality and is not suitable for drinking.
“This issue is difficult to solve without international intervention to end this human suffering for the people in those areas,” Taha Odeh Oglu, a researcher of Turkish affairs and international relations, told DW.
As of Friday afternoon, Alouk’s water station is reported to have started operating again. However, it will take up to three days for the water to arrive to the people in the Al-Hasakah region.
Trump brought chaos to a region already on the brink, and the unintended consequences of his actions will reverberate for years to come.
(U.S. soldiers patrol near an oil production facility in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah Province; Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images)
In September 2020, a Syrian rebel group called the Hamza Division showed up in an unexpected place: the disputed post-Soviet territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, 600 miles from Aleppo. The rebels had been offered $1,500 per month each to fight for Azerbaijan against Armenia in the two countries’ border war over that disputed territory, several different news outlets reported.
Sayf Bulad, commander of the Hamza Division, has an interesting past. He served as a commander in a CIA-backed rebel group, appeared in pro–Islamic State propaganda, trained with the U.S. military, and fought other U.S.-backed rebel groups in Syria on behalf of the Turkish government. Now he was helping two former Soviet republics fight each other for money.
Bulad’s story is a symbol of the chaotic U.S. policy toward Syria and its unintended consequences.
U.S. policy toward Syria was torn between two often-clashing goals during the Obama administration: The CIA and State Department were focused on ending the Assad family’s decadeslong rule, while the U.S. military was trying to crush violent religious extremists such as the Islamic State.
President Donald Trump inherited this awkwardly stitched-together policy and added in an element of chaos. The president himself said he wanted to end “endless wars” and claimed he was ready to pull U.S. forces out of Syria at the first opportunity. But he hired a collection of hawkish advisers who thought of Syria as a battlefield on which to make Iran and Russia bleed.
“He hasn’t been able to bring American troops home, because his own bureaucracy resists him,” says Aaron Stein, director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “He never set up a bureaucratic process to actually implement what he wants to do.”
The result has been a disaster.
In 2018 and 2019, Trump ordered U.S. forces out of Syria, only to walk back the order both times. The Kurds have been left in a deadly limbo, unable to count on U.S. protection from Turkey but also blocked from looking to outside powers for help. Meanwhile, American troops have found themselves in increasingly dangerous confrontations with their Russian counterparts in the country.
U.S. policy has not only failed to stop the conflict; it has helped prolong it, leaving millions of Syrians at the mercy of White House palace intrigue. President-elect Joe Biden will have to find a way to extract the United States from Syria without reigniting the civil war—or getting sucked back in.
‘The Time Has Come’
The United States began backing Syrian rebels because many in the Obama administration believed that they could help quickly bring down an oppressive tyrant. Instead, the U.S. intervention fed into a bloody, yearslong international conflict.
U.S.-Syrian hostility dates back decades. Syria is a close ally of Russia and Iran and helped support the insurgents during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. But direct U.S. involvement in Syrian internal politics began with the Arab Spring.
As in other Arab countries at the time, Syrian activists rose up in protest against corruption and political repression. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad cracked down with brute force. Part of the Syrian army deserted, and the uprising became a full-blown civil war.
U.S. officials “looked at Bashar al-Assad as a hapless dictator who was not going to survive any of this,” says Frederic Hof, who served as an envoy for Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations at the time. President Barack Obama declared in August 2011 that “the time has come for President Assad to step aside,” although he also made it clear that “the United States cannot and will not impose this transition upon Syria.”
Nevertheless, in an effort to hasten Assad’s end, the Obama administration imposed economic sanctions banning nearly all trade with Syria. The Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush administrations had previously imposed some sanctions on the Syrian government for supporting terrorism, but the new sanctions put the entire country under a blockade.
Other countries lined up more forcefully behind the anti-Assad opposition. Saudi Arabia, seeking to hurt Assad’s ally Iran, sent arms to the rebels. So did Turkey and Qatar, who saw the uprisings of the Arab Spring as a way to increase their own influence.
In 2013, Obama gave the CIA a green light to join in directly arming Syria’s rebels. Many details of the “Timber Sycamore” program remain classified, but it reportedly cost billions of dollars over four years. Assad’s forces lost control of much of the country in this time.
Hof and Robert Ford, the last U.S. envoy in Syria, claim that the U.S. arms program was not a decisive factor. It was “overwhelmed by support provided by regional actors such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey,” Hof says. Other experts, including Stein, disagree. In particular, they say, U.S.-made anti-tank rockets played a key role in helping the rebels push back the Syrian military.
But the regime did not fall.
“Rather than Bashar capitulating,” Stein explains, “he said, ‘I’m going to the Russians and the Iranians'” for help. “It was the boomerang of the success of the CIA program.”
Ford had believed early in the conflict that Assad could not win a war of attrition—and that the opposition could convince Assad’s allies in Russia and Iran to stay out of the fight. This prediction turned out to be incorrect. Iran soon began sending military advisers, volunteers, and mercenaries to back Assad. By late 2015, Russian jets and combat troops were also in the country.
“We made a terrible, terrible analytical mistake,” says Ford.
Russia, Iran, and the Assad regime eventually retook most of Syria’s major cities through years of brutal siege warfare. As many as 200,000 civilians died in the process, in addition to the tens of thousands who perished in Assad’s prisons during this period, according to the pro-opposition Syrian Network for Human Rights and the British-funded Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The chaos also allowed religious fundamentalists to take a prominent role in the Syrian opposition. Syrian nationalist rebels vetted and backed by the United States fought alongside sectarian Islamist groups.
“We effectively created auxiliaries to these hardline groups that were taking territory,” Stein says. “Even though the hardliners were smaller in number, they were more effective.”
These “openly sectarian figures…just scared the hell out of Syrian minorities, who as a result stuck with Assad,” explains Hof, who resigned from the government in 2012 and now teaches at Bard College.
Religious fundamentalists became especially powerful in Eastern Syria, where U.S. military intelligence warned in August 2012 that Al Qaeda in Syria was going to “declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria,” according to a declassified report.
At the same time, Syria’s long-oppressed Kurdish minority was starting to take up arms. They were led by a left-wing guerrilla group called the People’s Defense Units (YPG).
The YPG began to clash with Al Qaeda, whose Syrian branch broke off to form the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in early 2014. The Kurdish militants sought autonomy for their region under a secular system of self-rule, while Al Qaeda and later the Islamic State wanted to establish a pan-Islamic theocracy—just as the U.S. military intelligence report had warned.
U.S. diplomats were flying blind when it came to the region, according to Ford, now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. American intelligence agencies had not even been able to provide him with “two pages” on the political dynamics of northeastern Syria. But pressure was building on Obama to act, especially as the Islamic State executed journalists on tape and began a genocide against the Yazidi minority in neighboring Iraq.
The administration did not really understand which factions it could work with in Syria, according to Alexander Bick, then the director of Syrian affairs at the White House National Security Council. But eventually, the American military saw that the YPG was drawing Islamic State fighters “like a magnet” to the besieged northern Syrian city of Kobanê in late 2014. The United States opened a line of communication with the Syrian Kurds through intermediaries in Iraqi Kurdistan, and the YPG began helping direct U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State.
At the same time, the U.S. military was trying to work with other Syrian rebel groups. It spent $500 million on a program to train and equip a new army of pro-America, anti-Assad fighters. The results were disastrous. The first batch of fighters was quickly defeated and robbed by Al Qaeda in July 2015. Other alumni of the program, including the Hamza Division, went on to fight as mercenaries throughout the region—turning up, eventually, in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“We would hear, ‘I have 5,000 men’…and it turned out there would be like 20,” said former Middle East envoy Brett McGurk during a October 2019 speech at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Or the forces that we wanted to work with were so riddled with extremists that our military repeatedly said, ‘There’s no way we can work with these people.'”
Finally, the U.S. helped the YPG form a coalition with Assyrian Christian and Arab fighters called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). With minimal U.S. involvement—mostly in the form of military advisers and air support—the coalition sliced the Islamic State into pieces.
SDF fighters found themselves at the gates of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital, by October 2016.
Obama had launched two interventions in Syria. The first, a covert attempt to overthrow Assad, failed miserably. The second, the war against the Islamic State—which sought to fix problems partially created by the first—succeeded only when the administration set limited goals, employed modest means, and relied on a campaign led by locals.
‘Orderly Transfer of Power’
Trump may have criticized America’s interventions abroad during the 2016 election, but his administration picked up almost exactly where Obama had left off. McGurk stayed on as the White House’s point man for military operations in Syria and Iraq, and Trump signed off on his roadmap, with a few important adjustments.
The new administration launched airstrikes against pro-Assad forces in April 2017 and April 2018 in response to chemical weapons attacks on civilians. Trump saw himself as reestablishing a “red line” that Obama had muddled.
Trump also started backing the YPG, who were still the most effective fighters in the SDF, more directly. American weapons flowed to the Kurds, while about 400 U.S. Marines joined the front lines in Raqqa, the first-ever conventional U.S. boots on the ground in Syria. “Donald Trump wanted to end the war in Syria as fast as possible,” says Stein. “That’s why he signed off on arming the YPG directly.”
The international coalition declared victory at Raqqa in October 2017 and moved on to hunt down the remnants of the Islamic State in the oil-rich, Arab-majority rural province of Deir al-Zor, Syria. The campaign there, which dragged on for more than a year, was temporarily put on pause when Turkey invaded the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin in January 2018. American officials described the Kurds’ mini-war with Turkey as a “distraction,” but the conflict would later become a major headache for the United States.
Trump then began to talk about withdrawing from Syria—while at the same time escalating against Iran.
In April 2018, the president appointed longtime hawk John Bolton as his national security adviser and promoted CIA Director Mike Pompeo to secretary of state. Both saw Iran rather than the Islamic State as America’s greatest enemy in the Middle East. They began a “maximum pressure” campaign meant to roll back Iranian influence across the region, which included forcing Iranian troops out of Syria.
Pompeo put two hawkish officials in charge of Syria policy: James Jeffrey, a veteran cold warrior who had served as U.S. ambassador to both Turkey and Iraq, and Joel Rayburn, a retired Army officer who had helped advise the U.S. military “surge” in Iraq.
McGurk supported brokering a peace deal between the Syrian Kurds and the Russians, but he met opposition from the new faction of Iran hawks in the administration. Jeffrey even asked the Kurds not to make a deal with Assad, telling them to rely instead on U.S. protection, the Daily Beast later reported. The hawkish faction also saw the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces as a “terrorist group,” as Bolton put it.
The YPG was close to an insurgent group in Turkey called the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Ironically, U.S. diplomats had predicted confidently in November 2007 that the Syrian Kurds would “not rally around the extremist tendencies of the PKK,” according to a cable later published by WikiLeaks. But in fact, both the PKK’s “libertarian socialist” ideology and actual PKK veterans held enormous influence over the Syrian Kurdish rebellion.
By 2018, Turkey was extremely unhappy with the growing power of the SDF, which it saw as an extension of the PKK. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan got Trump on the phone to complain about it in December 2018. Trump, eager to fulfill a campaign promise to bring American troops home, agreed to pull U.S. forces out of Syria, which would leave Turkey free to invade. Photo: The nearly deserted Syrian city of Kafranbel, south of Idlib, during a pro-regime offensive; Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images
That decision set off a bomb within the administration. Many officials felt blindsided by the sudden announcement and anxious about “betraying” the SDF to Turkey. McGurk quit in frustration. So did Secretary of Defense James Mattis.
Bolton, Pompeo, Jeffrey, and Rayburn stayed, however. The Iran hawks were now in full control.
The hawks began to work on an agreement called the “safe zone,” a project to let everyone have a cake and eat it, too. The deal would bring Turkish troops into northern Syria as part of an international peacekeeping force, which could push the Kurdish YPG away from the border. American forces would stay in the short term to help implement the plan.
“While we played this string out, or developed a better idea, which might take months, we had a good argument for maintaining U.S. forces,” Bolton later wrote in his memoir. He added that he had hoped an “orderly transfer of power” from U.S. forces to Turkish troops would prevent Assad, Iran, and Russia from retaking northeastern Syria.
Turkey and the United States finally agreed to a deal in August 2019, and the SDF coalition dismantled its fortifications along the border with Turkey.
Trump’s advisers were hoping they could keep U.S. forces in Syria to fight Assad without angering Turkey—all while appearing to bring American troops home. Bolton wrote in his memoir that he was “deliberately vague” to both Trump and the media when it came to the number of Americans that would be necessary to implement the safe zone.
In an interview he gave to DefenseOne shortly after resigning from the State Department following the 2020 election, Jeffrey admitted that he had been “playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there.” As part of that effort, U.S. military leaders and Bolton pushed to count U.S. forces at Al-Tanf, a remote desert base far from the SDF-controlled zone, separately from the rest of the U.S. deployment to Syria.
Trump wanted out of Syria, but instead of organizing an orderly withdrawal, his advisers tried to take the fight against Assad out of the public eye.
As part of an effort to resurrect the anti-Assad rebellion, Trump administration officials had pushed the SDF to work with Turkish-backed Islamists against Assad. The effort didn’t go well. In one tense September 2019 meeting, according to a report from The National Interest, Rayburn screamed and broke a writing utensil in frustration after Syrian Kurdish officials refused to join forces with the Islamic hardliners.
Erdoğan, meanwhile, was publicly agitating to expand the safe zone. He got his wish and more during an October 6, 2019, call with Trump, when the U.S. president gave him a green light to invade Syria outright. It remains unknown what exactly the two leaders said, but the White House announced immediately afterward that “Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria.”
American forces had dismantled the SDF’s anti-tank fortifications as part of the safe zone deal two months earlier, rendering the Syrian Kurds defenseless. Now the United States was ushering in Turkish tanks and Turkish-backed militants.
Over 100,000 Syrians fled the invasion. They had seen the same forces unleash chaos, mayhem, and ethnic violence on Afrin a year earlier.
“I’ve met numerous people who were displaced when Turkey invaded in October [2019] and personally blame Trump,” writes Amy Austin Holmes, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson -International Center for Scholars, from Syria.
The Trump administration was willing to allow Turkey to invade northern Syria. But the administration did not want the Syrian Kurds to turn to Russia, Iran, and the Assad regime for help, which would undo years of efforts to roll back the influence of Assad and his allies. U.S. policy, in other words, was not only to refuse to protect the Kurds but also to deny them protection from others.
A U.S. diplomat tried to convince SDF leader Mazloum Abdi to hold off on asking Russia to step in. Turkish forces were only going to move 30 kilometers into Syria and the invasion would stop after that, he claimed.
The Kurdish general was not having it. “You will not protect us and you won’t let anyone else protect us. Your presence has turned everyone else in Syria against us,” Abdi responded, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable leaked to CNN. “Either you stop this bombing [by Turkey] on our people now, or move aside so we can let in the Russians.”
The SDF signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the Assad regime soon after, allowing Assad’s troops to join the fight against the Turkish invasion. Russia and Turkey then agreed to a safe zone of their own—along the same lines as the U.S. proposal—and the Syrian Kurds watched as Russian troops moved into their region as protection against the Turkish Army.
The Trump administration had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of planning for an orderly U.S. withdrawal and encouraging the Syrian Kurds to negotiate a peace deal with other factions in the country, Trump’s advisers tried to use the SDF to continue their anti-Assad campaign. Their efforts ended not with a Kurdish-led rebellion against Assad but with the Kurds looking to Assad and his allies to shield them from their archrival Turkey.
‘Take the Oil’
Trump’s pullout of Americans from Syria following his deal with Erdoğan was short-lived. U.S. troops eventually moved back in, including to areas near the Turkish border now guarded by the Russians. Trump repeatedly claimed that their mission was to “take the oil” or guard the “oil region.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) and other hawks had used the promise of oil profits to sell Trump on their plans to keep U.S. forces in the region, according to Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, which lobbies for the Syrian opposition in Washington.
“If you want to feed the baby medicine, you put the medicine in candy or something. That’s what happened with the oil,” Moustafa told me in November 2019. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you want to take the oil? Yeah, take the oil. We’ve got to take the oil.’ So that ended up becoming the reason that he would keep anyone there.”
The actual oil in the region is not worth much. Syrian petroleum production was falling even before the civil war, and the Islamic State at its peak only made about $1.5 million per day from Deir al-Zor’s wells.
But its location is important. Deir al-Zor lies right along the line of contact between the SDF and the Assad regime. By holding that “oil region” as well as the U.S. base at Al-Tanf, U.S. forces can surround Iran’s military supply lines on two different sides. This makes Iranian forces in Syria vulnerable to an attack by U.S. forces or allies.
Assad is also sensitive about the oil, as his regime has had trouble meeting its people’s fuel needs. Russian mercenaries attacked the SDF on Assad’s behalf in February 2018 to try (unsuccessfully) to take the oil fields in Deir al-Zor.
To make matters more complicated, foreign companies are forbidden from dealing with the oil under European and U.S. economic sanctions. So the Syrian Kurdish oil ministry has been forced to rely on smugglers, whose leaky storage tanks and backyard refineries have become a serious threat to public health.
The situation looked as if it could change in April 2020, when the U.S. Treasury Department issued a special sanctions exemption to a little-known company called Delta Crescent Energy. Jeffrey and Rayburn then met with politicians in neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan to discuss opening a route for Delta Crescent Energy to export the oil, The New Republic later reported.
Graham and Pompeo finally went public with those discussions during a Senate hearing in July 2020. “I talked to General Mazloum yesterday, with the SDF,” Graham said. “Apparently they’ve signed a deal with an American oil company to modernize the oil fields in northeastern Syria. Are you supportive of that?”
“We are,” Pompeo responded. “The deal took a little longer, senator, than we had hoped, and now we’re in implementation.”
Delta Crescent Energy partner James Cain told Politico that the company’s goal was “to get the production back up to where it was before the civil war and sanctions.” But there was a problem: The Syrian Kurds, who control that land, were not completely on board. Ahed Al Hendi, a Syrian-American activist who works with the SDF, called Pompeo’s announcement premature. Abed Hamed al-Mehbash, the Arab co-chairman of the SDF’s civilian administration, told local media only that he planned to “study requests by many Russian and American companies.”
Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish general, later confirmed to Al-Monitor that Delta Crescent Energy was involved in northeastern Syria but said that talks were “advancing slowly.”
The SDF knew that announcing an oil deal with America—and no one else—would be provocative. Indeed, it has been. Assad’s foreign ministry quickly denounced the agreement as a scheme to “steal Syria’s oil” and “an assault against Syria’s sovereignty.”
In August 2020, an Iranian-backed militia fired rockets at a U.S.-controlled oil field in Syria. That same week, pro-Assad gunmen got into a shootout with U.S. troops at a checkpoint in Qamishli, near the Turkish border.
The week after, a Russian armored truck rammed into a U.S. humvee, injuring at least four Americans. Russian and U.S. troops in Syria had seen tense encounters with each other before, but this was the first violent clash between the two armies.
Russia and Iran did not tie the clashes directly to the oil deal, but the message was clear: A more entrenched U.S. presence in Syria would meet harder resistance.
According to a September 2020 report by Eva Kahan at the Institute for the Study of War, Russia, Iran, and Turkey have also been secretly backing Arab insurgents against the SDF in Deir al-Zor. Russia hopes to use the instability “to compel senior SDF leadership to accept a new deal in Syria that constrains U.S. forces or ejects them,” Kahan wrote. In other words, the continued U.S. presence has induced Russia to play good-cop, bad-cop with the Kurds.
Several local leaders have already died in mysterious shootings. In response to the violence, U.S. forces have beefed up their presence in Syria, deploying Bradley Fighting Vehicles and advanced radar systems in September.
One bad decision after another has led to the current situation. The failed U.S. effort to take out Assad helped open the space for the Islamic State, which was only defeated when the U.S. pivoted to supporting Kurdish forces. Instead of allowing the Kurds to consolidate their gains and negotiate with Assad, the U.S. tried to use them as proxies against Assad and to make a quick buck from their oil. The situation has angered both Turkey and Assad’s allies, causing them to set aside their differences and turn their sights on pushing out the U.S. presence.
National security officials kept pushing grandiose goals even as U.S. leverage crumbled away. “This isn’t a quagmire,” Jeffrey said at a May 2020 event at the Hudson Institute. “My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.” He later praised “the stalemate we’ve put together” as “a step forward” in the region.
As Rayburn explained at a June 2020 event hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Trump officials think they can use sanctions to “deny the [Assad] regime access to international financial markets until a political solution can be reached.” Pro-Assad and opposition negotiators have been meeting in Geneva to work on a new Syrian constitution, although the SDF and the Kurds have never been included in those talks.
But Ford—the former U.S. envoy who learned the hard way that Iran and Russia were unlikely to abandon their interests in Syria—is skeptical that U.S. economic sanctions will be enough to pressure Assad into accepting anything. “I think we are trying to do something with tools that will not deliver the results we want,” he says. “They can sanction the hell out of the Assad government. He doesn’t give a shit about his people!”
Syrians have faced massive inflation, fuel shortages, and breadlines over the past few months, in addition to a spiralling coronavirus crisis. (A banking crisis in nearby Lebanon is partially to blame for their woes.) But the U.S. is unlikely to lift the economic pressure: Congress passed even more sanctions aimed at deterring foreign reconstruction investment under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019.
The Biden administration may not change other aspects of the strategy, either.
Antony Blinken, the president-elect’s nominee for secretary of state, gave a speech to the Meridian Group in May 2020 outlining his approach toward Syria. “Any of us—and I start with myself—who had any responsibility for our Syria policy in the last administration has to acknowledge that we failed,” he said. “We failed to prevent horrific loss of life. We failed to prevent massive displacement of people, internally in Syria and of course externally as refugees. It’s something that I will take with me for the rest of my days.”
And yet his prescription was more of the same.
Blinken claimed that the United States still has “points of leverage,” including troops on the ground near oil-rich regions and the ability to marshall resources for Syria’s reconstruction, that could lead to better outcomes next time around. He argued that U.S. leaders should demand “some kind of political transition that reflects the desires of the Syrian people” and said that it was “virtually impossible” to imagine normalizing relations with Assad’s government.
Hof, another Obama administration alum, believes that the United States can turn the SDF-held zone into “an attractive alternative to Assad” for all Syrians. U.S. diplomats could push for this new government to take over Syria’s seat at the United Nations while U.S. forces stay to carry out a “stabilization” mission and “keep the Iranians and the regime and the Russians out.” (“We also have the ability to respond militarily to the regime with great effect and force if it resumes a program of mass civilian homicide,” Hof says. “We can do a lot of damage with cruise missiles.”)
But Ford wants America to focus on the “only really useful things we can do” at this point: to help refugees fleeing the civil war and to “negotiate with the Russians some kind of deal” that would allow the Kurds to govern themselves in peace.
Ford has recently taken a liking to the writing of Robert McNamara, the U.S. secretary of defense during the Vietnam War who later became a critic of the war effort. “Vietnam was a problem that ultimately we could not fix,” Ford says. “That’s kind of where I’m at with Syria right now.”
Sinam Sherkany Mohamad is the Co-Chief of the US Mission of the Syrian Democratic Council. She is a Kurdish woman from Afrin, Syria.
During the year 2020, North and East Syria faced a wide variety of challenges — war, occupation, terrorism, and instability, a sharp economic downturn, a global pandemic, and more. However, we have met these challenges with determination and commitment to our people. We have acted not only for our own people, but to protect the world from the global threat of ISIS terrorism, and to act as a beacon of democracy and stability in the Middle East. Our hearts still beat with the desire to bring democracy, peace, stability, equality, and prosperity to the Middle East. We are still standing — it is the strength of the people of North and East Syria that is the rock we stand on.
That’s why 2021 is the year that the people of North and East Syria are calling upon the international community for inclusion in talks on the future of Syria. We ask to be recognized as a key player in the solution to the Syrian crisis. We are one-third of Syria. We call at minimum for the inclusion of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) in the UN peace talks mandated by UNSCR 2254, as well as in the Syrian Constitutional Committee.
We have consistently acted through the Syrian crisis to benefit our people, the Middle East, and the world. We ask now for a seat at the table, a stable place in global coalitions, and acknowledgment as an indispensable part of a democratic Syria.
The challenges that we have overcome this past year in North and East Syria have been brutal. While most of the world faced the pandemic, we have faced the onset of Coronavirus with little to no trained personnel, few medical facilities, and a lack of testing machines and personal protective equipment. Our health infrastructure had been left in disarray following a decade of war and instability. But with an early unified response, including stay-at-home orders, travel restrictions, and public sanitization, we have kept our case numbers much lower than they may have been.
We have endured continued attacks and human rights violations by the Turkish military and Turkish-backed militias, while the rest of the world looked the other way, unable to admit that Turkey might commit these atrocities. The ongoing Turkish occupation of our region — Afrin, Serekaniye, and Gire Spi — has come with theft, murder, kidnapping, and other violations. Although Turkey may be losing favor in the West, it is still able to gain enough currency to continue to wage genocide and territorial expansionism against the Kurds and the people of North and East Syria. The people of North and East Syria have weathered Turkish attacks with the same determination with which we defeated the ISIS “caliphate.”
In 2020, our economy crashed as never before. The Syrian pound remains low. Our people are facing even higher rates of poverty. Hunger and food insecurity are soaring. We are committed to overcoming these challenges, and the administration of North and East Syria is working every day to provide food aid and water, stabilize prices of basic goods and necessities, and secure the medicines and nutrition that our people need.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) is an authority governing about one-third of Syrian territory and five million people. The AANES provides daily services to millions of Syrians including education, electricity, water, sanitation, and security in North and East Syria. Its security forces, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), are a steadfast ally to the United States and a partner to the US State Department’s Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. Known in the West for its Kurdish Protection Units and women fighters, the SDF’s defeat of the ISIS “caliphate” was announced by President Trump in March 2019 and celebrated across the world.
So it is time that we were included in talks on our future. Inclusion in talks on the future of Syria will help us build upon our mission for a democratic Syria, receive humanitarian aid, expand the capabilities of our governance, and reduce the harm and suffering many are going through. It will help us rebuild after a decade of war and instability, much of which occurred as we battled the ISIS “caliphate” and kept the rest of the world safe from its violence and oppression. It will help us build momentum to recover our territory from the Turkish occupation, restore human rights and dignity to our region, and allow displaced people and refugees to finally return home.
We wish for our people, at the end of a long and bitter decade of hardship, to have the kind of stability and certainty they need to pick up the pieces of their lives. In many cases, these are pieces that they left scattered in all four corners of the world, as people became refugees elsewhere. They are still our people, whether they still reside in North and East Syria or whether they return there only in their dreams at night. So many long to return. Inclusion in talks on our future will give many the assurance they need to plan their return trip.
We wish to bring true democracy to a unified Syria, a Syria that respects the diverse communities, ethnicities, and religions of its people, a Syria that upholds equality, women’s rights, and human rights. We call for a decentralized Syria that allows communities to have power over their local governance, elected officials, and shared resources.
We are a necessary part of a peaceful resolution to the Syrian conflict, we are a force for democracy that is growing brighter each day, and we are an integral part of the future of Syria.
In the past few days there have been a series of large-scale ISIS attacks in Syria. Is the Islamic State coming back?
ERSİN ÇAKSU
QAMISHLO
Thursday, 14 Jan 2021, 09:51
After the many attacks in Syria and Iraq in the last few days, the question for many is whether these attacks announce a comeback of the Islamic State or whether there are other factors that prompted this increase.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) ended the territorial rule of the so called ‘caliphate’ with the liberation of Baghouz in March 2019. Even if thousands of ISIS jihadists have been arrested, underground, clandestine structures have formed in Iraq and Syria. In provinces such as Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and Hama in Syria and Kirkuk, Baghdad and Anbar in Iraq, these networks have been carrying out attacks from time to time. The frequency and quality of these attacks has increased significantly in the last few days.
Dozens of attacks since early December
Since December 2020, the Islamic State has carried out eight attacks in Deir ez-Zor, eight in Raqqa, ten in Hama, five in Homs and two in the Aleppo area. Shortly before the end of the year, ISIS bloodiest attack took place, leaving at least 28 Damascus soldiers dead on the road between Deir ez-Zor and Palmyra. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) speaks of dozens of Syrian government soldiers and militia killed in ISIS attacks in the desert near Hama.
Damascus is not doing anything serious against ISIS
The presence of the Islamic State in the desert to the west of Deir ez-Zor, i.e. in the area under the control of the Assad regime, has never been a secret. However, as it is, the Damascus regime and its supporters have never waged a serious fight against the Islamic State presence there. According to observers, this was because of the plan to put pressure on US-backed groups in the Tanef region on the Jordanian border. It must also be noted that this region is on the route from Bukemal, the main route of Iranian militias to Iraq, something which led to a wide range of speculations.
Turkey’s Role in Reviving ISIS
The biggest factor that led to the resurgence of ISIS, however, was the invasion carried out by the Turkish state in northern Syria. Following this invasion, many ISIS members withdrew to the areas under Turkish rule. Many of them escaped from internment camps and prisons in northern Syria with the help of Turkey. The presence and reorganization of the Islamic State in the areas under Turkish control is an open secret.
SDF operations continued
The SDF carried out targeted operations against the Islamic State networks and were able to discover and neutralise several jihadist cells, especially in the Deir ez-Zor region. In 2020, two large-scale SDF operations and 25 targeted operations against these cells took place in Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa provinces. Hundreds of alleged Islamic State members were arrested and large quantities of weapons were confiscated.
The areas under ISIS control
Siyamend Elî, press officer at the YPG, said in an interview with ANF that ISIS was tolerated by various forces involved in Syria, precisely in the places where the attacks are taking place, and added: “After the neutralisation of ISIS in Baghouz, it continued to exist mainly in al-Bukamal, Deir ez-Zor, Palmyra and Hama. In fact, some forces have allowed ISIS to continue to exist there in order to be able to use it as a tool in the future.”
ISIS used this phase as a time for training and reorganising and also to change its strategy, said the YPG representative adding: “ISIS is now carrying out many more surprise attacks and has increased its forces.”
Russia focused on Northern Syria
Elî recalled that Russia and Iran came to Syria allegedly “to protect Syrian territory”, but that both forces are not concerned with rural areas, but rather focused on “cities that are strategically important for them.”
Elî said: “Russia’s concentration on Til Temir and Ain Issa, and on Northern Syria in general, gave ISIS the opportunity to carry out these attacks.” He underlined that ISIS is not a priority for Russia. Israel’s attacks on Iranian armed forces have led to an increased of attacks by ISIS in these regions, said the press spokesman for the YPG, noting that the regime would not be able to wage war without Iran and Russia.
“Coordination with the SDF necessary”
Elî said: “Russia and the regime should coordinate with the SDF in the fight against ISIS and the small groups that appear under different names. If this does not happen, the situation east of the Euphrates will become very serious. That is why ISIS has been able to act by surprise against Russia and the regime.”
The attacks put a strain on the regional balance of power
Journalist Nazım Daştan is also following developments in the region closely and does not see the increase in ISIS attacks as a coincidental development. To speak about a revival of ISIS is “still a little too early” but, said Dastan: “ISIS is coming to the surface again. Even if I don’t think this will happen on a large scale, it can put a strain on the balance of power in the region. The attacks may increase further in the coming days.”
“The international powers neutralize each other”
Daştan pointed out that the United States and Russia continued to try to define their territories and thus determine the borders in Syria. This results in a space from which ISIS can carry out its attacks. Daştan said: “We can see this as a process in which the international powers and regional powers measure each other anew for the year 2021.”
As for the position of ISIS, Daştan added: “It will be difficult to revive such a discredited force on an earlier scale. However, ISIS can use this process, in which international forces are actually busy weakening each other, as an opportunity for its reorganization and strengthening.”
ISIS increases attacks in Raqqa as Turkish-backed forces shell Ain al-Issa
One expert noted that the Russia and Syrian regime attempts to push the SDF to withdraw from the Ain al-Issa area and shelling by Turkish-backed rebels is “giving ISIS cells greater ability to conduct attacks deep behind the SDF lines.”
On Sunday, a civilian was injured in an improvised explosive device bombing in Raqqa city (Photo: SOHR)
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The so-called Islamic State has claimed seven terrorist attacks in Syria’s Raqqa province in the past ten days, amid increased shelling of Kurdish-led security forces by Turkish-backed groups in the town of Ain al-Issa.
The attacks terrorist attacks included improvised explosive device (IEDs) bombings and hit-and-run assaults against the Internal Security forces (ISF), also known as Asayish, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) both inside Raqqa city and the province’s countryside.
The Raqqa Asayish has confirmed at least two of the incidents. According to the ISF, one of the attacks occurred on January 6, in eastern rural of Raqqa, resulting in the deaths of two of their Arab members. Another one took place on January 4, later claimed by the Islamic State inside the city, resulted in the injury of several civilians.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) also reported that a civilian was injured in an IED explosion that targeted a vehicle in the al-Malahi area of Raqqa city on Sunday.
“The considerable increase in attacks in Raqqa is a significant indicator of ISIS’s rising capability of conducting attacks beyond its active operating zone of Deir Ez-Zor,” Mohammad Ibrahim, a Syrian researcher and analyst who focuses on northeast Syria, told Kurdistan 24.
“ISIS repeatedly proves its swift resilience and ability to hit various regions whenever it finds security gaps. The ISF and SDF are currently hugely distracted in northern rural Raqqa, in Ain Issa, where there are daily clashes between SDF and Turkey-backed Islamist armed groups,” he added.
Over the past two months, there have been increased Turkish-backed shelling and fighting near the Ain al-Issa town in the Raqqa province.
According to Ibrahim, the increasing pressure by Russia and Syrian regime forces to push the SDF to withdraw from the Ain al-Issa area and shelling by Turkish-backed rebels is “giving ISIS cells more ability to conduct attacks deep behind the SDF lines.”
Raqqa was liberated from the Islamic State in October 2017 by the SDF with support from the US-led coalition.
Despite the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US-led coalition announcing the defeat of the extremist group’s so-called caliphate on March 23, 2019, Islamic State sleeper cell attacks continue in areas that were liberated from the militants, including in Raqqa.
In 2020, most Islamic State activities took place in Deir al-Zor province, with Raqqa province coming in second place. The terror group’s propaganda outfit, al-Bayan, suggested that it had claimed 389 attacks in Deir al-Zor in 2020 and another 59 in Raqqa.
Charles Flynn, a Syria-based researcher at the Rojava Information Centre(RIC), told Kurdistan 24 that the Islamic State has also increased its attacks in the southern Raqqa countryside, controlled by the Syrian government.
“We’ve seen increasing number of Russian airstrikes against ISIS targets west of the Euphrates, as well as several ambushes conducted by ISIS that have produced large number of casualties against the SAA (Syrian Arab Army).”
The US government claims to be supporting the Syrian Kurds in the fight against ISIS. But it is attempting to bring a more moderate leadership to power in a bid to weaken the Kurds’ revolutionary project in Rojava. Washington will never be a friend of self-determination.
Troops from the Syrian Democratic Forces head to the front line on November 10, 2015 in the autonomous region of Rojava, Syria. (John Moore / Getty Images)
Last September, the United States began sending additional troops into northeast Syria, where hundreds of US soldiers are helping Kurdish forces fight the remnants of ISIS. The move represented a sharp change for the Trump administration, which had pulled US forces from the Turkish border the previous year, facilitating a brutal Turkish attack on the Kurdish homeland of Rojava.
Yet despite predictions that Trump’s betrayal would bring an end to the Kurds’ leftistsocialrevolution in Rojava, the Kurds have been remarkably resilient. Not only have they managed to endure more than a year of ongoing Turkishattacks, but they have continued forging an inspiring experiment in direct democracy, drawing praise from observers who visit the area.
Rojava “has the best religious freedom conditions in the Middle East and has the best conditions for women,” said Nadine Maenza, a US commissioner for religious freedom, when she visited Rojava this past October.
While the Kurds have defied the odds, they are now facing new threats — particularly from the United States. Over the past year, US diplomats have been calling on Kurdish leaders to sharepower with rival politicians who do not hold the same revolutionary views.
Participants portray recent talks as a well-intentioned effort to create Kurdish unity.
But the talks are more accurately seen as a bid by Washington to appease Turkey, maintain a foothold in Syria, and, perhaps most crucially, moderate the Kurds’ revolutionary ambitions.
The Syrian Kurds, Trump’s Betrayal, and the Aftermath
For the past several years, the United States has been working with Kurdish forces in northeast Syria in the war against ISIS. By providing the Kurds with arms, money, training, air cover, and logistics support, the United States has enabled them to wage an effective military campaign that has left the group defeated and largely dismantled.
This partnership has ramped up tensions with Turkey, which has been waging a decades-long war against the Kurdish people. The Turkish government has accused the Syrian Kurds of being part of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a militant Kurdish resistance group, and portrays both the PKK and Syrian Kurdish fighters as terrorists who must be destroyed.Although Trump has periodically praised the Kurds for their military courage, he has repeatedly enabled Turkish aggression.
The international left has largely supported the Kurds, inspired by their efforts to lead a leftist social revolution in Rojava. As the Syrian state withdrew its forces from northeast Syria during the early stages of the country’s civil war, leftist Kurds began transforming the area into an autonomous region. They empowered women and ethnic minorities to participate in local and regional politics and promoted a vision of “democratic confederalism” rooted in egalitarian economics and political participation.
The Kurds’ vision of democratic confederalism has led them to begin building a revolutionary new society that is democratically administered by small, decentralized self-governing units. Local communities and ethnic groups participate in communes, neighborhood councils, and district councils, where they decide how to run their communities and manage their resources. By adopting the principle of dual leadership, the Kurds have empowered men and women to work alongside each other as equal partners at all levels of society. If Rojava is successful, it could become the basis for a new kind of egalitarian and self-governing society.
Officials in Washington have always harbored serious concerns about their partnership with the revolutionary Kurds. They have refused to recognize Rojava as an autonomous region within Syria and have displayed a reckless disregard for Rojava’s security, looking the other way as Turkey periodically launched attacks like the brutal invasion of Afrinin 2018.
The Trump administration has been one of the greatest threats to Rojava. Although Trump has periodically praised the Kurds for their military courage, he has repeatedly enabled Turkish aggression. When administration officials announced in October 2019 they would begin drawing US troops away from the Turkish border, they cleared the way for Turkey’s right-wing nationalist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to launch a military operation that killed hundreds of civilians and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
Turkey “had to have it cleaned out,” Trump said, justifying the ethnic cleansing.
But Trump’s decision sparked a backlash, including from many US officials, and he backtracked by keeping a small contingent of US troops in northeast Syria. After Russian and Syrian forces moved into the area, administration officials announced that about five hundred US soldiers would continue working with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to guard the region’s oil and fight the remnants of the Islamic State.
“We’re still partnering with the SDF,” then secretary of defense Mark Esper acknowledged several weeks after Turkey’s invasion. “We’re still providing assistance to them.”
US Support for Leftist Revolutionaries?
Many US officials have commended the Kurds for building a stable political system in a war-torn country.
In recent months, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom has taken the lead within the US government in highlighting the Kurds’ achievements in Rojava. In its annual report, a public hearing, and an op-ed, the commission praised the Kurds for creating an inclusive society that provides religious freedom to its diverse residents.
US commissioner Nadine Maenza, who visited Rojava in October and November, repeatedly extolled the Kurds for creating a system of self-government that empowers the local population.
“They set up all these committees and they start literally meeting the needs of the community,” Maenza said. “They did it in a way that promoted ethnic diversity, religious diversity, acceptance of one another. . . . It created conditions that are unique to the rest of the Middle East.”
Kurdish troops from the Syrian Democratic Forces stand in a forward operating base overlooking the front line on November 10, 2015 in the autonomous region of Rojava, Syria. (John Moore / Getty Images)
More recently, some high-level officials in Washington have offered similar words of praise. “They seem to be somewhat successful in bringing all these pockets of different ethnic backgrounds together under one sort of democracy that actually seems to be working,” Texas representative Michael McCaul, a Republican, said at a congressional hearing earlier this month.
But as the Kurds well know, US officials often have other motives in mind when showering them with praise — namely, their military prowess.
When ISIS forces began rampaging across northern Syria and western Iraq in 2014 and 2015, US officials discovered that Kurdish militias were the only forces that could hold back the onslaught. “They were the only people who could fight effectively against ISIS at the time,” a State Department official told Congress in 2019.
Over the course of the war, Kurdish fighters made great sacrifices, losing more than ten thousand soldiers. “We outsourced the dying to them,” one US official later admitted.
Now, with ISIS mostly vanquished, Washington has presented a new rationale for supporting the Kurds. Because the Kurds control about one-third of Syrian territory, US officials believe they hold significant leverage over Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. As long as the Kurds remain in command of Rojava, US officials wager, Assad will not be able to reestablish control over Syria.
Rojava “is the United States’ greatest single point of leverage in Syria,” the congressionally mandated Syria Study Group (SSG) noted in a major report in 2019.
This was one of the main reasons Turkey’s attack on Rojava in October 2019 upset some US officials. The president’s “approach has ceded U.S. leverage over a future political solution in Syria,” Florida representative Ted Deutch complained. The co-chairs of the Syria Study Group agreed, condemning the Trump administration for “forgoing an important source of leverage.”
With US forces once again working alongside the Kurds, many US officials believe they have salvaged that leverage. Even if Trump’s actions weakened the United States’ foothold in Syria, they remain convinced that Washington can use what remains of Kurdish control of Rojava to pressure Assad into a political agreement that results in him leaving office.
Antony Blinken, who is slated to become secretary of state in the incoming Biden administration, views Rojava as a key element of US strategy. “That’s a point of leverage because the Syrian government would love to have dominion over those resources,” Blinken said last year. “We should not give that up for free.”
US Opposition to Leftist Revolution
Viewing the Kurds as strategically important partners, US officials have been reluctant to criticize them. Only rarely have they revealed their opposition to the Kurds’ revolutionary aspirations.
In December 2017, former US diplomat Stuart Jones sent one signal when he urged Congress to make sure Washington’s partnership with the Kurds “does not create a political monopoly for a political organization that is really hostile to U.S. values and ideology.”Many US officials and establishment thinkers are doing what they can to bring a less revolutionary Kurdish leadership to power.
In 2019, the Syria Study Group provided another sign when it complained that the main revolutionary Kurdish party in Rojava, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), had been using the SDF’s cooperation with the United States to establish a civilian government at odds with US preferences. “The United States never explicitly pledged support for Kurdish autonomy or self-rule in Syria,” the study group insisted.
One of the clearest signs of US opposition came during a congressional hearing in October 2019, when US senator Jeff Merkley repeatedly asked then State Department official James Jeffrey about his views on the revolution.
“There was, to be fair, a widely circulated vision of Rojava,” Merkley explained. The Kurds envisioned a “self-governed autonomous area with a whole philosophy of democratic control.”
Jeffrey responded by agreeing with Merkley’s characterization of the Kurdish vision, even suggesting that the Kurds might achieve their revolutionary goals, but insisted that the United States did not back the revolution. “I want to emphasize that this vision, which is the vision of our partners, was never the American vision,” Jeffrey said.
And US officials are keen on making their own vision come to fruition. Many US officials and establishment thinkers are doing what they can to bring a less revolutionary Kurdish leadership to power.
In a 2018 policy brief, the Brookings Institution argued that the United States should encourage the PYD to share power with the much smaller Kurdish National Council (ENKS), an opposition umbrella group hosted by Turkey. The brief suggested that a power-sharing agreement could prevent the PYD from creating an autonomous region inside Syria. The United States could adopt “a posture that is accommodating of Turkish national security concerns,” the brief noted.
Turkey’s attack on Rojava in October 2019 put significant pressure on Kurdish leaders to take Washington’s concerns into consideration. Shortly after the assault, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi agreed to begin talks with opposition leaders, and US officials urged the two sides to create a unity government that incorporated ENKS leaders.
US diplomat William Roebuck, who played a central role in facilitating the talks, noted in an internal memo that he wanted to see Rojava’s political structure “evolve” by “including Kurds outside the PYD and more empowered, independent Arabs.”
After several rounds of negotiations in early 2020, one of which Roebuck attended, the two Kurdish sides came to an agreement. On June 17, Kurdish leaders announced they had reached a “common political vision” over how to govern Rojava.
Roebuck, who participated in the ceremony, praised both sides for their efforts. “They have shown flexibility and intelligence in the way that they have dealt with this,” he said.
The US Embassy in Syria agreed, issuing a statement that described the agreement as “an important first step towards greater political coordination between Syrian Kurdish political factions with the support of the United States.”
Although it remains unclear whether the deal will create a pathway for ENKS leaders to acquire political power, the accord is a major political victory for the United States — and a blow to the Kurds’ revolutionary ambitions.
The Future of Rojava
Despite the Kurds’ many achievements, the future of Rojava remains in doubt. Even if the revolutionaries find some way to withstand growing US pressure, the Kurds still face an existential threat from Turkey.
Turkey’s invasion in October 2019 expelled hundreds of thousands of people from numerous towns that Ankara’s forces and their allied militias continue to occupy. As part of the military operation, Turkey drove a huge wedge between the western and eastern parts of Rojava.US officials insist that they are trying to create unity among various Kurdish political parties, but what they are really trying to do is create a more moderate Kurdish leadership. They want to appease Turkey, maintain US forces in Syria, and bring the revolution in Rojava to an end.
Turkish leaders continue to back militants that launch periodic attacks on the Kurdish people. The very day that the Kurds in Rojava announced their unity deal, Turkey launched a major offensive against the Kurdish region of Iraq, even receiving encouragement from the Trump administration. Recentreports indicate that Turkey is preparing to mount another attack on Rojava.
The Kurds have also lost much of the leverage they had over the Syrian government. After Turkey invaded Rojava in October 2019, Kurdish leaders had no choice but to invite Syrian and Russian forces into the area for protection. US officials estimate that between four thousand and ten thousand Syrian forces now occupy various parts of northeast Syria.
Russia has also been pressuring the Kurds, despite the fact that Russian military forces initially came to their assistance during the Turkish attack. Russian leaders are intent on bringing Rojava back into the orbit of the Syrian government, which Russia has been backing in the Syrian Civil War. In early 2020, Russia closed an Iraqi border crossing that had been supplying Rojava with about 40 percent of its medical aid.
The coronavirus and economic woes are still another challenge for the Kurds. Reports indicate that the virus is spreading through Rojava; officials have periodically placed cities into total lockdown. On the economic side, rapid inflation has made it difficult for people to purchase basic goods and essentials. Farmers are struggling to find buyers for their crops. US sanctions have worsened the crisis.
“Ordinary people are having trouble buying the basic goods that they need to survive,” US diplomat William Roebuck acknowledged last August.
Through it all, officials in Washington insist they are still supporting the Kurds. They continue paying the Kurds to manage several camps that are holding about ten thousand detained Islamic State fighters and about seventy thousand civilians, many of whom are the wives, children, and family members of ISIS fighters.
Hundreds of US soldiers remain on the ground in Rojava, where they continue working with Kurdish forces to target remaining pockets of jihadists. Although the Trump administration has announced troop drawdowns in Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan, US officials haveindicated that they will maintain a military presence in Rojava.
The incoming Biden administration remains something of a wild card, but president-elect Joe Biden has signaled he intends to keep working with the Kurds. In 2019, Biden said that “it makes a lot of sense” to keep several hundred US troops in Rojava “to protect the Kurds and provide for security in the region.” Other US officials have indicated that there will be no immediate changes in US policy under the Biden administration.
Much more quietly, however, Washington continues meddling in Kurdish politics. US officials insist that they are trying to create unity among various Kurdish political parties, but what they are really trying to do is create a more moderate Kurdish leadership. They want to appease Turkey, maintain US forces in Syria, and bring the revolution in Rojava to an end.
In short, the United States has begun a major new battle for Rojava — and Kurdish liberation is their last concern.
The working class has played an essential part of European countries’ history – through revolutions, wars and social progress. In 4 episodes of a spectacular tale, this show reminds us of what our societies owe to the workers’ movements and its struggles.
The story begins in the 18th century. But their fight carries on today. Much of our current democracies’ institutions and values flow from older working class demands: universal suffrage or social solidarity are some of its most telling examples. Our culture – the way we dress, the songs we listen to, the movies we watch and the mass-media themselves – heavily relies on the workers’ erstwhile popular culture. Finally, all across Asia, Africa and Latin America, millions of women and men experience lives similar to the 18th and 19th centuries’ European working class. We will bring out the present’s ever looming shadow by constantly flowing back and forth between history and current situations. Those contemporary testimonies and photographs will help us gather the threads of memory between yesterday and nowadays together again.
“Communist” history of own prominent family not black and white, says documentarian Stan Neumann
Among the guests at East Doc Platform, a parallel industry event to Prague’s One World festival of human rights documentaries, is director Stan Neumann, a man with a captivating personal history. Born in Prague, he left with his American mother for France in 1959. His father’s family had been prominent to say the least.
Stan’s great-grandfather Stanislav Kostka (S.K.) Neumann was a lauded poet, an anarchist who later co-founded the Czechoslovak Communist Party. His grandfather Stanislav, also a red, was a famous stage and movie actor. But it was the complicated fate of his father, yet another Stanislav, that we first discussed when I sat down with Stan Neumann last week.
“My father was… it’s very difficult to define, because he was supposed to be a writer, in fact. His mother, my grandmother, wanted him to be absolutely a replica of S.K. Neumann.
“In a certain way, I think he was not completely fit for that. I may say that from my point of view, it destroyed his life.
“These things with the generations, when somebody in the family thinks that the next generation must emulate the preceding generation, sometimes leads to catastrophes.”
He was a Communist poet, essentially?
“He had a very moving… path in life. Before the war he was in this kind of bourgeois, intellectual French gymnazium [grammar school], and so on.
“When he was 16, at the end of the war, he was arrested by the Nazis with a group of something like 50 gymnazium students and sent to the Small Fortress in Terezín.
“On May 2 the whole group was shot – it was May 2, the war was over – and he was the only survivor from this group, because he was dying from typhus.
“From then on he had a kind of fidelity pact with the [Communist] Party, from which he didn’t want to deviate. This created a strange situation, because he was very young but when destalinisation came, he behaved like an old Stalinist.
“He was one of the few who didn’t accept destalinisation. It broke his literary career. Then he became a small functionary, a cultural attaché, and finally he broke with the party only after the [1968 Soviet-led] invasion.
“And he committed suicide the day before he had to answer to a special commission and he was about to be expelled from the party. So it’s very sad – a broken life, broken by I would say politics, war, family, thing like that.”
You were telling me your mother [Claudia Ancelot] worked for Radio Prague.
“Yes. My mother came here with my father. They met in Paris in ’47 and she came here at the worst moment possible. Then they started to live in this house in Žižkov with the family.
“Then the political situation became such that my father realised that it was a big political mistake to have married an American Jew from German origins. In these times, it was the worst combination possible.
“So there a quick divorce, and the grounds were the political immaturity of my mother [laughs]. Then she found herself here with two children and had to find a job. She found one at the international section of the Radio.
“She made broadcasts for the States, in the middle of the night calling for American workers to rise and overthrow capitalism [laughs].”
Did you ever visit the Radio in those days?
“Yeah, I loved that. I still have very wonderful memories from the pater noster and the feeling of it and the people there. And the canteen – for a child it was fantastic.
“Later when I was eight or nine, before we left for France, I used to make false Communist programmes. I was supposed to be a young pioneer, coming back from vacation, very glad [laughs].”
I imagine it must have been a difficult experience for your mother, living here in the ‘50s?
“It was very strange, very difficult, very dangerous. At this moment, the head of the international section was Lise London and at the time of the Slánský trials my mother had the perfect profile, coming from the States, so it was very difficult [London was the wife of Artur London, a co-defendant in the anti-Semitic show trial of Rudolf Slánský, who was also found guilty but not executed].
“But my mother was always very curious and she was very happy to see what was going on. She learned Czech. She became one of the best translators from Czech to French. Later when she went to France, she was the translator of Hrabal. She interpreted for Havel, and so on.
“I think the situation was so tense but also so interesting that she enjoyed it [laughs].”
I often get the impression when I hear about women like your mother, who here from the West came after the war, that they were quite isolated. People were perhaps wary of speaking to foreigners.
“Yes. But there was a small group of people with very strange destinies. For example at the American section [at Radio Prague] there was an American soldier who came here after the war because of a love story which collapsed.
“My mother had a very close friend who was a British doctor, a woman, who came for political reasons. So there was a small group. Then there was the French section, where she met her second husband.
“We were isolated because we lived in special places, in hotels or in buildings, under the close watch of janitors and the people around.
“But it was not lonely, at least for her. Because she had experience of emigration. She had left Germany when she was 12 years old in ’33, then she to flee France. Then the States. France again. She was used to a strange life.”
So she left this country, because she met a French man, is that right?
“It was a quite difficult situation. Because my father didn’t want to her to leave with the children, and she didn’t want to leave without the children.
“So it took almost 10 years before she could obtain the permit to leave with us. At this time she met a French journalist who was working in the French section at the Radio [laughs].
“Like many people at this time, it was after Budapest, so he was completely disappointed with communism – but at the same time he loved the country.
“Many people had this story. They came here and in two, three months their eyes were opened, they saw the reality of the society, but they fell in love with Prague, with the Czech people, and so on.
“My stepfather was so much in love with Czechoslovakia that when the Prague Spring happened in 1967 and ’68, he returned here and started to work once again for the international section of the Radio. He preferred the life here to the life in France.”
You left at the end of the 1950s. Did you follow events in Czechoslovakia closely from France?
“Yes. I left on a Czech passport. My grandfather and grandmother were still alive and I was in love with my Czech family, and my aunt and the house.
“So as soon as I could do it, I used to come here. I think I spent all my holidays in Prague. I was very close to it and for a very long time I felt it was my home more than Paris.”
I know you’ve made many films, but I’d like to speak about one of them, A House in Prague. Tell us about that film.
“It was a film I made quite late. After the revolution here, the situation in France was that all the filmmakers suddenly discovered Prague and rushed here and started to make films. I found it a little bit like vultures.
“So I waited till ’95, ’96, when the wave ended, to feel able to return and to make a film about my family story and about the house.
The house is a villa in Žižkov?
“The house is a villa in Žižkov in which my great-great-grandfather created an anarchist commune at the beginning of the 20th century, and which then was the house of my grandfather and my grandmother, but divided between them and the other part of the family.
“My grandfather was red establishment, let’s say a mild Stalinist, and his sister was a kind of bohemian anarchist – and the house was a battleground between the two parts of the family. This is basically the story of the film.
“But it was a very, very moving film for me, and very difficult. I think it’s one of the most difficult things to do, at least for me, to turn the camera in the direction of my own stories.
“Because in all my films I have always the pleasure of discovering something new. And if you are with your own stories, you don’t discover anything, you just tell what you already know.”
Was there nothing you discovered in the making of A House in Prague?
“There was something, which was that when I started to make the film I had a kind of judgmental position: wrong, right, black, white.
“And as I entered into the life of this house and the life of the people in this country, I started to see that the situations were much more complex, much more difficult, much more painful in a certain way.
“But there was also much more life in it than we see when we look at it from today.
“The second thing is I did with this film as I do with all of my major films, which is that I took this part of my history and I put it in the film, so that I can be freed of it, in a certain way.”
SDF are confronting the Turkish army and jihadist mercenaries who have intensified their attacks on northern Syria in recent weeks in violation of so-called ceasefire agreements and international law.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Tuesday, 29 Dec 2020, 14:30
The Press Office of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) released a statement on the attacks of the Turkish state and allied mercenaries on Ain Issa district in northern Syria.
SDF reported intensified attacks on Ain Issa line in recent days, remarking that through these attacks, the Turkish-backed mercenaries seek to increase their dominance on M4 highway and to expand their wave of aggression against the region.
The attacks of the invaders were mostly repelled as result of the response from SDF fighters, the statement said.
SDF stated that the Turkish army and allied mercenaries attacked the villages of Mişêrfa (Al-Mushairfa) and Cehbel (al-Jahbal) in Ain Issa district with UAV support on December 27. Surroundings of both villages were heavily bombarded, the statement noted.
“As a result of the immediate response of our forces resulted in heavy fighting in the area of the two villages on 27-28 December and the attacks of the gangs were repelled.”
SDF reported that 5 of their fighters, 4 of them from the Democratic Brigade al-Shimal (Lîwa El-Şimal El-Demokrat), fell as martyrs during the attacks of the Turkish state and mercenaries.
SDF extended their condolences to the families of the martyrs and to the people and reiterated their promise to defend their lands.
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Commander denies claims of an agreement with Russia on Ain Issa
The Commander-in-Chief of the Military Council of Girê Spî (Tal Abyad) denied that any agreement had been reached with the Russian forces regarding Ain Issa, stressing that their forces were confronting Turkish attempts to control the international road.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Monday, 28 Dec 2020, 20:08
On Monday, Turkish artillery attacks targeted villages on the M4 highway, 3 km east of the Ain Issa town, a day after the killing of 6 mercenaries in a failed infiltration operation to control the villages of Al-Jahbel and Al-Mushairfah, with Turkish support.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Girê Spî (Tal Abyad Military Council), Riad al-Khalaf, spoke to ANHA News Agency and said that this evening, their forces are responding to the Turkish and its mercenaries’ attempts to control the international road.
Al-Khalaf affirmed that all the news about any agreement with the Russian forces is “baseless,” and that the control map is still intact after 6 weeks of the Turkish military build-up and aggression.
This comes as the Syrian government forces’ presence is limited to a number of military points on the lines of engagement, in light of Russian military reinforcements for the back lines.
The Ain Issa town is witnessing daily protests in front of the Russian base, in conjunction with Turkish shelling that targeted the vicinity of the base for weeks without any military or political response from the guarantor Russian state.
Russian forces and the Syrian government forces are deployed in the areas of contact with the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries, following the Sochi agreement on the 22nd of October between Moscow and Ankara, to monitor the ceasefire process. This is indeed what the Russian forces ignore, despite casualties in Turkish shelling targeting the northern neighborhoods of Ain Issa and a number of villages on the international road.
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Ain Issa: “We have always been united and will remain so”
As the fighters keep resisting in Ain Issa, which is under the attack of Turkey and gangs, the people carry out a protest in front of a base of Russian troops, which have remained silent on the invasion attempt.
ANF – BÊRİVAN CİZİRİ
AIN ISSA
Wednesday, 23 Dec 2020, 14:45
Since November, the attacks of the invading Turkish army and gangs of Ain Issa have been going on. These attacks have intensified since the beginning of December. Heavy bombardments on the Seyda and Malikiye villages was followed by artillery attacks on the city centre.
Since December 18, there have been intense attacks on the villages of Misefra and Cebel. YPJ, YPG and SDF forces responded to these attacks in an act of self-defence. In these attacks, 19 members of the invading Turkish army and allied gangs were killed and 9 others injured.
While these attacks resulted in the death and injury of civilians, settlements were also seriously damaged. Against the silence of the Russian and Regime forces, the dirty alliances and the intensifying attacks, the Revolutionary Youth launched an action in a tent set up near a Russian military point. The action was taken over by activists from the women’s umbrella organization Kongreya Star.
When the action started on December 19, the invaders attacked near the Russian points with heavy weapons and fired sound bullets. Despite the attacks, the people displayed heroic resistance chanting slogans one after another.
On December 21, the invading Turkish army and gangs attacked the village of Misefra with heavy weapons at night. Each day a gang group makes a statement on their media outlets. And they circulate a footage which dates back to 4 years ago claiming “it is from Ain Issa”.
The invaders boast about their fake news. They are doing this to wage a psychological warfare against the population, kidnap local people and plunder their homes. The people see the whole truth and express that they will fight against it and they will not leave their land.
Today people from Kobanê and Raqqa have joined the tent protest to defy the lies and attacks of the gangs. The groups, especially women and young girls, who took over the action, displayed their attitude with great enthusiasm and excitement. They also performed a traditional folk dance for freedom.
After four years, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Units) remain the most effective forces on the ground in Syria to fight ISIS, just as in 2016 – this despite of the loss of significant territory to Turkey and the US-led Coalition pulling out from several towns in northern Syria in October last year. As a result, the SDF-controlled areas in northeast Syria remain the largest opposition-controlled territory.
The SDF and YPG were not able to achieve their main goal in marching further towards Afrin to connect the three Kurdish cantons after the ISIS defeat in August 2016. The US were opposed to the idea and told the SDF they would only support them to liberate the ISIS capital of Raqqa.
Moreover, due to Turkish fears of a Kurdish-led autonomous entity on its border and Ankara’s own territorial ambitions, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan launched Operation Euphrates Shield. This lasted from August 2016 to March 2017, and sought to prevent the SDF from connecting Manbij to Afrin by taking territories between the two (including Bab and Jarabulus). On 20 October 2017, the SDF liberated the town of Raqqa from ISIS. However, this did not stop Turkey from launching further operations against the SDF, despite having already thwarted their plan to unite the cantons.
With Russian backing (with Moscow pulling out troops and opening up airspace to Turkey), Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch in Afrin in January 2018 (lasting until March 2018). The YPG refused a Russian offer to hand over Afrin completely to the Syrian regime and as a result, Russia allowed Turkey to attack. This temporarily disrupted SDF-US cooperation against ISIS, with the SDF redirecting troops to defend Afrin from the Turkish assault. The earlier Operation Euphrates Shield was also coordinated with Russia, as were most Turkish operations against the SDF.
Nevertheless, despite losing Afrin, the SDF continued to work with the US and liberated the last territory from ISIS in Baghouz on 23 March 2019. But this did not stop Turkey from launching another attack, ‘Operation Peace Spring’, in October 2019. The US made attempts in June 2018 – through the Manbij Roadmap and through a safe zone deal in March 2019 involving Turkey and the SDF – to prevent a further Turkish incursion. However, Turkey demanded that this ‘safe zone’ on its border be completely under its control.
As a result, despite the SDF removing fighters and fortifications from Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain (Serekaniye), and joint Turkish-US patrols in SDF-held areas on the border, these deals did not dissuade Turkey from launching a new operation. The US was also not ready to militarily prevent the Turkish army from attacking the SDF. Turkey launched the so-called Operation Peace Spring on 9 October, after a green light from US President Donald Trump during a phone conversation with Turkish President Erdoğan. This major Turkish offensive led to the displacement of nearly 180,000 civilians.
Russia and the US were able to quickly reach separate ceasefire deals with Turkey, which limited Turkish control to an area between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain. This stopped Turkey’s original plan to destroy the Kurdish-led autonomous administration by creating a 32-kilometre-deep ‘safe zone’ stretching along the 460 kilometres of the Turkish-Syrian border. Turkey also wanted to relocate the 3.6 million Turkish-based Syrian refugees to north-eastern Syria, which would have completely changed the demography of the area, and may well have threatened the Kurdish presence in Syria.
The SDF also reached a deal with Damascus in October 2019 to place regime forces on the frontline facing Turkish forces and Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels. US troops also pulled out from areas near Manbij, Kobani and Raqqa in late 2019, while Russian troops moved into these areas, as well as other borderlands. The US repositioned their forces to Hasakah province and the oil-rich Deir az-Zour. Coalition forces are today tasked with protecting oil infrastructure and continuing the fight against ISIS. As a result, the SDF stayed in control of significant oil resources, which gave them continued independence from Damascus. Moreover, one US oil company, Delta Crescent Energy, also received a waiver to modernise oil fields in SDF-held north-eastern Syria in July 2020 in a deal with a US company. So far, the company has not yet commenced operations.
As a result of the ceasefire deals, and an accord with the Syrian regime, the SDF continues to control significant territory. With a détente holding, they have not handed over territory to the Assad government, and neither has Damascus recognised the SDF or the local Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), despite repeated failed negotiation attempts. The SDF continues to stay in control of all the area’s checkpoints and has suffered only minor defections.
Around 300 Russian military police now operate in the border area and conduct joint patrols with Turkey. Moreover, there are an estimated 4,000 to 10,000 Syrian regime forces that operate in the area. In addition, the SDF continues to control and pay the salaries of over 100,000 forces. There remain 500 Coalition troops present in the areas of Hasakah and Deir az-Zour, which has led to competition and tensions between US and Russian forces in the area due to Moscow’s continued opposition to any American presence in Syria. As such, Russia’s preferred solution is for Damascus to take full control of north-eastern Syria, without any concessions to the SDF.
However, Russia is unable to push out the US forces by military means. This has raised fears in north-eastern Syria that Russia could allow another Turkish intervention to force the SDF to make concessions to Damascus, or even push US forces further out of the area. Erdoğan recently increased his threats to invade the north-east again amidst economic trouble inside Turkey. During a recent interview on Hawar News, a senior Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) official, Hikmat Al-Habib, also expressed fears over a possible Turkish-Russian agreement that could pave the way for an attack, after Turkey withdrew from some observation bases in Idlib. As such, the future of the north-east remains unclear. However, until now the SDF and the local AANES have been successful governing this part of Syria and will look to continue, unless Turkey is allowed to attack again.
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Assad’s statements incongruous with changes in Syria
Latest statements by the Syrian president Bashar Assad are seen by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria as persistence to deepen the Syrian Crisis via the denial and exclusion language incongruous to the religious and cultural variety in Syria.
NEWS13 Dec 2020, Sun – 10:302020-12-13T10:30:00 NEWS DESK
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria has called on Assad, in a statement released today, not to exploit the Arab component for the benefit of policies adopted by the regime.
The statement reads as follows:
After a decade, the Syrian Crisis is still aggravates, real efforts of finding a solution have never been found so far, and what gives permanence to the crisis is the approach adopted to the crisis by some parts in dealing with the crisis, for there still some parts, of which the Syrian Regime is number one, in dealing with the crisis ignoring it’s core.
This vision to the actual reality in Syria impinges unbearably on the situation and the prolongs the crisis, and adds to the already suffering of the Syrian people.
What is astonishing, after all this plights, destruction, murder, deportation, occupation and terror is that there are still some parts who believe that such negligence to the crisis would conduce to a solution, taking into account that the denial language is the reason behind such destruction.
Comments by the Syrian president lately, in his participation in the periodical meeting that was held by the Syrian Endowment Ministry at the Uthman Mosque in Damascus, on December 7th, 2020, on some issues of which his short-sighted discussion of the Syrian situation and denial to the various components of the Syrian society that never pays attention to openness that ought to be adopted by all parties that advocate for the interests of Syria and of it’s people.
His approach to pluralism and variety prevalent in Syria and excluding all that to one colour, that is the pan-Arab one, never conforms to the necessary changes to take place in Syria, and never to efforts exerted to build the new Syria, for this narrow dealing of the Pan- Arab form of the case is a hard proof to denial of all indigenous Syrian components and a bid to melt down all cultures and components of Syria such as Kurds, Syriacs, Armenians, Circassians and others to be melted down
We respect all components and assure that Arabs are a big and indigenous people of the Syrian fabric but this component must never be exploited by a regime that alleges it advocates for Arabs’ cause but it serves it’s mere service, for Arabs as others underwent denial in spite all of speech by Syrian president that stresses the Arab role, this classic speech has never made any progress years ago regarding solution in Syria.
We, in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria are in dire need today of adopting a language by all parts that conforms to the changes taking place and the social variety prevalent in Syria really, denial to any people or the plural components of Syria excludes it’s religious, societal and cultural richness, and such exclusion never serves Syria’s future and it’s integrity, rather it eases all endeavours to segregate it societal unity.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria
A dream destroying borders: The book by commander Meryem Kobanê
YPJ commander Meryem Kobanê, one of the commanders of the historical Kobanê resistance and victory, speaks about her book, “Kobanê: Çepera Rûmetê”.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Thursday, 12 Nov 2020, 13:04
Kobane: Charter of Honour
The first volume of the book of Meryem Kobanê, one of the commanders of the historical Kobanê war and victory, about those days, “Kobanê: Çepera Rûmetê” was published by Şilêr Publications.
Translations in different European languages are already underway as this book is not only a beautiful piece of literature but also an important testimony and tribute to the resistance and victory carried out by men and women in Kobanê.
Meryem Kobanê is one of the witnesses of that time when ISIS destroyed cities one by one in 2014 and brought states to their knees. She is a protagonist and witness of the great resistance in Kobanê.
With the book “Kobanê: Çepera Rûmetê”, Meryem Kobanê brings together the will of a handful of revolutionaries who said “Kobanê will not fall”. She did this first by fighting, this time she does it as a story teller.
The book is also a very valuable recent history document.
From a border village of Serxet (North Kurdistan) to Binxet (Rojava Kurdistan), Meryem Kobanê looks at the borders that are dividing Kurdistan with the eyes of a child, pursuing her childhood dreams.
Meryem Kobane’s dream of crossing the borders as a child comes true in Kobanê, where, years later, a people stood hands in hands and destroyed those borders.
Meryem Kobanê, who held a gun in her hand during the Kobanê war, now undertakes the task of transferring that war, resistance, will and heroism to the new generations with a pen in her hand.
She spoke to ANF about the book and its importance.
With this book, you became the narrator of the historical Kobanê victory after being one of those who achieved this victory. What was your aim while writing this book?
Undoubtedly, the expectation to carry over and convey the truth of a war that you witness and fought bears a high responsibility. There are great resistances in the history of the Kurds. But most of them remained only oral. There are many different reasons for this, but since the result remained oral, most of those resistances do not somehow become history.
That is why a person who witnessed a great war like Kobanê, who witnessed many moments and took decisions there, has a responsibility to leave it to history. There was such a responsibility not only for that truth not to be lost but also for it to be passed on to new generations and history. We wanted the truth to be known. Yes, this was also the task of a militant of the freedom struggle. I wanted that the truth of the great war we fought be conveyed and be the legacy of the resistance history of all Kurdistan and other peoples. Every Kurd needs to know this truth. Because if a people does not know its past, it cannot build its future.
Your book starts with the border. You define the border from a child’s perspective. The border is one of the biggest traumas for Kurds…
Borders have always meant pain in human life. The first words and emotions that come to mind when talking about borders is: falling apart, being separated, expatriating, being exiled. Borders, not only in human life, but also in the life of all living things means obstacle. It means stopping the flow. Longing accumulates when there is no flow…
It is the biggest embarrassment of the world that our country is divided by borders. They tried to educate us Kurds with borders. Yes, they did that physically, but mentally and emotionally they could never succeed in making us accepting those boundaries. Because it is impossible to put borders to thoughts and feelings.
This is why every child who has lived close to the border has a border metaphor in his/her eyes. When you come to a border, the first thing you feel is barbed wire. Those borders are never forgotten. But there is something else that those who build those boundaries do not take into account, or try to extend their life by denying them: the fact that borders always bring hatred and anger. This situation is also valid for us Kurds. Kurds have never accepted the borders drawn between Kurdistan. Every Kurd saw those borders as their denial and destruction.
Years later we see that girl on the North side of the border as a revolutionary on the other side, in Rojava. Could you tell us a little bit about your first feelings in the land of revolution?
I tried to express this in the book: What I found the most difficult thing to make sense of even in my childhood and which became an open wound for me in later years were borders. Tens of questions were constantly puzzling me, such as why the border, why these people cannot see each other, why is there a constant obstacle between us, why can’t we play games with our children on the other side, and we can only see them from a distance? There was no escape from these questions. As a child I started looking for answers to these questions. As I learned something, my consciousness of Kurdishness grew stronger and so did my hatred against those who drew those borders between us.
Pursuing the dream of childhood…
I remember well in my childhood I always dreamed of having wings. I dreamed that I could fly over the border, to see our relatives on the other side, to play with my cousins. In fact, our childhood games often were about crossing borders. I can say that the answer to the question of how can I cross that border never abandoned me. I followed my dreams. I saw my dreams indispensable. Sometimes I followed them, sometimes they followed me…
Years later, when I looked at the land where I was born this time from the other side of the border and dreamed of how to eliminate them, my dreams were with me again. But now, I realized that those borders could not be crossed by wings… You have to do something to make the borders disappear.
Because boundaries were the product of an imposition…
Yes, those borders were aimed at sowing genocide, hostility and contradiction among brothers and peoples. For example, my mother used to talk about Assyrians and they were no strangers to me. When I crossed to Binxet (Rojava), I also saw Syriacs there. This means that these borders shattered not only the Kurds, but also other peoples and beliefs. When I was a child, my mother used to tell not only the Kurdish çîrok (stories), but also Assyrian and Armenian çîrok. Then I began to grasp the real meaning of borders sowing hostility. Just as the story of the Assyrian girl Febrûniye which begins in a church in Nusaybin and ends with her death in a church in Qamishlo…
You are also the witnesses, decision makers and survivors of many of the events that you describe in your book. Was it difficult to put them on paper?
This is really a difficult issue. Surely, you experience many emotions at the same time while you are at war. It is a flood of emotions. But the most dominant feeling is ‘how do I win this war’. It is undoubtedly difficult to be in this flood of emotions, but really much harder to write about them. Because you are reliving many events that you have witnessed. You are also worried about not being able to do justice to the heroism experienced. One may be bolder or more assertive than the other, but ultimately there is also the truth that all hearts beat for victory. I made a lot of effort so that no one was left out of the book. Maybe not all of them have names, but they all joined with their skills to ensure that victory. I tried to write down those images that I saw with my eyes and recorded in my mind. When I first decided to write a book, my only goal was to be the language of those heroes. I wanted everyone to know these heroes. I wanted to be fair. I don’t know how much I have achieved it, but that was my goal. I made an effort so that no one is forgotten.
Let’s ask what was the most difficult thing while writing…
You know, as the great philosopher says, you can’t bathe twice in the same river. It is very difficult to live and feel a memory for the second time. Yes, the mind is also the place to record memories. But one should not forget the destruction of time. My biggest concern was not being able to do justice to the resistance and heroism I experienced. It was this anxiety that I struggled most with.
How does it feel to be both a freedom fighter and the narrator of a historical war, a historical period? Because the people you describe in the book are not “fictional heroes”, but the greatest heroes of the 21st century and you know them all…
We see ourselves as truth seekers, truth fighters. We are fighting for justice against injustice. We are fighting for rights against injustice. As the dominant system, capitalism is also waging a war against the memory of human and society daily, in fact every second. Truth seekers or fighters are also fighting against this system that targets the common memory of human and society. Being the narrator of this great war is a completely different, indescribable feeling, of course… When we chatted between us sometimes while at war, we were making a promise to each other: whoever lived would write what happened and make it immortal. Indeed, I saw the greatest people, the most epic heroes in that war.
When I decided to write those historic days that were a source of hope for all the oppressed, I wrote it feeling that there was a great burden on my shoulders. There was a promise I had made. These experiences would not be forgotten, they would be written, left to history, passed on to new generations… Because writing was an order of the martyrs.
No one I am talking about in the book is a fictional novel or movie character. They are all real heroes. Children of this people. Each of them is the living hero of every village, street and city of Kurdistan. They are heroes who walked for a life of dignity, without blinking when faced with an honourable death. My heroes are the ones I saw, gunpowder coming out of the barrel of their gun, and the ones of whom I heard the roar of an empty stomach. They are my heroes …
Did you believe that you could one day tell what happened while fighting in Kobanê?
This book has a story of its own. One day, we were in the first group of friends that went to Kobanê and we were chatting. Kobanê was surrounded from all sides. We had not recorded much of what happened in the early years of the revolution. In that conversation, we said that whoever survived should write what happened. Before that, I had read the book The Unknown Soldier. It was then that I had decided that no fighters or resistance fighters should remain unknown in Kurdistan. Too many people wanted our country to remain unknown. Now, they wanted to silence those who resisted, struggled and fought for that country. As a matter of fact, there have been many fighters left unknown in our history.
While chatting with Heval Cûdî, Dilgeş, Roza, Masîro and Baharîn, we said that the last person left would write the Kobanê’s resistance book. As in the story of the 300 Spartans, we were saying that someone should be saved. That survivor would bring tens of thousands with him. We believed it. Heval Cûdî always told me ‘write down about friends, what happened, the resistance’. He said, ‘You are traveling on all fronts, you know all your friends well. At that time, I was keeping a diary. Because we had a promise made to each other. Fulfilling it was a revolutionary task.
You said “Kobanê will be like Stalingrad” in an interview you gave during the heavier days of the war. Indeed, Kobanê did not fall as someone expected, and it became the 21st century Stalingrad for both Kurds and peoples. Looking back today, what would you say?
The answer to this question is in the second volume of the book. It was the first day of the attacks in September. It was around 1 or 2 pm in the village of Serzûrî in the east of Kobanê. The clashes were heavy. As they say, bullets were pouring like rain. At that time, that scene in the movie Stalingrad came to my mind. With that image in front of my eyes, I said, “This will be the Stalingrad of the Middle East. Just as Stalingrad did not allow fascism to pass, Kobanê will not allow ISIS.” Because there was no hesitation or fear in the voices of any of those 13 friends on the upper floor of the Serzûrî school. One day and night they resisted without hesitation. Their morale and their belief in great war was being renewed once again.
With your resistance in Kobanê, for the first time in Kurdish history, that traumatic borders were hit. The Turkish state initially tried to protect those borders by building walls around it. When this failed, it started invasion operations.
We started talking about borders, let’s end with borders. Instead of those wire fences, they built concrete walls so that we wouldn’t see each other. But these efforts are all futile… This must be said and seen: Kurds are not the old Kurds. The occupiers are still alien to Kurdish history. They said in Ağrı that “the imaginary Kurdistan became forgiven here we poured concrete on it”. But the Kurds shattered that concrete like a plane tree. No matter what they do, those borders are no longer holding. Because the Kurds removed the borders in their minds. If they draw a border around every house, every street, every village, they have no chance to be successful. Just as young women, old people and children will remove their borders, they will shatter their walls. The philosophy of leader Abdullah Ocalan once lifted the borders of the minds and hearts. What power can harm the heroic stories of the Kurds anymore?
Something else you want to add?
Let me state again that in fact, I did not write this book. This book was written by the fighters who destroyed those borders. This book is the work of people of all ages, tribes and beliefs from four parts of Kurdistan, from Europe, the Middle East and different parts of the world, who have joined the resistance and whose hearts beat with the resisters. I offer my infinite respect and love to all of them. Once again, I remember the martyrs with respect and gratitude.
It’s one year since Turkey launched its devastating ‘Peace Spring’ operation, green-lit by Donald Trump and primarily targeting the Kurds in North and East Syria. The invasion displaced an initial wave of 200,000 IDPs, including most of the Kurdish and all of the local Yezidi and Christian minorities, plus large numbers of Arabs.
Since then, Turkey has been installing Sunni Arab militias in this formerly diverse, tolerant and secular region, responsible for a wide range of war crimes and atrocities against the civilian population, according to the UN.
Now, a new Rojava Information Center report reveals the identities of over 40 former ISIS members being sheltered, funded and protected by Turkey in the occupied regions. The report reveals that many ISIS commanders, fighters and emirs are now on the Turkish payroll, using Turkish-issued ID cards and receiving commands from Turkish intelligence as part of the Turkish-controlled ‘Syrian National Army’.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) is generally recognized as providing the highest levels of religious and ethnic tolerance, human rights and respect for rule of law of any actor in Syria. Since their occupation, Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad have moved from a situation of relative peace, secularism and prosperity to one in which Turkish-controlled armed groups commit a wide range of war crimes against the civilian population, including raping women, torture, summary executions, kidnapping for ransom, extortion, forcibly confining women to the home, and in some instances the imposition of a strict interpretation of Sharia law.
Far from acting to combat terror, then, Turkey’s invasions and installation of the SNA in regions formerly controlled by SNA have provided safe havens for globally-wanted terrorists. US airstrikes regularly target top-level militants linked to al-Qaeda or ISIS,
moving freely in Turkish-controlled territory. In 2019, Rojava Information Center published a widely-covered report identifying over 40 former ISIS members now part of Turkish-backed forces in Afrin. They include former emirs, commanders and those responsible for coordinating jihadist fighters with their handlers in the Turkish military intelligence services (MIT).
The present report expands on this work. Applying a more stringent methodology, it identifies over 40 former ISIS members now safely sheltered as part of Turkish-controlled factions in Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad, many for the first time. Along with previous RIC reports addressing the dire humanitarian situation in the occupied areas, it constitutes further evidence that Turkey is acting as a state sponsor of terror. These regions now serve as a launching-pad for Turkey’s regional expansion, transferring fighters from these same militias to represent its interests from the Mediterranean through to the Caucuses.
Download the full report here, and contact Rojava Information Center for further comment, analysis and information.
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Syrian Kurdish commander sees chance to ease tensions with Turkey under Biden
In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, Mazlum Kobane said the former vice president’s victory may well spell change in Ankara’s behavior.
Mazlum Kobane, commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), speaks with AFP during an interview in the countryside outside the northwestern Syrian city of Hasakah, in the province of the same name, on Jan. 24, 2019.
Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images.
Amberin Zaman @amberinzaman
Nov 9, 2020
The victory of former Vice President Joe Biden in the US presidential election has raised expectations of renewed and constructive US engagement across the world. Such expectations are acutely felt by the Kurds of northeast Syria. Washington’s top allies in the war against the Islamic State (IS) have suffered an undue share of tumult as a result of President Donald Trump’s erratic policies. His decision to green light Turkey’s October 2019 invasion, which resulted in the loss of a huge chunk of Kurdish-controlled territory and the withdrawal of US troops from the Turkish border, was a huge shock. But in the year that has elapsed since the Turkish assault, the Syrian Kurds — under the stewardship of Mazlum Kobane, the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — have been striving to turn adversity into opportunity.
The universal outcry over Trump’s perceived betrayal of the Kurds led the US president to backtrack and keep several hundred US troops in northeast Syria. Trump said they would remain to protect several oil fields, which hold the bulk of Syria’s reserves.
With US military protection intact, Kobane has embarked upon a series of political and economic initiatives aimed at cementing the Kurds’ hard-won gains. The most critical is the ongoing unity talks between the Democratic Unity Party, which shares power in the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration in Northeast Syria, and a group of opposition parties gathered under the umbrella of the Kurdish National Council (KNC), which has close ties to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraq as well as with Turkey.
The need for intra-Kurdish unity has gained fresh urgency in the wake of the Turkish invasion that displaced tens of thousands of people, adding a new layer of misery to that inflicted by IS. Kobane succeeded in persuading the United States to become co-facilitators of the talks whose strategic objective is to help normalize relations with Turkey. This, in turn, would help Kobane achieve his overarching goal of ensuring that US troops stay put and US diplomatic engagement is sustained until Syria gets a government that respects the will of all of its citizens, including that of its long-repressed Kurds.
In an hour-long interview conducted via Signal just hours after Biden’s victory was announced on Nov. 7, Kobane told Al-Monitor that the former vice president’s election may well spell change in Ankara’s behavior. Squeezed by a mounting economic crisis and potential US sanctions over the acquisition of Russian S-400 missiles, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could prove more amenable to peace with Syria’s Kurds. His wilting poll numbers are another compelling reason to attempt a reset with the Kurds. Whether that will be enough to salvage his 18-year-old administration is a question mark. In any case, Kobane said he is willing to talk peace with Turkey without any pre-conditions and might even consider mediating between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), provided that Ankara acts in good faith. In another first, Kobane also announced his willingness to become a full-time politician provided that the unity talks and other initiatives result in success. Here are the highlights of the interview that was conducted in Turkish and lightly edited for clarity:
Al-Monitor: Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the US presidential elections. Can you share your thoughts about the new US administration? What would you ask of Joe Biden if he were sitting across from you?
Kobane: We are optimistic about the new administration. In fact, they are not so new for us. When we started the fight against the Islamic State together with the United States and the Global Coalition, the same team was pretty much in place. They are in command of the situation here. They grasp its complexities. I believe they will pursue a more realistic policy in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan). As for our expectations, we must successfully conclude the fight against terror that we are conducting together. We continue to view DAESH (IS) as a threat. They have camps in regime-controlled areas. They have camps across the border, in the desert in Iraq. They have no financial problems. They are able to find money. They have no trouble recruiting fighters or with training them. They are able to deploy them everywhere. They have a network of sympathizers.
Therefore, the United States needs to send more troops here.
Al-Monitor: What kind of numbers are we talking about?
Kobane: At least double the existing number. [Following Turkey’s October 2019 invasion], coalition forces pulled out of from certain areas including Raqqa, Kobani and Manbij. But we are continuing our campaign against DAESH in all of those areas. As things currently stand, we can keep DAESH under control, but we cannot finish it off.
Our other expectation from the Biden administration is to maintain coalition troops here until a political solution is reached for Rojava and for the whole of Syria, naturally. Our military ties with the United States are very good, but we consider our political relations to be insufficient. Despite all our efforts, they have not attained the desired level.
Al-Monitor: Since March, the United States has together with the SDF been co-facilitating unity talks between the KNC and the PYD. Negotiations began in earnest in June when you announced that you shared a common vision with regard to what the outcome of the talks should be. The US Embassy in Syria referred to this in a statement that was also published in Kurmanji (the most widely spoken Kurdish dialect). That’s quite some progress, no?
Kobane: Yes. We the Syrian Democratic Forces are together with the United States formally facilitating these talks. And we have established a sound foundation for their successful conclusion. We have forged a common will, and this reflects the will of our people. A lot of effort has been invested. We have made good headway. But more work needs to be done. The negotiations are progressing slowly.
Al-Monitor: Sources tell us the talks keep getting hung up over the issue of the PKK. More precisely, the KNC is demanding that any final agreement must contain a paragraph saying that the PYD is committed to severing its ties with the PKK or for the PKK to be expelled from Rojava, or something along those lines. And you have refused. Is that correct?
Kobane: Everyone here agrees that Rojava must be administered by the Syrian Kurds and that Syria’s territorial integrity needs to be preserved. Its commonly agreed that any administration in Rojava needs to be formed by Syrian Kurds alone, that all decisions made by that administration need to be made by Syrian Kurds alone and that all such decisions need to be made transparently. It is agreed that the Syrian Kurdish identity needs to be nurtured and fortified. On this, we are in agreement. Therefore, if the KNC is truly sincere about this territory being self-administered without any external interference, there is no problem.
Al-Monitor: So what is the problem then?
Kobane: At the moment there are some problems between the Kurds. There are tensions between the PKK and the KDP (the Kurdistan Democratic Party). We do not want to be a party to those tensions. We as the Syrian Kurds, as the Syrian Democratic Forces, as the Autonomous Administration in Rojava — we refuse to take sides. We refuse to make statements either in support of or against the KDP. The same applies to the PKK. That is our fundamental principle. Similarly, we are opposed to any form of external intervention in Rojava. We all agree on this, and when we expressed this view, the [former] US Special Representative for Syria Engagement, Jim Jeffrey, was in the room.
Al-Monitor: But the KNC has been insisting on referencing the PKK in a final agreement. And you are refusing. Right?
Kobane: Yes, that’s right. And it’s not just the PKK. We refuse to name any group in this context. We as the Syrian Democratic Forces sought the help of everyone in our fight against terror, against DAESH. From the KDP, from everybody. Prior to this interview, I held talks with the KNC delegation that arrived from Erbil. I explained this to them once again. I believe that this obstacle will be overcome. Our talks are continuing. If we persevere we will succeed. If good things are desired for Rojava by all sides, then the problem will be solved.
Al-Monitor: What about the Russians? What is their position on the talks?
Kobane: This process developed independently of the Russians. However, nothing negative about the talks was communicated to us by the Russians through their official channels. Though they are not part of the process, they want to be kept informed about it. They are constantly briefed about them by us. In August, Ilham Ahmed, the president of the [SDF-affiliated] Syrian Democratic Council, met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow as you know. Then the KNC sent a delegation to Moscow. The number of Russian forces has expanded in our area in the wake of Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring, and when problems arise on the ground, we always manage to solve them. There’s no difficulty on that front either.
Al-Monitor: But the Russians want you to strike a deal with the regime?
Kobane: It’s true that they are pushing us to make peace with the regime. But we expect them to put more pressure on the regime. In any case, overall the regime is not ready for a solution. This applies to the whole of Syria. It lacks confidence. It’s not ready for a democratic solution. It’s been unable in particular to shake the Baath mentality when it comes to the Kurds. However, we remain in constant contact with the regime because we live side by side and we face common security problems.
Al-Monitor: The regime and Iran are seeking to sow discord between you and the Arab tribes.
Kobane: The regime and Iran work in concert in the territory under our control. They are trying to provoke the Arab tribes against us. We made our displeasure known to them. We can say we have stopped their mischief for now. We have good relations with the tribes everywhere, and we wish to make them even better. As you may know, we freed some 600 IS militants who are members of local tribes who were established as not having blood on their hands. We also freed some families. But of course we took maximum security measures. We investigated every detail of their past. We are constantly exchanging information with the coalition forces on these issues. We plan to free more such people over time.
Al-Monitor: One of the main purposes of the unity talks is to improve relations between the Rojava administration and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). If tensions between the PKK and the KDP continue, isn’t this likely to cause harm to the talks?
Kobane: Of course it will cause harm. It will cause a lot of harm. At the end of the day, you have Kurds on both sides. Kurdish forces. A conflict like this will cause harm to Rojava as a whole as it will to the ongoing dialogue between the Syrian Kurds. That is why we are doing our very best to help reduce these tensions. We are in contact with all the different parties. We are talking to officials from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. We are also in touch with Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani. This fight is of a kind that will cause harm not only to Rojava but to all Kurds.
Al-Monitor: What caused this quarrel?
Kobane: There is only one cause: Turkey. Turkish pressure. There is nothing to be gained by either the KDP or the PKK in this fight. Both sides continually say they are against Kurdish infighting. I am well-acquainted with both sides. Listen, they haven’t had any real fight to speak of in the past 21 years. There are no serious differences between them. Therefore, I have difficulty in understanding the current situation. This situation is the result of the intervention of outside forces. It’s the result of Turkey’s military operations against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Al-Monitor: While talks with the KNC are aimed at bolstering relations with the KRG, their overarching strategic logic is to help normalize relations between Rojava and Turkey. This is how the United States views this process.
Kobane: Should these talks succeed, and if all the different Kurdish parties work together, I agree that it will definitely have a positive impact on our ties with Turkey. This would rob Turkey of its excuses for its continued hostility toward us. It would benefit both sides economically. And it’s true that it would make it easier for the Americans to stay here.
Al-Monitor: As of Jan. 21, there will no longer be a leader in the White House Turkey can influence with a single phone call. Would you concur that Biden’s victory presents opportunities for a reset with Turkey?
Kobane: [Under the Trump administration], Erdogan found a vacuum and went to extremes in exploiting that vacuum. He imposed his will [on the United States]. Should Erdogan face resistance to his aggressive policies, he will be forced to climb down. This would not only benefit us but the region as a whole.
I believe that Turkey’s options are shrinking. Conditions no longer favor a continuation of its aggressive stance. While we cannot say that chances of Turkey mounting a new military attack against Rojava are zero, we can say that they have been significantly reduced. At the very minimum, we believe that conditions for the existing [US- and Russian-brokered] cease-fires to hold and for a new dialogue to start are indeed ripe.
Al-Monitor: You posted a very kind message on Twitter to the Turkish people in the wake of the Izmir earthquake. Ankara will have noticed. Are you ready to sit down with Turkey without any preconditions?
Kobane: It depends on their intentions. Our intentions are open and clear. We want peace. We want stability. If Turkey doesn’t espouse a cynical approach, if it is ready to take steps with a real solution in mind, and if that solution is to the benefit of the people of Rojava, and if all outstanding issues are put on the table, why not? There is the matter of the territories occupied by Turkey. There is Afrin. There is Serekaniye (Ras al-Ain). There is Tell Abyad. And there are the hundreds of thousands of our people who were displaced as a result of Turkey’s actions.
On the question of Turkey’s national security concerns and interests, we are very clear. We are ready to accommodate them. But as you know, last year, prior to Turkey’s October assault, we were holding indirect talks with Turkey through the United States. We took many steps. We pulled our forces back from the border, and in return, Turkey occupied our lands.
Al-Monitor: Turkey’s Justice and Development Party government is under mounting pressure. It has big problems, starting with the economy. The decisive role of the Kurdish-friendly Peoples’ Democratic Party in any election is by now well established. There are claims that Turkey’s intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, met with PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan (at his island prison) in September. Erdogan may knock on the Kurds’ door yet again. This time around he may be more flexible as you say. However, he is likely to tell you to end the PKK presence in Rojava as a precondition to improving ties. The PKK will set conditions of its own. Can you act as a mediator between Turkey and the PKK? Could you, for instance, help negotiate an end to the low-intensity war being waged by PKK-linked groups in the territories occupied by Turkey as a confidence-building measure?
Kobane: First of all, it’s important to note that the PKK made big sacrifices in the war against terror in Rojava. Nobody can dispute this. The PKK will always defend the interests of the people of Rojava. It will not create problems for them. On the contrary, it will always look to ease their path. That is what we believe.
However, before talking about mediating between the PKK and Turkey, we first need to solve the problems between ourselves and Turkey. If we can really achieve a dialogue with Turkey that will have a positive effect on Rojava, and if Turkey changes its current policies, this will have a positive effect on Turkey’s problems with the PKK. In such circumstances, we will do our very best to contribute to a solution to the problems between Turkey and the PKK. Why not?
Al-Monitor: Abdullah Ocalan has a long past in Syria and Rojava. He remains the PKK’s sole and undisputed leader. Do you believe he can help with this process?
Kobane: As you know, during his last meeting with his lawyers (May 2019), Ocalan said he could play a constructive role in helping to mend ties between Turkey and Rojava. I believe that he must play a part in any new process that could potentially evolve. He can be very influential.
Al-Monitor: Would it help for you to meet with Ocalan?
Kobane: I would like to meet with Mr. Ocalan if he were free.
Al-Monitor: But he isn’t. Would you want to meet if the Turkish state allowed it?
Kobane: It is too early to answer that question.
Al-Monitor: There’s the chronic problem of Turkey cutting off the water supply to Hasakah from the Alok power station in Serekaniye. What’s the latest?
Kobane: However much this problem occurs within Turkey’s full knowledge, it’s first and foremost a problem caused by the Turkish-backed Sunni opposition armed group there. They keep cutting off the water. They place Turkey in an awkward position. The Russians are mediating to solve the problem but they have failed so far. So we are working on a lasting solution that involves carrying water from the Euphrates River to Hasakah.
Kobane: Oil is an economic issue. It’s not political. Talks between US oil company Delta Crescent and the KRG [for marketing the oil] are continuing. I believe they are advancing slowly because of the terms, because of prices. But I believe these will be overcome.
Al-Monitor: It’s been nine years since you returned to Rojava. Have you changed in those nine years? Has your world view changed?
Kobane: Over these nine years we waged a successful war against a very ferocious enemy. We acted in concert with international forces. We gained experience. At the same time, we gained experience in managing a civilian administration. Our skills in the diplomatic arena are also growing. As such, we feel that the responsibility that we carry for our people is growing as well. Without question, our world view, our vision has expanded. The same applies to the new generation in Rojava. They are more open to the world. They are well-versed in new technology. They are able to keep track of things. Like youth elsewhere in the world, they want freedom and a prosperous and stable life. Should Turkey enter a constructive dialogue with us, I am sure that their views on Turkey will be positively impacted as well.
Al-Monitor: You have become far more occupied by politics than military matters of late. Might we see you one day as a full-time Syrian politician?
Kobane: As you know, politics and military affairs are intertwined here. And I am running both at the moment. If we achieve progress in our political work, I will devote most of my time to politics.
Today’s topic of International Action Week for Kobane is Women’s Liberation! We want to bring to light the achievements of the women’s revolution in Rojava and remind everyone why we say “No to occupation! No to genocide We defend women and life!”.
Women in Rojava have organized on all levels – communal, economical, institutional, militarily and so many more. Through autonomous organizing, women have created systems meant for the freedom and liberation of everyone. Women’s structures means diversity. Here are some examples:
Within the field of education, the women’s revolution in Kurdistan developed Jineolojî. The science of women. A revolutionary approach to the nature of women, women’s history and sociology, politics, defense, health, ecology, demography, and so on.
In the field of military and self-defense, Rojava is partly protected by the all-women forces called the YPJ, the Women’s Protection Units. Women are also included in many other forces under the SDF such as Asayiş, HPC, Syriac forces, and more.
Mala Jin “Women’s House” is a community institution under the Women’s Justice Committee. Their role is to support women in solving the problems that affect them in their daily lives and to take part through the Consensus Committees in the management of gender-based conflicts.
On the political level, women in Rojava have established a co-chair system where women have political equality. Women represent themselves in every single political institution and participate in all political decision-making, ensuring justice and diversity within that structure.
Jinwar, also known as the Free Women’s Village, is an ecological women’s village in Rojava. A peaceful place for the co-existence and self-sustainability of women, free of any and all violence where women have the opportunity to provide for their own basic needs.
️These are the achievements of the Women’s revolution that we need to rise up to protect. From the heart of the revolution in Rojava – to all of Kurdistan – to the whole world – we encourage everyone to join us and say: “No to occupation! No to genocide! We will defend women and life!”
Afrin: 116 Persons Arrested and Disappeared in September 2020, despite UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria’s Demands for Halting Violations
The arrests were chiefly carried out by the Military Police Service, the Sham Legion, Ahrar al-Sharqiya, al-Jabha al-Shamiya, al-Waqqas Brigade, Northern Democratic Brigade, Sultan Murad Division, 113th Division, and 114th Division
A photo shared to social media by the Ahrar al-Sharqiya/Free men of the East group of the SNA -operates under the opposition’ Syrian Interim Government – shows a recruited child among the group’s fighters participating in Turkey’s Olive Branch military operations.
In September 2020, arbitrary arrests/detentions and enforced disappearances spiked dramatically in the Syrian Kurdish-majority region of Afrin, slamming the demands of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, aka UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, to cease violations. In mid-September, the commission laid down several recommendations, including the immediate cessation of all forms of incommunicado detention and release of all persons arbitrarily detained, calling Turkey to exert more efforts to ensure public order and safety in the areas under its control to prevent such violations by the Syrian National Army (SNA). These recommendations were made on the heels of the commission’s latest report, in which it documented that members of the SNA have committed hostage taking, cruel treatment, torture and rape in Afrin and surrounding areas.[1]
In this report, Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ), through its network of field researchers that operate across Afrin region, documents the arrest/detention and disappearance of no fewer than 116 persons, including 5 woman and a teenage girl, in September 2020. The reported figures indicate a marked increase compared to the arrests documented in earlier months, as 40 in June,[2] and 101 in July and August 2020.[3]
Furthermore, STJ managed to document the release of 56 persons, detained in September, including two women. In exchange for their release, the detainees and/or their families paid fines/bails of varying sums, either in Turkish Lira (TL) or in Syrian Pound (SYP), STJ’s field researcher reported, adding that the fate of 60 persons, a teenage girl and four women included, was still unknown at the end of the reporting time, on 15 October 2020.
Carried out in seven districts, the arrests were perpetrated by the SNA-affiliated Military Police Service, along with other armed groups— namely, Sham Legion/Failaq al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sharqiya/ Free Men of the East, al-Jabha al-Shamiya/Levant Front, al-Waqqas Brigade, Northern Democratic Brigade, Sultan Murad Division, 113th Division, and 114th Division.
It is noteworthy that the reported arrests were basically documented by STJ’s field researchers, who are based in the target districts, in addition to local sources, family members or relatives of the detainees, as well as inside sources affiliated with the opposition armed groups, who reported or commented on a number of arrest incidents.
It is also important to mention that a commander of the Military Police has in a former testimony reported to STJ that Turkey ordered opposition armed groups, positioned in Afrin, “not to harass or arrest civilians”, as it tasked the Military Police with carrying out arrests/detentions. However, against the Turkish government’s instructions, several armed groups appear to continue perpetrating arbitrary arrests, while detaining dozens of persons without disclosing their whereabouts or bringing them before the courts operating in the region.
Arrests Carried out at Different Intervals in September
From inside sources, affiliated to armed groups, STJ obtained information that indicates the arrest of six persons in September 2020, perpetrated mainly by SNA armed groups. However, the detention facilities, and/or the number of people from Afrin who got arrested outside the region, were not exactly identified. One detainee was released, but the fate of the other five continues to be unknown, STJ’s field researcher reported, adding that no contact could be established with any of the disappeared detainees’ families. The reported arrests were carried out thus:
On 3 September, Ahmad Ali Omar and Muhammad Hassan were arrested by an armed group operating under the command of Abu Juma’a al-Farouk, an affiliate of the 2nd Battalion of the SNA’s 1st Legion. The reasons for the arrest were unknown.
On 5 September, Jabal Hassan Dairo was also arrested by the armed group operating under the command of Abu Juma’a al-Farouk.
On 9 September, Issam al-Bakrow was arrested by members of the Military Police in Termanin town, near Azaz. Al-Bakrow was arrested for reasons related to the corruption charges laid against the head of the local council in Jindires district.
On 20 September, Rashid Hussain Baker, 42, disappeared. Baker is a merchant from the Qrmitlq village, in Shaykh al-Hadid district, a local source reported, adding that he went missing after passing a checkpoint of the Suleiman Shah Brigade/al-Amshat while on his way back from Azaz city.
On 29 September, Ahmad Omar Krinbeh was arrested by members of the Military Police for insulting the Police’s personnel. He was released on the same day.
Arrests in Afrin District
In the district of Afrin, seven persons were arrested in September. The fate of all the detainees is still unknown. The arrests took place thus:
On 1 September, the Military Police arrested Basel Muhammad, 30, who is a resident of the al-Ashrafieh neighborhood. He was still detained at the time of reporting.
On 17 September, a patrol of the Military Police arrested Hussain Sheihko. He was still detained at the time of reporting.
On 19 September, members of Ahrar al-Sharqiya arrested the brothers Idris Hajji, 33, and Nabi Hajji, 34, on the charge of dealing with the Autonomous Administration and performing the mandatory duty of self-defense, when the latter was in control of the area. The fate of the two detainees is still unknown.
On 20 September, Jankeen Osman was arrested at a Civil Police checkpoint, set up at the entrance to Afrin city. Osman was transferred to one of the Military Police’s centers in the city, as he was charged for dealing with the Autonomous Administration. Commenting on the arrest, a source close to the detainee said that he was arrested for “not paying due taxes,” imposed by the armed groups on the area’s indigenous population.
On 21 September, members of the Military Police arrested Muhammad Hajji Hussain at the center of Afrin city on the charge of dealing with the Autonomous Administration in the past a few years.
On 21 September, Zainap, the wife of Khalil Attar, was arrested by members of the al-Jabha al-Shamiya/Levant Front. She was arrested in the al-Ashrafieh neighborhood, Afrin city.
Arrests in Jindires District
In the district of Jindires, the Military Police arrested 22 persons, including three women. While 10 detainees, one women included, were released, the fate of the remaining others continues to be unknown. The arrests took place thus:
On 3 September, a patrol of the Military Police arrested a number of people in the center of Jindires district. They are all linked to the head of the district’s local council, Subhi Rizq, who himself was arrested on 9 September. On this note, a source informed of the bill of indictment said that Rizq was arrested on several charges, including dealing with the Autonomous Administration, receiving funds from it, and being involved in planning some of the blasts that shock the area, in addition to corruption and embezzlement.
On 9 September, Dilkash Hamou, the owner of a money exchange office, and his brother Jameel Hamou, were arrested on the charge of transferring money to the Haftaro for Money Transfer Company, also implicated in the corruption charges laid against of the head of the Jindires local council.
On the same day, the media officer of the Jindires local council was arrested, with a number of his relatives. The officer is from Junaid family, and his arrested relatives are Mustafa Rizqi, Muhammad Rizqi, Hannan, the wife of Muhammad Rizqi, and Muhammad Hannou, owner of an Internet Café. They were all released a few hours later.
On the same day, the brothers Rushdi and Shadi Khoursheed, the owners of a money exchange office, were arrested on charges related to the corruption case. They were released two days later.
On the same day, Muhammad Baker was arrested on the charge of performing guard services on behalf of the Autonomous Administration when it was in control of the area. He was still detained at the time of reporting.
On the same day, Khadija Siri, a pharmacist, was arrested on the charge of dealing with the Autonomous Administration by members of the Military Police, which for its part, denied the arrest and stated that the woman was a victim of ransom kidnapping. Her fate continues to be unknown.
On 17 September, members of the Military Police arrested Muhammad Bazo, officer of the Healthcare Department at the Jindires local council, also for reasons related to the above-mentioned corruption case. Bazo was still detained at the time of reporting.
On 17 September, a resident of the Yalanqo village reported that a patrol of the Military Police arrested and deposited Murad Hajji Rashid Agha in the Jindires Prison, charging him and his family for dealing with the Autonomous Administration. Furthermore, the patrol confiscated several vehicles he had, a motorbike, a car and a tractor. Agha was released on 26 September after paying a fine, but he was not given the vehicles back.
Commenting on the incident, a source affiliated with the Military Police stated that Murad Rashid Agha was kidnapped by unidentified persons and his fate is still unknown.
On 19 September, a resident of the Kora village reported that a patrol of the Military Police arrested a woman and two men on the charge of dealing with the Autonomous Administration. They are Rashid Khoursheed, 32, Daydar Khoursheed, 34, and Aufa Sido, a resident of al-Mahmoudiyah neighborhood, Afrin city. Sido was arrested while on a visit to her son. The fate of the three detainees is still unknown.
Commenting on the arrest of Aufa Sido, a source affiliated with the Military police said that she was kidnapped by unidentified persons and the police has no further information on the incident.
On 30 September, a patrol of the Military Police arrested two men in the center of Jindires district. They are Hussain Za’azou, 33, from the al-Hamam village, administratively affiliated to Jindires district, and Ziyad Mahroum, 39, from Ḩājj Iskandar village and the owner of household utensils and electronic devices store in the city of Jidires. Both men were arrested on the charge of dealing with the Autonomous Administration and are still detained by the Military Police.
STJ also verified an arrest incident in Celemê village on 27 August, which was not added to the August arrest lists. In this regard, a local of the village reported that the Civil Police arrested Muhammad Hassan Zouri, Ali Hassan Zouri, Kanjo Subhi Kanjo and Fahed Ali. They were all transferred to the police center in Jindires district and were released in September after they paid a fine of 1000 to 2000 TL each.
Arrests in Shaykh al-Hadid District
In the district of Shaykh al-Hadid, six persons were arrested, while four were released, the fate of the other two continues to be unknown. The arrests were carried out by Ahrar al-Sharqiya, al-Waqqas Brigade, and the Military Police.
On 1 September, members of the Ahrar al-Sharqiya arrested Qazikli Jameel Hamou, 23, a resident of Jindires city, in Ĥêkiçê village, his birthplace. He was arrested on the charge of performing the duty of self-defense when the Autonomous Administration was in control of the area. His fate is still unknown.
On 9 September, members of the al-Waqqas Brigade arrested Muhammad Sabri, Fawzi Sabri, and Hassan Sabri in Ĥêkiçê village on the charge of dealing with the Autonomous Administration. They were released after paying a fine.
On 21 September, members of the al-Waqqas Brigade arrested Abdulrahamn Nizameddin Sheikh Mustafa, 23, on the charge of performing the duty of self-defense. He was released on 27 September after paying a fine of 150.000 SYP.
On 20 September, the Military Police arrested Mustafa Baker Klouteh, 53, in the Shkouta village, a resident of the village reported, adding that he was arrested on the charge of dealing with the Autonomous Administration. Klouteh was transferred to the police center in Afrin city, where he is still detained.
On 22 September, members of the al-Waqqas Brigade arrested Ammar Hassan Adham and Khamiss bin Hamdan al-Saloum in the Ĥêkiçê village, Shaykh al-Hadid district.
On 24 September, both Muhammad Rashid Jameel Habash, 18, and Muhammad Jameel Habash disappeared in the center of Shaykh al-Hadid district. They were kidnapped by unidentified persons, a local source said, adding that no further information was reported on the incident.
Arrests in Raju District
In the district of Raju, 11 persons, including a teenage girl, were arrested. Five were released, while the fate of the teenage girl and the other five continues to be unknown. The arrests were carried out by the military and the civil police, as well as the Ahrar al-Sharqiya. The arrests were carried out thus:
On 1 September, a patrol of the Military Police arrested Nazmi Rashid Akash, born in the Musakou village, from his home in Afrin city, on the charge of dealing with the Autonomous Administration. At the time of reporting, Akash was still detained.
On 2 September, STJ’s field researcher reported that a patrol of the Civil Police arrested Mustafa Rashid Zalfou in the Be’dino village and transferred him to the Police center in Raju district. Zalfou’s fate is still unknown. Commenting on the arrest incident, a source affiliated with the Military Police stated that the man was kidnapped on 8 September—that is, six days after he was arrested. It appears that the detainee was kidnapped after he was released.
On 7 September, a source affiliated with the Military Police stated that members of the Sham Legion/Failaq al-Sham arrested Rashid Fawzi Tobal in the Bilêlko village, who was not handed over to the Military Police. Commenting on this, a resident of the village reported that the detainee was released 10 days later after he paid a sum of money.
On 7 September, members of the Ahrar al-Sharqiya arrested Ali Jamil Muhammad Rashkilo in the village of Hajj Khalil. His fate is still unknown.
On 9 September, a patrol of the Free Police arrested Akid Sheikho and Jalal Muhammad Sheikho in the Qasim village on the charge of performing the duty of self-defense when the Autonomous Administration was in control of the area. They were transferred to the Police center in Raju district to be brought before the court.
On 10 September, members of the Ahrar al-Sharqiya, along with a patrol of the Civil Police arrested Maraym Afdik Sheikho, 17, on the charge of dealing with the Autonomous Administration. The teenage girl was detained by the armed group till 5 October 2020, a source affiliated with the Military Police stated.
On 6 September, a patrol of the Military Police arrested Msalam Baker Mousa, 78, Sheihkmous Mustafa Khalil, 50, Raiber Ibrahim Khalil Dawood, 31, and Mahmoud Khalil, 25, in the Koso village on the charge of receiving aid from the Autonomous Administration. They were all released, however, at intervals.
On 16 September, members of Sultan Murad Division arrested Murad Abdulrahamn Rashid in the Qasim village. On the same day, Murad Khalil Murad, born in the Yalanqoze village, Jindires district, was kidnapped.
Commenting on the incident, a local source said that the kidnapping was perpetrated by unidentified persons and no further information was reported on the matter.
Arrests in Maabatli/Mabeta District
In the district of Maabatli, 41 persons were arrested, mainly by the Military Police, Northern Democratic Brigade, and the al-Jabha al-Shamiya/Levant Front. Having paid fines, 32 persons, including a woman, were released. The fate of the other nine, including a woman, is still unknown. The arrests were carried out thus:
On 21 September, the Military Police arrested Aref Qazikli Hamou, Nashaat Khalil Hannan, As’ad Ibrahim Murad, Muhammad Ibrahim Murad and Muhammad Khalil Hannan in the Brîmce village on the charge of “not paying due taxes”. They were all released on the same day, after paying a fine of 800 TL each, an official of the Military Police reported.
On 15 September, the Military Police, an inside source reported, arrested Khalil Muhammad Osman, Walid Mustafa Mousa, Faek Sabri Mousa, Muhammad Hannan Mousa and Mustafa Muhammad Sido on the charges of “unlawful possession of weapons and for carrying out unlicensed night guard services”. They were offered a settlement, whereby they could pay a fine of 500 TL or serve three months in prison. Ultimately, the five detainees were released, however, at intervals.
On 6 September, the Military Police arrested seven local council employees in Maabatli district on the charges of dealing with the Autonomous Administration and receiving funds from it. The detainees are Rashid Murad Qasim, 43, Toulin Rashid, Midya Ibrahim Khanjar, 22, Muhammad Mannan, 40, Jalal Hussain Qrouky, 55, Farhad Shafi’ Bilal, 50, and Mustafa Hameed Mamesh. They were all transferred to the detention center of the Military Police.
Midya Ibrahim and Mustafa Hameed Mamesh were released after they paid a 1000 TL each, a source affiliated with the Military Police said, adding that the other five detainees are still held by the Military Police.
On 11 September, members of the Military Police arrested three persons on the charge of dealing with the Autonomous Administration. The detainees are Ibrahim Khanjar, Issmat Khouja and Ahmad Meshko. They were all released a few hours later after paying fines.
On 13 September, the Military Police arrested four other local council employees. They are Izat Hameed Muhammad, a local of Kamiran village and the deputy director of the Directorate of Education in the district, Shukri Hassan Humoutto, an employee at the Directorate of Transportation, Imad Hussain Khanjar and Ibrahim Sidki, an employee at the district’s municipality. Only Izat Hameed Muhammad was released. The fate of the other three detainees, however, is still unknown.
On 15 September, members of the Military Police arrested Ahmad Kousa, Muhammad Sido, Abdo Abass, Najemeddin Battal, Aref Kaku, As’ad Khalil, Issmat Na’sou and Muhammad Basheer Ibrahim in the Braimjeh village, Maabatli district, on the charges of “unlawful possession of weapons and for carrying out unlicensed night guard services”. They were offered a settlement, whereby they could pay a fine of 500 TL or serve three months in prison.
On 21 September, a patrol of the Military Police arrested Muhammad Hajji Hassan, 35, on the charge of working for the Autonomous Administration. Hassan was deposited at the Maabatli Central Prison where he is still detained.
On 25 and 26 September, unknown persons kidnapped Muhammad Hameed Zaino, 70, and his sons Kamal, 40, Walid, 35, and Abdo, 34, in the Shiteka village, Maabatli district. The kidnappers released the captives after a ransom of 1.600.000 SYP was paid for the entire family.
On 27 September, al-Jabha al-Shamiya/Levant Front arrested four persons in Maabatli district’s center on charges of carrying out guard services for the Autonomous Administration while it was in control of the area. They are Farhan Qalandar, Shukri Jojo, Hanan Baker, and Ali Kelo. They were released two days later, after paying varying sums of money. Commenting on the incident, a source of the Military Police reported that the four were actually kidnapped, and the police obtained no further information in their regard.
On 30 September, a patrol of the Military Police embarked on a large-scale arrest drive, capturing persons for allegedly performing the night guard service, which the Autonomous Administration mandated when it was in control of the area. The arrested persons are Luqman Azab Sha’abo, 50, Subhi Ali Mamesh, 60, Walat Muhammad Oskilo, 61, Aref Rashid Qarbouz, 75, Muhammad Rashid Qarbouz, 80, Sidki Mustafa Hambasho, 51, Muhammad Ali Yousef, 54, Ali Hassan Yousef, 57, and Adnan Muhammad Ali, 60.
According to a source affiliated with the Military Police, they were arrested on the charge of “unlawful possession of weapons” and released after they paid a bail of 600 TL each.
On 16 September, members of the Northern Democratic Brigade arrested Adham Hamou, Basil Abdulrahman Mustafa, and Muhammad Rasoul Mustafa in Kobke village on the charges of dealing with the Autonomous Administration and performing night guard services. They were deposited at a private detention facility, run exclusively by the armed group, and were not brought before the court. However, they were released after paying a fine of 300 TL each.
Arrests in Sharran District
In the district of Sharran, STJ documented two arrests in September, carried out by the military and the civil police. None of the detainees was released so far.
In early September, a patrol of the Military Police arrested Muhammad Nabi, 31, in the Dayr Şawwān village, on the charge of performing the duty of self-defense when the Autonomous Administration was in control of the area. He was transferred to the police center in Sharran district to be brought before the court.
On 20 September, Jamil Osman was arrested in the Kafr Janneh village at a checkpoint of the Civil Police, set up ate the entrance to Afrin city, on the side of Azaz, on the charge of performing the duty of self-defense when the Autonomous Administration was in control of the area. He was transferred to the Maratah Central Prison, where he is still detained.
Arrests in Bulbul District
In the district of Bulbul, the Civil Police arrested and transferred three persons to the police center in the district. Their fate is still unknown. The Sham Legion/Failaq al-Sham took part in the arrests, a source affiliated with the Military Police reported to STJ, adding that the detainees were not handed over to the Military Police.
On 21 September, a patrol of the Civil Police arrested Muhammad Mustafa Sheikh Hassan in Dodo village on the charge of dealing with the Autonomous Administration, and headed next to the Qaza Midono village, where it arrested Sha’ban Hameed Sheikho, and then moved to the Gewenda village, where it arrested the third person, Muhammad Sheikho Hassan.
[1] “UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria: No clean hands – behind the frontlines and the headlines, armed actors continue to subject civilians to horrific and increasingly targeted abuse”, OHCHR, 15 September 2020, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=26237&LangID=E (last visit: 23 October 2020), paras. 52-58.
The sixth symposium featured bold interventions and criticism of the Self- Administration institutions
In the second dialogue symposium in Raqqa and the sixth at the level of north and east Syria, within a series of seminars held by the Syrian Democratic Council, it was witnessed a lot of criticism about the performance of the Self- Administration institutions and those in charge of them, in a step through which the Syrian Democratic Council seeks to develop self-administration and enhance community participation within the administration structure.
Participants doubt the usefulness of these seminars
The invitation directed by the Syrian Democratic Council to societal and political activities, sheikhs and dignitaries of Arab and Kurdish tribes and intellectuals; raised doubts among the former elites and the participation in the symposium about the usefulness and seriousness of SDC and the Self- Administration in the transformation that they are about to take at political and administrative levels.
In light of this, “Ilham Ahmed”, the president of the executive committee of the Syrian Democratic Council, said that they are in SDC and the Self- Administration are in the process of developing the Self- Administration and enhancing community participation within the administration structure and its institutions. Therefore, we need all opinions, proposals and criticisms and they will be as recommendations for the conference of the people of al-Jazeera and al-Forat that will produce committees to follow up on these recommendations and implement them on the ground in accordance with a clear roadmap.
The administration’s need for expertise and technocrats
Among the interventions that have been repeated is the need of the Self- Administration for expertise and competencies and providing it with technocrats with specialization and professions, and to move away from favoritism and quota system, which has proven unsuccessful in the experiences of neighboring countries.
Laila Mustafa, the co-chair of the Civil Administration in Raqqa, added that Self-Administration is not an ideal situation and we are working to avoid mistakes and choose the right person, adding that the doors of the Self-Administration are always open to all experiences, competencies and certificates, and certainly your proposals for a mechanism to choose the right person in the right place will be presented in the conference and their implementation is going to be followed up.
The duality of poverty and corruption and the standard of transparency in the administration
The participants’ interventions intersected about the spread of corruption cases in the body of the Self- Administration, pointing to specific cases issued by some persons in the Self- Administration using their position to gain personal interests and others working to waste public money.
This was recorded by the office of the seminar to be investigated and submitted to the monitoring body, which was recently created for this purpose, and those who misuse the position and responsibility will be held accountable.
One of the participants pointed out the lack of transparency in the joints of the Self- Administration of north and east Syria and that the resources and revenues of the Self-Administration, as well as the budget and disbursements of the administration are not exposed, and all of this, is done from one person to another in the absence of real institutions.
Al-Mahbash clarified the details of the financial administration, its resources and local sources of funding, as well as the number of its employees, the figures of disbursements, the cost of infrastructure restoration and construction projects. He added that the administration deals with complete transparency in regard to financial aspect and the budget was exposed to media.
In addition to observations and criticism directed to service, educational, security and health side, in which proposals and recommendations were made by the organizers of the symposium in order to be presented at the National Conference for the People of al-Jazeera and al-Forat.
The Syrian Democratic Council continues to follow up holding its seminars with societal, political and cultural activities, as six seminars have been held so far, and others are scheduled to be held in the regions of north and east Syria to come up with recommendations and proposals that contribute to strengthening the participation in the Self- Administration and preparing for a new phase.
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Ilham Ahmed: We Seek to Make the Self- Administration an Effective Experiment And a Model to Be Followed in Syria
“It is a mistake to claim that all political and social activities and formations in north and east regions of Syria participate in the Self- Administration, at a time when we seek to involve them and expand the administration to include everyone and be a model for the new Syria.” Thus, “Ilham Ahmed”, the president of the executive committee of the Syrian Democratic Council, opened her speech at the fifth seminar, held by SDC in north and east regions of the country.
“Ahmed” stated that the reason for the Syrian Democratic Council’s intention to hold dialogue seminars in the regions of north and east Syria; is to give space for events that have not yet participated, to express their opinion, direct criticism to the administration’s performance, submit proposals and recommendations in order to develop them, as well as supplement the Syrian-Syrian dialogue path with opinions and proposals that would contribute to crystallizing the political process in the country.
The Self-Administration is an objective necessity
Abed Hamed Al-Mahbash, the co-chair of the Executive Council in the Self- Administration, spoke about the objective reasons that prompted the people of north and east Syria to organize themselves and manage their affairs, as he attributed this to the withdrawal of the regime’s authorities from the regions of north and east Syria and their evacuation in order to preserve the authority of the center, that followed a state of discrimination for the regions of north and east Syria.
The Self-Administration is a societal and necessary need and an advanced model in the Syrian case, adding that despite this, we seek to develop the administration and involve those outside it so far.
He added that there are local parties such as the Syrian government and regional bodies such as the Turkish state and Iran, and the Syrian opposition parties that are affiliated with Turkey, seeking to destabilize and spread discord among the components of the region in order to weaken the administration and distorting it by inciting the Syrian public opinion. But according to Al-Mahbash, the Self-Administration, in spite of shortcomings remains the best model of administration on the Syrian geography so far
. Serious steps to develop the Self-Administration
The participants presented the fifth symposium in Raqqa, as they did in the rest of the previous seminars; lot of criticism about the performance of the administration and its institutions in north and east Syria, both in terms of service and providing facilities to citizens, and this aspect received a lot of interventions by the participants, as well as the educational aspect and teaching curricula adopted by the Self- Administration, received notes and criticism on its content and its observance of the composition of society and also in the security aspect and the rights of individuals in the administrative areas.
For his part, the Vice President of the Executive Committee of SDC “Hikmat Habib” stressed the importance of these observations and recommendations that will enrich the administration, provide it with expertise and contribute to the participation of technocrats in the Administration structure and its institutions.
Habib added that the Self- Administration is not an ideal situation, and the surrounding circumstances together contribute to the delay of its progress and development, in addition to the huge amount of deliberate distortion by media institutions linked to the parties that seek to thwart the administration and bring it down. He indicated that there are activities and personalities who adopt gray attitudes towards the administration as a result of their insufficient knowledge of the functioning of its work and the difficulties it faces, adding that these seminars aim to address everyone in order to involve them at the political and administrative level.
Corruption and transparency in the Administration
The participants’ interventions focused on cases of corruption in the Self- Administration and its institutions, which limits prosperity and actual development in society and obstruct the wheel of construction, which is considered the most important part of the emerging administration.
In his response and clarification to the opinions of the participants on the co-chair of the Executive Council in the Self- Administration, “Abed Hamed Al-Mahbash,” he said: “There is no doubt that the administration is working, through strict oversight agencies, to eliminate all forms of corruption and to hold accountable“ climbers ”and opportunists”.
Adding that the process of eliminating corruption and the corrupt people will continue, and there will be no complacency in dealing with everyone who seeks to waste public money and misuse of responsibility.
Regarding the sources of the self- Administration, Al-Mahbash mentioned in numbers the administration’s expenditures on service projects and restoration of crumbling infrastructure in the regions of north and east Syria, and that the budget of the Self- Administration was presented to the media and it was not hidden from anyone, the source of the administration’s funding and revenues.
The South Kurdistan’s ruling party KDP is reinforcing its troops on the border to Rojava. Military positions are being established and heavy weapons are being stationed at the Sêmalka border crossing.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Saturday, 19 Sep 2020, 14:17
ANHA reports that South Kurdistan’s ruling KDP government, which collaborates closely with Turkey, has begun to station heavy weapons on the slopes at Peşxabûr across the Sêmalka border crossing to Rojava/Northern Syria and is setting up new control and support bases. The KDP’s military deployment at the border raises concerns about a possible joint attack by Turkey and the KDP on Rojava. At the moment, however, it appears that the militarization of the border region serves primarily to place the region again under an embargo in coordination with Turkey.
As early as 2014, the KDP had deep trenches dug on the inner-Kurdish border between Syria and Iraq and imposed a sharp embargo on the self-governing areas. In this way the KDP, together with Turkey, provided de facto support to ISIS. At the time, the population protested vehemently against the embargo and thousands fought in actions of civil disobedience to fill in the trenches again. The KDP’s Peshmerga forces then opened fire on the people and shot 32-year-old Mevlit Hadji Yunis in the night of April 14-15 when he tried to cross the border at Sêmalka to South Kurdistan. Many people were injured by shots during the protests at that time.
The cordoning off by the KDP was coordinated with Turkey, which also dug trenches on the border to Northern Kurdistan. Afterwards, a meter-high wall, hundreds of kilometers long, was built to separate Northern Kurdistan from Rojava. The armament of the border from Rojava to South Kurdistan reminds many of the coordinated action between KDP and Turkey in 2014 and raises the question of a new invasion.
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UN say war crimes carried out in Afrin and Serêkaniyê
The UN Syrian Commission of Inquiry said that the FSA carries out war crimes under Turkish control, including abductions, disappearances, gender-based violence in Afrin and Serêkaniyê.
ANF
GENEVA
16 SEPTEMBER 2020
The UN Syrian Commission of Inquiry released a 25-page report in which it documents continuing violations and abuses by nearly every conflict actor controlling territory in Syria.
The report also highlights an increase in patterns of targeted abuses such as assassinations, sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls, and looting or appropriation of private property, with sectarian undertones. Civilian suffering is a constant and personal feature of this crisis.
In Afrin and surrounding area, the report documents how the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army may have committed the war crimes of hostage-taking, cruel treatment and torture, and rape. In the same region scores of civilians were killed and maimed by large improvised explosive devices, as well as during shelling and rocket attacks.
In particular the report said: “Since 2019, Kurdish women throughout the Afrin and Ra’s al-Ayn [Serêkaniyê] regions have faced acts of intimidation by Syrian National Army brigade members, engendering a pervasive climate of fear which in effect confined them to their homes. Women and girls have also been detained by Syrian National Army fighters, and subjected to rape and sexual violence – causing severe physical and psychological harm at the individual level, as well as at the community level, owing to stigma and cultural norms related to ideations of “female honour”. During the period under review, cases of sexual violence against women and men at one detention facility in Afrin were documented.
The Commission also received reports of forced marriage and the abduction of Kurdish women in Afrin and Ra’s al-Ayn [Serêkaniyê], which primarily involved members of Division 24 (the Sultan Murad Brigade) of the Syrian National Army.”
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Female YPJ fighter in Syria allegedly murdered by relatives in ‘honor’ killing
Female fighters of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) played a significant role in the fight against the Islamic State. (Photo: Reuters)
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) on Monday reported that a member of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) was killed by her brother in the Syrian town of Darbasiyyah, located near the Turkish border.
One source claimed that her brother said he killed her because she “brought shame and dishonour upon the family.”
In the region, there is a history of men being accused of killing women or girls perceived to have brought shame to a family or tribe being given token sentences, or in other cases, escaping justice entirely.
Even though such acts are technically illegal in Syria, Iraq, and other nearby countries, their prosecution, in practice, is sometimes dealt with as a “family” matter and kept out of the courts.
In other cases, the murders are made to look like suicides.
A source from Kongra-Star in Darbasiyyah, a confederation of women’s organizations, told Kurdistan 24 that the woman was known as Beritan, had lived with her family in the town until she told them she had joined the YPJ. According to the source, her father and step-siblings were not pleased with her decision. After her two stepbrothers tried to force her to go with them to go to Hasakah instead and she refused, one of them allegedly shot and killed her.
The source added that the family members are ethnic Arabs, remarking, “As you know, joining YPJ is not something uncommon among the Arab community.”
An official Kongra-Star statement read, “Violence against women is one of the most common violations of human rights, but most of these violations are not reported because of the absence of penalty.”
“We, as women’s movement, call on all the women, civil rights institutions and the civic society institutions to take a rapid initiative to stop these crimes and not to be slow in holding the criminal accountable and applying the heaviest penalty so we can see that justice is done.”
Thomas McClure, a Syria-based researcher at the Rojava Information Center, told Kurdistan 24 that the YPJ, established in 2013, is known the world over for their efforts to establish a new form of autonomous, female-led democracy in northeastern Syria.
“But this week’s honor killing underscores a reality many miss – that many parts of society in NES (Northeast Syria) remain deeply patriarchal, conservative and religious,” he said.
“Northeast Syria’s population is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim – both Kurds and Arabs. Though ISIS have been defeated and driven out of their strongholds in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, ISIS’ mentality and sleeper-cells still enjoy strong support in these regions,” he continued, “while Turkish-controlled groups continue to abuse, abduct and murder women and in some instances impose sharia law in regions under their occupation.”
Moreover, he added that, although the local Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) promotes and enshrines women’s rights into their laws, females living in areas under their control “continue to face major violence and oppression in the family home.”
“Bodies like Mala Jin (Women’s House) and the women’s movement Kongra-Star work tirelessly to provide routes for women to escape abusive or dangerous situations, while YPJ, too, has provided a route for thousands of women to leave the family home and achieve newfound autonomy,” said McClure. “But profound entrenched misogyny is not changed overnight, and this latest honor killing underscores how much work remains to be done in Northeast Syria.”
On Aug. 21, Kongra-Star and other women’s rights institutions westward in the city of Kobani also started a campaign entitled “She did not commit suicide, you killed her,” reported the Hawar News Agency. The campaign was launched after an increase in murders of females there, plus other deaths that were officially ruled suicide, but where so-called honor killing is strongly suspected.
Editing by John J. Catherine
UpdatedSeptember 03-2020
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Afrin women call to act against violence
The Afrin Region Young Women’s Union made a statement regarding the violence and oppression against women.
ANF
SHEHBA
Sunday, 30 Aug 2020, 07:49
Dozens of women gathered in Serdem Camp in the Shehba canton carrying Young Women’s Union flags, photographs of Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan and banners saying ‘The young woman revolt is revenge’.
The statement was read in Arabic by Gulê Cimo, co-chair of the Afrin Region Youth and Sports Committee, who said: “Women have fought for the sake of society in all areas of life throughout history. Tens of women activists and feminist movements have chosen resistance. Women, who have imposed many things on the state and international societies with their struggles, have increased the resistance.”
The statement underlined: “As the struggle of women increases, the hatred of the male mentality that dominates the world politically and militarily also increased.”
The statement added: “This mentality has used women for their own interests through power, the state and the economy. Violence has increased all over the world and can no longer be hidden.” During the coronavirus pandemic, said the statement, “direct and indirect violence, murder, rape, suicide, kidnapping and migration have increased. Afrin has witnessed first hand all these crimes. Here these crimes against women are being committed by the AKP-affiliated mercenaries.”
The statement also reminded that “suicide and murder incidents in the regions of North and East Syria have increased and so did our organizational responsibilities, our resistance and our struggle against this dirty mentality.”
The women of Afrin “call on the international community, human rights organizations, feminist movements to take action against the crimes committed. Because only a few agreements, laws and articles are not enough to save women from their suffering.”
Three-stage plan for the Turkification of North-East Syria
The Turkish state is pursuing a three-stage plan in northern and eastern Syria. First the Kurdish population is displaced, then the region is Arabized and finally Turkified.
ERSİN ÇAKSU
QAMISHLO
Thursday, 13 Aug 2020, 15:48
The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu (AKP) could not have put it more clearly during his visit to Lebanon: “Anyone who says of himself ‘I am a Turk’ or ‘I am Turkmen’ is granted Turkish citizenship. The AKP politician thus named one of the core principles of Turkey’s Middle East policy. Not long ago, the “Muslim Brotherhood” was used as an argument for the Turkish state’s interventionism in Syria. But this slogan changed into a policy of Turkishness when it was put into practice. The best example of this is the development of the Turkish strategy for Syria. In the occupied territories from Idlib to Afrin, Jarablus, Bab, Girê Spî (Tal Abyad) and Serêkaniyê (Ras al-Ain), the AKP/MHP regime is pursuing a massive policy of Turkification.
Steps of the Turkification process
Turkification is taking place step by step. For example, the names of territories are being Turkified, Turkish post offices are being set up, district governors and administrative staff are being appointed, the Turkish lira is being made compulsory and faculties affiliated to Turkish universities are being opened. Agents of Turkification are so-called “Turkmen” militias such as the Sultan Murad Brigade, the Sultan Süleyman Shah Brigade, the Sultan Mehmed Fatih Brigade, the Muntasir Billallah Brigade and the Samarkand Brigade.
A plan of MIT and the Ministry of the Interior
The establishment of a “Turkmen crescent” in northern Syria and the annexation of the region are not new projects. The Turkish secret service MIT and the Ministry of the Interior have been working on the implementation of such a plan since 2018. The first mainstay is the people who have fled to Turkey from various parts of Syria and are being kept away from the EU there. The second mainstay is the people who have migrated to Turkey from so-called “Turk states”. The Turkish secret service and the migration office of the Turkish Ministry of the Interior are working closely together to settle the refugees from Syria in northern Syria.
Dekurdification of Rojava is the goal
For this reason, the Turkish migration authority declared refugees from many regions of Syria to be people from Northern Syria. For this reason, the identity cards for a temporary stay of people in the refugee camps in Turkey often state Dêrik, Qamişlo, Dirbesiyê, Amûdê, Serêkaniyê, Til Hemîs, Til Temir, Girê Spî and Kobanê as the place of origin, although the families come from completely different regions.
People are transported to Syria from “Turkic countries”
The second pillar of the plan is the settlement of people from so-called “Turkic countries”. According to the plan, people from Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Turkestan, Tajikistan from the Caucasus and Central Asia, such as Uighurs, are settled in Northern Syria.
Dekurdification is followed by the expulsion of the Arab population
Now the Turkish state is trying to reap the fruits of its policy of demographic change in northern Syria. The declaration of Çavuşoğlu to make everyone who calls himself “Turk or Turkmen” a Turkish citizen on the “order of our Republic’s President” shows which steps will follow. The Turkish state plans to both dekurdify and de-Arabicize Northeast Syria and wants to annex the region as in the past Iskenderun.
Similar policy in Iraq
Even if this policy in Iraq has not reached the same extent as in Syria, Turkey has been trying to implement a similar policy since the US invasion in 2003, especially in the Kirkuk and Mosul regions and in Southern Kurdistan. After the invasion, the Turkish state distributed money to people who registered as “Turkmen”. Turkey argued that under Saddam, Turkmen have been Kurdified (!) and Arabized so Turkey advocated that the number of Turkmen should be as large as it was before. Because of the economic advantages, many Arabs and Kurds were registered as “Turkmen” during this period.
Erdoğan: “Will not leave”
Today, the same policy is to be implemented in Northern and Eastern Syria using weapons. The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has already announced that they will not withdraw from Syria.
The Civil Defense Forces (HPC) is a voluntary, community-based organisation which carries out community policing functions in NES.
Following the recent unrest in the USA, the HPC has been held up by some commentators as an alternative model to a traditional, professional, state-controlled police force. Less often mentioned is the fact that HPC works alongside the Asayish (internal security), a professional force which conducts anti-terror operations and is responsible for day-to-day security and policing functions across NES.
In this interview, two female commanders in HPC explain how and why their organisation was established; how it works alongside, relates to and differs from the Asayish; which roles they fill in their community; and how they aim to construct a new model of policing in a region which suffered for decades under the security apparatus of the Assad regime, and which faces a critical security situation to this day.
Zibeda Eli commands the Civil Defense Forces in Qamishlo and the Jazira region, while Samira Mihemed is the commander of the all-female Women’s Civil Defense Forces (HPC-Jin) in Qamishlo.
Could you explain more about the history of the HPC?
Zibeda Eli: It all started in 2014 when ISIS attacked Sere Kaniye and the surrounding villages. The fighting was very heavy and we saw that there was a need for a different organization to be responsible for the security inside the cities and villages as the other military structures were busy fighting on the front lines.
Back then, the war was extremely difficult and there was a huge need for people to learn how to defend themselves and their societies. At first it was very important for everyone to learn how to handle the weapons so as to be able to protect themselves, their land and loved ones. In the beginning we were very focused on the military aspect of self-defense. After the fighting subsided we were able to give our attention to the other parts of self-defense, such as education.
So the HPC were originally founded in Qamishlo and later spread all over Rojava, and step by step more and more people started to step up to protect their neighborhoods and cities. Many who had become refugees during the war were able to return to their homes with the help of the YPG, and then protected by the HPC.
How are you organized today?
ZE: Now, our members total between 13,000-15,000. The HPC have a presence in all cities and in almost all of the villages in the Jazira region. We work via the communes in the civil society.
In the beginning when the organization was founded there was a lot of criminality and drug use by the young people here, but that has since become significantly less.
Samira Mihemed: it is very important for us that we have a presence in all places so as to keep our young people from making bad decisions and helping them choose a good path in life. We live a communal life here, we are all responsible for each other and it is our duty to look out for and help each other.
North and East Syria also has a professional military force – the Syrian Democratic Forces – and a professional internal security force, the Asayish. What’s the difference between HPC and these bodies?
SM: HPC is tied to Asayish, but the women’s branch is independent because we organize ourselves and the men cannot give us orders or intervene in our work. If a problem occurs we try to solve it ourselves first. If this fails we will bring the issue to the women’s branch of the Asayish.
During the war in Sere Kaniye [Turkey’s 2019 invasion of North and East Syria], other institutions joined the combat – Asayish, The Syrian Democratic Forces and other military forces. But our role is different. Our job is to keep the society whole, to defend the society from within. We protect the society from everything from espionage to preventing drugs and forbidden substances from entering.
ZE: We organise together with other institutions, for example with the women from the Asayish. We are a civilian organisation but we have some military responsibilities. For example we have the right to arrest people who have broken the law but we are obligated to hand them over to the Asayish, who will take over the case from there. So we ourselves are civilians but our work includes some military responsibilities. Our job is to support and help the Asayish with civilian matters.
Besides providing neighborhood security, what are HPC’s other duties?
SM: We want to help those women who are being oppressed and who are experiencing difficulties to improve their quality of life. As HPC-Jin we have the right to get involved in anything that concerns women. For example, if a women is being beaten or mistreated by her husband, or if she is being oppressed, we have a right to step in to end the mistreatment of the woman. We also go visit people in civil society and listen to what they have to say and they can tell us what they are struggling with.
We also give seminars on women’s rights. For example we don’t accept for a man to marry two women, or for underage girls to get married. Usually when a man marries a girl so young they end up divorcing them one or two years later which causes the girl a lot of pain. So this is where we put our foot down. Our duty is to protect the society.
ZE: The first step is education. Home by home, neighborhood by neighborhood, all the way up to the cities and villages. The people are always very happy and excited when we come to visit them, because it gives them a chance to better get to know us and our ideology.
One of our main goals is to educate people about women’s rights and to empower women. The people in the society look up to and admire the women who have joined the movement and fought the enemy on the front lines.
Could you explain the difference between the HPC and the police of the Syrian regime, how do they differ from each other?
ZE: The differences are huge. When the police of the Syrian regime arrests someone they can abuse them and deny them food and water and their basic rights. We, on the other hand, would never do that.
Why? Because the people who volunteer with us volunteer out of their own free will, because they want to help protect their societies and the people living in it. Some of our volunteers are 18 years old while others are 70 years old, and no one volunteers with us for money. The people with the regime are not like that. They all work for money and don’t have the best interest of the people in mind.
Why do you have an autonomous women’s structure, HPC-Jin? What role do women play in the organisation?
SM: It is very important for us to help women empower and defend themselves. Women should be involved in and play a role in all structures of society. For a long time the women here have been looked down upon and only been considered good for marriage. This is something we want to change.
That is why we give educations and seminars for women on women’s rights and women’s history, so that they can get to know themselves and their rights and through that empower themselves. And we also give educations that are more militarily focused because self-defence is a big part of empowering women. All women should know how to defend themselves.
Now, if someone tries to force a girl or woman to do something she does not want to do, she won’t accept it because she has the option to join the military forces or any other institution which will protect her. In the system we have now there are women in all institutions and leadership positions. Men and women are now working together. Women in civil society get a lot of morale and inspiration from us, and we get many girls and women wanting to join us.
What are your thoughts on the uprising that the police in the USA are facing after the killing of George Floyd? And how do you think that your organisation differs from police forces around the world?
ZE: The HPC differ in that we are supported and made up by the local people. We have all races working together to protect and keep their societies safe. There is no one who is considered to be better or worse than anyone, we are all equal. For example, the Turkish attacks were against us Kurds, but we Kurds had Arabs fighting with us side by side.
The Rojava revolution is for democracy and is for everyone, not only Kurds. We want everyone, Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians and Turkmen to unit and help each other to protect our societies together.
The pictures featured in this article were taken during a HPC-Jin training session.
“In July 2020, as war continues in Syria, we celebrate the eighth anniversary of the revolution, remembering the 19th of July 2012 when autonomy was declared in the city of Kobanê,” said Têkoşîna Anarşîst (Anarchist Struggle), an internationalist anarchist collective in Rojava, in an interview. “Rojava (West Kurdistan, or North-East Syria) is a small player in a game of powers full of resentment and strife. Its brief history has always been threatened by the war and conflict that surrounds it, as its very existence challenges the plans and agendas of the powers that battle in Syria. Despite tactical alliances, it is clear that no state has an interest in allowing this revolutionary project to prosper and expand. Now that the Daesh (Islamic State, or ISIS) Caliphate has been defeated, other forces and powers continue to harass Rojava, mainly through the Turkish State and its proxies. Rojava exists thanks to the commitment and collective effort of thousands of militants, and we must always bear in mind that, without their sacrifice, nothing we are experiencing here today would be possible. The attacks we have suffered have led to painful losses, and we have had to move forward and rebuild the ruins the war has left behind. As militants, these experiences have forced us to appreciate the fundamental need for self-defence, and to appreciate life and moments of happiness with more gratitude than we have ever experienced before…
To this day, Rojava remains an inspiring model for revolutionary movements around the world, a space for debate and political practice demonstrating that another world is possible. Rojava is not an anarchist society, but it is a society where anarchists from all over the world can nurture our ideas through praxis. We cannot allow this beacon of hope to be extinguished, and even though it is a struggle we will continue to build, defend and develop the world we dream of living in. The attacks to come will cause more pain and destruction, but we are not afraid of the ruins because we carry a new world in our hearts…
The authoritarian drift of the Turkish state in recent decades has been accompanied by a purge of military commanders, especially after the so-called attempted coup in 2016, as well as heavy investment in military spending. Erdogan recently acquired a second shipment of S-400 anti-aircraft systems from Russia, while closing a deal to acquire Patriot missiles from the United States. We see him arming himself to the teeth, seeking to maintain his position in NATO, while leaning into a pact with Russia, trying to reorganise the geopolitical chessboard of the Middle East by evoking an Imperial Ottoman past. These expansionist dreams, the usual narrative of fascism, always need an internal enemy to blame. In 1915, the world witnessed the Armenian genocide on which the Turkish state was founded, where not only Armenians and other Christian minorities were massacred and forced to leave their homes, but an example was set that would later be referenced in perpetrating the holocaust (‘After all, who today speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ said Hitler, invading Poland). Now it is the Kurdish population that is suffering from these genocidal policies, and no doubt Rojava is in Turkey’s sights…
On the one hand, Erdogan continues to threaten the occupation of the region, with particular risk to Tal Rifaat and the Şehba camps, as well as Manbij and Kobanê. As we have seen with other operations, it is not a question of whether Turkey will attack again, but when it will do so. Recently, Erdogan announced a new operation in Başûr, Iraqi Kurdistan, which began with over 80 bombings by the Turkish Air Force. Among the targets were the Mexmûr camp, a hospital in Şengal, guerrilla positions and civilian villages in mountains bordering Turkey and Iran, where the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) has its bases. In late June, a drone bombed a village outside Kobanê, where a meeting of the Kongreya Star (the women’s movement in Rojava) was being held, killing four women, including the head of the Kobanê area. All these attacks are carried out while Turkey maintains its front in Idlib, supporting HTS (Islamist coalition led by the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda), its military operations in Libya, its aggressive international policy in the Mediterranean and a brutal internal repression against the Kurdish population within Turkey’s own borders…
Without a doubt, the biggest threat is a new invasion by the Turkish state, probably in Kobanê, as it is their resistance against Daesh that captivated international attention. The symbolic power of this city is very important, and that is why the Turkish state wants to occupy it, because it knows it will be very difficult to sustain faith in the revolution without the city that managed to break the advance of Daesh. It is possible that Ain Issa and Manbij would be attacked first, since they are nearby cities and essential when it comes to providing logistical support in case Kobanê is besieged again.
To launch such an attack, Erdogan knows he needs a green light from the international and regional powers. The war of influence between Russia and the US in the Middle East can play a significant role, and depending on how the balance of power and objectives of both imperialist powers change, the effects will be felt not only in Syria, but across the Middle East and the world. In the past few months, we have seen a steady withdrawal of US troops from Syria, though never a definitive one, as one of its priorities remains preventing other powers from gaining influence, especially Russia and Iran. Putin is racing to fill this vacuum, reinforcing his hegemony on Syrian soil and ensuring his access to the Mediterranean Sea.
Other regional powers may also influence Syria’s future, such as the State of Israel, which continues to maintain its occupation of the Golan Heights, and carry out attacks and bombings against different targets on Syrian soil. Iran’s presence in Syria is no secret; in fact, most of Israel’s attacks are usually against Hezbollah targets or other forces close to Iran’s theocratic regime. The Zionist government of Netanyahu takes advantage of Iran’s enmity with the US to attack with impunity and thus weaken the powers that surround Israel. The Egyptian state now makes threats to intervene in the conflict in Libya to stop the spread of Turkish influence. For now, Egypt is off the Syrian board, but al-Sisi’s government sees Erdogan as a threat, given his neo-Ottomanist rhetoric and his strong relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition to al-Sisi’s government…
Since the beginning of the Rojava revolution, especially following the resistance in Kobanê in 2015, international volunteers have come to confront Daesh and defend the revolution. In the early years, most of the international volunteers came in coordination with YPG (People’s Defence Units) and YPJ (Women’s Defence Units), the Kurdish self-defence militias. Given the anti-state character of the political project of Rojava, anarchists from different continents joined the struggle in defence of the revolution, often arriving in a disparate and disorganised way.
In 2015, in addition to internationalists in YPG and YPJ, the IFB (International Freedom Battalion) was organised, uniting international militants and Turkish revolutionary organisations in a common organisation. Within the IFB, the first anarchist brigade was formed under the name of IRPGF (International Revolutionary People’s Guerrilla Forces), which operated for approximately one year during the Tabqa and Raqqa operations.
Têkoşîna Anarşîst was created at the end of 2017 after the liberation of Raqqa. We seek to not only participate in the struggle against Daesh, but to learn from the Kurdistan freedom movement while building bridges with libertarian movements around the world. As anarchists, we see the importance of taking up arms against the theocratic despotism of the Islamic State, but also against the fascistic oppression of the Turkish State, the Syrian State, the various imperialist powers and the myriad Islamic fundamentalist groups fighting in Syria.
The reality of the war is very complex, and sometimes it plunges us into a sea of contradictions about our role here. Inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts converge with a proxy war of regional and geopolitical powers, where imperialist and colonial influences set the pace of a Middle East bathed in blood and oil. But the Kurdish resistance is an emblematic example of revolutionary organisation, and Rojava’s social and political project is certainly inspiring. After some years working here, we saw good sides and also bad sides of the revolution, and our commitment to it is based in a frame of internationalism and critical solidarity.
The implementation of democratic confederalism, a stateless society based on women’s liberation, ecology and direct democracy, is an example for those of us who believe in a world free from capitalism and patriarchy.
This is what led us to Rojava, but what now? A large number of internationalists who come to Rojava participate in defending the revolution for a few months and then return home to their previous lives. Is that what we want? Is this our idea of internationalist solidarity? No, we want something else.
To better understood what we are looking for, we studied the history of internationalism, but instead of looking at the centralised structure of the Third International, we choose to find inspiration in the anti-colonial struggle of the Tricontinental Conference. Revolutionaries like Almícar Cabral from Guinea-Bissau, Ben Barka from Morocco and Che Guevara from Argentina came together to, in the words of Franz Fanon, ‘stand with the wretched of the earth to create a world of human beings’. Their perspectives on international solidarity were very clear: ‘It is not a question of wishing success to the attacked, but of running his own luck; accompanying them to death or victory.’ They were talking about creating ‘two, three, many Vietnams’; we talk about creating two, three, many Rojavas, many Barbachas, many Chiapas.
Tekoşîna Anarşîst is not only an anarchist group in Syria or Kurdistan; our existence is conditioned by the struggle and the revolutionary process of Rojava. The oppression suffered by the Kurdish people is another example of the colonial dynamics suffered by indigenous peoples, peoples with ancestral cultures and roots who are threatened by capitalist hegemony. As internationalists, it is also our duty to study and understand the ways imperial powers exert oppression over countries of the Global South. We struggled against oppression at home and now we continue the struggle here. We came to Rojava responding to the call for international solidarity, and so our priority is to understand the needs of the people and the dynamics of the local revolutionary movement. In the past, we had been working in coordination with the IFB, but today we are an autonomous organisation integrated in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), alongside Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and other internationals, fighting for a democratic and ecological Syria free of patriarchal oppression.
The PKK is a revolutionary party created in response to the oppression suffered by the Kurdish people. Tekoşîna Anarşîst is a collective created to support and learn from the revolution of Rojava. This reality engenders a great number of differences in relation to the size of the organisation, objectives, internal dynamics, future projection, tactics and strategies.
The PKK was founded more than 40 years ago as a national liberation movement with an internationalist outlook, forming an anti-colonial movement in the Middle East. Through its struggle for national liberation, the PKK, which started with a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist orientation, evaluated its achievements and shortcomings. Abdullah Öcalan proposed a new paradigm, nourished by libertarian perspectives, positioning itself against the nation-state model, patriarchy, and the ecocide produced by capitalism and the techno-industrial system. Instead, the new paradigm creates models of direct democracy, with communes and cooperatives as the social base. It prioritises women’s liberation as the basis of social transformation through women organising themselves autonomously. It is committed to an ecological perspective and a reconnection with nature, reconstructing a model of life in accordance with the other living beings on this planet.
Its perspectives on violence also differ from those of its Maoist origins, where revolutionary violence was conceived of as an objective in itself. The change of paradigm, largely motivated by the Kurdish women’s movement, refocused the analysis around the concept of self-defence. The patriarchal and colonial dynamics of states, which base their existence on domination through war, genocide and slavery, have always met with resistance from those they seek to subdue. Societies that have lived a free life cannot accept the domination of centralised systems, and that is why every society, every living being, needs to ensure its systems of self-defence.
As anarchists, as revolutionaries, we agree with this political and social vision. Ecology, feminism, communalism or confederalism are not unknown to anarchism; quite the contrary. In Rojava, we have had to defend ourselves with all the means at our disposal against the theocratic despotism of the Islamic state and the invasion of the Turkish fascist state. In times of war, we have fought side by side with YPG, YPJ, guerrillas of the PKK, members of other Turkish revolutionary parties, other internationalists of different ideologies, Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians. When the enemy fires, when the bombs fall, the one on our side of the trench is compa, is heval, and the ideological differences do not weigh as much as the passion to defend the revolution, the passion to build a free society.
But, certainly, there are ideological differences that, when bullets and mortars do not rain down, lead to debates and reflections that influence our way of thinking about revolution and understanding anarchism. The differences that Marx and Bakunin, among many others, discussed at the congresses of the first workers’ international are still a source of conflict today. But it is precisely this conflict that helps us to reflect, to learn, to continue to grow…
The main differences we have found are, on the one hand, organisational, and on the other, ideological. At the organisational level, we prioritise decentralisation and the distribution of tasks, responsibilities and leadership, deliberately avoiding the creation of a central committee or an authoritarian institution. We know military structures are always conditioned by hierarchical organisation and a chain of command, and, in some aspects, we have had to adapt our structure to military needs. But, unlike other forces, we pay special attention to operating in an inclusive and horizontal manner, encouraging rotating responsibilities and leadership. Collective learning, trust and mutual support, but, above all, the desire for a free life, are the basis of our work and political project.
At the ideological level, the differences may be more complex. The most relevant is perhaps our strong support for LGBT+ struggles, which in the Kurdish liberation movement do not have such determined support. There is, however, a current in the Kurdish women’s movement, and in jineolojî in particular, with whom we share a perspective on these issues. They themselves are questioning and reflecting on the apparent essentialism of this movement, opening the door to a more extended understanding of woman closer to queer theories, although still in a minority.
Also, the pragmatism of this movement sometimes leads to ideological contradictions, especially in aspects related to property. In Rojava, there are communal initiatives and incentives for collective ownership, but private property is still the norm in society, without much effort to change this reality. Within revolutionary movements, property is largely collective, and the communal life has a clear socialist orientation, but it is sometimes difficult for these ideas to reach the majority of the population.
To bring a wider perspective, if we think not only of our organisation, but of anarchism more broadly we see great contradictions with the individualistic tendency of anti-authoritarian movements in recent decades. Têkoşîna Anarşîst is committed to a collective struggle that transcends individual logic and liberal thinking, in tune with the values of social anarchism, but without ceasing to reflect on the role of the individual in society. We are very aware that with orders imposed from the top down, without respecting collective decisions or listening to minority voices, coercion is imposed on the individual. In turn, when the individual does not act in accordance with the common aims of a movement, he or she delegitimises the organisation and the collective struggle.
Another important debate between traditional anarchism and the ideas of democratic confederalism is the approach to society and the relation with positivism and rationalism. Anarchism has often seen science and reason, which were resignified by the so-called enlightenment, as the only way to achieve a free society. In the new paradigma, this premise is questioned, with special attention to other ways of understanding the world and society that elude European colonial thought, especially looking at mythology and ancestral knowledge. These perspectives are important when it comes to learning from indigenous movements, rethinking our relationship with nature, with civilisation and with life itself.
Evaluating these ideas, the similarities and differences that we have found with our movements and the reality of Rojava, have led us to prioritise two objectives. First, the development of militant personalities, working to deconstruct the patriarchal and capitalist influence that we have internalised. Second, the need to agree on organisational standards based on commitment and responsibility, according to our will as revolutionaries, but also to the needs of our organisation.
And even though these objectives are developed in a different way from the PKK, the methods we learn here are of great help to us. The practice of tekmil, platform, criticism and self-criticism, guide us in our growth and development as revolutionaries, but we also recognise the need to study and learn from the history of anarchist and revolutionary movements around the world.
The construction of democratic confederalism is certainly more visible in Rojava, but it cannot be disconnected from the rest of Kurdistan. In recent years, the ideas of this political paradigm have been put into practice on a large scale in Rojava, but we must also take into account other territories such as Mexmûr camp or the more recently autonomous zone of Şengal in Başûr (Iraqi Kurdistan). There are also political developments in Rojhilat (Iranian Kurdistan), but, above all, in Bakûr, within the borders of the Turkish State. It is necessary to take into account the four parts into which Kurdistan is divided today to understand why the Kurdish movement is oriented towards an anti-state solution.
When analysing its construction, it is essential to refer to the ideological work of Abdullah Öcalan and his ‘Manifesto for a Democratic Civilisation’. Unlike other political proposals, democratic confederalism does not limit itself to describing a utopian society free of oppression, but opens a dialogue of questions and answers on how to transform society and realise this utopia. How we want to live, how we want to relate to each other and how we want to fight are important questions in building a revolutionary society. The answers Öcalan outlines are not easily summarised in a few paragraphs, but it is important to understand some of the concepts he identifies.
This democratic modernity is based on the liberation of women, ecology and democracy without the State. This ideological progression shows similarities with other revolutionary processes such as the Zapatista movement, an insurgent movement in the mountains of southern Mexico. Both movements are born with a Maoist framework, but are reoriented towards libertarian socialism; both have grown and found refuge in the mountains; both are heirs to a people with ancient origins; both have a strong autonomous women’s movements; both are examples for anti-capitalist movements worldwide.
Democratic confederalism is not a new ideology; it is a way of understanding society and civilisation that inspires us to develop as revolutionary movements, to make a commitment to our ideas and to move forward with determined steps towards a more just society. In bringing these ideas into practice in Rojava, the process has been vastly influenced by the war in Syria. In turn, it has been the war that made the revolution possible, enabling the radical social transformation needed to lay the foundations of such political developments.
In 2012, the YPG/YPJ, then poorly armed people’s militias, expelled the soldiers and bureaucrats of the Syrian state with hardly a few bullets fired. This was followed by bitter fighting against Islamist groups like al-Nusra and later Daesh. After breaking Daesh’s seige of Kobanê in 2015, the YPG/YPJ expanded to lead the military coalition of the SDF. By the time Raqqa was liberated in 2017, the SDF had become a regular military force, trained and equipped to a semi-professional level.
These military developments were accompanied by a process of social transformation based on the ideas of democratic confederalism, with the creation of communes, cooperatives, women’s centres, justice committees, academies, school programmes in Kurdish, cultural centres and so on. Social institutions such as TEV-DEM (Tevgera Civaka Demokratîk, or Movement for a Democratic Society), together with the PYD (Partiya Yekineyen Democratic, or Democratic Unity Party) and other political parties, came together to establish the Autonomous Administration, initially organised in three cantons (Afrîn, Kobanê and Cizîre). We see the clear aim to manage the territory on the basis of local organisation, based on a municipal model, without seeking the centralisation of a state system.
No revolution is an easy process and, despite the criticisms we may have about certain decisions, the process that Rojava is going through in these eight years of revolution is admirable. Once again, it is difficult to summarise everything in a few paragraphs, but among the most important steps we want to mention the development of the situation that women are experiencing, and the role that the YPJ is playing in this process.
Women in Syria, like women all over the world, suffer from the violence and oppression of patriarchal systems, but from 2014 they were especially threatened by the theocratic despotism of the Islamic State. Daesh is undoubtedly a more brutal and bloody example of patriarchy, with thousands of women captured and sold into sexual slavery. In the words of YPJ fighter Amara from Kobane, ‘Our philosophical views made us women conscious of the fact that we can only live by resisting’, giving perspectives on why many women choose to take up arms to free themselves from such a threat, why they choose self-defence and direct action against threats to their lives.
After the military victories against Daesh, the enormous courage and sacrifice women have brought to the revolution was proven beyond doubt. The Kurdish movement says no society can be free if women are not free, and in Rojava this slogan becomes the heart of the revolutionary process.
Our involvement in this whole process is relatively modest, as we have been working for only three years in Rojava. In the beginning, the most important thing was to understand the local reality, the Kurdish language and culture, the political project and the functioning of the organisations and structures. This brought some ideological contradictions along with new methods of organising.
Despite our ideological similarities and Öcalan’s references to different anarchist thinkers like Bakunin, Kropotkin or Foucault, anarchism remains a great unknown for the Kurdish movement. In the third volume of the ‘Manifesto for a Democratic Civilisation’, Öcalan reflects on the importance of anarchism as a key ally in the development of democratic modernity, sharing his critique and perspectives for anarchist movements. In the ideological field, our work has focused on reflecting on these ideas and contradictions, translating them and making them more accessible to a wide audience. We have also spent time debating and sharing our ideas among us, as we are an international group of anarchists from various countries, often with different prespectives and backgrounds. This work has given us a better understanding of the libertarian movements in different parts of the world and how to put them in context with the revolutionary process we are going through.
In the practical field, our work has focused on defending the revolution. After taking part in different military campaigns against Islamic State, we pushed to develop our capacities as combat medics, since health care in the first minutes can be crucial for survival. Tekoşîna Anarşîst worked as a combat medical team in the Baghouz campaign, the last bastion of Islamic State, and has since been our main task whenever there has been an active front in Rojava. Operating as a combat medical team also means being able to train new members in these disciplines, so we have put a lot of effort into compiling what we have learned to share with new comrades who came to join the revolution…
The Islamic State has been defeated after the battle of Baghouz in 2019, but there are still cells and operational groups that continue to carry out attacks. Many of its former members have also joined the Turkish-backed Islamist groups, which have occupied the canton of Afrîn since early 2018. It is less than a year since Turkey and its Islamist mercenaries occupied the cities and villages alongside the border in between the cities of Tel Abyad and Serêkaniyê. People fleeing these conflicts are found in refugee camps, such as the Şehba camps where people from Afrîn fled, or the Waşokanî camp where people of Serêkaniyê fled for refuge from Turkish bombs.
The al-Hol camp is also difficult to run, where tens of thousands of women and children who lived under the Islamic caliphate are held. This includes some women who maintain their Islamic fundamentalist ideas, often organising riots and statements in support of Daesh, attacking the security forces of the camp and also other women, stabbing, throwing acid or setting tents in fire. The special prisons for Daesh fighters add to the difficulties faced by the Autonomous Administration in stabilising the region, needing an international tribunal to find solutions and bring Daesh members to justice. But the international community does not seem very interested in supporting this kind of judicial process, and few countries have repatriated the international fighters who left to join the ranks of Islamic State. In these prisons too, there are often riots and escape attempts.
The refugee camps are also hotbeds of health emergencies, with outbreaks of salmonella or other diseases such as leishmaniasis in the Şehba camps. So far, Rojava didn’t suffer an outbreak of Covid-19, but the self-administration has been working to prevent future risks. Our work on health issues has also allowed us to learn and support in these fields and to better understand the situation, as well as to collaborate in the development of training and preparations for preventive measures in case the pandemic begins to spread here. The hospital in Serêkaniyê – now occupied by Turkey and its proxies – was the only one equipped to carry out PCR tests, and it is known that Turkey is sending a large number of Covid-infected people there. In Afrîn, the epidemic is spreading, given the direct connection of the Turkish army with the Islamist groups occupying the area, possibly in an attempt by the Erdogan administration to spread the virus to Rojava. The virus has spread in the parts of Syria still under the control of the Syrian regime, so we do not know how long Rojava will be free from the effects of the pandemic.
The military situation is not easy either… The economic situation in Rojava is also very complex, with enormous difficulties ahead. The Syrian pound has fallen to historical lows, in recent months it has lost more than 300% of its value on the domestic market. To this, we must add the new sanctions against Syria imposed by the Trump administration, a form of economic warfare, which, despite being directed against the government of al-Assad, has a profound effect on all of Syria. Trump promised that the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria would be exempt from these sanctions, but so far this promise has not materialised, and they must be added to the embargo Rojava has suffered since the beginning of the revolution.
In terms of resources, Rojava has an abundance of only wheat and oil, which are suffering from economic turmoil. The Covid-19 crisis has caused a fall in the price of crude oil, which has had a huge impact on the income of Autonomous Administration. In addition, the sanctions mentioned against the Assad government make it difficult to sell the oil, which needs the refineries in the areas under the control of the Syrian state to be able to process it. As for the wheat, the Autonomous Administration has decided to begin the harvest earlier to avoid what happened last year, when insurgent groups burned large swathes of cultivated land. Advancing the harvest has ensured that the wheat is not burnt, but at the same time it has been harvested still green and the price at which it can be sold is lower. In addition, wheat was stolen from silos in the Turkish-occupied area, such as the important silos in Tel Abyad.
A last point we want to mention is also related to the global effects of the pandemic, and is the closing of borders that has limited the mobility of internationalists. During the past four months, no internationalist has been able to enter or leave Rojava. A number of new people who want to travel to Rojava have no way of doing so. With all this, it is difficult to foresee what will happen. The situation is highly unstable; there are so many variables and so many interests at stake that things change quickly from one day to the next…
Another possible scenario in the near future is a full-scale attack by the Turkish state on Qandil in Iraqi Kurdistan, where PKK bases are located. Erdogan has been besieging the mountains, the heart of the Kurdish insurgent movement, for years and hopes to have the support of NATO and its media and technological network to carry out such an operation. But to lay siege to the mountains, Erdogan needs the collaboration not only of the Iraqi state, but also of Iran, since Qandil is on the border between them. It would be a very costly operation and, given Turkey’s unstable economic situation and its many fronts, it is not very clear whether Erdogan will be able to launch such a large-scale campaign. Such an attack would be highly provocative across all parts of Kurdistan and revolutionary Rojava would not stand idly by in the face of this aggression…” #JinJiyanAzadi#SehidNamirin#RiseUp4Rojava#WomenDefendRojava#RiseUp4TheRevolution#RiseUp4TheMountains#FreeAfrin#FreeOcalan#SmashFascism
(https://anarchistsworldwide.noblogs.org/…/interview-with-t…/)
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Arabs Across Syria Join the Kurdish-Led Syrian Democratic Forces
A Profile of Arab Recruits from Aleppo, Al-Hasakah, Deir Ezzor, Homs, Ras al-Ayn and Raqqa
[Forthcoming in MER issue 295 “Kurdistan, One and Many”]
In 2012, as the so-called Arab Spring protests in Damascus and elsewhere in Syria descended into a brutal civil war, President Bashar al-Asad withdrew his forces from northern Syria to turn their guns on rebels in the south. Into the vacuum stepped the Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat, or PYD) and their armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, or YPG)—which set up a rudimentary Autonomous Administration in three cantons: Afrin, Kobane and Jazira. Surrounded by enemies, the three cantons that declared self-rule were not even connected to each other. As non-contiguous regions abutting the Turkish border, it was difficult and at times impossible to travel from one to the other or share vital resources. Their chances of survival were slim.
Then in 2014 militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) surged across both the Turkish and Iraqi borders into Syria, declared Raqqa as the capital of their Caliphate and proceeded to establish a government that, among other egregious practices, sanctioned slave markets where Yezidi women and children were traded. In 2016, 2018 and 2019, Turkish military incursions into Syria—with help from what is now known as the Syrian National Army—aimed to dislodge the YPG from areas near the border, resulting in mass displacement of civilians including Kurds, Yezidis, Arabs and Assyrian-Syriac Christians.[1]
Led by Kurds, the YPG evolved over time into the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF): a multi-ethnic, multi-religious force in which all the indigenous peoples of the region are represented. Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians, Yezidis, Circassians and Turkmen have fought alongside Kurds to defend their homeland. By 2019, when the SDF had liberated all of Syrian territory from ISIS control, there were some 100,000 fighters (including SDF and Internal Security Forces) under the leadership of SDF commander-in-chief Mazlum Abdi, a Syrian Kurd and former Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) cadre.[2] The majority of his rank-and-file fighters, however, were Arabs. While conscription can account for some of this growth, it does not tell the whole story. Until today, the rules on mandatory conscription have never been implemented in several Arab-majority regions; in previous years there was even less enforcement. Furthermore, conscription is limited to one year and only applies to men. How was a sister militia of the PKK—an organization founded in Turkey that historically fought for an independent Kurdistan—able to successfully recruit and retain tens of thousands of Syrian Arabs for multiple years? What sort of political project did they create and endorse that retained the loyalty of an ethnically diverse coalition?
My field survey of over 300 SDF members reveals that there are three main reasons for the SDF’s success in recruiting and retaining Arabs: First, the SDF offered material incentives such as salaries and training opportunities.[3] Second, the existence of a common threat—first ISIS and now Turkey—solidified bonds between Kurds and Arabs and also prompted many to enlist. Third, the survey shows that many Arab members of the SDF support at least some, if not all, of the basic political principles upon which the SDF and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) are based.
The YPG Evolves Into the SDF
Throughout the course of the Syrian civil war, the Kurdish-led YPG cooperated with Arab-majority armed groups. The YPG began to actively recruit Arabs just months after regime forces withdrew from the north, or at least since late 2012. The Shammar tribe’s Al-Sanadid Forces led by Bandar al-Humaydi was one of the first to cooperate with the YPG, starting in 2013. Active recruitment was underway during a series of battles along the Syrian-Turkish border centered around the city of Ras al-Ayn, which has a mixed Arab-Kurdish population (the city is known as Serekaniye in Kurdish and Ras al-Ayn in Arabic). Later in the war, virtually all of the Arab tribes had members in the SDF, including major tribal confederations and prominent tribes including the Al-Jabbur, Ageedat, Baggara, Busha’ban, Tay and others.
In September 2014, a joint operations room was established between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the YPG, known as Burkan al-Firat (Euphrates Volcano).[4] The ISIS siege of Kobane and ensuing US military support cemented the alliance between the YPG and a number of Arab units within the FSA, which led to the emergence of the SDF in October 2015. The United States had shifted its efforts to the YPG/SDF after previous attempts to train and equip other Syrian armed groups had been deemed unsuccessful—in part because some of those groups had links to extremist factions or were more interested in fighting Asad than ISIS. Henceforth, the SDF became the main partner force for the United States on the ground in Syria. In order to defeat ISIS, it was necessary to further expand the geographical reach of the SDF to Arab-majority cities such as Manbij, Raqqa, Tabqa and Deir Ezzor. In the course of this expansion, some Arab women were recruited as well. In July 2017, the YPJ (the women’s branch of the YPG) announced the creation of the first battalion of Arab women, the “Brigade of the Martyr Amara.”[5]
When the SDF began to expand beyond the Kurdish heartland into Arab-majority areas, Western analysts observing from afar rang the alarm bells. Some academics and think tanks claimed this move would mean the imposition of “Kurdish rule” over Arabs. Others predicted it was doomed to fail because self-respecting Arabs would never concede to being part of a Kurdish militia with links to the PKK. Yet others suggested that conservative Arab tribes viewed the secular-egalitarian ideas promoted by Kurds as an “alien ideology.”[6] One think tank analyst was so troubled that he recommended the United States should work to “control the YPG’s provocative behaviors and limit its ideological indoctrination of northeastern Syria’s communities.”[7] And yet, despite these predictions of impending failure, the SDF continued, year after year, to incorporate more and more Arabs into its ranks.
Despite predictions of impending failure, the SDF continued, year after year, to incorporate more and more Arabs into its ranks.
To be sure, the expansion of the SDF and self-administration across north and east Syria was not always welcomed by Arab communities. The increase in Arab rank-and-file fighters has not yet been accompanied by an equally significant increase of Arabs in leadership positions, although Arabs have been promoted within both the military and civilian structures of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. The secular and gender-egalitarian ideology is not embraced by some more conservative members of society. In the spring of 2019, I attended a meeting at the Tribal Reconciliation Center near Tabqa, where more than 50 representatives from the various Arab tribes in the region were in attendance.[8] These tribes had been cooperating with the Autonomous Administration for several years and seemed to be on friendly terms. Yet none of the tribes had sent female delegates to represent them. In the far eastern part of Syria, I met with the head of a major tribe who referred to the YPG as “our friend.” But he also indicated some displeasure because his traditional title of “sheikh” was less frequently used than in the past: In an attempt to undo tribal hierarchies, administration officials are encouraging people to use the term al-raey, which means shepherd.[9] Over the course of more than six hours, I toured the expansive grounds and met several dozen people, again without encountering a single woman. But during my visits to ramshackle YPJ outposts in Manbij, Raqqa, Al-Sheddadi, Tabqa, Ain Issa, Al-Hasakah and elsewhere, I met many Arab women. They had all enlisted in the YPJ voluntarily, as there is no conscription for women. Many of them were eager to tell their stories.
Kurdish officials are taking various measures to ease Arab concerns over Kurdish domination. The very name of the governing entity was changed to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Kurdish term Rojava was dropped in December 2016.[10] Although this decision angered some Kurdish nationalists, it was justified by the expansion of the territory beyond Kurdish-majority areas. The official logo recognizes the linguistic diversity of the region, and is in four languages: Arabic, Kurdish, Syriac-Aramaic and Turkish. Furthermore, in 2018 the de-facto capital or administrative center of the region was moved from Qamishli to Ain Issa, an Arab town.
By 2019, the SDF was in de-facto control of approximately one-third of Syria. The territory they defend from incursions by ISIS, the Turkish government and Syrian government forces is an ethnically and religiously diverse region. These six regions—Jazira, Deir Ezzor, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Euphrates—are governed by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, which operates semi-independently of Damascus. The Arabs who inhabit these six regions are not a homogenous group. While some Arabs have protested the policies of the Autonomous Administration, others openly endorse the new political project.
Arab Apocis?
The ideology espoused by the Autonomous Administration is inspired by the writings of Abdullah Öcalan, one of the founding members of the PKK. Fleeing persecution in Turkey, he spent some 20 years in Syria. During this time, he cultivated ties to the Syrian regime under President Hafez al-Asad and to a number of leading Arab figures, in addition to the Kurdish minority. After he was forced to leave Syria and was captured and imprisoned by Turkey in a maximum-security prison on the island of İmralı, he turned to writing and formulating a new paradigm for the Kurdish struggle. Inspired by an eclectic assortment of scholars, ranging from Murray Bookchin to Immanuel Wallerstein, the ideology that emerged is referred to as Democratic Confederalism. The nation-state is no longer a prize to be obtained but is now seen as part of the problem that led to the subjugation of Kurds in the first place, along with that of women and other minorities, and therefore to be avoided.
Instead of an independent Kurdistan, Öcalan urged the Kurdish movement to work toward attaining a stateless democracy.[11] The political entity he envisions is to be premised on secularism and full equality between all people, regardless of gender, religious or ethnic identity. Those who support these ideas are often referred to as Apocu or Apocis, meaning the followers of Öcalan, whose nickname is Apo. Historically his supporters were Kurds, but some of his newer ideas have also been embraced by Arabs. The emergence of Arab Apocis may be one of the many unexpected twists of the Syrian conflict, signifying the appeal of the Rojava revolution beyond Rojava.
As soon as the Autonomous Administration assumed de-facto control over parts of north and east Syria, officials lost no time in putting these ideas into practice. A co-chair system was established where all leadership positions—from the most powerful institutions down to neighborhood communes—are held jointly by a man and a woman. The current co-president of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) is Ilham Ahmad, who represents the Autonomous Administration during high-level diplomatic visits outside of Syria. The SDC was created in 2015 as the assembly of political parties and organizations that represents north and east Syria. The liberation of Raqqa was led by Rojda Felat, a female commander of the SDF/YPJ. Arab women and men have also benefited from this system. Layla Hassan and Ghassan Al Youssef act as co-chairs of the Deir Ezzor Civil Council, the largest governorate under SDF control and home to oil resources.
Surveying a Non-State Actor in a War Zone
Between 2015 and 2019, I conducted the first field survey of the YPG/SDF in all six regions of north and east Syria under the control of the SDF. Although my sample included members of each ethnic and religious group in the region including Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs, Assyrians, Armenians, Yezidis and Turkmen, here I focus on Arabs since they now constitute the majority of rank-and-file fighters and yet are frequently omitted from analyses of the SDF. Scholars, journalists, think tank analysts and government officials still incorrectly refer to the SDF as a Kurdish force.
In order to allow the voices of Arab members of the SDF to be heard, I provide brief profiles of six Arabs from six different cities across Syria. Two of these cities were taken over by ISIS militants: Raqqa and Deir Ezzor. Two other cities had at one time been under the partial or full control of other armed opposition groups, referred to for the sake of simplicity as the FSA: Ras al-Ayn and Al Hasakah. In the spring and summer of 2019, at the time of my survey, these four cities were under the control of the SDF. Finally, two of the six Arab SDF members I discuss here are from Aleppo and Homs, cities that were never under the control of the SDF. A number of additional respondents come from yet other cities outside SDF control, including Idlib, which seems to indicate that the SDF holds a broader appeal. My survey data also shows that Arabs from virtually all the major and minor tribes in Syria have been incorporated into the SDF (the respondents self-identified as belonging to 46 different tribes or sub-tribes). The six individuals I cite here are from different geographical regions of Syria, different class backgrounds and have different modalities of engagement with the SDF. Some of them became leaders of military units and fought in numerous battles against ISIS, while others did not take part in combat operations. Finally, I have also selected both male and female members of the SDF. To protect their identities their real names are not used.
For all six individuals, the timing of their decision to join the SDF indicates that they did not do so out of opportunism. On the contrary, joining the SDF entailed risks, especially for women.
Five of the six respondents I cite here were selected precisely because they enlisted in the SDF between May 2015 and March 2017, during a very chaotic and uncertain period of the war when the SDF had neither yet emerged as the clear victor against ISIS nor was the only game in town. The last person to join of the six individuals I discuss here is Rania from Deir Ezzor. She enlisted in 2018, at a time when ISIS still controlled territory in Deir Ezzor. Hence, for all six individuals, the timing of their decision to join the SDF indicates that they did not do so out of opportunism. On the contrary, joining the SDF entailed risks, especially for women. Anyone who joined the SDF from a city that was under the control of ISIS, or who joined from territory never controlled by the SDF, did so at great personal risk. Because these Arab men and women remained within the SDF for as long as they did, also suggests a continuing commitment to the organization.
Rejecting Centralized Government
Ahmed was born in 1992 in Ras al-Ayn, a mixed Arab-Kurdish town along the border with Turkey. He belongs to the Tay tribe, which was used by the regime in Damascus to suppress the Kurdish uprising in Qamishli in 2004, when he was about 12 years old. His parents were farmers and his father had been conscripted into the Syrian Arab Army. Ahmed attended university for a year and claimed no prior political affiliation. In June 2016, when he was 24 years old, he joined the SDF. He was later promoted to become a leader of a unit, and fought in battles in Manbij, Raqqa, Shaddadi, Tabqa and Deir Ezzor. Among his reasons for joining the SDF, Ahmed wrote: “To fight for my nation and defeat all forms of terrorism and because of the Turkish threat, and fight for our land.” He also wrote, “All members of SDF do not want a centralized government. We don’t want Turkey to get anywhere near our land or our revolution.” The fact that Ahmed belongs to a tribe that was used to suppress the Kurdish uprising in 2004 and yet was still recruited and then promoted within the ranks of the SDF suggests that either the SDF has been able to overcome historical grievances and establish trust between ethnic communities or that Arab opposition to the Turkish occupation of Syria now overrides other concerns, or perhaps both.
Liberating Syria from ISIS Oppression
Mohammed was born in Raqqa in 1995 as a member of the Abu Ragab tribe. His father was a trader and had been conscripted into the country’s military, the Syrian Arab Army. Mohamed listed no prior political affiliation and had not finished high school, perhaps due to the conflict. In March 2013, Raqqa was captured by the armed opposition groups and held by various FSA brigades until ISIS took full control of the city in January 2014. Mohammed joined the SDF in January 2016 from the city of Raqqa when he was 21 years old. He took part in the liberation of his own city, as well as battles in Tabqa and Deir Ezzor. As the capital of the Islamic State in Syria, Raqqa was enormously important both in terms of its symbolism and strategic importance. Public executions were being staged on the city’s main square and Yezidis were traded in slave markets. Mohammed’s decision to join the SDF at that time was enormously risky: It would be another one and a half years before Raqqa was liberated from ISIS. He said: “I am a citizen who used to be oppressed before joining the SDF. I saw suffering at the hands of ISIS, but I have seen a bright light from the SDF. And I see that all the countries of the world have to come together to eliminate terrorism.”
Establishing a “Long Lasting Democracy”
Mona was born in Homs to a middle-class family in the year 2000. As the third largest city in Syria, Homs became a key battleground between the forces of the Asad regime and the armed opposition. She was about 11 years old when the regime began the siege of the city in May 2011. Three years later, the opposition left and the regime reclaimed it. Mona attended high school but never finished. In March 2017, when she was 17 years old, she joined the YPJ.[12] She fought in the battle to liberate Raqqa. In the margins of the survey questionnaire, she wanted to convey an additional message: “I want the Coalition to stay and protect the area and establish a long-lasting democracy.”
Ending Turkey’s Colonization of Syrian Lands
Farid was born in the northeastern city of Al Hasakah in 1988. His family belonged to the Tufaehy tribe. Farid had finished high school and listed no prior political affiliation. His father was a public sector employee. In May 2015, Farid joined the YPG, even before the creation of the SDF. At this time, just a few months after Kobane had been recaptured from ISIS, the YPG was still a Kurdish-majority force. Farid was then 27 years old. He fought in battles in Al Hasakah, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Al Sheddadi. On the back page of the survey Farid advocated for the creation of a security zone between Syria and Turkey “so we can achieve stability in the region.” He also demanded “the returning of all lands that have been colonized by the Turkish occupation.” In contrast to other cities closer to the Turkish border including Afrin and Ras al-Ayn, Al Hasakah has not been occupied by Turkey or its proxy forces. And yet, as comments by Farid and others make clear, Syrians of both Kurdish and Arab ethnicities viewed the Turkish encroachment on sovereign Syrian territory as a form of colonization.
The SDF Should “Manage Syria in the Next Stage”
Hassan was born in Aleppo in 1999 to a middle-class family. His father was a businessman and his mother a nurse. Hassan finished high school and then joined the SDF from his hometown of Aleppo, although the city had never been under its control. As a teenager he would have witnessed how Aleppo was ruled by both the regime and by armed rebel groups. In January 2017, just one month after the Russian-backed Syrian army had recaptured Aleppo, Hassan joined the SDF. He was 18 years old at the time. The mere fact that someone from Aleppo would join the SDF suggests that the SDF has some appeal even in areas it does not control. In the case of Hassan, it would seem to indicate that he, as an Arab from Aleppo, preferred to leave his family and live under the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration than under Asad. Furthermore, his comments indicate that he views the SDF not just as a military force to defeat ISIS, but as a form of governance. He wrote, “I propose to the alliance to strengthen the support to the SDF because it is the only force that confronted and was able to end the terrorism represented by ISIS and it is trusted. And as you have seen there is freedom in the areas they control. The opinion of the community in the SDF is that it is an active force and able to manage Syria in the next stage.”
YPJ Must “Continue Fighting Until Women are Freed”
Rania was born in 1999 in Deir Ezzor, an eastern governorate along the border with Iraq. Her family belongs to the Ageedat tribe, one of the largest tribes in the area, which also has members living in Iraq. This region is commonly referred to in Syria as the “remote provinces” and is distinctly “tribal, rural, and marginalized.”[13] It is also where ISIS had its last stronghold, in Baghouz. Rania never attended school. As a teenage girl she lived under the sway of ISIS for at least two years. She reported that one member of her family had been killed by ISIS. In 2018, when Rania was just 19 years old, she decided to join the YPJ. At the time, this was an exceedingly brave decision for anyone, given that ISIS still controlled Baghouz. But as a teenage Arab woman from Deir Ezzor, she would have likely had to convince members of her family and tribe to allow her to enlist. As an additional comment on the survey, she wrote: “We want the YPJ to continue fighting until women are freed.”
Overcoming Sectarianism
The Syrian Democratic Forces is the only armed group in Syria that has a policy of not discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or gender, which has allowed the SDF to develop into a truly multi-ethnic and multi-religious force. This radical egalitarianism clearly appealed to non-Arab minorities who suffered under decades of pan-Arabism promoted by the Baathist regime of the Asad family. Kurds from the far corners of Kurdistan were galvanized by the promise of the Rojava revolution. What is less well appreciated is that Arabs have also embraced these ideals and practices.
The Syrian Democratic Forces is the only armed group in Syria that has a policy of not discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or gender, which has allowed the SDF to develop into a truly multi-ethnic and multi-religious force.
The Arab men and women discussed here have diverse class and educational backgrounds. They come from territory controlled by the SDF as well as territory controlled by the Asad regime. What they have in common is that they all joined the Kurdish-led SDF—rather than other armed opposition groups, most led by Arabs—and they joined the SDF at considerable risk to themselves. Why? One reason is because they all appear to support at least one or more of the key ideas inherent in Democratic Confederalism, which guides the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration and the SDF. These key principles include decentralization instead of rule by the central government in Damascus, a sense of brother or sisterhood among ethnic groups instead of sectarianism, gender equality and rejection of ISIS and other forms of religious extremism. Finally, I found that a large number of Arab respondents rejected the Turkish occupation of Syria and demanded that the land be returned to Syria. Contrary to analysts who portray the conflict as one solely between Turkey and the Kurds, my survey shows that Arab SDF members also view the Turkish incursions and expanding Turkish presence as an illegitimate foreign occupation of Syrian land.
The future remains uncertain. Much depends on whether Russia and Iran will continue to back Asad in his quest to retake all Syrian territory and whether the US-led Coalition will maintain its presence in the northeast. The SDF faces ongoing threats from the Asad regime, Turkey and ISIS cells. The Turkish intervention in October 2019, however, did not lead to a disintegration of the SDF, or even to any serious defections, as some had predicted.[14]
Analysts have thus far tended to ignore those Arabs who support the political project in north and east Syria. Several observers have amplified the voices of those Arabs who are critical of it, perhaps because that narrative fits more easily into the simple trope of sectarianism. When the SDF’s policy of non-discrimination is seen in the context of the ideological transformation of the PYD-aligned movement from one that promoted Kurdish nationalism and separatism to one based on the notions of co-existence and decentralization, it should come as no surprise that the PYD’s political project would appeal to non-Kurds—or at least appear as more compatible with their own views. Understanding the dynamics that undermine sectarianism in the Autonomous Administration—or perhaps how it is being overcome—is a crucial analytical task and political challenge.
[Amy Austin Holmes is a fellow at the Wilson Center and former associate professor at the American University in Cairo and visiting scholar at Harvard University.]
[7] Written Testimony of Charles R. Lister, Senior Fellow and Director of Countering Extremism and Terrorism, Middle East Institute to the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs Middle East and North Africa Sub-Committee, February 6, 2018, p. 5.
[9] Interview with the head of a large Arab tribe in eastern Syria, July 2019.
[10] The word Rojava is derived from the word “roj” which means “sun” in Kurmanci. Rojava means Western Kurdistan, or the land where the sun sets. Kurds refer to the other three parts of Kurdistan as Rojhelat, or Eastern Kurdistan (in Iran), Bakur or Northern Kurdistan (in Turkey), and Başûr or Southern Kurdistan (in Iraq).
Amy Austin Holmes “Arabs Across Syria Join the Kurdish-Led Syrian Democratic Forces,” Middle East Report Online, July 28, 2020.
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Major damage inflicted to Girê Spî farmers due to fires mostly caused by Turkey
The Agriculture Directorate of Girê Spî canton revealed the damage caused to farmers as a result of deliberate and unintentional fires broken out during the current year, noting that 70% of them were caused by the attacks of the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries.
23 Jul 2020, Thu – 07:022020-07-23T07:02:00 AIN ISSA
Large areas of farmers’ crops in Girê Spî / Tel Abyad canton were subjected to fires before and during the harvest season this year, especially in villages along the lines of contact with the Turkish enemy.
Girê Spî Canton Council formed committees specialized in cooperation and coordination with the Directorate of Agriculture to uncover and document the damage caused to farmers by these fires.
The committees of the Agriculture Directorate based in Ain Issa counted the burnt trees; 615 dunums of wheat, 9,042 dunums of barley, 10 dunums of coriander, while the number of fruit trees burnt reached 3,184 trees, the majority of which were “olive”. In addition, the burning of 1,315 meters of hoses that are used for the purpose of agriculture was documented.
The Co-chair of the Directorate of Agriculture, Abdullah al-Khalil, told Hawar news agency that the burned areas are in al-Jarn town, Selok district, Ain Issa district and its towns.
Moreover, the committees that inspected the farmers’ affected land areas were unable during their work to reach areas of contact lines with the Turkish enemy, of which large areas were burned as a result of the deliberate arson by the mercenaries of the Turkish occupation.
In this regard, Abdullah al-Khalil indicated that they relied on counting these areas (located on the seam lines) based on books certified by the commune in those areas or the adoption of last year tables. He explained that they counted in Ain Issa only through this method 77,463 dunums in the villages of Moallaq, Saida, al-Loubeida, and al-Jehbal.”
He revealed that their estimates show that 70% of the burned areas are the result of the Turkish attacks, “burning directly or through artillery shells that they launch on these villages on an almost daily basis.”
He concluded his speech by saying that the results of the statements their committees concluded with their statistics have been submitted to the Economic and Agriculture Body in the Euphrates region for the purpose of consideration and evaluation.
It should be noted that the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries have intensified targeting and burning farmers’ crops in the countryside of Girê Spî to damage the farmers’ crops in order to starve them and hit the economy of the region.
Çiçek Kobane’s mother: “Our daughter is detained in Turkish prison under inhuman conditions”
updated on
During the offensive launched on October 9th, 2019, in NE Syria, by the Turkish state, the Jihadist group under the flag of the Syrian National Army ( SNA), invaded Serêkaniyê and Tel Abyad (Girê Spî) regions.
The city of Serêkaniyê which was liberated by the YPG forces and taken from Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist in 2013, has been occupied and is now under control Turkish state and so-called SNA.
Local journalist Diyar Ahmed, affirms that: “[The SNA factions] don’t have a well-organized structure. There are 20 armed groups in the city, and they fight against each other. The only system which is there has been imposed by Turkey.”
The humanitarian impact of the war has been severe. There have been 250,000 people displaced from their homes, dozens of neighborhoods and crucial infrastructure destroyed by shelling and airstrikes, and the irretrievable loss of human life.
Attacks in Serêkaniyê on October 2019
On the 17th October, the so-called “ceasefire agreement” was signed and announced following the USA and Turkish negotiations. Five days later another agreement between Turkey and Russia was announced and the so-called “security zone” was put under their control.
Never the less the Turkish attacks on NE Syria haven’t stopped. Crimes and atrocities are constantly committed against the population.
On a daily basis, villages are bombed and thousands of hectares of fields are burned. Many civilians have been hurt and killed, including numerous children. In this occupied region, houses of people have been plundered and women kidnaped, raped and killed.
The Turkish state and its Jihadist proxies, through this barbaric ethnic cleansing practice, are forcing demographic changes in the region and opening space to all kinds of terrorist groups in this area.
During this occupation, Çiçek Kobane, was in Rojava, her homeland, when the Turkish invaded and occupied Gire Spî. She was wounded and captured on the 21st of November by one of the allied jihadist groups and sent to a Turkish prison.
This fact also proves the direct connection between the Turkish state and Jihadist groups. Video of her being captured was sent directly to her family and also spread through social media.
Çiçek Kobane before being captured
We have conducted an interview with her mother who after 7 years living in Turkey, has come back to NE Syria:
What can you tell us about the current situation of your daughter and how she ended up in a Turkish prison?
“In the beginning, we didn’t have have any information for 4 days and when she disappeared, we thought she must have been killed. After four days a video was sen to my husband’s phone of her being captured. We immediately also informed everyone we knew in Rojava and started looking for her.
At this time we were living in Turkey, however, we were able to find a Kurdish lawyer and went to a government establishment with her picture. We were afraid of also getting arrested but wanted to find out where she was and confirm if she was alive.”
In the time of corona, many prisoners were released but she and other political prisoners were not. She was wounded and because of this, she should’ve been released.
There is constant oppression on the Kurdish population and their rights within the Turkish state. The Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East and one of the most persecuted minorities of our time. Nowhere is their future more threatened than in Turkey where Kurds are one-quarter of the population.
After some days in the hospital and another week Urfa prison Çiçek was brought to Hilwan prison without any medical care and still with metal in her leg.
How are her health and psychology could you communicate with her?
“Her leg is in a really bad state. She can’t move around properly, walk, or change her clothes. She’s really worried about her health. We’ve been struggling to get her medical treatment for her leg but for 6 months, but she still hasn’t received any. She’s unable to be self-sufficient and this is affecting her psychology. The biggest priority is for her leg to be treated.
In the time of corona, many prisoners were released but she and other political prisoners were not. She was wounded and because of this, she should’ve been released.
All visitations were suspended and no precautions against the virus were taken; not even medical checks.”
We received threats and have been humiliated. My husband and two sons were arrested and tortured. They even broke my husband’s fingers.
Turkey has also been implementing various measures to fight COVID-19 within prisons across the country, including a highly contested special amnesty law that enabled the release of some 90 thousand convicts.
According to reports by human rights and prison monitoring organizations, the conditions of prisons have worsened with the pandemic¹.
Turkish authorities do not follow principles and guidelines specified by the World Health Organization, the Committee for Prevention of Torture (CPT), or the human rights commissioners of the United Nations and the Council of Europe. The lives of prisoners are highly at risk.
How often were you able to see Çiçek? How your family was treated?
“We could visit her once a month and speak on the phone once a week for 10 minutes. We’ve lived with the constant pressure of the Turkish police being in our house every month. We received threats and have been humiliated. My husband and two sons were arrested and tortured. They even broke my husband’s fingers.
Our lawyer was also arrested and received the same treatment.
Because of this constant pressure and threat, three months ago we decided to leave Turkey and come to Rojava, where we’re originally from. We haven’t seen our daughter since.”
The Turkish government has not suspended it’s anti-Kurdish policies even under the conditions of a global pandemic. On the contrary, the government is using the pandemic as an opportunity to further repress Kurdish democratic institutions; their municipalities in particular.
Do you want to send any message to the international population?
“ Human rights organisations should not remain silent, because Turkey is violating international law. Cicek was not arrested in Turkey. She was wounded and kidnapped in her country. She was kidnapped in front of the world by jihadist mercenaries and handed over to Turkey. This makes it obvious that Turkey cooperates with jihaddist groups and supports them.
The trial of our daughter has been set for July 28, 2020. We want the human rights organisations to be aware of her situation and intervene to help her to come back home to her family.”
A commander of the jihadist militia “Faylaq al-Sham” was killed in an explosion in Afrin, Northern Syria. At least ten people were injured.
ANF
AFRIN
Sunday, 19 Jul 2020, 15:13
A militia leader was killed on Sunday in an explosion in the Turkish occupation zone Afrin in northwest Syria. At least ten other people, including several Islamists, were injured. The explosion was caused by a mine laid by previously unknown persons on the road to Jindires district. The explosive device detonated during the passage of the vehicle of Hossein Bedra, a leading member of the jihadist militia “Faylaq al-Sham” and commander of the so-called SNA (Syrian National Army), the proxy invasion troops of Turkey.
The Afrin region has been occupied by Turkey since March 2018. Since the beginning of the occupation, human rights violations and war crimes have been on the agenda in what was once the safest region of all Syria. In addition to a classic colonial policy, Turkey continues to practice a policy of ethnic cleansing, which has driven hundreds of thousands of people from their ancestral settlements. The demographic change in favour of Turkey and its Islamist invasion troops, crimes such as kidnapping, torture, extortion and murder are happening with the de facto approval of the international community.
It is still unclear whether today’s attack in Afrin was an act of retaliation or should be seen as the result of conflicts within the SNA militias. After the Turkish invasion, two groups, the Afrin Liberation Forces (HRE) and “Operation Wrath of Olives” formed in 2018, which carry out actions on the Turkish Jihadist occupation forces and have set themselves the goal of liberating Afrin from occupation. In recent weeks, however, there have also been repeated tensions between the individual occupying militias.
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Turkey detains niece of Syrian Kurdish official Salih Muslim:
BEIRUT,— Turkey has detained the niece of an influential Syrian Kurdish politician, himself wanted by Ankara, the family said Sunday.
Dalia Mahmoud Muslim is a niece of Salih Muslim, who is close to the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).
She was “handed over to the Turkish authorities and their intelligence services” after travelling to neighbouring Iraq’s Kurdish region six months ago for medical treatment, her father Mahmoud Muslim said.
Writing on Facebook, he said his daughter had been preparing to return to Syria and that her apparent transfer to Turkish custody had “surprised” the family.
The Iraqi Kurdish authorities shoulder “responsibility for her kidnapping or handing her over to Turkish intelligence”, he said, adding that any words attributed to her were “false” and obtained “under pressure”.
Official Turkish Anadolu had on Saturday reported a different version of her detention. Citing security sources, it said that she had “handed herself in” to Turkish security forces on July 15 in a southern province of Turkey.
Salih Muslim was himself brieflydetained in Prague in 2018 and Turkey demanded he be extradited, on the basis of an arrest warrant Ankara issued two years earlier in connection with an attack in Ankara that killed 29 people in February 2016.
He denied any link to the attack, and was released.
The Kurds established their semi-autonomous administration region in northeastern Syria, the vast stretches of northeastern Syria, that border Turkey during the ongoing civil war.
The administration is viewed with hostility by Turkey, which sees the main Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG, as “terrorists” and an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Dalia Muslim’s father says she belongs to the YPG’s female contingent.
Salih Muslim was long co-chair of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the YPG’s political arm.
The worldwide-respected PYD-led Autonomous Administration in Syrian Kurdistan has a secular decentralized self-rule, where equality between men and women, direct democracy, and environmental responsibility are emphasized.
In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish and Arab authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, the de facto army of the autonomous Kurdish region, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Syrian Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq.
‘The Rojava Revolution is also the revolution of the Armenians’
The Rojava Revolution has left its 8th year behind. Those who live in the region and witness the revolution say that they were reborn on 19 July.
MUSTAFA ÇOBAN
DIRBESIYÊ
Sunday, 19 Jul 2020, 12:34
One of the witnesses of the Rojava Revolution since the beginning is Şexmus Ehmed Fetah, an Armenian living in Dirbêsiyê.
Fetah, also known as Bavê Zana in the region where he lives, is originally from Bitlis in North Kurdistan. Fetah’s family was forced to emigrate to the Rojava region to flee massacre during the 1915 Armenian Genocide.
Fetah said that he participated in the revolution with his children and family and added: “We joined the revolution since the beginning. We found ourselves in this revolution. This is our revolution, the revolution towards freedom. This revolution is not the revolution of one people, but of all the oppressed people. As Armenians, we saw it as our own revolution. When the revolution started, we saw that this was the revolution of all peoples and beliefs: Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Yazidi, Arabs and Alevi. So it belongs to all the peoples living in this region. If it had been a revolution involving only one people, maybe we would not get involved. We owe this revolution, which embraces all peoples.”
Describing the Rojava Revolution as “the historical revenge of the Armenians”, Fetah said: “The Rojava Revolution is my family’s and our history’s revenge. It marks a new century for us. It was as if we entered a new world with this revolution.”
Commemorating the thousands of martyrs that sacrificed their lives for this cause, Fetah said that they owe it to the martyrs to protect the gains of the revolution.
Reminding that the Turkish state has plundered and destroyed all the religious sites in the region, Fetah added: “The occupying Turkish state burned down the Armenian settlements in Serêkaniyê and Til Temir. Some Armenian women were kidnapped and their families were asked to pay a ransom. They were killed by mercenaries saying ‘Allah-u Akbar’. These mercenaries deceived many people under the name of religion. The Turkish state was let groups such as ISIS and al Nusra to enter this region every day. Erdogan is representing ISIS; he is the sultan himself. If this revolution is crashed, we’ll all be crashed.”
Şexmus Ehmed reminded the SIHA attacks against Dirbêsiyê on 16 July 2020 and said: “The people are afraid to go out on the streets. They [Turkey] want to empty the city by targeting civilians. They want to confuse the people using the differences of faith, trying to put Muslims against Christians. All this comes from the history of the Ottomans. They carried out dozens of massacres.”
Addressing the Armenian people, Şexmus Ehmed Fetah said: “Know who you are and be with each other. See yourself as the owners of this revolution. Those who are far from this revolution are far from Armenia. Because this revolution is our revenge.”
The imprisoned leader of the Kurdish freedom movementAbdullah Öcalan writes that capitalist modernity prevents us from asking a fundamental question: “how to live?” Under the “ideological monopoly” of liberalism, we are sneered at, ostracised or violently put back in our place any time we try to resist the “universal rules” which hegemonise our lives.
As militants of the Rojava revolution – which began eight years ago today – we have the opportunity to transgress these rules, and seek new ways to live. But before we can begin to seek an answer to Öcalan’s question, we must ask ourselves another: “how do I feel?”
The freedom of checkpoints.
Towards the end of my time in the West, this question was easy for me to answer. I woke up feeling quite bad; then at some point I had a drink; then another; then I started to feel good; then very good; then at some point – bliss – I felt nothing any more.
Alcohol dependency is one blunt example of a broader set of cultural, social, economic and – especially – patriarchal practices which limit the emotions we are able or permitted to feel. Love between a man and a woman must be lust; we must feel happy when with our family; we must be greedy with our time and resources if we are to pay the rent. We must drink to feel good: we must feel good, we’re drunk.
Of course, the same state-capitalist global hegemony affects our mood here too in North and East Syria (the formal name for the autonomous regions still better-known by the Kurdish synecdoche Rojava). It still surrounds us, still stands tall in the public consciousness and stalks through the cities here, still fuels the nightmares and daydreams of local people and international militants alike. But here, I and others have found new space to feel.
Jineology, the easy-to-grasp but hard-to-practice “science of women” founded by Öcalan and studied and practiced in academies across Rojava, places great value on subjective experience, irreducible to objective assessment. Practicing criticism and self-criticism, we learn to criticise our comrades not just for failing to do the washing up, but for their mood as they do the dishes; for the atmosphere they create as they walk in a room; for their failure to articulate their own emotions to their comrades. We consider emotion not as localised in the individual, but as something shared between us in our communal life.
For me, this process has sometimes been as simple as noting the impact of other factors on my mood which I was numbed to in the West. There, I mocked the idea that diet could make any real impact on my mood, one good meal not making any real dent in the amphetamine onslaught that invariably followed. Here I have learned, among other revelations, what a difference is made by an unlooked-for egg in the morning.
Other emotions are harder to grasp, easier to fumble. As militants of this revolution, we are encouraged to ‘give meaning’ to the minutiae of life, to remind ourselves that tens of thousands of our comrades died to make our life here possible. We should grant revolutionary significance to our life in its smallest details, from the morning egg to cleaning the toilet to the way we use our free time.
Such an emotional response is not to be achieved through effort of will alone. If the word ‘martyr’ is too quickly invoked, as it sometimes is here, it ends up feeling cheap. This is an error many new international militants make, which I made, striving to imbue our toothpaste with the mystical value of the blood of ten thousand martyrs.
Our toothpaste, like all our groceries, is delivered by a logistics truck, making weekly rounds of the civil institutions to bring us our daily essentials, just as it would if we were on the frontline in Deir ez-Zor. This system does away with some of the stress attendant to the wage-relation in the West – fuck, I’ll never make it to the supermarket before it closes; fuck, my card’s declined; fuck, I forgot to buy toothpaste – time-consuming, psychologically taxing, above all boring. It is an alteration to the baseline reality of experience, opening new space in which to think, share and feel.
So the toothpaste does have special meaning: but only in relation to our comrades driving the logistic truck and keeping the supply-lines into Rojava open despite the Turkish-enforced embargo, sometimes, yes, at the cost of their lives.
Likewise, it is easy here to indulge in grandiose moments of emotional grandstanding – the manful sniff of the air on the earthwork berm overlooking a pile of dead Isis fighters, the pose struck in the mirror late at night in borrowed combat trousers, the whole People’s Protection Units/Women’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) fantasy as indulged in by movie-producers and Western anarchists who know nothing of what these things cost.
Such emotions – freedom, pride, honour – are indeed in the air here, but they are not to be found so cheaply, on such an individual basis.
Take freedom, for example. Rather than the sports car on the open road of American fantasy, here one feels free because one knows there will always be a lift, because if I need to travel from Qamishlo to Kobane for my work I can present myself at the nearest checkpoint and hitch rides from comrade to comrade until I reach my destination, with smiles and small-talk and cups of chai all the way, because our comrades are everywhere, manning all the checkpoints.
It is not the solipsistic moments snatched from some imagined future biopic which are important, I want to say, but those where one feels part of a great network of solidarity expanding out in time and space.
On the abstract level, I have never managed to give the same ‘meaning’ to a cup of chai tea here as I would to my first beer of the day in England: my failing, perhaps. But then I think of the chai shared with old friends as our paths crossed unexpectedly in a house near the border, with the Turkish invasion expected to break upon us any day; of the stories we swapped like gifts, each not expecting to see the other whole again; of the extra hour we snatched together as the beans proved slow to come to the boil on the hob, and how precious those moments were.
Statehood and sensibility.
Such moments are not only the result of changes in the fabric of society instigated by the Kurdish freedom movement under the umbrella of the Rojava revolution. They also emerge from the local culture of warmth, camaraderie and hospitality. Such characteristics are assigned to almost every culture outside the imperial core by travel-agents and travel-writers: pace Öcalan, the backpackers’ cliché has its truth.
5,000 years ago, Öcalan writes, people lived communally in small egalitarian communities not yet torn apart by the masculine ego which finds its greatest expression in the nation-state. Öcalan sees remnants of this ‘jiyana komînal’ – communal life – in the villages of Kurdistan and rural regions of the Global South more generally, and argues for its restoration into our desiccated society.
These values structure the work being done to restructure society in Rojava, not only as basis and aspiration, but also as necessary condition. You cannot ask for directions without someone clambering into the car to see you to your destination, nor stop off at someone’s house without being press-ganged into staying the night.
Here we arrive at an important question. North and East Syria is full of international militants feeling complicated feelings – and writing about them online. But what about the ordinary local people? How do they feel? How does state capitalism – and the attempts to shake it off now underway here – mitigate their emotions?
It’s not a question which can be answered in a few words. Broadly speaking, the public mood here is sentimental, in all the contrariness of the term: sickly sweets, oversized plush toys, bad phone graphics of hearts and roses, impassioned bouts of tears over matters trivial and life-altering alike (fingers fluttering at the breast and tongue ululating in the throat), fierce and overweening love of one’s land, courtship, blood feuds, veneration of martyrs, the elasticisation of the term ‘martyr’ to cover those dead by disease or road accidents, attachment to causes larger than oneself, militarism (pure sentimentality), idolisation of the family, swift empathy with strangers, shame, dignity. Lives spent swimming in a warm bath of emotions, like organs bathing in interstitial fluid.
An abundance of feeling is more present in society here than in the West, but constrained, mitigated and distorted by deep-rooted patriarchy (the blood feuds), the steady creep of capitalism (the plush toys), and war. The weddings here used to last three days and the funerals a week, grandmothers have told me as we chain-smoke together on the sidelines of such festivities: now, the funerals last three days, the weddings just one.
Such observations are in line with Öcalan’s analysis, and applicable to many other societies outside of North and East Syria. But here, the general lessening of shared emotion was abrogated by the outbreak of the Rojava revolution.
Exiting the state of exception.
There were few bullets fired on the night of 19 July 2012, as Syrian Arab Army units withdrew and the YPG entered Kobane. The price would be paid later, in running battles against the regime, the bitter campaign against Isis and other jihadist groups, and the ongoing struggle against Turkish occupation: but in those first hours, the major cities were seized without a fight. All that changed were the people manning the checkpoints, the flags over the squares, and the names of the cities.
Local people have told me of being moved to tears as they approached a checkpoint flying YPG colours for the first time, never having thought this day would come: ask any Kurd here how it feels to call their city by its Kurdish name. The emotional weight of that day is still felt here, even if it is forgotten in the West, with the people of Rojava constantly asked to prove anew their ‘right’ to dignity, freedom and self-determination, the hoops held out for them to jump through by liberal governments, anarchists and communists impossibly far apart.
Rojava’s would-be supporters may have forgotten this day: its enemies have not.
The philosopher Giorgio Agamben argues the capitalist nation-state achieves hegemony through the necessary and permanent exclusion of certain populations, voiding them of political agency and leaving them to live what he calls the “barren life” – Kurds in Turkey, migrants in Europe, women everywhere. The liberal state proscribes certain limits to its violence, only to suspend them in these ‘exceptional’ cases, which then become the new ordinary. “The rule, suspending itself, gives rise to the exception,” and whole populations are left to suffer under a permanent and increasingly global ‘state of emergency’.
Gassed in Iraq, executed in Iran, tortured in Syria, driven from burning villages in Turkey, the Kurdish people have learned the lesson of state violence. In many ways, Rojava prior to the revolution could have been a case study for Agamben – in Syria, the Kurdish people were written out of state politics to the point that hundreds of thousands of them were literally denied identity papers. Like Agamben, Öcalan came to believe that any state – however revolutionary in intention – would inevitably bring cruelty and oppression against the excluded minorities within its borders.
But what happens when the state takes the logical next step and literally withdraws from the unwanted border cities filled with easily-expendable Kurds? The Syrian Arab Republic spilled incredible amounts of blood to keep Arab-majority cities in its grasp: that it withdrew before a ragtag militia like the YPG perversely shows how little value it placed on the lives of its nominal citizens in the Kurdish regions. What happens when the state of exception consumes itself, and passes into statelessness altogether?
This question was answered by the Kurdish liberation movement in its Syrian manifestation, lean, hard and organised from long years of struggle, deeply-rooted in the villages and working-class neighbourhoods of Rojava. Following Öcalan’s thought on the nation-state, they refused the two obvious paths before them: neither bloody smash-and-grab expropriations of land in pursuit of centralised socialism, nor the establishment of an oil-rich client state like that across the border in the devolved Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), Kurdish-nationalist in name, boot-licking in practice.
From the outset, the Autonomous Administration here has vocally expressed its desire to organise society in a different way, in a commune-based federation with as little top-down control as possible and guaranteed representation of minority communities. From the outset, the imperialist powers which variously besiege, invade, threaten, form alliances and negotiate with the autonomous region have refused to recognise it as such.
The people of North and East Syria, their political representatives in the Autonomous Administration and Syrian Democratic Council and their military representatives in the Syrian Democratic Forces are still typically referred to as ‘the Kurds’. This lazy shorthand elides the distinction between the KRI Peshmerga forces who fled and left the Yazidis to be slaughtered by Isis on Mount Sinjar, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and YPG units which liberated the Yazidi people from ongoing genocide.
More importantly, the synecdoche indicates how hegemonic global powers are constantly seeking to press North and East Syria into ethno-nationalist form. The ‘Kurds’ are famous: they are good; they are secular; their men are brave and their women sexy; they are like us.
With millions of Arabs centered in cities like Raqqa, Manbij and Tabqa, sizeable Assyrian, Armenian and Chaldean minorities and small Turkmen and Chechen populations too, it is likely that Kurds do not even make up a majority of the population in the autonomous regions of North and East Syria. (Many would doubtless be shocked to realise that ‘the Kurds’, like the Arabs, are Sunni Muslims). But the world wants Rojava to be the new Kurdish state – it cannot understand what is happening here otherwise.
Likewise, the liberal press insists on understanding North and East Syria through a primarily-military lens. Following the bloody Turkish occupation of two border cities in October 2019, a tentative deal was reached with Damascus to bring Syrian Arab Army and Russian troops into position on the border to head off further Turkish attacks. Foreign correspondents fled overnight, pausing only to publish weepy op-eds about the “end of the revolution.”
They ignored what they were told by the authorities here, that the region retains its political, administrative and security autonomy: that every single checkpoint remains in our hands, that a change-over of flags along the border does not mean the undoing of all that has been won here in the last eight years. This misconception, repeated by radicals as well as the mainstream press, is borne of a wilful failure to understand the revolution here in its richness and fullness.
To this day, the US is pressuring the Kurds of North and East Syria to forge a union with the KRI, even as the KRI aids and abets Turkish war-crimes, even as the Syrian regime likewise attempts to buy the Kurds off with the promise of guaranteed language and cultural rights. Washington and Damascus alike want the Kurds to give up on their aim of multi-ethnic confederation, to reduce Rojava to just another ethno-nationalist project.
Through their refusal of the state form, the people of North and East Syria defiantly place themselves outside the biopolitical consensus, choosing to continue living bare lives without protection under international law. 11,000 dead in the defeat of Isis and the YPG, YPJ and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are not invited to the negotiating table by the great powers, not even named, UN spokespeople instead alluding glibly to “our partners in the Middle East”. Like the Kurds under the regime, the people are denied identification.
Here, their names and photos are emblazoned on every wall: as far as the world is concerned, all those 11,000 sons and daughters are buried in the tomb of the unknown soldier.
YPG iPhone cases and Isis amnesties.
No wonder people here experience lack, craving the security and comfort which statehood would bring. Those who do not engage with the structures of the Autonomous Administration keep their distance because participation leaves them feeling bare, exposed, outside the law. I have spoken to scores of people here who still chose to send their children to regime-backed universities, as opposed to the exam-free spaces of cooperative learning opened by the Autonomous Administration. Despite the slaughter of the last eight years, a qualification from the regime has infinitely more international legitimacy than those signed off by the Autonomous Administration, effectively worthless outside the autonomous regions.
The pressure to conform to statehood operates on all levels, from the concerned mother wanting what’s best for her children to the geopolitical decisions taken by the Autonomous Administration. In defending itself and its people, the revolutionary movement is necessarily forced to compromise, to take on state form. Such actions are often described with the Turkish loan word mêcbur – the same word you would use to describe the situation in a chess game where there is only one possible move to make.
Given the embargo, the smugglers and border traders must be allowed to continue their work so that medicine, cooking oil, sugar and other vital supplies can reach the people of Rojava: mêcbur. As such the economy remains capitalised, prices driven up by black-market Turkish goods. A friend has documented some of these knock-off efforts on Twitter, the ‘brands of Rojava’ bathetic in their failure to match up to the real thing.
The YPG-liveried iPhone cases and bootleg Starbucks in Kobane city center illustrate a larger point. This revolution is at its weakest in its moments of dewletbûn, or becoming-a-state, when conditions compel it to take on the form of the state it can never be. Instances of dewletbûn range from the bathetic (the short-lived cooperative which tried in vain to introduce ‘Rojava Cola’ as an alternative to the omnipresent Pepsi) to the troubling (training courses on how to run detention centers delivered by the American intelligence services.) These efforts, too, leave one with a sense of lack, an unfulfillable desire for the security and power of statehood.
Conversely, the revolution is at its most vital when it does not try to recoup these qualities, but goes its own way, achieving affects more vital and profound, more difficult to articulate to the West.
The defeat of Isis necessitated a highly-disciplined, centrally-commanded fighting force: mêcbur. The emotion which unites ordinary Arabs, Kurds and others in the autonomous regions more than any other is hatred of the shared enemy Isis, and delight in their defeat. Here lurks that inevitable danger which Agamben and Öcalan both describe: the people inevitably coalescing against an enemy who admittedly did everything possible to put themselves outside the law.
Yet there is another form of pride present here also, in how well captured Isis fighters are treated, in distinction to both Isis’ own practices and those of the nation-states who spent billions to bomb the caliphate into ruins only to cut off all support as the bombs stopped falling. It is in these moments, when you meet the 20-year-old Kurdish woman responsible for a camp of Isis detainees, loved by them and loving them though three of her family were slaughtered in Kobane, that you can see a way forward out of the mêcbur mess we are in.
Such efforts to do things differently, the education programs for Isis prisoners and women’s houses in the refugee camps and managed releases of convicted Isis members back to their tribes, have largely been ignored in the West. It is the Western pundits who clamour bloodthirstily for Isis fighters to be executed or left to fester in desert camps, and the Autonomous Administration here which waives its hard-won right to revenge.
In their refusal to exercise violence against captured Isis members, the autonomous regions step back from statehood as it is inevitably understood in this region. Rojava can never be a state – if it were to start trying and sentencing international Isis members, its judgements would be not recognised by international law anyway – and nor should it try to be.
Choosing without a choice.
By articulating the unavoidable mêcbur move as though it were a choice, the people here have found a way to fill this lack. More than a defence mechanism, this constitutes a reclamation of selfhood. When Isis closed in on Kobane and Turkey lined its tanks on the border to block the only way out, there was no option save a seemingly-hopeless resistance: but our comrades fought as though there was a choice, proudly, freely, in a resistance which won them global support and turned the tide of the war.
Or, as political leader Saleh Muslim said last year when Trump first announced his intention to withdraw from North and East Syria, flinging the door wide open to a Turkish invasion: “We did not call the Americans here, and we are not sending them away […] We won’t beg anyone not to attack us, or beg to be protected. We are here. We can handle our own defence.” A total lack of control over the capitalist and material forces pressing in on all sides becomes itself a point of pride, the people greeting their barren status with arms spread wide – and at this point zero, paradoxically, a space of resistance is opened in which humanity may be reclaimed.
Agamben typifies the last-ditch resistance of the barren life on the most individual scale possible, localised in the mortified bodies of Guantanamo Bay hunger strikers kept in permanent isolation. Members of the Kurdish freedom movement recently used the same method in Turkey, to win visitation rights for Öcalan following years of isolation. Their victory was achieved through what Agamben takes little account of, the international solidarity which saw hunger strikers from Canada to Wales to the villages of Rojava join Leyla Guven in her desperate death-struggle. Through their sympathetic participation, bodies spread far through space – and time – enabled the barren body in revolt to reclaim power outside itself.
More broadly, North and East Syria’s insistent presence outside the state – and specifically outside the Turkish state – is in itself an act of resistance. Per Agamben, the barren life is “at every instant exposed to an unconditional threat of death.” Here in North and East Syria, the people willingly put their bodies on the line, flooding in their thousands to ‘human shield’ protest camps on the border. It is easy for international observers to understand the crisis over North and East Syria as a matter of international horse-trading between imperialist powers, Turkey, America, Russia – but it is precisely the four million lives being lived here in Rojava which mean they can find no shareholder-pleasing accord, bringing NATO’s two largest armies to the brink of conflict.
In recent days, SDF forces have literally mediated between Russian and American patrols when they clashed on border roads in North and East Syria, in a striking image of the precarious dance in the space between imperialist powers which enables this region to retain its power. Rojava is playing Turkey against the US, the US against Russia, playing and being played, of course, but playing as best it can.
By excluding those four million lives from their power-plays for so long, the imperialist powers have granted them a power of their own. It was in their fragility that the people of Rojava found their strength. It was precisely because they lacked the apparent might of a state, devoid of heavy weapons, fighting without salaries or uniforms with rusty Kalashnikovs, fighting without a choice as though there was a choice, that the YPG and YPJ won international sympathy and support.
Driven outside of state structures, that old excess of emotion wells up through the gaps, reanimating dormant forms of kinship and solidarity all but written into myth back in the West – and drawing internationalist militants here to sacrifice their lives.
On a material level, those 60 international volunteers who lost their lives in the YPG and YPJ made no impact on the outcome of the war. The liberal press has been at a loss to understand why anyone from the comfortable West would throw their life away so lightly, lacking even the vocabulary to grasp such an act. ‘Volunteer fighters,’ they said, as though each of these militants did not feel in their separate ways an overwhelming need to travel here and join this revolution – as though it was not absolutely mêcbur. Speak to anyone here in Rojava who knew Anna Campbell, however, and you will understand that their sacrifice was worth everything.
To take another example, a friend of mine who worked in a film commune in the now-occupied border city of Sere Kaniye observed that for his young colleagues it is difficult to create new ideas, to dream, to hope – how can you start to really picture another world when the one around you might be wiped out tomorrow? At the same time, he said, many of these young women had to fight their families for months or years to be allowed out of the home to join the project. Their attendance at the commune, in a city right on the Turkish border, was in itself a victory. To turn up and do their work, to be alive, free and Kurdish, was itself an act of resistance.
The safe-zone where nothing is safe.
Following the military agreement between Damascus and the SDF and the temporary cessation of the Turkish advance, the same dialectic must be leveraged by Rojava’s political leadership. It remains to be seen if a real, political settlement with Damascus can be reached before Turkey continues its assault. With talks deadlocked, this sometimes seems impossible, and the civilians fear a third Turkish invasion will soon come.
But what Damascus values is military sovereignty and a photo of Bashar al-Assad on every wall, whereas what truly gives this revolution its value is not the photos of Öcalan but the great network of solidarity built on the basis of his ideas, the reconciliation committees and women’s houses and communes. The regime underestimates these structures at its peril – but it is in this disjuncture between how states understand power and how power is experienced here in Rojava that the space for continued resistance may be found, even within the context of a deal with Assad.
The principles of this revolution are most fully enacted in precisely those contexts where they are placed under most stress. In all my travels throughout North and East Syria, the most successful communes I have visited were those in the Kurdish refugee camps in Shebha, isolated and under embargo – because it is in such circumstances where principles of mutual aid are needed most.
So let Erdogan drive us south into the desert, as he has threatened – he will only strengthen the communal will to resist. Whether a settlement with Damascus is reached or not, what is certain is that what has been achieved here cannot be wiped away with the changing of a flag.
It is true that the people here are very tired, tired of war, tired of death, tired of not knowing when the next attack will come. Yet the last round of bombings and field executions and forcible demographic change made clear, once again, that Turkey will accept nothing less than the eradication of this project and this people in their entirety. As such, each life in Rojava is not merely “barren” but existentially, verdantly politicised. Ask any grandmother in Qamishlo – she will tell you they don’t know anything about politics, then talk about politics for hours. She will tell you that resistance was the milk on which they raised their children.
The fragile protest camps along the border were temporary, willed articulations of a permanent and unavoidable state of affairs. This remaining-in-one-place which itself constitutes an attack on the neo-Ottoman power to our north illustrates the ineluctable animating tensions of life in Rojava.
“We are here,” as Saleh Muslim said – depending on who is listening, it is both a war cry and a cry for peace. “Resistance is life,” runs the Kurdish slogan graffitied all over the border regions. This runs both ways as well: for the people of Rojava, life is necessarily resistance.
Here, in the safe-zone where nothing is safe; in the deconfliction zone where war is a constant reality; in Qamishlo souq where international militants cross paths with regime soldiers, each ignoring the other (unless you photograph their checkpoint, collapsing the fantasy of security, they and you becoming horribly present in the same place in one instant); here we can answer the riddling question posed by Öcalan, an obscure run-of-the-mill guerrilla when free, growing daily in strength and influence now he is captured and isolated on the prison island Imrali, for years kept in what one observer has called a “deafening silence.” It is only in this constant state of emergency that we know how to live, how to feel.
And so perhaps Rojava would have faced a more existential threat if things had been easier here, if Trump had not blundered into withdrawal and Turkey and their jihadist proxies had not soaked the cornfields of Sere Kaniye with blood. Perhaps the ill-defined ‘political status’ Rojava is seeking from indifferent Western powers would not be such a panacea after all, international capital rushing in before the ideas being rooted in the jineology academies truly have time to grow. It is at once harder and better to live in the permanent state of exception, where strong, clear emotions – love for the people, hate for their enemies – are easy to find.
Matt Broomfield is a journalist, poet and activist who has been living and working in Rojava for the last two years.
Published 17 July 2020
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Foza Yûsif: The Rojava Revolution is a milestone for women
On the occasion of the 8th anniversary of the 19 July Rojava Revolution, PYD Co-Presidency Council member Foza Yûsif talked to ANF.
NESRIN DENIZ
QAMISHLO
Sunday, 19 Jul 2020, 10:32
We publish the second part of the interview with PYD Co-Presidency Council member Foza Yûsif.
The Rojava Revolution has been a woman-led revolution since its inception. However, how do you evaluate the impact of this democratic system, which has grown within the framework of the democratic nation and is embodied in North-East Syria, on the Middle East, the peoples of the world and the women of the world?
A peculiar feature of this revolution was that many women took part in it. This was one of its biggest peculiarities. In this revolution women left their traditional supporting position. They played a big role in political, defense and cultural fields. In some areas, women were up to 50 percent. For example, in the political field, the co-presidency system came to life in Rojava Kurdistan for the first time and went on to acquire an international dimension being established around the world. It is also present in Northern and Eastern Syria. This co-presidency system has been a revolutionary step and model for women organizations all over the world.
Currently, there is a co-chair system in all communes and assemblies in North and East Syria. The Women Justice Council was also a first in the world and allows women to be involved in cases concerning them, and on this basis, women can be effective in making decisions. Again, women played a historical role in the defense fields by joining the YPJ, Asayiş and HPC. Women played a major role in all resistance areas to ensure the end of ISIS.
A social revolution was lived in parallel to the Rojava Revolution
Another effect of the revolution has been the great changes and transformations as to relations within the family. We can say that a social perception, thought and male dominant mentality had taken advantage of the chaos in which our society had been left. In parallel to the political revolution, a social revolution took place. And both were very important for our society. They had a big impact on the democratization of the family. Changes in the cultural and political sphere have had a major impact on the women-men- -family relations. The women’s revolution can form the basis of political and social revolutions. It also paves the way to the women’s revolution in political and social revolutions. They have happened together.
There are also positive changes in the man himself. Men made a revolution with women and tried to organize a free society. I see this as a positive development. Just saying that doesn’t mean we end the revolution and do everything we need for freedom. Freedom is something that develops day by day, needs to be strengthened and organized. However, the gains achieved have been considerable. As women, we have to protect the revolution and its gains.
We have seen that the women’s gains in the occupied regions has been eroded. Laws are implemented which remind of the dark years in the history of humanity. The woman’s head and brains have been covered again. The women were buried alive. What happened in Afrin, Gİrê Spî and Serêkaniyê show this reality. We can say that ISIS and its partners target the freedom of women most.
We are organizing day by day
The Rojava women’s revolution did not start in 2011. The Kurdish women’s struggle has 30-40 years. Objective and subjective conditions led to more concrete emergences. Favourable conditions were prepared for the revolution to happen with a greater effect. The gains achieved in these years played a major role in the feminist movements in the world as to intellectual work, women’s science, and in the development of a free society. At the same time, there was a big change experienced by men.
A women’s council in the North and East Syria has been established. The general Syrian Women’s Council was formed. In other words, women’s organizations under the roof of the revolution are getting stronger and bigger. In order to endure the women’s revolution, all women must claim the gains of the revolution. At the same time, the woman needs to increase and strengthen her own organization. Because there are huge threats upon the women’s revolution. We see these threats in the daily attacks on women. For this reason, we women have to work and defend the achievements day and night to make the changes and transformations for freedom permanent. Women play a big role in this matter.
After the defeat of ISIS, the Turkish state attacked the region and occupied some areas. The occupation attacks still continue. What can be done to protect and make the gains achieved with the price and struggle of the people of North-East Syria?
As we mentioned, there have been great changes and transformations in this decade. Again, great achievements and successes were achieved. But the war is still going on in Syria, and there are major dangers undermining the July 19 revolution. There are many forces that don’t want the revolution to develop, to be permanent. They are against change and transformation. These forces want to strangle the revolution. The people of Northern and Eastern Syria, especially the Kurdish people, need to understand the value of these achievements very well. The situations in Jerablus, Idlib, Afrin, Girê Spî and Serêkaniyê show us very well that the enemy does not want brotherhood among the peoples.
They don’t want stability and democratic system in the region. Their aim is to overwhelm us through nationalism, religion extremism and sectarianism. They want to turn this place into a bloodbath. Then they want to protect their interests. All hegemonic powers, especially the Turkish state, want to protect their interests in the region. To do this, they can sacrifice all peoples. We must protect our unity and solidarity as a people under all conditions and difficulties. Let us embrace, grow and organize more and more our brotherhood of the peoples and our democratic nation strategy day by day.
Again, self-defense, in terms of the region, is also essential in the process we live in. Therefore, it is not a remedy to escape from the war or to go in different directions. The important thing is to be one by combining our strength and energy together. We must protect our achievements by providing unity in our thoughts and ideas.
As we mentioned, the revolution started in Dera, but it produced results in Qamishlo, Raqqa, Dêir Ez-zor, Manbij and Kobanê. The 19 July Rojava Revolution was also a guarantee for the democratization of Syria. All Syrian people should protect the democratic autonomous system. Because it is a way of liberation and solution for all Syria’s problems. The democratic nation is a solution not only for Northern and Eastern Syria, but for the entire Syria. The more this revolution is defended, the more Syria’s future and the union of Syria are defended. It would be more accurate if everyone moves with this thought and idea in mind.
I congratulate all the Kurdish people, Syrian peoples and free people living in the four parts of Kurdistan on the occasion of the anniversary of the 19 July Rojava Revolution. I congratulate all the families of martyrs. At the same time, I bow with respect to all martyrs of revolution and freedom. Up to now, we have accomplished so much with our resistance and cooperation. Peoples’ unity, women’s freedom and democratic forces can overcome all obstacles. With this belief, happy 19 July revolution to everyone.
The mixed Kurdish-Arab zone could buckle under any number of security, health, and economic threats, especially if the United States surrenders to Russian and Turkish interests by withdrawing its remaining forces.
Since the Turkish offensive of October 2019, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) has found itself in a precarious position. Potential new attacks by the Turkish army are the main sword of Damocles hanging over its head. Yet the AANES and its main local authorities—the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—also face numerous other threats to their autonomy, including weighty humanitarian issues, a resurgent Islamic State, and repeated Syrian regime demands that they return to the fold unconditionally. Although Bashar al-Assad and his allies in Moscow lack the means or desire to open a military confrontation with the SDF, they are readily playing on local weaknesses accentuated by the Turkish offensive and the partial withdrawal of U.S. troops, which they hope to see completed in the coming months.
SDF WILL REMAIN UNITED IF U.S. TROOPS STAY
The Turkish offensive seriously injured the SDF because the umbrella group’s Kurdish units were left to weather the battle on their own—Arab SDF units largely abstained from the fighting because they do not consider themselves part of the dispute with Ankara. Based on the author’s trips to the region and conversations with local officials, however, none of the Arab militias appear to be defecting from the SDF, despite the regime’s urgent calls for Arab tribes to join the Syrian army. As long as U.S. troops are present in the east and fighters’ wages are paid, the SDF has a good chance of remaining united and controlling most of the territory in question.
Yet the presence of Syrian and Russian forces complicates the picture. Their troops occupy some bases inside the AANES as well as all boundary areas with the Turkish army. Russia’s positioning is likely intended as much to temporarily delay a new Turkish offensive as to control the strategic axes of the AANES. In any case, SDF units and local civilians can no longer freely use the section of the M4 highway between Ain Issa and Tal Tamer. The road was closed from October 2019 to this May, and traffic is now limited to convoys with Russian military escort. To reach Raqqa or Kobane from Qamishli, other travelers must therefore take a much longer and more dangerous route that is regularly threatened by Islamic State raids. Russian and Syrian troops could easily cut this narrow alternative road if they wanted to separate the western part of the AANES from the Kurdish stronghold of Qamishli-Hasaka.
Click on map for larger version
Some American troops have remained in Rmelan, al-Shadadi, and the oil fields southeast of Deir al-Zour. They patrol roads in these areas intensively, preventing Russian and Syrian forces from using routes outside their immediate area of influence. The strategic crossroads between the M4 highway and the Amuda-Hasaka road is strongly under U.S. control—Russian troops are not allowed to use it to reach their bases in Amuda and Qamishli. The road between Rmelan and the Peshkhabur crossing with Iraq is likewise forbidden to Russian and Syrian forces, which regularly provoke incidents with U.S. patrols. Moscow wants to control this crossing because it is the only breach in the encirclement belt that Turkey, Russia, Iran, and Assad have built around the AANES. Indeed, with Ankara’s cooperation, the Kremlin appears to be pursuing a strategy of progressive control through strategic points and economic asphyxiation.
TURKEY’S WATER WAR
Before the civil war, the Baath regime had long pushed the region currently controlled by the AANES to specialize in the production of raw materials such as wheat, cotton, and oil, which were then processed in west Syria. This had the advantage of keeping the region dependent on Damascus and limiting autonomist tendencies, whether among the Kurds or Arab tribes.
These arrangements pose a serious challenge to the zone’s autonomy today, since it is still heavily dependent on imports in the agricultural field and other sectors (e.g., the AANES does not produce its own fertilizers or pesticides for export crops). Yields have been plummeting since 2011, greatly decreasing farmers’ income. Widespread fires in 2019 also discouraged many locals from cultivating their fields.
Click on map for larger version
Above all, farmers in the AANES lack sufficient water due to the destruction of the large Euphrates River irrigation systems during the war against the Islamic State. Rehabilitating these systems will be slow and costly, requiring substantial help from Western NGOs whose work is currently handicapped because of security risks.
In addition, Turkey has been using water as a weapon against the AANES, reducing the flow of the Euphrates and tapping into groundwater around the border, thereby reducing the amounts available downstream. With the capture of Ras al-Ain, Turkish forces now control the main source of drinking water in Hasaka province, the Aluk pumping station, where supplies are sent to the provincial capital via Tal Tamer and other localities. Voluntary cuts are increasing despite Russian mediation, and it is very difficult to find new sources of water for Hasaka’s large population, which swelled to 450,000 after new refugees arrived from Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain. The local groundwater is salty, and the construction of a pipe from al-Malikiyah, a more favorable source, would be long and expensive. Another costly solution is to extend al-Suwar canal further north than al-Shadadi, but Kurdish authorities are afraid to be dependent on “Arab water.”
For now, the water shortage is exasperating the population and creating additional tensions between Arabs and Kurds. Arab tribes in the southern part of Hasaka province have accused AANES authorities of hoarding local water supplies for Kurdish communities to the north, reviving rumors of ethnic cleansing.
BLOCKING HUMANITARIAN AID
In all, around three million inhabitants live under SDF control, including the Shahba enclave north of Aleppo and the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo. The majority of these people are in great need of humanitarian help, especially the estimated 700,000 internally displaced persons. Kurds expelled from Afrin, Tal Abyad, and Ras al-Ain during the Turkish offensives of winter 2018 and autumn 2019 have little hope of returning to those areas. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the latter offensive displaced 222,000 people, and all of the 117,000 who have since returned home were Arab.
This situation makes Western aid to the AANES even more essential. Yet Moscow has repeatedly tried to block this aid, both at the UN Security Council and through its actions on the ground. In December, it vetoed the council’s proposal to use al-Yarubiya in the northeast as a border crossing for UN supplies via Iraq. Aid can now only come through regime-controlled territory. The European Union and the United States have strongly supported deliveries by humanitarian NGOs to compensate for the resultant UN shortfall, but such groups have been hampered by Russian patrol activity along the Peshkhabur-Qamishli axis.
Meanwhile, Assad has tried to use the coronavirus pandemic to discredit the AANES, claiming that only the Syrian state can fight the disease. Due to UN inertia and Russian pressure, the World Health Organization still works primarily with the official Syrian government, so all of the main laboratories capable of testing COVID-19 patients are located in Damascus, Latakia, and Aleppo. The AANES refuses to send tests to these labs because it does not want the regime to spread potentially destabilizing disinformation about infection rates in the northeast. In mid-April, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq set up two laboratories in the AANES, but medical equipment remains scarce, forcing Syrian Kurdish authorities to close the Peshkhabur crossing throughout March-April and institute draconian restrictions on internal movement in order to prevent wider spread of the virus. These efforts were effective in terms of containing the pandemic, but they have impaired foreign aid and the fragile local economy.
THE NEED FOR WESTERN POLITICAL DETERMINATION
Russia’s apparent goal is to suffocate the AANES, force its dissolution, and convince the SDF to integrate into the Syrian army’s 5th Corps. For the time being, the presence of U.S. troops and substantial aid has defeated this strategy. Yet Moscow and its allies have not lost hope that the Trump administration will change the game by ordering further withdrawals. Russia is also counting on a new Turkish offensive against the Kurds, which might make the American presence untenable if it occurs in the vicinity of Rmelan. Since 2016, Moscow has regularly offered Turkey a piece of Syrian Kurdistan in exchange for standing aside while the Assad axis continues to retake the northwest part of the country. After the recent Syrian army advance in Idlib, Ankara may now have the Russian green light for a new offensive in the northeast.
As for last month’s dialogue between rival Syrian Kurdish political parties, the United States and Europe welcomed the diplomatic progress, since a united Kurdish front would strengthen the AANES. Realistically, however, this dialogue will not remove any of the above threats to the zone’s autonomy. What is required instead is Western political determination against Russia and Turkey’s strategies, supported by a sufficient military presence to dissuade external coup efforts and a Marshall Plan-style humanitarian and economic campaign to reduce internal tensions. The contrast between improvements in the AANES economy and financial deterioration within regime-held areas (e.g., because of new U.S. sanctions arising from the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act) could give a particularly potent boost to local authorities.
Fabrice Balanche is an associate professor at the University of Lyon 2 and an adjunct fellow with The Washington Institute.
SDF launches second stage of operation against ISIS
SDF launched second stage of “Deterrent of Terrorism” Operation.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Friday, 17 Jul 2020, 16:11
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have launched, this morning, Friday, (17th July, 2020), the second stage of “Deterrent of Terrorism” campaign to track down and pursue the cells of ISIS terrorist organization in the areas of Deir ez-Zor. According to the statement published by SDF Media Center, this stage targets ISIS hideouts and their cells that threaten stability and civil peace in the areas of Deir ez-Zor and came at the request of the people, chieftains, and elderlies of the tribes of the region, especially after ISIS attacks on civilians increased and posed a direct threat to their lives. The campaign involving the Special Anti-Terrorism Units (YAT) and in coordination with the international coalition and air support forces will continue until the goal set by the General Command is achieved.
SDF: First phase of the offensive completed
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SDF affirms commitment to protect children and schools
Affirmation of SDF policy towards the military use of schools and educational facilities and the protection of children.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Wednesday, 15 Jul 2020, 15:49
In accordance with the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1998 (2011) and 2143 (2014), regarding the military use of schools by military forces and its implications for the safety of children and education personnel, the SDF stresses the right to education during armed conflicts, as well as reducing the impact of the conflict on the safety of children and those who work in the educational field, and the provision of the necessary facilities to protect them from the dangers of military operations in areas under their security and military control. Accordingly, the SDF affirms its commitment to the following:
1- As part of our efforts in the SDF to protect children, schools, and educational personnel from the effects of armed conflict and military operations, and to ensure the civilian nature of schools as safe learning environments for children, the SDF is obligated to refrain from using schools for military purposes and from placing equipment or weapons near them, except in cases of extreme military necessity, when schools are exposed to aggression from other military parties and need protection. However, this action is carried out in full coordination with the civil authorities, including the Education Authority of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (EAAANES), as the civil authority vested in regulating schools, the educational process and facilities.
2- All members of the SDF are in full compliance with the Principle of Distinction between Civilian Objects and Military Objectives and the Principle of Precautions against the Effects of Attacks, as stipulated in the Law of Armed Conflict. Therefore, the SDF refrains from military use of schools in a manner that does not contradict its above commitment No. 1.
3- The SDF is obliged to take precautions while attacking schools where military targets are identified to avoid direct or incidental damage, and to resort to legal advisers accompanying military operations to assist commanders in making decisions.
4- All military leaders of the SDF in headquarters, as well as field officers and military personnel under their command, must be fully aware of these instructions and include this document in all training programs in schools and military academies of the SDF.
5- These instructions are included in the Rules of Military Engagement, related military policies, and in the overall military planning, preparation, and implementation of military operations by the SDF.
6- The SDF allows civil authorities and humanitarian actors, following coordination with and approval by the EAAANES, to access the sites, review the state of schools and make efforts to assess the damage to schools and remove military risks, which allows schools to be restored to their civilian nature.
7- The SDF is committed to cooperating fully with the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, and the United Nations Task Force on Monitoring and Reporting, including the exchange of appropriate information on violations and abuses against children.
8- As of the date of issuance of these instructions, the SDF shall proceed with the evacuation process of sites, which the EAAANES, as the official and duly constituted authority responsible for education, classifies as schools to complete the teaching process.
9- The SDF will abide by what is stated in this document. All SDF leaders and officers face penalties if they do not adhere to the above-mentioned instructions properly.
People of Til Berak protest against Turkish invasion
Demonstrations continue across North-East Syria against the genocidal campaign of the Turkish state seeking to invade the region as part of its expansionist policies.
ANF TIL BERAK Wednesday, 15 Jul 2020, 15:15
People took to the streets in the town of Til Berak, in the northern Syrian city of Qamishlo, in protest at the Turkish occupation attacks. The residents staged a protest march with banners reading “No to Ottoman invasion” and “We will frustrate all conspiracies”. The march was followed by a rally in the town center where Rusil Hesen from the women’s umbrella organization Kongreya Star addressed the crowd. Hesen denounced the inhuman crimes committed by the Turkish state in order to realize its Ottoman dreams. Hesen stressed that resistance was the only way out against occupation.
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Rojava University calls on academic world for support
The Rojava University called on the academic community for support as it continues its preparations for the new academic year.
NESRIN DENIZ
QAMISHLO
Monday, 13 Jul 2020, 11:04
The Rojava University has begun operating in 2016. It continues preparations for the new academic year.
With more than 20 departments, 210 lecturers and more than a thousand students, the Rojava University continues its preparations for the new academic year and calls on academics and friendly circles to support the Kurdish education institution.
Rojava University co-chair, Dr. Ebdulah Mistefa and Rojava University Foreign Relations officer Gulistan Sîdo talked to ANF.
Mistefa said that the university was forced to switch to online education due to the coronavirus threat and that many academics from different universities around the world supported them, making important contributions to the university despite the difficulties of the online education system.
Mistefa underlined that the academics who gave lectures online provided them with interesting experiences and added: “We have benefited a lot despite all the difficulties. In addition, we realized that we should look at the current situation from a wider window. On this basis, we needed to begin relations with places outside our region.”
Mistefa continued: “The opportunity to join the education system of our Rojava University through the online system to anywhere in the world has emerged.”
Mistefa said that they will open new departments after the training of the necessary academic staff and confirmed that they invited volunteer academics to Rojava. Likewise, Mistefa invited those who could not go to Rojava to help through online education and call on academics, especially Kurdish ones, to help them using the tools provided by internet.
Call to be launched on 19 July
Gulistan Sîdo, the Rojava University Foreign Relations officer, said that they contacted many academics from different universities around the world during the pandemic process and these academics have responded positively and helped by providing online education.
“We can improve the online education system and benefit from the educational experience of universities in other countries,” said Gulistan Sîdo.
Sîdo also announced that on 19 July they will launch a campaign for academic support through the publication of a call on behalf of the Rojava University.
Fighting ISIS in eastern Syria: Arab tribes in Deir ez-Zor seek military support from Kurdish-led SDF
Kurdish-led SDF commander Mazloum Abdi holds urgent meeting with Arab tribal leaders in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province for fighting Islamic State (ISIS) remnants
HASAKAH, Syria (North Press) – Dozens of Arab tribes in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor called on the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) for more military support to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) sleeper cells in the region, tribal leaders said in a meeting with SDF Commander Mazloum Abdi on Wednesday.
The SDF commander held an urgent meeting with the tribal leaders, who asked for the tightening of security procedures in the country’s east, near the border with Iraq, where ISIS sleeper cells have been very active the past few months, military sources told North Press.
The tribal leaders stressed intensifying the military support in the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor, especially Al-Shuhayl town near the border with Iraq.
Abdi has been holding meetings with Arab tribal leaders in several areas in northern and eastern Syria, including a meeting with Raqqa tribes and another with Tabqa tribes during the last month.
In all meetings between the SDF commanders and Arab tribes in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, the latter expressed their concern over the growing attacks of ISIS against civilians and a potential resurgence of the radical groups in the region.
The SDF, spearheaded by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and backed by the US-led Global Coalition, was the leading force responsible for ISIS’ fall in Syria, sacrificing over 13,000 fighters in the battles to regain territory from the terror group until the latter’s final loss in al-Baghouz on March 23, 2019.
ISIS sleeper cells have been active in the region since their defeat, but recent events, mainly the US troop withdrawal in January 2019 and subsequent Turkish invasion of the Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad regions in October of the same year, led to a security vacuum which emboldened the group.
Last year, former Special Envoy to the Global Coalition Against ISIS Brett McGurk stated that “the Islamic State and other extremist groups will fill the void opened by [the US] departure.”
Northeastern Syria has witnessed ISIS activity tied to sleeper cells in the region, including a series of attacks which resulted in the death of an SDF fighter on May 17 in the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor.
In addition, a major ISIS prison in Hasakah has witnessed repeated unrest as ISIS detainees attempted to take control of the prison, though anti-terror security forces associated with the SDF quickly controlled these uprisings.
On May 16, ISIS media accounts shared a nearly fifty-minute video which declared their loyalty to new leader Abu Ibraim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, showed ISIS militants executing civilians, and threatened to attack security forces in Iraq.
(Reporting by Zana Ali and Hisham Arafat; editing by Lucas Chapman)
SERE KANIYE, Syria (North Press) – Even though Turkish forces and their affiliated opposition groups invaded the northern Syrian city of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) in October 2019, Walid Mostafa stayed in his city in order to secure his house and possessions. He never expected to face such extreme violations, carried out in the light of day, with no one held accountable.
In a voice recording, he told a North Press correspondent that “the city’s sights have changed; strange flags flap over our heads, and strangers hang out in our city. We are being stolen publicly.”
Families in Sere Kaniye live in fear of the ongoing violations of Turkish-backed opposition groups in light of Turkey’s domination of the city, just as families in the currently Turkish-occupied Syrian city of Afrin.
Turkification policy
Walid said with a trembling voice, that “the city has turned into a Turkish province, where there are portraits of Kemal Ataturk (founding father of the Republic of Turkey), Turkish flags, in addition to teaching the Turkish language with Arabic in schools and forbidding the Kurdish language.”
Photos that Turkish-backed armed opposition groups posted on media websites showed the changes that took place in the city: hanging identification signs for organizations in Turkish and Arabic languages, as well as hanging the portrait of Turkish president Erdogan next to the founder of the Turkish Republic Ataturk inside the organizations.
Walid added that “they stole everything inside and outside the city, including livestock, houses…everything.”
“They arrest those who oppose them under the pretext of dealing with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF),” he said.
Walid sent special photos to North Press that showed looted and burnt houses by Turkish-backed opposition groups in Sere Kaniye, under the pretext of dealing with SDF.
In June, the governor of the Turkish province of Urfa, Abdullah Areen, inaugurated a house belonging to a Kurdish family who had been displaced from the city of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) as an institute for the memorization of the Quran.
Al-Khabour Network published footage showing the governor of Urfa opening the institute. Muhyiddin Essu, a human rights activist residing in Germany, wrote on his personal account on Facebook that the house belongs to his family, and that “the governor committed systematic looting on the pretext of the opening of the institute.”
“Teaching the Holy Qur’an in stolen homes is immoral and contrary to Islamic principles,” Essu added.
During the Turkish operation in Sere Kaniye, Human Rights Watch published a report in which they accused Turkish-held armed opposition groups of murdering civilians who tried to return to their homes, as well as stealing and converting houses into headquarters, where they arrest and displace hundreds of people.
Disputes over spoils
Walid said that “three clashes took place in June and the beginning of July between Turkish-backed opposition groups over the sharing the spoils, shops, and houses.”
In July, North Press Agency wrote about clashes that took place between Turkish-backed armed opposition groups in Sere Kaniye, which resulted in the killing and wounding of dozens of members of the groups, amid civilians’ fears from the ongoing fighting between these groups.
Bad living conditions
Another source from Sere Kaniye said that the living situation is very bad, and the local councils in the city and its countryside have set the price of one ampere for generators at eight thousand Syrian pounds per week, while a gas tank is sold for 30,000 Syrian pounds. High prices include all basic foodstuffs inside the city.
He added, “If we do not die from a stray bullet from their clashes, we will die because of the deteriorating living situation.”
The same source pointed out that the local council imposed financial dealings in Turkish lira, but they retracted the decision after a popular protest.
Turkey imposed their own identification cards on residents of the area, taking shops by force from their owners and handing them to settlers coming from outside the city, the source added.
(Reporting by Delsoz Yossef, editing by Lucas Chapman)
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Syrian Kurds Alarmed Over UN Security Council Vote on Aid
BySirwan Kajjo
July 12, 2020 07:36 PM
FILE – A Syrian Kurdish woman chants slogans during a rally in the countryside of the Hasakah province, Syria, June 27, 2020, to protest deadly Turkish offensives in northeastern areas of the country.
WASHINGTON – Kurdish officials in northeast Syria are expressing disappointment following a vote by the United Nations Security Council that failed to address “the deteriorating humanitarian situation” in that part of the war-torn country.
The U.N. Security Council on Saturday approved a resolution authorizing an international program that will deliver aid to the rebel-held northwest Syrian province of Idlib through one border crossing.
However, the majority of the council, including the U.S., wanted to reopen another border crossing with Turkey and a third on Syria’s northeast border with Iraq in order to get aid to an estimated 1.3 million Syrians in need of medical supplies.
The Bab al-Hawa border crossing between Turkey and Idlib province will remain open to humanitarian aid for one year. The other two crossings, Bab al-Salama between Turkey and Syria’s Aleppo province, and al-Yaroubia, between northeast Syria and Iraq, will not be reopened.
The Security Council vote Saturday came after previous efforts to reauthorize the opening of Bab al-Hawa and al-Yaroubia failed by vetoes from Russia and China.
‘Unfolding catastrophe’
Local officials in northeast Syria say blocking aid through al-Yaroubia crossing would throw the already-volatile region into further uncertainty.
“With this decision, we are literally left alone to deal with an unfolding catastrophe,” said Luqman Ehmi, spokesman for the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration in North and East of Syria.
“The Security Council failed to address what our region has been experiencing for a long time, and this is a very negative move against us,” he told VOA.
FILE – Members of a displaced Kurdish family sit at a public school they use as a temporary shelter, in Hasakah, Syria, Oct. 22, 2019.
The semiautonomous region is under the control of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a major U.S. partner in the fight against the Islamic State terror group. The partnership was key to liberate much of eastern Syria from IS militants.
Kelly Craft, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., said the U.S. “cannot disguise our disappointment at the loss of the Bab al-Salama and al-Yaroubia border crossings, which puts millions of Syrian women, children and men at risk.”
“To them, I say we will never back down. We will always have hope for your future and will continue to stand with you,” she said in a tweet after the Saturday vote.
Monopolizing aid
Russia, a major backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, has insisted that all international aid go through Damascus.
Humanitarian groups and officials, however, say the Syrian government monopolizes aid for political purposes.
They add that the decade-long conflict in Syria and the recent outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic have created a major humanitarian crisis in the country, including the northeast.
“The Syrian regime continues to impose high tariffs on anything that enters our region, including medical supplies,” said Kurdish spokesman Ehmi.
FILE – A displaced Syrian Kurdish woman, who fled violence with her family after a Turkish offensive in northeastern Syria, gives one of her children a shower at a public school they use as a temporary shelter, in Hasakah, Syria, Oct. 22, 2019.
Kemal Derbas of the Kurdish Red Crescent, one of the largest humanitarian groups that provides medical care to refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDP) in northeast Syria, says relying on Damascus for receiving international aid has proved futile.
“The Syrian regime doesn’t recognize most of the humanitarian groups that operate in northern Syria,” Derbas told VOA.
“This forces the World Health Organization (WHO), for example, to redirect its support to regime-held areas. The WHO used to deliver some aid and funding to us through al-Yaroubia border crossing, but after this Security Council voting it is no longer an option,” he said.
Some medical aid groups have shut down their operations because of a lack of funding, Derbas said, noting that about 300,000 IDP and refugees in northeast Syria will have no adequate access to medical services.
‘De facto embargo’
Some observers say the recent U.N. decision represents a de facto embargo on those Syrian regions that don’t have access to aid.
“People in SDF-held areas in northeast Syria will be deprived from much needed international aid” at a critical time, said Siruan Hadsch Hossein, a journalist at the local radio station Arta FM.
He told VOA that millions of civilians in northeast Syria, including hundreds of thousands in refugee camps, will immediately suffer the consequences of the U.N. move.
“This voting proves that the international community is not ready to find a resolution for the Syrian conflict,” Hossein said. “It is disgraceful that certain members of the Security Council such as Russia use humanitarian aid to score political points.”
KOBANI, Syria (North Press) – The Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration in northeast Syria announced on Thursday the inauguration of the first foodstuff factory in the country’s northern town of Kobani.
The Syrian government, under complete control of the Arab Socialist Baath Party, banned factories and universities in the country’s predominantly Kurdish north since 1960, until the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011 and the establishment of the Kurdish-led administration.
The Autonomous Administration’s Economic Authority opened a foodstuff factory called Khairat Al-Furat in the Qena Village west of Kobani.
North Press toured the factory, observing about 60 workers, most of whom are women, operating the factory.
The factory, which belongs to the public sector, manufactures jam, molasses, tomatoes, and peppers, in addition to spices, workers told North Press.
Factory director Kameran Omar told North Press that establishing the factory came as a response to the economic crisis and the tremendous rise in food prices in the region, especially after collapse of the local currency.
“We opened this factory to ease the burden on residents, who find it difficult to buy expensive products from the market,” he said.
“Despite the short period that has passed since the opening of the factory, it became clear to us that it has a great benefit to the workers in the factory and the population,” he continued.
He added that the goal of factory is not to make profit, but to benefit from the region’s resources and achieve self-sufficiency.
Most workers said they were happy to have a spirit of cooperation with their work, and a sense of responsibility in their human duty to contribute to and support to the region’s economy.
Amina Ali, a worker in the factory, said she joined the work to provide foodstuffs that the people of the region need.
“We work with all our efforts to achieve progress in an economic field to find a balance between supply and demand, and we seek with time to export foodstuffs out of the region.”
Young worker Fatima Bouzan expressed her joy over the factory’s opening.
“This project is a step towards progress and prosperity, as it has great benefit to workers here who were in urgent need of work,” she said.
For about five decades, northern Syria lacked economic projects that met the needs of the population. Currently, the Autonomous Administration is working on security and stability projects to clear the region from ISIS cells and terror groups, meaning that economic projects can sometimes be a second-tier priority.
(Reporting by Victor Mustafa, editing by Hisham Arafat and Lucas Chapman)
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YPG Martyr Omer Şêxo laid to rest in Hesekê
YPG fighter Omer Şêxo was laid to rest with a ceremony held at Martyr Dijwar graveyard in Hesekê.
ANF
HESEKÊ
Saturday, 11 Jul 2020, 11:32
YPG fighter Omer Şêxo, who fell martyr in Hesekê as a result of his illness on 5 July, was laid to rest with a ceremony held at Martyr Dijwar graveyard in the village of Dawidiyê.
Speaking at the military ceremony organized by the YPG, YPJ and SDF fighters, Martyrs’ Families Council member Sultan Ehmed said that they would continue their struggle on the path of the martyrs.
Speaking at the ceremony, PYD co-chair Ayşe Hiso paid tribute to all the martyrs of freedom and said: “Let’s stand against the invading Turkish state, which wants to destroy our values and the achievements of our people.”
Stressing that the fight against all crimes committed by the Turkish state will continue with determination, Ayşe Hiso added: “We will build a free and democratic Syria with our people’s will.”
After the speeches, the identity information of SDF fighter Amar Osman (Birusk) and HPG guerrilla Rüstem Cudi was also announced by the Martyrs’ Families Council.
The martyrdom paper of Martyr Omer Şexo was delivered to his family.
At the end of the ceremony, Martyr Omer’s body was buried, accompanied by slogans.
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Turkey weaponizes water and electricity against Syria’s Autonomous Administration areas
ISTANBUL, Turkey (North Press) – A state of dissatisfaction exists among activists and politicians concerned with Turkish affairs due to Turkey’s foreign policy, the latest of which is the restriction on the population of northeastern Syria, especially in Hasakah, by reducing the water level of the Euphrates River.
Turkey did not justify this measure, and observers believe that it aims to pressure the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria, ignoring the humanitarian situation and civilian need for water.
Observers added that this issue decreased electricity production, and interrupted a large number of water pumps needed to provide water to agricultural land, amid fears of the consequences if this situation continues.
Turkish activist Aisha Kaya, who is concerned with Syrian affairs, said in an interview with North Press that “Turkey may take this step in defiance of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Hasakah, Raqqa and parts of Deir ez-Zor, especially since Turkey accuses the SDF of reducing the electricity amount to the Operation Peace Spring area, which is a Turkish-held area, and this matter disturbed Turkey.”
Turkish Armed Forces and Turkish-backed armed opposition groups took control of the cities of Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad and their surrounding countrysides as part of Operation Peace Spring in October 2019. Since this time, residents in the region have reported many human rights abuses, including theft, looting, assault, kidnapping and murder.
Kaya added that “there is an agreement between the SDF and Turkey, under Russian auspices, in which SDF provides 15 megawatts of electricity to Turkish-held areas in northeastern Syria, and that the opposition’s Syrian National Army and local councils operate Alouk water station to supply Hasakah with water.”
“Alouk station is under Turkey’s control; it provides Hasakah governorate with water. Hence, Turkey’s pressure on the SDF may lower the water level of the Euphrates,” according to Kaya.
Kaya pointed out that “the sharp fall in Euphrates’ [water] level will affect the electricity that feeds Syria’s northeastern areas.”
Media sources said that co-chair of Executive Council of the Autonomous Administration Ilham Ahmad accused Turkey of attempting to control residents of Autonomous Administration areas, and that Turkey cut off drinking water flow from Alouk’s station to more than half a million people in Hasakah.
“Turkey cut off the Euphrates’ water after it built dams on it; by doing this it exposes the lives of about five million Syrians to risk,” Ahmed added.
According to an agreement signed between Syria and Turkey in 1987, Turkey must provide 500 cubic meters of water per second to Syria, though Turkey has thus far ignored the stipulations of this agreement.
Political motives
Mustafa Bazerkan, an Iraqi petrol and electricity expert, told North Press that “the Turkish step may have political aims: to put the Syrian government under pressure, or a means to discuss the amount of water…the third reason may be technical, keeping in mind that a year ago, there was also a problem with Iraq in releasing or reducing water, because Turkey filled the dam’s large reservoirs that have been established recently.”
In 2019, the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources accused Turkey of causing a water shortage in Iraq, stating that the Tigris River’s supply of water at the Turkish border would decrease from 20.93 billion cubic meters annually to 9.7 billion cubic meters after the opening of the Turkish Ilisu Dam on the river.
According to observers, Turkey is weaponizing water and electricity against residents of Autonomous Administration areas to force them to accept its terms in the absence of international moves to stop Turkey, repeating the Iraqi scenario.
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SDF Spokesperson: Turkey prepares further attacks
Kino Gabriel, spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), warns of new attacks by Turkish invasion forces.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Wednesday, 8 Jul 2020, 13:11
Turkey seems to be preparing for another major attack on Rojava. The Turkish army is drawing together further troops in the areas it has occupied in north-east Syria. ANHA news agency interviewed SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel about the current developments and said: “The Turkish state is intensifying its attacks and constantly committing new crimes. Therefore, we are on alert and we are expecting a new large-scale attack at any moment. Recently, Turkey has been spreading the rumour that the SDF is breaking the ceasefire of 2019. This is a pretext for a new invasion. A new invasion is not unlikely. Preparations are being made for it.”
“We are coordinating with the US and Russia”
Gabriel explains that they are coordinating with the forces that brought about the ceasefire in October 2019: “These forces are the international coordination, the US and Russia. Our aim with this coordination is to prevent a possible attack by Turkey.”
Turkey is committing crimes”
As SDF, we are responding to the calls for a global ceasefire due to the Coronavirus pandemic and have fulfilled our responsibilities. But the Turkish state continues to commit crimes with its drone attacks and artillery fire.”
Gabriel warns that a new attack is dangerous. The destruction and flight that an attack will attempt will negatively affect the fight against the pandemic worldwide, he said.
Germany admits Turkish presence in Rojava “not legitimate”
For the first time, two years after the invasion of Northern and Eastern Syria carried out by Turkey, the German Federal Government admitted that the “occupation is not justified under international law.”
ANF
BERLIN
Monday, 6 Jul 2020, 09:58
The Federal Government replied to a question from Evrim Sommer (Die Linke) about the invasion of north-east Syria carried out by Turkey: “From the Federal Government’s perspective, the Turkish argument is not beyond doubt. With regard to the “Operation Peace Spring”, the Federal Government has announced that it cannot identify any reasons that would legitimize the operation under international law.”
With this reasoning, the Federal Government is following the findings of the Bundestag’s scientific services that the invasion of northern Syria is not covered by international law.
In October 2019, they had determined: “In the absence of a self-defense situation, the establishment of a Turkish ‘security zone’ in northern Syria does not constitute an act of self-defense permitted under international law. Even in the (hypothetical) case of self-defense, there is no doubt about the inappropriateness of the Turkish military operation.”
In addition, the Federal Government pledged the support of several health non-governmental organizations in Rojava with one million euros for measures against the Covid-19 pandemic. So far, the Federal Government had only financially supported forces that actively oppose the self-government of the region.
Commenting on the Federal Goevrnment’s reply, deputy Evrim Sommer said: “We welcome that the Federal Government is officially announcing for the first time that it recognizes no reasons that legitimize Turkey’s attacks against the democratic self-government in Northeast Syria under international law. It is a diplomatically wrapped but resounding slap in the face for the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”
The Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) is a political assembly representing political parties and organizations in North and East Syria. The SDC creates a political framework for the governance of Syria along a decentralized, federal model. It is the political body to which the SDF reports. It is also the political counterpart to the Autonomous Administration, which takes on more administrative and executive functions. Negotiations with the Syrian government, as well as diplomatic relations with international powers, are generally conducted through the SDC.
Origins of the SDC
In its founding declaration, the Council set itself the task of “leading the Syrian revolutionary democratic movement along the right course, and ending the present fragmentation, bloodshed and darkness the country is being dragged through.”
The SDC, was created in 2015. 103 high-profile individual members and representatives of Syrian political parties and organizations were present at the congress which founded the SDC. In its founding declaration, the Council set itself the task of “leading the Syrian revolutionary democratic movement along the right course, and ending the present fragmentation, bloodshed and darkness the country is being dragged through.”
Participants in the founding congress of the SDC came from a range of political backgrounds and engaged in negotiations concerning key issues and principles behind the establishment of this new political body. One point of discussion which generated internal controversy was the continued use of the term “Syrian Arab Republic,” seen by many as part of the heritage of the oppressive Ba’ath regime. The congress eventually reached consensus on the term Democratic Syrian Republic, and agreed on a strategy of working towards a federal model for Syria rather than the top-down centralistic model of the Assad regime.
The SDC supported the development of the democratic administration of Manbij, Tabqa, Raqqa and Deir-ez-Zor after they were liberated from ISIS by the SDF. At a congress of the SDC in July 2018, the decision was taken to create the Autonomous Administration to carry out the work of establishing communes, councils and confederalism in each region. This enabled SDC to focus on its role as a political body, rather than an administrative one.
How the SDC is organized
The SDC contains three main bodies: the Executive Council, the Political Council and the General Conference. In many ways the Executive Council takes a leadership function because it is smallest and meets most often. For instance, Executive Council chair Ilham Ahmed led a delegation to the United States Congress to discuss the Turkish invasion in October 2019. However, both the Political Council and the General Conference are larger and more representative and so are considered to be higher bodies. The General Conference meets only once a year, acting as a more direct form of democratic input but without much executive power. The Political Council meets on a monthly basis. The SDC organizes its work through several offices: the Organizational Office, Women’s Office, Foreign Relations Office, Media Office, Youth Office, Finance Office and Archive Office.
The SDC contains a mix of political parties, civil society organizations and individuals. The membership of the SDC represents all the components of society in North and East Syria; Arabs, Kurds, Syriac-Assyrians, Armenians, Circassians, Chechen and Turkmen. People who want to join the SDC as individuals must make a written submission outlining their goal in joining the assembly, and the relevant group within the SDC conducts research on that person and whether they are suitable for membership. To be considered for membership, the individual needs to accept the principles of the SDC, such as the co-chair system, be making a genuine effort to resolve the Syrian crisis, and be of Syrian nationality. The person does not need to be resident in Syria, as they can join the meetings via a digital platform.
Roles and responsibilities
We will not accept a situation like before, that the Ba’ath party making laws, dividing and destroying. We want the constitution to be changed, we want formal acceptance of the Kurds and Syriacs and Assyrians…so we can take our place in a diverse nation. We don’t accept Syrian politics without a place for all the people of Syria.
Jihat Omar, co-chair of the External Relations Office of the Syrian Democratic Council
The purpose of the SDC is to work towards a democratic confederal Syria through conversations, consensus building and diplomacy. The SDC poses itself as an alternative to the Syrian National Council, which has been criticized for being under the influence of Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as of the government of Turkey, where it is based. Like the Syrian National Council, the SDC is in opposition to the Assad regime. The SDC states its aim as bringing together a coalition of democratic forces within Syria to build the movement towards a democratic political solution for the country. The Council has a stated focus on ‘Syrian – Syrian dialogue’ to envision a future for Syria, rejecting the dominant framework of international powers such as Russia, Turkey or the USA determining the fate of the region. Three conferences have already been held as part of this process.
This ‘Syrian – Syrian dialogue’ process also includes meetings with opposition parties and personalities who are not engaging in the SDC system, both within Syria and in the diaspora. Through these meetings, Council members say they aim to understand the criticisms and reservations of those who do not participate in the system, and to build understanding and unity. There have also been meetings organized within Syria with different sectors of society. For instance, a meeting was organized in Ayn Issa in May 2019 which brought together members of the SDC and 5,000 Arab tribe leaders. The Council is planning a mass conference, aiming to bring together 2,000 intellectuals to develop ideas and solutions for the challenges facing Syria. The SDC also aims to bring together organizations in a ‘National Conference of Syria’ to build a unified political vision for Syria, strengthen the movement for a democratic, federal Syria, and further the case for participation in the Geneva talks to write a new constitution for Syria. However, the official process for writing a new Syrian constitution has recently started with no representation from the confederal structures of North and East Syria and only nominal inclusion of Kurdish minorities through ENKS. There is also no inclusion of women’s organizations from North and East Syria.
The diplomatic role of the SDC
The Council plays a diplomatic role both within Syria and internationally. In October 2019, following the Turkish invasion, a delegation headed by Ilham Ahmed, chair of the Executive Council, traveled to the USA. The delegation met with members of the US Congress on the 22nd October to discuss the future of North and East Syria. Delegations of the SDC have also met with government representatives across Europe, and members of the Council have attended meetings in countries around the world, including Australia, Lebanon and Tunisia.
The SDC is the political entity engaged in negotiations with the Syrian regime about the future of North and East Syria’s relationship with the Syrian government. The stance of the Council up to now has been that they want to be integrated within the Syrian state, but in a federal system with a degree of autonomy, and with guarantees of respect for all the ethnic and religious groups living in Syria.
The incorporation of the SDF into the Syrian Army has been a contested issue between the SDC and the Syrian government in discussions about possible integration of the political systems. For a long time maintaining the SDF as a separate military force was presented as a non-negotiable by the SDC, because “without defense forces, how should we be able to protect our people and our political vision?” (Jihat Omar, co-chair of the Foreign Relations Office of the SDC). Although the SDC lost a significant amount of bargaining power due to the Turkish invasion, they continue to affirm that “the autonomy of the SDF in the region protected by it” (General Command of the SDF, 30 October 2019) must be maintained, although they may concede some degree of integration.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – More than a dozen organizations have signed a letter to European human rights officials detailing abuses committed by Turkey and Turkish- backed groups in northern Syria.
“Since the start of Turkish military operations on the areas of Kurdish origin in northern Syria, the region has turned into a hotspot full of all forms of human rights violations,” reads the letter addressed to Marija Pejčinović Burić, Secretary General of the Council of Europe and Robert Ragnar Spano, President of the European Court of Human Rights.
The 18 signatories have unanimously accused Ankara and its Syrian proxies of committing “war crimes, crimes against humanity, as well as crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
Turkey and its Syrian proxies launched a military operation against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria in October 2019, seizing control of a stretch of northern Syria, known to Kurds as Rojava, including Sari Kani (Ras al-Ain) Gire Spi (Tal Abyad). Hundreds of thousands of civilians were displaced in the offensive.
The military offensive, dubbed “Operation Peace Spring”, followed the March 2018 invasion of Afrin, in Aleppo province, which came under control of Turkish forces and their Syrian militia proxies following two months of intense fighting with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Since then, human rights monitors have accused these groups of serious violations against locals.
“The opposition prevented the displaced civilians from returning to their homes, practiced theft, robbery, plunder, armed robbery, confiscated property and crops, burned them, burned forests, abducted civilians, and arbitrarily arrested them. Cemeteries and cultural symbols were destroyed,” the letter added.
Violations have been “confirmed by reports of governmental organisations, and non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the reports of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry for Syria.”
According to numerous organizations, Turkish-backed armed groups in northwestern Syria have committed repeated violations against the local population with impunity, including killing, kidnapping, and sexual violence.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a late November report that pro-Turkish militiamen prevented Syrian Kurds from returning to their homes. Instead, they “looted and unlawfully appropriated or occupied their property.”
“Executing individuals, pillaging property, and blocking displaced people from returning to their homes is damning evidence of why Turkey’s proposed ‘safe zones’ will not be safe,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW.
Prominent war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) confirmed to Rudaw English that it had signed the petition.
Other signatories include the Kurdish Committee for Human Rights, Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Austria, The Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Syria (MAF) and Kurdish Civil Society Organization in Europe.
Turkey blocked the water supply from the Euphrates into Kurdish-held areas in northeast Syria last week, according to local officials.
Ilham Ahmed, president of the Executive Committee of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) said that Ankara “intentionally” withheld the water to induce “a real drought in Syria.”
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Vocational training center for women opens in Kobani, north Syria
Kobani – Opening a vocational training center for women – North Press
KOBANI, Syria (North Press) – The Free Women’s Foundation in the Euphrates region opened a center for training women in the city of Kobani on Sunday which aims to assist women and empower them economically and educationally.
“Women started training on first aid, sewing, hairdressing, literacy in both Arabic and Kurdish, and computer literacy in the Ari Center for Training, said Amina Muhammad, an official in the Foundation.
“About 70 women joined the training courses, and the number is expanding.”
The duration of the courses ranges between one to three months, Muhmmad stated.
She added that the goal of the courses is to empower the women economically by teaching them professions and providing them job opportunities to achieve economic independence and help their families.
The Free Women’s Foundation in the Euphrates region opened a center for training women in the town of Sirrin, south of Kobani, on February 26 this year.
(Reporting by Fattah Issa, editing by Lucas Chapman)
NORTHEASTERN SYRIA – (North Press) – Ilham Ahmad, the executive president of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) accused Turkish authorities of trying to create a drought in Syria by cutting off Syria’s share of the Euphrates River.
“The Euphrates River has been a life source for the people of the region since the beginning of human civilization; Turkey, through a number of dams, deliberately reduced the water level to create drought in Syria,” Ahmad tweeted.
Ahmad attached a video showing a marked drop in the water level in the Euphrates River basin, and a large area of the river basin being transformed into dry land that was previously submerged in water.
The video shows a person speaking from behind the camera, who says nowadays the Turks have cut off the waters of the Euphrates River, confirming that he is walking in the middle of the river on foot, and only a small part of the river remains.
On Saturday, the General Administration of Dams in the Euphrates Region announced the reduction of power supply hours for areas in northeastern Syria due to the significant drop in the water level of the dams, accusing Turkey of cutting off water.
An agreement concluded between Syria and Turkey in 1987 stipulates a commitment Turkey to provide a flow of water at a rate of 500 cubic meters per second to Syria, and in 1994 Syria registered the agreement signed with Turkey at the United Nations to ensure the minimum amount of water.
Engineer Jihad Bayram, head of the Operations Room in Tishreen Dam, told North Press earlier that the water supply that crosses the Euphrates River does not exceed 200 cubic meters of water, although the agreements stipulate that the water intake should be 500 cubic meters per second.
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Syrian Kurds say Turkish charity dwarfed by stolen produce
As Turkey touts its humanitarian aid deliveries to Syria’s Idlib, critics weigh the six truckloads of supplies against its thousands of tons of allegedly looted Syrian grain.
A woman pushes a cart loaded with a sack of wheat in Qamishli, Syria, Sept. 18, 2017. Photo by REUTERS/Rodi Said.
Amberin Zaman @amberinzaman
Jun 22, 2020
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported that on Monday, two Turkish charities had sent six trucks carrying humanitarian aid to the rebel-held province of Idlib in northwest Syria.
“Truckloads of supplies including flour, clothing and dry food [donated] by the Adana Dosteller and Eskisehir Gunisigi charities entered Idlib through the Yayladagi border crossing in Turkey’s southern Hatay province. The aid will be distributed among families living in tents in Idlib,” Anadolu reported.
Turkey’s generosity to millions of displaced Syrians inside Syria and Turkey alike has been well documented. But critics of Ankara’s Syria policy charge that it’s giving with one hand and stealing with the other.
A report released today by Syrians for Truth and Justice, a non-partisan nonprofit documenting human rights violations in Syria, lays out in exhaustive detail how the Turkish government has facilitated commerce conducted by its Syrian National Army allies in looting grain. The grain is from eight silos that were confiscated in October during Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring, which resulted in Turkey’s occupation of a large swath of territory between the towns of Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain formerly controlled by the United States’ Syrian Kurdish allies.
Based on interviews with a range of actors including National Army commanders as well as employees at the grain silos, Syrians for Truth and Justice unveiled a network of grain dealings conducted by a Turkish government company — the Turkish Grain Board, known as TMO for short — and “armed groups’ commanders who personally seized amounts of the grain storage” and “then sold them to either local or Turkish merchants” and kept the proceeds for themselves. The theft is documented by satellite imagery showing transportation trucks taking the grain away from the silos.
The allegations will further blot Turkey and the National Army’s image in northeast Syria. Ankara is accused of overseeing or directly participating in a panoply of abuses, including summary executions, abductions, looting, crop burning and weaponizing water against the Kurds.
The Kurdish-led administration in northeastern Syria told the authors of the report that it had left behind about 730,000 tons of wheat, barley, fertilizers, cotton and seed as it withdrew in the face of advancing Turkish forces. “This stock is the strategic reserve for the next three years and constitutes 11% of the total stock of Raqqa and Hasakah provinces,” said Salman Baroudo, the co-chair of the commerce committee of the autonomous administration.
A ton of wheat produces around 850 kilograms of flour, and a ton of flour produces 1.2 tons of bread, explained an autonomous administration official to illustrate the scale of the loss.
The Syrian National Army denied that it was engaged in any looting from grain silos but officials from the Istanbul-based Syrian Interim Government and employees of the local councils claimed the opposite.
Syrians for Truth and Justice executive director Bassam al-Ahmad told Al-Monitor in a telephone interview that the looting “fits a broader pattern of abuses as were perpetrated in Turkish-occupied Afrin. Turkey is buying looted wheat.” Afrin is the Kurdish-majority enclave that was occupied by Turkey in 2018. Crimes committed by Turkey’s Sunni rebel allies have been well documented. They include rape, arbitrary detentions and industrial-scale extortion of local olive farmers, with much of their oil finding its way to Turkey and exported to foreign markets under Turkish labels, Germany’s Deutsche Welle reported.
The TMO insists that it only imports surplus barley but no wheat from Syria. But the trade is driving up prices, noted Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Syria expert and fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. She told Al-Monitor, “It’s absolutely true that wheat and grain is being looted. I’ve confirmed it with the factions. They are stealing the wheat and barley that is cultivated in large swaths of land between Ras al-Ain and Tell Abyad and selling it to Turkey.”
Tsurkov added that Turkey was offering more money for the commodities “than any other actor in Syria is offering to farmers. Therefore there is a clear incentive to sell to Turkey.”
But even as Turkey engages in such transactions, it continues to prevent any flow of humanitarian aid from its borders to the Kurdish-held areas. The COVID-19 pandemic has not softened Turkey’s stance while the collapse of the Syrian currency has compounded people’s misery across the country.
Protests erupted today in Tell Abyad and the town of Suluk, also under Turkish control, over deteriorating living conditions and rising food prices, especially that of bread.
In Suluk, a crowed gathered outside the local Turkish-appointed council and called for its removal, reported the Violation Documentation Centre in North Syria in a tweet. It said in a separate call for action yesterday that Turkish soldiers were targeting farmers on the Turkish-Syrian border. Syrian Kurdish farmer Muhayuddin Abdurazak died after allegedly being shot by a Turkish border guard on May 17.
Thomas McClure, a researcher at the Rojava Information Center, which publishes reports on the Kurdish-controlled region for international audiences, told Al-Monitor that the area affected by Operation Peace Spring encompasses 440,000 hectares of arable land producing up to 763,000 tons of wheat. “Turkey’s instillation of proxy militias ın this once productive region has severely impacted the remainder of northeast Syria and those civilians who have remained in the zone of occupation. The loss of vital arable land places further pressure on the remainder of the northeast, where per UN figures 1.94 million people are in need of humanitarian aid,” he noted.
McClure backed up Syrians for Truth and Justice, saying, “Grain silos were rapidly looted, with tens of thousands of tons of wheat transferred to Turkey for sale or sold to local merchants at extortionate prices. Bread, the local staple, doubled in price in the months following the invasion, while other local essentials like cooking gas are now five times as expensive as elsewhere in northeast Syria.”
The governor of Turkey’s Sanliurfa province, where the occupation is administered from, told Anadolu last week that Turkey would be opening a new gate between Ras al-Ain and the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar. Abdullah Erin said the gate would be “for both Ras al-Ain and Ceylanpinar,” much as the opening of a gate from Turkey’s nearby border town of Akcakale had been for Tell Abyad. The pro-government Daily Sabah reported, “Citizens frequently voice that daily life is getting better as a result of the reconstruction of infrastructure” in Tell Abyad and in Ras al-Ain. Today’s protest paints a different picture.
KOBANI, Syria (North Press) – The General Administration of Dams in the Euphrates Region announced on Saturday the reduction of electricity hours for the Jazira region due to the massive decrease in the level of the dam’s water. The Administration accused the Turkish state of cutting water to the regions of North and East Syria.
The General Administration of Dams in the Euphrates Region declared in a statement that was read at Tishreen Dam that “the water supply of the Euphrates River from the Turkish state reached less than a quarter of the internationally agreed-upon quantity.”
Engineer Jihad Bayram, head of the operations room at Tishreen Dam, told North Press that, “according to international agreements, the water intake should be 500m3 per second, whereas now it is 200m3 per second.”
“Turkey besieges [northeast Syria] by controlling the water supply of the region,” he added.
“The General Administration of Dams announced that it will adopt a electricity supplying program for ten hours, from 2 p.m. until 12 a.m., until further notice while monitoring the low reservoir levels. A new program will be approved if the water level falls more than that, so the lakes do not reach the “dead zone”, where the lakes cannot generate electric power,” according to the statement.
“The supplying period will be ten hours, from 2 p.m. until 12 a.m., is for the Euphrates region by the Euphrates Dam and Tishreen. As for the Jazira region, it will be supplied from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. by the Swedeya Dam in the Derik countryside, which works on oil energy.”
The statement concluded that reducing water to northern Syria will directly affect environmental wealth and agricultural products, and will affect the community’s economy and the general food security of the average citizen.
(reporting by Fattah Issa, editing by Lucas Chapman)
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Turkish drone strike kills 3 women in north Syria’s Kurdish city of Kobani
Three women reportedly killed in a Turkish drone strike that targeted a civilian residence in the northern Syrian city of Kobani. (Photo: Social Media)
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A Turkish drone strike on Tuesday evening killed three civilian females at a residence in the village of Helincê, located outside the northern Syrian city of Kobani, according to local security forces.
The General Command of the Kurdish-led Internal Security Forces (ISF), also known as the Asayesh, in an official statement said blamed the “Turkish occupation” for the attack.
“We in the General Command of the Internal Security Forces (ISF) for Northeast Syria condemn the crimes of the Turkish occupation against our people and we also call on the International Coalition and the Russian Federation to do their duty.”
The ISF demanded that the United States and Russia hold Turkey to its stated commitment to the “ceasefire agreement between the two states of Russia and Turkey.”
After Turkey intervened in northeastern Syria in October 2019, Russia and the US reached separate ceasefire deals with Ankara, which allowed Turkish troops to control the area between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain (Serikaniye).
Despite the agreements, Turkish-backed groups and Turkish army continue to occasionally target areas held by the SDF. In some cases, villagers living in the Syrian-Turkish border areas were killed in attacks by the Turkish army and Turkish-backed rebel forces.
The aftermath of the deadly Turkish drone strike on a civilian residence in the northern Syrian city of Kobani, June 23, 2020. (Photo: Hawar News Agency)
“Zehra Berkel is one of the women who died during the Turkish attacks. She is a coordinating member of the Kongra Star women’s movement,” read the official Twitter account of the women’s rights organization, based in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).
“She was struggling or women’s rights. The attack… targeted women. This is another example of Turkey showing its patriarchal face,” the organization said.
According to the local Hawar News Agency (ANHA) the other two victims were Mizgin Xelil and the owner of the house, Amina Waysi.
This was not the first Turkish drone attack in Kobani. On April 28, a previous one targeted a checkpoint of the ISF, though resulted in no casualties or significant damage.
Local officials and Kurdish civilians fear Kobani could still be a target for a possible Turkish attack in the future because the city was a global symbol in the fight against the Islamic State.
“All of the cities at the border are under threats, but particularly when it comes to Kobani, even the Russians tell us from time to time that there is the danger that the Turks will attack you again,” Ilham Ahmed, President of the Executive Committee of the Syrian Democratic Council, said during a May 29 online event organized by the Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign.
“So this is something that the Russians inform us of. So, of course there is a fear that Kobani will be attacked.”
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Syriac, Assyrian and Arab prominent figures on Wednesday applauded the intra-Kurdish dialogue in Syria stating it would not exclude other communities from ruling the country’s northeast.
“The agreement between the Kurdish National Council in Syria (ENKS) and the [PYD-led]Kurdish National Unity parties is in the interest of the region and solves their political disputes,” Gabriel Moushe, a senior official at the Christian Assyrian Democratic Organization told North Press.
He pointed out that the agreement will not exclude other communities in the area, but rather it solves internal Kurdish political issues.
Moushe also noted that any agreement between the Kurdish factions should take the other communities of northeastern Syria into consideration.
Last week, ENKS and the [PYD-led] Kurdish National Unity parties announced they reached an initial understanding on a political vision for Syria stemming from the 2014 Duhok agreement.
This understanding came after a long-term intensive dialogue on the initiative of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi and with direct American support and sponsorship.
The dispute between the two Kurdish factions, ENKS which is a group of Kurdish political parties affiliated with the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition, and PYD, the main Kurdish party in northeast Syria began after the breakout of the Syrian civil war in 2012.
Arab Communities’ position
Amer Sheikh Halosh, an Arab community leader and lawyer, told North Press, “Kurdish participation in the Syrian political scene is important.”
“The intra-Kurdish talk plays a significant role in founding a future with no conflicts and crises,” he added.
But he further pointed out that the agreement of two Kurdish blocks didn’t contain all Kurdish parties in Syria.
“The Kurdish Democratic Progressive parties, Kurdish Democratic Unity Party in Syria (Yekiti) and many other Kurdish parties,” he said.
Halosh also rejected the accusation that the main Kurdish parties would exclude the other communities from ruling the area.
“Talks that accuse the two parties that their agreement and understanding on specific percentage is at the expense of other communities in the region, are incorrect, and this dialogue is the right policy which Syria needs,” he said. Christian Communities’ stance
Hana Somi, a senior member of the Syriac Union Party, said the talks among the Kurdish political parties would have positive influences on the region.
“[Kurdish talks] are not against Arabs, Syriac or other communities and what is rumoured about power sharing at the expense of the communities are incorrect,” he said.
He added that the intra-Kurdish dialogue will strengthen cooperation and understanding between parties and other Syriac institutions.
Dohuk agreement in 2014 was signed between ENKS and the PYD-led Council, known as TEV-DEM, in the city of Duhok in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. It provided for the formation of a Kurdish political authority in Syria, but it failed due to mutual accusations between the two parties.
(Reporting by Reem Shamoun; Editing by Hisham Arafat)
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80-year-old Kurdish man tortured to death in Afrin
The Turkish state and mercenaries continue to target civilians in Afrin. Hardly a day passes without reports of crimes in the occupied territories of North and East Syria.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Thursday, 11 Jun 2020, 16:04
Human Rights Organization- Afrin reported that the dead body of an 80-year-old Kurdish man called Aref Abdo Khalil, alias Aref Khatouneh, was found thrown near Lake Maidanki.
According to reliable local sources the victim had been kidnapped from his home village of Qezilbash, in Afrin’s Bilbile district on June 9. The area is under the sway of notorious Sultan Murad Turkmeni militias of Jaish al Nukhba.
The dead body of the disabled old man, who used to sit in a wheelchair, was found naked bearing traces of torture yesterday morning.
Local sources said that the victim had been kidnapped by Jaish al-Nukhba militiamen who broke into his home and stole his money.
The Turkish state has established a “terror regime” in all the areas it has occupied in North-East Syria. On April 23, the invaders kidnapped Sheikh Inezan, a prominent figure from the Neim tribe, which is among the most important tribes of the region.
On April 4, three civilians were kidnapped and then executed in the area between the villages of Kopirlik and Evdokoy. On the very dame day, a civilian named Sileman Bekre was kidnapped by the invaders in Afrin.
Two days ago, on June 9, eight civilians were kidnapped in the village of Raco, in Mabata by Jabhat al-Shamiya mercenaries who asked for ransom to release those detained.
16-year-old Malak Nabih Khalil was kidnapped by the Sultan Murad Brigade mercenaries on May 23. Her lifeless body has been found near the village of Firiziya in Azaz region on June 5.
Afrin has been under the occupation of the Turkish state and its mercenary allies for over two years now. The attacks of the Turkish state against Afrin began on 20 January 2018 and the invasion of the city was carried out on 18 March 2018. Since the invasion, war crimes have been systematically committed in the region. Almost every day, crimes such as the confiscation of property belonging to local people, kidnapping of civilians for ransom, torture or executions are carried out.
The occupation forces controlled by Ankara use the abductions to extort ransoms. This method has become a lucrative source of income. At least 500 cases of ransom handovers have been reported so far. Turkish-backed militias demand an equivalent of between 3,000 and 100,000 euros, depending on the ability of the victims’ relatives to pay.
Videos circulated on social media in late May showed the evacuation of abducted and imprisoned women prisoners found in an internment camp of the pro-Turkish militia Furqat al-Hamza. A number of Kurdish women, many of them Yazidis, were abducted after the invasion of the city by the Turkish army in spring 2018, and many are still in the prisons of the militias commanded by Turkey, being tortured and sexually abused. Protests against violent attacks on defenceless civilians, especially women, have been ongoing since, demanding urgent action by the international authorities which have remained silent on the Turkish occupation and resulting crimes in the region.
Turkey-linked mercenaries kidnap 11 civilians in Afrin
The Turkish state and mercenaries continue to target civilians in Afrin. Hardly a day passes without reports of crimes in the occupied territories of North and East Syria.
ANF
SHEHBA
Tuesday, 9 Jun 2020, 11:48
According to local sources 8 civilians have been kidnapped in the village of Raco, in Mabata by Jabhat al-Shamiya mercenaries. The mercenaries said they will release the kidnapped civilians if a ransom is paid. The kidnapped people have been named locally as Elî Hemo, Husên Şêxo, Ezîz Şêxo, Betal Mihemed Şêxo, Heysem Remzî Hecî Hemo, Henîf Arif Şerê, Mihemed Birîm and Henîf Henan.
Sources in the region also told ANHA that eventually two of the kidnapped civilians, Henîf Henan and Mihemed Birîm, were released after ransom was paid while there is no information about the fate of the others.
In addition, a source from the village of Meimila in Mabata, said that many more civilians were abducted by the mercenaries.
Only some of the names of the kidnapped people could be learned: Lawend Umer Simo (20), Mihemed Menan Birîm (32) and Ciwan Şukrî Umer (20).
The occupation forces kidnapped 16-year-old Malak Nabih Khalil by the Sultan Murad Brigade mercenaries on May 23. Her lifeless body has been found near the village of Firiziya in Azaz region two days ago.
According to reports revealed in late May, 11 women who had been abducted in 2018 were subject to brutal torture for two years. The women were hidden from their familes during the mentioned period of time.
The Turkish state has established a “terror regime” in all the areas it has occupied in North-East Syria. On April 23, the invaders kidnapped Sheikh Inezan, a prominent figure from the Neim tribe, which is among the most important tribes of the region.
On April 4, three civilians were kidnapped and then executed in the area between the villages of Kopirlik and Evdokoy. On the very dame day, a civilian named Sileman Bekre was kidnapped by the invaders in Afrin.
Afrin has been under the occupation of the Turkish state and its mercenary allies for over two years now. The attacks of the Turkish state against Afrin began on 20 January 2018 and the invasion of the city was carried out on 18 March 2018. Since the invasion, war crimes have been systematically committed in the region. Almost every day, crimes such as the confiscation of property belonging to local people, kidnapping of civilians for ransom, torture or executions are carried out.
The occupation forces controlled by Ankara use the abductions to extort ransoms. This method has become a lucrative source of income. At least 500 cases of ransom handovers have been reported so far. Turkish-backed militias demand an equivalent of between 3,000 and 100,000 euros, depending on the ability of the victims’ relatives to pay.
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Water as a weapon of war
2 June 2020
Turkey is restricting access to a vital life source for thousands of people in northeast Syria. A new crowdfunder is raising money for water infrastructure in the region, writes Jo Taylor from the campaign.
In an area of northern Syria, already struck by desertification which has been dramatically intensified by the global climate crisis, water is being used as a weapon of war.
For the past eight years the region commonly known by its Kurdish name of Rojava has been experimenting with building up an ecological and feminist system of self-governance. In this system, ordinary people make decisions about how their towns and neighbourhoods are run and women’s freedom is considered fundamental.
Turkey invaded Rojava in October 2019 after Trump announced US military withdrawal from the region. Turkish forces bombed the main water station on the first day of the invasion of Serekaniye (a city whose name, in Kurdish, means ‘fountainhead’, or ‘water source’) and surrounding towns and villages. Since then, the water has been shut-off on five further occasions, denying more than 650,000 people of access to water, just as the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
Since the subsequent invasion and occupation of Serekaniye and Tel Abyad in late 2019, water is now being weaponized and water infrastructure targeted as never before
In addition to this, Turkey has dammed the rivers which flow from Turkey into Syria and Iraq, detaining water inside its own borders, causing a big reduction in the flow of water to the wider region – by an estimated 80 per cent to Iraq and by around 40 per cent to Syria.
In response to the ongoing crisis, UK-based co-operative the Solidarity Economy Association (SEA) has come together with a number of other international organizations and women’s structures in Rojava to launch a big crowdfunding campaign for water infrastructure and women’s co-operatives in the region. It aims to raise £100,000 ($123,463).
The #Water4Rojava crowdfunding campaign launched on 16 May and reached £25,000 ($30,865) in the first week. The campaign is also being match funded up to the first £50,000 and is being supported by well-known figures, including British actress Maxine Peak, David Graeber, Debbie Bookchin, Janet Biehl and world-renowned photographer Joey Lawrence.
‘Most of the water sources in the region were in Serekaniye and we lost them with the invasion,’ explains Heval Armanc from Aborîya Jin (Women’s Economy) – an autonomous women’s economic body in northeast Syria.
‘We have been struggling a lot more since we lost access to the water resources. We have some women’s economy projects, like our project in Derîk (another city in Rojava), where we are digging wells, planting trees and building houses. With all that we do, we are mindful about nature and not to cause any harm.’
Aborîya Jin’s main role is to help women set up and run projects like agriculture and textile co-operatives, and communal living projects with collective livelihoods. ‘If we are working alone, those projects will move very slowly, but with support the project can be very successful, that’s why the Water for Rojava campaign is very important. Access to water is even more vital now with the global pandemic – you need water to be clean and safe,’ says Armanc.
Turkey controls 90 per cent of the waterflow of the Euphrates, and around 44 per cent of the Tigris, the two main rivers of the region. Since 1992, the government has built 22 major dams which hold back the headwaters of these two great rivers.
Within Turkey’s borders, hundreds of towns and villages have been submerged and (mostly Kurdish) residents forced into cities and away from traditional ways of life. Downstream in Iraq, regions such as the ecologically and culturally unique Mesopotamian Marshes and the Marsh Arabs who depend on them for subsistence are also at threat of extinction.
In Syria, Turkey has been directly at war with the predominantly Kurdish population of the northern regions since its invasion and continued occupation of Afrin in early 2018. This is now escalating since the subsequent invasion and occupation of Serekaniye and Tel Abyad in late 2019, and water is now being weaponized and water infrastructure targeted as never before.
The local Directorate of Water, the citizen-led municipalities, the Women’s Economy, local charities and NGOs, all have plans for alternative measures to provide water, but pressures such as an economic embargo on the region and food insecurity caused by the depleted water supply, climate change and the ongoing conflict, mean that there are not enough funds to go ahead with all the projects. That’s where #Water4Rojava can help.
SOHR: ISIS battalion from Iraq works for Turkish intelligence
SOHR reported that an Iraqi battalion of ISIS members working for “Ahrar Al-Sharqiayyah” and Turkish intelligence.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Monday, 8 Jun 2020, 08:51
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that a battalion which comprises tens of ISIS members operates under the banner of “Ahrar Al-Sharqiyyah” and consists of nearly 40 Iraqi fighters, works for the Turkish intelligence.
According to SOHR sources, the battalion works in northern Syria with a task of carrying out executions and detonations. In addition, they are tasked with spy on ISIS foreign members who try to flee to the Turkish territory and the undercover members in Aleppo countryside, so that the battalion can arrest them. Some of those arrested ISIS members were imprisoned or executed, while others were taken to Turkey in return for large sums of money. Reliable SOHR sources confirmed that those members in prisons have been compromised in order to be sent to fight in Libya.
The Observatory said: “The headquarters of the battalion, which is led by a person known as (Abu Waqqas Al-Iraqi), is in Al-Bab city in north-eastern Aleppo. A notorious prison belonging to the battalion is also located in the area. It is worth noting that Al-Iraqi used to travel comfortably between Turkey and Aleppo countryside. Al-Iraqi appeared in a picture taken in the Turkish state of Urfah documenting his meeting with Abu Osama Al-Tayanah, an ISIS commander.”
Reliable sources have informed SOHR that Abu Waqqas has been laying low for nearly two months, while it is not known whether he has been involved in military operations in Libya on the side of the “Government of National Accord”, or travelled to Egypt with large sums of money in his possession, like Abu Hudhayfah Al-Hamawi did. Abu Hudhayfah, a former commander in “Ahrar Al-Sham”, fled to Egypt after stealing large sums of money from “Ahrar Al-Sharqiyah” when the formation was established and joined “Ahrar Al-Sham movement” at that time.
“The Iraqi battalion recently transported prisoners from its prison in Al-Bab to Idlib city, where a commander in Hayyaat Tahrir Al-Sham known as (Abu Ali Al-Iraqi) has received them. It is worth noting that (Belal Al-Shawashi Al-Tunsi, Abu Al-Waleed Al-Tunsi and Abu Osama Al-Iraqi) as well as other Egyptians were among the prisoners who have been transported to Idlib. All of these prisoners who have been taken to Idlib are ISIS commanders. The battalion also established another headquarters recently in Al-Bab city,” SOHR sources added.
“Moreover, the Iraqi battalion used to bury people it killed in a mass grave on the outskirts of Susanbat village on the road between Al-Bab and Al-Ra’i in the north-eastern countryside of Aleppo. SOHR has obtained information about the fact that this battalion has killed nearly 300 civilians, combatants and ISIS members buried in the battalion’s mass grave in Aleppo.”
SOHR state that, on January 16, 2020, Thabet Al-Hwaysh, a security official in Ahrar Al-Sharqiyyah, was killed in a car-bomb explosion in Siluk town in northern Al-Raqqah. Al-Hwaysh was the one responsible for transferring money to Abu Waqqas Al-Iraqi from Al-Bab city to Turkey, during the period when Abu Waqqas was in Turkey.
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Assyrian villages in the Khabur valley under constant attack
Of the 20,000 Assyrians who were living in the Khabur valley in northeast Syria before the war began in 2011, only about 1,000 remain today. Madeleine Khamis, commander of the “Khabur Guards”, fears that even the last Assyrians will be forced into exile.
ANF
HESEKÊ
Tuesday, 26 May 2020, 13:36
According to Madeleine Khamis, commander of the Assyrian combat unit “Khabur Guards”, the Christian inhabitants of the Khabur valley cannot return to their homeland in the long run. As long as their settlement areas in northeast Syria are threatened by the Turkish army and its Islamist allies, the last members of the Assyrian community will probably be forced into exile, Khamis fears.
Programmes and projects to promote the return of displaced persons and their reintegration had to be put on hold due to the war of aggression launched last October by NATO member Turkey and its proxy invasion troops, the so-called “Syrian National Army” (SNA) – an association of extremist FSA militias, members of the “Al-Nusra Front”, Turkmen groups and other jihadist factions from the largely Turkish-held Idlib province.
After the liberation of Til Temir (Tal Tamr), the Khabur guards, together with Christian organizations, had succeeded in bringing exiled Assyrians back into the country. Now that the Khabur valley is in Turkey’s sights, no one believes that the return projects will be resumed soon. Time and again, the region is at the centre of invasion attacks to integrate it into the illegal occupation zone.
20,000 Christian population before the war in Til Temir
The Khabur river extends along the Khabur valley in the northeast of Syria. Here, where the town of Til Temir (Kurdish name: Girê Xurma), a reflection of the population mosaic of Syria, is located, the Nestorians – Assyrians from (Hakkari – who had fled to northern Iraq during the genocide of Christians in the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1918, settled in 1933. The League of Nations in Geneva awarded them the settlement area. Their second exodus was preceded by the Simele massacre: some 9000 Assyrians, mainly men and young people, were murdered in various villages in the Duhok region. The village of Simele, which was particularly affected, gave its name to this genocide. There, under the leadership of the Iraqi military, some 350 people died.
Madeleine Khamis
The Assyrians from Hakkari founded 33 villages in the flat valley of the Khabur, while Chaldean Christians settled in another three villages. Before the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011, about 20,000 Assyrian Christians were still living here, in almost every village there was a church. Now there are not even 1,000 people left. Because of the jihadists almost all inhabitants fled abroad, most went to Canada, Australia or the US. Some of the villages are completely empty, those who stayed are mostly elderly people. Also, several hundred internally displaced persons from other regions of the country now live in Til Temir.
Most of the inhabitants of Til Temir had already fled towards the end of 2012, when mercenaries of the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) shifted their attacks on Christians in the west and east to the northern regions and threatened to invade the city. Throughout the year there were repeated massacres, attacks and kidnappings in Homs, Damascus and Deir ez-Zor. Tn time the circle of perpetrators expanded to almost all armed jihadist militias, above all the “Al-Nusra Front”. Churches were desecrated and bombed, Christian villages systematically attacked and depopulated, religious dignitaries kidnapped and murdered. Starting in the second half of 2013, the name “Islamic State” (IS) was used more often in connection with crimes against Syrian Christians, especially around the Khabur valley. When the IS took control over more and more roads in the immediate vicinity of Til Temir, migration increased again.
In 2015, the escalation of terror in the Khabur Valley reached a new level when, in the early morning of February 23, the IS overran the western bank with 40 SUVs, took 12 Assyrian villages on the west side of the river and set fire to the churches. Some 4,000 people who wanted to seek shelter in Tur Abdin – the “Mountain of God’s servants” and heartland of the Syriacs – but were not allowed through by Turkey, managed to escape to Qamishlo and Hesekê. Others went abroad. Those who did not make it in time fell into the hands of the IS. According to various reports, the number of those kidnapped ranged from 262 to 373 and a ransom in the tens of millions was demanded for their release. In June 2015, Til Temir, the nearby Mount Kizwan (Abdulaziz) and the surrounding area were liberated by the YPG/YPJ and Christian fighting groups that had been formed after the outbreak of the Syrian war. Among the martyrs of the city was Ivana Hoffmann from Duisburg. She died on 7 March 2015 bearing the name of “Avaşîn Têkoşin Güneş” in the ranks of struggle and is considered the first internationalist to die in the armed struggle against the IS.
Assyrian Church in Til Temir
Khamis: Turkey is a colonial state
“There are absolutely no differences in the mentality of the Islamists and the Turkish state. When the jihadists invaded the Khabur valley a few years ago, our churches and other holy sites were the first target. This scenario has been repeated during the recent invasion. So far, six of our churches have been razed to the ground by Turkish combat drones. Others were largely damaged,” says Madeleine Khamis.
The commander, who is also a member of the Military Council of the Khabur Guards, calls Turkey a “colonial state”, which, according to the principle of divide et impera – divide and rule- has pursued and is constantly refining its old strategy of dividing territories, dividing the population and confusing the social structure. The same scenario as in Hatay 1938 is wanted to be implemented in the entire border strip as part of the neo-Ottoman expansion plans, says Khamis.
“Turkey wants to expand its borders by dividing and annexing parts of Northern Syria. The Assyrians accept the Turkish state neither in their settlement area nor in other parts of north-eastern Syria. Because the Turkish threat is an existential threat,” Khamis continues.
Genocidal violence against Assyrians and other Christian and ethnic groups is a common thread running through the history of the Turkish state and the Ottoman Empire, of which Turkey is the successor. When more than 1.5 million Armenians became victims of genocide under the responsibility of the young Turkish government during the First World War, pogroms, deportations and massacres also killed about 500,000 Syriacs, 300,000 of them Assyrians, and members of other ethnic groups who did not fit into the nation understanding of the “Turkish-Islamic synthesis”. The historian Joseph Yacoub, who was born in Hesekê, describes the genocide of the Syriacs as “hidden genocide”, since science has paid little attention to this event.
Church damaged during attacks
We are the descendants of survivors
“We in the Khabur Valley are the descendants of survivors of these events. Turkey, on the other hand, has always been an aggressor, destroying the civilizing heritage of the Christian settlement areas,” says Khamis. The Turkish state has not contributed to anything apart from its own ethnic nationalism and the resulting destruction, she says and adds: “Even today, it is attacking our regions and exporting Islamist terror to northeast Syria to wipe us out. As long as silence continues to reign, as long as the Turkish government’s actions are approved by the international community, as long as the outcry continues to fail, even the last Assyrian will leave the region. No one will be able to return home.”
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Turkish forces and opposition groups destroy nine Yazidi shrines in Afrin
Destruction of the dome of Sheikh Ali shrine in the village of Basoufan, southern Afrin
On Sunday, co-chair of the Legislative Council of Afrin region, Suleiman Jaafar, said that the number of Yazidi shrines that have been destroyed by Turkish forces and their affiliated armed opposition groups has reached nine so far.
Jaafar, a Yazidi from the village of Basoufan in the Sherawa district, southern Afrin, said to North Press that members of the Turkish-backed armed opposition groups destroyed the dome of Sheikh Ali shrine in the village of Basoufan two days ago, making the number of the shrines destroyed by them nine.
He noted that members of the Turkish-backed armed opposition groups “dug up the shrine, which dates back to the first century AD, and opened the tomb of Sheikh Ali in search of gold and treasures, and now, the dome is destroyed.”
Human Rights Organization – Afrin, in the northern countryside of Aleppo, confirmed on Saturday that militants of the Failaq al-Sham group, along with settlers residing in Basoufan village, destroyed parts of the dome of Sheikh Ali shrine using a bulldozer amid high voices shouting “Allah Akbar”, describing the shrine as a place for atheists and infidels.
Jaafar indicated that the shrines, which were destroyed by Turkish forces and their affiliated armed opposition groups in Afrin region are Sheikh Barakat shrine on top of the Sheikh Mount southern Simeon Castle, Sheikh Hamid and Parsa Khatoun in Qastal-Jendo village in Sharra district, the shrine of Sinka village and Qara-Jorn shrine near Midanki in Sharra district, Malak-Adi shrine in Qibar village, Sheikh Jneid shrine in Faqira village in Jinderis district, Seikh Rakab shrine in Shadeiry village, and Sheikh Ali shrine in Basoufan.
For his part, Zinar Jaafar, a journalist from the village of Basoufan, said: “The Turkish army and its affiliated armed groups are taking up position in the village of Basoufan, which means that they are aware of what is happening, as there are plans to eliminate Yazidis in Afrin.”
Yazidis in Afrin are distributed in 22 villages, but there are no accurate statistics about their number in Syria, while according to a previous report issued by the Human Rights Organization – Afrin, the number of the Yazidis is about 25,000.
The number of Yazidi shrines in Afrin exceeds 18, most of which have been subjected to destruction and demolition in addition to the theft of their property.
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Coronavirus in Rojava: Facing a Pandemic Without a State
by Thomas McClure
Across the world, states are coming under pressure for their response to the coronavirus crisis. Some fail to adequately protect their citizens, some use Covid-19 as an excuse for authoritarian power-grabs, and some do both simultaneously.
Here in North and East Syria, the autonomous region more commonly known as Rojava, 4m Syrians – Kurds, Arabs, Christians – live outside the limited protection and authoritarian control of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Their stated aim is to build a new form of communal politics, outside the state. Consequently, the autonomous region faces isolation, embargo and the severing of aid on behalf of state powers unwilling to see their project succeed, leaving it searching for solutions outside those the United Nations and World Health Organization can offer.
Nine years of war, systematic targeting of health and water infrastructure by occupying Turkish forces, a lack of international recognition, and January’s closure of the only UN aid crossing into North and East Syria have left the region at extreme risk from coronavirus. With the WHO refusing to support it directly, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) is reliant on its own meagre resources and aid routed via the Assad government, little of which ever arrives to the north-east.
Pre-existing crisis.
The humanitarian situation is dire across Syria, and the north-east is no exception. 1.6m people are in need of humanitarian assistance, including 600,000 internally displaced people. Local doctors are modelling a 10% death-rate in both the detention centers containing Isis fighters and the refugee camps – some containing Isis-linked families, others housing hundreds of thousands of Kurds displaced by successive Turkish invasions, as well as Arabs who have fled to the relative security of the north-east throughout the nine-year conflict.
The region’s 4m residents are reliant on a total capacity of just 40 ventilators and 35 ICU beds. Nine of the 11 public hospitals in North and East Syria have been damaged during the war, while a recent London School of Economics study found the regions under the AANES have the capability to handle just 460 coronavirus cases before being overrun.
WHO support.
The only way to accurately test for coronavirus is with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test machines. The only PCR machines in North and East Syria were lost in October 2019, when Turkey invaded the Kurdish-majority city of Serê Kaniyê. The hospital was shelled and then seized as part of the operation, leaving it inaccessible and inoperable.
The WHO had required North and East Syria to send all test samples to the Syrian capital, Damascus, but neither the WHO nor the Syrian government were facilitating the process. On 2 April, testing in Damascus confirmed a case of Covid-19 that, the same day, gave the North and East Syria its first coronavirus death, yet both the Syrian government and WHO failed to communicate this information to the AANES until two weeks had elapsed, putting medical staff in danger and meaning health officials in the region could not take adequate precautions.
Via Turkey, the WHO has now provided test kits to Idlib, a city controlled by al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS), from where samples can be sent to Turkey for testing. It has also provided 1200 testing kits to regime-controlled areas. Due to its lack of recognised status, however, North and East Syria has no access to WHO-provided testing kits. With support from the Kurdistan regional government in Iraq, the AANES was finally able to privately acquire five PCR machines, and together with front-line tests like white blood cell tests and temperature checks, the AANES is now able to run a basic testing programme rather than relying solely on Damascus.
UN aid severed.
The WHO’s parent organisation, the UN, is beholden to the powerful states sitting on its security council. In January 2020, Russia – whose support for the Damascus regime means it refuses to countenance autonomy in the north-east – exercised its security council veto to close the only UN aid crossing into North and East Syria
This means all UN aid into Syria is now sent either into areas controlled by HTS, to factions under the control of the Turkish intelligence service, or directly to the Assad regime. The AANES is forced to try to access UN aid via Damascus, but the reality is that most aid sent to Damascus remains in areas loyal to the regime. Little to nothing ever arrives in the north-east.
One sole 20-tonne aid delivery via Damascus did make it to North and East Syria – but per WHO guidance, 89% of the delivery remained in a regime-controlled pocket in Qamishlo. The limited aid supplied to the AANES was made up of infant incubators and other supplies not related to coronavirus, with one doctor telling the Rojava Information Center that the supplies were “essentially useless”. Similarly, under Turkish pressure the Iraqi Kurdish regional government has also been preventing the purchase and transfer of coronavirus supplies into North and East Syria.
A recent report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs indicated this decision will seriously reduce North and East Syria’s ability to combat coronavirus. Seven health centres in Raqqa are facing severe shortages of medicines and supplies as a direct result of the decision, with one soon to close, while the health centre in the Hol camp is also severely affected.
Turkish attacks on water.
While the regime obstructs aid from the south, Turkey applies pressure from the north. Turkey’s 2019 invasion of Serê Kaniyê and Tell Abyad was marked by shelling and airstrikes targeting health points and clinics, resulting in the loss of two key hospitals as Turkey seized control of AANES territory.
It also allowed Turkey to take control of the Allouk water station. Allouk is a critical piece of infrastructure, providing drinking water to between 650,000 and 1m+ people, including 65,000 internally displaced people and Isis-linked individuals in the Hol camp; internally displaced people in the Washokani and Aresha camps and ad-hoc settlements, including 80 schools in Hasekah; the largest detention facility for captured Isis fighters in the world, housing some 5000 combatants and the scene of a recent uprising; and the AANES’s main quarantine hospital.
Turkey launched an airstrike against Allouk on day one of its invasion, putting it out of service. Now Turkey is in control of the water station, and although it has since been fixed under international mediation, Turkey has nonetheless cut the water flow to AANES areas five times in the last month, each time demanding the AANES send more and more electricity into (and pay for repairs in) the areas Turkey occupied in 2019. As the occupying power, Turkey is responsible for electricity provision in Serê Kaniyê under international law, and moreover it is demanding far more power than is proportional to its needs. Most recently, on 2 April Turkish forces shelled the water pipe from Allouk to Hasekah, cutting off water for the fifth time.
Solutions outside the state.
With Russia, Turkey and the Damascus government all piling pressure on the autonomous regions, aided and abetted by the WHO and UN, the north-east is forced to pursue alternative solutions. On the one hand, its political demands are clear: direct provision of WHO test kits and other supplies, re-opening of Yaroubiah aid crossing, an end to Turkey’s manipulation of the water flow, and in the long term recognition of the north-east’s autonomy as part of a federal, democratic Syria.
In the short term, however, the region is once again forced to rely on its own strained resources. Multiple medical projects are underway to develop DIY, locally-produced ventilators as a solution to the chronic shortages in this field; aid is being distributed on a family-by-family basis via the local communes which form the building blocks of the grassroots democratic system.
If the AANES’s vision of a federal Syria is realised, it will be a chance to spread these ideas in a world newly awakened to the need for local, communal living. For now, the administration must rely on these war-tested ideals as its best hope of keeping the population alive through the pandemic crisis.
Thomas McClure is a researcher at the Rojava Information Center.
This article is part two of a two-part feature on the current situation in North and East Syria. Read part one here.
Published 4th May 2020
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UN, WHO work with Assad to starve eastern Syria of aid during pandemic
The World Health Organization has also stopped supporting eastern Syria, an area of millions of people who are recovering from ISIS atrocities.
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, wearing face masks as protection against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), meet in Damascus, Syria, in this handout released by SANA on April 20, 2020
(photo credit: SANA/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)
International organizations partnering with the Syrian regime are cutting off aid to the poorest and most vulnerable people in Syria during the global pandemic.
A recent report at Foreign Policy noted that the “United Nations informed its relief agencies several weeks ago that they were permitted to fund private charities operating in northeastern Syria only if they were registered in Damascus and authorized to work there by the Syrian government, which has proved unwilling, or unable, to meet the region’s health needs.”
This gives the Syrian regime a veto over aid to eastern Syria and a way to use it as a weapon. Turkey and Russia collaborated in the effort, as Turkey turns off water to 460,000 people in eastern Syria, and Russia supports the Syrian regime. The report indicates how dictatorships and regimes that abuse human rights come first at controlling UN and international aid, enabling them to use it only for charities linked to them and using it to empower loyalists and sideline others.
The World Health Organization has also stopped supporting eastern Syria, an area of millions of people who are recovering from ISIS atrocities, as the WHO also works through the Syrian regime rather than providing equal access to people on the ground in a Syria divided by conflict. It now turns out that people of eastern Syria are being increasingly isolated by great powers who want them to stop working with the US and either be controlled by Turkey or by the Russian-backed Assad regime.
The report notes that the UN Security Council, “acting under pressure from Russia, shut down a UN-sanctioned humanitarian aid hub on January 10 at the Yaroubia crossing on the Iraqi-Syrian border. That deprived the UN of an explicit legal mandate to serve in the region.” The crossing was used by the WHO and private groups, “delivering medical assistance into northeastern Syria.”
THE LARGER context is that Russia, Iran and Turkey want the US to leave eastern Syria. the people in eastern Syria are the victims because the local authorities were supported by America to fight ISIS. The local authorities are called the Syrian Democratic Forces and various civilian autonomous councils linked to them. The Syrian regime wants the SDF to be disbanded and become part of the Syrian regime’s forces.
Russia and Iran want the US to leave eastern Syria. Turkey, which works closely with Russia and Iran, also wants the US-backed SDF to leave; it invaded part of eastern Syria last year, sending extremist groups to attack civilians.
The pandemic has made matters worse. Desperate for medical support, the local authorities have complained that the WHO didn’t even inform them that a man who became sick in March in Qamishli had COVID-19. The organization reportedly informed the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), but it took another week to even tell the local authorities, because the UN only speaks to the Syrian regime in Damascus. Local authorities in Qamishli and Hasakah complained in a Voice of America report that the regime is concealing the number of coronavirus cases in eastern Syria and also allowing travel, despite attempts at lockdowns.
On May 7, Turkey and the extremists it backs in northern Syria cut off water to 460,000 people in eastern Syria. Turkey and the Syrian regime agree on trying to impose suffering on locals, isolate them and make sure they receive no aid.
THE WAY the UN works makes it so that no one who is not loyal to the Syrian regime receives aid in Syria. For instance, the UN’s World Food Programme conducted air drops to the Syrian-regime-run city off Deir Ezzor when it was under siege by ISIS between 2015 and 2017. The program conducted 309 airdrops at a cost of $37 million a year, according to its website. The assistance helped 200,000 people. But there were no UN-supported air drops for people in Raqqa, Qamishli, Kobane or Idlib, or in refugee camps or areas outside Syrian regime control.
The recent Foreign Policy report indicates that OCHA did ask the UN Office of Legal Affairs to look into the legality of providing relief to people who the Syrian regime didn’t want relief to go to. The experts “concluded that the UN could only fund agencies registered and approved by the Syrian government.” This means the government of Syria can decide who gets aid and can discriminate against those it doesn’t like, including for political, ethnic or religious reasons. That would appear to run contrary to all the lip service the UN and its various organizations pay to human rights and access to health care.
But the reality as it plays out in eastern Syria shows that even during a global pandemic, authoritarian regimes always come first, even if they can’t provide for their own people or don’t control most of their country. For similar reasons, people in Libya, Yemen and parts of Somalia receive no support during the pandemic.
THE SYRIAN regime has blocked aid going to eastern Syria unless local authorities will make sure it only goes to areas the regime wants. That has included blocking delivery of supplies by road from Damascus and making sure any aid flights to the regime-run airport in Qamishli are managed by the regime. The cut-off of aid is designed to isolate areas in eastern Syria and bring them to the bargaining table. The US had already walked away from some of these areas in October 2019, enabling a Turkish invasion and the rapid movement of Russia and Syrian regime forces to parts of northeast Syria.
US envoy James Jeffrey indicated in December 2018 that the SDF would need to work with Damascus and the regime, saying the US has no permanent relationship with non-state actors like the SDF. The US view of the SDF is temporary, tactical and transactional. The transaction today includes the SDF continuing to fight ISIS while the US secures oil fields near the Euphrates River to block Iran’s presence. The US calls this the Eastern Syria Stabilization Area.
As part of the transaction, US anti-ISIS envoy Jeffrey wants the SDF to continue to be subcontractors holding thousands of ISIS detainees. There was even some talk of having the UN support a coronavirus facility at Al-Hol camp where some families of ISIS detainees live, alongside other internally displaces Syrians. But that plan was also scuttled. Civilians who suffered under or even fought ISIS in eastern Syria will get no aid from the WHO or UN.
The US anti-ISIS coalition has tried to do what it can to help in eastern Syria. Under CENTCOM’s leadership, which is sympathetic to the people of eastern Syria and helping them in stabilization efforts after ISIS, some limited support has been delivered, including a multi-year electricity infrastructure effort. Had the area of Raqqa and other towns that once suffered under ISIS waited for the UN, they would still be in darkness.
Turkish-controlled faction Ahrar al-Sharqiya claimed sleeper cell attacks in North and East Syria for the first time this month
April saw a 16% decrease in ISIS sleeper-cell attacks (48 to 40), whereas joint SDF and Coalition raids increased 100% this month (11 up to 22). Despite this increase, the rate of raids has consistently remained lower than the rates we were seeing prior to the war
Cells continue to specifically target individuals connected to the Autonomous Administration or SDF. Fatalities in general increased 21% this month, with 41% of these deaths being assassinations
In a new development, two attacks were claimed by Ahrar-al-Sharqiya, a Turkish-backed faction forming part of the Syrian National Army (SNA). Both of the attacks took place in Ain Issa
The 30km-deep ‘safe zone’ along the border with Turkey has remained untouched by sleeper-cell attacks
40 confirmed attacks took place in April, a 16% decrease from May (48 down to 40). 73% or 29 attacks were claimed by ISIS, leaving nine unclaimed and two attacks claimed by the SNA, as mentioned above.
RIC documented a total of 29 deaths in April, a 21% increase from March (24 up to 29). 41% of these deaths were assassinations specifically targeting village elders (Muhktars), or people claimed to be associated with the Autonomous Administration or SDF. In total 12 assassinations took place. This occurred after ISIS pamphlets were seen distributed throughout Deir-ez-Zor, threatening individuals connected to the Administration. At least 20 people were also documented as have being wounded, but not fatally, in April.
The rate of raids doubled this month (11 up to 22), but still remain lower than the rates we were seeing prior to the latest Turkish operation. 52 arrests have been documented, and three individuals operating with sleeper-cells were killed.
As throughout 2020, sleeper-cells have not targeted cities along the border with Turkey in the 30km-deep ‘safe zone’ (from Derik through to Dirbesiye and around Kobane). 75% of attacks occurred in Deir-ez-Zor, 15% in Heseke, 8% in Raqqa and 2.5% in Manbij.
In keeping with previous months’ trends sleeper-cell groups have continued to focus their energy on IEDs, attacks using small arms, and occasionally grenades – mostly with the purpose of direct elimination of an individual connected to the Autonomous Administration or SDF. There was also one instance of ISIS exploding an oil pipeline in the Heseke region.
Comment from Robin Fleming, a researcher with the Rojava Information Center:
“Unusually, two attacks this April were claimed by the Syrian National Army, specifically the Turkish proxy group Ahrar-al-Sharqiya. This group fought under Turkish command and control during operation Peace Spring, and infamously took the life of Hevrin Khalef, Secretary-General of the Syria’s Future Party and leading female Kurdish politician. These attacks show that following the Turkish invasion, these proxy groups still have a presence in NES outside of the occupied zones, and are still endangering the stability of the region.
Following a recent ISIS campaign distributing pamphlets throughout Deir-ez-Zor, threatening the lives of all those who associate themselves with the Autonomous Administration in any capacity, we saw the rate of both overall fatalities and specific assassinations rise. All of this indicates an ongoing evolution in ISIS’ tactics. It is no longer attempting merely to wreak havoc and claim as many lives as possible. Now instead ISIS is surgically targeting individuals connected to the Administration and SDF, using whatever
The water level of the Euphrates river has decreased by 60% in the past two weeks. This was due to the Turkish state reducing the flow of the river.
ANF
KOBANÊ
Wednesday, 13 May 2020, 12:05
Closing the part of the river that flows into the Syrian side, the Turkish state has greatly reduced the amount of water entering the country thus causing serious problems to both agriculture in the north of the country and electric supply to vital areas and facilities.
Under a prior agreement between Syria and Turkey, Syria was receiving 500 cubic meters of water per second. But Turkey is now using water as a threat and pressure way. In the summer of 2017, it decreased the flow to 100 cubic meters per second, and this year the flow of the river did not exceed 200 cubic meters per second.
In order to produce electricity, the flow rate of the river must be at least 300 cubic meters per second. A 300-cubic meter flow can operate a 105-megawatt turbine.
There are 3 dams on the Euphrates River, which run for about 600 km in Syrian territory. Rojava (Tişrîn) Dam located in Manbij is the biggest dam in Syria.
There are six dams in the Turkish side of the Euphrates river, with Ataturk Dam being the second biggest dam of its kind in the Middle East. This dam has the capacity to store approximately 48 billion cubic meters of water.
Reducing the water level of the Euphrates River is a threat for millions of Syrians in the northeast of the country. It affects drinking water as well as electricity supply. Indeed in the past week there has been repeated interruption of electricity in northeast Syria. In addition, reduction in water is a problem for agriculture
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51 bodies recovered from a mass grave in Raqqa
Bodies of 51 people murdered by ISIS have been unearthed from a mass grave in Raqqa.
ANF
RAQQA
Monday, 4 May 2020, 18:51
51 corpses have been recovered from a mass grave in the region of Til Zedan east of Raqqa city.
Yasır Hamis from Raqqa Emergency Response Teams said that the mass grave in Til Zedan area, located between al-Samra and Hamrat villages, contains at least 200 corpses. He told that remains of 51 people have been recovered so far and their work continues.
Hamis pointed out that this mass grave was more sensitive in comparison to the mass graves in other parts of Raqqa as victims were piled up over each other in this one. He noted that they were working with utmost sensitivity to make sure that bones are not mingled.
According to Hamis, the digging might take a long time as three corpses are exhumed each day.
He added that the remains in the mass grave belong to civilians aged between 25 and 35 who were murdered by ISIS mercenaries during their bloody reign in the city.
Raqqa was the city ISIS jihadists proclaimed the capital of their so-called caliphate. It is also one of the cities which suffered most and witnessed inhuman massacres, beheading, violence difficult to express with words.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces liberated the Raqqa city on 20 October 2017. Since then the city has begun to rebuild itself. Some 85% of the city and its infrastructures had been destroyed by ISIS, yet the deepest destruction had to do with life itself. Some of the survivors of the dark years of the Caliphate say that life stopped during those times.
Yet, life prevailed. And the newly declared Autonomous Administration has been working since the liberation of the city to rebuild it.
Within the scope of the coordinated activities of the Raqqa Civil Assembly and the People’s Municipality, roads were re-opened, houses and water were started to be supplied to the neighborhoods and the war debris removed.
With the reconstruction of the city and the development of a free and common way of living, 700,000 people who had fled ISIS have returned to their homes.
With the increase of the population, the reconstruction works accelerated. The People’s Municipality of Raqqa announced an amnesty for those who had repaired their destroyed houses without permission and offered assistance to put the houses at norm.
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Attacks on northern Syria continue unabated
The Turkish and Jihadist occupation forces continue their attacks against northern Syria enjoying a worldwide silence on their ongoing offensive seeking to invade the region in violation of international law.
ANF NEWS DESK
Sunday, 3 May 2020, 11:49
The Turkish state is systematically bombing civilian settlements in North-East Syria/Rojava on daily basis. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes, while hundreds of civilians have lost their lives since the invasion attacks that began on 9 October 2019.
The occupant Turkish army and allied mercenaries have launched a wave of attacks on villages in Afrin’s Shera and Sherawa districts Sunday morning.
The attacks with heavy weapons have targeted the villages of Malikiya, Shiwarxa, Meranaz, Kafr Antun and Irshadiya in Shera, and the villages of Bene, Darjimal and Soxaneke in Sherawa.
On Saturday evening the occupation forces shelled the village of Xirbitbeqir near Gire Spi (Tal Abyad). No information was immediately available about the results of the attacks on the inhabited villages.
The attacks by Turkey and its jihadist aid troops in northern Syria have not abated, even in times of the coronavirus pandemic, and are mainly directed at residential areas and civil infrastructure. While civilian population suffers casualties, the power and water supply has collapsed in large parts of north-east Syria due to the targeted artillery attacks.
As part of worldwide measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for a global ceasefire on 23 March and called on the parties to the conflict to cease hostilities, saying; “End the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world. It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives. Silence the guns; stop the artillery; end the airstrikes. This is crucial.”
In Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) responded by declaring that they would follow the UN appeal in the autonomous region and calling on all other parties to the conflict to immediately observe a humanitarian ceasefire. But so far the other warring parties have ignored this outstretched hand.
Turkey is using the Corona pandemic to expand its zone of occupation in the midst of the crisis. Despite warnings that a Covid-19 outbreak in Syria would pose a deadly threat to 6.5 million internally displaced persons suffering the effects of nine years of war, and a renewed appeal by the UN that a cessation of fighting could help create the conditions for the provision of life-saving aid, Northern and Syria continue to be under attack.
In the cities of Serêkaniyê (Ras al-Ain) and Girê Spî (Tal Abyad), which have been included in the Turkish occupation zone in North-East Syria since October 2019, and in the self-governing areas along the Turkish-Syrian border, significant military activities of Turkey’s jihadist proxy army (“Syrian National Army”, SNA) are taking place.
Afrin has been under the occupation of the Turkish state and its mercenary allies for over two years now. The attacks of the Turkish state against Afrin began on 20 January 2018 and the invasion of the city was carried out on 18 March 2018. Since the invasion, war crimes have been systematically committed in the region. Almost every day, crimes such as the confiscation of property belonging to local people, kidnapping of civilians for ransom, torture or executions are carried out.
The occupation forces controlled by Ankara use the abductions to extort ransoms. This method has become a lucrative source of income. At least 500 cases of ransom handovers have been reported so far. Turkish-backed militias demand an equivalent of between 3,000 and 100,000 euros, depending on the ability of the victims’ relatives to pay.
UN: War crimes and torture in Afrin
Last autumn, the UN Human Rights Council published a report on the situation in Syria, which also describes the devastating human rights situation in Afrin. The Council documented that the overall security conditions in Afrin and adjacent districts remained dire with armed factions having carved up the province into geographic zones of influence.
“As a result there is a general absence of rule of law and repeated incidents of kidnappings, torture, extortion and assassination. Victims were often of Kurdish origin as well as civilians perceived as being prosperous, including doctors, businessmen and merchants,” said the report
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Syrian Kurdish parties resume talks, in secret
Rival Kurdish parties in northeastern Syria have began US-sponsored reconciliation talks after repeated delays in the past and in the hope of joining the UN-sponsored peace process to resolve the Syrian conflict.
Fighters of the Manbij military council, allied to Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), take an overwatch position in the southern rural area of Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria June 1, 2016. Photo by REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo.
Ivan Hassib
Ivan Hassib is a Kurdish journalist who has worked as a correspondent and photographer for Kurdish and Arabic news channels, as well as international outlets. He is based in northeast Syria and currently works as a researcher for Information Management and Mine Action Programs, or IMMAP. On Twitter: @Ivan_Hassib
May 1, 2020
For the first time since Oct. 28, 2019, when Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Mazlum Abdi announced an initiative to resolve inter-Kurdish differences, the Kurdish National Council (KNC) and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) kick-started secret, direct talks. The initiative is seemingly designed to include all the Kurdish parties in the PYD-ruled autonomous administration in northeast Syria, paving the way for the autonomous administration to join the UN-sponsored negotiations in Geneva to end the Syrian conflict.
Despite the stakes involved, success is not guaranteed given the tense political relations between the two negotiating parties following years of political conflict and media spats. The KNC is an official part of the Istanbul-based Syrian opposition in exile, while Turkey views the PYD, which espouses the ideology of the Abdullah Ocalan-led Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), as its top foe in Syria. Meanwhile, the PYD is also part of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political arm of the Kurdish-led SDF fighting alongside the US-led international coalition.
Speaking to Al-Monitor on the condition of anonymity, an informed official source revealed the origins of the negotiations process. “The first direct negotiating round between the KNC and PYD was held in early April at a US military base on the periphery of Hasakah, in the presence of the US special adviser to the global coalition forces in Syria, William Roebuck, and SDF commander Mazlum Abdi.”
The attempted détente is reportedly taking place under US supervision. Roebuck has had multiple meetings with the KNC in the past three months to discuss developments in the Syrian arena and to support the initiative to unify Kurdish ranks in Syria.
At an April 25 press conference in Qamishli, Abdi said, “Remarkable progress is being made in the process to unify the Kurdish ranks. The parties, the PYD and the rest of the political parties are being responsive to the initiative.”
Commenting on the agenda for the negotiations, the source told Al-Monitor, “The two sides are discussing the adoption of a unified political vision for Syrian’s future based on discussion of a draft presented by the US side. After holding at least four meetings as part of the negotiations, the two sides agreed on the following: Syria will be a federal, democratic and pluralistic state; the current regime is an authoritarian and dictatorial regime that uses violence against its opponents; the Kurdish areas consist of an integrated political and geographical unit.”
He also said that the parties agree on building positive relations with neighboring countries and resolving the Syrian crisis in accordance with UN Resolution 2254. Both sides seek to include recognition of Kurdish national, cultural and political rights in the Syrian constitution as well secure constitutional recognition that Syrian Kurds are an indigenous people. They also agree to advocate for the return of refugees and other displaced persons to their homes and for a democratic opposition.
In Qamishli, SDC spokesman Amjad Othman told Al-Monitor, “The motives behind the agreement are much stronger than reasons preventing its conclusion. The parties to the dialogue have the single option of coming to an agreement despite the considerable challenges and difficulties which will only be resolved if the parties are serious.”
Othman said the negotiations can only succeed if the parties remain independent. “The regional influences and agendas need to be ignored, and priority needs to be given to the public interest and a joint vision to address the situations in Afrin, Ras al-Ain/Sari Kani and Gire Spi/Tell Abyad. The Kurdistan parties agreeing to and supporting the initiative would improve the odds of success.”
The KNC is allied with the Kurdish nationalist project led by Massoud Barzani and his Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraq, having been formed in 2011 with the KDP’s support. As noted, the PYD bases its political and organizational projects on the PKK’s ideology.
Tensions between the PYD and KNC took a turn for the worse when the PYD became the most influential player in northeast Syria in 2012. The KNC viewed the PYD-led autonomous administration as a fait accompli and has refused to apply for a permit to engage in political activity there. The autonomous administration responded by exiling the KNC president, shuttering its offices and arresting dozens of its leaders and members during 2016-17.
Meanwhile, the KNC’s affiliation with the Istanbul-based Syrian opposition has served to exacerbate tensions between the two sides following multiple Turkish military operations launched against the Kurds in Syria. In fact, the PYD has accused the KNC of subordination to the Turkish state at the expense of the Kurdish people.
Kamiran Hajo, chairman of the KNC’s Foreign Relations Committee told Al-Monitor by phone from Sweden, where he resides, “We have always called for the unification of Kurdish ranks. The current circumstances seem to be right for practical steps to be taken in this direction. Following the relatively longstanding feud, the two sides are in need of an agreement that lays the foundations for the Kurds’ future in Syria.”
Hajo fears, however, that any new agreement with the PYD will suffer the same fate as previously ones reached by the two sides under Barzani’s auspices: collapse at the implementation stage. “Negotiations are not going to be easy, and there will be multiple challenges before an agreement is reached,” Hajo said. “The agreement’s implementation phase could be harder than the dialogue and agreement phase in itself. That’s what happened with the previous deals.”
Commenting on the US role in the negotiations, Ahed al-Hindi, a Washington, DC-based political analyst, told Al-Monitor by phone, “I believe that the US efforts to unify the Kurdish ranks in northeastern Syria are a part of [a broader] project designed to unify the entire Syrian north, namely the northwest controlled by the Turkish-backed [opposition] and the northeast controlled by the US-backed [Kurdish-led forces]. This project aims to build a strong position against the [Bashar] al-Assad regime and deny it the areas’ wealth, which could be used to revive the regime.”
Hindi believes the United States is determined to unify the ranks of the Syrian Kurds. He asserted, “The repeated visits Roebuck and his team made lately and his long stays in the region confirm that the US is serious in resolving inter-Kurdish differences and subsequently have the autonomous administration taking part in the Geneva talks to resolve the Syrian crisis and be represented in the opposition delegation.”
Over the course of the nine-year Syrian civil war, the Kurds in Syria have paid exorbitant prices in military and social terms. In 2018 and 2019, they lost the regions of Afrin, Ras al-Ain/Sari Kani and Gire Spi/Tell Abyad to Turkey and Turkish-backed militias, resulting in the displacement of most Kurdish residents in these areas. In addition, in the fight against Islamic State, the SDF, whose backbone is the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, lost 11,000 fighters and saw 22,000 wounded.
Despite controlling nearly 20% of Syrian territory, the SDF does not have political representation in the Geneva talks because of Turkish opposition to their presence. With Ankara continuing to reject any project that would lead to Kurdish autonomous rule in Syria, unifying to jointly pursue Kurdish interests is the only option the Kurds have left.
Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria condemn ‘cowardly’ Afrin bombing
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria have condemned the “cowardly” Tuesday car bombing which killed at least 40 civilians in the northern city of Afrin.
A fuel tanker laced with explosives detonated in the city center on Tuesday evening, killing at least 40 civilians and injuring 47 others, according to Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu Agency (AA).
General Commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Mazloum Abdi took to Twitter on Wednesday to condemn the attack.
“What happened in Afrin yesterday was a condemned terrorist act which claimed the lives of innocent people. This criminal act is the outcome of destructive policy pursued by the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries in the city of peace and olives,” Abdi wrote.
A statement released by the Syrian Democratic Council, the SDF’s political wing, accused Turkish-backed forces for the explosion.
“We condemn this cowardly terrorist act which targeted innocent civilians and threatens the remaining sons of Afrin to displace and leave their villages and cities,” read the statement.
“[The] Turkish invasion, relying on [military] fractions with terrorist ideology, has opened the door wide to terrorist forces to reorganize their ranks and carry out cowardly acts under Turkish protection,” it added.
Hours later, Abdulkarim Omar, co-chair of the Department of Foreign Relations for the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES) called on the international community to “pressure Turkey to leave Afrin and all other occupied areas.”
Afrin was invaded by the Turkish army and its Syrian proxies during Operation Olive Branch in March 2018 on the grounds that the YPG threatened Turkish national security.
Turkish authorities, including the country’s defense ministry and vice president, accused the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the backbone of the multi-ethnic Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of being behind the attack.
Several bombings have rocked Afrin since the Turkish invasion, which Ankara insists are the work of the YPG. However, SDF officials have said that they do not intend to target civilians.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also condemned the attack.
“The United States renews its call for support and implementation of a nationwide ceasefire in Syria following today’s cowardly act of terror carried out on innocent victims in Afrin. Such acts of evil are unacceptable from any side in this conflict,” he wrote on Twitter.
Black smoke rises from the site of Tuesday’s blast in Afrin. Photo: submitted
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — An explosion in the rebel-controlled city of Afrin in northwest Syria on Tuesday killed 42 people and wounded at least 50 others, local officials tell Rudaw English.
Witnesses told Rudaw English that the attack took place just before four p.m. on a crowded street in Afrin’s city center, near the entrance to its main market referred to by locals as the Political Junction, when fully loaded fuel tanker detonated in the middle of midday traffic.
“The bodies have been charred beyond recognition, but they appear to be civilians who were just passing by,” Azad Othman, a member of the Afrin Local Council, told Rudaw English.
Shops and vehicles burned for nearly an hour as fire and rescue vehicles rushed to the scene from nearby Azaz to assist in put out flames caused by the blast.
“It was a popular market that was targeted, so most of the dead are civilians, Raed Saleh, director of the Syrian Civil Defense told Rudaw English via telephone. “Our teams are still searching and rescuing. There could be more,” he added.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took to Twitter to condemn the bombing.
“The United States renews its call for support and implementation of a nationwide ceasefire in Syria following today’s cowardly act of terror carried out on innocent victims in Afrin. Such acts of evil are unacceptable from any side in this conflict,” he wrote.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast, but the Turkish defense ministry has accused the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which were ousted from the region by Turkey and its proxy Syrian rebel factions in March 2018. Since then, there has been a series of attacks on Turkish targets in the area, as well as reports of violations by local human rights monitors.
Similar blasts in areas controlled by Turkey-backed rebel fighters have targeted the area in recent months.
A statement by the YPG-affiliated Afrin Liberation Forces claimed to have killed two Turkish soldiers and three Syrian fighters in two separate attacks earlier this week.
“There have been three explosions targeting the city just this month, but this one is definitely the biggest and most deadly,” Afrin resident Milad al-Shehabi told Rudaw English.
Originally from Aleppo, Shehabi was displaced to Afrin two years ago. Recent fighting has displaced more that one million Syrians from rural Aleppo and Idlib, some of which still lies outside of the control of forces loyal to Bashar Assad.
Turkey supports the Syrian opposition in the war against President Bashar Assad but has joined with Russia to secure and monitor local ceasefires.
By evening, local authorities had compiled a list of names for relatives searching to check on their missing loved ones and collect their disfigured remains.
Updated at 8.51am on 29/4/2020
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Kino Gabriel refutes Turkish allegations, calls on them to respect agreements signed
The spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has denied the news that the media of the Turkish occupation is promoting about the developments in the occupied Serekaniye and Girê Spi / Tal Abyad, and affirmed their full commitment to their duty towards their people and partners.
The areas occupied by Turkey and mercenaries are witnessing what is called the “Syrian National Army”, and there is a great security chaos, and there are clashes between mercenaries almost daily.
The Turkish occupation has been working for a while to falsify the facts taking place in the occupied areas, and to spread false news and statements about the operations of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
On what the media machine of the Turkish occupation is trying to publish and which will falsify the lived reality in those areas, the spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces, Kino Gabriel, issued a written statement >
“Recently, several fabricated news and statements by a number of official accounts of the Turkish Ministry of Defense appeared on the Internet, including the official account of the Turkish National Security Council, which publishes false news and information about the military situation and developments in the occupied areas of Ras Al-Ain, Tal Abyad and the Tal Rifaat region.
We in the Syrian Democratic Forces assure that all this information and news is unfounded, and a miserable attempt to distort the reality of what is happening on the ground in terms of the full commitment of our forces to their obligations towards the agreements signed in this regard, and any military presence of our forces do not exist in the aforementioned areas, while the reality is the continuation of the forces Turkish and its mercenary groups bombed villages surrounding the areas of operations, which resulted in various civilian casualties and sabotage to the infrastructure in those areas.
We reaffirm once again our full commitment to our duties towards our people and partners, our rejection of such propaganda methods, and our call for Turkey to respect the agreements signed with our partners in the region. ”
J.O ANHA
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SDF’s Abdi calls for support for national unity initiative
Abdi said that talks have produced positive results which will be announced in the coming days.
ANF
QAMISHLO
Saturday, 25 Apr 2020, 20:09
SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) Commander General Mazloum Abdi spoke to the press after a meeting with a delegation from the Euphrates Region about national unity.
Abdi said there were new developments in the efforts for the achievement of Kurdish national unity, noting that political circles bore a positive approach toward the initiative.
Remarking that talks have produced positive results which will be announced in the coming days, Abdi called on all political parties to support the established initiative and act according to the national unity of the Kurds.
HUSÊN: KURDISH NATIONAL UNITY IS AN URGENT NEED
Dr. Bextiyar Husên from the delegation that met Abdi, remarked that all those that support the establishment of Kurdish national unity have united around the initiative that has been founded to this end.
Defining Kurdish national unity as an urgent need, Husên added that they would meet and talk with the PYD (Democratic Union Party) and ENKS (Syrian Kurdish National Council) on the subject.
Recalling the previous attempts for national unity, Husên said; “The Autonomous Administration and ENKS signed the Hewlêr 1, Hewlêr 2 and Duhok agreements. However, these agreements have unfortunately produced no results. There is a different atmosphere and circumstance today. It is now essential to make a decision for the benefit of the Kurdish people.”
The delegation is expected to meet ENKS and PYD tomorrow.
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Turkish-backed militias beat man to death in Afrin
Members of the Sultan Murad Brigade set up and organized by the Turkish secret service MIT have beaten a 74-year-old man to death in Afrin.
ANF
AFRIN
Thursday, 23 Apr 2020, 17:13
Reports of further attacks by the occupation forces against inhabitants of the occupied region of Afrin come through almost daily.
On Wednesday, 74-year-old Ali Ehmed died of his injuries. When he was grazing his sheep near his hometown Meydankê, he was severely maltreated by mercenaries of the Sultan Murad Brigade and subsequently died in the hospital of Afrin.
Ali Ehmed is the second civilian who was murdered this week by the occupation forces in Afrin. Two days earlier, Fatme Kene, also 74 years old, had been killed in an attack by Pro-Turkish mercenaries.
The Sultan Murad Brigade consists of Turkish right-wing extremists and Islamists and was set up under the direction of the Turkish secret service MIT.
HRE units continue inflicting blows on the occupation forces in North-East Syria.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Afrin Liberation Forces (HRE) released a statement announcing the results of their latest operations against occupation forces in North-East Syria.
According to the statement, the HRE operations on April 21 and 23 left 10 Turkish-backed mercenaries dead, 14 others wounded and a vehicle destroyed.
On April 21, HRE fighters targeted the mercenary groups between the villages of Kîmarê and Beradê in Afrin’s Sherawa district. Two mercenaries were killed and three others wounded as a result.
On April 23, HRE units carried out three separate sabotage operations against occupation forces in Jarablus and Rai. Eight mercenaries were killed, at least 11 others wounded and a vehicle destroyed in these operations.
HRE fighters also hit the mercenaries at the Maratê junction in Afrin city center but the results of the action couldn’t be clarified.
Kongra Star commemorates victims of the Armenian genocide
“In the name of Kongra Star, we remember the victims of these massacres and express our condolences to them and their families. May the existing struggle and resistance be successful.”
ANF
NEWS DESK
Friday, 24 Apr 2020, 14:52
Women’s umbrella organization in North and East Syria, Kongra Star, released a statement marking the 105th anniversary of the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire.
The statement by Kongra Star includes the following:
“Today, April 24th is the commemoration day of the Armenian genocide, which took place in 1915, 105 years ago. This massacre was carried out by the Ottomans against the Armenian, Syriac, Chaldean and Greek populations.
This was a continuation of the massacre that began in 1904 against the Armenian people. The Ottoman Empire, with its brutality and the massacre it committed, tried to exterminate and destroy the indigenous peoples of the region through rape, kidnapping and murder. Only a few were able to flee and find safety in the surrounding villages. These people wanted to be the voice to demand justice for these massacres and their victims. Until today there are no efforts to ensure that the Armenian genocide is recognized as such in the world. Only few international states have officially recognized this genocide so far. The Turkish state denies this genocide until today.
The current Turkish occupation and invasion in North and East Syria, as we can see in the present Turkish occupied regions of Afrin, Girê Spî or Serêkaniyê, are no less violent in their brutality than a century ago.
When one considers the brutality of their actions, one can see parallels with the ISIS. The Ottoman violence and oppression, which began with the massacres against the Armenians and Syriacs, is now directed against the people in North and East Syria and has the same form as well as the same goal. But the resistance of the peoples continues until today, as we can see in the resistance and struggle against the state oppression of Turkey.
The indigenous peoples today organise themselves in the form of a common administration, which includes all Kurdish and Arabic as well as Syriac, Assyrian and Armenian components, and live together here. This can be a model for the whole world. In the name of Kongra Star, we remember the victims of these massacres and express our condolences to them and their families. May the existing struggle and resistance be successful.
President Trump has said of Syria, “Let the other people take care of it now.” His repudiation of responsibility is striking, given that during his Administration the U.S. military, in its zeal to destroy ISIS, has reduced huge swaths of the country to wasteland.Photograph by Ivor Prickett / Panos
Many Syrians thought that the U.S. cared about them. Now they know better.
President Trump has said of Syria, “Let the other people take care of it now.” His repudiation of responsibility is striking, given that during his Administration the U.S. military, in its zeal to destroy ISIS, has reduced huge swaths of the country to wasteland.Photograph by Ivor Prickett / Panos
By the time Turkey invaded northern Syria, in October, the Ain Issa refugee camp—twenty miles south of the Turkish border—resembled a small city. In recent years, some fourteen thousand people had moved there, displaced by ISIS, Russian and American air strikes, or the repressive regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The camp had evolved from a few tents in a muddy field into a sprawling grid complete with shops, cafeterias, falafel stands, schools, clinics, mosques, a full-time administration, and offices of more than two dozen local and international N.G.O.s. As news spread of the Turkish offensive, Nashat Khairi, a camp mukhtar, or selected representative, urged the roughly thirty families in his section to remain calm. A fruit vender before the war, Khairi had fled his village, in the eastern province of Deir Ezzour, with his wife and seven children, after ISIS captured it, in 2014. They reached Ain Issa three years later. Since then, the camp had come to feel like home. Khairi knew everyone in his section, oversaw the distribution of food rations, registered every birth, and seldom missed a wedding or a funeral. His children received an education and had access to health care. His wife earned a salary as a cleaner. They never went hungry. In cold weather, the camp provided kerosene for their stove, and during the summer they kept their tent cool with a fan powered by a generator. Outside their entryway, Khairi tended a small garden, with neat rows of radishes and bell peppers.
Most important, they were safe. The camp stood on a strategic intersection of the M4 highway, which traverses Syria from the Mediterranean Sea to its border with Iraq. The town of Ain Issa, less than a mile away, was the headquarters of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led army that had vanquished ISIS in northern and eastern Syria. Also nearby were two large U.S. military bases, which housed hundreds of American troops, contractors, and Foreign Service workers, who had supported the S.D.F. throughout its anti-ISIS campaign. One of the bases, at the former Lafarge Cement Factory, served as the joint-operations center for Kurdish and American commanders.
Khairi assured his fellow-refugees that someone surely had a plan to protect them. A fenced-off part of the camp held more than eight hundred wives and children of killed or captured ISIS militants: if nothing else, Khairi reasoned, the U.S. forces down the road would never let so many high-value detainees escape.
As the Turkish forces approached, however, an alarming development inside the camp deepened the communal panic. Without informing anyone, the management staff, armed guards, and aid workers had all disappeared.
In town, meanwhile, about fifteen hundred S.D.F. members had been frantically organizing a defense. One of the commanders was a twenty-eight-year-old Kurd from Aleppo Province who went by the nom de guerre Brousque—Lightning, in Kurdish. Brousque had been fighting ISIS alongside American troops for six years; his four siblings, including his twenty-one-year-old sister, also served in the S.D.F. In 2017, when the S.D.F. conducted a gruelling urban assault on Raqqa, ISIS’s global capital, U.S. Special Forces provided Brousque and other Kurdish commanders with tactical guidance while keeping a safe distance from the combat. Two months into the battle, an S.D.F. fighter a few yards in front of Brousque stepped on a mine and was killed, as was a fighter behind them. The blast knocked Brousque unconscious. He woke up in a hospital, blind, his chest, neck, and face burned and lacerated by shrapnel. By the time he recovered and regained his vision, at the end of 2017, ISIS had been defeated in Raqqa. Brousque was deployed to Tell Abyad, in the far north, where he was assigned five hundred fighters to secure a fifty-mile stretch of the border with Turkey.
Tensions on the border were already high. The S.D.F. had grown out of the P.K.K., a Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey that had waged a decades-long insurgency. The U.S. military’s collaboration with the S.D.F. enraged Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “A country we call an ally is insisting on forming a terror army on our border,” Erdoğan declared, shortly after Brousque arrived in Tell Abyad. “Our mission is to strangle it before it is even born.” Turkey had twice carried out major cross-border operations to seize Kurdish towns and cities in Syria, and further attacks seemed inevitable.
Then, last August, the U.S. brokered a deal between Turkey and the S.D.F. A demilitarized buffer zone along the Syrian side of the border required Brousque to dismantle all his fortifications, seal a tunnel system that his fighters had constructed, pull out of Tell Abyad, and move ten miles deeper into S.D.F. territory. In exchange, Erdoğan pledged not to invade. Brousque was skeptical of this promise, but he had faith in the Americans, who, according to the agreement, would act as guarantors. “We’d become good friends,” he told me, during a visit I made to Syria this winter. “I assumed that the advice they were giving us was in our interest.”
After the S.D.F. withdrew from the border, Turkish and American forces began conducting patrols and aerial surveillance together. Though no Kurds crossed into Turkey, Erdoğan soon dismissed the buffer zone as inadequate, and insisted on expanding it. In September, before the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, he announced his intention to annex more than five thousand square miles of Kurdish land, creating a “peace corridor” where two million Syrian refugees living in Turkey could be resettled. The refugees would be overwhelmingly Arab and from other parts of Syria. The southern edge of the corridor would encompass Ain Issa, Khairi’s refugee camp, and the Lafarge Cement Factory. International observers denounced the scheme as a flagrant attempt at demographic engineering that was certain to produce conflict and humanitarian disaster.
Two weeks later, the White House issued a press release stating that President Donald Trump and Erdoğan had spoken on the phone. While the details of the conversation have not been made public, it was a triumph for Erdoğan. “Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into northern Syria,” the press release explained, adding that American troops “will no longer be in the immediate area.”
After the U.S. vacated the buffer zone, Turkish jets, drones, and artillery pummelled Tell Abyad and other border cities. The S.D.F., which has no air assets, petitioned the U.S. to impose a no-fly zone, but the Americans refused. Turkey’s ground forces consisted mostly of Syrian Arab mercenaries, many of whom had previously belonged to jihadist groups with a profound animosity toward the Kurds. As these militias pushed south, in armored vehicles, nearly two hundred thousand civilians fled from their path. Reports of war crimes, such as summary executions, followed the advance. Later, the senior American diplomat in Syria, William V. Roeback, wrote an internal memo lamenting that U.S. personnel had “stood by and watched” an “intention-laced effort at ethnic cleansing.”
On October 12th, a Turkish-backed militia reached the M4, where it intercepted an S.U.V. carrying Hevrin Khalaf, a prominent female Kurdish politician. She was beaten to death. Videos posted on Twitter show the militants murdering a second unarmed passenger as well. “Another fleeing pig has been liquidated,” one of the assailants proclaims.
The next day, Turkish forces in the open desert north of the highway began shelling Ain Issa, where Brousque was told to hold the line.
“The only thing between us was the camp,” he recalled.
In Nashat Khairi’s section, a troubling rumor had begun to circulate. The Kurds were said to have turned in desperation to the Assad regime, which was now sending reinforcements to Ain Issa. For many of the refugees, who’d come to the camp seeking asylum from the regime, this was as distressing as the Turkish offensive. Still, most people were reluctant to leave without their I.D.s, which were locked in the camp’s administrative offices.
As the sound of shelling and machine-gun fire neared, another danger materialized. The ISIS-affiliated detainees had somehow got out. The S.D.F. later blamed the breach on a riot provoked by Turkish air strikes. But I met multiple witnesses who claimed to have seen S.D.F. fighters arrive in a pickup and release the detainees. This seems plausible. Much of the Western criticism of the Turkish invasion focussed on the possibility that tens of thousands of ISIS militants and relatives might escape Kurdish custody. The S.D.F., realizing that the world cared more about the spectre of terrorists on the loose than about the killing of Kurds, promoted false accounts about Kurdish prison guards being sent to the Turkish border. Although these stories were untrue, an S.D.F. spokesman told me, they “made the international community pay attention.”
From Ain Issa, most of the detainees ran north, toward the Turks. Others stayed in the camp, infiltrating the regular population and adding to its paranoia and confusion. Several people told me that some of the fleeing ISIS wives cried out, “The night is coming!”
Not long after this, a convoy of armored vehicles flying American flags approached on the highway, from the Lafarge Cement Factory. When the convoy stopped in front of the camp, relief washed over Khairi. “We were so happy,” he remembered. “We thought they were coming to save us.” Khairi told his children that everything was going to be O.K. Then the convoy started moving again.
Khairi and the other refugees did not know that Trump had ordered an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Syria, and that the convoy now receding out of sight was headed for Iraq. But they understood that it wasn’t coming back. “Everyone went crazy,” Khairi said. “It was total anarchy.” People swarmed the administrative offices, shattering the windows, breaking down the doors, and lighting them on fire. Fighting persisted between the Turks and the S.D.F., and at some point Khairi’s eight-year-old niece, Amal, was struck by a stray bullet. Her older brother, Ali Mohammad, took her to the hospital in town. The incident aggravated the hysteria, and soon nearly everyone poured out through the camp’s main gate. Unlike the detainees, most of the refugees went south—some in cars, others on foot—unsure where they were going or what they would do. When Ali Mohammad returned to the camp with Amal, she was dead.
Khairi and his relatives stayed to bury her. In a clearing outside a mosque, they dug a grave and marked it with a stone on either end. The sun was setting. No one had eaten in several days. Khairi set out to scavenge for food. It looked as if a tornado had descended on the camp. He marvelled at how quickly everything had changed.
The next day, he hired a truck. “It was very difficult for me to leave,” he told me. “It was the same as when we left our village, in Deir Ezzour.” As the truck headed south—in the same direction from which, five years earlier, they had fled—Khairi and his family found themselves, once again, homeless and running from the war.
The departing Americans, after their brief pause outside the camp, proceeded east on the M4, through the middle of the battle, with Turkish forces on their left and the S.D.F. on their right. Both sides stopped fighting to let them pass, then resumed.
In the end, Brousque and the S.D.F. held on to Ain Issa, preventing the Turks from crossing the highway. It took the Americans three days to transport all their equipment and heavy weaponry out of Syria. Locals hurled rocks at them and called them traitors. After the Lafarge Cement Factory was abandoned, two American F-15s launched missiles at it. A U.S. Army spokesman explained that the purpose of the strike was “to reduce the facility’s military usefulness”—a stunning conclusion to what had arguably been America’s most successful military partnership in the post-9/11 era.
That partnership had begun in 2014, when ISIS stormed across northern Syria and the only meaningful armed resistance it encountered was a small band of Kurdish men and women who called themselves the People’s Protection Units, or Y.P.G. (The Syrian government had pulled most of its troops out of the region two years earlier, to quell uprisings elsewhere in the country.) Thousands of ISIS militants eventually besieged Kobani, the home town of the Y.P.G.’s commander, Ferhat Abdi Sahin, better known as Mazloum. A massacre appeared at hand. When I met Mazloum, in February, he recalled telling his fighters that under no circumstances were they to let ISIS advance beyond the street where he grew up. ISIS captured his house twice, and, according to Mazloum, both times the Y.P.G. took it back. By then, the U.S. had begun providing air support to the embattled Kurds; Mazloum said that American commanders advised him to surrender Kobani, and offered to cover his retreat. He refused. When ISIS seized his house a third time, he radioed its coördinates to the Americans and asked them to destroy it. “That was when the momentum changed,” Mazloum said. “After they bombed my house, we retook the neighborhood, and from there we kept advancing.” The Kurds eventually pushed ISIS out of Kobani, at which point the U.S. proposed to continue backing them from the air, as long as they pursued ISIS on the ground.
This must have been a strange moment for Mazloum, because the U.S. had once considered him a terrorist. He was born in 1967, shortly after the creation of the Syrian Arab Republic, which institutionalized the repression of Kurds. At the age of thirteen, he was imprisoned for reading a book in Kurdish, and as a student at Aleppo University he was arrested four times, for “political activities.” Meanwhile, in Turkey, whose government had enacted severe anti-Kurd policies of its own, the P.K.K. had launched a guerrilla war against the state. The group’s founder, Abdullah Ocalan, was forced to flee to Syria, where Mazloum’s father, a physician, befriended him. Some Turks now refer to Mazloum, derisively, as Ocalan’s “spiritual son.”
After graduating with a degree in architecture, Mazloum joined the P.K.K. He rose through its ranks during the eighties and nineties, while the group carried out kidnappings, assassinations, bombings, and suicide attacks in Turkey. The U.S. officially designated the P.K.K. a terrorist organization in 1997, and a year and a half later the C.I.A. helped Turkey capture Ocalan. He was imprisoned on a small island in the Sea of Marmara, where he remains today.
In 2011, at the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, Mazloum founded the Y.P.G. as a Syrian branch of the P.K.K. Three years later, when American officials offered to support the Y.P.G., they insisted that it break ties with its parent group. Mazloum says that his organization is not connected to the P.K.K. That is preposterous; what is debatable is the nature of the connection. As the Y.P.G. recaptured more territory from ISIS, it absorbed tens of thousands of non-Kurdish fighters—Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, and Turkmen—and, in 2015, it rebranded itself as the Syrian Democratic Forces. Recruits were still indoctrinated in Ocalan’s anti-Turkish ideology, however, and P.K.K. leaders quietly installed themselves in Syria, consolidating a shadow authority in both the S.D.F. and the emerging bureaucracy responsible for liberated areas. This bureaucracy—the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria—now governs about a third of the country, garnering considerable revenue, from taxes and trade, which, many experts believe, directly finances the P.K.K.
For the Americans, the S.D.F.’s proficiency against ISIS eclipsed concerns about antagonizing Turkey, a NATO ally. As the war against ISIS progressed, the Kurds, despite their fidelity to a designated terrorist organization, developed an extraordinarily copacetic relationship with U.S. troops and personnel. At the command level, this symbiosis seems to have been largely thanks to General Mazloum, whose competence and reliability permitted American officials to overlook his political associations. Brett McGurk, a former special Presidential envoy for the coalition fighting ISIS, told me, “Mazloum proved himself to be incredibly effective militarily—and diplomatically, bringing tens of thousands of Arabs into the force. The results spoke for themselves.” Notwithstanding a lifelong devotion to Kurdish rights, Mazloum was crucial in uniting the S.D.F.’s diverse non-Kurdish factions, especially rivalrous Arab tribes. “He’s pragmatic and subtle,” McGurk said. “He became a trusted interlocutor.”
Today, Mazloum commands more than a hundred thousand fighters, fewer than half of whom are Kurds. His astonishing trajectory, from the leader of a fledgling militia to the general of a multiethnic army controlling a large swath of Syria, has endowed him with an almost mythical stature. “People see him as a kind of prophet,” a Kurdish friend of mine said. Some Americans express a similar awe. “Mazloum is the George Washington of the Kurds,” a U.S. Army major told me.
Erdoğan, for his part, has issued a warrant for Mazloum’s arrest through Interpol, and placed a bounty on his head. For my meeting with General Mazloum, I was instructed to show up at an S.D.F. base; I was then escorted to a remote compound on a hill overlooking wetlands. Guards paced the terraces of a luxurious residence with patios and an expansive swimming pool—the Hollywood version of a narco mansion, except that everyone was nice. Mazloum, the only person on the property in uniform, received me in a small, austere room with a few couches and coffee tables. Soft-spoken and clean-shaven, with graying black hair and an open face, he radiated the guileless enthusiasm of an idealist and the imperturbability of a veteran commander.
It is a sign of the insular and secretive culture of the P.K.K. that, until last year, few people outside Syria had ever heard of Mazloum. Throughout the Raqqa offensive, he avoided the press and remained sequestered with his American counterparts inside the Lafarge Cement Factory. His first public appearance came last March, after the S.D.F. captured Deir Ezzour, ISIS’s last redoubt in Syria, erasing from the map a caliphate that once encompassed more than thirty thousand square miles. At a choreographed ceremony, Mazloum briefly addressed international media outlets that had covered the battle. When we spoke, he explained to me that it would have been inappropriate for a subordinate of his to have declared such a momentous victory. But his decision to step into the spotlight was also tactical: in addition to declaring victory, he implored the U.S. not to abandon Syria prematurely. Warning that ISIS and Al Qaeda still posed a danger to the “whole world,” he asked for continued military support, “in order to begin a new phase in the fight against terrorism.”
His worry was understandable. Three months earlier, in December, 2018, while the S.D.F. was still engaged in brutal daily combat in Deir Ezzour, Trump had declared, on Twitter, “We have won against ISIS.” Praising the “soldiers who have been killed fighting for our country,” he directed the Pentagon to withdraw all its forces from Syria within thirty days. (Two U.S. service members had been killed in Syria, compared with more than ten thousand men and women in the S.D.F.) Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned in protest, as did Brett McGurk. After Republican senators joined the backlash, Trump relented on his timetable. But he never rescinded his order to withdraw.
When I asked Mazloum if U.S. military and civilian leaders had begun preparing him for their departure after Trump’s announcement, he said absolutely not. “Basically, they told us it wasn’t going to happen,” Mazloum said. The first official warning he received to the contrary came in October, when the ranking U.S. general for the Middle East called to inform him—on the same day the rest of the world found out—that a Turkish incursion was imminent and that the U.S. would do nothing to impede it. (A U.S. Army spokesman said, “We decline specific comment on prior conversations between senior leaders.”)
The disaster that subsequently befell northern Syria has been widely attributed to Trump’s capitulation to Erdoğan, which many people view as a gross betrayal of the Kurds. Senator Mitt Romney, raising the prospect of a congressional investigation into Trump’s decision, called it “a bloodstain on the annals of American history.” Such criticism hinges on the seemingly self-evident notion that the Kurds, after defeating ISIS at great cost, had earned a debt of loyalty from the U.S. Certainly, this was Mazloum’s understanding. Trump, however, never suggested that it was his understanding. Rather, it appears that U.S. commanders and diplomats made commitments that contradicted his explicit statements—imparting a false sense of security to the Kurds that ultimately harmed them. Mazloum told me that last summer, when he agreed to pull back his forces from the Turkish border, the Americans on the ground in Syria assured him, “As long as we’re here, Turkey will not attack you.”
By all accounts, these Americans genuinely believed in their partnership with the Kurds and were anguished by the way it ended. The question is whether they did the Kurds a disservice by not adequately explaining to them that the collective will of U.S. institutions could be instantly abrogated by a Presidential tweet—and that the posting of such a tweet was likely. In Syria, perhaps more than anywhere else, the unprecedented friction between the White House and its foreign-policy apparatus is on stark display. Almost every Kurd I met, including Mazloum, distinguished between the U.S. military and its Commander-in-Chief. “After all the fighting we did together, we had lots of trust in the Americans,” Mazloum said. “We never imagined everything could change in just two days.” After a pause, he qualified the criticism: “We know this was a political decision. We still have confidence in our American brothers-in-arms.”
In 2015, when Bashar al-Assad appeared to be losing his grip on the country, Vladimir Putin came to his aid. A prodigious Russian air campaign turned the tide of the civil war. In addition to enabling regime atrocities, Russia has killed thousands of Syrian civilians. Russian security contractors have also committed horrific crimes. A 2017 video showed Russians murdering a Syrian with a sledgehammer, then decapitating him and lighting his corpse on fire. However problematic the U.S. intervention in Syria has been, it would be specious to equate Russian and American conduct in the country.
Assad and the Russians have made it clear that their long-term goal is the return of “total state control” in Syria, including in the territory captured from ISIS by the S.D.F. Nevertheless, the day before Turkey attacked Brousque’s forces in Ain Issa and U.S. troops began leaving the Lafarge Cement Factory, Mazloum met with representatives from Russia and the Assad regime. The next afternoon, government military units returned to parts of northern Syria for the first time in seven years. In an editorial in Foreign Policy, Mazloum described his choice as one between “painful compromises” and “the genocide of our people.”
During the next week, a cascade of events upended the strategic balance in Syria and, by extension, throughout the Middle East. Putin invited Erdoğan to Sochi, where the two leaders signed a treaty that halted the Turkish offensive while implicitly ceding to Turkey the land it had already taken—nearly a thousand square miles. (An earlier ceasefire, negotiated by Vice-President Mike Pence, had been neither respected by Turkey nor enforced by the U.S.) Mazloum agreed to relinquish his remaining border positions, and Russia replaced the U.S. as the neutral mediator of the buffer zone. Russian troops also joined regime forces on the S.D.F.’s new front line along the territory annexed by Turkey. Near Ain Issa, Russian soldiers commandeered the largest U.S. airbase in Syria. Russian state television broadcast video footage of American medical supplies, empty bunkhouses, and shipping containers marked “PROPERTY OF U.S. ARMY.”
When I visited Ain Issa, in February, Russian military vehicles entered and exited a former U.S. outpost on the edge of town. A large Russian flag waved on the roof of a former U.S. guard tower. It was visible from the building where I met with Brousque, who now coördinates with Russian soldiers instead of with U.S. Special Forces. It wasn’t the same, Brousque said: “We fought alongside the Americans. They ate with us. They laughed and joked with us. We had the feeling that we belonged to the same team. It’s not like that with the Russians.” Brousque recalled a celebration at the end of a training exercise, during which American troops sang and danced to traditional Kurdish music with their S.D.F. comrades. Smiling at the memory, he said, “The Russians would never do that.”
Earthen berms and trenches lined the north side of the M4. A few hundred feet beyond them were the Turkish-backed militias. Before October, downtown Ain Issa had been a bustling souk. Now it was deserted. Regime soldiers walked by shuttered stores, garages, barbershops, and restaurants. When I introduced myself and tried to ask them questions, they nervously hurried off. They wore mismatched uniforms and tattered sneakers, and several of them looked underfed. Of the handful of soldiers I managed to interview, all but one had been conscripted. None was armed, and I later learned that the S.D.F. had prohibited them from carrying weapons in town.
The regime forces that Mazloum allowed back into Kurdish territory are restricted to the frontiers and pose little danger to the S.D.F. By stopping the Turkish offensive, securing Russian protection, and limiting the deployment of regime troops, Mazloum prevented northern Syria from descending into chaos. But this emergency diplomacy grants only a temporary reprieve. The longer the Kurds must contend with an existential threat from Turkey in the north, the less able they will be to defend their Arab satellites in the south—Deir Ezzour and Raqqa—from Russia and Assad. This secondary effect of the U.S. withdrawal has the potential to become yet another catastrophe, for yet another population.
To the extent that Trump has articulated a coherent policy in Syria, it reflects his view that the country is irredeemably doomed and therefore no longer our concern. “Syria was lost long ago,” he said last year. “We’re talking about sand and death.” Trump is not the first President to cite the scale and the complexity of the Syrian war as a justification for American inconstancy. In 2013, when the regime killed more than a thousand civilians with sarin gas, Barack Obama, leery of being drawn into the conflict, backed away from punitive strikes, despite having declared a “red line” on the use of chemical weapons. The regime, uninhibited by a fear of American repercussions, has since conducted additional gas attacks and wantonly slaughtered tens of thousands of its citizens by other means. One could argue that Obama’s painstakingly considered inaction enabled more violence and misery than any of Trump’s carelessly impulsive actions. At the same time, Trump’s repudiation of American responsibility to Syria is harder to rationalize, given that during his time in office the U.S., in its zeal to exterminate ISIS, has reduced parts of the country to wasteland. Nowhere is this more true than in the city of Raqqa.
The truck that Nashat Khairi hired to take his family away from Ain Issa stopped ten miles north of Raqqa. Khairi, his wife, and their seven children unloaded their belongings on the roadside: mattresses, blankets, pots and pans, their fan and stove. All around them, thousands of refugees from the camp had pitched tents in empty fields, amid grazing livestock. Khairi told his family that they would not be staying there. After a night under the stars, he hitched a ride to Raqqa to look for someplace with a roof.
He discovered a city whose utter decimation might be unique in this century. As a candidate, Trump had vowed to “bomb the shit out of” ISIS, and, almost as soon as he entered the Oval Office, Raqqa afforded him the opportunity. By the summer of 2017, the S.D.F. had encircled the city, which ISIS militants prepared to defend with suicide bombers, an elaborate tunnel system, and ubiquitous I.E.D.s. Because the S.D.F. lacked heavy weaponry and armored vehicles, the offensive relied on U.S. air strikes. For four months, the U.S. deployed thousands of munitions, ranging from laser-guided Hellfire missiles to one-ton unguided bombs. U.S. artillery battalions complemented the barrage with more than thirty thousand shells. An adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff later told the Marine Corps Times, “Every minute of every hour, we were putting some kind of fire on ISIS in Raqqa.” I was shocked, while covering the battle, by what seemed to be a strategy of physical annihilation applied against a city that still harbored a significant civilian population. One front-line S.D.F. commander told me that he called in U.S. air strikes on solitary gunmen.
When the last ISIS holdouts surrendered, the layout of the city was unrecognizable. Months of labor were required just to uncover the streets. The effort was overseen by the Raqqa Civil Council, a municipal authority established by the Kurds which currently operates under the Autonomous Administration. The U.S. supplied excavators and paid the salaries of more than six hundred local workers. Large rig-mounted jackhammers smashed the vast mountains of concrete into manageable pieces, which were then used to fill in craters, seal ISIS tunnels, and reinforce levees on the Euphrates River. Smaller slabs were pulverized and repurposed as cement. Thousands of bodies were extracted, as were tens of thousands of mines. Once the main arteries were passable, water stations and basic plumbing were installed. People started moving back.
“It changed from a dead city to a city with a pulse,” Ibrahim Ibn Khalil, the former director of the Civil Council’s reconstruction committee, told me this winter. We met in a small café in downtown Raqqa, near the central roundabout where ISIS once performed public beheadings and crucifixions. Ibn Khalil, in a wheelchair, held a hookah pipe in his left hand and a cappuccino in his right. In January, 2018, an assassin had entered his house and shot him six times in the chest; ISIS claimed responsibility. Doctors saved Ibn Khalil’s life, but three bullets remain lodged in his back, and no hospital in Syria is equipped to take them out. Ibn Khalil told me that the American officials who had encouraged the development of the Civil Council had promised to secure him a visa so that he could undergo surgery in the U.S. But they never followed through. “It’s very disappointing for me,” he said. “This happened because I was working with the Americans.”
His personal disappointment echoes a larger one. Because the U.N. respects the sovereignty of the Syrian regime, and the regime does not authorize aid delivery to areas controlled by the S.D.F., the U.S. initially assumed the financial burden for Raqqa’s recovery. But, seven months after Ibn Khalil was shot, Trump suspended the Syria budgets of the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development. “Let the other people take care of it now,” he had said. “We’re going to get back to our country, where we belong.” Although Gulf states and European nations made up for the shortfall, which totalled around two hundred and thirty million dollars—about a quarter of what’s been raised to repair Notre-Dame, in Paris—the disruption hampered progress, and many locals lost their jobs. Five months later, when Trump first threatened to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, the Americans advising Ibn Khalil’s team—public-health, water-sanitation, and demining experts—were evacuated from the country. Those who eventually returned were confined to U.S. military bases far from Raqqa, and in October they left Syria for good. Rubble, bombs, and bodies still litter the city—unexploded ordnance continues to kill and maim people every week, typically children—and no government has offered any support for the monumental undertaking of fixing damaged buildings and erecting new ones. In Ibn Khalil’s opinion, “The world has betrayed the people of Raqqa.”
The comprehensiveness of the destruction can be visually disorienting. It’s as if the cumulative energy of the American bombardment had scrambled the normal order of things, leaving behind an Escher-like reality to which the mind needs time to adjust. Concrete staircases dangle vertically from twisted rebar; cars lie upside down; roofs jut at weird angles; slabs of concrete undulate like rumpled cloth; trees cower from old blasts. On every surface, projectiles have gouged holes of different shapes and sizes; entire blocks are sheared off at the top. Some buildings appear to defy physics, frozen mid-fall. Others have been trucked away, the only trace of them a square of dirt.
And yet, remarkably, the obliterated city abounds with activity. Because most of Raqqa was wrecked from above, the ground levels of taller structures often survived more or less intact. Many streets are lined with shops and restaurants that have reopened under multiple gutted floors. Less obvious is where everybody lives. For several days, I couldn’t figure it out. Then one evening, while we were driving around, my translator—a friend from Iraq who’d never been to Raqqa before—said, “Look at all the people.” Although solar-powered L.E.D. lamps illuminate a few main boulevards, and commercial enterprises run diesel generators, Raqqa is eerily dark at night. But now I saw what he was talking about: scattered throughout the city, dim points of light.
One of these belonged to Nashat Khairi. Three days after his family left Ain Issa, he found a cinder-block room on Raqqa’s northern outskirts, near train tracks whose rails had been removed by scavengers, and rusty freight cars converted into shelters. The room was too small for his seven children, so Khairi installed the family’s tent outside, and linked the two entrances with a tarp, thereby doubling the square footage. Between the stakes, he planted another garden with radishes and bell peppers. “This tent is dear to my heart,” he told me when I visited.
As we discussed what had happened in October, Khairi kept referring to a compact agenda that he kept in his pocket. The agenda, so old and weathered that most of its pages had detached, contained copious notes from his years as a mukhtar at the Ain Issa camp: the names, ages, and phone numbers of everyone in his section; the rations to which each family was entitled; the locations of tents with infants needing formula; dates of marriages and deaths. Between the pages were battered business cards—contact information for N.G.O.s and aid workers who had long since quit the region. Picking up a card that had fallen out, Khairi told me it belonged to a doctor who used to perform circumcisions for newborns in the camp. He carefully returned the card to its place.
Khairi had found a job helping a Raqqa merchant sell secondhand blankets, and earned around three dollars a week. (I had first met him, by chance, while he was unfolding his wares on the sidewalk one morning.) Although he often had to choose between food and kerosene—winter temperatures frequently dropped below freezing—he considered himself lucky. Thousands of refugees who had fled Ain Issa were still living in the fields north of Raqqa. The former manager of the camp told me that there is no plan to help them. When my translator and I visited the makeshift settlement, a crowd of women swarmed our car, shouting, “We’re dying of hunger!” and “Why isn’t anyone coming?” We had to drive away when they tried to force open our doors. A villager who lived nearby later told me, “They don’t even have water. Their husbands are in Raqqa looking for work.” He added, “When it rains, these fields will all be flooded.”
The reason none of these people had moved into Raqqa was that the city was already full. Around a hundred thousand people are thought to live there. In addition to former residents returning home, and people fleeing the Turkish invasion, the city has been inundated with Syrians displaced by the regime—from Aleppo, Hama, Deir Ezzour, and elsewhere. Every habitable niche has been claimed. After a week or so, I learned to identify signs of human life within the ruins: drying laundry, bricked-up holes, plastic-covered windows, and small gray satellite dishes affixed to half-collapsing walls. (The Civil Council sells generator-powered electricity for about two dollars a week, and everyone, no matter how destitute, seemed to have a television with several hundred channels.) Sometimes tower complexes were so thoroughly damaged that only a single apartment retained a modicum of structural integrity. One day, I noticed a man sweeping debris from the roof of a three-story building whose top and bottom floors had no exterior walls; he lived in the middle. When he invited me inside, I found the living room impeccably restored, with plush carpets and decorative plaster molding. A polished wood-and-glass display cabinet had survived the battle; on its shelves, porcelain figurines and delicate teacups were arranged on lace doilies.
Most people in Raqqa live in far more squalid and hazardous conditions. Large families are often crowded into one or two rooms with bowed ceilings and bulging walls—masses of blasted concrete literally pressing in on them. Given the state of these apartments, I was surprised to discover that there are few squatters in Raqqa. Almost everyone I met, including Khairi, paid rent.
At one of the dozens of real-estate offices downtown, Hassan Yassin, a middle-aged agent wearing a kaffiyeh and traditional tribal robes, told me, “We’ve never seen such a high demand.” Yassin said that property owners can usually be tracked down, and if they are dead, imprisoned, or abroad, relatives suffice. Prices range from about ten dollars a month, in the suburbs, to as much as thirty dollars a month in the popular Al Firdous neighborhood. (Al Firdous is no less damaged than anywhere else, but it boasts the Electric Park of Raqqa, whose Ferris wheel and bumper cars withstood two air strikes, and Rashid Stadium. A former ISIS torture center, the stadium has a synthetic track that people now jog around.) Yassin waved a stack of papers—his backlog of would-be tenants seeking accommodation. “It’s like that everywhere in Raqqa,” he said.
During the day, the city resonates with the din of banging hammers, power tools, and machinery. Wood shops fabricate furniture; boom trucks and bulldozers clog the roads; venders hawk salvaged brick, tile, metal, and marble. But almost none of this industry is geared toward creating new structures. At a high school flattened by an air strike, a crew of workers contracted by the Civil Council explained their work to me. As backhoes clawed through heaps of concrete, raking out gnarled rebar, laborers fed the steel rods through a straightening machine. Earthmovers then exhumed the foundation, so that the school could be resurrected on its original footprint. This final step, however, was merely theoretical: no building had occurred on any of the sites the crew had prepared.
The U.S. and its allies have refused to fund construction projects in Syria as long as Assad remains in power. “It’s become a collective consensus among donors that we will not do reconstruction in Syria,” a senior humanitarian officer told me. “ ‘Reconstruction’ is a dirty word.” The ostensible reason for withholding such assistance is to incentivize the resolution of a U.N.-sponsored peace process. But the process has been stalled for years, and few people expect it to succeed. The Western aversion to durable investment in Syria more likely arises from a broad but unspoken recognition that Assad is winning the war. “It’s political,” the humanitarian officer said. “We don’t want to do anything that will eventually benefit the regime.”
Even though the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. no longer have personnel in Syria, they still determine how the majority of foreign funding is spent there. The U.S. government distinguishes between “stabilization” and “reconstruction,” allowing the former and proscribing the latter. Stabilization projects are subject to guidelines that forbid, among other things, the building of load-bearing walls. In practical terms, this means that, if a school was minimally damaged by an American air strike, the U.S. can finance basic refurbishments, such as replacing doorframes or applying new paint. But if the school was destroyed—as the vast majority of structures in Raqqa were—the U.S., as a matter of policy, cannot replace it. The Europeans and the Gulf states generally follow the same rule.
For even these limited interventions, only public structures are eligible. Since the Second World War, the U.S. has rarely paid directly for the reconstruction of private homes in any conflict; the crucial difference in Syria is the absence of other actors to provide such aid. In Iraq, the U.N. has rebuilt more than twenty-five thousand residences that were destroyed during the war against ISIS, and the World Bank is funding major infrastructure projects. In Raqqa, deferring to the regime, neither institution has done anything.
Yassin told me that, among the buildings where he had placed renters, “we estimate that at least seventy per cent of them will have to be torn down—they’re not safe.” I asked what will happen to their occupants if that happens. “They’ll have to go somewhere else,” he said.
In Raqqa, you can’t walk down the street without encountering people whose lives have been shattered by American arms. An investigation by Amnesty International found that the U.S.-led coalition killed at least sixteen hundred civilians in the city; locals say that the actual toll is much higher. Although American officials like to claim that the U.S. “liberated” Raqqa, nobody I met there felt liberated.
One afternoon, in a neighborhood adjacent to Al Firdous, we passed a yellow taxi parked outside a building that looked as if it had been stepped on by a giant. A sheet hung over the doorway. When my translator asked if anyone was home, a middle-aged man with gray hair and a gray mustache emerged. His name was Mustafa al-Hamad. We followed him into a room with crumbling walls lined with blankets and pillows, where we were joined by his wife, Namat.
They were originally from Aleppo, where Hamad had managed a shoe store. In 2012, the revolution turned violent in their neighborhood, and they moved with their four children to Raqqa. The war had not yet reached Raqqa, and Namat’s family lived there. Hamad bought a taxi and began working as a driver. He and Namat had another daughter. After ISIS captured Raqqa, in 2014, they considered fleeing—but nowhere they could go was significantly safer. Two years later, the S.D.F. began its advance on the city, and ISIS, recognizing the need for human shields, prohibited civilians from leaving.
In 2017, as the S.D.F. approached Raqqa, the already ferocious deluge of munitions intensified. That July, a shell or an air strike killed Namat’s brother, Khalid. She and Hamad resolved to get out. The taxi could fit only them, their five children, and Khalid’s thirteen-year-old son, whom they had adopted. Hamad promised to return for Namat’s mother, sister, nieces, and nephews. They left at night, following a rutted dirt road through the wetlands on the edge of the Euphrates. Eventually, they arrived at a line of vehicles—other residents trying to escape the city—backed up from where the road disappeared into a marsh. ISIS militants had blown up a levee, flooding the way.
About a dozen men were helping people move their cars, one after another, across several hundred feet of water. “If we hear a plane, we have to go,” they told Hamad. The Americans, fearing that ISIS militants were sneaking out of Raqqa, had dropped leaflets threatening to bomb anyone attempting to ford the river.
When it was Hamad’s turn, he and his two teen-age sons got out and pushed. Namat and her daughters waded alongside them. The water rose to Namat’s chest; she held her infant above her head. They made it across, and the next day reached a town under the control of the S.D.F.
Hamad did not go back for Namat’s mother and sister—to do so would have been suicidal. Both women, along with four of Namat’s nieces and nephews, were later killed in an air strike. As soon as Raqqa was accessible, Hamad and Namat visited the site, hoping to recover their bodies. There was too much rubble.
The day after I met Hamad, he led me and my translator to the place where he had pushed his taxi across the marsh. The dirt road was still flooded, and looked exactly as he had described it. On the way back to the city, we stopped at a small scrap yard. In a wooden shack surrounded by rusty engine parts, shutters, gears, wheels, and other refuse, we found the young owner sitting on a crate, drinking tea with one of his suppliers. While I spoke to the owner about his business—there had been a brief boom, he said, but the city was soon picked over—the supplier regarded me suspiciously. He was missing several teeth, and cotton spilled from holes all over his dirty coat. He grew agitated as I continued asking questions, and finally interrupted me. “During the battle, a mortar killed my wife and three of my daughters,” he said. “Another one of my daughters lost her leg.”
The man, named Hussein Ahmad, invited me to his house, where I met his ten-year-old daughter, Fatma, who is now in a wheelchair. Fatma recalled cooking dinner with her mother and sisters when a shell tore through their kitchen. Rima was fifteen, Amira fourteen, and Waffa twelve. Ahmad said he had asked several N.G.O.s about getting a prosthesis for Fatma. He’d taped his phone number to the wall, in case someone showed up while he was out collecting metal.
Most civilians who were injured by U.S. artillery and air strikes were treated at the Raqqa Public Hospital. A former doctor from the hospital told me that by the end of the fighting only ten of his colleagues remained, the others having fled or died. Amputation became the default treatment for wounded limbs, the doctor said. One physician had performed so many amputations that ISIS accused him of deliberately impairing people. Infection and sepsis were common. Fatma said that, when she woke up in one of the wards, “they were cleaning my leg but I couldn’t feel anything—then it started to smell and they cut it.”
Because the hospital also treated ISIS militants, it was a frequent target of U.S. air strikes. (Toward the end of the offensive, it also became an ISIS fighting position.) When the current director of the hospital, Kassar Ali, took me inside the original facility, we had to scrabble through downed pipes and caved-in ceilings, the walls and floors scorched black by fire. Scattered everywhere were the remnants of medical supplies: white piles of cast plaster, contorted gurneys, smashed exam tables. Air strikes had destroyed all of the X-ray machines, CAT scanners, and MRI devices. Doctors Without Borders has financed the renovation of a new wing—which is currently the only public-health facility in Raqqa—but none of this essential equipment has been replaced. According to Ali, American commanders had visited the hospital on several occasions: “Each time, they took pictures, we had long meetings, and they promised support. But so far they’ve given us nothing.” Since October, even the visits have stopped. Reached by phone recently, Ali said that he is deeply worried about the possibility of a COVID-19 outbreak in Raqqa. “We can take care of one or two patients, at most,” he explained. The hospital has two ventilators—eight were lost to air strikes.
If people in Raqqa knew the U.S.’s rationale for refusing to engage in any substantive reconstruction of their city—because it might end up in the hands of the regime—they would no doubt feel even more betrayed than they do now. Raqqa is an Arab city, and most of its residents, unlike the Kurds, are unwilling to accept any deal with the regime. While interviewing people in Raqqa, I often heard the phrase “the devil before Assad.” When General Mazloum made his accommodation with the regime, protests broke out in the city. Some Arabs, fearing the regime’s return, have since fled. Hamad and Namat told me that if the regime comes back they, too, will leave. After they escaped Raqqa, in 2017, their daughter Noor married and moved to Hama Province, in western Syria; six months later, she was killed, along with her husband and her in-laws, in an air strike by the regime or the Russians. Hamad and Namat’s anger aside, staying would be foolhardy: as natives of Aleppo, they risk meeting the same fate as the tens of thousands of Syrians whom the regime has disappeared since 2011. When their eldest son turned eighteen, he would be conscripted.
The partially demolished apartment where they now live once belonged to Namat’s mother. When they returned to Raqqa, Hamad and Namat spent ten days clearing out rubble and shoring up the walls. Hamad wired in electricity, and Namat planted vegetables in an empty lot outside. They even had a kitchen with a sink and running water. If they left this place, I asked, where would they go? Hamad reflected, then said, “Wherever the regime isn’t.”
Dread of the regime is even more acute for those who have worked, even in limited capacities, with the U.S. At the offices of Citizenship House, a local N.G.O. based in the Al Firdous neighborhood, I met half a dozen women who ran democracy-education workshops funded by the State Department and by European governments. One of them, Yamam Abdulghani, told me, “To the regime, we’re terrorists. They accuse us of applying a Western agenda and Western ideologies.” When I asked what punishment such activities might elicit, Abdulghani said, “Look at Caesar’s pictures.” In 2013, a former military-police photographer using the pseudonym Caesar divulged thousands of images of Syrian prisoners who had been tortured and executed in regime detention centers.
The workshops at Citizenship House are quintessential “stabilization” programs. In contrast to humanitarian operations—which are supposed to address immediate needs—such programs are designed to forestall the emergence of ISIS and other extremist movements; for this reason, the U.S. and its allies will fund them. But, in Raqqa, the absence of any U.S. protection against the regime—and of any U.S. investment in rebuilding—has created exactly the kinds of conditions in which radical groups like ISIS flourish. According to Abdulghani, a bellwether for such instability in Raqqa is the current situation of its women.
Women’s rights are central to the political philosophy of Abdullah Ocalan, and the S.D.F. and the Autonomous Administration vigorously promote gender equality. A billboard outside the Raqqa Civil Council declares, “With women at the forefront of the twenty-first century, we will end all violence against humanity.” Moreover, before ISIS, few women in Raqqa wore niqabs and veils. Yet Abdulghani was one of only two uncovered women I met in the city. The other was the Kurdish co-chair of the Civil Council. Abdulghani said that the prevalence of niqabs and veils could be attributed, in part, to the lingering influence of ISIS. But the U.S. withdrawal was a bigger factor. “Before October, some women had started to uncover,” she said. “Now it’s stopped. Women are afraid of what’s coming.”
Abdulghani, who, in 2016, smuggled herself out of Raqqa in a truckful of goats, said that people often harass her on the street, calling her a prostitute and warning that ISIS will soon be back. “Everyone is preparing to leave,” she said. “No one feels secure. No one can think about tomorrow.”
Two weeks after Trump ordered a full withdrawal of the thousand or so U.S. troops in Syria, he decided to send half of them back. They would not be defending their Kurdish allies against Turkey, or deterring the regime from encroaching on Raqqa. Instead, Trump said, “we are leaving soldiers to secure the oil.” Cryptically, he went on, “Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they’ll have a hell of a fight.” The Pentagon has characterized the mission differently: the “somebody” it is concerned about is ISIS, and American troops are in Syria “for the oil” only insofar as safeguarding it deprives ISIS of a potential source of revenue.
Both of these explanations feel disingenuous. It’s true that ISIS persists around the S.D.F.-controlled oil fields of Deir Ezzour Province, where U.S. Special Forces continue to carry out counterterrorism raids. But Iran, which supports the Assad regime, is also active there. Nashat Khairi and his family, for instance, can’t return to their village in Deir Ezzour because it is occupied by an Iranian-backed militia. Until October, containing Iranian adventurism was a key U.S. priority in Syria, and Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach to Iran has been perhaps the most consistent feature of his foreign-policy agenda. Iranian operations in Syria are overseen by the Quds Force, which used to be commanded by Qassem Suleimani, the general who was assassinated in a drone strike in January. Trump later defended his decision to order the strike by saying that Suleimani had “viciously wounded and murdered thousands of U.S. troops.” A U.S. withdrawal from Deir Ezzour could entail surrendering U.S. bases to the Quds Force.
Another place in Syria where U.S. troops are currently stationed is also rich in oil—a Kurdish region called Jazira. But ISIS has no presence in Jazira, and there is little need to protect its oil. Most of the crude in both Jazira and Deir Ezzour is exported to the regime, which refines it and sells a portion back to the Kurds, as diesel and petroleum. Although the Kurds and the regime fundamentally oppose each other, they engage in this commerce because neither could subsist without it: international sanctions prevent the regime from buying sufficient oil on the global market, and the Kurds have no refineries of their own. Jazira is strategically valuable not because of its peculiar oil trade but because it is where the M4 crosses into northern Iraq—another Kurdish-governed territory. The border is a lifeline for Syrian Kurds, and also a bridge between two major spheres of U.S. influence. Russia is thus determined to control it. When I visited Jazira, this winter, U.S. and Russian patrols were confronting one another almost daily on the muddy roads that crisscross its barren hills.
Russia has long presented itself as a preferable alternative to U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, and Trump’s disengagement has galvanized Putin’s regional ambitions. The most arresting thing about the video showing the Russian takeover of the U.S. airbase near Ain Issa is not the Russian helicopter touching down on an American landing zone, or the Russian soldiers moving into American barracks; it is the Russian officer invoking timeworn American rhetoric. “We are here to deliver humanitarian and medical aid to civilians, and to provide them with peace and security,” he says.
The Kurds know that Russia, Iran, and the regime want the same thing Turkey wants: an end to their autonomy in Syria. This is why many Kurds, despite Trump’s oft-expressed indifference to their welfare, cling to the hope of a renewed alliance with the U.S. Nearly all the Kurdish officials I interviewed were so desperate to salvage what remained of the American commitment to Syria that they refused to speak on the record about the withdrawal. One S.D.F. commander told me that, even during the Turkish invasion, he and his peers refrained from criticizing the U.S. in the press. “We discussed it, and decided to say we felt ‘disappointed’ instead of ‘betrayed,’ ” he said. Trump’s opinion of the Kurds, however, seems to have only deteriorated since he abandoned them. In November, he hosted Erdoğan in the Oval Office, where the Turkish President reportedly produced an iPad and showed a video comparing General Mazloum to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS. Afterward, Trump thanked Erdoğan and the Turkish military “for the job they’ve done” in Syria. He has also mused, “The Kurds, it’s very interesting—Turkey doesn’t like them, other people do.”
Were Trump to remove the remaining U.S. forces in Jazira and Deir Ezzour, the S.D.F. would have to make additional concessions to the regime in order to secure a bulwark against Turkey. This could include handing over Raqqa. But, even if the U.S. stays in Syria, and Turkey does not renew its offensive, the status quo appears unsustainable. Once Russia, Iran, and the regime have defeated the final pockets of the Arab opposition, they will almost certainly turn their attention to the Kurds. Arthur Quesnay, a political scientist at the Sorbonne, who recently co-authored a report on northern Syria, told me, “It may take a couple of years, but the regime will gradually return and recapture territory.” Quesnay believes that the fall of Raqqa and Deir Ezzour will be only the beginning. If the regime managed to take control of a few strategic sites, such as the border crossing in Jazira, it could starve the S.D.F. of resources, precipitating its collapse. In that case, Mazloum’s army would revert to what it was before his fateful introduction to the U.S., in 2014: a small Kurdish militia, surrounded by enemies.
All over northern Syria, the Kurds are preparing for this scenario by building an extensive network of tunnels. According to Mazloum, Trump promised him that he would never allow Erdoğan to attack Kobani. But Mazloum seems to have little confidence in the reassurance: I saw more tunnels in his home town than anywhere else. Twenty-five miles of paved road connects the former U.S. airbase near Ain Issa to Kobani, which abuts the Turkish border. The entire length of this route is lined with small blue tents, spaced around seventy feet apart, each standing beside a large mound of soil. When my translator and I pulled over and entered one of them, we found two teen-agers, covered in dirt, peering into a narrow shaft. A winch was suspended above the mouth of the shaft, and when the boys retracted its cable a man in a harness surfaced from the subterranean dark. They had been digging for three weeks straight. The tunnel, which parallels the road, was thirty feet underground.
While the Kurds are adjusting to the fact that the sky is no longer on their side, so are the area’s civilians. West of Ain Issa on the M4, where the front line with the Turks cuts across sweeping plains, a small Christian village called Tell Tawil sits on a low rise, conspicuous from a distance because of its abundant trees. In 2015, as ISIS neared Tell Tawil, the entire population fled. A year later, after the S.D.F. expelled ISIS, some people returned. When the Turks invaded, there was another exodus. One afternoon, as I accompanied an S.D.F. fighter through Tell Tawil’s deserted streets, he explained that Turkish-backed militias across the fields frequently shelled the village, despite the ceasefire, and Turkish drones sometimes targeted it with missiles. All the houses were empty, and the church was boarded up.
I was therefore surprised when we came upon two old men, sitting shoulder to shoulder, on a stoop in the sun. Their names were David Abraham and Khoshaba Samuel. Abraham, who is eighty-seven years old, wore a pin-striped blazer over a V-neck sweater and a collared shirt. He said that he had lived in Tell Tawil since 1935. His wife had died six years ago, four of his five sons had settled in Sweden, and his daughter lived in the U.S. Samuel, who is eighty, had known Abraham since he was a child and still appeared to respect his seniority. “I love this land,” Abraham said. “I’ll never leave it.” Samuel nodded in agreement.
After saying goodbye to Abraham and Samuel, I asked the S.D.F. fighter to show me his unit’s forwardmost position. We were heading down a hill to the northern edge of the village when I heard footsteps approaching from behind and turned to see Abraham briskly following us. At the end of the road, the S.D.F. fighter pointed to several sandbagged foxholes outside a gated property. He gestured toward the open expanse, strewn with old tractor parts, that stretched from where we stood: this was the no man’s land.
When Abraham caught up to us, he insisted that we come to his house for a cup of coffee. I asked where he lived.
“Here,” he said, opening the gate behind the foxholes.
Three huge dogs barked and jumped on Abraham as he led us into the yard. Pushing them away, Abraham complained to the S.D.F. fighter that someone had recently shot one of the dogs in the paw. We sat at a picnic table, on a deck looking out toward the Turkish front line. Abraham said that mortars sometimes whistled over his roof. He went inside and returned with whiskey tumblers containing espresso. Roosters crowed. After a while, Samuel appeared and, without a word, took a seat across from Abraham. Like almost everyone else from Tell Tawil, they were cotton farmers. Abraham owned a six-acre parcel across the road, but, even if peace came to Syria before he died, he knew that he’d never work it again. ISIS, the Turks, and the S.D.F. had all littered it with mines.
As we stood to leave, I asked Abraham what Tell Tawil had been like during the Second World War, when Britain and Vichy France fought for control of Syria. He said that his memories were vague. One, however, did stand out. He remembered lying flat in the fields, with other children, each time planes passed overhead. ♦
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SDF commander: Turkey, its mercenaries prepare for launching massive attack
SDF commander in Ain Issa district ‘s fronts has linked the Turkish reinforcements and sleeper cells attacks of mercenary gangs to preparing for launching massive attack on the areas of north and east of Syria.
NEWS21 Apr 2020, Tue – 10:312020-04-21T10:31:00 AIN ISSA- JIHAN BALKI
As we know all world’s states are preoccupied with confronting Coronavirus pandemic, but Turkish state is interested to occupy large swaths of the lands of north and east, where it escalated its attacks on it.
Despite all UN invitations to cease-fire in Syria, but all the evidence that refer to massive attack are being prepared to be launched.
Preparations for a massive attack
In an interview with Hawar news agency (ANHA), SDF commander in the fronts of Ain Issa, Ardal Kobani, said that the signs indicate a Turkish preparation for a large-scale attack on north and east Syria.
“The occupiers are taking advantage of the status quo, to occupy more areas, and deliberately targeting civilians, the people are resisting on two fronts, resisting to prevent the emergence of the Coronavirus, and resisting the attacks of the Turkish occupation army, as the Turkish occupation state tries to transfer the Coronavirus to our areas to put north and east Syria In trouble“.
He continued in the same context, “We have information stating that people infected with the Coronavirus have been taken to Serêkaniyê area, Tel Abyad and Afrin, and they are also trying to transfer infected people to Ain Issa.”
ISIS is reorganizing its ranks
Ardal Kobani drew attention to the fact that ISIS mercenaries are taking advantage of the curfew conditions in the area, and said, “A few days ago, they attacked civilians in their homes with grenades, with this dirty method, they are trying to push the people out of their homes to break the measures taken to prevent the emergence of the Coronavirus and empty it of their residents, recruiting children as old as 15 years to carry out suicide attacks, it is clear that ISIS is preparing for an attack and reorganizing its ranks. There are movements of sleeper cells with the aim of weakening SDF. “
SDF is committed to defending the people
The leader reaffirmed the commitment of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF to international calls for a cease-fire, but at the same time affirmed the readiness of the forces to confront the continuous attacks by the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries.
T/S ANHA
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Socially dangerous’ for having fought off ISIS
3 April 2020
Stefania D’ignoti speaks to a group of volunteers met with hostility and legal persecution after returning to Italy from the autonomous Kurdish-held region of Rojava.
The entrance graffiti of the Ex-Caserma Livorno. Credit: Stefania D’Ignoti
At the entrance of the Ex-Caserma Occupata, a community centre in the Tuscan seaside city of Livorno, there is some graffiti of a woman holding a gun. She wears a green, red and yellow-coloured headscarf.
Posters bearing the word ‘Rojava’ and flags with red stars on yellow backgrounds signal the centre’s clear support for the Kurdish social revolution that began in early 2013 in north-eastern Syria – now named Rojava.
Rojava has a Kurdish majority population, but is also home to other ethnic minorities, including Arabs and Yezidis. According to Yilmaz Orkan, coordinator of the Kurdistan Information Office in Italy, signs of support for Rojava, similar to those at Ex-Caserma Occupata, can be spotted at youth and social centres scattered around the country, particularly in the northern regions of Piedmont, Tuscany and Emilia Romagna, where Kurdish refugees have flocked to since the late 1980s.
‘In Italy there have always been people showing interest in the Kurdish cause, and since the People’s Protection Unit, more commonly known as YPG, fought and helped defeat ISIS, the topic gained international resonance,’ Orkan says.
‘But what made it even more popular recently is the trial of a group of Italian volunteers who joined YPG units on the ground.’
In January 2019, a court in the northern city of Turin began a peculiar legal procedure called ‘special surveillance’ against five volunteers from Italy who joined the YPG (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel), the primary component of the Syrian Democratic Forces, in north-eastern Syria.
The defendants, Maria Marcucci, Davide Grasso, Jacopo Bindi, Fabrizio Maniero and Paolo Andolina, pictured during the trial. Credit: Jacopo Bindi
Revolutionary ideas
The five volunteers – Maria Edgarda Marcucci, Davide Grasso, Jacopo Bindi, Fabrizio Maniero and Paolo Andolina – were mostly in Syria between 2016 and 2018. They had never met each other before this, but had previously been active in social and political movements in Italy.
They travelled to Syria after becoming fascinated by the revolutionary ideas emerging from Rojava after the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011. According to Orkan, these Rojavan ideals are rooted in building a ‘multi-ethnic society, based on principles of gender equality, social cohesion and environmental protection.’
Four of them ended up enrolling in the YPG and Marcucci in the YPJ, the women’s combat unit.
It’s absurd to think that they’re the ones considered dangerous while real acts of terrorism often pass unpunished
In January 2019, Turin’s court instigated a ‘special prevention procedure’, a legal process aimed at potentially ‘dangerous subjects’, to limit the volunteers’ civil freedoms.
Judges recommended they be expelled from their hometown of Turin for at least two years, revoking their passports and driving licences, banning them from all social and political activities – including engaging in public life by discussing their experiences in panel events and conferences. The suggested measures also included placing the defendants under curfew between 7.00pm and 6.00am.
The volunteers were labelled ‘socially dangerous’, and judges said that they represented a threat because of the combat training they received while on the ground.
The case attracted widespread criticism from young people in Italy and social centres like the Ex-Caserma in Livorno mobilized through solidarity campaigns to condemn what they see as ‘unfair’ and ‘undemocratic’ treatment, according to Elisa, a regular attendee of the community centre’s activities.
‘[This legal procedure] is a lack of respect for the European and international victims of fundamentalism and to those, Syrians and not, who perished in the war against the Islamic State,’ she said.
Jacopo Bindi, one of the five defendants, explains to New Internationalist that they all ‘felt [they were] victims of an unfair judicial system that focuses on our political views, rather than our actual conduct.’
Cracking down on dissent
Before leaving for Syria, Bindi was part of the popular ‘No Tav’ grassroots civil movement criticizing the TAV (Italian for ‘high-speed trains’) and more generally the unsustainable train infrastructure development in northern Italy. The group claims the development ignores the environment dangers inherent to the project, and the movement itself has been widely opposed by Italian authorities. Bindi believes his involvement in No Tav is what pushed judges to consider him ‘dangerous’.
‘I was a young student curious to learn about new social systems that could give an answer to my ideals,’ he says. ‘So in 2017 I decided to go to Syria and see with my own eyes the revolution that was taking place there. I needed to witness change.’
Initially, Bindi planned to stay for a month as an international observer. Hundreds of young people from western countries were already on the ground, offering what help they could. Apart from combat help, they would help organizing activities at youth centres and engage with the local population through cultural and ideological exchanges, helping out with farming and ecology activities, or write reports on the ground for western readers.
Compelled to take a more active role, Bindi ended up extending his stay by nine months, during which he served as a volunteer for youth activities and at the media centre in Afrin. Of the five, he was the only one who did not get involved in military operations. ‘I was in charge of peaceful activities, that’s why in my situation, this scenario was even more absurd,’ he says, exasperated.
Claudio Novaro, the defense attorney of the five defendants, told the Italian magazine L’Espresso that ‘the court’s claim is that their military skills could potentially be used in the No Tav context,’ making it a trial against their potential intentions rather than actual crimes committed.
A solidarity march in support of Rojava and remembering Lorenzo Orsetti. Credit: Jacopo Bindi
The court case began a few days before another Italian volunteer, Lorenzo Orsetti, died on the battlefield in the village of Baghouz on 18 March 2019. His death attracted significant media attention in Italy.
Zerocalcare, an Italian cartoonist and author of Kobane Calling, a comic book about his own volunteer experience in Rojava, paid tribute to Orsetti’s ‘martyrdom’, as he called it, through one of his comics.
Elisa says that Orsetti’s act of courage resonated with her because she sees regimes imposing their power through fear and violence as the enemy of her generation, as fascism was for her grandparents, who lived through the Second World War.
‘I think many politically active young people felt represented by Orsetti’s commitment to social justice, that’s why we raised our voice and gathered social media resonance to not let this episode pass by unnoticed,’ she said.
Both the media and the committee in charge of their case labelled the group as ‘foreign fighters’, a term normally used to refer to jihadists joining ISIS, who both Grasso and Bindi were surprised to be associated with
As a result of the public outcry in Italy, the judges decided to drop the charges against two of the defendants – Davide Grasso and Fabrizio Maniero – and postpone a separate decision about the remaining three to the fall of 2019 which, according to the defendants, was a move to separate and weaken them.
‘[But] when Turkey began bombarding north-eastern Syria in October, the judges postponed their decision again,’ Davide Grasso told New Internationalist. On 16 December 2019, prosecutors finally convened on a special surveillance against the remaining three, with a 90-day period to officially approve the decision to convict them, or overturn it. Finally, on 17 March this year,, the court of Turin decided to apply the special procedure solely to Maria Edgarda Marcucci, the only woman of the group.
The court based their decision on the notion that Marcucci was the most threatening case, because in the fall of 2019 she took part in a protest against the arm trade between Italy and Turkey while Turkey was implementing aerial bombardment over northern Syria this past October.
‘We all feel personally attacked by this decision, without distinctions. We still feel proud of what we did for Syria and democracy, to free people from fundamentalism, and to inform Italians about what really happens in Syria,’ the five defendants wrote in a joint statement reflecting on the decision.
‘It’s a serious action against a woman who risked her life to fight ISIS and terrorism and protect civilians.’
The trial has represented a mental burden for the young activists. Years after his return, Grasso admits he was shocked and disappointed to learn the news that his own country now considered him a threat. His bank account was shut down for ‘safety reasons’ connected to his service in Rojava, and his Facebook account was suspended three times for having shared photos and posts about his experiences in Syria.
On the other hand, Bindi says his time in Syria as a peaceful supporter was life-changing: ‘It made me realize our indifference toward what happens in the rest of the world, and how isolated we are.’
But when he returned, the trial aimed to limit his freedom to share his experience. Despite the year-long legal procedure they’ve had to face, both Bindi and Grasso feel relieved to have had public opinion on their side.
Stefania Pusateri, a humanitarian worker, produced a documentary about the trial, with the title Dangerous Subjects, to raise awareness about what she considers to be an example of legal injustice.
‘It’s absurd to think that they’re the ones considered dangerous […] while real acts of terrorism often pass unpunished,’ she says.
QAMISHLI, Syria (Kurdistan 24) – The Syrian regime-affiliated National Defense Forces on Saturday opened fire on a police vehicle of the Kurdish-led self-administration in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli, local authorities said.
A Kurdistan 24 news team reported that the shooting killed one member of the Kurdish security forces, known as Asayish, and wounded another.
A Russian patrol unit headed to the site of the incident and intervened to de-escalate and prevent clashes amid underlying tensions in the area, a Kurdistan 24 correspondent in Qamishli reported.
Local Asayish officials said in an online statement, “Members of the Syrian regime forces targeted a military vehicle belonging to our forces, which was in a joint patrol with a municipality vehicle carrying some cleaners as well as another for emergency medical transport.
The Asayish were guarding the cleaners and the ambulance, both on duty as part of efforts to prevent an outbreak of the new coronavirus disease in the region, the statement said. It added that the attack disrupted their work.
The Syrian forces killed a member of the Kurdish security forces and wounded at least three others. The shooting also resulted in the death of one passerby civilian.
The Kurdish police condemned the shooting and blamed the Syrian regime forces for the attack.
“We condemn the cowardly act carried out by members of the Syrian regime, and we assure our people that such attacks will not discourage our resolve and our insistence on achieving security and stability in our regions,” the statement read.
The shooting happened in the regime-held part of Qamishli near a roundabout in the city’s center where a statue of the former Syrian president Hafez Al-Assad stands.
This regime-held roundabout links two Kurdish-held neighborhoods of Qamishli. It is a road that vehicles of the Kurdish self-administration have taken without any obstacles over the past seven years.
Syrian regime troops have only had brief and intermittent clashes with Kurdish-led forces since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. Both sides appear to have purposefully avoided escalation, but confrontations in Qamishli and Hasakah–both mostly regime-controlled in previous years–have resulted in Kurdish forces taking over a large portion of the two Kurdish-majority cities.
Editing by Kosar Nawzad
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“A federalist system is a system of free women and free men”
A novel Middle East Women Leaders Index, published by the Middle East Women Initiative, ranked Syria relatively low in women’s representation and leadership in the public sector. The data used (primarily from the World bank and UNDP) for the index covered the status of women in the Syrian government and areas it controls. However, the situation in Syria today is far more complex, almost ten years into the conflict.
In addition to the central Assad-led government, both the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and various opposition groups control territory in the country— and will likely have some say in its post-war future. Yet their respective policies on women’s rights and representation are vastly different— an important distinction to make in assessing the country’s progress and determining international support.
Leadership and Representation
Women in the Autonomous Administration and the Syrian Democratic Forces hold senior leadership roles across policy functions and at all levels of their institutions. Ilham Ahmed, the co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, acts as the region’s de facto head of state, speaking before the U.S. Congress and meeting U.S. President Donald Trump last year. Further, the SDF operation to liberate Raqqa from ISIS control was led by a woman commander, Rojda Felat.
With the exception of women-only institutions, every deliberative body operates under a co-chair system, where all leadership positions are held jointly by one woman and one man. Offices and commissions within the Executive Council of the Administration, equivalent to cabinet departments, also use this system.
The Syrian opposition, however, lacks senior female leaders. In 2012, an early conference of the Syrian National Council elected no women to its 41-member decision-making group and the Syrian National Coalition has never had a woman president. In fact, the first woman to serve as the head of any opposition local council was only elected in 2018.
These disparities in senior leadership are reflected across the political structures of each faction. The Autonomous Administration’s constitution mandates that elected bodies and political parties, from the highest levels of the Administration to the smallest neighborhood commune, be made up of at least 40% women. Autonomous women’s organizations, like the Women’s Council of North and East Syria, exist in parallel to every mixed-gender institution, making the percentage of women actually serving in government slightly higher than men. These institutions have the ability to overrule and advise mixed-gender institutions on issues of women’s rights.
The Autonomous Administration’s constitution mandates that elected bodies and political parties, from the highest levels of the Administration to the smallest neighborhood commune, be made up of at least 40% women.
In contrast, a 2016 report from the Syrian Feminist Lobby quoted a study of 105 of the 427 local councils in opposition-held Syria at the time, which found that just 2% of their members were women. Just two women, including the Vice President, serve on the 23-member Political Committee of the Syrian National Coalition, and just 10% of the members of the Coalition’s General Body are women.
Based on this data, the Autonomous Administration would fall into the Middle East Women Leaders Index’s categorization of Ascending Representation— meaning women’s participation and leadership is high at all levels of government and across all policy areas. The report accurately classifies the Syrian government in the category of Aspiring Representation— meaning that women’s participation outside of traditional roles is still low. Despite claiming to represent a new future for the country, the Syrian opposition falls into this category as well.
Legal Status and Protections
New laws implemented by the Autonomous Administration contrast favorably with opposition laws and policies on women’s issues. In North and East Syria, the Women’s Laws address inequities in personal status that existed in Syrian law, and explicitly ban and criminalize child marriages, domestic abuse, and other forms of social inequity and gender-based violence. The region’s constitution states that “men and women are equal in the eyes of the law” and “guarantees the effective realization of equality of women and mandates public institutions to work towards the elimination of gender discrimination.”
Women who face discrimination or violence have significant institutional and social recourse. Women’s NGOs, like the Free Women’s Foundation and the Sara Organization for the Prevention of Violence Against Women, operate openly. Institutions known as “women’s houses” provide community-based mediation for domestic disputes and protection from unsafe home situations. Jinwar, an all-women’s village, is home to women who have lost their husbands in war, experienced sexual violence, and otherwise require support.
In opposition-held regions, no pretense of formal legal equality or legal protections is made. HTS, which controls much of Idlib, excludes women from political bodies and limits their basic freedoms, running gender-segregated schools,enforcing conservative dress codes, and forcing women whose husbands have been killed in the ongoing conflict to move in with a male “guardian.” These policies are enforced by ISIS-like morality police. Activists and civil society organizations that resist them face persecution, and must operate in secret; there is no legal resource for domestic violence, forced marriage, and other gender-based violence under religious law.
In opposition-held regions, no pretense of formal legal equality or legal protections is made. HTS, which controls much of Idlib, excludes women from political bodies and limits their basic freedoms…”
A recent UN report condemned the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army’s treatment of women in areas it has taken over, warning that “by targeting almost every aspect of Kurdish women’s lives…armed groups generated a palpable fear of violence and duress…[which] resulted in an undermining of women’s ability to meaningfully participate and contribute to their community.”
The report stated that these actions— like the assassination of Hevrin Khalaf, a former economy co-minister and then co-chair of the Syria Future Party targeted by Ahrar al-Sharqiya militants in October— constituted a concentrated attempt to “dismantle” the Autonomous Administration’s efforts to advance the status of women.
As the Index notes, laws and policies that regulate the lives of women and girls can either prepare them for political participation and leadership or act as obstacles to it. It is clear that the Autonomous Administration has done the former— while opposition groups have not been willing to implement such protections, and have even gone so far as to seek to force women out of public life altogether.
Why does it matter?
The Autonomous Administration provides a tried and tested blueprint for women’s political empowerment, a policy priority the opposition lacks. The gap in political and social opportunities for women between areas controlled by each faction is shocking. In areas that the SNA has captured from the SDF, like Afrin, Ras al-Ain, and Tel Abyad, the deterioration of women’s rights and basic personal safety is notable.
However, this dynamic has not factored into discussions on the country’s future, or determination of which factions deserve political and diplomatic support. Opposition groups that marginalize women have not faced any consequences for their actions— and the Autonomous Administration’s empowerment of women has not been discussed as a model for the rest of the country or a project that deserves support. Greater understanding of the fundamental differences on this issue, and the unique advances the Autonomous Administration has made, is essential for ensuring that women can play the role they deserve in all aspects of Syria’s future.
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Mazlum Kobanê calls for “radical solution” to the ISIS problem
In a prison in Hesekê, ISIS prisoners instigated a riot on Sunday evening and attempted to escape. SDF Commander General Mazlum Abdi Kobanê demands “radical solution” to the ISIS problem from the international community.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Tuesday, 31 Mar 2020, 13:27
The Commander General of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Mazlum Abdi Kobanê calls on the international community to find a “radical solution” for the ISIS prisoners in North and East Syria. On Sunday evening, detained members of the jihadist militia instigated a riot in a prison in Hesekê. Some managed to escape at first but were later caught. Immediately after the incident, other security forces moved in, the area around the prison was surrounded by SDF anti-terrorist units, and the anti-ISIS coalition supported the intervention by aerial surveillance. Since Monday afternoon, the situation is under control again.
About 5,000 ISIS prisoners from 50 different states are held in the complex in the Xiwêran district. Another 7,000 are held in other prisons in the region, in addition to tens of thousands of ISIS members in various camps. But the autonomous authorities and the SDF are left alone with the problem, the home countries are not meeting their responsibility for their own citizens.
SDF Commander Kobanê says that the burden of the ISIS prisoners should not rest solely on the shoulders of the autonomous administration authorities and their institutions. In a Twitter post, he wrote: Due to great efforts made by our forces and swift intervention against the insubordination of ISIS detainees inside one prison, we were able to avoid catastrophe and take control. No prisoners escaped. Our allies must find a quick radical solution to this international problem.”
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Turkish Government cut water supplies on Al-Hasaka city
Turkish Government cut water supplies
A violation of IHL who can be fatal of thousands of people.
On Saturday, Turkish Government cut the flow from a reservoir that supplies water to areas in northeastern Syria’s Hasakah province that the Kurdish-led local authorities control.
The Alouk Water Station is located near the border town of Serekaniye, which Turkey and its militant proxies took control of in October 2019 during Turkey’s so-called “Peace Spring Operation”. Since then, Turkishbacked groups have regularly cut off the water flow. This is confirmed also by a public UNICEF statement, which one claimed the move was the latest in a series of disruptions in water pumping over the past weeks.
The Allouk pumping station, which usually serves more than 460,000 people in and around Hasakah, has not been functional since 30 October 2019. Since then, KRC with other actors has been taking emergency measures to find alternative sources of water for people in the region.
Protecting water resources and infrastructure to ensure a reliable supply of water and electricity to the population is a basic need for the civil population. Water facilities are covered under a number of terms and provisions of international humanitarian law, either by treaty or by customary law.
Starvation as a method of warfare is explicitly prohibited regardless of the nature of the conflict, and the concept of objects essential for the survival of the civilian population includes drinking-water installations and supplies and irrigation works. Immunity for indispensable objects is waived only when these are used solely for the armed forces or in direct support of military action. Even then, the adversaries must refrain from any action, which could reduce the population to starvation or deprive it of essential water.
The water pipeline is still regularly cut off.
More than 460.000 people are without water supply.
The international community have to take a serious step to reduce this catastrophe.
In civil wars, which today account for most of the armed conflicts in the world, the use of water by the belligerent parties constitutes a serious threat to the population concerned. To attack water is to attack an entire way of life and makes access to water well nigh or completely impossible, thereby heightening the risks to the civilian population despite the protection it is granted under international law.
Moreover, a United Nations representative in Syria on Monday said interruption to a key water station in the country’s northeast puts at least 460,000 people at risk as efforts ramp up to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease.
The COVID-19 pandemic (or coronavirus) is unprecedented in recent history and is spreading rapidly. It is not only a public health crisis, but also a humanitarian crisis in the making. In war-torn countries, COVID-19 represents a dramatic threat to life. Health system has already been ravaged by violence, and the threat of further strain on health care from the coronavirus is an enormous risk for communities. Plans to prevent and respond to the virus must urgently move forward before it gains a foothold in countries in conflict. Denying hundreds of thousands of people access to water is denying them a basic source of protection against Covid19, given that handwashing is a fundamental means in shielding oneself of the virus.
Meanwhile, the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) replying to a calling by UN Secretary-General, declared a ceasefire in all the area.
The KRC urges all parties to the conflict to declare a ceasefire and to respect civilian life by taking every possible measure to protect and respect civilians and civilian infrastructure.
International Humanitarian Law aims at ensuring that the basic needs of civilians are met, even in times of conflict. In northeast Syria, the infrastructure (e.g. water stations and dams) for water supply systems happen to be located near the frontlines and it is critical that they are protected.
The Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols protect sick, wounded and shipwrecked persons not taking part in hostilities, prisoners of war and other detainees, civilians and civilian objects. Military operations must be conducted in accordance with IHL, in particular the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution. Attacking, or rendering useless, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as water and sanitation facilities, is prohibited.
KRC ask the Turkish Government to allow providing water to areas deprived of it immediately and urgently and to guarantee that no further water interruption is to happen under any pretext.
Owing to these circumstances and due to the critical and dramatic situation due to COVID-19 pandemic, we strongly recommend and ask the UN Security Council an immediate reopening of Yaroubiyeh border.
According to the UN, the border crossing in the past enabled support to an estimated 1.4 million people in northeast Syria.
KRC took it as our humanitarian mandatory to serve all people no matter of their background, nationality, race, religion, gender. However, the International Community have to be aware and to support these activities. We will always continue our work accepting the international humanitarian principles, protecting the ideas of international laws and principles.
Fight against pandemic in the besieged Shehba region
The North Syrian region of Shehba is under a siege. The supply of hygiene materials and medicines is difficult. Under these conditions, the population is trying to fight the pandemic.
ANF – ROJ DENİZ/HÎVDA HEBÛN
SHEHBA
Friday, 20 Mar 2020, 14:37
In the desert region of Shehba live 90,000 original inhabitants and about 140,000 displaced people from Afrin. It borders on the areas occupied by Turkey and its militias and is repeatedly the target of artillery fire. The region is also acutely affected by the risk of COVID-19 pandemic. The autonomous administration, the local government and the health committee of Shehba are doing everything in their power to prevent the spread of the pandemic. After the closure of schools and public facilities, all areas are being disinfected.
Even though the Syrian regime has not yet issued a statement on the pandemic, reports of COVID-19 cases in Latakia, Aleppo and Damascus are putting people in fear. The internally displaced persons from Afrin, who live in difficult conditions in the region, are particularly threatened. The co-mayor of the Shehba Municipality, Melek Huseyin, reports that no cases have yet been detected in the region; health committees, communes and councils are active and taking precautions against the virus. Information events are being organised and people are warned through television programmes, brochures and leaflets.
The co-mayor reports on a cleaning campaign in three phases;
The first phase is the cleaning of outside areas and disinfection of all facilities, schools, shops and restaurants.
The second phase will involve the disinfection of all houses, streets, rubbish dumps, the sewage system and mosques.
In the third phase, all streets will be steamed with disinfectant.
The work is to be carried out every 15 days for the next six months.
The co-mayor concludes with the warning: “As you know, Shehba has been a war zone. For this reason, most of the houses have been destroyed, which is not good for health.”
Wide-spread fear and popular discontent prevail NE Syria as SDF release more than 80 ISIS members
21/03/2020
Less than a minute
Reliable sources have informed Syrian Observatory that Syria Democratic Forces and “Autonomous Administration in northern and north-eastern Syria” released more than 80 ISIS members. Those members had been arrested by SDF during the war against ISIS. According to SOHR sources, all released persons are Syrians and descended from Al-Raqqah, Al-Hasakah and Deir Ezzor.
It is noteworthy that some of the released members have served their sentence and some others have not. This action triggered Wide-spread popular discontent for fear that these released members could return to fight in the ranks of ISIS, especially with ISIS members spreading widely in SDF-held areas.
SOHR sources reported early this year that the “Autonomous Administration in northern and north-eastern Syria” and Syria Democratic Forces released ten persons in Al-Hasakah city, after mediation by tribal elders and Sheikhs in the area. The ten persons were arrested earlier on charge of dealing with ISIS.
This action comes few days after the release of at least 39 persons from Deir Ezzor, Al-Haskah and Al-Raqqah, by SDF after mediation by tribal elders and dignitaries. They were arrested for the same accusation.
The release of those persons is a part of the outcomes of a meeting held in early May 2018, between “Syria Democratic Council” and tribe dignitaries.
YPJ: With Newroz’s flame, we will defeat occupation
The General Command of the Women Protection Units YPJ congratulated on March 21, and said, with the flame of Newroz, we will defeat the occupation, pledged to raising the pace of the struggle in the spirit of Newroz.
WOMAN21 Mar 2020, Sat – 14:102020-03-21T14:10:00 NEWS DESK
The General Command of the Women’s Protection Units issued a written statement in which they congratulated Newroz, who falls today, March 21.
The text of the statement states:
We receive Newroz 2020, which has become a symbol of the spring of peoples with a spirit of Resisting Dignity, and we bless Newroz on the martyrs of the revolution, the leader Ocalan, the resisting people, and the peoples of the Middle East and the world.
For thousands of years, the Kurdish people have resisted against the suppression of the occupier, a resistance known through Kawa Hsinkar epic, which the Kurdish, Assyrian, Persian, Turkmen, and Yezidi people have introduced to the new day, celebrating their victory over the oppressors, and in this sense Newroz is not just a celebration, it is a reminder of victory on Dahkan.
As YPJ, we say that the commemoration of Newroz means a renewal of our promise to take revenge, as we have offered thousands of martyrs for the sake of freedom and in the Rojava Revolution, so for this day, raising the pace of the struggle for freedom and existence is for us the greatest promise we can make to Newroz fighters.
Today, more than ever, we must prove our existence in a spirit of resistance to Newroz, in order to protect our identity and our homeland.
In order to defeat Dahkan of the times, everyone must protect themselves, their identity, their existence, their dignity and their homeland by the thought of the leader Ocalan. The Kurdish people have suffered from injustice, from Halabja to the Qamishlo uprising, from the Zilan Valley to the Mahabad and Afrin, and more recently in Ras al-Ain and Tel- Abyed.
The tyrants are still seeking to eliminate the presence of the Kurdish people and the peoples of the region, and therefore heroes and heroines such as Arian Mercan, Ilan, Avista, and more recently Ronahi and Berxwedan sacrificed their lives to revive these peoples, and standing against the massacres and conspiracies committed against them, and this is evidence that thousands of Kawa Today, they are fighting a struggle against Dahkan of the times.
Dignity battles continue to be led by YPJ fighters
This year we celebrate Newroz with the spirit of Ronahi, Zain, Amara, Zylan, Delovan, Bimal, Hefrin and Mother Aqidah, and we are certain that with the organization of women and the struggle, Newroz 2020 will become Newroz’s revenge and historical victory.
We, YPJ, pledge to escalate our struggle with the spirit of Newroz, and we hope that all our days will be like Newroz and that our people will be victorious, and we will bless Newroz once again on our people, and on all free women”.
(T/S) ANHA
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PYD: Solution in Syria through expel Turkish occupation from occupied areas
The General Council of PYD indicated that the resistance shown by the people of Afrin demonstrated that the truth of defending the revolution lies in adhering to democracy and dignity, noting that there is no real stability and no solution that serves Syria and its people except through the exit of Turkey and those with it from its areas of occupation in the foreground is Afrin.
POLITICS17 Mar 2020, Tue – 13:042020-03-17T13:04:00 NEWS DESK
The General Council of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) issued today a statement of public opinion, on the occasion of the passage of two years since the occupation of Afrin, by the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries.
The text of the statement read:
“These days, the second anniversary of the occupation of Afrin by the Turkish fascism and its tools, which caused the displacement of our people from its cities and villages, and the practice of the most heinous crimes and abuse and demographic change, bypassing all of the agreed rights and norms. In light of the clear deviation of the course of the revolution in Syria and the overlapping of agendas regional and dependency, as well as the emergence of extremist organizations, the revolution has been emptied of its content, while our regions in northern and eastern Syria have maintained a state of stability and contributed to preserving the foundations on which to build change in Syria through the project of Democratic Autonomous Administration DAA and the philosophy of self-defense project and the brotherhood of peoples, where these factors have contributed to the transformation of our regions to prevent the yard danger to Syria and its future as compared to other regions, which met the wrath of some of the parties.
The success of the experience of AA as well as the resistance that took place against the projects of creating chaos, destruction and rivalry in our regions made many forces rally to attack these areas, especially the Turkish state headed by a Syrian spear that is groups with weak Syrian affiliation and with deep loyalty to Turkey, as the failure of these plans on the hands of the people of northern and eastern Syria components pushed Turkey into direct intervention, after its plans went bankrupt through the paid forces and, unfortunately, the Syrian ones.
Afrin was one of the regions that enjoyed free will and developed a democratic project that was distinguished by the pioneering and leadership role of women, and Afrin has become a real attraction for Syrian civilians fleeing the Syrian war zones (more than 450 thousand displaced Syrians were in Afrin before the Turkish attacks). Where Turkey began invading Afrin on 20 January 2018 in order to undermine the state of stability in it and a public attempt to thwart the democratic experience in northern and eastern Syria.
The resistance that our people demonstrated in Afrin came against the expectations, as it was proven that the truth of defending the revolution lies in adhering to democracy and dignity as it appeared in Afrin and before it in Kobani in 2014, these historical resistance strengthened the Kurdish spirit and reinforced true cohesion in Afrin between the four parts of Kurdistan not to mention the volume of echo that the world circulated about the resistance of the times and its continuity for 58 days in the face of a country the size of Turkey that used various types of weapons against a small geographical spot.
Two years after the occupation of Afrin by Turkey and its mercenaries, we confirm the General Council of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) condemning the silence of the world and ignoring what Turkey is doing today in Afrin and the whole of the occupied areas in Syria, we confirm that there is no real stability and no solution that serves Syria and its people except through the exit of Turkey and those with it from the areas of its occupation, especially Afrin. We also appeal to all of our people and all democratic components and forces keen on their moral and patriotic duty to work together to close ranks to confront the Turkish threat and occupation in Syria and the necessity of getting them out.
In conclusion, we extend our sincere appreciation and greetings to our steadfast people in al-Shahba camps and confirm that we continue to struggle with them and the resistance until the liberation of Afrin and the return of its people to it and we recall the heroic resistance of the YPG and YPJ and their great sacrifices, where we all draw from the spirit of the resistance of the age in Afrin our strength and our insistence on the struggle and we affirm that the continuation of the second stage of the resistance until now, and our people in al Shahba cling to the residents of Afrin and clinging to all difficulties for one option is to return to Afrin with their dignity, indicating that the continuous resistance is the path towards victory for Afrin and its people. A great retreat without victory.
We also salute the forces of the liberation of Afrin and their sacrifices and their continued heroic resistance in their struggle on the path of the martyrs of Afrin and its resistance fighters, and we affirm that the resistance continues and we will escalate it and achieve victory in the spirit of the martyrs Avista, Karkar, Barin and all their companions who sacrificed of themselves for the sake of Afrin and its people. “
The statement concluded with slogans, “A salute to the spirit of the martyrs of Afrin and the martyrs of freedom, a tribute to our wounded heroes.
Greetings to our resisting people in Afrin and al-Shahba. “…
(T/S) ANHA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Syria is geopolitical prize, Kurds seek new Middle East
The American expert Dr. Thoreau Redcrow has said that Syria is a global chess board. It is not a problem that must be solved from the point of view of the interventionists, but a geopolitical prize to be won. Stressing that Ocalan’s ideas provide a road map “The Kurds will be the first domino to seek a new Middle East for all,” he said.
As the Syrian crisis enters its tenth year the interventionist parties want to prolong the life of this crisis to make the most of it and divide Syria. In this context our agency interviewed the expert Dr. Thoreau Redcrow, an American specialist in international conflicts and Kurdish affairs. The text of the dialogue reads.
1. As the Syrian crisis enters its tenth year. What are the dimensions of the international conflict in it?
Unfortunately for the people of Syria, their country has become a global chessboard where many nations have been pushing their own geopolitical interests through the use of proxy forces. Since the US and Russia/Iran don’t want to fight an open conflict with each other in their own nations, they use Syria as an arena to test each other’s will and commitment. Moreover, Turkey wishes to expand their neo-Ottoman project and is hoping to annex northern Syria for themselves or form some break away territory like Northern Cyprus which they can control. Meanwhile, the Autonomous Administration is attempting to establish their own form of local self-governance built on a multi-ethnic and gender equal vision, that is unique to the wider region.
2. All regional and international parties involved in Syria take the fight against terrorism as an excuse, but what are their real goals?
The term “terrorist” is often times not helpful, as it can be a synonym for “armed opponent”. However, if any group meets the definition as commonly understood then ISIS and al-Qaeda (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham aka HTS) would, and both of them have been armed and assisted by the Turkish Government in Syria. Most groups in Syria at present could say they are battling terrorism by fighting either of these two groups, for instance the SDF/YPG/YPJ and the US Military both have been fighting ISIS, while the Syrian Government and Russia are battling al-Qaeda (HTS) in Idlib. Meanwhile, the one nation that sets up outposts in al-Qaeda territory and doesn’t fight them is Turkey, as HTS are essentially their ground forces in Idlib.
3. Throughout history there has been a Turkish-Iranian war; what is the impact of the Turkish-Iranian conflict on Syria and the future of the region?
I wouldn’t say there’s been a war between the two, in fact I think Iran is the one country in the region which Turkey legitimately fears and doesn’t believe they could defeat in a direct conflict. In the same way that the US and Russia can’t openly fight one another since both possess nuclear weapons, Turkey and Iran both realize that fighting one another directly would badly damage both nations, so they battle in a third party territory through proxy forces (Iran has Hezbollah and Shia militias, while Turkey has various jihadist groups like al-Qaeda / HTS and the defeated remnants of ISIS which they’ve formed into their so called “Syrian National Army”).
4. Erdogan is seeking to establish a Sunni state in the region led by him and that includes parts of Syria that include Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, and Hasaka; why does the international community not cut the road ahead, or is there an international trend to redraw the region again?
The Turkish Army looted the industrial base of Aleppo very early on the conflict, and once they realized that Assad’s Government wouldn’t be overthrown, their Plan B was simply to take as much territory as possible to either form a puppet state like Northern Cyprus, or directly annex and steal the territory from Syria as they already did historically with Hatay. Whether they are allowed to do this will depend if the US supports such land theft, and if Russia is willing to assist the Syrian Government in driving Turkey out from the lands they now illegally occupy. I should add, that Turkey also wanted to keep “Rojava” or the Autonomous Administration early on from spanning the entire border of Turkey and reaching the sea potentially, which is what motivated their invasion and occupation of Afrin and backing of jihadi groups in Idlib.
5. Why has the Syrian crisis not been solved yet? What is the impact of the international conflict on the shape of the Middle East in general?
Syria is not a problem to be solved, but a geopolitical prize to be won. Early on the US was hoping to prevent Russia from having their only Naval Base on the Mediterranean Sea in Tartus if Assad was overthrown, but that plan was unsuccessful. Now, likewise, the Syrian Government is trying to prevent the U.S. from having any airstrips or bases in Eastern Syria within Kurdish areas, which the U.S. is hoping to use to counter Iranian regional influence and the so called “Shia highway” from Beirut to Tehran. This is also taking place in the wider picture of a regional-wide battle for influence across the Middle East between 3 factions, (faction 1) Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen vs (faction 2) Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan vs (faction 3) Turkey, Qatar, and Azerbaijan. With the Autonomous Administration and SDF in Syria being neutral with faction 1, gaining support with faction 2, and at war with faction 3. Meanwhile Russia backs faction 1, the US backs faction 2, and both of them at times try to win the favor of faction 3.
6. Kurdish, for how long will the Turkish Kurdish conflict last? What are the main objectives of Turkey to launch attacks on the Kurdish-majority regions of northern and eastern Syria?
The Kurdish conflict will last as long as the 40+ million Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran do not have equal rights to exist as Kurds, and either autonomy or independence in all of the areas in which they live. Turkey’s motivations are first that they have a very deep fear about the 20+ million Kurds within Turkey rising up in mass against their continued occupation and brutality. This fear spills over into Syria, as they fear Kurds in Turkey will take inspiration from their example, and want to establish local governance in a similar manner.
7. Turkey committed grave violations against the Kurds in Syria during its attacks in Afrin, Ras al-Ain and Tel Abyad and caused the displacement of the Kurds from their lands. Why is it not held accountable internationally despite all the documents and evidence?
Turkey is not held accountable because they are in NATO, which means they can carry out war crimes and be shielded from blame. American and Western media also does not cover Turkey’s war crimes in the same way they would if Assad’s Government was carrying them out, because it doesn’t fit with the geopolitical objectives of the US military. The US, UK, and Germany know that if Turkey was held accountable for their war crimes, then the US who sells them the jets, the UK who sells them the missiles, and Germany who sells them the tanks would also be guilty.
8. What is the role of world powers in fueling the Turkish Kurdish conflict? And why does the United Nations and the United States of America not play their role in resolving the Kurdish issue?
Turkey’s constant need for weapons to use in their fight to oppress their Kurdish population is good for business, and makes NATO nations a lot of money. So that’s the first obstacle. The US is also worried that if they forced Turkey to stop oppressing their Kurdish population, the Turkish Government would realign themselves with Russia instead of NATO, which would ruin NATO’s plan of keeping Russia locked into the Black Sea via the Bosporus. As for the United Nations, they are not that interested in solving the Kurdish issue, as then they would also be forced to solve the Tamil, Balochi, Western Sahara, West Papuan, Ambazonia, Basque, Hazara etc issue. Many nations around the world deny the self-determination of new nations because they know it might also apply to occupied groups within their own. That is a box they are afraid to open.
9. Why does the international community not respond to Ocalan’s proposals to solve the Kurdish issue politically away from militarization? Does this have anything to do with the Greater Middle East project?
Ocalan’s ideas are a threat to every nation in the Middle East because they provide an alternative democratic roadmap of how the multi-ethnic mosaic of the region could govern themselves locally, which threatens all of the authoritarian regimes and royal families who use their nations as their personal bank accounts. History shows us that power never gives away their stranglehold easily, they must be made to with force. Luckily the Kurdistan liberation movement has both ideas and arms.
10. How does solving the Kurdish issue affect the problems of the Middle East?
Solving the Kurdish issue would have huge spill over effects for the entire Middle East, as many of the Kurdish groups would like to display an alternative model of democratic governance and defend ideas like religious freedom, and gender equality, which are lacking in much of the region. It’s seen as a Kurdish issue, but it’s really a Middle East issue, as the model that the Kurds want would also appeal to many of the ethnicities in the Middle East as it’s based around local people controlling their own destiny and promoting a sustainable and communal way of life. The Kurds would be the first falling domino to a new Middle East for everyone.
Report: Kurdish population in Afrin dropped to 18 percent
Within two years of Turkish occupation, the Kurdish population in Afrin has dropped to 18 percent. The human rights organization of Afrin has presented a report on ethnic cleansing and other violations of rights.
ANF
SHEHBA
Tuesday, 17 Mar 2020, 20:20
In March 2018 Afrin was occupied by the Turkish state. The human rights organization of Afrin has presented a report on the violations of rights during the past two years. The report was publicly read out by Heyhan Ali in the Serdem camp in Shehba.
According to the report, more than 300,000 people from Afrin were displaced by the Turkish invasion to the neighbouring canton of Shehba and other places in Syria. The Kurdish population in Afrin has dropped to 18 percent. In the course of the demographic change, jihadists from Idlib and other areas were settled with their families in Afrin.
Turkification policy
Heyhan Ali explained that the “Turkification policy” is being further advanced in Afrin. Places and streets have been given Turkish names. For example, the Kawa crossroads, whose name refers to the Kawa the Blacksmith from the Newroz myth, has been renamed Olive Branch Crossroads. “Olive branch” was the name Turkey had given to its invasion two years ago, which was contrary to international law. Today, Turkish language classes are given in schools in Afrin. According to the report, the new school uniforms represent “the Turkish culture”. Pictures of Turkish President Erdogan hang in many places. Turkish identity cards are being forced upon the people in Afrin.
6,200 people kidnapped
In Afrin, according to the human rights organisation, 6,200 people have been forcibly abducted. The fate of 3,400 abduction victims is unknown.
Attacks against women
Women are particularly affected by the occupation regime in Afrin. The human rights organisation has documented 61 cases of attacks against women. The suicide rate of women has also increased since the occupation. Three women have committed suicide after being attacked by jihadists.
553 civilians killed
According to the report, 553 civilians have been killed by direct attacks of the Turkish state and its jihadist proxies. 55 of the victims were tortured to death.
200,000 olive trees cut down
The report states that not only the civilian population and their property are affected by the systematic attacks, but also nature and historical and sacred sites. Heyhan Ali stated that over 200,000 olive trees have been cut down and 11,000 hectares of cultivated land burned: “The green nature of Afrin has become a desert. The tree trunks were brought to Turkey for recycling.
75 historical sites plundered
75 historical sites have been looted by the occupying forces, according to the report. Dozens of mosaics were removed. In addition, 15 graves, which were sacred to various religious communities, were destroyed.
Before the eyes of the world public
Heyhan Ali concluded by pointing out that these crimes take place in front of the eyes of the world public. The human rights organisation called on the UN to fulfil its responsibility and to remove the Turkish state with its jihadist proxies from Syria.
ISIS standards in Girê Spî: Women forced to veil themselves
In Girê Spî in northern Syria, standards similar to those once established under the rule of the ISIS in Raqqa are gradually being introduced under Turkish occupation. Women are no longer allowed to leave the house without full body cover.
ANF
GIRÊ SPÎ
Friday, 20 Mar 2020, 15:15
In the city of Girê Spî (Tal Abyad) in northern Syria, which has been occupied since October 2019 by Turkey and its jihadist allies with the de facto approval of the US, Russia and the European Union, standards similar to those once established under the rule of the ISIS in Raqqa are gradually being introduced. In many places, women are now no longer allowed to leave the house without full body cover and male company. In neighbouring settlement areas such as the town of Siluk and the village of Hemam al-Turkmen, the veil obligation is also enforced.
Girê Spî and the surrounding areas are largely controlled by the Turkish-backed jihadist militia Ahrar al-Sharqiya – the mercenary group that executed Kurdish politician and Secretary General of the Future Party of Syria (Hizbul Suri Mustakbel), Hevrîn Xelef (Havrin Khalaf), and her driver.
New living space for ISIS mentality
The houses of the Kurds expelled from Girê Spî are now occupied by the occupation troops and members of jihadists who had been brought to the city from other regions of the Turkish occupation zone in northern Syria. In the meantime, every Kurdish business has been expropriated without exception. The situation is no different for Syrian internally displaced persons. Their businesses have now also been confiscated.
The situation for young people is also critical. The so-called “military police” under the command of the Turkish army wants to increase their ranks and is luring with money. Because of the lack of prospects under the occupation, human rights organisations fear that young men will be recruited by the militias because they see no other choice for their survival.
People can no longer afford basic food
Due to the looting and destruction of the infrastructure during the Turkish invasion, there are still bottlenecks in the supply of basic goods such as water, bread and food in Girê Spî. Prices have risen dramatically. Many people can already no longer afford basic foodstuffs. In addition, kidnappings by the occupying forces to extort ransom money are increasing. This method represents a lucrative source of income.
TURKISH PROVISION OF MATERIAL SUPPORT TO AL-QAEDA-LINKED GROUPS IN IDLIB:
[The Rojava Information Center (RIC) is an independent media
organization based in North and East Syria. The RIC is made up
of local staff as well as volunteers from many countries across
Europe and North America. Some of us have experience in journalism
and media activism and came here to share our skills,
and others joined bringing other skills and experiences to the
team. There is a lack of clear and objective reporting on Rojava,
and journalists are often unable to make contact with ordinary
civilians and people on the ground. We set up the RIC to fill this
gap, aiming to provide journalists, researchers and the general
public with accurate, well-sourced, transparent information.
We work in partnership with civil and political institutions, journalists
and media activists across the region to connect them
with the people and information they need.
RIC has assisted reporters and researchers from all leading international
newspapers, websites and news sources with their
work, including: BBC, CNN, ITV, NBC, Fox News, ABC and Al Jazeera;
New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal,
LA Times; Die Welt, Die Zeit, El Pais, El Monde, Corriere Della
Sera: TFI, France 24, ZDF, ARD, DW, ARTE; Associated Press, AFP,
DPA, EFE, ANSA; Cambridge, Yale and Madrid Universities; Amnesty,
Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations: and many
other national and international news sources.]
This dossier will briefly examine the evolving relationship between Turkey and
al-Qaeda offshoots and proxies in Idlib, in particular HTS, before compiling visual
evidence of the proliferation of armored vehicles and heavy weaponry among
these groups in Idlib province.
CONTENTS
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 GROUPS PRESENT IN IDLIB
1.1.1 Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)
1.1.2 Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP)
1.1.3 Hurras ad-Din (HaD)
1.1.4. National Front for Liberation (NLF) and Syrian National Army (SNA)
1.2 HTS AND OTHER GROUPS – LINKS TO AL-QAEDA
1.3 HTS AND OTHER GROUPS – LINKS TO ISIS
1.4 TURKISH SUPPORT FOR HTS AND OTHER AL-QAEDA-LINKED GROUPS IN IDLIB
1.4.1 The situation in Idlib: creeping Turkish control and influence
1.4.2 Joint Turkish-HTS operations room
1.4.3 Turkish proliferation of armor and heavy weapons among
al-Qaeda-linked groups
1.4.4 The MANPADS question
2 VISUAL EVIDENCE OF TURKISH MATERIAL SUPPORT
FOR HTS AND OTHER AL-QAEDA-LINKED GROUPS
3 CONCLUSION: POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
3.1 Taking up the offer of support from North and East Syria
3.2 Supporting the political process towards a federal solution in Syria
3.3 Bringing an end to Turkish support for al-Qaeda-linked militias
4 APPENDIX
4
1 INTRODUCTION
During the Syrian Arab Army’s latest advance in north-western Syria, ongoing
since 19 December 2019 and entailing the capture of over 2000km² of land to
the south and east of Idlib city, international condemnation has focused on the
immense humanitarian cost of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Russian bombing
campaign and the displacement of up to a million civilian IDPs.
The context of the bloody war being waged by the SAA notwithstanding, it is important
that Western policy-makers maintain a clear eye when scrutinizing the
opposition in Idlib and in particular Turkey’s increased involvement in co-ordinating,
arming, fighting alongside and proliferating man-portable anti-aircraft defence
systems (MANPADS) throughout territory controlled by al-Qaeda offshoot
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), with potentially disastrous consequences for American
and global security.
Turkey variously seeks to justify its actions in Idlib as support for the legitimate
Syrian opposition; as humanitarian intervention; and even as an act of self-defence
against the Kurdish forces which have no presence whatsoever in Idlib governate.
The waters are further muddied by Russian disinformation efforts which,
in effectively insisting that everyone in Idlib is a legitimate target, ironically make
it more difficult for objective commentators to make their voices heard on the
true situation in the province.
The reality is that no meaningful secular opposition remains in Idlib, now controlled
by al-Qaeda offshoots of varying hue, and moreover that Turkey has little
interest in either defending the civilian population of Idlib, or the secular values
of elements of the original Syrian revolution.
Rather, Turkey is using the conflict in Idlib to advance its own interests, extending
its geographical and military sphere of influence deep into Syrian territory
through increasingly open and reckless collaboration with HTS – despite the fact
that HTS are listed by the Turkish government themselves as a terror organisation.
Thus we see jihadist militants sporting ISIS’ Seal of Muhammad logo riding
in US-made armored vehicles – not seized in war, but handed to them by the US’
NATO partner, Turkey.
5
Turkey’s current approach offers the worst of both worlds. While unlikely to make
any significant impact on the Russian advance and inevitable recapture of Idlib,
the provision of high-end military equipment to HTS will have devastating security
consequences for the US and its partners across the world. As such, we will
close with brief policy recommendations on how the situation in Idlib may be
resolved to ensure a safe and secure existence for civilians and IDPs, the removal
of the international security threat posed by HTS and the neutralization of Turkish
moves to arm and support this listed terror group, and a process of accountability
for the Syrian Government and its backers.
Fighters sporting ISIS insignia ride in an armored vehicle provided to them by NATO partner Turkey
INTRODUCTION
6
There are three main groupings of armed factions present
in Idlib, namely:
1. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and associates, most notably the
Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), professedly independent
though still understood to maintain ties with al-Qaeda;
2. Hurras ad-Din and associates, al-Qaeda’s direct proxy
in Syria which itself works in coordination with HTS; and
3. Factions grouped under the National Front for Liberation
(NFL), long under heavy Turkish influence and
incorporated into the Turkish-controlled Syrian National
Army as of October 20191.
We will examine each of these groupings in turn, giving a
brief summary of their history and relationship to one another,
before moving on to discuss their relationship with
al-Qaeda, ISIS and Turkey.
1.1 GROUPS PRESENT IN IDLIB
1 https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/10/syrian-opposition-merger-into-national-
army-battle-sdf.html
INTRODUCTION
7
1.1.1 HAYAT TAHRIR AL-SHAM (HTS)
The dominant faction in Idlib is HTS, a Sunni Islamist group which is dominated
by the former Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda’s original proxy force in Syria following
their split from ISIS) and hardline elements from Ahrar-al-Sham2. HTS can field
a reported 15,000 to 30,000 fighters, a majority of whom are former al-Nusra
fighters3.
Al-Nusra itself operated as the official Syrian branch of al-Qaeda from the outset
and committed acts of torture, child abduction, and summary execution – including
stoning to death women accused of committing adultery – as part of ‘a
strict interpretation of Sharia law… imposing punishments amounting to torture.’4
Al-Nusra also executed at least 20 members of the Druze minority who opposed
a campaign of forced expropriation of their houses and destruction of their religious
shrines5.
During the latest operation, HTS fighters have filmed themselves with decapitated heads of rival combatants,
and filmed themselves torturing captives
2 https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/hay%E2%80%99-tahrir-al-sham
3 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-defeat-al-quaeda-syria-growglobal-
attention-islamist-terrorists-jihadis-un-us-west-iraq-raqqa-a7932881.html
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Nusra_Front#cite_note-72
5 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-druze/calls-for-aid-to-syrias-druze-afteral-
qaeda-kills-20-idUSKBN0OR0NV20150611?irpc=932
GROUPS PRESENT IN IDLIB INTRODUCTION
8
As of June 2013, al-Nusra Front had claimed responsibility for 57 of the 70 suicide
attacks in Syria during the conflict, along with mass executions and other atrocities6.
HTS itself claimed a 2017 twin bombing in Damascus that killed at least 40
people, the majority of them Iraqi Shia pilgrims7.
HTS describes itself as a military force, but retains tight control on civil society
through its ‘Salvation Government’ and system of sharia courts, often staffed by
individuals with no formal legal training or even training in sharia law. Much like
ISIS, HTS conducts morality patrols, arresting young women for failing to follow
religious dress codes; young men for shaving or listening to music; and civilian
activists for any activity in opposition to HTS’ de facto control of Idlib. HTS’s religious
police, known as ‘Sawid Al Khayr’, enforce dress codes and the segregation
of males and females on buses and in the streets8.
HTS conduct public executions for witchcraft and heresy – as well as of ISIS members9.
Human Rights Watch has documented consistent arbitrary detention and
torture of civil society activists who sought to document HTS abuses or protest
their rule, as well as assassinations and the restriction of humanitarian aid to
civilians living under its rule10. Local human rights organisations have documented
184 such cases in the space of three months11, while HTS has also conducted
widespread confiscations of Christian property12.
The US and Turkey designated the group a foreign terrorist organization affiliated
with al-Qaeda in 2018, at which time it was also sanctioned by the UN13.
INTRODUCTION GROUPS PRESENT IN IDLIB HTS
6 http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2013/06/suicide_bombers_kill_14_in_dam.php
7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-39250040
8 https://syria.chathamhouse.org/research/women-are-at-the-forefront-of-challenging-extremism-
in-idlib
9 http://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=149003
10https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/01/28/syria-arrests-torture-armed-group
11 https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/01/28/syria-arrests-torture-armed-group
12 https://stj-sy.org/en/syria-at-least-750-christian-houses-illegally-seized-in-jisr-al-shughuridlib/
13 https://www.csis.org/programs/transnational-threats-project/terrorism-backgrounders/
hayat-tahrir-al-sham-hts
9
TIP GROUPS PRESENT IN IDLIB INTRODUCTION
1.1.2 TURKESTAN ISLAMIC PARTY (TIP)
In a still from a recent Turkestan Islamic Party propaganda video from Idlib, children in military uniform receive
ideological indoctrination on the role of the mujahidin [Islamic warriors]
The TIP is an Uyghur Salafist-jihadist group which has spent decades fighting for
an independent Sunni state in Xinjiang, western China. It has killed hundreds in
its bombing campaigns and, since 2002, been sanctioned by the UN due to its ties
to al-Qaeda14/15.
Since 2015, the organization has sent fighters to Syria to participate in the conflict
via front organizations based in Turkey, and currently fields around 5,000 fighters
in Idlib16. They operated in close coordination with Jabhat al-Nusra, and continue
to do so with HTS. As well as killing Christians and desecrating their churches,
the TIP is notable for its extensive – and often openly advertised – deployment of
child soldiers17.
Chechen Caucasus and Uzbek al-Qaeda proxy organisations are similarly present
in Idlib, operating in coordination with HTS.
14 https://apnews.com/79d6a427b26f4eeab226571956dd256e/AP-Exclusive:-Uighurs-fightingin-
Syria-take-aim-at-China
15 https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/sanctions/1267/aq_sanctions_list/summaries/entity/
eastern-turkistan-islamic-movement
16 https://web.archive.org/web/20150618235954/http://www.jamestown.org/regions/middleeast/
single/?tx_ttnews
17 https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/03/turkistan-islamic-party-continues-
to-train-children-in-syria.php
10
INTRODUCTION GROUPS PRESENT IN IDLIB
1.1.3 HURRAS AD-DIN (HAD)
HaD are the official al-Qaeda proxy group in Idlib and Syria, breaking away from
HTS in 201818. As the group maintaining the most overt ties with al-Qaeda, they
have faced targeted US airstrikes against their senior leadership, and former ISIS
emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was being sheltered by HaD elements when he was
assassinated by the United States in 201919.
They field several thousand fighters and maintain military co-ordination with
HTS, despite some disagreements (see below).
1.1.4 NATIONAL FRONT FOR LIBERATION (NLF)
& SYRIAN NATIONAL ARMY (SNA)
There are also militant groups in Idlib under the direct command, control and
influence of the Turkish government. The National Front for Liberation (NFL) incorporates
a score or so of factions of varying size, with dominant forces including
the Sham Legion, Ahrar al-Sham, Suqqour al-Sham, Jaysh al-Ahrar and Nour
ad-Din al-Zenki Movement remnants.
In October 2019, immediately prior to its invasion of North and East Syria, Turkey
incorporated the NFL and the Syrian National Army (SNA) – another Turkish-
armed, controlled and funded umbrella organisation which has its base of
operations in Turkish-occupied regions of Syria including Afrin, Bab, Jarabalus and
now Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad – into one command structure20. SNA elements
have entered Idlib to participate in the current conflict, while NFL elements have
also passed via Turkish soil to participate in Turkish offensives against the SDF
and territories controlled by the Autonomous Administration of North and East
Syria.
Directly Turkish-controlled groups in north-west Syria are not ideologically homogenous,
ranging from Salafist jihadists through to opportunists seeking to
profit from the war, though they are united in their execrable human rights records.
18 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-48353751
19 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/us/politics/baghdadi-isis-leader-trump.html
20 https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/10/syrian-opposition-merger-into-national-
army-battle-sdf.html
11
The militias Turkey has united under its control have been accused of war crimes
by the UN and Amnesty International, including raping women, carrying out mass
killings against Kurdish civilians, torturing, electrocuting, executing and parading
caged civilians in the streets as a human shield21. Turkish-backed militias often
worked alongside the al-Nusra Front, and together “applied a strict interpretation
of Shari’a and imposed punishments amounting to torture or other ill-treatment
for perceived infractions,” as well as torturing and disappearing lawyers and civil
society activists22.
Turkey also used SNA and to a lesser extent NLF forces as its proxies during its
2018 and 2019 invasions of Afrin, Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad, killing hundreds and
displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians23/24. Those who survived have faced
summary rule by Turkish-backed militias imposing sharia law, kidnapping, torturing
and executing civilians, and committing human rights violations possibly
amounting to war crimes, along with an ongoing policy of forcible demographic
change in regions formerly populated by Kurds, Yazidis and Christian minorities25/
26.
Per a 2020 UN report, Turkish-backed groups have committed war crimes across
areas under their control, constituting “myriad violations of human rights and
international humanitarian law by SNA fighters, using language comparing their
“enemies” to “infidels”, “atheists” & “pigs” when referring to civilians, detainees &
property…“, the displacement of the entire Yazidi population in Sere Kaniye and
large swathes of the Kurdish population, the expropriation and looting of schools,
businesses, bakeries, olive groves, vehicles, agricultural tools, “the war crime of
murder and repeatedly the war crime of pillaging… hostage-taking, cruel treatment
and torture… these violations may entail criminal responsibility for Turkish
commanders who knew or should have known about these crimes.”27
NLF/SNA GROUPS PRESENT IN IDLIB INTRODUCTION
21 https://rojavainformationcenter.com/storage/2019/03/TNA_report.pdf
22 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/07/syria-abductions-torture-and-summarykillings-
at-the-hands-of-armed-groups/
23 http://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=102951
24 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/world/middleeast/afrin-turkey-syria.html
25 https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/19/who-exactly-is-turkey-resettling-in-syria/
26 https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/02/inside-rojava-democratic-province-
trapped-between-turkish-forces-and-isis
27 https://twitter.com/UN_HRC/status/1234436461245673472
Rojava Information Center and Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights have
documented over 100 former ISIS
fighters and commanders now part of
Turkish-backed forces.
12
1.2 HTS AND OTHER GROUPS:
LINKS TO AL-QAEDA
The US position on HTS is clear
– yet NATO partner Turkey is
now supplying HTS with heavy
weapons
Though HTS insists it is independent from al-Qaeda, the UN, the US and Turkey
all continue to regard it as associated with the international terror organization28.
Internationally speaking, al-Qaeda’s use of proxy groups is on the increase. In
2018, it carried out a total of 316 attacks around the world, according to data
collected by The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project29. Its proxies have
killed hundreds including an attack in Mogadishu in 2017 that left 600 dead, while
as noted above HTS themselves have claimed terror attacks killing scores of civilians30.
In brief, HTS emerged as a merger dominated by Jabhat al-Nusra (including its
commander-in-chief, al-Qaeda operative Abu Mohammed al-Jolani), hardline Ahrar-
al-Sham elements and other jihadist groups in Idlib. As Jabhat al-Nusra, the
group openly declared allegiance to al-Qaeda31,while a subsequent rebranding to
Jabhat Fatah al-Sham did not change the reality that senior al-Qaeda members
are embedded throughout the group’s command structure.
INTRODUCTION LINKS TO AL-QAEDA
28 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48056433
29 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-48056433
30 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/15/truck-bomb-mogadishu-kills-people-somalia
31 https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/fr/originals/2013/04/al-qaeda-jabhat-al-nusra-merge.
html
32 https://sy.usembassy.gov/amendments-to-the-terrorist-designations-of-al-nusrah-front/
13
As such, the establishment of HTS was widely seen as a rebranding exercise, with
the US Embassy issuing a statement to the effect that “the United States is not
fooled by this al-Qaeda affiliate’s attempt to rebrand itself.”32 Prominent al-Qaeda-
linked individuals and designated terrorists joined the group following its formation.
More broadly, despite paying lip-service to reform and moderation in recent
months, HTS continues to violently crush dissent and apply a strict interpretation
of sharia law in the area under its jurisdiction (see above).
Per US think-tank Soufan, “HTS maintained links with al-Qaeda’s loyalists in northern
Syria and even allocated areas and resources for its supposed rivals… While
HTS proclaims that it is an independent entity not affiliated with al-Qaeda, the
organisation grew out of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, following a
series of strategic rebrandings. Throughout its numerous iterations, HTS has not
altered its ideology and is still widely thought to maintain links with al-Qaeda.”33
Senior al-Qaeda figures embedded in the Syrian organization’s command structure
have continued to be assassinated by the United States via strikes on Idlib34/35.
It is important to note that al-Qaeda’s ‘official’ representative in Idlib and Syria
is now HaD, and moreover that HaD and HTS have come into occasional, albeit
limited, conflict. These conflicts, however, were resolved through dialog mediated
by senior al-Qaeda figures, and the groups reconciled under the aegis of al-Qaeda36.
Practically speaking, HaD and HTS operate together on the battlefield
against the SAA (see below), and HaD are only able to operate in Idlib as a result
of HTS’ blessing, logistical support and coordination.
Recent conciliatory statements by Jolani towards the West do not change the reality
that HTS and al-Qaeda at the least share a common ideology and history, that
HTS leadership is full of known al-Qaeda elements, and that the groups engage in
strategic and military coordination in north-west Syria.
LINKS TO AL-QAEDA INTRODUCTION
33 https://www.france24.com/en/20190114-al-qaedas-shadow-still-hangs-over-syrias-idlibanalysts
34 http://www.businessinsider.com/egyptian-al-qaeda-leader-killed-by-drone-strike-in-idlibsyria-
2016-10?IR=T
35 http://aranews.net/2016/11/us-drone-strike-kills-prominent-turkish-al-qaeda-leader/
36 https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2019/02/analysis-hayat-tahrir-al-sham-and-hurras-
al-din-reach-a-new-accord.php
14
1.3 HTS AND OTHER GROUPS:
LINKS TO ISIS
Jabhat Al-Nusra and ISIS (then known as the Islamic State of Iraq) both emerged
as al-Qaeda proxy forces, in Syria and Iraq respectively. By 2013, Jolani’s al-Nusra
and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s ISIS were clashing with one another, with Jolani
swearing loyalty to al-Qaeda while Baghdadi attempted to subsume the Nusra
Front into ISIS. There are significant strategic, tactical, and to a lesser extent theological
differences between ISIS and what is now HTS. On the one hand, then,
al-Nusra and its later incarnation HTS have been involved in armed conflict with
ISIS. Open conflict between the two groups left hundreds dead in 2014, after
which their spheres of influence coalesced in separate areas of Syria37.
INTRODUCTION LINKS TO ISIS
37 https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/the-nusra-front-al-qaedas-affiliate-syria
Fighters wearing ISIS insignia are a common sight among the ranks of HTS and other groups which receive
Turkish backing
15
Until at least 2019, ISIS sleeper cells continued to operate against – and were captured
and executed by – HTS, in HTS areas of control38.
However, it must not be forgotten that both HTS and ISIS originated as al-Qaeda
proxies, that they subscribe to broadly similar Salafist ideologies, and that
they have used similarly brutal methods both in enforcing these ideologies on
populations under their control and in seeking to expand their sphere of influence39.
As such, it is unsurprising that many former ISIS members have travelled
to north-western Syria to join HTS and Turkish-controlled groups there.
The Rojava Information Center has documented the names and biographies of
over 40 former ISIS members now part of Turkish-controlled forces in north-western
Syria, while the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights has similarly recorded
the identities of over 70 former ISIS members now part of Turkish-controlled forces
in their new zone of occupation east of the Euphrates40. They include former
emirs, commanders and those responsible for coordinating jihadist fighters with
their handlers in the Turkish military intelligence services (MIT).
Turkish toleration of former ISIS elements in the ranks of factions under its direct
control is an open secret. Just as we are seeing now in Idlib, their 2018 and 2019
invasions of Kurdish regions of northern Syria featured scores of identifiable former
ISIS members making use of Turkish armor and heavy weaponry, in some instances
while openly displaying ISIS insignia. Turkish-backed groups openly filmed
themselves ‘liberating’ ISIS-linked detainees from detention facilities operated by
the SDF, and hundreds of ISIS-linked individuals were able to escape from at least
three secure facilities as a result of Turkey’s 2019 invasion east of the Euphrates41.
Idlib itself “also plays host to relocated ISIS fighters and dependents,” per a UN
report published in February 202042. The most notable instance is of course Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was able to cross into Idlib during ISIS’ demise as a territorial
entity and was being sheltered by a HaD commander at the time of his assassination
by the USA. More broadly, ISIS militants who managed to escape the final
operation to eradicate their physical caliphate – or those able to pay smugglers to
LINKS TO ISIS INTRODUCTION
38 https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/hts-executes-rival-isis-sleeper-cell-fighters-inidlib/
39 https://www.csis.org/programs/transnational-threats-project/terrorism-backgrounders/
hayat-tahrir-al-sham-hts
40 https://rojavainformationcenter.com/2019/08/database-over-40-former-isis-membersnow-
part-of-turkish-backed-forces/
41 https://rojavainformationcenter.com/2019/12/report-turkeys-war-against-civilians-1/
42 https://www.voanews.com/extremism-watch/will-recapture-syrias-idlib-affect-islamic-
state
16
flee SDF detention facilities – inevitably
head for north-western Syria, either to
Idlib or to Turkish-controlled regions.
As can be seen below, ISIS insignia are
on common display in Idlib, with an
ISIS-style Seal of Muhammed in identical
stylization and font often to be
seen proudly sported by fighters using
Turkish-supplied hardware.
Some pro-HTS commentators have
sought to downplay the significance of
this insignia, arguing it is a long-standing
Muslim symbol not specifically tied
to ISIS: but the layout and stylization
used by mujahidin [Islamic warriors] in
Idlib is invariably a carbon-copy of ISIS’ black standard. No actors in the Syrian
Civil War are unaware of its significance either locally or globally, and its omnipresence
in Idlib provides the clearest visual indication possible of the ideological
stance of those armed groups Turkey is backing, arming and funding in Idlib.
Indeed, former ISIS members are even more prominent among the supposedly
less-radical groups which Turkey directly, openly supports and controls than they
are among the ranks of HTS, their old rivals in jihad. The scores of former ISIS
members identified by RIC and SOHR among the ranks of Turkish-backed factions
are just the tip of the iceberg.
Turkey provided heavy weapons, including armor, to
extremist SNA factions like Jaysh-al-Islam during their
2019 invasion of North and East Syria
Turkish-backed fighters openly bragged in propaganda videos like the one pictured about using Turkish armor to
‘liberate’ ISIS-linked individuals from SDF detention facilities
INTRODUCTION LINKS TO ISIS
17
IDLIB TURKISH SUPPORT FOR HTS INTRODUCTION
1.4 TURKISH SUPPORT FOR HTS
AND OTHER AL-QAEDA-LINKED
GROUPS IN IDLIB
1.4.1 THE SITUATION IN IDLIB:
CREEPING TURKISH CONTROL
AND INFLUENCE
As outlined above, Turkey’s relationship with jihadist groups in Idlib ranges from
direct support, arming, funding and issuing commands through a deliberately
opaque relationship with HTS to a relatively distant engagement with Hurras-ad-
Din.
Simplest to define is the relationship between Turkey and those factions directly
under its control – that is, the NLF in Idlib, now incorporated into the SNA command
structure following their aforementioned merger in October 2019, and the
SNA in Turkish-occupied regions to the north. A cursory investigation of the command
and control structure of jihadist factions in the SNA, such as Ahrar-al-Sharqiya,
Jaysh-al-Islam and Sultan Murad, shows that responsibility flows directly up
to the TAF – and by extension their commander-in-chief, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
These factions are technically subordinate to the Syrian Interim Government, a
Turkish-sponsored body which lobbies on behalf of the SNA in Geneva and other
foreign capitals. In practice, they are trained, armed, funded and commanded by
the Turkish government. The SNA number “at least 35,000 full-time fighters, all
under the near-total control of Turkey’s Ministry of Defense and National Intelligence
Organization (MIT).” 43
43 https://www.mei.edu/blog/turkish-backed-syrian-armed-opposition-groups-unite-underone-
banner
18
In areas under nominal SNA control, they are granted limited autonomy to plunder
and extort money from the local population. But real power is retained by
Turkey, through direct control of local political bodies, top-down exploitation of
economic resources, and governance through proxies “dependent on Turkey’s
political, economic and military backing for their survival.”
On the battlefield, likewise, the SNA take their commands directly from Turkey.
A recent piece of in-depth research by Elizabeth Tsurkov, speaking to multiple
sources within the ranks of the SNA,
confirmed: “All decisions, big and small,
in the ‘National Army’ are made by the
operations room run by Turkish intelligence.”
44
While Turkey’s control of the Idlibbased
NLF is less total than its control of
the SNA, it has nonetheless been able
to establish an “influential client-proxy
relationship with the NLF by offering its
groups a rear base, having them participate
in Turkish operations in Afrin
and in the Azaz-Jarabulus corridor, and
providing them with equipment, training
and salaries.”45 The October 2019
merger constituted a further solidification
of Turkish control over the NLF,
illustrated by the participation of NLF
elements – most notably Faylaq-al-Sham
and Jaysh-al-Ahrar – in the execution
of Turkish policy objectives against
the SDF.
2018 saw clashes between NLF and
HTS, with HTS objecting to the extension
of Turkish control and influence
into its zone of control in Idlib.
INTRODUCTION TURKISH SUPPORT FOR HTS IDLIB
Less ideologically extreme than HTS, the Turkish-controlled
SNA nonetheless committed multiple atrocities
during their invasion of NE Syria, including this field
execution.
44 https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/11/27/who-are-turkeys-proxy-fighters-in-syria/
45 https://www.clingendael.org/pub/2019/strategies-of-turkish-proxy-warfare-in-northernsyria/
4-key-characteristics-of-turkish-use-of-syrian-armed-proxies/
19
HTS were the victors in that conflict, with NLF forced to sign a cease-fire agreement,
but since 2019 the Turkish-backed grouping and HTS have operated together
jointly to fight against the SAA under HTS’ aegis.
Turkey’s relationship with HTS, then, is a more complex question. As noted above,
Turkey initially listed HTS as a terror group, but over the years their relationship
has evolved into one of mutual co-dependency, with Turkey of course retaining
technical and military superiority but at the same time recognizing HTS’ territorial
dominance in Idlib. HTS is too powerful, in other words, to merely be considered
as a Turkish proxy: it has other sponsors and backers, and the jihadi organization
is able to exert a certain influence on Turkish policy in Idlib, rather than merely
following Turkish orders as in the case of the SNA. As such, Turkey’s increasing
trust in and cooperation with the Salafist-jihadist organization has alarmed observers
who fear Turkey is handing power, influence – and lethal weaponry – to
an organization it cannot expect to control.
The gradual extension of Turkey’s military operation in Idlib began with occasional
minor clashes with HTS, but as Turkey became entrenched in observation
posts so they began a tacit relationship with the dominant grouping in Idlib.
HTS guarded Turkish convoys as they entered Idlib and permitted Turkey to operate
within its zone of control. By May 2019, HTS and the NLF were coordinating
their attacks and the use of heavy weaponry, including anti-armor missiles, from
a joint operation room. HTS’ total control of Idlib means that Turkey’s extensive
operations in the region cannot take place without HTS’ express knowledge, approval
and coordination.
A Chatham House research paper summarizes this evolution well:
“Hostility between HTS and Turkey has turned into a form of peer-to-peer coordination.
This was clear when HTS allowed Turkish patrols to enter territories under
its control and protected Turkish observation points in northern Syria, despite
previously expressing disapproval at their presence. This nascent coordination
turned into wide-ranging cooperation, with HTS exclusively facilitating Turkish
logistics and military operations in the north. The group prevented any other
armed group being involved except with itself as an intermediary. Even Faylaq
al-Sham, which had been very close to Turkey, cannot liaise with the Turks without
the approval or agreement of HTS.”46
IDLIB TURKISH SUPPORT FOR HTS INTRODUCTION
46 https://syria.chathamhouse.org/research/reviewing-the-turkey-hts-relationship
20
1.4.2 JOINT TURKISH-HTS
OPERATIONS ROOM
From 2019 until the present day, Hurras-al-Din, HTS and Turkey’s NLF and SNA all
coordinate their operations in Idlib, meaning that Turkey is in coordination with
al-Qaeda’s appointed proxy in Syria, as well as al-Qaeda-linked HTS47, through its
Syrian proxies.
Since Spring 2019, the NLF and HTS have been operating together via an operations
room known as “al-Fatih al-Mubeen”, thus uniting the Turkish-controlled
and al-Qaeda-linked forces in a single fighting coalition48.
HTS upload images of Turkish-provided armor through their official channels – but refer to ‘al-Fatih al-Mubeen’
operations room as a figleaf.
47 https://t24.com.tr/haber/han-seyhun-idlib-in-kale-kapisi-nin-dusmesi-suriye-de-savasinseyrini-
ve-turkiye-yi-nasil-etkileyebilir,835771
48 https://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/peace/conflict_resolution/syria-conflict/internal_
conflict_in_north_west_syria.pdf
INTRODUCTION TURKISH SUPPORT FOR HTS OPERATIONS ROOM
21
This operation room has not been prominently featured in either Turkish or
al-Qaeda media, with neither HTS nor Turkey wishing to draw attention to the
increasing extent of their cooperation. In particular, the NLF do not mention this
operations room in their own propaganda published through their own channels.
It appears that Turkey’s NLF units have been merged with HTS units. HTS media
originally only covered HTS, and not NLF and other Turkish-backed units, but
NLF and even SNA units now appear in HTS propaganda videos. It is likely for
this reason that most of the combatants in footage released by HTS propaganda
channels have now removed their patches, in order to disguise the extent of collaboration
between Turkish-backed and HTS forces.
On HTS’ behalf, meanwhile, the new operations room serves as a figleaf to cover
Turkish supply of armaments to the al-Qaeda-linked group – presumably at Turkish
request. That is, HTS still refer to their own units as the ‘Mujahidin of [Hayat]
Tahrir al-Sham’ in videos without any Turkish armor or weapons pictured, but
when Turkish armor is included in the shot they refer to the new operations room
instead.
Hurras-ad-Din and other smaller, hard-line Salafist groups in Idlib have their own
operations room, ‘Incite the Believers’. As outlined above, this separate operations
room operates in coordination with the dominant faction HTS49, who in turn
are in coordination with Turkey.
49 https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2019/05/al-qaeda-linked-operations-
room-counterattacks-as-bombs-fall-northern-syria.php
In videos where HTS’ new
Turkish supplies aren’t visible,
they continue to refer
to themselves as ’the Mujahidin
of Tahrir al-Sham’
OPERATIONS ROOM TURKISH SUPPORT FOR HTS INTRODUCTION
22
1.4.3 TURKISH PROLIFERATION OF
ARMOR AND HEAVY WEAPONS
AMONG AL-QAEDA-LINKED GROUPS
INTRODUCTION TURKISH SUPPORT FOR HTS AL-QAEDA-LINKED GROUPS
Following the escalated SAA and Russian operation against HTS starting December
2019, and Turkey’s well-documented intervention alongside HTS, the extent
of Turkey’s support for al-Qaeda-linked groups has dramatically increased. Turkey
has both provided HTS with heavy weapons and armored vehicles for the
first time, and proliferated high-end weapons systems throughout territory under
HTS control.
Turkey’s provision of armor to HTS and other extremist factions marks a serious escalation. Note the ISIS flag
being worn by this HTS militant
23
AL-QAEDA-LINKED GROUPS TURKISH SUPPORT FOR HTS INTRODUCTION
The following section of this report will provide visual evidence of HTS fighters
and members of other extremist organizations in Idlib – in some cases openly
sporting the ISIS-style Seal of Muhammed – making use of Turkish-provided armored
vehicles, fighting under the cover of Turkish grad salvos, and otherwise
benefiting from Turkey’s deployment of tanks, armored vehicles, rocket launcher
systems and special forces into the Idlib region.
Turkey has supplied its proxies with small arms, mortars and anti-tank guided
missiles in large amounts. Despite protestations to the contrary from pro-Turkish
propaganda channels, visual evidence clearly indicates that HTS and other al-Qaeda-
linked factions including the TIP are making use of Turkish armor to launch
their latest assaults, including American-made M113 personnel carriers sold to
Turkey and then provided to the al-Qaeda offshoots.
Weapons systems such as ‘GRAD’ Multiple Rocket Launcher Systems (MRLS) may
have not been handed directly to HTS, but are certainly being put to joint use by
HTS and the NLF via their joint operations rooms50. Again, HTS propaganda footage
shows them advancing under the cover of GRAD fire, while at least one piece
of propaganda footage shared by HTS shows fighters loading up Turkish-marked
GRAD missiles. Even where these heavy armaments remain in the hands of Turkish-
dominated groups in the NLF, they are being put to joint use with HTS, while
their proliferation through HTS territory means they may well fall into HTS hands.
Finally, as a recent review from the Soufan Center thinktank noted, “While Turkey
prefers to support rebels from the National Liberation Front and the Syrian National
Army, HTS remains an effective fighting force. Turkey has supplied its proxies
with a range of weaponry, including small-arms, mortars, and anti-tank guided
missiles (ATGMs). There are growing concerns that the chaos in northwestern
Syria is allowing the al-Qaeda-linked Hurras ad-Din to rebuild its network, one
that could potentially seek to launch external operations against the West.”51
50 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-idlib/turkey-sends-weapons-to-syrian-
rebels-facing-russian-backed-assault-syrian-sources-idUSKCN1SV0FA
51 https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-conflict-in-idlib-escalates-between-turkey-
and-syria-while-civilians-suffer/
24
1.4.4 THE MANPADS QUESTION
Perhaps most serious is Turkey’s proliferation of man-portable air-defence systems
(MANPADS) throughout the Idlib region. A MANPADS can be used to shoot
down a helicopter, low-flying jet or civilian airliner, and these systems ending up
in the hands of al-Qaeda-linked terrorists would be an unmitigated disaster52.
As such, Turkey is tightly controlling information about the proliferation of these
systems in Idlib. In at least one incident in February, HTS claimed a MANPADS
strike which took down an SAA helicopter53. There is no visual evidence to date
of MANPADS in HTS hands, and in those pieces of footage which have leaked out
of MANPADS being used in Idlib it appears to be TAF commandos operating the
systems.
Nonetheless, with the situation in Idlib highly volatile, Turkey’s proliferation of
these lethal systems into territory held by HTS means it is increasingly likely that
al-Qaeda-linked groups will get their hands on these lethal weapons systems, capable
of shooting down airliners.
52 http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Security_Issues/manpadsthreat.html
53 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jFg_U6s4HU
INTRODUCTION TURKISH SUPPORT FOR HTS MANPADS
25
2 VISUAL EVIDENCE OF TURKISH
MATERIAL SUPPORT FOR HTS
& OTHER AL-QAEDA-LINKED GROUPS
Where: Idlib
When: 29 February
Who: HTS
What: HTS fighters using a US-built M113
Equipment supplied: M113
Source: Ebaa News (Official HTS channel)
VISUAL EVIDENCE
A)
26
VISUAL EVIDENCE
Where: Idlib
When: 27 February
Who: HTS
What: HTS fighters wearing the ISIS patch
using a US-built M113
Equipment supplied: M113
Source: Ebaa News (Official HTS channel)
B)
27
VISUAL EVIDENCE
28
Where: Kuffar Awid, Idlib
When: 29 February
Who: HTS
What: Militiamen wearing the insignia of HTS militia Jaysh
abu-Bakr al-Sidiq using a US-made built M113
Equipment supplied: M113
Source: HTS media operative Mohammed Othman
VISUAL EVIDENCE
C)
29
VISUAL EVIDENCE
Where: Idlib Governate
When: 20 February
Who:
What: HTS loading Turkish-marked MRLS (GRAD) missiles
Equipment supplied: MRLS missiles
Source: Ebaa News (Official HTS channel)
D)
30
VISUAL EVIDENCE
Where: Abin Selman
When: 13 February
Who: HTS
What: Advancing under cover of GRAD rocket salvo
Equipment supplied: GRAD launcher
Source: Video shot by Turkish-backed forces,
supplied to journalist Lindsay Snell
E)
31
VISUAL EVIDENCE
Where: Mayzanaz and Kafr Halab, west Aleppo
When: 16 February
Who: HTS
What: HTS fighters using US-made M113,
fighter wearing ISIS patch visible in same video
Equipment supplied: M113
Source: HTS-linked Insight media
F)
32
VISUAL EVIDENCE
Where: Idlib
When: 26 February
Who: Turkestan Islamic Party
What: Using Turkish-supplied armored vehicles
Equipment supplied: ACV-15
Source: TIP channel
G)
33
VISUAL EVIDENCE
Where: Eastern Idlib
When: 20 February
Who: HTS
What: Using US-made M113 and Turkish-supplied ACV-15
Equipment supplied: ACV-15 (rear of first image), M113 (second image)
Source: Ebaa News (Official HTS channel)
H)
34
Where: Nayrab, Eastern Idlib
When: 24 February
Who: HTS
What: HTS using US-made M113
Equipment supplied: M113
Source: Ebaa News (Official HTS channel); pro-NLF media
I)
VISUAL EVIDENCE
35
VISUAL EVIDENCE
36
VISUAL EVIDENCE
Where: Idlib
When: 20 February
Who: HTS
What: HTS using Turkish-supplied ACV-15
Equipment supplied: ACV-15
Source: SNA channels
J)
37
VISUAL EVIDENCE
Where: al-Narb, Idlib
When: 21 February
Who: HTS
What: HTS using Turkish-supplied M113
Equipment supplied: M113
Source: A24 News Agency
K)
38
VISUAL EVIDENCE
Where: Idlib
When: 26 February
Who: HTS
What: ‘the mujahidin of HTS’ in US-made M113
Equipment supplied: M113
Source: Ebaa News (Official HTS channel)
L)
39
VISUAL EVIDENCE
Where: Kafr Awaid, Idlib
When: 29 February
Who: HTS
What: HTS fighters using Turkish-supplied
armored vehicles
Equipment supplied: ACV-15 and M113R
Source: Ebaa News (Official HTS channel)
M)
40
3 CONCLUSION:
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
For as long as the Syrian conflict in general – and Idlib in particular – is conceived
in black-and-white terms, no solution will be found. This is equally true of the
‘regime vs. rebels’ and the ‘legitimate state vs. jihadis’ narratives propagated by
Turkish and Western press on the one hand, and Russian press on the other.
War crimes committed by HTS and Turkish-backed groups against civilians living
in areas under their control do not excuse the Russian and SAA carpet-bombing
campaign: but nor should Turkey’s intervention be misunderstood as anything
less than a power-grab carried out in coordination with radical jihadist groups,
which will have potentially disastrous security consequences for the West as
Turkey recklessly provides these groups with heavy weapons and disseminates
MANPADs through areas under their control.
Given that – as is clear by this stage in the conflict – NATO and the Western community
are unwilling to proactively intervene in north-western Syria, Turkey’s
intervention cannot prevent the eventual return of Idlib to Damascus’ control.
On the basis of this reality, there are some concrete steps which can be taken
towards reconciliation, while also ensuring Western security interests are protected
and that lethal weapons systems are not handed to extremist groups
who pose a threat to civilians in the USA, Europe and Middle East alike.
41
SUPPORT FROM NORTH AND EAST SYRIA CONCLUSION
3.1 TAKING UP THE OFFER OF SUPPORT
FROM NORTH AND EAST SYRIA
Though Turkey claims its intervention into Idlib is to protect Syrian civilians, Turkey’s
invasions of Syria have killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands
of ordinary Syrians. At the same time, Turkey’s border remains closed to
refugees fleeing the lethal Russian-SAA assault, and Turkish border guards have
shot dead at least 422 civilians trying to flee into Turkey throughout the Syrian
conflict54.
Meanwhile, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) has
demonstrated its willingness to host up to a million IDPs from all over Syria55.
Most recently, the AANES opened its doors to IDPs fleeing Idlib, with at least 6000
IDPs from Idlib now being housed by the AANES. Loqman Ahmi, spokesperson
of the AANES, recently spoke with the UN to reaffirm North and East Syria’s willingness
to partner with the UN to house IDPs from Idlib, relieving the burden on
Europe and enabling these Syrian IDPs to remain in their own country56.
As noted above, a 2020 UN report found that Turkish-backed groups have committed
war crimes across areas under their control, constituting “myriad violations
of human rights and international humanitarian law by SNA fighters, using
language comparing their “enemies” to “infidels”, “atheists” & “pigs” when referring
to civilians, detainees & property…“, the displacement of the entire Yazidi
population in Sere Kaniye and large swathes of the Kurdish population, the expropriation
and looting of schools, businesses, bakeries, olive groves, vehicles,
agricultural tools, “the war crime of murder and repeatedly the war crime of pillaging…
hostage-taking, cruel treatment and torture… these violations may entail
criminal responsibility for Turkish commanders who knew or should have known
about these crimes.”
54 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/syriasource/syrians-at-the-turkish-border-humiliation-
torture-and-death/
55 http://reporting.unhcr.org/node/2530
56 Rojava Information Center interview with Loqman Ehmi, 28 February 2019
42
The same report found no evidence of war crimes committed by the SDF, and on
the contrary praised the AANES for its ground-breaking efforts towards democratic
and gender equality in the regions under its control. Indeed, the AANES and
SDF are the only actors in Syria which consistently strive to meet international humanitarian
standards. Despite the US withdrawal which allowed Turkey to invade
North and East Syria, the AANES and SDF have consistently proven themselves
the West’s best partners in Syria, and loyal custodians of US and international
interests.
The fact that the AANES are welcoming IDPs from Idlib in their thousands once
again demonstrates that there was no need for Turkey to invade and occupy
North and East Syria to install Arab IDPs there. Nor is there any need for the UN
and EU to bow to Turkey’s use of refugees as a political weapon. Rather, NE Syria
has always been open to receive IDPs from all over Syria, and as such a strengthened
partnership between North and East Syria and the international community
is fundamental to resolving the humanitarian crisis in Idlib.
The USA and Europe should also act to house refugees fleeing Idlib on their own
account, rather than allowing Turkey to use refugees as a political bargaining chip.
As well as opening routes to safe third countries in the EU and elsewhere, they
should recognize that they have a loyal partner in North and East Syria willing and
able to house these IDPs on Syrian soil.
CONCLUSION SUPPORT FROM NORTH AND EAST SYRIA
43
A FEDERAL SOLUTION CONCLUSION
3.2 SUPPORTING THE POLITICAL
PROCESS TOWARDS A FEDERAL
SOLUTION IN SYRIA
As outlined above, a military solution is not feasible in Idlib, with international
intervention off the table and Turkey unable to seriously resist Russian aerial and
military dominance. As such, rather than allowing Turkey to prolong the conflict in
the hope of securing a larger slice of territory in North and East Syria, the United
States and the international community should offer meaningful support for a
political process and the vision of a federal Syria.
This will mean forcing Turkey to admit that it cannot – not does it seriously expect
to – prevent Russia and the SAA from taking Idlib, and recognizing that despite
recent flare-ups Turkey and Russia are taking great care not to engage one another
militarily in the field of conflict. The pressure Moscow exerts on Ankara is too
great, and Ankara likewise recognizes that NATO is not about to intervene on its
behalf in a war it has brought upon itself as part of its efforts to seize land, influence
and power in Syria.
In the words of analyst Aaron Stein, “The United States is Turkey’s ally, but has
little interest in the Turkish armed forces being bogged down in an unwinnable
war in Syria, taking casualties and being humiliated by Russian bombardment. A
ceasefire makes sound strategic sense. It also would be preferable to an outcome
in which more Syrians will die fighting for an unwinnable endeavor. Negotiations
with Russia will not be easy, nor straightforward.
“Idlib is a massive humanitarian catastrophe and the Assad regime is almost certain
to exact revenge on innocent civilians it accuses of being disloyal. The United
States ought to work to prevent this, but the path to doing so is not continuing
aid to an insurgency that will not win. The United States and Europe both should
consider continuing — if not expanding — its humanitarian assistance to ease
Turkey’s burden and support Syrian civilians.”57
57 https://warontherocks.com/2020/02/cleaning-up-turkeys-mess-in-idlib-and-ending-the-war/
44
The more the USA and Western community play a role in this process, the more
they can influence its outcome to ensure the best possible outcome for civilians
in north-western Syria and in terms of their security interests in the Middle East.
This means ensuring that all actors in Syria have a seat at the negotiating table,
including the AANES and SDF who are the USA’s most loyal partners in Syria but
are currently excluded from this process, as well as representatives of the wider
Syrian opposition.
The vision of a federal, devolved Syria being put forward by the AANES represents
the best possible outcome for civilians in Idlib and across Syria, but for so long as
the debate is polarized between hopeless investment in a lost war in Idlib on the
one hand and Damascus’ hardball demands on the other, the best interests of
local civilians and the international community alike cannot be met.
3.3 BRINGING AN END TO TURKISH
SUPPORT FOR AL-QAEDA-LINKED
MILITIAS
The more the burgeoning humanitarian crisis in Idlib is resolved, the less Turkey
will be able to use it as a figleaf to disguise its ambitions of territorial expansion.
Curbing Turkey’s proliferation of lethal weapons systems and heavy armor
throughout territory controlled by HTS and other al-Qaeda-linked militias is not
only a security prerogative, but a necessary step on the path toward an enduring
reconciliation and resolution in Syria outlined above.
To achieve this policy objective, it will be necessary for the international community
in general and the US and NATO partners in particular to exercise pressure
on Turkey, which is currently acting as a rogue actor and supporting listed terror
organizations, including HTS.
45 END TURKISH MILITIAS SUPPORT Even setting aside the fact that Turkey has aided and abetted the growth of ISIS in Syria and to this day shelters scores of high-ranking former ISIS members in the ranks of its militias, Turkey’s current actions in Idlib alone warrant its formal listing by the US Treasury Department as a State Sponsor of Terror. Taking decisive action against Turkey’s open support for al-Qaeda-linked factions in Idlib today could prevent a civilian airliner being shot down by these same factions tomorrow.
***********************************************************************************************
Report: 447 civilians killed by Turkish forces at Syrian border
The 447 refugees killed by Turkish security forces at the border with Syria include 83 children under the age of 18 and 56 women.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Sunday, 15 Mar 2020, 16:34
The Human Rights Organization of Afrin – Syria released a statement announcing that 447 refugees were killed by Turkish soldiers at the Turkish-Syrian border.
The statement includes the following:
“Turkish border guards shoot Syrian asylum seekers, including Kurdish citizens, and beat them when they try to enter Turkish territory, causing the death and injury of a number of them. Especially recently, after the Turkish state and its armed Syrian factions occupied Afrin area and as a result of the pressure that the indigenous people in Afrin are exposed to by the armed factions of the Turkish occupation, the cases of the flight of citizens, especially the Kurds, from them, and their asylum to Turkey across the common borders, especially in Afrin, increased.
According to the testimony of the relatives and local residents, which were documented by international and local human rights organizations, including the “Human Rights Watch” violence is used against asylum seekers and Syrian smugglers.
If Turkey has the right to secure its borders with Syria, it is obligated to respect the principle of non-refoulement that prohibits the expulsion of asylum seekers at the border when they are at risk of persecution and torture, or when their lives and freedom are threatened. Turkey is also obligated to respect international standards related to the use of excessive force, the right to life and physical liberty, including the absolute risk of subjecting anyone to inhuman or degrading treatment.
At a time when Turkey is blackmailing the European Union with refugees on its soil, in order to obtain financial and political benefits to legitimize their stay in Syria, and subject them to death and beatings, Turkey is using live ammunition and rifle butts to counter the flow of refugees, and among the victims that the border guards are killing are children and women.
Local and international human rights observatories (Human Rights Watch, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Center for Violations in Northern Syria), noted in their reports the extent of the violations that took place and are still occurring during the asylum of the citizens of Syria with various components and nationalities who are trying to enter the Turkish lands to escape the death that has been chasing them in the conflict that has been going on in Syria for 9 years. In addition, residents of the Syrian border villages and towns or farmers and landowners near the border are also targeted by Turkish gendarmerie with live bullets.
The number of Syrian citizens who were shot by Turkish border guards (gendarmerie) reached 447, including 83 children under the age of 18 and 56 women. In addition, 420 Syrian citizens were injured with gunfire or assault. Also, the Turkish state has built a separation wall along its 911 km long border with Syria to prevent the entry of refugees, resulting in continuous civilian deaths and injuries.
Although Turkey is one of the guarantor countries to de-escalation, and participates as one of the main parties to the conflict in Syria, and has the task of protecting refugees and displaced persons, it acts completely the opposite.
We, as the human rights organization in Afrin-Syria, appeal to all international human rights and civil organizations, led by the United Nations, to put pressure on the Turkish government to prevent the use of excessive force against Syrian refugees and displaced persons and others, as one of the countries of the Council of the European Union, and it must respect all international laws and regulations that stipulates respect for human rights principles and all relevant international agreemen
“Erdoğan experiences a political and military defeat in Idlib”
The HDP’s foreign policy spokesperson, Hişyar Özsoy says: “Turkey has tried to play off powers against each other, but this policy no longer works. Therefore it experiences a political, military and diplomatic defeat in Idlib”.
ANF
ANKARA
Friday, 6 Mar 2020, 15:30
Hişyar Özsoy is deputy co-chair and foreign policy spokesperson of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and is currently participating in various meetings in the US. ANF talked to him about current developments in the context of the Idlib dispute and the use of refugees as a means of blackmailing the EU by the Erdoğan regime.
What do you think about the fact that Erdoğan is trying to direct the anger about the killed soldiers towards the refugees?
This is nothing new. From the very beginning the refugee issue has been used to threaten Europe. This time it has partly worked, but partly it has not. Erdoğan could not achieve much with this threat. There were very strong reactions from Europe, but Angela Merkel started to support the Turkish wish for a “security zone” within Syria. Even if the refugee card does not build up as much pressure as before, it is still in Erdoğan’s hands. This is his strongest trump card against Europe.
You are currently taking part in various meetings in the US. How is the situation viewed there?
In the US this refugee question is taken very seriously. But for Washington, the relations between Russia and Turkey and the S-400 missiles are in the foreground. It looks like there will be very serious sanctions in April if Turkey does not do anything about the S-400s. But if Turkey abandons the S-400, Turkey can count on strong US support in Idlib. Some US politicians are trying to take a Turkey-friendly position. They try to support Turkey in Idlib, but that doesn’t mean that the US will send troops to Idlib or provide air support. There are fierce discussions about this in the US government.
The supporters of Erdoğan are isolated in this respect. They don’t get much support from the Pentagon, nor from Congress in this sense. But a humanitarian aid package has been announced. This is set to be used to pull Turkey to its side. This logic is directed against Russia. Especially because of the escalation of hostilities against Iran, the US wants Turkey on its side. But as I said, the crucial point is the S-400 missiles. If this deal with Russia is abandoned, the US will make a great effort to direct relations with Turkey. But if this does not happen and Turkey does not move into an anti-Russia position as the US wants, Ankara will probably soon come under very strong pressure from the US.
Do Turkey’s blackmail attempts not isolate the country?
Look, at the moment Turkey no longer has any real diplomatic relations with Europe, the US and, to be honest, with Russia. It is constantly trying to threaten and blackmail Europe. The reason for their cooperation with Erdoğan and its government is not because they like it. They are actually tired of this government. We can talk about anger here. Erdogan has built a relationship with all of Europe based on threats. This relationship is rapidly moving towards collapse.
The policy towards the Kurds in Syria has also isolated Turkey from the US. Even Turkey’s supporters have so far been unable to make their support openly known. All institutions are against Erdoğan. The refugee question is not important for the US, it mainly concerns Europe. Some countries in Europe do not want to turn Erdoğan against themselves. For example Greece, Bulgaria, Italy and the southern countries. Erdoğan can get Merkel to make concessions, even if only partially. And that is what he is trying to do.
Will this save Turkey from its internal crisis?
Whether it works or not, we’ll see. But Erdoğan has gone so far beyond threats and blackmail that he is diplomatically at his wits’ end. This is a big problem for him, because he is currently facing Russia militarily, but he doesn’t have Europe on his side. That is a big obstacle. Turkey has tried to play the powers against each other, but this policy no longer works. That is why it is experiencing a political, military and diplomatic defeat in Idlib.
In a recent interview, Bashar al-Assad stated that a Kurdish question did not exist in Syria and accused the autonomous administration of separatism. The latter called on Damascus to develop an understanding for democracy.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Saturday, 7 Mar 2020, 20:36
The unresolved Kurdish question in the Middle East has been one of the most serious conflicts in the region for more than a century, with dramatic political and humanitarian consequences – for all four central states, to which the historical settlement territory of the Kurds was divided quite arbitrarily: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The “divide and rule” policy has not only created a Middle East that resembles an open powder keg and is constantly fed with dynamite. In the “quadripartite” Kurdistan, starting with the denial of a Kurdish existence at all, an unresolved identity conflict has established itself. Also from this aspect, the solution of the Kurdish question and Kurdish self-determination is seen as the key element of the democratization of the Middle East.
In Syria, the Kurds form the largest minority in the country. Their oppression, similar to that in Turkey, has a history of decades. The Syrian regime also relied on tyranny and denial of Kurdish existence. The recognition of Kurdish identity was considered a threat to national unity. Even before the country was marked by political instability in the 1960s – one coup followed the next – the Kurds experienced brutal oppression. In 1958, the publication of Kurdish books and the teaching of the Kurdish language in schools was banned. The authorities Arabized the names of Kurdish villages and towns. In 1962, 120,000 Kurds were deprived of Syrian citizenship after a census in Hesekê. In 1963, shortly after the Baath Party took power, plans to “Arabize” northern Syria began to take shape with the so-called “12-point plan” by Talab Hilal, the then police director of Hesekê. His racist and anti-Semitic ideas about how to deal with the Kurds were clear: Hilal called the Kurds a “malignant tumour”. To “cut it out” was the only right way to “cure” Syria.
Ten years later, the so-called “Arabization” was implemented in a 350-kilometer long and about fifteen-kilometer wide “Arab belt” along the border with Turkey in order to change the ethnic composition of the population in favor of the Arab population. In the course of the Arabization project, dozens of new villages were built and four thousand Arab families from Raqqa and Aleppo were settled as early as the beginning of the 1970s. Kurds were deliberately expelled or deported from their ancestral homeland, their cultivable land confiscated and given to the newly settled Arabs. The regime presented this de facto expropriation as “privatization”, deprived the expropriated Kurds of their citizenship and Arabized all Kurdish place names. Nevertheless, the Kurds remained steadfast and refused to comply with the regime’s demand to leave the region.
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, who has continued the oppressive policy of his father Hafiz al-Assad since 2000, recently stated in an interview on Russian television that there is no “Kurdish question” in Syria. Claims to the contrary were “illusory and a lie”, he said and argued that, moreover, all Kurds living in northern Syria have immigrated from Turkey in the last century.
The fact that the Assad regime, despite the crisis in Syria, which has now been going on for nine years and is getting worse and worse, has apparently not changed its attitude towards the Kurds and is sticking to its assimilation policy has provoked sharp criticism in the self-governing areas of northern and eastern Syria. In a written statement, the autonomous administration recalls that Syria, once torn by internal conflicts, has become a theatre of war for numerous armed groups and international state actors within a scant decade.
“The Syrian regime, as the architect of this as yet unresolved crisis, is shirking its responsibility to find solutions instead. That Bashar al-Assad under these circumstances is sticking to the mentality that created this crisis, is unacceptable”.
The autonomous administration emphasizes that the regime’s approach and language against the Kurds do only serve the Turkish state, which occupies large areas of Syrian territory; “The government in Damascus claims that Syria will defend its territory and will not accept any occupation of ‘Syrian soil’. However, Assad’s most recent statements testify to the regime’s lack of interest in dialogue and hamper the search for a solution to the crisis. The Kurdish question is one of the most fundamental problems and the key to the democratisation of the country. A peaceful solution will pave the way to defusing Syria’s crisis.”
Alluding to the accusations of separatism raised by Assad against the Kurdish part of the population and the peoples of northern and eastern Syria, the autonomous administration calls on the regime to take a look at the recent past and at Afrin’s resistance against the Turkish state and its “terrorist jihadist factions” – a struggle that was aimed at defending the integrity of Syria.
“All those who are now accusing us of separatism in Syria should remember emphatically those who defended Serêkaniyê (Ras al-Ain) and Girê Spî (Tal Abyad) with their lives. It should not be forgotten that the regime remained silent on the invasion and merely observed incidents from a distance. We, the peoples of Northern and Eastern Syria, are committed to defending the very Syrian soil that the regime claims to protect. Our merit is obvious, we do not have to present the evidences of our struggle but we have the right to ask the Syrian regime if it has achieved any success.”
In its statement, the autonomous administration emphasizes that the regime must finally adopt a solution-oriented attitude in order to lead Syria out of the crisis, saying that, in the contrary case, the conflicts would intensify further.
“The current mentality, which has failed to come up with a solution to the Syrian crisis for years, is what has made the occupation of Northern Syrian cities by Turkey possible.”
For a Syria-wide perspective to solve all problems, a renewed political agenda is needed that allows for change and internalizes democracy, the autonomous administration proposes.
“To build a democratic Syria, the paths must be opened. At the same time it should be accepted that the Kurdish question is one of the main factors in Syria’s crisis. The autonomous administration of northern and eastern Syria is not a system that seeks to divide Syria. The project of a democratic nation, which is implemented in the self-governing areas, is based on the fraternity of the peoples. It has proved to be successful. Statements aimed at defaming this alternative system, which has already proved its worth, are of benefit only to those who want Syria to be divided,” the statement said.
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Autonomous administration welcomes people from Idlib
North and East Syria is open to displaced people from Idlib. The autonomous administration takes care of the people who fled the war. Since the region itself is undersupplied due to the Turkish invasion, an appeal is made to the UN.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Sunday, 1 Mar 2020, 16:39
Over 1,500 families fled the war in Idlib to the autonomous region of North and East Syria. The autonomous administration has accommodated the displaced civilians from Idlib in camps despite their own limited possibilities and takes care of the basic supply of food and health care.
Today the Autonomous Administration has again declared that people from Idlib who had to leave their homes due to the fighting are welcome.
The statement says:
“Due to the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Idlib, the civilian population is in a very bad situation. Cooperation is needed to alleviate the suffering of civilians in the face of the wave of migration that is taking place. Action must be taken.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have already declared that they will fulfil their humanitarian duty towards the people of Idlib in accordance with their responsibilities. On this basis, we are once again informing the people of Idlib that we will provide them with care within the limits of our possibilities. We declare that despite the high number of migrants in our region we will fulfill our duty.
Call to international institutions
As the autonomous administration, we face serious obstacles due to the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons from the areas occupied by the Turkish state, the closure of the Til Kocher [al-Yaarubiyah on the Iraqi-Syrian border] border crossing and the small quantities of UN aid shipments via Damascus.
We call on the UN and other international institutions to cooperate with the autonomous administration in view of the flight from Idlib. They should propose solutions on how to overcome the current difficult situation.
This should be accompanied by a reconsideration of the decision to close the Til Kocher border crossing for humanitarian aid deliveries. Humanitarian aid must arrive in north-east Syria in order to guarantee basic supplies for those seeking protection”.
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Another step towards Turkification … Turkish language courses in Gire Spi
The Turkish occupation continues to follow the policy of Turkification in the areas it occupied from Syria with the aim of changing the demography of the region, and this was evident by the courses that were announced yesterday in the occupied city of Girê Spi.
NEWS02 Mar 2020, Mon – 14:332020-03-02T14:33:00 Ain Issa
Turkey and its mercenaries occupied each of the cities of Serekaniye and Gire Spi after its brutal attack on the regions of northern and eastern Syria in October 9 last year.
Since its occupation of the two cities, it began with the assistance of its mercenaries, whom it uses to implement its agendas of pillaging and pillaging the region’s goods, and displacing the indigenous people with flimsy pretexts that it creates for them, in order to displace them and resettle the mercenary families instead of them.
After its indiscriminate bombing of populated cities and villages, it managed to displace more than 300 thousand people of the two cities, and it is currently restricting the rest of the people with the aim of displacing them.
After seeing that the people adhered to their cities and villages, it started with other plans, including the Turks, with the aim of spreading the Turkish language among the people, as it announced yesterday the opening of free Turkish educational courses in Gire Spi.
According to local sources, Turkey announced that it would receive all those who would like to learn the Turkish language, and identified the educational complex in the neighborhood of housing as a place for registration and education.
About a month ago, Turkey opened a similar course in the occupied canton of Afrin and forced more than 30 young people from Afrin to join that course.
The same source added that the people in the occupied area reject the behavior of the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries, and the high cost of living there, in addition to the lack of security, and the large number of arrests and theft by mercenaries there.
J.O. ANHA
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Syrian Kurds push UN for action on Idlib humanitarian crisis
Children walk along a mudpath at a camp for displaced Syrians in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, Dec. 12, 2019. (Photo: AFP)
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – On Saturday, officials from the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) discussed the dire situation for large numbers of displaced civilians fleeing from the embattled city of Idlib with the director of the United Nations Office for Coordination and Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The ongoing fighting in Idlib has already displaced over 800,000 civilians. So far, 1,000 of them have fled the city to areas controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Manbij, Raqqa, and Tabqa following the call of the group’s leader, according to a Feb. 21 statement released by the US-based aid group Burma Free Rangers.
The SDF says it expects at least another 5,000 to flee to the northeast. “In light of the recent deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Idlib, we have talked to UN Regional Humanitarian Coordinator Kevin Kennedy today to express our readiness to scale up these efforts, with the assistance of the UN and the international community,” said AANES spokesperson Luqman Ahmi.
“We talked about how the Self Administration of North and East Syria and the UN can support one another to help IDPs fleeing war in Idlib,” Ahmi told the Rojava Information Centre.
“IDPs from Idlib have already arrived to North and East Syria. We have welcomed them and prepared camps for them. We are ready to continue this work in an organized, efficient way, in collaboration with the UN,” he added.
The local administration also called on the international community and the UN in a public statement to coordinate with the local administration to “offer proposals and resolutions to face this challenge in these severe circumstances and reconsider its decision to close the Yaroubiyeh border crossing.”
The UN’s Yaroubiyeh operation that previously supplied 40 percent of the medical provisions used in areas run by the Self-Administration was closed in January due to a veto of China and Russia in a UN Security Council vote. As a result, the humanitarian situation has worsened in northeastern Syria.
Thomas McClure, a Syria-based researcher at the Rojava Information Center, told Kurdistan 24 on Saturday, “Turkey claims its intervention into Idlib is to protect Syrian civilians, but in reality, Turkey’s invasions of Syria have killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands of ordinary Syrians.”
“At the same time, Turkey’s border remains closed to refugees fleeing the lethal Russian-SAA [Syrian Arab Army] assault, and Turkish border guards have shot dead hundreds of civilians trying to flee into Turkey throughout the Syrian conflict.”
“The AANES, meanwhile, has demonstrated its willingness to host up to a million IDPs from all over Syria, most recently opening its doors to IDPs fleeing Idlib. Indeed, the AANES and SDF are the only actors in Syria which consistently strive to meet international humanitarian standards.”
McClure underlined the fact that the Autonomous Administration welcomes people fleeing from Idlib demonstrates that there is no need for “UN and EU to bow to Turkey’s use of refugees as a political weapon.”
Thousands of immigrants recently gathered at the closed Greek border after Ankara said it will not prevent their passage to Europe following the death of several Turkish soldiers in Idlib.
“Rather, Northeastern Syria has always been open to receive IDPs from all over Syria, and as such a strengthened partnership between Northeastern Syria and the international community is fundamental to resolving the humanitarian crisis in Idlib.”
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdoğan asked NATO to exercise its mutual defence agreement stipulated by Article 5 of its charter when 33 Turkish troops were killed by Russian and Syrian forces in Idlib.
Turkey’s request is cynical and self-serving. Erdoğan betrayed the Alliance, siding with Russia in a war he helped foment.
After the 2011 popular uprising in Dara’a, which marked the beginning of Syria’s civil war, Erdoğan embraced the Muslim Brotherhood and supported Islamist rebels fighting the regime of Bashar Assad. Erdoğan envisioned himself the Caliph of Mesopotamia, leading a worldwide community of Sunni brothers.
Turkey was the major conduit for weapons and money, thinking the victory of jihadists was inevitable. However, Assad’s forces were tenacious.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama promised a regime change and drew a red line on the use of chemical weapons (CW). His warnings were hollow. More than 1,300 people, including hundreds of children, were killed in the Damascus suburbs of Ghouta, Muadhamiya, Ein Tarma, and Zamalka on 21 August 2013. Obama had no appetite for military intervention. He claimed the red line was a warning, rather an actual threat to intervene.
Erdoğan decided to expand support for the rebels and overthrow Assad he had, a year ago, hugged as ‘dear brother.’. Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency established the jihadi highway from Şanlıurfa in Turkey to Raqqa, the Islamic State (ISIS) capital in Syria. It assisted 40,000 foreign jihadists from more than 100 countries who transited through Turkey to the front lines in Syria.
The presence of Chechens and other Islamists from the Southern Caucasus was deeply unsettling to Russia. Their advances presented a risk to Russian bases in Latakia and Tartous, threatening Russia’s warm-water port on the Mediterranean. They also threatened Iran’s corridor through Iraq and Syria that was supplying Lebanon’s Hezbollah with sophisticated missiles to attack Israel.
General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) Quds Force, met Putin in Moscow. With Turkish-backed rebels advancing on Damascus, Soleimani unfurled a map of rebel positions. Despite the consternation of his Russian hosts, he assured them, “All is not lost.”
Russian and Iranian officials agreed on a plan to rescue Assad. The IRGC, Hezbollah, and other Shiite militias would engage Sunni rebels on the battlefield. Russia would provide air support.
Putin announced Russia’s military intervention at the U.N. General Assembly on September 28, 2015. Turkey and Russia were on opposite sides. Turkey supported regime change and gave weapons to the rebels, while Russia backed the regime.
Russian-Turkish relations collapsed when a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Sukhoi-24 along the Syrian border.
Turkey was also alienated from the United States. The United States and Turkey had a major falling out after Erdoğan alleged Washington’s complicity in the so-called coup of July 2015. Ever pragmatic, Erdoğan reached out to Putin and forged an alliance in Syria.
Turkey joined Russia in parallel diplomacy called the Astana process in January 2017. The Astana process marginalised the U.N. and excluded the United States.
Putin agreed to look the other way, while Turkish-backed jihadis and Turkish armed forces targeted the Syrian Kurds, who Erdoğan called the “real terrorists.”
Turkey invaded Afrin in January 2018. The offensive, cynically called “Operation Olive Branch”, killed hundreds of Kurds and displaced nearly a quarter million. Russia controlled the air space west of the Euphrates and was complicit.
Turkey invaded Kurdish lands east of the Euphrates in October 2019. Hundreds were killed and many displaced, including Kurds,
Armenians and Syriac Christians. Turkey’s jihadist proxies committed atrocities, mutilating the bodies of female fighters.
Erdoğan sought to dissuade Putin from attacking Idlib, the last rebel stronghold in Syria’s northwest. Despite Erdoğan’s appeal, Syrian ground forces backed by Russian air power intensified attacks, pushing 900,000 people from their homes. Turkey sealed its border leaving displaced Syrians with no place to go.
Turkey presents itself as the victim of actions by Russia and Syria. In fact, it is the aggressor.
The recent armed conflict between Turkey and Russia is a direct result of Erdoğan’s ill-conceived bravado. It was a strategic miscalculation to think that Russia and Syria would stand down in Idlib.
Now Erdoğan wants NATO involved. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Charter stipulates that an attack on one member of the Alliance is an attack on all members.
However, Erdoğan’s appeal has fallen on deaf ears. In addition to his duplicity, Erdoğan’s anti-American, anti-European and anti-NATO positions have deeply riled the West.
For sure, any loss of life is regrettable. It is, however, hard to side with the Turks when Erdoğan’s actions led to Turkey’s woes.
Turkey intensified the civil war by supplying jihadis. When the war persisted and millions of refugees went to Turkey, Erdoğan extorted money from the European Union to manage the refugee crisis, which he helped create. Turkey scorned the U.N., joining the Astana process, and it repudiated the U.S., spending $3 billion to buy Russian weapons.
The US assiduously avoided a military role in Syria. Years ago, it missed an opportunity to intervene when intervention could have saved Syria.
Despite the heart-wrenching suffering of people in Idlib, the Trump administration is unlikely to intervene militarily. Turkey will pay a steep price for Erdoğan’s hubris and bad judgment.
Turkish-backed Syrian rebel forces have reportedly stopped a pumping station in Ras al-Ain from providing water hundreds of thousands of people including internally displaced Syrians and Islamic State captives and their families.
REUTERS/Kemal Aslan
A vehicle belonging to Turkey-backed Syrian rebel fighters is parked next to a Turkish military bulldozer in the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain, as seen from the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar, in Sanliurfa province, Turkey, Oct. 30, 2019.
Turkey’s pressure campaign on Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria took a fresh sinister turn this week when Turkish-backed Syrian rebel forces reportedly halted service at the Alok pumping station in the Turkish-occupied town of Ras al-Ain. The facility supplies water to approximately 460,000 people, including hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Syrians as well as Islamic State captives and their families.
“The Turkish-backed sources entered the water station [Feb. 24] and forced it to stop its work and threw out the technicians as well,” wrote Sozda Ahmed of the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration in Northeast Syria. She told Al-Monitor via the Rojava Information Center in emailed comments, “As a result the city of al Hasakah, Tell Tamar and the rest of the Hasakah region — including Hol and Shedadi — have been left without water. Arisha camp, Hol camp [housing Islamic State fighters’ families] and Washokani camp [housing internally displaced Syrians from Ras al-Ain] have all been affected.”
Ankara has long been accused of seeking to suffocate the Syrian Kurdish-run region economically as well as militarily and politically, all part of a campaign to torpedo Kurdish aspirations of self-rule. Turkey’s borders with the Kurdish-administered northeast from Manbij all the way to the Iraqi border further east remain sealed, including to humanitarian organizations.
“Water is a weapon that Turkey has used against Syria in the past and it will likely continue to do so,” Fabrice Balanche, Syria expert and associate professor at France’s Lyon II University, told Al-Monitor.
With all eyes trained on the rebel-held province of Idlib, where Russian-backed Syrian government forces and the Turkish army have been clashing since the start of this month, the Alok affair has largely slipped under the radar. A Russian delegation was expected to arrive in Ankara tomorrow to break a deadlock over Turkish demands for a cease-fire as close to a million displaced civilians remain massed along the Turkish border, reported the state-run Anadolu news agency.
At least 16 Turkish military personnel have died so far, some of them victims of Russian airstrikes.
Balanche reckons that despite all the hawkish rhetoric, the two sides will eventually agree. A putative deal might include Russia letting Turkish forces take the Kurdish-controlled town of Kobani and move people displaced from Idlib there, Arabizing Kobani as was done in Afrin, the Kurdish-majority enclave Turkey invaded in early 2018. “All depends on whether the Kurds cut a deal with regime and tell the Americans to go or not,” Balanche noted.
Meanwhile, coming amid a global scare over the coronavirus epidemic, a sustained water cut could spell disaster for Hasakah as local authorities struggle to cope with overcrowded displacement camps crammed with infants and children.
Ahmed said that the reasons for the stoppage were not clear to the local authorities. “We only know the station has been prevented from working. We don’t know why they did this or what they want from us.” Nor was it clear whether Turkey gave the orders.
The technicians who were allegedly evicted from the Alok facility are believed to be members of a Syrian government team that routinely visits the station for maintenance purposes and has continued to do so following Turkey’s October “Operation Peace Spring” invasion of Ras al-Ain. Alok was first put out of service by shelling during the Turkish push, the United Nations reported on Oct. 18.
Kurdish authorities blamed Turkish artillery fire. Service was partially restored with the facility operating at about 20% of capacity.
Well-informed sources familiar with humanitarian relief efforts in northeast Syria said they had heard matching accounts of the situation at Alok from local authorities.
“Alok water station remains a critically important source of clean water for nearly half a million people in northeast Syria. As was done last year, when the station was damaged in hostilities, the UN and humanitarian partners are advocating to parties to ensure the station runs uninterrupted,” Danielle Moylan, spokesperson for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told Al-Monitor. “In addition, the UN and humanitarian partners are planning emergency water supplies to affected families in the area.”
Found in:internally displaced persons, turkish intervention in syria, ras al-ain, water crisis, water supply
Amberin Zaman is a senior correspondent reporting from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe exclusively for Al-Monitor. Zaman has been a columnist for Al-Monitor for the past five years, examining the politics of Turkey, Iraq and Syria and writing the daily Briefly Turkey newsletter. Prior to Al-Monitor, Zaman covered Turkey, the Kurds and conflicts in the region for The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, The Los Angeles Times and the Voice of America. She served as The Economist’s Turkey correspondent between 1999 and 2016, and has worked as a columnist for several Turkish language outlets. On Twitter: @amberinzama
Turkish armed forces have controlled a strip of land in northeast Syria between the towns of Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ayn (Serekaniye in Kurdish) since October 9, 2019. Turkey, which has had a presence in northwest Syria since it invaded the Afrin region in January 2018, has split the territorial integrity of this Kurdish region, Rojava (“west” in Kurdish) or the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, politically autonomous since 2013.
Turkey’s actions are a direct threat to the political and military alliance established by the PYD (Democratic Union Party)—the Syrian branch of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party)—and northeast Syria’s other main demographic groups, the Arabs and Syriac Christians. This alliance, the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), and its political wing, the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), also have to reckon with the forces of Bashar al-Assad who still hopes to regain control of the whole region, from which he withdrew in 2012. Seven years after its creation, what remains of the PYD’s pluralist, democratic project?
We set out from the Newroz refugee camp in Derik, near the Turkish and Iraqi borders. A woman living there said she had fled six times since 2018: “My family and I are from Afrin. When the Turks came, we went first to Shabab, then toward Aleppo. From there we reached Kobane. Then my son found work in Ras al-Ayn. After the Turks attacked, we had to flee barefoot to Tell Tamr and now we’re here in this camp.” A man said he had left his small farm in Tell Abyad last autumn: “We were living happily. The political system worked well. Then the Turkish president sent planes to bomb us and all the Kurds left.”
Ethnic makeup to be changed
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin signed a 10-point agreement in Sochi on October 22, 2019, ratifying Turkey’s presence in northeast Syria and forcing the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the PYD’s armed forces, to withdraw from Turkish-held territory. Since then, Turkey has been accused of driving out the Kurdish population and replacing them with 2 million Sunni Arabs who had fled from elsewhere in Syria to Turkey. “Erdoğan wants to change the ethnic makeup of the territory his army controls,” according to Abdel Karim Omar, foreign minister in the Federation’s autonomous government. “Before Turkey invaded in 2018, 85 percent of Afrin’s population was Kurdish. Now it’s 20 percent.”
We can’t be sure if these profound changes mean the end of Rojava as a political entity. When the Turkish army and its Syrian militias—known as çete (gangsters)—tried to expand their territory, they met fierce resistance.
We set off from Qamishli for Kobane, which was where Kurdish forces first seriously defeated ISIS in January 2015. At a main checkpoint held by the federation’s security forces, we were redirected to avoid the M4 east-west highway, as it was too dangerous: Turkish military drones overfly it and pro-Turkish militias, based just 400 yards from the road, make regular incursions. On October 12, 2019, Hevrin Khalaf, an influential Kurdish politician, was intercepted on the M4 at Tirwazi near Tell Abyad and brutally killed by Turkish-backed jihadist militias.
The Trump administration’s announcement on October 6 of a US military withdrawal from the region opened the way for a Turkish invasion and left the SDF no option but to call for military support from Damascus. After the Sochi agreement, Syrian troops were deployed between Kobane and the Iraqi border, except for the Turkish-occupied enclave. The Syrian army has small military posts every six miles; according to people we spoke to, its role is mainly to discourage further Turkish expansion.
The Turks have put a price on the head of SDF military commander Mazloum “Kobane” Abdi, who said of the Syrian army, “It’s largely a politically symbolic presence.” He added that there is no other Syrian military presence in SDF-controlled zones. Throughout our journey we saw only the Asayish, the Arab-Kurdish SDF police, watching the roads. We asked Abdi about future relations between Rojava and Damascus, and he said the priority was a political agreement: “We want political autonomy to be written into the Syrian constitution and the SDF to be part of the defense of the whole of Syria. These are demands we won’t compromise on. Under such an agreement, defending the north of the country would be the SDF’s responsibility.”
‘We will not let Kurds lose their rights’
Would the Syrian government accept a change that would end decades of centralism and the quest for a single Arab national identity? Damascus has given no sign of this. We spoke to Polat Can, an SDF commander who led the operation to liberate the Deir al-Zor region, long under ISIS control. “Rojava will not revert to its pre-2010 state. We will not let the Kurds lose their rights, and we will not destroy the relations we’ve established with the Arabs and the Syriac Christians.” He suggested everything else was negotiable, including the autonomous entity’s name and how its borders would be controlled.
The Kurds feel bitterness and anger over how the enclave between Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ayn was abandoned to the Turks. This feeling is especially acute because of the lack of air protection. Abdi said, “The Russians have let Turkish planes bombard our civilians, children, and defense forces. They haven’t kept their promises. Nor has the US.” Polat Can’s verdict was starker: “The Turks are killing Kurds with European weapons. Their drones are Italian and their Leopard tanks are German. If we had an air exclusion zone that could stop our troops being bombed from the air, we would kick the Turks out of Rojava in a week.”
We reached Kobane after a six-hour detour via Raqqa on badly damaged roads. The many oil tankers on the road made the air almost unbreathable. Some of the cheap, low-quality crude oil extracted in northeast Syria is used by the local population and the rest is sold by Damascus through intermediaries. The autonomous government runs public services and funds infrastructure projects through oil revenue and taxes on goods crossing the Iraqi border in both directions. But oil extraction is not at full capacity. Ziad Rustem, a member of the autonomous government’s energy commission, told us, “Only 25 percent of oil wells in northeast Syria are operating. The rest have stopped because of the war and the embargo on Syrian oil.”
Raqqa, the ISIS capital from 2014 to 2017, is now SDF-controlled. The city was badly damaged by fierce fighting, but reconstruction has begun. In the center, where ISIS used to display human heads on stakes, there are huge letters spelling “I love Raqqa.” ISIS still has a support base in this Arab-majority region and cells regularly carry out operations, including suicide attacks. But the city seemed relatively calm. When Erdoğan invaded the north, he counted on an Arab uprising against the Kurds. It hasn’t happened.
Brainwashed against the Kurds
Polat Can explained, “The Arab clans in Deir al-Zor told us, ‘Don’t bring the regime back here. You’re Kurds and we don’t like you, but at least you’re Sunnis—we can work with you.’ The Syrian regime used to brainwash the Arab population against the Kurds by telling them we’re Zionists, atheists, capitalists. But in the regions that are almost 100 percent Arab, there have been no uprisings against the SDF.”
The recent Turkish invasion brought together Kurdish groups that used to oppose PYD dominance. Nari Mattini, a longtime opponent of the SDC, has now joined them. Mohsen Tahir, a member of the Kurdish National Council (ENKS), created at the instigation of the PDK (Democratic Party of Kurdistan), which is on good terms with Turkey and is intended to counterbalance PYD-PKK influence in the region, now admits that the priority is Kurdish unity to stop ethnic cleansing. That unity will depend on how relations between the PYD and the PDK develop; currently the PYD will not allow any other military force on the ground in Rojava.
In Ain Issa, midway between Raqqa and Kobane, a Russian patrol suddenly emerged from a military base: Russia has replaced the United States here. We had already encountered a Russian patrol near the Tell Tamr front line further east, around Hasakah, and a US patrol near the eastern oil fields. It’s unclear who is calling the shots.
Do the Kurds trust the Russians more than they trust the United States? Abdi told us that, for now, “Moscow is working on a solution between the Kurds and the Syrian regime.” But he and other prominent Kurds know Russia and Turkey made a bargain over Rojava that benefited the Syrian government. “Initially, Russia ‘gave’ Afrin to Turkey in exchange for Homs, Ghouta, and a small part of Idlib for the Syrian regime. Then it ‘ceded’ Ras al-Ayn and Tell Abyad to Turkey in exchange for another bit of Idlib.” The Kurds could be the biggest losers in these trades.
It was cold and wet in Kobane, and reconstruction work in the town was on hold because of fears of another invasion. In 2014 the invader was ISIS. Kobane is now threatened by the Turkish army and its allied militias, some including former jihadist fighters. The inhabitants, convinced that war was imminent, were digging tunnels to withstand attack. If it happens, the fate of Kobane might determine Rojava’s fate too.
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Syria: Who’s in control of Idlib?
By Zulfiqar AliBBC Reality Check 18 February 2020
The northern Syrian province of Idlib is the last remaining stronghold controlled by forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad.
Syrian government forces have been pushing into rebel-held territory with the help of Iranian-backed militias and Russian airstrikes.
Dozens of towns and villages have been captured by Syrian forces including a key strategic highway, the main economic artery through Syria from north to south, linking Damascus, Homs and Aleppo.
The fighting has led to the collapse of a fragile cease-fire brokered in 2018 by Turkey, Iran and Russia.
Turkey supports the Syrian rebels, while Russia backs the Syrian government’s campaign to retake the area.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to drive back Syrian troops already in Idlib province unless they withdraw by the end of February.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said 1,240 Turkish military vehicles have crossed into Idlib in February, along with around 5,000 soldiers.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Syrian government forces have captured the crucial M5 highway first time since 2012
Who controls Idlib?
Idlib has been controlled by a number of rival opposition factions since government forces lost control of the province in 2015.
The main armed groups operating there are:
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, a jihadist alliance)
National Liberation Front (Turkish-backed rebel alliance)
Hurras al-Din (pro-al-Qaeda HTS offshoot)
Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP, Chinese Uighur-dominated jihadist group)
In January 2019, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an alliance of jihadists groups, launched a large-scale offensive against rival rebel groups in the area.
HTS has now become one of the strongest militant groups in northern Syria. It largely controls Idlib province, including the provincial capital and the border crossing with Turkey at Bab al-Hawa.
In 2016, al-Nusra Front declared that it had severed formal ties with the al-Qaeda network and renamed itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.
The following year, it merged with several small jihadist groups fighting in Syria and formed HTS.
Although HTS insists it is independent and not linked to an external entity, the UN, US and Turkey consider it a group associated with al-Qaeda and list it as a terrorist organisation.
Although analysts are cautious about making numerical estimates, Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, an independent analyst, says he believes HTS is the biggest group, which still controls large parts of Idlib province, carries out most of the fighting against government forces and has between 15,000 to 20,000 fighters.
“HTS has also set up and backed a civilian administration in the area – the Salvation Government- that has thousands of employees,” Al-Tamimi says.
In a report published in January, the UN gave a slightly lower estimate of between 12,000 and 15,000 fighters in Idlib associated with HTS, including many foreigners.
This report says that there are an additional 3,500 to 5,000 fighters affiliated with the Hurras al-Din group.
Syrian government supporters say the numbers are significantly higher.
Pro-government politician, Fares Shehabi, told us that he believes there are there are as many as 100,000 HTS fighters in Idlib.
He says HTS is affiliated to al-Qaeda despite its denials. “They carry al-Qaeda flags, they practise al-Qaeda methods,” he said
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption HTS is the most powerful group in the only remaining area still held by rebels in Syria
Other groups
The other significant force is the National Liberation Front (NLF), which was formed in 2018 by rebel factions wanting to counter HTS.
It is a Turkish-backed alliance that includes hardline Islamist groups like Ahrar al-Sham and Faylaq al-Sham, as well as several groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) – a force considered more “moderate” by Western powers.
In October NLF merged with other rebel groups in northern Syria and rebranded itself to become part of the Syrian National Army (SNA) under the command of the Syrian Interim Government’s (SIG) Ministry of Defence.
But Aron Lund, a fellow with the US-based research group The Century Foundation, says the NLF “is still the same group of Idlib-based factions as before the SNA rebranding”, noting that the alliance is held together by Turkish leadership, as well as Turkish money, weapons and supplies.
“They’re clearly a weaker force than HTS,” according to Lund. “They lack the cohesion, logistics, and organization of that group, and they are not as well armed. However, they add some manpower and are closer to Turkey whose role is going to be key to what happens next in Idlib,” he says.
According to a report by the US Department of Defense released in February, the “Turkish-supported opposition likely consists of between 22,000 and 50,000 fighters from more than 30 different groups.”
There are other groups as well.
One is Hurras al-Din (Guardians of Religion), a splinter group from HTS that is widely believed to be al-Qaeda’s new affiliate in Syria.
Hurras al-Din is largely made up of HTS defectors and the two groups have so far found it difficult to set aside their differences and work together beyond occasional, limited collaboration.
Image copyrightAFPImage caption Idlib is the last rebel stronghold – if re-taken it would effectively signal the opposition’s defeat
Foreign militants
There are also many foreign jihadists in Idlib, many of whom are fighting for groups associated with al-Qaeda.
The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) is a group of Uighur fighters, who mostly fight alongside HTS.
The Uighurs – a Muslim ethnic minority primarily based in China’s Xinjiang province – established a presence in northern Syria in the early years of the civil war.
There are also the predominantly-Uzbek Tawhid and Jihad Brigade, which is aligned with HTS, and the Imam al-Bukhari Brigade.
“We believe there are about 30-40,000 foreign fighters mainly Uighur, Tajik, Uzbek, Turks, and others from 103 nationalities – many with their migrated families,” says Syrian MP Fares Shehabi.
But Raffaello Pantucci, of the UK-based security think tank the Royal United Services Institute, believes this number is too high.
“They and their families may not number more than several thousand,” he says.
There are also believed to be other foreign jihadists in Idlib, including Chechens and Uzbeks, although the numbers are likely to be smaller.
Civilians trapped in Idlib
A major concern now is for the civilians living in Idlib.
The UN estimates it is home to 3 million people, including 1 million children.
More than 40% of these come from other areas previously held by opposition forces.
The UN says the air and ground attacks in Idlib have been causing both “massive waves” of displacement and “major loss of civilian life”.
At least 1,710 civilians have been killed, including 337 women and 503 children since the escalation of the conflict in northwest Syria in April 2019
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YPJ fighter Nûcan Cuma martyred in Serêkaniyê
YPJ announced the martyrdom of Nûcan Cuma in the resistance against the Turkish invasion of Serêkaniyê.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Thursday, 13 Feb 2020, 20:20
The General Command of the Women’s Defense Units (YPJ, Yekîneyên Parastina Gel) has announced that YPJ fighter Şêrin Silêman Murad (Nom de Guerre: Nûcan Cûma) fell a martyr in the resistance against the Turkish invasion of Serêkaniyê (Ras al-Ain).
Serêkaniyê was one of the first cities to be attacked during the Turkish invasion of northern Syria, which began on 9 October 2019. For ten days, resistance was put up against NATO’s second largest army until the agreement of a ceasefire – which was actually never respected by the Turkish army and its jihadist auxiliary forces – implicated the withdrawal of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from Serêkaniyê.
When exactly and under what circumstances Murad died, however, is unclear. For a long time it was not known whether the Kurdish woman was captured or died in battle, which delayed the announcement of her death.
Şêrin Silêman Murad was born in Girkê Legê (Arabic: al-Muabbada), a small town in northeastern Syria in which Kurds make up the majority of the population, as the daughter of a patriotic working class family. In 2011, Murad, who had been taking part in the Rojava revolution since its inception, joined the local women’s struggle groups. Since the YPJ was founded on 3 April 2013, she has been an active member.
YPJ described Murad as a selfless woman who followed her convictions with courage and dedication; “She fought in the front ranks of the resistance without batting an eyelid, her attitude testifying to the passion for revolution in the hearts of the women of Rojava. Our friend Nûcan gave her life defending her motherland. It is the dignified attitude of patriotic and freedom-loving women like hers that will lead us to victory. We remember Nûcan and our other friends who died in the Resistance of Honor with the greatest respect, deep gratitude and loving remembrance and express our condolences to their families and to the peoples of North and East Syria. We promise to continue our resistance until we have realized the ideals and achieved all their dreams.”
People arbitrarily detained as “YPG sympathizers” in Afrin
Refugees from Afrin speak of absurd abduction methods by the jihadist occupying militias.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Thursday, 13 Feb 2020, 22:04
Due to persecution and the arbitrary rule of Turkish-backed militias, M. F. had to leave the occupied Afrin city about 20 days ago. He reports on the absurd kidnapping methods of the invading forces and explains how jihadists come to the villages and address young people as “Heval” or “Refiq”, as comrade, and when they react, they kidnap them as “YPG sympathizers” and demand ransom. He also reports on what the jihadists call a “clean-up operation”, a wave of attacks on villages, in which the doors and windows of houses were smashed and the apartments looted. All those who protested, including the elderly, were mistreated by the jihadists.
“At checkpoints, they address the young people as ‘Refiq’ or ‘Heval’. If the young people turn around and look, they are kidnapped for alleged relations with the YPG, and ransom money is demanded from the families,” explains M. F. and goes on to talk about his experiences under occupation: “The gangs have kidnapped a young person from our village. He is still missing. They also kidnapped the owner of the generator that supplies the village with electricity. They demanded a ransom from the family for his release. But although the money was paid, he still hasn’t returned. The Furqat al-Hamza gang also kidnapped a woman who had left her apartment in the evening to check the electricity supply. She disappeared seven months ago.”
Regarding the reasons for his escape, M. F. says: “I have given my children the names of the martyrs. Then I learned that I was to be deported. Out of concern for my children, I was forced to leave the village.”
Turkish military vehicles enter the Bab al-Hawa crossing at the Syrian-Turkish border, in Idlib governorate, Syria, Feb. 9, 2020.
Amid heightened Turkish-Russian tensions in Idlib and a more assertive Iranian posture in the region, Syrian Kurds are said to be silently weighing their options in the event the conflict escalates and are not ruling out the prospect of fighting along with Syrian government forces.
Turkey had appeared rather calm last month when the Syrian army marched on Maaret al-Numan, an offensive that unfolded against the backdrop of a flurry of contacts between diplomats and military and intelligence officials in Moscow. Moreover, Turkish officials let Syrian rebel commanders know that the strategic M4 and M5 highways had to be somehow reopened as they briefed them about the talks with Russia in meetings in the Turkish border cities of Gaziantep and Reyhanli Jan. 15.
Yet when the Syrian army moved on to its next target, Seraqib, in late January, Turkey appeared to be going on a war footing to prevent the fall of the town, which lies on the junction of the M5 and M4 highways. It began sending reinforcements to Idlib, a move that came after Gen. Tod Wolters, the commander of the US European Command, visited Ankara Jan. 30 to discuss the situation in Syria, as shelling by Syrian government forces killed eight Turks, including soldiers and civilian contractors, Feb. 3 near Seraqib. While Ankara urged a return to the cease-fire line behind its 12 observation posts in the region, the Syrian forces took control of nearly 100 locations within a week, heedless of Turkey’s intervention threats. With Turkish forces cutting off the eastern approach, they drew an arch from the south to the west to quickly capture Seraqib. As a result, seven Turkish military bases, including three recently established checkpoints, were besieged as of Feb. 8.
Turkey has continued to send reinforcements into Idlib, with hundreds of vehicles crossing the border. Turkish intelligence officials have reportedly held another meeting with some 40 rebel commanders in Reyhanli, telling them negotiations with Russia have failed and they should “prepare for the worst.” A source who attended the meeting told Reuters the rebels saw Idlib city as “a red line.”
All those developments in the northwest are reverberating to the east of the Euphrates River, where the Syrian Kurds are silently preparing for possible scenarios. Amid the escalation in Idlib, the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) has mounted attacks in the Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain areas but failed to pose a serious challenge to the Kurds. The Kurds, meanwhile, are mulling how to take advantage of evolving equilibriums in the event of a broader Russian-Turkish rift.
Turkey’s beating of war drums over Idlib has led the Kurds to consider the option of collaborating with the Syrian army in eventual offensives to retake areas to the west of the Euphrates. The focal point of the Kurds is the Afrin region, which Turkey seized in March 2018 as part of efforts to stymie the Kurdish drive for self-rule in Syria on the grounds that it is led by affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the insurgent group in Turkey that Ankara considers to be a terrorist organization. According to Syrian Kurdish sources contacted by Al-Monitor, the Kurdish sentiment and assessments could be summarized as follows:
The Kurds have learned a good lesson from Operation Peace Spring in October, through which Turkey secured a foothold to the east of the Euphrates. They have reinforced their conviction that placing too much trust in the United States is a mistake, that they should not ignore Russia and that a settlement could be reached only through negotiations with Damascus.
With US forces focused on the oil fields in Rmelan, Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor in the northwest, the notion of opening more room to Russia without severing ties with the United States is being put into practice. There is even talk about offering a new base to Russia, which has already taken over several facilities evacuated by the United States, in a bid to encourage it to press Damascus in favor of the Kurds.
The Kurds could get fresh room to maneuver if a continued escalation in Idlib causes the Russian-Turkish partnership to collapse. They do not rule out the possibility of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) or the People’s Protection Units backing the government forces if the clashes in Idlib grow into a war between the Syrian army and Turkey. In such an event, new fronts might be opened from Tell Rifaat and Manbij against the Turkish-controlled Euphrates Shield triangle between Azaz, Jarablus and al-Bab, in addition to possible military moves in areas to the east of the Euphrates, where the Turkish military and the SNA are present.
All those prospects, however, depend on Damascus engaging in full-fledged negotiations with the SDF, building on the dialogue that Russia initiated between the two sides after Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring, which resulted in the Syrian army’s return to certain stretches of the border with Turkey. If the risk of a war in Idlib does not materialize and the Syrian army reaches Afrin, the Kurds might still join the campaign at that point. At present, Russia is tacitly facilitating Kurdish operations against the Turkish-backed groups controlling Afrin.
If the escalation on the ground results in major tensions with Turkey, Russia might end its strategy of letting Turkey safely conduct military operations, including the “blinding” of air defense systems to the activity of Turkish aircraft, preventing confrontation between the Turkish and Syrian armies, reining in pro-government militia and minimizing the risk of asymmetric responses, as seen in Turkey’s Olive Branch and Euphrates Shield operations. The termination of such brake mechanisms, which have functioned thanks to joint coordination centers, might lead to surprise developments anywhere the Turkish military is present.
Alternatively, if Turkey and Russia agree on a new cease-fire line after the reopening of the M4 and M5 highways, Moscow might return to its strategy of paying regard to Turkish concerns on the Kurdish issue. For the Kurds, this would mean going back to the waiting room. The rapid changes in Idlib, however, have weakened the possibility of Russia greenlighting a Turkish offensive on Kobani in return for an Idlib deal, a scenario the Kurds have taken seriously for some time.
Meanwhile, a new aspect is emerging in Iran’s involvement in Syria, which the Kurds are not very willing to discuss as of yet. Iran had kept a low profile until recently, as the United States used the Iranian presence to justify its stay in Syria and Israel did the same to strike targets on Syrian territory. But since the killing of Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in early January, Iran has vowed to oust US forces from Iraq and Syria as part of a broader “revenge” strategy, which appears to have brought it to the Idlib and western Aleppo fronts. Along with Hezbollah, pro-Iranian groups such as the Zainabiyoun Brigade, made up of Pakistani Shiites, and the Fatemiyoun Brigade, an Afghan Shiite militia, have taken part in the recent fighting in the region. Moreover, Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has vowed that “the Syrian government and its allies from the resistance front will go from Idlib to the eastern Euphrates to expel the Americans.”
The Iranian strategy closely concerns the Kurds. If the Kurds are to be drawn away from the United States and brought closer to Damascus, then meeting Kurdish demands on a “reasonable” level is not something Iran would object to. Despite its own Kurdish problem, Iran has been careful in its ties with the Syrian Kurds since the beginning of the Syrian crisis. While Russia sees rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus as a shortcut to closing ongoing fronts and moving on to the reconstruction stage, Iran is irked that Russia has opened too much room to Turkey. Ankara’s conditions on the Kurds, meanwhile, are blocking Moscow’s exit strategy. Tehran, for its part, favors Kurdish alignment with Damascus in a way that would bring further gains to the Syrian government.
Of note, the PKK leadership, based in Iraq’s Qandil Mountains, has come to see Damascus as the address of settlement, taking into account the Iranian factor as much as the Russian one.
Yet if the SDF keeps up its partnership with the United States, it could face the risk of the Idlib scenario being repeated to the east of the Euphrates at the expense of the Kurds; hence the significance of Velayati’s warning.
With all that said, the main factor defining the present sentiment among the Kurds is their sense of uncertainty. Thus, no one in the Kurdish movement is willing to declare a clear position yet, making do with general assessments.
Fehim Tastekin is a Turkish journalist and a columnist for Turkey Pulse who previously wrote for Radikal and Hurriyet. He has also been the host of the weekly program “SINIRSIZ,” on IMC TV. As an analyst, Tastekin specializes in Turkish foreign policy and Caucasus, Middle East and EU affairs. He is the author of “Suriye: Yikil Git, Diren Kal,” “Rojava: Kurtlerin Zamani” and “Karanlık Coktugunde – ISID.” Tastekin is founding editor of the Agency Caucasus. On Twitter: @fehimtastekin
The Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian and Syriac youth established the Til Temir Military Council against the Turkish attacks. Council Spokesperson Brûsk said they came together to counter the invasion attacks.
ERSIN ÇAKSU
TIL TEMIR
Monday, 10 Feb 2020, 10:33
Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian and Syriac young people established the Til Temir Military Council.
“The youth of the peoples of the region came together to fight shoulder to shoulder against the occupation,” said Assembly Spokesperson Demhat Brûsk.
The Til Temir Military Council, which was established with the self-defense forces of the peoples of the region, is struggling to liberate its occupied territory.
Speaking to ANF, Til Temir Military Council spokesperson, Demhat Brûsk, stated that the Turkish state is trying to occupy their territory by targeting all the peoples and beliefs of the region.
Underlining that all the peoples of the region are under occupation attacks and threats, Brûsk said: “The city of Til Temir, where our Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian and Syriac people live, is under the occupation threats and attacks of the Turkish state. We decided to establish this military council to protect our people and our lands.”
Duty to protect the people and territory
Brûsk continued: “Young people from the mentioned communities are part of the Council. At the same time the Syriac Military Council, the Khabour Guards (Hares el Xabûr) and the self-defense forces established by the Kurdish and Arab youth have also decided to take part in this Council. So, we all took on the mission of protecting our people and our lands shoulder to shoulder.”
Call to join the Military Council
Stating that many Kurdish and Arab youth whose lands have been occupied in Serêkaniyê have also joined the Council, Demhat Brûsk said: “We are calling on our people to join the Military Council and liberate our lands. We are not only going to liberate Til Temir center but also the surrounding occupied villages. We promise to rescue our lands from and expel the invaders.”
Demhat Brûsk ended his remarks by reminding that “the Turkish invasion is targeting not only a people or a belief, but all the peoples and beliefs of the region. At the same time, it is trying to take our land from us. We will fight until we stop the invasion of the Turkish state, avenge our martyrs, and remove the invaders from our lands.”
The Turkish state’s genocidal offensive seeking to invade North and East Syria has continued since October 9 in violation of international law.
ANF
TIL TEMIR
Friday, 7 Feb 2020, 14:05
According to reports from the ground, Turkish invasion forces have carried out yet another attack on the town of Til Temir (Tal Tamr) in northern Syria on Friday.
Initial reports say that six fighters of Til Temir Military Council have lost their lives in the attack. Further details about the aggression were not immediately available.
During the ongoing military offensive seeking to invade North and East Syria, which was launched on October 9, Turkish state forces and allied mercenaries have been heavily attacking the area of Til Temir in the Khabour region, inhabited by the Syriac, Assyrian and Christian community.
The villages around Til Temir and the small town of Ain Issa on the strategically important M4 highway are the focus of the invasion troops. The region lies outside the targeted “safe zone”, a thirty-kilometer-deep strip on the Turkish border, and is being attacked unabated. The Til Temir district consists of 180 villages and is crossed by the M4 highway, an important target for invading troops, located between Kobane and Ain Issa.
The region has become one of the most severely attacked targets in Northern Syria during recent weeks. Turkey’s attacks are aimed at expanding the occupied zone to the south and taking control of the strategically important M4 highway.
Occupation army continues to change demography of Afrin; settles thousands of mercenary families there
The Turkish occupying power continues to change the demography of the occupied Afrin canton by dismissing the indigenous people and settling the families of mercenaries from Idlib instead.
NEWS04 Feb 2020, Tue – 15:232020-02-04T15:23:00 News- Afrin
A source from Balbulah district said that more than 800 families from Idlib were settled in the district.
The settlement process was supervised by mercenaries of Souqur al-Shamal and Sultan Murad.
Mercenary families were settled in the district and in the villages of Bilan, Qurna, Hayama, Sariah, Bika, Qastal Khudria, Hassan Dera. ”
Mercenaries imposed on the people of Afrin the settlement of mercenaries in their homes.
In a related context, another source stated that the Turkish occupation army mercenaries settled new families of mercenaries from Idlib, in the village of Trinda, affiliated to the Afrin Center, 55 families, and the village of Burj Haidar in the district of Sherawa, 68 mercenary families in Astir village of Afrin Center two families, and the village of 240 mercenaries. In addition to the village of Kafira, affiliated to the Afrin Center 85 mercenary families, in Iskan village of Sherawa district, around 66 mercenary families, Kafr Zeit village of Jandares district about 57 mercenary families, Jouqa village affiliated to Afrin Center 24 mercenary families, Bablit village of the Afrin Center 62 mercenary families, Tel Tawil related to Afrin center 45 family mercenaries, in the village Basouta 38 family mercenaries.
Kidnapping civilians for ransom
According to a source from Raju region, the mercenaries of the Turkish occupation army kidnapped a number of citizens in Afrin and demanded ransom in exchange for their release.
The source obtained the names of the kidnapped, each of them Ezzedine Anwar Ali, who was kidnapped two weeks ago, who is 35 years old, from the people of Hassan Kalkawi village of Raju district.
Mercenaries with the kidnappers demanded an amount of 300,000. Q in return for his release.
On February 1, mercenaries kidnapped two citizens of Hayamu village, which belongs to Raju district, and they were Ayhan Muhammad Mamo and Haitham Muhammad Mamo.
The fate of those kidnapped remains unknown.
It is reported that the Turkish occupation mercenaries kidnapped a citizen of Afrin a few days ago, an oil merchant, and after receiving the ransom they killed him.
Today we’re talking with Wladimir van Wilgenburg on his latest book, the Kurds of Northern Syria: Governance, Diversity and Conflicts. Wladimir van Wilgenburg is an analyst of the Middle East, with a particular focus on Kurdish issues. Wladimir has closely covered key events on the ground, including the battles with the Islamic State in Raqqa and Baghouz Fawqani. His book provides a nuanced assessment of the Kurdish autonomous experience and prospects for self-rule in northeast Syria. It is the first English-language book to capture the transformations that have occurred since the start of the civil war in 2011. Wladimir had unprecedented access to northeast Syria and conducted momentous field work to encapsulate the evolution of self-rule in Rojava.
Thank you so much Wladimir for this opportunity to interview you about your new book. What inspired you to conduct this research and write the book? Can you discuss your research methods?
Wladimir van Wilgenburg (WW): It was not my own idea. I was approached by Dr. Faleh Jabar and he had a project for the Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies to do a research project, not on the Kurds only of Syria, but also of Iran, Turkey, and Iraq. So, all the parts of Kurdistan, let’s say. Me and [co-author] Dr. Harriet Allsopp, we did the research together and the book is focused not only on the field research, interviews, but also a number of surveys. We did around 180 surveys. The idea of the project was to have a sort of standard book so that you have a book on all these Kurds from these different parts of Kurdistan. And that’s how it all started basically. Then, in 2016 I did several months of research on the ground. But because of the difficult conditions, sadly Dr. Faleh Jabar passed away in 2018 and also because of the developments on the ground that took some time for that. The book was published in 2019.
CT: What is the current state of the union in the Autonomous Administration? And what does the governance structure look like?
WW: I mean the government structure is very different if you compare it, for instance, to Iraqi Kurdistan where you have the Kurdistan Regional Government because in northeastern Syria, this is not just the Kurdish areas they control. You have, of course, Rojava, Syrian Kurdistan, but they also control areas like Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. So, the Administration is not based on, for instance, a Kurdistani identity, the identity is multi-ethnic. It’s a combination. That’s why the Administration logo, it’s in four languages. And that’s why the situation is a little bit different than, for instance, for the Iraqi Kurds, because the Syrian Kurdish led Administration, they fought also in our Arab majority cities. For instance, in Iraq the Peshmerga didn’t really fight inside the city of Mosul but in Syria, it’s very different.
CT: How have Kurdish politics in Syria evolved since the civil war started in 2011? What are the notable successes and failures throughout the development of the PYD (Democratic Union Party) led project of self-rule? WW: Well, the Syrian Kurdish parties, in the beginning, they attempted to establish a united sort of Administration. So, on one hand, you had the Kurdish National Council, and on the other hand you had the Democratic Union Party. Between 2012 and 2014 there were attempts to reach sort of a unity agreement, but this never worked. And as a result, they didn’t have, for instance, a similar social contract that you have in Iraqi Kurdistan where the Kurdish parties agreed on forming a government together. They didn’t have that. But despite of that they have been very successful in creating an Administration because in the end they controlled over 30% of northeastern Syria. Of course, recently they had setbacks because of Turkish operations, but in general, they managed to create, out of nothing, the whole Administration. And for instance, they managed to have an Administration with thousands of employees and they’re selling oil. So, in a short period of time between 2014 when they first announced the Administration, until now, they have managed to build like a huge Administration system. But there’s also things that can be improved. It would have been better if they could have held elections because until now, most of the councils and the Administration bodies, they’re appointed representatives from their own community. But in this kind of civil war, it’s difficult to do a democratic election. You have the Syrian civil war. I mean, they’re still fighting against ISIS. There are still challenges from the Syrian regime or attacks by Turkey. You cannot compare it to, for instance, the situation will Iraqi Kurdistan where they had the no-fly zone and there was not really a big threat at that point from Saddam Hussein. But then in the end, they had their own internal differences in Iraqi Kurdistan. So, I think they could have maybe done elections, but at the same time, I’m not sure if you can blame them for not implementing a fully electoral system yet because there also are a lot of challenges like attacks from different actors.
CT: Focusing specifically on Turkey, how did the October invasion of last year affect the Autonomous Administration?
WW: Well, what’s interesting to see that at the same time a lot of things have changed, but at the same time things have not changed so much. So, Turkey, they control a limited border strip, which is completely isolated and surrounded by the SDF and the Administration is still working in northeastern Syria. So, they’re still able to pay the salaries and so far, there have been no major defections from the Kurdish-led forces from the Syrian Democratic Forces. And the situation is somehow still stable. But the fear is that in the future, there could be another Turkish attack. Although in that case, U S says they’re going to put huge sanctions chances on [Turkey]. There is still an attempt to reach an agreement with the Syrian government, and this is still not working well. So, the fear is that there’s going to be in the future, either more pressure from Turkey or from the Syrian regime, but until now, even though that in October, Syrian government forces came to prevent the Turkish expansion, the Administration has not changed. So, as a foreigner, you can go all the way to the city of Manbij, where you don’t have regime checkpoints that arrest people. There is no regime education system in the Kurdish areas. There are no people that are being stopped and arrested by the Mahabharata of the Syrian regime. So far, the Administration has stayed intact, but they lost some territory. And the fear is that in the future, Russia could put more pressure on them to surrender to the Syrian regime. While until now also, Damascus is very much focused on the battle in Idlib. So, it also is very much related to developments elsewhere in Syria and what is going to happen with the future of this Administration.
CT: I think it was last week or the week before, the Rojava Information Center released the budget of the Administration and their economy seems to be doing well. Can you discuss the factors that contribute to the success of the economy?
WW: Well, I remember before 2014, the Administration didn’t have a budget, but what they successfully did is that they started to control a large amount of the oil through the battles against ISIS. I mean, Ramalan was already controlled before they defeated [ISIS]. There was basically an attempt by Turkish-backed groups to control Ramalan. This was like much earlier around 2012 – 2013, but then after the battle of Del ez-Zor they also controlled major oil and gas fields in Deir ez-Zor. So that made the Administration possible for Administration basically to sell the oil. Some of the oil is going to the Kurdistan Regional Government and some of the oil is going to the Syrian government still. With this money they have a budget to basically pay their employees. And another contributing factor is also that the US was paying some salaries of the fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces. They are also providing some financial assistance for mostly fighters, not for the Administration. I think this made it possible for the Administration to actually pay their employees. And this is also why that until now, although there has been a bad economic situation in the rest of Syria, there’s a lot of problems for the Syrian pound as it has crashed. There is also neighboring Lebanon where there is a lot of economic problems and protests. In general, the areas of the regime have many difficulties. For instance, with [the lack of] cooking gas and fuel for cars. But in general, the Administration has even been able to increase the salaries for the employees to deal with the rising inflation and the increasing high prices for food products. And they also banned exports of meat to the Kurdistan region and they are importing other products so that they can sell them for a cheaper price to the local population. I think that although some people say that governance wise, they were not so successful while on the military side, they were very successful. I think that’s not true. I mean they could have been more inclusive, but in general, the Administration has been quite successful in being such a big Administration, like so many employees, despite of all these challenges.
CT: The Faysh Khabur border crossing seems to be one of the lifelines of the Administration and Rojava. Do you see any imminent threats to whether the border will be open or continue to be open?
WW: There seems to be some attempts by Russia and the Syrian regime to check if they can probe the Americans to see if they can find a way to that border. But according to the official agreement between the regime and the SDF, the regime is not supposed to go to the Iraqi-Syrian border. But, also there is still a fear that Turkey could attack the small town of Kahtanieh and then make up a small corridor towards Abira that will cut off the border access because they will not control the border, but there will be no way to go around this area because it will be cut off. So far, the situation is stable. There are still threats of a possible Turkish attack, but Turkey also knows if they do an attack, there will be heavy repercussions because there’s a lot of support in the US Congress and the Senate for the Kurds in Syria. It seems the situation could stay the same. But I talked to SDF leader Mazloum Kobani and he also said, despite of everything, we should not rely on the situation. There is still a possibility that there could be an attack in Jazeera and Kahtanieh.
CT: And you discussed the inability for the Administration to be completely inclusive. Could you talk about the attitude the Arab tribes have?
WW: Well, I mean, as I said, the issue of inclusivity could be improved, but also the problem is if you look to the rest of Syria, if you compare the self-Administration to a piece of Syria [controlled by] the Syrian regime, which has killed thousands of people, not only by airstrikes but also in prisons. And if you look to the Turkish-backed groups, they have done major looting and kidnapping people for ransom. If you compare the self-Administration to the regime and Turkey including tribes, I think the SDF has been much more successful. This is not only me saying that, there’s also other research that talks about this, that basically the SDF has been more successful of let’s say coaptation of the tribes. So although some of the tribal leaders are still supported by Damascus, you’ve seen that the tribes that are still inside on the ground and the SDF maybe for various reasons, maybe they are not completely supportive of the SDF, but in Deir ez-Zor they don’t really like the Syrian regime. They prefer SDF over the Syrian regime. Also, in Raqqa, there have been challenges, but at the same time, the situation is still stable. I think this also depends on the region, but I think they have still been quite successful because even ISIS was not able to control Deir ez-Zor because all the tribes wanted to have a piece of the oil income. There were some protests in the past against the SDF because of the high fuel prices because the people are complaining why are we going to get car fuel here? It’s more expensive in Deir ez-Zor, while we have all this oil, but it is more expensive, for instance, than in Hasakah, but now I think they evened out those prices. I think in general it doesn’t mean that the Arab tribes necessarily support the system, but despite of that they have been sort of successful in including certain tribal leaders, for instance, the councils of Deir ez-Zor, in Raqqa, and also in Manbij. They have had a working relationship with these tribes. But if this Administration survives in the future and will get more recognition than it will be much more possible to get a better inclusive system because then if they have recognition, they can also have local elections. But now with all these challenges, it’s much more difficult.
CT: What other ways can the Administration improve their governance structure? I know you’ve talked several times about the inclusiveness and the inability for them to move forward with it because of all these threats. But what else can they improve on?
WW: They can improve by interacting with other Kurdish [entities]. There is now attempts by the SDF leader, Mazloum Kobani to reach a better agreement, for instance, with the British National Council. There are attempts to bring a better Kurdish unity. Also, the Syrian Democratic Council, they are organizing a dialogue. They have two Syrian dialogues. They have done this in several countries. Even people that participate in these meetings, they can criticize the Administration for their shortcomings. So what they’re trying to do is to try to bring even more people that are maybe not 100% supportive of the Administration about and maybe interested in seeing if there is space for them in this Administration to bring them together and to create an internal Syrian opposition. One of the problems I think, it’s not just because of the inclusivity of the Administration. Because if you look to the regime or the Turkish-backed groups, they’re not inclusive at all. And they don’t even care if they’re inclusive because they don’t have support of the US-led coalition. It’s just because that the SDF and the Kurds, and the Administration, they have support from the US-led coalition that there’s so much focus on [inclusivity]. But if it was the Syrian regime or if it was the Turkish backing them, there would not be this focus on inclusivity. But I think that’s why it’s also more difficult to be more inclusive because you have, the Syrian opposition that basically supports the Turkish invasion. And then you have tribes with the Syrian regime that also support the dictatorship of the Syrian regime. So I think that’s, that’s the challenge, but maybe through more intra-Kurdish dialogue and more intra-Syrian dialogue, and if they are able to continue to pay the salaries of their employees and also give more positions to certain people from Arab backgrounds, and try to improve the economic situation, not only in the Kurdish towns, but also in Deir ez-Zor. And I think it will, it will be able to improve it much better. But I think so far, they have not neglected the Arab areas. Sometimes Kurds will complain, why does all this humanitarian support go to Raqqa or Deir ez-Ezor. I think the main challenge is what’s going to happen with the Syrian regime and Russia.
CT: I know it’s hard to predict the future as it depends on a lot of the various factors that you talked about today. But are you optimistic, optimistic for the future of the Autonomous Administration? What do you see in possibly five years in northeastern Syria?
WW: I think in the short term, unless Turkey attacks, I think the Administration has a good, status quo, if the U S stays and the state situation stays like this. Then I think they have good prospects. But I think the main challenge is what’s going to happen after Idlib and if they will focus more on northeast of Syria. I was more optimistic about the future of the northeast of Syria when there was just US forces there to be very honest. I mean they still have prospects. I’m not saying that it’s going to be necessarily a negative scenario because it’s still very much out in the open. Like nobody exactly knows what’s going to happen. But I think there will be much more challenges for the Administration and the Syrian Democratic Forces now that the US has reduced its presence.
CT: What comes next for you? Do you have any upcoming projects or any current projects that you’re working on?
WW: Well, I mean I’m still working on several projects. I’m still doing research on the SDF for a paper. I am also in general writing articles about the situation in the northeast of Syria. I am also looking for possibilities of maybe publishing a new book on Kurds, but so far that’s unclear. I keep following the current situation in Rojava in northeast Syria, but also in other parts of Kurdistan, like the Kurdistan Regional of Iraq, the Kurds in Turkey and the southeast of Turkey or North Kurdistan, and the situation of the Iranian Kurds of Rojhelat. So, I keep doing news reports, but also bigger think-tank reports.
CT: Good luck with everything and thank you so much. I’m very excited to read your book.
The Turkish state’s genocidal offensive seeking to invade North and East Syria has continued since October 9 in violation of international law.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Monday, 3 Feb 2020, 11:34
According to reports from the ground, Turkish military forces launched a wave of aggression against the villages of Merenaz, Malikiyê, Şewarxa and Keleha Şewarxa in Afrin’s Shera district at around 11:00 local time on Monday.
Concurrent attacks by the Turkish army targeted the northwest of the Ain Issa town and the M4 international highway.
The 93rd Brigade of the Syrian regime forces was also attacked. The bombardment reportedly began at 12:00 local time Monday noon.
Earlier today, Turkish attacks on the region claimed the life of a civilian.
The invading Turkish state and its mercenaries have been carrying out heavy weapon attacks in Sherawa and Shera districts in Afrin and Shehba regions since 4.30 this morning.
A civilian called Ali Mele lost his life in the attack on the village of Aqibe in Shêrawa (Afrin), and many more were injured.
Intense UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) flight is experienced in the regions of Shehba and Sherewa. The village of Hirble in Shehba is also under bombardment.
At the same time, the invading Turkish state and its affiliated mercenaries targeted civilian settlements and bombarded the flour mill in the village of Feysal in Shera with artillery shots.
According to information received, warplanes of the invading Turkish state are flying over Afrin and Shehba.
Turkey’s mercenaries cut down 400 olive trees in Afrin
The Turkish invasion of Afrin has left two years behind. During this period of time, the Turkish state and allied mercenaries have committed numerous crimes and massacres.
ANF
AFRIN
Tuesday, 28 Jan 2020, 18:06
Turkish-backed mercenary groups have cut down numerous olive trees in the village of Kafarjana in Afrin’s Shera district.
According to sources on the ground, the mercenary group Liwa al-Waqas have cut down 400 40-year-old trees in the villages of Sanara and Hakaha in the Shiye district.
According to Afrin Human Rights Organization, the occupation forces have cut down more than 15,000 olive trees in the Afrin region since it was invaded.
According to the recorded data, 3 to 5 million trees were plundered by the invaders.
Only 160 are left of the total 300 olive plants in Afrin after its occupation. The Turkish state held these plants to ransom, causing a significant decrease in the soap production in the canton. A 25 percent decrease has been recorded in the production of commercial products.
SDF: Turkey wants to extend the occupation zone
The Turkish army with its proxy troops is attacking further areas outside the already occupied zone. The SDF informs about the current developments of the past days in Northern Syria.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Saturday, 25 Jan 2020, 17:53
The press centre of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has reported continued attacks of the Turkish state and its Islamist proxies on Northern Syria. According to the SDF statement, Turkey continues to try to take over further areas beyond the established occupation zone.
“The Turkish state and its militias are violating the ceasefire agreement and have carried out numerous attacks between January 21 and 24,” said the statement published today.
Among the details, it is said that mortar and howitzer shells were fired into the villages of Xirbet Beqer, Sevan and Erîda in Ain Issa town on January 21 and 22. The bombing caused material damage.
On 22 January, a mortar and howitzer attack was carried out on the village of Um El Kêf near Til Temir (Tal Tamr).
On January 24, also in the vicinity of Til Temir, a comprehensive attack was launched on positions of the Syrian army and the Syriac Military Council in the villages of Erîşa, Qasimiyê, Reyhaniyê, Ebû Hêla, Mikran, Begara, Dawudiyê, Ewêyşa and Erbaîn. Syriac Military Council responded to the attack. During the fighting, numerous jihadists were killed and a military vehicle was destroyed. Weapons and ammunition were also confiscated.
The SDF also reported reconnaissance flights by Turkish drones in the Euphrates and Cizire regions in recent days.
1,500 jihadist families settled in Serekaniye
Turkey’s demographic change policy in the occupied territories in Northern Syria is gaining momentum. 1,500 families of jihadists have already been settled in the occupied city of Serekaniye.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Wednesday, 22 Jan 2020, 16:52
Since October 9, the Turkish state has been attacking northern Syrian cities in violation of international law. Despite a ceasefire agreement with Russia, the Turkish state terrorizes the people with artillery attacks and expels the original inhabitants of the region. Instead of the displaced population the families of the SNA mercenaries are settled.
The so-called “Syrian National Army” (SNA), commanded by Turkey, is an alliance of jihadist and right-wing extremist groups, some of which, like the Al-Qaeda branch Ahrar al-Sham, are also internationally recognised as terrorist organisations. The families of these jihadists from Idlib, Homs, Jarablus, Bab, Azaz and Ghouta are settled in the entire occupied territory.
According to the latest information, 1,500 families of members of the Sultan Murad Brigade and Liwa al-Sham were brought from Ceylanpınar in Northern Kurdistan to Serêkaniyê (Ras al-Ain) and settled in the districts of Xerabat and Hawarna two days ago. The jihadists celebrated the occupation with shots of joy in the air. In Ceylanpınar, a district of the Urfa province bordering Rojava, the Turkish army trained jihadists and sent them and their families across the Turkish border at Serêkaniyê.
Results of occupation’s violations against civilians in Afrin during two years of occupation
The Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries have killed more than 535 civilians from Afrin, injured more than 670 civilians, including 300 children, and abducted 3,300 civilians whose fate remains unknown. The violations spread to nature and archaeological sites.
DOSSIER17 Jan 2020, Fri – 12:572020-01-17T12:57:00 NEWS DESK
In January 20, 2018, the Turkish occupation army attacked Afrin canton and the civilians using all heavy weapons, and targeting women, children, the elderly and young people in addition to the archaeological and historical sites.
Because of these brutal attacks, Afrin residents were forced to get out of their land and homes, most of whom now live in al-Shahba canton near Afrin, some of whom went to the rest areas of northern and eastern Syria, and a number of them went to Aleppo.
After the displacement of the people, the families of mercenaries were settled in Afrin
Before the Turkish occupation of Afrin, the population of the canton was 550,000, but after the occupation and because of the displacement of more than 300,000 people from Afrin, only 20 percent of the indigenous population remained in Afrin, while the remaining 80 percent of the population are the families of mercenaries, residents of Hama, Homs, Idlib, Daraa and al-Ghouta countryside, who have been resettled in the area with the aim of making the demographic change.
The Turkish occupation army has committed numerous violations of human rights against civilians, nature, historical and archaeological sites, and due to the absence of human rights and humanitarian organizations in Afrin, all those violations cannot be documented.
Statistics of the dead and injured
During the two years of occupation, 534 civilians were killed in Afrin, 489 of them were killed as a result of the Turkish occupation’s shelling on the area and 54 civilians were killed under torture. The killing was also extended to journalists.
In two years, more than 670 civilians were injured as a result of the shelling by the Turkish occupation army, including 300 children.
Kidnapping the civilians
More than 6,000 people have been kidnapped in Afrin, the fate of 3,300 of whom including women are still unaccounted, and more than 700 people were tortured.
The story of 30-year-old Aras is painful and tragic, and it is the greatest example of the violations and brutality of the Turkish state and its affiliates. In the result of the brutal actions practiced against him, he has become deaf, all his reproductive organs have been damaged in addition to cutting three pieces of his left ear.
On November 19, 2019, the BBC’s Arabic section published the story of the citizen Aras.
More than 500 people have been kidnapped for ransoms, and the people are kidnapped and blackmailed on charges of working with the Autonomous Administration, but the main goal of the kidnapping is to demand ransom, which in some cases can amount to US $ 100,000.
The number of bombings (mines and explosive devices) reached 198.
Cutting and burning trees
The Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries cut more than 150,000 olive trees, more than 300 perennial and rare trees and more than 15,000 oak trees in Afrin canton with the aim of selling them as firewood.
More than 10,000 olive trees, and more than 2,150 dunams of agricultural lands planted with various crops were burned.
The destruction of schools, homes and places of worship
During the period of the attacks and after the occupation destroyed 64 schools in Afrin and its countryside, either in full or in part, resulted in the denial of study by more than 50,000 students.
Afrin schools, which have been converted into centers for various entities, are as follows:
Amir Ghubari School for Girls has been converted into a military police station, Azhar Afrin School has been converted into an intelligence headquarters and a torture center, and al-Karama School has been converted into a prison and a detention for abductees.
The Commercial High School has been converted into a place and a torture and detention center, the Afrin University building has been converted into a restaurant.
In all Afrin schools, Turkish curricula are taught, while Kurdish language education has been banned.
10 religious sites were destroyed, including the Center of the Yazidi Union in Afrin, where there were more than 25,000 Yazidis in Afrin before the occupation, only 7,000 of whom remained, and a compulsory Islamic law education center was opened.
The Alawite Center in the center of Mobata district was destroyed, forcing most Alawites to displace from Mobata.
The property and possessions of the Evangelical Church were looted and stolen in the center of Afrin…
Thousands of homes were destroyed completely or partially.
Changing the names of streets, neighborhoods and villages
The name of Newroz Roundabout has been changed to the Olive Branch Roundabout.
The name of the National Roundabout has been changed to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Roundabout.
The name of Kawa al-Haddad Roundabout has been changed to the Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi Roundabout.
The names of several villages in Bulbul district have also been changed:
The village of Kutana has been changed to Zafer Obasi.
Changing the name of the village of Qastal Mekdad to Seljuq Obasi.
Changing Kurzely’s name to Jafer Obasi.
Mercenaries loot and steal civilians’ property
140 of 300 olive presses in Afrin and its countryside have been looted and stolen, while the rest of the presses, their owners have had to share with a mercenary so as not to be robbed.
The contents of 7 soap factories were looted.
During the agricultural season in 2018, mercenaries stole more than 70,000 tons of olive oil, and they were sent to Turkey and then sold in the Spanish markets as a Turkish product. This amount does not include the 2019 season.
On the other hand, the livestock sector in Afrin was looted by the Turkish state and its mercenaries, and only 20 percent of the livestock that existed before the occupation remain in Afrin.
The looting of archaeological and historical sites
7 archaeological sites in Afrin were destroyed and vandalized, a number of which have been documented:
Nabi Hori Castle (Sirius).
Ain Dara Archaeological Hill.
Barad’s Historical Site (Marmaron).
The antiquities and artifacts stolen and transported to Turkey are the Basalt lion at the Ain Dara archaeological site, and a mosaic stolen from Nabi Hori archaeological site by a mercenary called Mohammed Ali, one of the leaders of the mercenary gangs.
Murders and rapes against women
Women were specifically targeted in Afrin by forcing them to wear black dress and veils, and they were prevented from leaving the house after they had become a symbol of liberation and took leadership positions in building a democratic society in Afrin and north and east Syria. A set of abuses against women in Afrin was documented:
More than 50 women have been killed in Afrin since the occupation.
210 women were injured.
60 women were raped.
In addition to 3 suicides due to oppression and psychological repercussions resulting from violations.
Since the occupation of Afrin by the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries, all treaties and conventions relating to the combat forms of discrimination against women have been violated.
These statistics and data have been obtained from Human Rights Organization in Afrin and the Kurdish Red Crescent.
Furthermore, a great number of YPG, YPJ, Internal Security Forces (Asayîş) and Self-Defense Forces’ fighters martyred.
The continuation of violations by mercenaries
The mercenary gangs continue committing their violations against the civilians in Afrin, who have been forcibly displaced to the canton of Al-Shahba.
The civilians’ homes, populated areas and children’s educational places are also targeted deliberately with the aim of intimidating them and preventing them from continuing their education. For example, targeting Aqiba village school more than three times in October last year.
This year, more than 102 cases of shelling and targeting with heavy weapons the populated areas in the areas of al-Shahba and rural areas of Sherawa district have been recorded.
The number of civilians martyred during these violations was 41 martyrs and 78 injured, most of them were children, women and people with special needs.
The continued shelling operations also led to the collapse of a number of civilian homes on the heads of their dwellers.
Tel Rifaat massacre
In December 2, 2019, the Turkish occupation army committed a brutal massacre against the people of Afrin who were forcibly displaced to the areas of al-Shahba in Tel Rifaat district, and the victims of the brutal massacre were 12 martyrs, most of them children.
The practices and brutality of the Turkish army and its mercenaries against the civilians are great, as they are waging a dirty and black psychological war against the people of Afrin residing in the areas of al-Shahba under the supervision of the Turkish intelligence (MIT). The aim of this psychological war is to intimidate the people, force them to displace and migrate again, and keep them away from Afrin permanently.
A.J ANHA
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YPG: We repeat our oath to our people to liberate Afrin
We commit ourselves to the struggle and resistance with the aim of liberating Afrin and our people, said the YPG.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Tuesday, 21 Jan 2020, 18:58
The General Command of People’s Defense Units (YPG) released a statement marking the second anniversary of the occupation of Afrin by the Turkish army and allied mercenaries.
The statement by YPG General Command includes the following:
“Two years have passed since the Turkish state and their mercenary proxies began the occupation of Afrin which still continues until today. They commit every kind of human rights violations and demographic change. The occupation started with Afrin and continues with Girê Spî (Tal Abyad) and Serêkaniyê (Ras al Ain) and without knowing any borders carries out a massacre and genocide against our people and the people of Northern Syria.
The Turkish state is attempting with all its force to legitimize their occupation and are expanding their attacks against northern Syria and western Kurdistan (Rojava) and are destroying the democratic progress that has been made by our people in regards to free co-existence with the aim of creating obstacles for further progress and development in western Kurdistan (Rojava) and northern Syria. The occupation and demographic change which they day by day are carrying out is a continuation of the occupation of Afrin which started 2 years ago. Today, in the cities of Girê Spî (Tal Abyad) and Serêkaniyê (Ras al Ain), they are expanding their fascist occupation and are changing the demographics of the region.
Today, all different types of human rights violations along with ethnic cleansing are being carried out in Afrin. Destruction and theft of the city’s wealth and theft of people’s land and properties is being carried out in a systematic way. The geography of Afrin is left face to face with the results of the fascist actions of the Turkish state. The entire world remained silent against the occupation of Girê Spî (Tal Abyad) and Serêkaniyê (Ras al Ain) and also remains silent against the occupation of Afrin which started two years ago and still see the occupation carried out by the Turkish state as legitimate and have shown no effort in taking necessary action against this occupation.
As YPG and YPJ, we will not remain silent against the expansion of the occupation and the actions that are being carried out by the fascists. We commit ourselves to the struggle and resistance with the aim of liberating Afrin and our people. We also commit ourselves more than ever before to resist against the occupiers and their expanding occupation and to more than ever before protect the value of our people and the achievements of the revolution. In this regard, we commemorate all martyrs of the Resistance of the Age and repeat our oath to our people to liberate Afrin. We will continue our struggle in every way in order for our people to be able to return to their sacred land.”
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Inheritance of resistance: Kongra Star’s anniversary statement and presentation
On the 15th January 2016 Kongra star was announced as the creation of an umbrella organisation of the Rojava women’s movement. We begin our anniversary by celebrating all revolutionary, struggling, resisting and freedom seeking women in the world. The inheritance gathered by global women’s struggle continues here in every area of life and struggle with Kongra Star. To build an ethical and political society, the freedom struggle of women and society will be raised even higher by women who resist.
In Rojava Kurdistan, the women’s movement began in 2005 under the name Yekitiya Star, working within society and social organising. At the same time, within the PYD, for the development of women’s politics, autonomous and women’s projects were organised. From 2005 until 2011 a huge amount of work was done in the face of great difficulties and oppression from the Syrian state and it’s mentality. Yekitiya Star made many sacrifices and gave immeasurable effort. In this resistance struggle many women were imprisoned, tortured and disappeared. Nazlîye Keçel is an example of such a revoltuionary woman, disappeared by the state. It is still not known what happened to her.
Yekitiya Star, as made up of women revolutionaries and warriors, also played a leadership role in the Rojava revolution. It organised thousands of women in every kind of work in society and politics. The works of the Rojava women’s movement that were built up under the name Yekitiya Star, named itself Kongra Star to continue its work fighting for women’s freedom and equality. Kongra Star organised with more width and depth on the experience and acheivements of Yekitiya Star. Now, after a great struggle in all political and social fields, the autonomous women’s political system has also been built up. The system of equal representation has become an example in the Middle East and in the world.
All the women of Rojava took their place in the work of Yekitiya Star, playing a leading role and organising in all different areas before the revolution. They shouldered a great responsibility, some in the work of defence, others in political areas. Şehîd Şîlan Kobanê has become a symbol for the struggle to build up women’s freedom, the development of autonomous women’s organising, and women’s leadership. Şehîds such as Gulê Selmo, Fatma Hecî, Eyşe Elî and Dayê Aqîde have left their mark on history, falling martyr in the struggle for women’s and people’s freedom, on the journey to build a free and equal society.
Women have given heavy sacrifices and many şehîds in the creation and advancement of autonomous organising and on the way to women’s freedom. Comrades have given their hearts and souls to lead and take responsibility for the creation and organising of a system for a democratic society. Women showed their strength of belief, mind and connection particularly clearly in the time of the Afrin resistance. The self sacrifice actions of Şehîds Berîvan, Avesta Xabûr and Barîn Kobanê have become examples from this time. Furthermore, in the Kobane resistance our comrades Şehîd Rêvan, Şehîd Arîn Mîrkan and many more comrades who’s names we don’t know for sure, put themselves into the pages of the history book of women’s freedom.
Women’s rights and role in society have become apparent, and women’s will represented, between the women’s army, the efforts of women’s organising in every area of life, and so many immortal şehîds. In the current Resistance of Dignity the martyrdom of other comrades has brought the attention of the whole world onto the resistance; Şehîd Amara in defence of her honour and land, Hevrîn Xelef in the advancement and example of a democratic system, Dayê Aqîde for bringing about women’s justice.
Kongra Star is, in the broadest sense, taking on the same role and mission continuing the work and struggle that is the inheritance of all this experience of the global struggle for women’s freedom, in particular from the base build up by Yekitiya Star. Women have become organised under the umbrella of Kongra Star at every level of commune, group and council, across every aspect of societyl and have played a vanguard role in the Rojava revolution. The power of women is the measure of a free, equal, and and democratic life. This has shown itself in Kongra Star and struggled has continued in the face of the oppression, occupation and violence of the dominant male mentality. Furthermore the struggle within society has continued, and be brought about against mistreatment, rape and assault, child marriage, polygamy, massacres and femicide. Thousands of women have made actions for their historic and universal rights, and these actions are organised with the example and leading role of Kongra Star and have become a model for the whole world.
The women’s army YPJ has taken its place and played a role in all these advancements, and the defence of the Rojava revolution, and has become famous around the world. With this role and these missions, the revolution of Rojava society has become a women’s revolution and with women as the vanguard is building up a democratic and ecological society as well as women’s freedom. Many concrete changes have been made and important steps taken in the gender struggle, and it has proved itself by making the women’s liberation ideology a reality.
On this basis, we once again celebrate the anniversary of the announcement of Kongra Star by saluting all revolutionary women and those struggling, seeking freedom, resisting and defending. Honouring the memories and bringing about the dreams of those who have fallen şehîd on the road to a free life, given their spirits for struggle, equality and freedom is the goal of a free and democratic life. The anniversary of Kongra Star honours all three of our comrades Hevrîn Xelef, Amara Renas and Dayê Aqîde, and all the şehîds of the Resistance of Dignity of the Serêkaniyê war and we say “We will defend our land and defeat fascism and occupation.”
Greetings and regards
Kongra Star Coordination Rojava 14/1/2020
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Rahmani: Rojava gives hope to the oppressed
In an interview with ANF, Iranian author Bahram Rahmani stresses the importance of the democratic alternative in Rojava for the oppressed of the world and calls for solidarity with the resistance against the Turkish invasion.
ANF – MURAT KUSEYRİ
STOCKHOLM
Sunday, 12 Jan 2020, 16:29
Bahram Rahmani, former chairman of the Association of Iranian Writers and the Iranian section of the PEN writers’ association, spoke to ANF about Turkey’s Middle East policy and Turkey’s “Kurdish policy” in Syria. Rahmani emphasizes the importance of the democratic alternative in Rojava for the oppressed of the world and assigns Turkey and Erdoğan a crucial responsibility for the war in Syria.
Astana must be investigated
The Iranian author and journalist regards the shooting down of a Russian plane by Turkey in 2015 as a decisive turning point. “Ankara has moved away from the US and NATO and started to cooperate with Russia and Iran. However, these forces were on different sides in Syria. While Russia and Iran took sides with Assad, Turkey continued its support for the jihadists. One has to look closely at how these countries, although supporting different factions, are working together on the future of Syria. They meet in Astana and make decisions. But neither the Syrian Government nor the Syrian people are present at the table. Three countries decide the future of another country.”
Turkey’s position is weakened
Despite the different interests regarding Syria, both countries have given the green light to Turkey’s occupation of northern Syria, Rahmani continues; “Erdoğan’s aim was to settle Syrian Arabs in the border area in order to prevent the relationship between the Kurds in Northern Kurdistan [Turkish territory] and Rojava. But this could not be realised until today. Turkey is not economically in a position to do this. Turkey is also in a difficult situation in Idlib. Here the ISIS and Al-Qaeda groups supported by Ankara are in power. For all these reasons, Turkey’s position is weakened.”
Erdoğan’s plan for Libya
Rahmani recalls that Erdoğan has armed and supported jihadists during the Syrian war. Since they could not be accommodated on Turkish-occupied territories in North-East Syria, Ankara is planning to send his Islamist allies into the Libyan civil war. “Regardless of what Erdoğan has done, Turkey is actually in a key position in the Middle East. Erdoğan and the Turkish state fear that the systems are changing. There is a strong popular movement against the mullahs in Iran. If the Iranian regime collapses, this will have a strong influence on Turkey. Erdoğan will not be able to stay in power.”
Erdoğan and Khamanei take an ideological approach
While Russia pursues a pragmatic policy in line with its political and economic interests, Erdoğan and Khamenei have adopted an ideological approach and support Islamists close to them. Thus Erdoğan also supports the Muslim Brother Government in Libya, says Rahmani.
Erdoğan fears the Kurds’ territorial gains
“The Turkish state has been attacking the Kurdish people and PKK for 40 years. But the Kurdish people have their demands. Erdoğan panicked when the Kurds became stronger during the peace process and the HDP was able to send 80 MPs to parliament. Despite all the repression, the HDP was able to send 50 MPs to parliament in the last elections as well. Erdoğan is even more afraid of developments in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan than of Rojava. He is afraid of the Kurdish people in Northern Kurdistan. Everybody knows that there has been no threat for Turkey from Rojava for eight years. Erdoğan is afraid that the democratic system in Rojava will be extended to Kurdistan and the Middle East.
Rojava does not suit the reactionary and imperialist states
Not only Turkey is against Rojava, but also Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, the EU, the US and other countries are against self-government, says Rahmani. “For eight years not a single country has recognised the system in Rojava. They pretend to be against the Turkish invasion of Rojava, but at the same time they don’t like the system there. German and Swiss weapons are used in Rojava, as well as armaments from other Western countries. These countries do not want the people to administer themselves.
The system of Rojava is successful because it is based on the people
When the ISIS attacked Shengal, the Peshmerga abandoned the Yazidis and withdrew. Aid came from Rojava and the ISIS was prevented from entering the self-governing areas in northern Syria. The people of Rojava are now resisting the Turkish invasion. The system in Rojava gives hope to the poor all over the world. All oppressed peoples should support the resistance of Rojava against the Turkish state.”
Non-stop Turkification policy in the occupied Syrian territories
Turkey continues the (Turkification) process in the various Syrian regions and towns that it occupies, and among these measures is the naming of the official departments with Turkish names, where a school in the Syrian Jarablus was called the name of a deceased Turkish governor.
NEWS13 Jan 2020, Mon – 13:132020-01-13T13:13:00 NEWS DESK
Since the occupation of the Syrian territories in the middle of 2016, after its occupation of the cities of Jarablus and Al-Bab, Turkey has been working to “leave” the various official and service governmental institutions. On its roofs, the Turkish flag is raised, and on its doors the pictures of the Turkish president are suspended.
The names of these government and service departments are also written in Turkish in bold.
Adding more to “Turkification” policy, the Turkish occupation, on Sunday, where it opened a high school in the Syrian city of Jarablus, yesterday holding the name of the Turkish governor, “Ahmed Torgay Imam Geylar”, who died in Jarablus a year ago after a heart attack.
According to information received from the occupied city of Jarablus, Ankara deliberately opened the secondary school on the 12th of this month, to coincide with the day of Imam Geylar’s death.
The Turkish authorities do not hesitate to take advantage of any opportunity to implement the policy of Turkification in the cities and towns that it occupies within the Syrian territories, and thus honored the deceased deputy governor in Jarablus.
The “Imam Geylar”, whom Ankara honored and named after a high school, is the deputy governor of the Turkish city of Gaziantep, and he passed away on January 12 of 2019 in his office in Jarablus, where he used to live and work as an official in charge of Turkish scientific activities.
The opening of the high school that held his name was attended by a crowd of Turkish officials, among them the governor of the city of Gaziantep and representatives of Erdogan’s “Justice and Development” party, along with deputies from the same party in the Turkish parliament.
This is not the first time that Turkish officials have attended such events. Yassin Akti, Erdogan’s adviser, visited 6 months ago the city of Afrin and other towns north of Aleppo.
In addition to “Turks”, Ankara is striving to change the demographics of the areas that were controlled by north-eastern and western Syria, as it continues to settle operations of Syrian mercenaries belonging to Turkey in those cities and towns with their families.
The Kurdish people’s resistance against the invasion of northern and eastern Syria by the Turkish army and its proxies continues. Since the beginning of the war of aggression on October 9, 2018, Kurds in Kurdistan and all over the world responded to the occupation in a variety of ways, from political work to street protest and physical self-defence. Their resistance has received much support from internationalists around the world, who stand with them shoulder to shoulder in solidarity to put an end to the fascist AKP-regime of the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Art has always played a big role in the history of the Kurdish people and their struggles. Amongst others, the song “Şervano” has come to be the symbol of Rojava’s resistance against Turkish state fascism. Released in the same week as the beginning of the Turkish army’s “Peace Spring” operation, the song has become an important part of protests, the fields, and the front lines. It is even played at funerals in honor of the martyrs, accompanied by the singing of the attendants, who know it by heart.
The song became iconic with the circulation of videos from the funeral of YPG fighter Yusif Nebi, who had asked his family not to cry, but to sing and dance, if he dies in combat. Surrounded by large crowds of mourners, his brother and mother danced as an act of resistance against fascism.
The following interview with the composer was conducted by the Germany-based Kurdistan Report magazine. “Şervano” was written by Kurdish artist Şêro Hindê, who is working at “Hûnergeha Welat” (atelier of the homeland) in Rojava, and is also a member of the Rojava Film Commune. He is the director of the documentaries “Darên bi tenê” (Lonely Trees) and “Bajarên wêrankirî” (Destroyed Cities).
What were the circumstances in which the song “Şervano” was created? Where was the videoclip shot?
On the evening the Turkish government and its allies started the invasion on the 9th of October, we were in Qamişlo together with the musician Mehmûd Berazî and the author Ibrahim Feqe. Together, we wrote the song and composed the music. In the meantime bombs were dropping on Qamişlo, killing six people and injuring many more.
That night was very meaningful because the resistance fighters tirelessly and fearlessly took up position to protect the civilian populations and at the same time to prepare them for war again. The sight of those brave fighters persuaded us to put down what we saw in writing and composition. So we literarily saw the song “Şervano” in front of our eyes and on the following day, we started shooting the video based on the events of the previous night. We consciously worked without extravagant images and techniques in order to have be as authentic as possible.
The People’s Protection Unit (YPG) fighter from the video, Elî Feqe, is also a member of the Rojava Film Commune. He is a cameraman and an active role in the cinematic art.
Did you expect such a big impact of “Şervano”? What were the reactions?
We expected the song to reach and move people, but we too were surprised about the dimensions of the affect. We always try to create art, which reflects the Zeitgeist. However, it is important for us to express, keep alive and do justice to our centuries-old art traditions and to express our folkloric culture and dengbej music.
I would like to emphasize that our comrade Mehmûd Berazî, the composer of “Şervano”, makes the greatest contributions to music in Rojava and has the strongest influence.
The people love our songs, especially “Şervano”. Certainly, there have been other popular songs before, such as “Nivişta Gerilla”, “Tîna Çiya”, “Edlaye” and “Tola Salanîya Efrînê”, which are also often played at the funerals of our fallen friends, at protests or at the frontline. Essential elements of this music culture are the female and male resistance fighters, who show no fear of the enemy. Of course our musical work influences and touches us as much as anyone else. The emotional specificities of our artwork stem from the love and the esteem that is displayed towards us.
This became obvious also through the martyr Yusuf Nebî. His last will was that the people should not cry at his burial, but dance instead. Following his last will, his family played the song “Şervano” at the funeral, sang along the meaningful verses and danced. This sight was both, very painful and moving at the same time. For us as for everyone else.
You continue your work during the revolution. What do you do?
We were artistically active before the start of the revolution already. However, we couldn’t express ourselves as freely as now. Indeed, it’s astonishing that we feel freer than before in the development of our art, considering the adverse living conditions, the intensity of the war, the daily losses of our fighters and the civil fatalities. In this way, we as Kurdish artists want to make our contribution to the revolution. A revolution has different areas. Our task is it to convey to the outside the emotions and the spirit of the revolution in relation with the pain that our people have to suffer. In doing so, we don’t mind how the public interprets our art, whether positively or negatively. Our primary goal is to do justice to our people. To illustrate as well as relieve the suffering and to keep their morale up.
We also produce movies. The Rojava Film Commune was founded in 2015. We shoot documentaries, short movies, clips and feature films. I personally primarily focus on music, but also on my movie projects. At the moment I produce a documentary about the dengbej music culture. With the title “Darên bi tenê” (Lonely Trees), we documented dengbej songs in Şengal (Sinjar). We also produced a documentary about the life of the unforgettable artist Mihemmed Şêxo. I express myself best with the help of music.
As artists of the Rojava Film Commune and of Hûnergeha Welat, we want to add new elements to the revolution’s art. We don’t want to spread classic, well-known slogan-like art, but rather reflect the present, revolutionary spirit and feelings of Rojava’s society.
Do you face any difficulties during your work?
We work under very harsh conditions, in the midst of a war. Still, we strive to capture sharp photos and clear sounds. Our work is only possible thanks to the collective institutions, because we resist all together. As much as times of resistance are filled with creativity, they are also connected to difficulties. Big projects obviously aren’t possible in the midst of war. We have started a big research project about the dengbêj songs from Rojava. Among other things, we wanted to record some from Dicle (Tigris) to Xabûr and to piece them together in a documentary. But because of the current war conditions, we were forced to let it rest. Our only possibility at the moment is to show to the public, with the help of our projects, the omnipresence of the resistance. But unfortunately that’s not enough. For the realization of our projects, we need resources that are provided sufficiently to other institutions, which neither want to collaborate with us, nor are connected to us or Rojava in any way. They steal our projects and sell them as their own. In the near future, we want to take measures to prevent those and further thefts of course.
Are publications of further projects to be expected?
At the moment we especially work on projects, which primarily document the resistance. An important site of this great and strong resistance is Serê Kanîye (Ras al-Ain). We want to record this great resistance for history, with the help of art projects.
It is important for us to not produce typical revolution movies, but to realize projects, which create the consciousness among people to understand that we are those for whom the resistance fighters fight and sacrifice their lives. This is the direction of our work and it will be revealed in the near future. As much as we receive love and appreciation from the people, sometimes we also get criticism. This is important for the improvement of our further projects. Our singers Xalît Derîk, Haci Musa, Sîdar, Eyşe and Şefîka Şehriban Güneş, who always sing centuries-old folk songs with deep feelings, try to keep alive the cultural folk music.
How was Hûnergeha Welat founded and how is it made up?
Hûnergeha Welat was founded on the first of July 2014 in Qamişlo. There are two different areas: music and documentation. Every year, music is produced with dengbej artists and musicians, as well as movies and documentaries.
90% of the songs and videos dedicated to the revolution and which were produced in Rojava, are productions of Hûnergeha Welat. The name is in memory of the martyr Welat. This comrade was killed by a denotation of a car bomb from the so-called Islamic State. He was a very important friend, who kept himself busy with music and art and who knew a lot about the arts.
Hûnergeha Welat was a project, which we wanted to realize with him. Instead, we created the project and remembered him by naming it after him. The comrade Mehmûd Berazî is working at the moment on music. Likewise other friends, such as Kawa, Serxebên, Comerd, Ozan, Evan and many more. In the section of documentary film, the comrades Alab and Ali are the main contact persons. Of course there are many more members, who I didn’t name here but who are an essential part of our work.
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The Future of Northeastern Syria: In Conversation with SDF Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi
With the latest unexpected escalation between Iran and the United States in Iraq, the ongoing challenges of Syria have, for the moment, become a less-discussed point of regional tension. However, for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which precariously continues to control an autonomous region of Northeastern Syria, the last few months have tested the organization’s hold over the region.
In the months since U.S. troop withdrawal from the Turkish-Syrian border and the subsequent Turkish Operation Peace Spring, launched on October 9, the future of northeastern Syria has become in some ways less certain for the SDF. In addition to the previous major loss of Afrin during the earlier Turkish Olive Branch Operation in March 2018, the SDF has now also lost hold of Ras al-Ain and Tal Abyad.
Yet for now, the two ceasefire deals Turkey signed with the United States On October 17 and with Russia on October 22 have so far prevented further conflict and expansion of Turkish territorial control into northeastern Syria. Furthermore, the SDF reached a deal with Damascus with Russian mediation to protect the Syrian border, which, though it has not led to a concrete agreement between Damascus and the SDF, has at least encouraged ongoing negotiations between the two.
In December, the author sat down for an interview with SDF Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi, who explained the current position and concerns of the SDF, and how the two ceasefire deals now governing the Syrian-Turkish border have lessened the risk of a future Turkish attack. General Mazloum noted that although there is still a risk Turkey could attack either Jazira (Hassakah province) or Kobani, such a scenario would not be easy for Turkey. “They know that we will put a major fight—but there are larger agreements for now. There are agreements with Russians and also with the United States, which are preventing Turkish attacks. The Americans say that if Turkey attacks [Kobani], there will be sanctions against Turkey—and there are also Russian forces there.”
Moreover, for the local self-administration of northeast Syria (NES), not much has changed in the months since Turkey’s latest incursion. Although it had to evacuate its administration center from Ain al Issa and move to Raqqa, a number of checkpoints and the Fish Khabur border crossing with Iraq are still under SDF jurisdiction. The border crossing in particular has been key, as it allows foreign journalists and NGOs continued access to the northeast of Syria without needing to obtain a visa from the government in Damascus. What has changed is that Russian forces have replaced positions of the U.S. army, and Syrian forces now man the front line with Turkish-backed forces, though they do not maintain checkpoints.
Meanwhile, the U.S. army has now shifted its location deeper into the territory of northeastern Syria—between October and November, the U.S. army withdrew from areas near Raqqa, Kobani, and Manbij and repositioned their forces to the Hasakah province and the oil-rich Deir ar Zour. Forces are now tasked with protecting oil infrastructure and continuing the fight against ISIS.
The Resilience of the SDF
In spite of the territorial losses, one notable outcome of the fighting has been the demonstration of unity between Kurds and non-Kurds within the SDF, despite expectations to the contrary. SDF officials have reported that there was no major defection of Arab SDF fighters or uprising of Arab citizens in northeastern Syria to support either Syrian regime forces or Turkey in areas like Raqqa or Deir ar Zour. As General Mazloum stated, “Turkey’s plans were undermined; they were expecting that once they attack, the Arab-populated areas will rise against us [SDF], Raqqa, Deir Az-Zour, Manbij and Tabqah for instance.” Similarly, although there was an expectation that non-Kurdish SDF soldiers would defect, “Nothing like that ever occurred, actually, there has been more unity. And as we speak, Arab fighters are joining the SDF more than pre-Turkish invasion.”
This was not the only effort to prompt these forces to abandon the SDF. Earlier in December, Syria’s security chief Ali Mamlouk also asked Arab tribes to defect to the Syrian government. Mazloum suggested that the two efforts to prompt defection—Damascus with its threats, Turkey with its attacks—have both failed. Mazloum reported that his troops “rejected [the] call” of the Syrian government, attributing this to a shared vision: “Those who have joined the SDF believe in the ideas and goals of the SDF.”
The Challenge of Recognition
Yet the call by Ali Mamlouk highlights the continuing reality that the SDF and Syrian government are not on good terms, despite the two sides’ earlier military cooperation against Turkey. Negotiations between Damascus and the SDF to settle the status of NES in the eyes of the Syrian government have been ongoing, as the SDF leader confirmed. However, so far Damascus refuses to agree to any stipulations that they would recognize the SDF, and the government still wants to integrate SDF fighters on an individual basis into the Syrian army.
In contrast, the SDF has stated that they would only join the Syrian army in the event of a new Syrian constitution, in which the SDF “preserve[s] its autonomous status in the area of command and institutions.” According to General Mazloum, it is only “Within that framework [that] our discussions with the Russians and Syrian government [will] continue.”
So far, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad seems to be uninterested in such a deal, although an agreement with the SDF could improve the Syria’s deteriorating economy that has weakened due to the sorry state of the Syrian pound—which has hit a record low amid sanctions and war. The SDF still controls major oil and agricultural resources and is conducting trade with the Iraqi Kurds, which could provide an influx into the overall Syrian economy were some sort of agreement to be reached.
Refugee issue
Moreover, the SDF is now primarily concerned with another type of challenge to its borders: the publicly expressed desire by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to settle a million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey into Syrian areas under his control.
As General Mazloum sees it, “It is Erdogan’s goal to bring non-locals and force them to resettle, displace the Kurdish people and democrats from their homeland—and then hire mercenaries from those resettled to use them against Syrian people’s unity, using Syrians to advance Erdogan’s agenda in Syria.” The SDF leader argued that the basic conditions necessary for resettlement of Syrian refugees have not yet been met: “First the Syrian war must be resolved so that everyone can return to their homes.”
The SDF and the local administration have always stated that it is their policy to allow any refugees originally from the area under SDF control to return and resettle there. However, the SDF commander-in-chief emphasized that the majority of Syrians in Turkey are from regions of Damascus, Homs, and Daraa in the south. General Mazloum argues that Turkey’s resettlement plan would benefit neither the NES’s current residents nor those being resettled, as he said those refugees currently in Syria “also do not want to be resettled in Northeastern Syria.” Such a resettlement plan would decrease pressures for a political solution that allows refugees to return to their homes in Syria, and the general insisted that such a process should take place in order to resolve the Syrian crisis.
In contrast, Turkey’s resettlement plan would in turn solidify the displacement of Kurdish Syrians from Afrin and other areas currently under Turkish control, eroding support for the SDF in those regions in turn. A June 2019 report from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) expressed concerns that permitting Arabs to occupy Kurdish homes in Afrin could permanently change the ethnic composition there. The SDF fears that the scenario already playing out in Afrin could also affect the areas newly controlled by Turkey, though the Turkish Defense Ministry has dismissed these accusations.
Balancing Between Russia and Damascus
Despite recent history, the SDF is not currently concerned that Russia would threaten the SDF with a green light for a Turkish attack on Kobani or other regions in order to pressure the SDF to give more concessions to Damascus as it did in January 2018. Then, Moscow allowed Turkey to attack Afrin once it became clear that the Kurds were not willing to handover Afrin to Damascus.
Now, the Russians might seek access to oil-rich areas currently under U.S. protection, but General Mazloum thinks it unlikely that such interests would manifest into action. “There are agreements between the Russians and the Americans…They [the Russians] have not asked us something like that, and they are coordinating with the Americans as well, not only us.”
The current situation demonstrates that although the SDF is weakened, it has managed to keep its de-facto autonomy, balancing between Moscow, Damascus, Ankara, and Washington without the disintegration of the SDF. Moreover, the continued U.S. presence in the oil-rich regions of northeastern Syria has now given the SDF a point of leverage in negotiations with Damascus.
However, a political agreement with Damascus is far from assured. And if the SDF and Damascus are not able to come to an agreement, tensions are likely to rise once more. The ongoing regional tensions between the United States and Iran could also negatively affect the SDF, especially in Deir ar Zour. However, Damascus does not have enough manpower to replace the SDF, especially with its deteriorating economic condition. Thus, the SDF will continue to remain a de-facto autonomous entity despite uncertainty over its future unless there are unexpected changes in the political field of Syria.
Anarchist Fighter With YPJ Speaks about Defense of Serekaniye
Published December 26, 2019
Turkey initiated “Operation Peace Spring” on October 9, 2019, with the intention of occupying Rojava. This preceded 12 days of historic resistance which included anarchist and revolutionary left battalions. The clashes took place from balcony to balcony, street to street, and house to house. Despite the technical superiority and being outnumbered by Turkish forces, with only a small number of people, they resisted for 12 days until a ceasefire was implemented.
This is an interview with an anarchist who fought in Serekaniye with the YPJ.
Do you remember on October 9th, how the attacks on Serekaniye began?
It came to us that the day before there had already been an attack, a bombing, but that it had been decided not to respond. So it was a little conversation behind the scenes, between the companions that we were in my small group. We said: “What will happen?” Two days before we were on the street guarding at night and everything was too quiet. At one point the body feels it, because the tension increases and the body notices it.
And on the 9th, I remember it was past noon, we were in our normal position when we heard the first bombings and from our position we could see the smoke. I remember that my whole body, that all my blood told me: “Now, come on, let’s start.” And of course, I had not yet experienced such a strong sensation, and to see it physically … We all met at home and our commander told us: “all prepared, take the backpacks, take a position”. From that moment it was as if things were triggered little by little … Suddenly, there are many noises that you do not understand … There was a lot of smoke, the city was prepared to avoid observation from the sky by drones, and move under this smoke with psychological affects. Then all the cars full of families, marching with what they have been able to take in ten minutes …
I imagine that the air factor was very important, right? What was it like to fight an army that is supported by warplanes?
The first days were very hard, because with the first bombings the first mass wounded arrived. They are not wounded by war typical city war, they are injured by explosions, entire groups of people, it is another type of war. At first, for example, transporting injured from Serekaniye to Til Temir was a lottery. Ambulances and civil convoys, which did not pose any military threat, were bombed. People were bombarded and then the people who were going to collect the bodies that had just been bombed were also bombarded. There were no scruples, only eager to conquer the territory.
When there were airplanes, at first with the companions we made jokes. When we felt the noise of a plane or a drone, there was always someone who said: “It’s going to happen, it’s going to happen!” But in reality it is the uncertainty of thinking if they have already detected you before, if they are going to shoot where they know they have to. The uncertainty of saying, “Where will it fall?” The first feeling is that of running, but of course, the issue is that when you run away is when you are detectable. We kept the blood cold, when we saw them nobody moved, we controlled the fear, the uncertainty, that voice that told you have done well before and they have not seen you, mixed with the fullest and deepest trust with the companions that I had by my side fighting the invaders and fascists.
I trusted the companions with whom I shared the first days, because they have experience in the city, in the mountains and have lost many people, precisely because of bombings, so they have it very integrated. They know that with this machinery of war we do not have great possibilities, but we have the strategy, the courage of all these years of resistance, we know that we should not fear air support, we know that it is a machinery against which we cannot fight against frontal and direct form but that is why there are other strategies. Know how to move, share fears and doubts and have a lot of patience. It takes a lot of patience: wait and wait.
What else would you say you’ve learned from your most experienced partners?
Rojava’s story has a set of values, but I have really begun to understand these values when I have been with them. Everyone is afraid, but I have not seen at any time doubt for the companions. Their fight is something that they carry so much inside, that comes so much from injustice, from the decision they made to give everything for the fight, for the defense of the land, that when it came to fighting, I saw it in the day to day.
I saw how they took care of each other, in how when one was tired, the others took care of her. I saw serious wounded companions fighting, very young companions fighting, all always aware of where the others were … There were times when we had to continue, but if there was an injury, the first were the wounded companions. And the ones that fell wounded all they wanted were healed and came back, to heal them as they could and continue in the front. I have seen companions not sleeping in three days, not eating in three days, not taking off shoes in days, sharing everything, not having food, not having water and sharing what little they had … No one was left behind. I have not seen anyone fall behind.
There was a very strong feeling of defending. That it was a fight to defend the land, a fight against fascism, a millenary struggle. Why what they live is an attempt at ethnic extermination, a culture and also a movement that is led by women. See that everything you had built, which has cost so much pain, at the level of organizing society, women, that everything is democratic, confederal, that there are structures … see how all this can be destroyed in two days … well, of course, the spirit didn’t stop, nobody rested. There was a strength and a courage, a courage, that if they did not come from the heart and the feeling of “enough!”, Serekaniye’s resistance could not have been the way it was, because everyone had reasons to run away, with the machinery of Turkey, the second largest NATO army, who can fight against this? Only history, the ideological conviction, the defense of the land, the defense of the struggle of women, can against all this.
And I have not only learned from the most experienced companions, for me it has been incredible to share this time with 18-19 year old girls, Kurds, Arabs, who have joined the fight to rebel against a life that condemned them to be women of home and have a man, or who have joined by ideological conviction. That being so young they have taken the courage to join the armed resistance, with all that this entails for society … I was thinking of the Spanish civil war, of the women of the CNT-FAI. Elissa García, for example, who died at the front at 19 years … And see how the militant women of the movement open the way for the other women, for the young women. It has been amazing. There are also many things that I cannot explain, because there are many feelings that are like images that I remember, that I cannot express with words …
What images come to mind when you think of Serekaniye?
Many. From the beginning, I remember when my group was separated into two smaller ones. I have the image of when the partners of the other group were going to take a position and we were going to another place. I thought: “Maybe this is the last time I see them” and that has left me a lot. I remember very well that day, the columns of smoke. And as they were loaded with the biksi [name popularly used to refer to the PKM light machine gun designed in the USSR] and its backpacks.
And then I have many images of the hospital, because we made part of the resistance in the hospital, which at one point ended up being part of the front. It was 5 days, but I remember it as if it had been 10 hours. I remember the hospital, in the dark, because when the çete [term that literally means “mercenaries”, used to refer to jihadist groups taking part in the Turkish state’s offensive against Northern Syria] approached, there wasn’t electricity. And in the middle of the darkness, the light of the cigarettes that the comrades smoked. And the doors, why the light came through the doors. He did control of the wounded, asking each one: “How are you? All good? – Yes yes I’m fine”. And the wounded fighting. Because we all knew that we were surrounded, that we were going to be trapped in the city. And we gave each other courage, we said “no one leaves here, because here we are defending everything.” In the end, when we had to retire, the last image of Serekaniye, the city burning, everything burning …
You were surrounded and due to diplomatic agreements with Turkey you were ordered to withdraw. How did you receive this order? How was the withdrawal for you, after so many days fighting tirelessly?
The order arrived in the morning and we did not believe it. At first we didn’t believe it. But I remember that the feeling of devastation came quickly. They told us to leave, to prepare all the material. All the convoy, all the cars filled with all the defense forces, we left little by little and discovered that the enemies had gone out to the street. Everyone left their lines of defense and went down to the street, went out to the balconies, to make us a corridor, so that we could see them. You saw the Turkish soldiers and the jihadists, some in military uniforms but others camouflaged as civilians, throughout the hallway to the hospital. We saw the faces of those who until recently were attacking us, hidden 100 or 200 meters from the hospital. I remember one of the commanders telling us: “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot because the war isn’t over.” It was very hard, we didn’t expect it. All the adrenaline of so many days, all the emotion contained … but you see the comrades who have been fighting here for 7 years, plus some 10 years in the mountains, and you feel that you don’t want to be sad.
Do you feel that you have no right to be sad?
I have the right to be sad because Serekaniye has been my home, where I have seen comrades die, where we have defended the streets, where I have met families, like everyone else. But on the other hand, I feel that it has been a hard but beautiful resistance, that what we have done is part of history. And if you don’t keep this in mind, you go down fast, your morale falls, the word “defeat” enters your head. Yes, militarily it has perhaps been a defeat, but ideologically at no time. Serekaniye has been a reference, also for the population. Many people took up arms, especially boys and young girls.
Historically, weapons and armed struggle has been a closed ground for women. How was it for you to get in touch with this?
I believe that women have always been present in the armed struggle, but more invisible. Perhaps in smaller quantities, but throughout history there have always been references of women who have participated in the armed struggle and have built a bit the base and the way for many of us to consider it something possible, a path that is also our way.
In any part of the world and in any social and political context, as women and for the specific oppression that is imposed on us, we have always developed forms of self-defense, we have always had to use the tools we had at our disposal to defend our bodies, our thoughts, our life, the territory … As women, we are trying to introduce that this is not our role, but history shows the opposite, it shows that we have always been able to look for solutions, ways to fight and that is what happens in Rojava. Women have organized to build structures, learning spaces, support, mechanisms to fight and defend all this. Why … if we don’t do it, who will? We cannot wait to leave the decision on how we have to fight, we cannot entrust our future to structures that are oppressive. I consider, therefore, that self-defense is something that defines us as revolutionary and as women in general, it has always been part of our life because we have always been the object of the oppression of patriarchy, of the State, of all social institutions. Then I consider that in Rojava weapons are another method of defense, another element to protect the spaces where we grow, and a way to defend collective life and oppressed peoples, of which women represent the vanguard. It has not been easy for me to assume this, it has been a great learning.
Within my family, only men have participated in this form of resistance against Franco, basically my grandfather. But having the reference of my mother, my grandmother, the women of my family who during the Franco regime and post-Franco regime have been oppressed, some have organized and others have not, but if they had had the possibility, they would not have ruled out this way, like me, that having the possibility and having comrades who can introduce us, how could I not participate in this fight?
And it has been a process, a hard learning, very hard. Why the most important thing is not to take the weapons, but to know why you take them. At one point you ask yourself: “maybe I fall martyr here,” and the feeling was to say “we are fighting for life.” It is a lesson, and I continue to learn.
How was the relationship with fellow men? Was there a difference in treatment?
Most of the battle of Serekaniye, during which I was in the line of defense, I must say that we were mostly women. In our group there were also men but mostly we were partners. At no time did I receive orders from a man, my manager was always a woman. Yes, there were certain moments when I felt overprotected, but I think it was more because I was international. At first, these moments occurred, but quickly disappeared due to the harshness of the war and for the day to day, for sharing everyday life.
I was surrounded by women like the ones I was with, there was no room for gender differences, at least this is what I have lived. In all politicized environments there is always a task that partners should do much more than to give space to women at the level of militancy they deserve, and here it is not that they say that it is not necessary and that there is no domination of the partners towards the comrades, but it seems that there is the work of years in this aspect. Because many times we ourselves also place ourselves in this role, right? We have it internalized. The partners here have an attitude of not accepting this role, an attitude of saying: “We will not wait for men to change, we are the engine of this change.” And this attitude has also helped men a lot to understand the change in attitude they should have when they are struggling with women.
Once in the hospital, for example, where there were more men, yes, I noticed more differences, but we were not for nonsense. We could not. We were 4 or 5 people taking care of 40 wounded every day, apart from the martyrs and what it was to function, function, work and work, and in moments of rest, guard and fight.
In a context of war, everyone is very clear who the enemy is. This is what I have sometimes missed at home, in myself and in others. We have so many open fronts and so many enemies that we are not able to build something solid.
During the clashes in Serekaniye, in Europe and, for example, specifically in Catalonia, there were demonstrations, actions, demonstrations of solidarity with Rojava … Did you get this? How did you get it?
During Serekaniye we didn’t have much contact with the outside. Most of the time the phones did not work, the internet did not work, but the few moments that worked was basically what we looked at: how was the situation of the territory, what were the movements, share how were the other comrades and see what it happened at home in Europe. Then of course, every manifestation, every text, every action, every photo, every story … in 5 minutes everyone knew it.
Everything we saw was running fast to show it to the other teammates, because the morale rose so much. For example, seeing in Catalonia the photographs of black flags, flags of the YPG and YPJ … this has been incredible for us. Seeing the union of all these struggles … and for the movement partners here it was incredible. Many times they didn’t believe it. I showed them the pictures of the riots in Catalonia, the banners, the flares and it was exciting to share this and be able to say: “Look, look! Catalunya, my land!”
The feeling was that you were not alone, that people were connected to you … We have never expected or expect anything from the States, but at the level of society, at the level of peoples, of empathizing, of feeling the same oppression, this has been very important. I have no words to describe how the women’s movement, whatever the organization, has reacted throughout Europe for the defense and support of Serekaniye. I have no words to see how the partners have worked hard to bring us their warmth, and all the responsibility that many people in Europe felt with Rojava.
What would you say are also the lessons that would have to be exported from here to the movements and struggles in Catalonia?
I think one of the most important things I’ve learned here is the value of commitment. The commitment to really decide to fight the rest of your life. To make a decision that is not easy and to dump all your energies and time in building a base, to do it in the long term and with perspective. Not wanting to do things too quickly, but having perspective of what the revolutionary construction of a territory means, including society, people. I am not saying that in Catalonia there is no commitment, I say that there comes a time when, in the face of oppression, there is no possibility or half measures, it is one thing or another. And sometimes we expected to respond, but if we respond without having built the entire base on a social, ideological and structural level, the response to the attacks will be very short. It will not be long because it will not be ideological, it will not be based on common and shared values.
And then, of course … how to say it in Catalan? There is much talk here about bawerî, about faith. I believe that at home we have no faith in our own steps, in our structures, in our commitment, also at the vital level. Because if we do not start with ourselves, if we do not fight against our sexist personality, against the competitiveness that exists in us and the capitalist mentality that we have, if we do not learn to live collectively, how can we consider a real change? This is what I have seen here, that life and struggle are the same, that we have to get people to believe again, get organized again and not be afraid of difference, because the difference is what makes community. Look here, in Serekaniye the families and the companions were Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, Turks, international … sometimes we didn’t even speak the same language, and we all defended the same. And yes, here there is a context of war, but at home there is also war, society also suffers a war, simply that in a different way: in the form of wage labor, evictions, patriarchy … and in Catalonia, after the referendum, with all the repression. The strength of Europe continues to expand, we continue to have comrades in prison, evictions of historical projects, siege of migrated people, criminalization of abortion, privatization of health, world leaders to decide the future of the population, control and police violence of all colors … And Russia, the Spanish State, Germany, the United States … next to Erdogan. War!
Anarchist ideas taught me the struggle of the civil war revolutionaries, the comrades I have in Europe taught me the strength and the need to interconnect struggles, of internationalist solidarity. The companions of Rojava and Kurdistan have taught me the importance of unity and commitment to raise a land and defend oppressed cultures under mountains of ruins. And all of you have taught me the value of the struggle to defend the territory and the freedom of mothers, sisters, comrades, as well as the construction of another society, of revolutionary values with strong foundations. I look to the future in another way … The destruction of the State, the overthrow of prisons and police stations, the isolation of banks and large companies, the confrontation with fascist and patriarchal policies … are tasks that deserve commitment, decision and courage.
Mutual support, collective decision making, neighbor organization, defense structures, commitment, courage … We are prepared, let’s start walking.
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It’s Not Too Late for Rojava
The Trump administration betrayed the Kurds in Syria. But there is still time to turn things around.
As Turkey continues its devastating military assault on Rojava, the Kurdish-led region of northeastern Syria, officials in Washington are facing a critical decision: allow Turkey to prevail in its campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Kurds or take action to protect them.
The Turkish invasion, which began on October 9, has been devastating for Rojava. According to the United Nations, nearly 180,000 people, including 80,000 children, have been displaced. At the start of the attack, Turkish officials announced that Turkish-led forces had killed more than 200 Kurdish militants. About a week later, Kurdish officials said that more than 200 civilians had been killed.
After gathering witness testimony, Amnesty International reported that Turkish forces and allied militias had committed war crimes. They “have displayed a shameful disregard for civilian life, carrying out serious violations and war crimes, including summary killings and unlawful attacks that have killed and injured civilians,” the human rights organization said.
Speaking before Congress, James Jeffrey, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Syria, acknowledged that “we’ve seen several incidents which we consider war crimes.” He cited the killing of Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf and the killings of several defenseless Kurdish prisoners by Turkish-allied militias.
When the Turkish-led forces began their invasion, it was clear that they intended to cleanse the area of its Kurdish population. For years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been threatening to drive the Kurdish people out of the area, having directed a similar campaign in Afrin in early 2018.
“We are witnessing ethnic cleansing in Syria by Turkey, the destruction of a reliable ally in the Kurds, and the reemergence of ISIS,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tweeted days into the invasion.
U.S. Betrayal
What has made the attack particularly egregious is the fact that the Kurds are allies of the United States. For years, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been working with the U.S. military to fight and defeat the Islamic State in Syria. According to U.S. officials, the Kurdish-led forces have been the most effective fighters on the ground in Syria.
“These were an ally and a very good ally against ISIS, a very effective ally that lost over 10,000 people killed,” Jeffrey noted.
President Trump, who endorsed and facilitated the Turkish attack by withdrawing U.S. forces, defended Turkey’s actions, arguing that the country faced a terrorist threat from the Kurds. Turkey “had to have it cleaned out,” Trump said, referring to the Kurdish-led area along the Turkish border.
Democratic and Republican leaders strongly condemned Trump’s actions, accusing the president of betraying U.S. partners. In severalcongressionalhearings, multiple officials from both political parties blasted the president for opening the door to Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of the Kurds.
“The president of the United States gave a thumbs up to an act of ethnic cleansing,” Congressman Andy Levin (D-MI) said.
Gerry Connolly (D-VA) commented that “the abandonment of the Kurds is one of the most shameful things I’ve seen in over 40 years of association with American foreign policy.”
Although U.S. officials are correct to condemn Trump for betraying the Kurds, they have been downplaying several additional factors that led to the crisis. Since March 2018, when Trump first attempted to abandon the Kurds, the U.S. foreign policy establishment has been trying to appease the Turks and exploit the Kurds in the Syrian Civil War. The U.S. foreign policy establishment did not prepare to keep the Kurds safe, as several officials promised to do.
U.S. attempts to appease the Turks have been a complete failure. In the months before the Turks invaded, U.S. officials encouraged the Kurds to remove their defensive weapons and fortifications from the Turkish border. These actions cleared the way for the Turkish invasion.
“In tearing down those defenses, it left the Kurds much more susceptible to the inevitable attack that came,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-T) said.
Nor did U.S. officials devise a plan to protect the Kurds. They remained focused on exploiting Kurdish control of northeastern Syria as leverage in political negotiations with the Syrian government over the future of Syria.
The month before Turkey launched its invasion, the Syria Study Group (SSG), a special study group convened by Congress, issued a report arguing that “the United States can still influence the outcome of the Syrian war,” in part by maintaining U.S. forces in northeastern Syria and leveraging Kurdish control of Rojava.
“The reason the Syria Study Group talked about needing to retain a U.S. military presence in that one third of Syria was not only about completing the anti-ISIS fight, it was about the broader leverage of that one-third of Syria,” SSG Co-Chair Dana Stroul told Congress. That “is the resource rich part of Syria, which provided us leverage to influence a political outcome in Syria.”
These moves have proven disastrous to the Kurds. Not only has the U.S. foreign policy establishment failed to deter a Turkish attack, but it has created a situation in which the Kurds sought help from the Syrian government. As the Turks began their attack, the Kurds invited Syrian government forces into Rojava, working with them to deter additional attacks.
Perhaps most remarkable, the U.S. foreign policy establishment has not changed its strategy. Despite the fact that Turkish forces are now occupying parts of Rojava and Kurdish allies have turned to Syria for protection, U.S. officials still think they can use the Kurds as leverage against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“My instructions from Secretary Pompeo from day one…was to act to counter Russia’s effort in the Syrian conflict to obtain a military victory for Assad and his Iranian henchmen,” Jeffrey explained. “And that’s what I was doing every day and that’s what my orders remain to do, at least on the Syrian account.”
To prevent the Russians from helping Assad exert additional control over Rojava, the Trump administration is moving hundreds of U.S. military forces into its oil-rich areas, trying to use them as leverage.
According to Gen. Joseph Votel, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, U.S. control provides “a good negotiating leverage point” for future negotiations with the Syrian government.
Supporting the Kurds
Certainly, there are alternatives to these imperial tactics. The simplest and most obvious thing would be for U.S. officials to take into account Kurdishpreferences.
At the most basic level, U.S. officials should support the political aspirations of the Kurds, who are trying to create an autonomous region inside Syria. Over the past several years, the Kurds have been leading a leftistsocialrevolution in Rojava, creating a society of “democratic federalism” rooted in the values of ecology, feminism, and direct democracy.
According to Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), there has been “a lot of implicit support for supporting the Kurds in the vision that they were carrying,” but U.S. officials have yet to publicly endorse the Kurdish project.
A related option would be for U.S. officials to fulfill their promises to allow the Kurds to participate in negotiations with the Syrian government. Kurdish participation would enable the Kurds to make their case for creating an autonomous region inside Syria.
Another option would be for international forces to work with the Kurds to deter future attacks. U.S. military forces already maintain control of the airspace over northeastern Syria. U.S. forces could enforce a no-fly zone, preventing the Turks from launching aerial attacks. At the same time, international peacekeepers could replace U.S. forces on the ground, patrolling the region to deter future attacks.
Finally, global leaders should take action to hold Turkey accountable by investigating charges of ethnic cleansing and war crimes.
“Let’s be clear: this is intentioned-laced [sic] ethnic cleansing,” U.S. diplomat William Roebuck, the top U.S. diplomat on the ground in Syria, noted in an internal memo. “It is a war crime, when proven.”
Ultimately, the Turkish attack on Rojava should have never happened. The U.S. foreign policy establishment knew all along that Trump would betray the Kurds, that Turkey would not be appeased, and that the Kurds would turn to Assad out of desperation.
“We had long known that Turkey was preparing for this thing,” Jeffrey acknowledged. “Turkey had had troops in place actually for almost a year and had been threatening to do this.”
Fortunately, there is time to turn things around. The Kurds lost over 10,000 people in the war against the Islamic State and still manged to create one of the most promising democratic experiments in the Middle East. They deserve U.S. support.
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‘When they come, they will kill you’: Ethnic cleansing is already a reality in Turkey’s Syrian safe zone
Turkey’s invasion into northern Syria has caused a demographic shift that many fear will become permanent, reports Richard Hall
Turkish soldiers and Turkey-backed Syrian fighters gather on the northern outskirts of the Syrian city of Manbij in October ( AFP/Getty )
The brutal killings were not hidden, nor were they meant to be. From the very beginning of Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria, the fighters it sent across the border to carry out the mission have proudly documented their own war crimes.
Videos posted online by soldiers of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) – showing summary executions, mutilation of corpses, threats against Kurds and widespread looting – have struck terror into the tens of thousands who find themselves in the path of the offensive.
The ethnic dimension to many of the crimes has resulted in a mass exodus of Kurds and religious minorities from these once diverse borderlands.
Now, stranded in displacement camps across northeast Syria and in neighbouring Iraq, they fear they may never be able to return home. And that, they believe, was precisely the point.
“No one can go back there now, it’s impossible,” says Muhammad Amin, 37, a Kurdish man who fled with his family from the city of Ras al-Ayn in the first days of the Turkish-led operation.
“We’ve seen the videos,” he tells The Independent at a camp near the Syrian town of Tal Tamr. “They are shooting Kurdish people where they find them.”
Turkey offensive into Syria
The same story is being told by countless others like Amin, in the camps and temporary shelters that have sprung up in the past two months. Taken together, they paint a picture of a dramatic demographic change.
Turkey launched a long-planned incursion into Syria on 9 October to establish what it described as a “safe zone” some 20 miles deep and 300 miles wide along the border.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, claimed the offensive was aimed at removing the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – a group his country classifies as a terror organisation for its links to Kurdish separatists inside Turkey.
The offensive had been threatened for some time, but was only put into action when President Donald Trump abruptly withdrew US forces from the border. Those forces had been working alongside the SDF in Syria in the fight against Isis.
Turkey has supported the operation with airstrikes, drones and artillery. Leading the fight on the ground is a ragtag patchwork of militias who have fought at Ankara’s behest in two previous offensives. Some of the rebels had spent years fighting to end the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, while others were newly recruited.
The invasion was only a few days old when the first videos were posted online. Some showed the looting by SNA fighters of recently evacuated homes, but the first evidence of more violent war crimes quickly followed.
Havrin Khalaf, a member of the pro-Kurdish Future Syria Party, was travelling along a highway between the town of Ayn Issa and the city of Hasakah on 12 October when her civilian car was attacked.
A video posted online the next day shows SNA fighters, believed to be from the Ahrar al-Sharqiya faction, gather around the car as a woman’s voice is heard from the back seat. Khalaf’s body was later found riddled with bullets and showing signs of torture. An autopsy revealed she had a broken leg and her hair had been pulled so hard parts of her scalp were missing.
On the same day, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said nine civilians were executed by SNA fighters at a roadblock south of Tal Abyad.
Yet another video showed fighters firing into the body of a deceased man at the side of the road.
These brutal crimes, coming in quick succession, had a chilling effect. Those who hadn’t already fled from Turkish airstrikes now did so in fear of ethnically motivated killing.
“When we saw the murder of the politician, Havrin Khalaf, we saw they did the same thing that Isis did,” says 41-year-old Basima Daoud, a Yazidi woman who fled her village near Ras al-Ayn with her family and is now living in a hastily constructed displacement camp near Tal Tamr.
“We were afraid they would kill us or take us as sex slaves,” she adds, referring to the enslavement of thousands of Yazidi women by Isis in 2015.
In the nearly two months since the operation began, the SNA has captured a swathe of territory between the two border cities of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn that was home to a large population of Kurds, and smaller numbers of Assyrians, Yazidis and Turkmen.
The same area faced massive upheaval just a few years ago when Isis swept across northern Syria. Tal Abyad was occupied by the terror group for more than a year before being recaptured by the SDF.
This time, around 95,000 fled from Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn and the surrounding areas, which are now under the control of the SNA. Around half of that number has since returned, but they have been almost exclusively Arab, according to local monitoring groups.
Since the beginning of the campaign, a widespread perception formed among Kurds and other minorities that any non-Arab residents of the area would be targeted by the militias.
A Turkish soldier stands near his armoured vehicle on a highway near the northern Syrian town of Ain Issa in late November (AFP/Getty)
“Our neighbours who were Arab told us to leave. They said, ‘When they come, they will kill you,’” says Daoud. “There were two Christian families in our village who left for the same reason.”
These fears were bolstered by public threats made by the fighters. In one clip, previously reported by The Independent, militia fighters threaten to kill “pigs” and “infidels” as they parade a Kurdish captive. Many similar videos have been shared online.
What happened next only served to convince many Syrian Kurds that these men were serious about their threats.
As the weeks went on, more reports of ethnically motivated killings emerged from the areas recently captured by the SNA. A widespread campaign of looting and confiscation of Kurdish property – much of it also recorded by the perpetrators – and the blocking of return of Kurdish residents by SNA fighters gave the impression that these groups were systematically trying to keep Kurds out.
In a report released this week, Human Rights Watch said it had documented numerous examples of Kurdish homes being confiscated and their possessions looted. In addition, it interviewed three people who said their Kurdish relatives were blocked from returning to areas under SNA control. The rights group also reported that three men who tried to go back to their homes were killed.
Syrian Arab militiamen threaten to massacre Kurdish population
Several residents displaced from the area now under SNA control interviewed by The Independent said their homes had also been looted and their property confiscated. In most cases, they were informed of the takeover of their property by Arab neighbours who had stayed behind.
Daoud was one of them. Her husband is a farmer who owns a substantial tract of land and agricultural equipment.
“Some Arab neighbours called us to tell us the fighters have looted our house and taken it as a headquarters. They have taken our land and our equipment too. They have taken everything,” she says, with tears in her eyes.
One local Yazidi leader told The Independent that 45 Yazidi families had fled from the area around Ras al-Ayn alone. Dozens of Christian families from around Tal Tamr have also left their homes behind.
A girl plays with a ball at a newly opened displacement camp just outside of the city of Tal Tamr, in northeastern Syria (Richard Hall/The Independent)
Fasel Amin, 32, was among the first wave of people who fled the Turkish airstrikes in the initial days of the offensive. Today, he is living in a school used to house displaced people.
“We had a house and a shop. They stole everything. Some family members were able to go back briefly to check and it was all empty,” he says.
“Turkey wants to control the whole area. It wants to change the whole demography of the area – take the Kurds out and bring the Arabs in.”
The question that now haunts Amin and the tens of thousands of others who remain displaced is whether the demographic change that has taken place will be permanent.
Many Syrian Kurds see plenty of reasons which suggest it will be. They only need to point to Turkey’s last operation ostensibly targeting Kurdish militants in the Afrin region. There too, in early 2018, Turkey used the same patchwork group of rebel fighters to take control of the area.
Those rebel fighters have been accused of imposing a reign of terror ever since. A United Nations commission of inquiry found in February that “armed group members in Afrin committed the war crimes of hostage-taking, cruel treatment, torture, and pillage”.
“Numerous cases involving arbitrary arrests and detentions by armed group members also included credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment, often targeting individuals of Kurdish origin, including activists openly critical of armed groups and those perceived to be so,” the UN report added.
More than 130,000 mostly Kurdish residents are still displaced from Afrin, living in camps in the SDF-held region of northeast Syria. Many of their homes are now occupied by Syrians from other parts of the country.
The same process may well play out in Turkey’s latest “safe zone”. Even before the operation began, Ankara repeatedly said that it would use the newly captured territory to facilitate the return of some one million Syrian refugees from Turkey.
Basima Daoud and her family at a displacement camp near Tal Tamr, northern Syrian. Daoud and her family are Kurdish Yazidis. They fear they will be killed if they return to their homes in Turkey’s ‘safe zone’ (Richard Hall/The Independent)
Turkey currently hosts nearly 4 million Syrians, more than any other country in the world. The presence of such a large refugee population has created political problems for Mr Erdogan as the Turkish economy has struggled, and Syrians have been used as a scapegoat for the crisis.
But most of the Syrian refugees in Turkey today are from Sunni Arab areas in Syria. Such a large-scale repatriation to the previously ethnically diverse region where Turkey plans to implement its safe zone would drastically alter its demographics.
Despite Turkish officials frequently insisting that they do not seek to introduce demographic change, that is precisely what is happening. And those insistences have been overshadowed by President Erdogan’s rhetoric.
In an interview with Turkey’s state-run TRT network on 24 October, Mr Erdogan described the area designated for his planned safe zone as unsuitable for Kurds.
“The people most suitable for that area are the Arabs. These areas are not suitable for the lifestyle of the Kurds,” he said.
When pressed by the interviewer to explain why they were not suitable, he replied: “Because these are desert regions.”
This has led some experts to conclude that Turkey is indeed aiming to “Arabise” the land it has captured, and raised the prospect of ethnic cleansing by a Nato power.
“The Turkish incursion into northern Syria demonstrates clear hallmarks of ethnic cleansing,” says Professor Bridget Conley, research director of the World Peace Foundation based at Tufts University.
“Turkish government statements indicated an intent to displace the Kurdish population and replace it with Syrian Arabs, and pursued this policy with repression and human rights abuses,” Professor Conley, who teaches a course called Understanding Mass Atrocities, tells The Independent.
The same assessment was made by the top American diplomat in northern Syria at the time of the Turkish attack. In a damning internal memo, diplomat William V Roebuck criticised the Trump administration for not doing more to stop it.
“Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria, spearheaded by armed Islamist groups on its payroll, represents an intentioned-laced effort at ethnic cleansing, relying on widespread military conflict targeting part the Kurdish heartland along the border and benefiting from several widely publicised, fear-inducing atrocities these forces committed,” the internal memo said.
That memo was leaked a little under a month ago. Since then, even more evidence has emerged of ethnic cleansing. And yet these pleas have elicited little response from Donald Trump, who has seemingly lost interest in a part of the world he described recently as “blood-stained sand”.
In the makeshift camps and busy schools turned into displacement centres that are now scattered across northeast Syria, many watch from afar as their homes are being destroyed and stolen. They share a common feeling of helplessness and betrayal that their former ally, the US, is looking the other way.
“I don’t know how to tell you, but I will try to describe it. It’s like they sent us down the well and cut the rope,” says Aliya al-Ahmed, 31, who has just arrived at a dusty camp near Tal Tamr.
“If those big countries will not solve it, I don’t know what will happen. It is always the poor people who suffer. We have nowhere to go.”
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We stand in solidarity with Rojava, an example to the world
Leaders from social movements, communities and First Nations from around the world, including LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Eve Ensler and Stuart Basden on the Turkish invasion in north-east Syria
Letters
A Syrian Kurdish woman waves the flag of the Democratic Union Party during a demonstration near the town of Tel Arqam near the Turkish border on 6 October 2019. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images
What is at stake in north-east Syria is more than the fate of the Kurdish people or the autonomous homeland of Rojava or even the fight against Isis. What is at stake is humanity’s ability to survive our current civilisational crisis and to imagine new alternatives before it’s too late.
Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s brutal invasion of Rojava is using 20th-century techniques of extreme violence and genocide, despite a proclaimed “ceasefire”. Turkey’s air force is raining down napalm and white phosphorus on innocent civilians. At the same time, jihadi squads are massacring fleeing civilians as retribution for Rojava’s fight against Isis and their role as arguably the most important ally to the west in the region.
The US, the UK, France, Russia and other alleged superpowers are actively betraying both international law and the Geneva convention by allowing and facilitating the ethnic cleansing and occupation of Rojava. Turkey’s aim is clear: to eradicate what all fascist powers fear most, a free people daring to create brave and successful experiments outside the globalised, extractive system.
Western leaders are feigning empathy while American, German and British weapon manufacturers are actively selling weapons to Turkey. It is clear that the dominant system cannot and will not defend those seeking to explore other ways of knowing and being. As the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan writes: “The real power of capitalist modernity isn’t its money and its weapons, [but] its ability to suffocate all utopias […] with its liberalism.”
However, a growing chorus of allies are rising up around the world. From Haiti to Lebanon, from Chile to Iraq, from Cameroon to the US, from the UK to Hong Kong, social revolutions are confronting the rise of fascism, short-termism, greed, climate destruction and warfare that are required to prop up our existing economic paradigm. The battle lines are becoming clearer. Domination versus cooperation, colonisation versus autonomy, oppression versus freedom, patriarchy versus partnership – these values are the warp and weft of the defining struggle for the future of humanity.
For Rojava to survive and for justice to truly prevail, those rising up in their local context must stand together creatively with shared voice, values and visions for global systems change. Rojava is fighting for the same reasons as the awakening majority from around the world. It has shown that the way out of social and ecological crisis is not through GDP-focused “development”, but rather with decentralised autonomous communities.
Making such communities work in more and more places, by regenerating ecosystems, healing our collective trauma and creating social structures of solidarity and trust, is the transformational work of our times. Once we see our struggles as inherently interdependent with each other, and with the web of life itself, no army on the planet will be able to stop the inevitable transition.
As leaders from social movements, communities and First Nations from around the world, we stand in solidarity with the vision and work of Rojava. We pray for their resilience, protection and perseverance. We pray that we will listen to and learn from the living Earth as she continues to show us how to create societies which live in cooperation with all beings. We pray that those in positions of power be reminded of their humanity and end this invasion immediately. LaDonna Brave Bull Allard Standing Rock, Turtle Island (USA) Salim Dara Rural Solidarity, Benin Eve Ensler One Billion Rising, USA Sabine Lichtenfels Tamera Peace Research Center, Portugal Tiokasin Ghosthorse First Voices Indigenous Radio, Turtle Island (USA) Alnoor Ladha The Rules, Canada Gildardo Tuberquia Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, Colombia Yael Ronen Maxim Gorki Theater, Germany Sami Awad Holy Land Trust, Palestine Gigi Coyle Beyond Boundaries, USA Joshua Konkankoh Better World, Cameroon Stuart Basden Extinction Rebellion, UK Aida Shibli Global Campus, Palestine Claudio Miranda Favela da Paz, Brazil Rajendra Singh Tarun Bharat Sangh, India
SDF statement on the killing of ISIS leader al-Baghdadi
SDF said that the operation had been delayed for more than a month due to the Turkish aggression on their region.
ANF
HESEKE
Sunday, 27 Oct 2019, 18:20
The General Command of the Syrian Democratic Forces held a press conference in Heseke on the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a joint operation of the SDF and the U.S. near a Turkish military base.
The Kurdish version of the press statement was read by Head of SDF Foreign Relations Office Redur Xelil and the Arabic by SDF Official Spokesman Kino Gabriel.
The statement said the following:
“As a result of the joint efforts of more than five months between the military intelligence of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US forces, and in coordination at the highest level, the head of the Islamic State terrorist organization, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was eliminated in a joint operation near a Turkish military base in Barisha, northern countryside of Idlib province at dawn today. This historic achievement was the result of the close cooperation between the SDF and the United States of America.
We emphasize that this operation was delayed for more than a month due to the Turkish aggression on our region. We consider the operation as a revenge for the massacres committed by the terrorist organization in Kobani, Sinjar, the Khabour Basin, Nineveh Plain, Kirkuk, Khanaqin, Makhmour and revenge for the Kurdish Yazidi women in particular, and a revenge for humanity and all the victims of ISIS crimes worldwide.
The operation took place after our military intelligence documented over the past months the presence of high-ranking ISIS leaders including al-Baghdadi in areas under the military control of the Turkish state. We have shared some of the details regarding this issue with various media outlets after the liberation of the town of Baghouz in March 2019.
We warn the world of the danger that jihadi factions with the Turkish army may enter Ras al-Ain and Tel Abyad areas occupied by Turkey-backed militias and that the region could become another safe-haven in which ISIS may find opportunities to re-organize. We have already indicated that IS member and some senior leaders of the group have already moved to areas controlled by Turkish army in northern Syria. Presence of Turkish army and its mercenaries in Idlib, Afrin and the so-called “Euphrates Shield” areas and the recent operation that led to the killing of al-Baghdadi in the same area where Turkish army is present is yet another evidence of the authenticity of our repeated warnings.
As the SDF, while thanking all parties and forces that have contributed to the success of this historic process, we confirm our continued joint efforts with the international coalition led by the United States of America and that our intelligence services will step up their efforts to pursue and combat the leaders of ISIS and its cells.”
US President Trump: al-Baghdadi is dead
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412 SDF fighters killed in Turkey’s northern Syria offensive: senior Kurdish official
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A senior Kurdish official from northeast Syria said late Thursday that 412 fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been killed since Turkey’s launch of Operation Peace Spring.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, president of the Syrian Democratic Council’s (SDC) Executive Committee Ilham Ahmed announced “confirmed statistics” on their now 22-day-old conflict.
“More than 400,000 people have been forcibly displaced. Some of them stay at schools, while others are homeless. 18,000 of the displaced are children. Five of the medical personnel who were helping the injured were have lost their lives,” said Ahmed.
“Four journalists have been killed. More than 20 schools have been destroyed and 180 schools are out of service. 18,000 students cannot go to school now. 5240 teachers cannot go to work. All the [international] humanitarian organizations have left the arena,” she said, putting the number of SDF “martyrs” at 412.
She added that Turkey and its Syrian proxies currently hold 73 SDF hostages captured during the conflict.
The SDC is the political wing of the multi-ethnic SDF, allied with the US in the fight against Islamic State (ISIS) since it was founded in 2015.
Turkey regards the SDF a terrorist organization due to its alleged link to Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas inside Turkey.
It launched Operation Peace Spring on October 9 against the SDF in northern Syria, aiming to drive out Kurdish forces and eventually resettle millions of Syrian refugees who have fled to Turkey since the breakout of Syrian crisis in 2011.
Turkey and its proxies took the towns of Sari Kani (Ras al-Ain) and Gire Spi (Tel Abyad) from the SDF following days of intense fighting.
The offensive was officially paused by Turkey – despite a number of skirmishes – for six days after deals were reached with the US and Russia.
About 1000 US troops were present in the SDF-held areas but pulled out of the area after US President Donald Trump ordered their withdrawal. Only a small number now remain in Syria.
Meanwhile, Ahmed reiterated on Thursday SDC concern for the US response to Turkish incursion.
“The US promised us multiple times that the area where they are present will not be targeted by anyone, but the US did not commit to its promises.”
Kurds have blamed the US for abandoning them after years of joint operations against ISIS. However, the joint mission between US and Kurdish forces to kill ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proved some continued alliance between the two sides.
Report on use of chemical weapons by the Turkish Armed Forces in Northern Syria
Abbas Mansouran 2019-10-28 Epidemiology- Shiraz (Pahlavy) University Iran, Bacteriologist, 1976 MPH in Community Medicine, 1980 Actual Immunology, Stockholm University, Sweden 1990 Research principal in PEAS institute, Sweden since 2013
I came as a medical volunteer from Sweden to help treat those affected by war in Rojava. On October 13th 2019 I joined the medical staff in the main hospital of the Syrian city of Heseke to help the injured and be in close contact with patients. In my time there I have met many patients with severe burns which I would consider abnormal based on my experiences as founder and as the responsible of Hospital Acquired Infection control committee (HAI CC) at the university hospital of Shiraz, Southern Iran. My experiences go back to the first half of the Iran-Iraq war (1980s), including working in the burn’s unit. The shape and appearance of burns injuries I have treated here in Rojava are clearly very different from typical burns. It was immediately apparent to me that they were specifically manifestations of chemical weapon use. They show that Turkish Armed Forces have been using chemical munitions. I can emphasize that white phosphorus other some other unknown chemical such as Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) munitions were used in October in Rojava. We have so far admitted hundreds of patients, mostly civilians including children, women and men with severe injuries as a result of attacks by Turkey and their islamist proxy forces the cities of Serê Kanî (Ras al-Ain), Girê Spi (Tel Abyad) and surrounding villages. In total around 30 victims, mostly civilians, were admitted to Heseke’s main hospital with these severe and unusual burns and smoke injuries to
their faces, ears and other areas. The burn types I have witnessed here are very
different to those I would expect to have been caused by anything other than a
chemical incendiary weapons like white phosphorus. From my experiences I believe
therefore that the Turkish Armed Forces have used chemical weapons against women
and children in civilian areas.
White phosphorous munitions can adhere to clothing and deeply penetrate skin,
causing severe and often fatal burns to the bone. They continue to burn even when
deprived of atmospheric oxygen and do so until complete depletion of the
phosphorous material. This chemical can cause heart, liver, and kidney damages, and
inhalation of white phosphorus smoke may cause fatal respiratory issues.
Features of victims
1. Most of the victims we admitted were civilians
2. All the patients I visited reported that they had been victims of munitions
dropped or fired from unmanned drones in different places and in different
attacks.
3. Most patients reported 2 airstrikes, with bombs dropped one after another.
4. The injuries were black in appearance, deep, variable in size, and consisted
of multiple spots.
5. The victims had been covered by a cool smoke.
6. Pieces of bombs which have adhered to skin caused spots which looked like
droplets.
7. Some of the injured had breathing problems.
8. Smoke had settled over bodies with the appearance of charcoal dust.
9. At least 6 patients had very severe eye burns.
10. Hair and eyebrows were unburned but some deep spots in different size were
considerable.
11. The burns had no signs of foreign particles.
12. Most of patients developed life threatening infection by multi-resistant superbacteria
such as Pseudomonas spp, E.coli and MRSA.
13. Some victims had lost their arms or legs.
14. All victims suffering from a kind of neurotoxicity manifested in peripheral nerves and were irritable and painful sensitive feeling when I touched even the unburned skin.
15. Some victims exhibited hearing loss.
16. Most of them exhibited symptoms similar to those attained from landmines, but no evidence of shrapnel in the wounds was observed.
17. Some of the injured required laparotomy, lung and urinary catheterization.
18. Of the hundreds of patients I met, around 30 with above mentioned manifestations were observed. The Turkish Armed Forces may have used another different kind of chemical bombs similar to Dense inert metal explosive (DIME) bombs. This Tungsten alloy bombs consist of micro shrapnel 1-2 mm of heavy metals as cobalt. tungsten and nickel powder in a micro fibers. The features of injuries by DIME are very similar to white phosphorous munitions and are often fatal[1]. The carcinogenic effects of heavy metal tungsten alloys (HMTA) (along with depleted uranium [DU]) have been studied by the U.S. Armed Forces since at least the year 2000. These alloys were found to cause neoplastic transformations of human osteoblast cells.[2] Rhabdomyosarcoma [3] a tissue cancer is also reported to be caused by DIME bombs. In 2009, a group of Italian scientists affiliated with the New Weapons Research Committee (NWRC) watchdog group pronounced DIME wounds “untreatable” because the powdered tungsten they dispense cannot be removed surgically.[4] Because of the severity and life-threatening situations of injured and shortage of medical care in Rojava we had to transfer most of the injured to hospitals in Iraqi Kurdistan. These patients should be followed up for any carcinogenic and other complications effects. The names, dates and locations of attacks, and all above statements are documented and available on request.
2. Neoplastic transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by heavy metal–tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects. Carcinogenesis, Vol. 22, No. 1, 115–125, January 2001
3. Kalinich, J. F.; Emond, C. A.; Dalton, T. K.; Mog, S. R.; Coleman, G. D.; Kordell, J. E.; Miller, A. C.; McClain, D. E. (2005). “Embedded Weapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-Grade Rhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats”. Environmental Health Perspectives. 113 (6): 729–734. doi:10.1289/ehp.7791. PMC 1257598. PMID 15929896.
4. “Gaza: Israel under fire for alleged white phosphorus use”, Christian Science Monitor, January 14, 2009, by Robert Marquand and Nicholas Blanfo
Turkey-backed fighters have taken over an area along the border after a weeklong operation to push Kurds further into Syria. Photograph: Bakr Alkasem/AFP via Getty Images
Calls for war crimes investigations into the conduct of militias used by Turkey in Syria are mounting after a spate of new videos depicting Ankara-linked fighters torturing captives and mutilating dead bodies.Footage of atrocities allegedly committed by Arab forces in northern Syria is circulating widely across Kurdish regions of the country, sparking fears of renewed fighting and a deepening ethnic divide in the region, even as a tenuous ceasefire begins to settle.
A video purportedly posted earlier this week by one Turkish-supported group shows a captured Kurdish fighter being dragged by the neck as his captors threaten him with beheading. Another shows dead Kurdish fighters being cut with a knife as Arab combatants jeer.
Kurdish officials, along with the US special envoy for Syria , James Jeffrey, have condemned the videos, with the latter describing them as “potential war crimes” while the Kurds insist they represent ethnic cleansing.
Up to 170,000 Kurds have fled a battle zone along the Turkish border after a weeklong operation to push Kurds further into Syria.
Ankara has openly stated that it aims to send up to a million Syrians, who are currently living in exile in Turkey, into the area it has since dubbed a safe zone. Where the newly displaced – most of whom are Kurds – will settle remains uncertain, as does whether the recent spate of ethnic violence can be contained.
“One of our main challenges is to contain the emotional reaction,” said a senior Kurdish official, Arshan Mizgen Ahmad. “Those who killed here are not from this part of Syria. We are trying as an administration to calm them down.
“It is not a blood dispute in the usual sense of the term. This has been a cultural move that has been prevailing for centuries. We are trying another approach. We have made great efforts not to see it as a blood dispute, but as a political manoeuver,” she said.
Ankara’s proxies are comprised of Syrians who fought against the Assad regime, and other groups who have since been recruited as hired hands. They also include several extremist units, who were responsible for the execution of the Kurdish female politician, Hevrin Khalaf, who was hauled from her car two weeks ago and shot dead by a roadside along with her bodyguards.rtisement
Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who has studied the Turkish proxies, said: “The factions fighting on Turkey’s behalf are largely made up of young men displaced from their towns and villages from across Syria and particularly eastern Syria.
“In 2016, it was clear to many Syrians that Turkey has altered its position regarding the Assad regime and will no longer attempt to topple it, and hence, those who joined this force after 2016 were often individuals willing to fight, in exchange for money, to advance Turkey’s interests.”
Ankara has denied sanctioning any atrocities in Syria amid reports it has used white phosphorus. Turkish military officials say they are investigating reports of executions.
“Turkey retains control over all strategic decision-making,” said Tsurkov. “It decides when and where to start and end offensives. Turkey pays the salaries of these fighters, trains them in Turkey and in northern Aleppo, provides them free medical care when they are injured, and oversees all operations. Turkey is ultimately responsible for the conduct of these factions.”
Meanwhile, Kurdish officials were struggling to make sense of Donald Trump’s announcement that he was sending US tanks to secure oil fields in Deir Azzour, in far eastern Syria. The surprise move came after his widely condemned decision to withdraw all US forces who were working alongside the Kurds on Turkey’s border, ahead of the operation in early October.
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Hevrin Khalaf and the spirit of the democratic nation
Days after Turkey’s invasion of Rojava, Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf was assassinated. In this interview from last year, she shares her thoughts on the Rojava revolution.
My name is Hevrin, from Derik, a city in Rojava. I studied and lived there, but now my work is in Qamishlo. I studied civil engineering in Aleppo for five years and I completed my education in 2009. After working for the government for one year, the revolution started. This was in 2011.
My family deserves the credit for my participation in the Rojava revolution; they are patriotic and have been organized for years. They always took me to meetings and social events. In other words, I have never been far away from political organizing and have always had strong roots in our society.
This may be the case everywhere in the Middle East, but especially in Rojava there still exists a strong unity and solidarity among our people. Living together, or what we call ‘communal living’ is still alive and common today. I am also part of this communal society.
These were Hevrin Khalaf’s words in the spring of 2018 when I met her. On October 12, 2019, three days after Turkey launched its military offensive into northern Syria, she was brutally murdered. According to reports by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, she was dragged out of her car and shot in cold blood on the road. Her autopsy reveals she was shot, beaten with heavy objects and dragged by her hair until the skin on her scalp came off.
I do not know how many times I have listened to our interview recordings since I heard the horrible news of Hevrin’s death. She describes Rojava and her struggle with such pride. I wanted to hear these honorable words, because they also explain many of the reasons for the war against Rojava and Kurds. This interview is an attempt to bring justice to the brave work that Hevrin Khalaf did for her people and for the people of Rojava.
I met Hevrin Khalaf (Hevrîn Xelef, in Kurdish) in the spring of 2018 when she was the co-chair of the Ministry of Economy of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, better known as Rojava. The day before, she had lost her comrade Gerdo, with whom she had struggled together for many years; she was returning from Gerdo’s house in Tirbespîyê , and I remember when she called me to say that she was sorry for being late and that she was on her way.
A lifelong struggle
While I waited for Hevrin in the garden of the Ministry of Economy, sitting in the shadow of a tree, I chatted and smoked with the woman responsible for the Asayişa JIN, the women security forces in Rojava. She looked so strong and autonomous that when I saw the ring on her finger, I must admit I was a little surprised and asked her if she was married; “I’m married, but my husband works for the community security forces in another part of Rojava,” she said. A little embarrassed, she laughingly confessed: “We forgot that we were married once the revolution happened.”
Women in Rojava have always sought to transform the revolution, which everyone knows as a women’s revolution, into a social revolution. Hevrin struggled for this all her life and was murdered while fighting for it.
I had already heard about the beauty and dignity of Hevrin, and indeed, when she arrived, her swollen eyes and sadness from crying for Gerdo could not hide her beauty, nor did her fatigue obstruct her hospitality; while greeting me, she immediately inquired if I was hungry and if I had something to eat.
During my stay in Rojava, I had no relations with money; every day I ate and drank tea in the communal kitchens of one of the many local institutions or civilian houses along the way. There, it was evident that money does not dominate all social relations. Sometimes the people in Rojava were making fun of me; joking that if I had come during the time of war and embargo, they would have only given me soup.
A society build around communes and assemblies
Along with the revolution, a social economy had been organized in Rojava. At the time of our meeting, Hevrin was a spokesperson and co-chair of the Ministry of Economy for over two years.
There are three important pillars for organizing a social economy. The first one is the economy for social needs, which unlike in a capitalist economy, is not focused on maximizing profit. The second pillar is ecology and the ecologically responsible production of society’s needs. The third pillar is the creation and control of a fair market. These three pillars are very important for the social economy, and we want to make these a reality.
Rojava is not only the territory where a revolution is taking place, it is also a territory where the idea of a revolution is being redefined. Rojava is the place where a social revolution is taking place; where the notion of the “classical revolution” — based on the idea of transforming society through the seizure of power — is rejected.
The Kurdish movement of Rojava refuses to take power; instead, it mobilizes in an organizational modality that forms a network of assemblies that allows the people to become the subjects of their decision-making processes, offering the principle of self-determination for autonomy. That is, the Kurds are rejecting the basic component of a state: its power to make and implement decisions from the top down.
In other words, unlike other parts of Syria, the Kurds are not just another armed faction, but a militant popular movement that promotes horizontal self-determination and autonomy by and for the people of northern Syria. As Hevrin explained:
We should understand the main difference between the revolution in the rest of Syria and the revolution in Rojava. Let me give you an example, last night there was a public gathering. There was a teacher from Deraa. You probably know the significance of Deraa as the spark that lit the fire of the Syrian revolution back in 2011.
However, it could not go further.
Yesterday he told us that in Deraa, after the city was liberated from the regime seven years ago, nothing else was done; no organization, no service, no administration. Only a group of soldiers arrived to rule. That means whoever has guns can has power there. Our most important difference is this.
The first thing that was done in Rojava, and later in the broader region of northern and eastern Syria after it was liberated from ISIS, was the establishment of regional cantonal assemblies in agreement with the people living there, as the subjects of their own decisions. The sanctioning of, or participation in these assemblies by armed forces, was banned by the social contract of Rojava and northern Syria.
The purpose of the popular assembly-based system in Rojava is to organize an anti-capitalist and autonomous model for a stateless, anti-patriarchal and ecological society. Democratic autonomy, which is organized around the commune, is not a political party organization or government, although it recognizes political parties. Communes and popular assemblies, which are the main bodies of societal organization, constitute a self-government.
The spirit of a democratic nation
Unlike ethnic and religious conflicts that have transformed the Middle East into a war zone, democratic autonomy is guaranteed by the communes for all institutions of autonomous government on the basis of a “democratic nation”.
It was evident from the tone of her voice that Hevrin had captured the spirit of the democratic nation, just like her Assyrian comrade Gerdo:
Ever since the movement began organizing itself, they [militants of the Kurdish movement] have been explaining the solution [democratic autonomy] with Öcalan’s prison writings. In his work, there is a solution for the entire Middle East and Rojava. So, the political solution is already there, we just need to implement it.
This is why, when overthrowing a system, that you need to replace what was previously there with an alternative vision. If you don’t have an alternative, what you’ve destroyed might turn into something worse.
In other words, when the revolution started and the state left with all of its institutions — it remained only in a few places — if we didn’t have our alternative system and if our people were not ready, it would have been impossible for us to achieve a real liberation by simply establishing institutions.
In order to build this alternative system, we started with Mala Gel [People’s Houses] and Mala JIN [Women’s Houses]. All the institutions of society were created separately. If our society is recognized, it is best known for the women’s organizations. So, when people talk about the revolution in Rojava, they call it the Şoreşa JIN [Women’s Revolution]. The women started by building the Women’s Houses whose aim was to organize the women’s movement.
They were formed to create the common mind of women and to emancipate them from the dark and deprived situations in which they often find themselves, and have them become the leaders of this social revolution. Because we know that when a woman becomes a leader, society becomes a leader with her and transforms itself. The freedom of women and society are interdependent.
When I joined the revolution, my first place was in the Nurî Dersîm academy, where the political formation of society took place. I worked there for a time. At that time, the autonomous government had been declared, but prior to that my comrades suggested that I should take part in it. After the declaration of the autonomous government, I became the co-chair of the Ministry of Energy.
We worked with mamoste Gerdo, whom we lost yesterday, for three months. We worked with heval Gerdo since day one of the autonomous government. Many times he would say: we started the struggle together, and we will finish it together. He was our Assyrian friend and a very good person. He was a very good person in terms of human morality.
When we would talk about the terms of the democratic nation, I always said to him: you were our first friend who understood the democratic nation even though it wasn’t an explicit part of our political program yet. Because he understood and realized this; it was part of his nature.
He came from the city of Tirbespîyê and in this city people were living together in peace, so I was observing his nature in his relationships with Arabs and Kurds, Muslims and Assyrians. He repeated many times: ‘Serok [honorary title of Abdullah Öcalan] made us aware of it, and so we are very comfortable with it. We didn’t know that as Assyrians we had such rights; we had forgotten about it, but now we know our cultural and political rights, thanks to his prison writings.’
Gerdo always said that we must defend the project of democratic autonomy. He did so very quietly, but we worked with the spirit of a democratic nation for more than four years together. He really had the spirit of the democratic nation.
If there is one good thing about this autonomous government, it is the unity of the people. An Assyrian works with the Kurds, a Kurd with the Arabs. This wasn’t something that could have been achieved easily. This alone is a revolution.
Transforming gender relations
Hevrin had learned from her mother to be strong and revolutionary. As such, she joined the resistance as soon as the revolution began and held various positions. When she was discussing the social economy with me, she said that she would no longer be involved in the economic dimension of the movement.
After the liberation of regions like Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, she was offered to be co-president of the Syrian Future Party (SFP), which aims to establish a social consensus for peace and to eliminate the hostility that was historically generated by the Ba’ath regime between Kurds and Arabs. She brought this up casually and I could tell that she did not want to quit her job organizing the social economy of Rojava and that she did not want to participate in the SFP, but that she would not reject the offer of her comrades.
She added that she felt that she had become intertwined with the people working in the economic area and that they had managed to solve many realistic problems together. However, given that many aligned Arab tribes had not accepted the system of co-presidency, she knew she had a responsibility to take her place in the party in order to fight until such a system was accepted.
The system of having a co-chair or co-spokesperson is a praxis that provides women and men equal rights of speech and decision-making and which can be seen in every institution and organizational structure of the Kurdish freedom movement and dates back to a decision taken by a Kurdish women’s organizations in the 1990s. It is the first praxis of this nature among freedom movements in the world. Hevrin said that the adoption of the co-chair system was not easy, and that it would be an ongoing struggle:
After the declaration of the autonomous government, women’s work has become more and more prominent. All institutions of the autonomous administration are paying special attention to women’s issues, but there is always one institution focused on women exclusively..We do not encourage that women’s issues should be prioritized over general ones, but we do insist that women’s issues are taken into account in every institution.
In order to rekindle the extinguished fire in the history of women, we must intervene and support women’s organizations in every way possible. Until when? Until women and men can work together equally.
For example, the co-presidency system is not accepted in many regions. It has not been sufficiently internalized, even in the many institutions that we have established since the start of the revolution. In other words, to see each other as co-chairs, to know that decisions should be taken together equally, is an idea and a practice that has not yet been fully implemented in our culture.
It works very well in some places, but remember that it is not possible to change a millennia-old mentality in just two years. For example, when we talk about co-chairs, they immediately tell us that this right is only a woman’s right. The co-chair system does not exist solely for women — because the nature of women’s work is to work collectively, it therefore also assures men’s rights. Women see the co-chair system as a way of working with men, in other words, women see the right to work together also as a men’s rights issue.
For example, when we talk about co-chairing in newly-liberated areas, there is a perception that we are doing something for women, but that is not the case; co-chairing is not just for women, it is also for men. It is true, for example, that the decision to apply the co-chair system everywhere was conceived in women’s organizational spaces and actions, but from the beginning we recognized that this system would not only be beneficial for women, but also for all people in northern Syria. So, everyone has the right to act with his or her comrade.
This type of system may be perceived like this at first because there is no other example of it in the world. Sometimes I am very surprised, for example, when my male friends say, ‘Okay, let’s not argue too much, there is a co-chair system and our female friends here should not be offended.’ When I heard this, I said ‘We must accept this system not because otherwise women might get offended, but so that men’s voices do not disappear in society.’
Co-presidency does not mean destroying men, it means transforming gender relations inside our institutions and society. In single-presidency systems, the president is either a man or a woman. Therefore, in order to achieve real transformation in autonomous government, it was necessary to decide on the co-chair system.
For example, when the autonomous government was declared, all ministries had a presidential system; one president and two vice-presidents; now there are two co-chairs and three vice-presidents. Not only in ministries, but in all institutions.
The co-chairing first started in the canton of Cizre, then Kobane and now this system has also begun in Afrin. However, of course the Afrin cantonal assembly had also worked with the a de facto co-chair system from the beginning. In fact, even this was strange, as an example the first president of the Cizre canton was a man: Abdulkerim Saruhan; in Kobane also a man: Enver Muslim; but in Afrin it was a woman: Hevi Mustafa. Hevi Mustafa had a male co-chair even though the autonomous government had not yet decided on the co-chair system yet. But because she was a woman, the co-chair system was adopted de facto. It wasn’t implemented there yet. So, this tells us is that if the president is a man, they can continue as a presidential system, but if the president is a woman, she is not allowed to be without a male co-chair.
I laughed, and she laughed too; in that moment I saw the beautiful smile of Hevrin that no doubt stays with everyone who had seen it.
Even after her death, the importance of her struggle was once again made clear: Hevrin was not recognized as co-chair of the Syrian Future Party establishment, but rather referred to as the party’s “secretary general.”
She was a woman who was a co-president in her daily practice; I have no doubt that she continued her struggle with this spirit of resistance until the day she was murdered.
Hevrin Khalaf was smiling in front of me as a co-chair; this was undoubtedly the victory smile I saw in the eyes and faces of all women in Rojava; this honorable smile that destroyed patriarchy. So defending Rojava means defending that honorable smile!
SDF’s Xelil: Turkish army violated the ceasefire 37 times
Redur Xelil said that the Turkish state violated the ceasefire 37 times since October 18.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Monday, 21 Oct 2019, 20:00
Speaking to ANHA, Head of SDF Public Relations Office Redur Xelil said that the Turkish state has not adhered to the ceasefire declared on October 18 as it continued its attacks against North and East Syria.
According to figures announced by Xelil, the occupation forces have violated the ceasefire 37 times, with 10 airstrikes and 27 ground attacks.
Figures of the violation of ceasefire are as follows;
Rahila Gupta on why Turkey is encroaching on Rojava, an autonomous democratic commune fighting on the frontlines against ISIS.
Kurdish YPJ fighters embrace in Afrin, a city now occupied by Turkey since January 2018. Credit: Kurdishstruggle/Flickr
On 9 October, Turkey began a military invasion on northern Syria to attack the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). It’s an open secret that Turkey has been waiting in the wings for an opportunity to annihilate the Kurdish autonomous region Rojava in northeastern Syria, ever since it was established in 2012 while Assad’s attention was focussed on the civil uprising, part of the Arab Spring, in the south.
According to President Erdoğan of Turkey, the Kurdish struggle for self-determination, in south-east Turkey, led by the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê) which is proscribed by the authorities as ‘terrorist’, is closely related to the PYD (Democratic Union Party) in Rojava.
There is no doubt that theirs is a shared ideology, one that has been formulated by their joint leader, Abdullah Öcalan, now in his 21st year of incarceration in a Turkish prison. But the PYD’s organizing principle is democratic confederalism: a system of direct democracy, ecological sustainability and ethnic inclusivity, where women have veto powers on new legislation and share all institutional positions with men.
Within the short time since forming Rojava’s democratic experiment, child marriage, forced marriage, dowry and polygamy were banned; honour killings, violence and discrimination against women were criminalized. It is the only part of Syria where sharia councils have been abolished and religion has been consigned to the private sphere.
This is a blueprint for the kind of society that many of us have been campaigning for all our lives – and yet it is the best kept secret in the world. Most people, by now, know that the Kurds were the most reliable boots on the ground when it came to the battle against ISIS. Much of the widespread condemnation of Turkey’s aggression is articulated in terms of the US abandoning its loyal ally. While that is certainly true, what few people know is the kind of society that will be destroyed.
Collateral damage
The writing has been on the wall almost from the moment that the US and its European allies provided air cover to the embattled Kurds surrounded by ISIS in the famous battle of Kobane, northeastern Syria, which lasted more than four months from September 2014 to January 2015.
The US had been reluctant to help because its NATO ally, Turkey, would have preferred the defeat of the Kurds to ISIS. The entry of the US into the war turned around the fortunes of the Kurds. However, it was a purely transactional relationship. When Kobane lay in ruins because of the aerial bombing, the US did not provide funds for reconstruction nor did they pressure Turkey to open its borders so that Rojava could bring in much needed rebuilding materials.
Indeed until the military defeat of ISIS and the intermittent closure of the border with Iraqi Kurdistan, Rojava was basically blockaded. The US was not expected to have any interest in a society built on anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal ideas which were antithetical to everything it stood for.
The Kurds have been under no illusions about the superpower on whom they were forced to rely and knew that Turkey would move in as soon as the US vacated the space. Not even waiting till US evacuation, the westernmost cantonment of Afrin was invaded by Turkey in January 2018 and has been occupied ever since. And in February 2019, the last stronghold of ISIS at Baghouz collapsed. Within months, the US is leaving although the received wisdom is that the threat from ISIS is not over.
There are 12,000 ISIS prisoners (and 100,000 women and children, members of the ISIS fighters’ families) being held by the overstretched Kurds whose attention is now focussed on the Turkish invasion. These prisons and camps have become highly dangerous places where ISIS fighters are regrouping to relaunch their attacks.
Women have been killed and others injured in riots in the camps which broke out when ISIS enforcers imposed sharia dress codes on non-ISIS related women. Turkey has facilitated ISIS with arms and became a conduit for ISIS fighters crossing its border into Syria in what became known as the jihadi highway. If these prisons were to fall into the hands of Turkey, it would be bad news for all of us.
A source based in Tell Abyad (Kurdish name: Girê Spî) from the autonomous administration of north-east Syria, which is one of the towns currently facing Turkish bombing, told me: ‘Half the population of the town has been displaced. There is heavy fighting in the city between the Free Syrian Army, which is full of jihadi groups and the SDF (Syrian Democratic Force). Turkish F-16s are bombarding the city. I and my family are planning to move to a safe town nearby. We cannot remain if the jihadis take control of the city.’
Another source from the Foreign Relations Committee of Rojava believes that the town will fall fairly soon, a fate that could have been avoided if aerial bombing had not occurred. He added that aerial bombing was taking place all along the border, as far east as Qamishli, the de facto capital of Rojava, where five people died yesterday.
The Kurds have been asking for the imposition of a No-Fly zone monitored by international forces. That would certainly reduce civilian deaths and give the Kurds an equal fighting chance in which they always excel. Stopping arms sales to Turkey would also be an important step. Norway has begun the process. There has been a long running campaign of boycotting Turkish goods and tourism which provides the funds to help Turkey buy arms. NATO allies should also consider ejecting Turkey from its membership. These are some of the concrete ways in which UK, US and Europe can bring pressure to bear on Turkey.
What is interesting so far is the absence of comment from President Assad. After all, he and Erdoğan have been sworn enemies. Perhaps Assad wants Erdoğan to finish his dirty work for him and get rid of the final thorn in his side. It is a dangerous strategy indeed to allow an arch enemy to occupy your land to get rid of a harmless people that are not even demanding secession. They simply want to be left in peace to continue their democratic experiment. That is what many of us want too – a beacon of hope to inspire us to bring about radical changes in the way we live.
Turkish military and Islamic groups invasion in Northeast Syria:
On October 9, 2019 the Turkish army with islamic allies started an offensive targeting
mainly the area betweeen Sere Kaniye and Tell Abiad. SDF in turn started to defend it.
After few hours a massive displacement of population started toward south areas of
Hasake, Raqqa, Ein issa and Tel Tamir. Below the detailed report day by day with
photos and the casualties recorded.
(EDITOR : In order to get this report out urgently I have not adjusted the layout but it should be self explanatory)
16 and 17 of October,2019
The paramedic Hail al-Salih, he passed away today after he was injured with 3 other nurses in Asadiya south of Raselein on 15th of October
The main attack is concentrating on Ras Al Ain. Since the beginning of the attack the
access was already very limited. But since the night of 16th we had no access at all
anymore.
The capacity of Tiltemir hospital, which is the main Hospital to respond to all the
injuries from Ras Al Ain had to decrease drastically since the clashes were very near
and attacks to the hospital very likely. We evacuated most of our teams and
continued just with a small team.
In the hospital of Ras Al Ain is still a small team of department of health working but
with very limited capacities, they inform us, that there is many injured people which
they cannot treat and will probably die because of the lack of services. KRC
submitted an official call for help to ICRC and all humanitarian organizations:
There is a strong attack on towns and cities of North-East Syria, especially Ras al-Ayn
city. This is the most ferocious attack by Turkish military forces and allied Syrian
militias.
The city is suffering shelling, artillery, airstrikes and ground incursions with tanks and
heavy weapons. This has led to many civilian injuries, and since our medical teams
have been targeted we are unable to enter the city to rescue the casualties.
We are requesting that you respond to this appeal and intervene according to
humanitarian duties in order to bring an end to the airstrikes and ensure our permission
for the evacuation of civilian injuries.
Otherwise, we call on your direct intervention into the city. Without either intervention,
we will experience a full humanitarian disaster and lose hundreds of civilian live.
17/10/2019
Qamishli – 12:33 PM
GoS forces accompanied by GoR military police have officially entered Menbij town.
Prior to this, pro-GoS TV presenters were observed in the center of the town, reporting
of widespread call from the community for GoS intervention in the area. Asayish, later
stopped the filming and asked the reporters to leave the town. In the meantime, CF
have announced officially that they have withdrawn from Menbij and no longer have
active personnel in the area.
Along the M4, SDF have continued clashes and advances near Alyia Silos area (25km
East of Tell Tamr on the M4), followed by GoS establishing a new position
in Terwazieyeh village coming from Ein Issa town – thus making a large part of the M4
now under GoS/SDF control.
2
Unknown weapons attacks in Ras al Ain:
Hasake national Hospital received some patients, Civilian and Military, with burns (level 2 and level 3 ) after airstrikes. 6 patients where discovered with different symptoms. By time of writing this report an investigation of their symptoms is taking place to evaluate the symptoms and to check by which kind of weapon they got targeted. Some medias published the use of forbidden weapons. We as Kurdish Red Crescent can not confirm the use of chemical weapons yet, but working together with our international partners to investigate this subject.
Civilian casualties since the 9th of October– starting the Turkish invasion- recorded by KRC team
Dead: 44 in total recorded by KRC of them, male and female in Ras al Ain and Maabada.
Many of the Dead could not be registered due to distortion and there is a number that KRC
could not record. From the massacre of the civilian convoy 6 victims has been registered, in orange below, on the 11 certified.
Injured and shocked: 171 registered by KRC. From the massacre of the civilian convoy,
Series Name Gender Age Place of residence
Type of injury Casualties Date
1 Hamid Riyad Male 23 Qamishlo Wound in shoulder 09/10/2019
2 Rojin Mohammad Hani Female 18 Keyl Hasnak shrapnel in thigh 09/10/2019
3 Ahmad Othman Male 24 chil agha Wound and shrapnel in arm
09/10/2019
4 Alih ALhassafi
Saeed Male 32 chil agha shrapnel in
arm 09/10/2019
5 Basel Moudar
ALhamdal Male 20 Serekaniye Multiple
shrapnel 09/10/2019
3
6 Yousef Mohammad
Alih Anz Male 28
Western
neighborhood
in Qamishlo
shrapnel 09/10/2019
7 Turkiya Hajji Female 16 Qamishlo shrapnel in
head 09/10/2019
8 Abdulghani delf Male 15 Qamishlo Injury in head 09/10/2019
9 Majid Hamo Male 37 Qamishlo shrapnel in
ankle 09/10/2019
10 Jamil Hamo Male 50 Qamishlo
shrapnel in the
behind section
of theigh
09/10/2019
11 Hussien Hamo Male 10 Qamishlo shrapnel in
head 09/10/2019
12 Abdulghani Hamo Male 17 Qamishlo
shrapnel in the
behind section
of theigh
09/10/2019
13 Juliet Yaqoub
Nicola Female 30 Qamishlo shrapnel in
back 09/10/2019
14 Fadi Sabri Habsono Male 32 Qamishlo shrapnel in
belly and back 09/10/2019
15 Mohammad Haj
Qadur Ismael Male
Matlaka
village/Gire
sipi
Martyred 09/10/2019
16 Rabiea Ismael Female
Matlaka
village/Gire
sipi
Martyred 09/10/2019
17 Akram yousef Male Qamishlo Martyred 09/10/2019
18 Dalil Mousa Male 32
Western
neighborhood /
Qamishlo
09/10/2019
19 Basel Matar
Mohammad Male 19 Serekaniye shrapnel in
body 09/10/2019
20 Yehya Ibrahim
Aljasem Male 25 Derbasiye shrapnel and
neck injury 09/10/2019
21 Ahmad Khodr
Dandar Male Ashmia village/
Kobani 09/10/2019
22 Mohammad Ahmad
Aljasm Male Beshioukh
village Kobani 09/10/2019
23 Shahin Omar Kersh Male Ashmia village
/ Kobani 10/10/2019
24 Ali Moustafa
Moustafa Male Tabqa Multiple
shrapnel 10/10/2019
25 Ammar abdu
Altaym Male 18 Serekaniye Martyred 10/10/2019
26 Ahmad Mohammad
Altaym Male 24 Serekaniye Martyred 10/10/2019
27 Bashshar Ahmad
Sanjar Male 19 Serekaniye Martyred 10/10/2019
28 Ahmad Jasem
Alabed Male 21 Serekaniye Martyred 10/10/2019
4
29
Ezzeldeen
Abdulaziz
Mohammad
Male 18 Serekaniye Martyred 10/10/2019
30 Ibrahim Ali Male 39 Serekaniye Gun shot in
humerus 10/10/2019
31 Abdulaziz Jasem Male 35 Serekaniye Abdomen
injury 10/10/2019
32 Khalaf Aboud
Alkhaled Male 55 Serekaniye Head shot Martyred 10/10/2019
33 Abdulghani Bashir Male 16 Qedurbeck /
Qamishlo
shrapnel in
head 10/10/2019
34 Dalil Abdulhalim Male 30 Qamishlo Leg broken 10/10/2019
35 Serdar Yousef Male 30 Qamishlo Opened
abdomen 10/10/2019
36 Ibrahim Mamdouh Male 39 Qamishlo shrapnel in
arm 10/10/2019
37 Bahoz Saeed Male 38 Qamishlo Arm broken 10/10/2019
38 Qaymet Mousa Female 45 Qamishlo shrapnel in the
right shoulder 10/10/2019
39 Amina Mardini Female 73 Qedurbeck /
Qamishlo
shrapnel in the
abdomen Martyred 10/10/2019
40 Mahmoud Ahmad
Alhamawi Male 19 Himo /
Qamishlo 10/10/2019
41 Hamed Hawas Male 40 Terbesipiye 10/10/2019
42 Jankin Ahmad
Mourad Female 35
Qamishlo /
swes canal
neighborhood
Opened
abdomen 10/10/2019
43 Abdulkarim Aleid Male 28 chil agha 10/10/2019
44 Mohammad Yousef
Hussien Male 11 Qedurbeck /
Qamishlo Martyred 10/10/2019
45 Sarah yousef
Hussien Female 8 Qedurbeck /
Qamishlo
Feet
amputation 10/10/2019
46 Ahmad Abu Rana Male Qedurbeck /
Qamishlo Martyred 10/10/2019
47 Sozdar Ali Biro Male 37 Serekaniye
Left arm
fracture /
gunshot
10/10/2019
48 Ramadan Jasim
Tuhaini Male 60 Serekaniye
Broken legs
and left
forearm
10/10/2019
49 Eidan Sheikh
Ahmad Male 60 Kobani Martyred 11/10/2019
50 Dilgesh Mahmoud
Mohammad Male 15 Qamishlo shrapnel 11/10/2019
51 Dalil Abdulmajid
Ali Male 26 Qamishlo Multiple
shrapnel 11/10/2019
52 Bedran Rakan
Mahmou Male 35 Qamishlo shrapnel 11/10/2019
53 Daysam Emad
Sulieman Male 13 Tel ziwan \
Terbesipiye
shrapnel in the
head 11/10/2019
5
54 Majed Mohmmad
Sultan Albakr Male 40 Serekaniye Wounds in the
head 11/10/2019
55 Abdulmajeed Koni Male 50 Serekaniye Wounds in the
head 11/10/2019
56 Idrees Seydo Male 5 Serekaniye Shock 11/10/2019
57 Amina Abdu
Sheikhi Female 55 Serekaniye Gun shot in
left foot 11/10/2019
58 George Abdulahad Male 64 Serekaniye shrapnel in the
back 11/10/2019
59 Maso’ud Ali Mahdi Male 35 Qamishlo
Injury in
abdomen and
head
11/10/2019
60 Hussien Sulieman
Ibrahim Male 60 Qamishlo Martyred 11/10/2019
61 Hajji Hussien Male 70 Martyred 11/10/2019
62 Dakhil Mohammad
alHussien Male 55 Serekaniye shrapnel in
chest / traumas 11/10/2019
63 Qais Alsheikh Male 15 Serekaniye Martyred 11/10/2019
64 Mohammad Ali
Othman Male 26 Qamishlo shrapnel in the
back 11/10/2019
65 Mohammad Barho
Fares Male 60 Serekaniye Heart attack 11/10/2019
66 Ali Mahmoud
Hussien Male 30 Serekaniye Tumor in leg 11/10/2019
67 Mohammad Khalil
Khalaf Male 24 Serekaniye Shock 11/10/2019
68 Fryal Abdulrahman
Alfaraj Female 26 Serekaniye Shock 11/10/2019
69 Eyad thaki Hajji Male 20 Serekaniye Shock 11/10/2019
70 Hasan Sulieman
Alali Male 50 Qamishlo Martyred 11/10/2019
71 Habib Bashshar
Hbbo Male Qamishlo Leg
amputation 11/10/2019
72 Watan Amro Male 24 Kobani Martyred 11/10/2019
73 Fadi Adel Ibrahim Male 36 Qamishlo Martyred 11/10/2019
74 Hussien Ibrahim
Kasho Male 50 Qamishlo Martyred 11/10/2019
75 Fadel Saleh Male 45 Serekaniye Martyred 11/10/2019
76 Hajji Yaser Male Qamishlo Martyred 11/10/2019
77 Jalal Esmat Omar Male 25 Himo/Qamishlo Martyred 11/10/2019
78 Maso’ud Sheikh
Hamd Male Matin/Kobani Martyred 11/10/2019
79 Eidan Sheikh
Jaradeh Male Matin/Kobani Martyred 11/10/2019
80 Mohammad Youcef
Gharbo Male 13 Qamishlo Martyred 11/10/2019
81 Sulieman Abbas
Shaker Male Qamishlo Martyred 11/10/2019
82 Fadel Taqtaq Male 45 Qamishlo shrapnel in the
left thigh 11/10/2019
6
83 Hasan Naser Male 40 Qamishlo shrapnel in
chest 11/10/2019
84 Dadvik Naziyan Female 25 Qamishlo Broken leg 11/10/2019
200 muhammad khalaf Male 30 Serekaniye gun shoot 16/10/2019
201 eyad ahmad Male 19 Serekaniye gun shoot 16/10/2019
202 hozan ahmad Male 19 Serekaniye gun shoot 16/10/2019
203 ali dawood Male 22 Serekaniye gun shoot 16/10/2019
204 hamad al ebdu Male 35 Gire sipi martyred 16/10/2019
205 maryam
muhammad jeloud Female 25 Serekaniye fragments in
the left leg 16/10/2019
206 lamees ali assaf Female 14 Serekaniye gun shoot 16/10/2019
207 jazya al ali Female 45 Serekaniye broken legs 16/10/2019
208 sarah suleiman
hassan Female 20 Serekaniye Trauma 16/10/2019
209 ammar issa
muhammad Male 3 Serekaniye wounds 16/10/2019
210 osama ebrahim al
awad Male 21 Serekaniye Trauma 16/10/2019
211 hayel al salih Male Serekaniye martyred 17/10/2019
212 abdul fattah esmail
al ali Male 20 gun shoot 17/10/2019
213 nidal ebrahim Male 46 qamishlo fragments in
head 17/10/2019
214 nermeen
muhammad hassan Female 18 Gire sipi fragments in
the left hand 17/10/2019
11
215 alan Male 19 Gire sipi fragments in
body 17/10/2019
15th of October,2019
The displaced people problem became bigger after the INGOs had to leave NES, and
those work remotely most of them cannot have good access, the other problem is
that the GOS has raised the flag of Syria in some schools those host IDPs and many
INGOs are not allowed to work there.
As it was expected, this evening big part of KRC team had to leave the Hospital in Tal
Tamer due to the conflict around the town in Manajir and Alyia Silos area around
on the M4 east Tal Tamer, in that way there will be too much difficulties to reach to
the wounded and the injured people in the area of the conflict and Ras Al Ein. Later
at midnight it was reported that SDF took the control of both areas east Tal tamer, but
the medical team will check the area if there is possibility to work in the hospital or
not.
GOS didn’t enter the town of Tal Tamir but was only in Al-Aghebesh
Ein Issa camp was dramatically change today as a lot of ISIS cells showed up to
attack and burn the tents, there is no NGO can work there while the most of the IDPs
were moved to Mahmodly camp.
14th of October,2019
As it was expected, the number of the victims of the civilian convoy, bombed yesterday
in Ras Al Ain, increased after they were referred to Tell Tamer (S. Legerin Hospital)
and then to Qamishlo and Hasake Hospitals, in the list below the new casualties are
added.
Ein Issa camp is without services since yesterday, except for the only Health Point
where KRC medical team is working with very limited capacity. During the chaos, 25
unaccompanied minors were evacuated by NGOs together with the UN to Raqqa city
where they are now being supported in a NGO CFS.
The displaced people problem became bigger after the INGOs had to leave NES, and
those work remotely most of them cannot have good access, the other problem is
that the GOS has raised the flag of Syria in some schools those host IDPs and many
INGOs are not allowed to work there.
As it was expected, this evening big part of KRC team had to leave the Hospital in Tal
Tamer due to the conflict around the town in Manajir and Alyia Silos area around
on the M4 east Tal Tamer, in that way there will be too much difficulties to reach to
the wounded and the injured people in the area of the conflict and Ras Al Ein. Later
at midnight it was reported that SDF took the control of both areas east Tal tamer, but
the medical team will check the area if there is possibility to work in the hospital or
not.
GOS didn’t enter the town of Tal Tamir but was only in Al-Aghebesh
Ein Issa camp was dramatically change today as a lot of ISIS cells showed up to
attack and burn the tents, there is no NGO can work there while the most of the IDPs
were moved to Mahmodly camp.
The remaining of the INGOs left this morning through Semalka-Peshkhabour gate
after the Syrian government showed up: “We have made difficult decisions, staying
until the last minute. Of key NGO bases, Kobane was the first to have completed the
withdrawal of the staff and the suspension of activities and it was hit with heavy
activity just a day after. Ein Issa escalated significantly after assessments were made
the day before to withdraw all international staff and relocate to coordination of
activities to Raqqa. Today, we are leaving Amuda, Tel Tamer, Hasekeh city with, at
least Tel Tamer, witnessing presence of GoS just hours after the last NGO started
moving”.
For the Kurdish Red Crescent; all activities will continue in all the areas without open
conflict and KRC will get the support from the partners remotely, mainly inside of the
camps: AL Hol, Areesha, Roj, Newroz.
KRC announced (The Kurdish Red Crescent is continuing and will continue its activities
in all the camps (Al-Hol, Areesha, Roj, Newroz, Ain Issa). And all the health clinics and
hospitals that are supporting in all cities. A special team is working on the current
emergency situation to monitor and document the casiualties , and coordinate the
humanitarian work). Also Trauma Stabilization points and Ambulance services will
continue.
GoS movement:
GoS reinforcements were observed as heading towards frontline areas after
reaching Tal Tamer Sub-District. Furthermore, GoS have been observed as
moving a number of forces between Tall Tamer/ Ras Al Ain road.
GoS ground troops were observed about 20 km north of Al Tabqah City and
continuing in a northerly trajectory, towards Kobane with the intention of
preventing further OAG advances.
Furthermore, it is confirmed that GoS forces arrived in Tell Tamer and entered
the town.
Overnight, the situation in Menbij and Kobane was reported as calm, though
reports indicate that GoS forces will move into the aforementioned cities in the
next few hours, while it is reported that TAF forces have reinforcements on the
other side of the Turkish border from Menbij and Ain Al Arab/Kobane.
GoS elements have arrived in the towns of Ein Issa.
13
KRC Statement on the Impact of the withdrawal of international INGOs and continued
attacks by Turkey After the agreement between the Syrian Government and the SDF all international NGOs had to withdraw their international staff and have no access anymore to the region and also the situation got unpredictable with turkey as a NATO partner. At the same time the impact on the humanitarian situation is disastrous. Services for newly displaced people and already overburdened IDP/Refugee Camps decreased to a critical minimum. The IDP/Refugee camps are now left with extremely limited support. The coordination among remaining local NGOs and UN Organizations is poor and if support is provided there is duplication while at the same time big gaps in critical services such as shelter, drinking water and food. The coordination for the Emergency response is extremely difficult after all international NGOs also withdrew their essential expat staff this morning. Right now, KRC is the ONLY humanitarian Aid Organization providing direct Emergency Response on ground. Meanwhile, Turkey does not accept us as a neutral humanitarian aid organization and breaks international humanitarian law by targeting our ambulances and health point. By time of writing this statement the Turkish troops have nearly reached Tal Tamr. The chance that the hospital becomes a target itself is high. We are monitoring the situation very close, in order to re-allocate the team and the patients.
We will continue our activities in all six camps and all health clinics and hospitals that are supporting in all cities. We will continue to monitor and documentation of the wounded and martyrs. We also assist the newly displaced people and coordinating the humanitarian support.
In the best case this will end up in a massive escape towards Iraq (and then Europe), in the worst we experience a genocide. We need NOW the help of the international communities!
– We need NOW turkey to stop the invasion and to accept Syrian territory!
– We need NOW the access for international humanitarian Aid Organizations!
– We need NOW the support of all democratic nations who accepts the human rights to
stop this!
We consider Europe as well as USA and Russia as responsible to end this massacre
immediately!
13th of October,2019
At the early morning, the Turkish air forces were flying very closely over Ein Issa camp
which lead to fear between all the IDPs and Refugees inside of it. After that, around 10
am some families left, including ISIS families from the annex section. As the fight was
coming so close, the security team of the camp and the self-administration announced
that they were not able anymore to control it.
Kurdish Red Crescent, which is the main health responder in the camp, had to leave
as well due to security issues, and other actors left. There was burn of tents in the
annex section and ISIS supporter were carrying weapons with them (seems they had
it before). After few hours the Asaysh was able to go back to Einissa check point while
the IDPs went to Tilelsemin village, south of Einissa.
Tow ambulances of the health Department were kidnapped on the road to Tell Abiad
and no other information about them reached as so far.
Turkish backed forces took control of Mabruka Camp during the afternoon.
Reportedly, there were about 15 IDP families still in the camp at the time.
14
Around 4 pm, a Turkish airstrike impacted the center of Sere Kaniye- Ras Al
Ain town, which was at the time densely populated. The attack caused 11 deaths and
74 injuries at least, among them civilians and reportedly a number of international
journalists, but we think the number of the victims will increase because there were a
lot of several injuries. Those people were from all NES area community, heading to
the city to show solidarity with SDF. All were referred to Tel Tamir (S. Legerin
Hospital) which was already full so our team had to refer them to Hasake national
hospital and Qamishlo hospital.
At the late night between 11-12 pm, there was bombing on a TSB managed by the
health department of NES in Asadiya village 15 km south Ras Al Ain, as a resuly the
2 paramedic were heavily injured with one ambulance driver, they were referred to
Tiltemir hospital then To Hasake.
12th of October, 2019:
Kobane was strongly target since the night. The main hospital was out of the service
for three hours beacasue of close bombing that caused damage. Massive
displacemet was recorded.
An explosion occurred in front of Al-Hasakeh Central Prison, No casualties or
escapes were recorded.
Around 7- 7:15 am the Trauma Stabilization Point (TSP) set up by KRC in Salihiye
village, south of Ras Al Ain, has been hit by what we believe was an airstrike. The
TSP was temporarily placed there to support injured persons, 15 minutes away from
the front line of RAA. Two KRC staff were injured. Four patients where inside of the
TSP but they were not further injured and the staff referred them to Tel Tamer
hospital. Two ambulances have been damaged. Both them and staff were clearly
displaying KRC logo. KRC staff on the ground report that the airstrike was not nearby
but believed they were directly targeted. As a result, the two ambulances were out of
the services and the driver and the paramedic were injured.
The entirety of the M4 between Ein Issa and Tell Tamer remainds under SDF control.
However, turkish baked groups have reportedly made territorial advances between
Tell Abiad and Ras Al Ain during the night – around Rajim Aanwa area and possibly
further south. And after that they stopped the vehicles on the road and killed some of
them (could be only the kurds). The head of one party in NES (Hevrin Khelelf) was
one of the casiualties and was captured with the driver. As Kurdish Red Crescent with
our humantarian partners we get a lot of support from Hevrin as she was into the
humantarian work deeply. One of her speaches- “The war in Syria has destroyed the
places of childhood of millions of Syrians. In Ain Issa camp for displaced Syrians, we
suggested that we give the displaced people every tent, a small tree, they plant in
front of their tent. Take care of it. To be remembrance of them, after they left the
camp towards their cities and homes. It will be a beautiful green memory, in a land
that has grieved them and made them homeless. ”
Tell Abiad was heavily bombed all the day and medical teams are still working inside
of it trying to help the injures although there was a lot of randomly targeting
everywhere, which still limit the movement and the work in trauma stabilization points
and stop the hospital. KRC team there were trying to rise a flag showing that they are
humanitarian organization but this didn’t work as they targeted the TSP in Ras Al Ain.
KRC teams are not able to reach Ras Al Ain anymore, but we are still trying to find a
way. There is targeting on our ambulances as we try to go closer. After the TSP was
targeted the situation get worse.
15
11th of October, 2019:
Clashes continued overnight in the western and eastern outskirts of Ras Al Ain Town,
with OAG advances recorded in the industrial area of the town. Conflict activity
decreased after 1100hrs today.
In Tell Abiad Sub-District, during the night SDF regained control over Tel
Fender and Yasbseh villages, and OAGs regained control of Yasbseh in the morning.
This morning, indirect fire attacks continued south of Tell Abiad town, mainly in and
around Badi and Ein Al-Arus (south west) and Breighi (south east).
Additionally, last night, cross border indirect fire and cross border clashes were
recorded across Quamishlo and Al-Malikeyyeh Districts. Following the cross-border
exchanged in Al-Malikeyyeh Sub-District, TAF artillery reinforcement were sent across
the border from Hiyaka town.
In Quamishlo city, indirect fire was observed on 4 occasion between onto Qanat Al-
Sweis and western neighborhoods of the city as well as onto the Asayish training
center of Himo
Elsewhere, one artillery strike was recorded onto Samasakh/ Bostan and Zheiriyeh in
Malikeyyeh Sub-District, one onto Tal Khatun in Qahtaniya Sub-District and one
indirect fire occurred north of Mabruka town
A car bomb exploded today in Qamishlo in Monir Habib street (one main road of
Qamishlo) and as a result one civilian was killed and 5 were injured in front of one
popular restaurant (Omari)
Since the last night all Eindiwar town was evacuated afterwards the civilian houses
were burned by Turkish army/FSA.
Mabruka camp (Ras al Ain district) had to evacuate all the IDPs to other camps due to
the threating and targeting from the Turkish army and the rebels (FSA).
In the late evening conflicts in Al Hol camp, in the annex section which contain ISIS
families, where reported by KRC team. The camp security responded. In the time of
writing the tensions are still ongoing. No casualties reported yet.
5 ISIS fighters could escape from the main prison in Qamishlo, after targeting by
Turkish forces. Reported by Asayish (Kurdish police)
16
IDPs movements:
The total number of the IDPs from the border strip to the south areas since the beginning of
the attack:
Infrastructures:
There is lack of water in whole area of Hasakeh, due to the targeting the main water
station in Alok, which covers more than 500.000 people. This is also affecting all
hospitals in this region.
Electricity and phone network are decreasing in general in all the areas, especially in
the border strip.
17
In 10th of October:
Since this morning TAF has removed parts of the border wall near Tal Halaf, Tal
Arqam and Aziziyeh villages (All Ras Al Ain, Sere Kaniye) and TAF (Turkish Armed Forces)
and OAGs have engaged in clashes with SDF during attempts to advances further inside NES.
Clashes were reported in the three locations mentioned above as well as in Ras Al Ain
Town, Western Alok, near Jan Tamer (Yezidian village) and Bir Asheq village (also all in Ras
Al Ain sub-district). There has been no territorial changes at the time of writing.
In Ein Issa Sub-district, two airstrikes were recorded against a bridge 3km south of Ein Issa
town.
Cross border fire and clashes taking place in and around Tell Abiad town have stopped at
around 0300hrs with no territorial changes.
Airstrikes:
Sere Kaniye Ras Al Ain (x7)
Tell Abiad (x3)
Ein Issa sub(x2)
Al-Malekkiyeh Derik sub-district (x1)
Indirect Fire Impacts:
Tell Abiad sub-district (x9)
Ras Al Ain sub-district (x6)
Al-Malekkiyeh sub-district (x4)
Quamishli city (x4)
Jawadiyah sub-district (x3)
Amuda sub-district (x2)
Ain Al Arab/Kobane (x2)
Heavy clashes were ongoing in Tilebeyd and in the mornging while there was a delegation
from the tripes going to support SDF from Ein issa to Tilebyed, their convoy was targeted
and casualties were reported.
The kurdish red crescent and MSF working in the hospital had then limited access to the
area of Tilebeyed, while KRC teams are depending on Trauma stabilization points and
ambulances (at least 15 ambulances are involved in the respond so far) while the main
hospital to be refered to is still KRC hospital (Shehid Legerin) in Tel Tamr, privat Hasake
Hospitals supported by WHO and private Qamishli Hospitals.
Any further event/incidents will be shared in the next update.
18
On 9th of October:
Airstrikes targeted:
In 9th of October:
Sere kaniye (Ras Al Ain) x7
Ein Issa x2
Tell Abiad x1
1635hrs: indirect fire against Tell Salloush(west Al Munbateh) – Tell Abiad Sub-
District.
1640hrs: airstrike onto former CF border post in Tell Fender – Tell Abiad Sub-District.
1650hrs: indirect fire onto Bir Asheq checkpoint – Tell Abiad Sub-District.
1650hrs: two airstrikes against Abu Serraand Hoshan villages (approx. 15km North
West of Ein Issa Town) – Ein Issa Sub-District. Six SDF members were reportedly
killed.
1700hrs: indirect fire on a military position of the Tell Abiad Military Council (evacuated
a week ago) and onto the school in Yabseh village – Tell Abiad Sub-District.
1730hrs: Indirect fire towards Qanat Swiys Neighbourhood of Quamishli City –
Quamishli Sub-District.
1730hrs: Mortar rounds and artillery fire onto the outskirts of Mansura village – Al-
Malekkiyeh Sub-district.
1740hrs: Indirect Fire onto the outskirts ofEsmailiyeh village – Al-Malekkiyeh Subdistrict.
1820hrs: Indirect Fire against Tal Elhasanat and Kherbet Balak villages – Jawadiyah
Sub-district.
1830hrs: TAF removed parts from the wall north of Quamishli City.
At night a lot of clashes were happening in TIlebyed and casiualtis from both sided
were recorded.
The Kurdish red crescent has already declered on 9th :
This targeting is affecting the situaiton in NES for Local and IDPs in the the 7 main
camps in NES, we have already decleared in KRC that:
19
Due to the clashes on the border with Turkey and injuries and casualties, we have been
required to reposition our medical and ambulance teams from several camps such as Al Hol,
Areesha, Ein Issa, Roj and other camps. Unfortunately, this situation may cause a decline in
the quality of work in these camps, which contain tens of thousands of refugees and displaced
people, but the priorities of the stage requires that we respond first to life-threatening situations.
Most of our partners from humanitarian organizations and other INGOs in the region, for
security reasons, have limited access to the camps, which threatens to decrease the service
and increase the burden on the camp administrations and security forces guarding certain
sectors within these camps such as Al Hol. We will work in the Kurdish Red Crescent in our
best efforts to arrange our teams to respond to the emergency situation on the border with
Turkey and to continue working with the same quality in the camps.
The hospital in Serekaniye (Ras Al-Ain) is out of services, cases has been referred to Tel Tamr
Hospital, Hasakeh Hospital and Ein Issa Hospital.
The hospital of Tel Abiad (MSF) is out of the service so the cases were moved to other areas
such as Ein Issa, and Tel Tamer.
The hospital of Hasake as all Hasake area have lack of water which create problem to respond,
The largest Christian Neighborhood (Bisheriya) in NE Syria is being bombed and some
civilian houses were burned, 2 of the dyed civilians were from there.
Call for resistance against Turkey’s plan to invade Rojava
The Turkish state ruled by the AKP-MHP coalition has openly announced its plan to invade the Rojava region. HDP, SYPG-JKŞ-CKŞ, TJA and ESP called for resistance against the invasion plan.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Monday, 7 Oct 2019, 16:03
Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Free Women’s Movement (TJA), Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and SYPG-JKŞ-CKŞ released statements in response to the Turkish state’s threats of invasion against Rojava.
Free Women’s Movement (TJA) stated that an imminent military operation against Northeast Syria by the AKP-MHP coalition, which remains standing with war and repression, is an effort to bring itself into existence over attacks against Kurdish achievements and to cover its collapsing domestic policies with fascism and militarism.
TJA called upon all circles of society to stand against the AKP-MHP government’s policies for deepening the conflict.
Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Central Executive Board stressed that the AKP-MHP government putting a new military aggression against North and East Syria on the agenda was an extremely dangerous and wrong step.
HDP warned that the destruction to be caused by an intervention of this kind and population engineering would be categorized as a crime against humanity before international law.
The party pointed out that in addition to the Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens, Syriacs, Armenians and Yazidis in the region were also under a great threat.
HDP called on the forces of peace and democracy in Turkey to take an effective and determined stance against the AKP-MHP alliance that is trying to consolidate its destabilized rule; “Such a military intervention means more repression on the society in Turkey, more financial burdens, poverty, a deepening crisis, widespread lawlessness and the lack of democracy. With this likely intervention, Turkey is being dragged into a dangerous and deep trap, an adventure with no boundaries. We can stop this together.”
The Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) warned against “fascist Turkish state threat of invasion against the Rojava Revolution that gained its right to existence with a battle based on self defense against ISIS mercenaries, the reactionary states in the region and imperialist forces”.
ESP called on Turkish workers and laborers to reclaim their honor and to oppose the colonial war.
“Rojava Revolution is the revolution of workers, women, youth and the oppressed peoples. Rojava Revolution is our revolution. Let’s defend it against the fascist colonialist state and its mercenaries. Let’s be the voice of Rojava peoples everywhere we are. Let’s raise the struggle against occupant colonialism on the streets.”
SYPG-JKŞ-CKŞ pointed out that this operation cannot be considered or started independently from international imperialist alliance relationships.
The statement by SYPG-JKŞ-CKŞ said; “It is not really surprising that the US which was in a tactical alliance with SDF at first, now approves the Turkish state’s occupation campaign against North and East Syria. The US, which acts in line with its own international military and economic interests, connives at the massacre of the region’s peoples by Turkish invasion today, an act that actually corresponds its essence.
They are afraid because Rojava Revolution is the door to the freedom of all peoples. Alongside the self defense forces and mechanisms of the people, we will be resisting the occupation operations of the Turkish state, colonial regional states and international imperialist forces to the last drop of blood. To keep silent is to be a party to this crime. All streets should be turned into areas of resistance against invasion.”
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To the public
Despite all the efforts we did to avoid conflict, our commitment to the security mechanism agreement and taking necessary steps on our end, the US forces did not carry out their responsibilities and have withdrawn from border areas with Turkey. Turkey’s unprovoked attack on our areas will have a negative impact on our fight against ISIS and the stability and peace we have created in the region in the recent years. As the Syrian Democratic Forces, we are determined to defend our land at all costs. We call on our Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, and Syriac people to strengthen their unity and stand by the SDF in defense of their land.
General Command of Syrian Democratic Forces October 7th, 2019
Syria Kurds slam US withdrawal, vow to defend Rojava ‘at all costs’
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Condemning the US decision to withdraw troops from northeast Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said Monday they would defend the Kurdish-majority region, known to Kurds as Rojava, “at all costs”.
The pledge comes hours after US President Donald Trump gave his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan the greenlight to launch an air and ground operation east of the Euphrates River – controlled by the US-backed SDF.
Mustafa Bali, a senior SDF official, accused US forces of failing to fulfil their responsibilities as allies in the war against the Islamic State group (ISIS), “leaving the area to turn into a war zone”.
The SDF was the main coalition partner in the ground war against ISIS, responsible for retaking the de facto ISIS capital of Raqqa in 2017 and the last ISIS holdout of Baghouz in March this year. The SDF lost more than 10,000 fighters.
“The SDF is determined to defend NE Syria at all costs,” Bali said.
“US forces on the ground showed us that this is not how they value friendship & alliance. However, the decision by the @POTUS is about to ruin the trust and cooperation between the SDF and US built during the fight against ISIS. Alliances are built on mutual trust,” Bali tweeted.
“We are not expecting the US to protect NE #Syria. But people here are owed an explanation regarding security mechanism deal, destruction of fortifications and failure of US to fulfill their commitments.”
In an English-language press statement released on Monday, the SDF said: “Despite all the efforts we did to avoid conflict, our commitment to the security mechanism agreement and taking necessary steps on our end, the US forces did not carry out their responsibilities and have withdrawn from border areas with Turkey.”
“Turkey’s unprovoked attack on our areas will have a negative impact on our fight against ISIS and the stability and peace we have created in the region in the recent years. As the Syrian Democratic Forces, we are determined to defend our land at all costs. We call on our Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, and Syriac people to strengthen their unity and stand by the SDF in defense of their land,” the statement added.
Kurdish forces had agreed to dismantle their land defenses along the border after Washington and Ankara agreed to set up a so-called ‘safe zone’.
Erdogan had lobbied to create a 32 kilometer-deep buffer zone, where he hoped to resettle up to three million Syrian refugees currently hosted by Turkey. The Kurds have resisted the idea, calling for a shallower zone and for the resettlement to be limited only to those native to the region.
The SDF did however agree to move their defensive positions nine to 15 kilometers from the border.
Now that the SDF has lost its defensive assets along the border, resentment toward the US is running high.
“The [White House] statement tonight on Syria after Trump spoke with Erdogan demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of anything happening on the ground. The ‘United States’ is not holding any ISIS detainees. They are all being held by the SDF, which Trump just served up to Turkey,” tweeted Brett McGurk, the former special presidential envoy to the global coalition to defeat ISIS.
The White House statement issued late on Sunday indicates Turkey will be placed in charge of ISIS prisoners and that American force will stand aside to allow the Turkish operation to take place.
“Turkey will now be responsible for all ISIS fighters in the area captured over the past two years in the wake of the defeat of the territorial caliphate by the United States,” the office of the White House Press Secretary said.
“The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS (Islamic State) territorial “Caliphate,” will no longer be in the immediate area.
The SDF affiliated news agency Hawarnews published a video of American forces withdrawing from the border area.
Ibrahim Kalin, the Turkish presidential spokesperson, tweeted that the invasion of northeast Syria would serve two purposes – to eliminate members of the “terrorist group”, referring to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), and clear a safe border area that would allow safe return of Syrian refugees.
“Turkey supports Syria’s territorial integrity and political unity. Has no interest in occupation or changing demographics. The PKK/YPG did that to northeast Syria. Time to correct it. Turkey fights against a terrorist organization that has also killed and oppressed the Kurds,” he added.
Demonstrators in Qamishli march in August against Turkish threats to invade the Kurdish region. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images
Traffic is light on the two creaking pontoon bridges over the Tigris that mark the only official crossing into the autonomous region of north-east Syria, a little known area of 5 million people engaged in a radical political experiment.
At the border post stands a distinctive billboard: a martyrs’ memorial to the men and women who died eradicating the Islamic State (Isis), as well as those killed fighting what has become a more serious threat – Turkey.
“Our martyrs are our honour,” the poster says, depicting 40 foreign fighters, including a Briton, Anna Campbell, who was killed in March last year, aged 26, defending the city of Afrin against a Turkish incursion.
An estimated 12,000 fighters from the north-east region died in the territorial struggle against Isis, which ended in March, and a further 20,000 were wounded. What was initially a Kurdish force of ground troops with air and logistical support from a US-led coalition has expanded into an administration controlling 30% of Syria, east of the Euphrates river.
A Kurdish security officer stands guard at a rally against Turkish threats to invade the region in Qamishli in August. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images
North-east Syria is the largest part of the country outside the control of President Bashar al-Assad. Once a Kurdish area, it is now governed under a communal structure involving a complex set of committees representing seven “cantons” – including Sunni-Arab dominated areas – with each post jointly held by a man and a woman.
Westerners in the area still travel under armed guard in fast-driven vehicles, and there are obvious signs of war damage, decaying infrastructure and only the most basic economy. According to the local military, Isis sleeper cells remain active. The administration says it holds 6,000 Isis prisoners, although the figure may be higher, and over 100,000 displaced persons in overcrowded prisons and increasingly lawless camps, which officials admit they are struggling to control.
Local politicians are concerned about what they say is western indifference. Amina Omar, the co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council in the desert town of Ain Issa, said “we deserve to be supported” in the light of the sacrifices of the eight-year war against Isis.
Omar said: “We have had no political support from the international community to begin working towards our aims” and accused Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of wanting “to initiate a war”.
A merchant sells grains at a market in Qamishli in north-east Syria in September. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images
A cross-party British parliamentary delegation, led by Labour backbencher Lloyd Russell-Moyle, visited north-east Syria in September to begin a process of rallying political support. “Global civilisation owes them a debt, both of honour and of practical assistance to rebuild their damaged region,” he said.
Until now, UK participation has been limited to an unacknowledged presence of British special forces, with whom commanders of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) say they enjoy “a good relationship”. The UK forces are based with 1,000 US troops who provide ultimate support to the fledgling administration.
Political engagement has been minimal. On a visit to London in February, Îlham Ehmed, the co- of the “executive council” of the Syrian Democratic Council, was only met by mid-ranking civil servants in a cafe away from the Foreign Office building.
Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle speaks during a visit to north-east Syria in September. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images
North-east Syria’s leftist ideology was inspired by Abdullah Öcalan, one of the founders of the separatist Kurdish PKK in Turkey, where he has been imprisoned since 1999. It is particularly visible in the country’s male YPG and female YPJ militias, key components of the SDF, whose list of martyrs highlights their defence against Isis and “Turkish fascism”.
But as the fighting has drawn to a conclusion, north-east Syria has sought to reinvent itself. It is no longer a solely Kurdish region: about 1.5 million of the population are Kurds, clustered near the Turkish border where the safe zone is proposed, while the rest are mostly Sunni Arabs from former Isis centres in the Euphrates valley.
Polygamy and underage marriage have been outlawed as part of a “law of women” but while this has been observed in Kurdish areas, implementation in newly taken Arab areas has been patchy.
Relations with Assad’s Russian-backed regime are relatively calm, although limited, with officials even acknowledging privately that they sell some of the oil they control west of the Euphrates, in defiance of US sanctions. “There is no serious fight and there is no serious dialogue,” said Gen Mazlum Kobane, the commander of the SDF.
A rally in support of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan in Qamishli in February. Photograph: Hector Perez/AFP/Getty Images
Instead the focus is on placating Turkey. The Öcalan connection has been dramatically toned down. Once ubiquitous posters of the jailed leader are in shorter supply, although are still found inside some public buildings as well on the martyrs’ billboard. “We are willing to do whatever it takes not to threaten the national security of Turkey,” Kobane said.
The militias are integrated into the 70,000 strong SDF, which is also 35% female, and politicians claim that there is little or no PKK influence. “Our project has nothing to do with the PKK at all,” Omar argued, although she acknowledged that many PKK members have come from Syria.
North-east Syria is careful not to describe itself as independent, at a time when there is no international appetite for partition. But US military support has become critical.
Last December, Donald Trump announced a plan to withdraw all ground troops from Syria in the belief that Isis was defeated. After intense lobbying the decision was reversed, and local politicians diplomatically said that Trump had been “wrongly briefed” on the military situation.
Instead, north-east Syria agreed to withdraw SDF and YPJ forces away from the Turkish border and allow US and Turkish soldiers to patrol, creating a border buffer zone 5km deep between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and 20km deep for heavy weapons.
Turkish soldiers patrol the streets in Afrin in early 2018. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The concern locally is that the deal has not proved to be enough to placate Turkey. “President Erdoğan seems to regret what has been agreed,” Kobane said, warning the Turks to brace themselves “for a long war” if they try to invade.
Mindful of Turkish sensibilities, last week Brig Gen Christian Wortman, the deputy director of operations in the US-European command, heaped praise on the Turks as he talked up the new security arrangement. “The intention of this security mechanism is to address Turkey’s legitimate security concerns,” Wortman said.
Memories, however, linger of Turkey’s 2018 occupation of Afrin, historically a Kurdish area, and the ensuing population displacement which has seen thousands of Kurds leave.
Photographs circulate in Kurdish political circles showing the destruction of agricultural areas and the desecration of cemeteries, and it is estimated that 30% of SDF leaders come from Afrin, the bulk of whom are opposed to the border zone settlement that has been agreed with Turkey.
Dr Abdulkarim Omar, the co-chair of foreign affairs of the SDC, accuses Turkey of human rights violations, and says that the occupation was allowed to take place through a deal between Turkey and Russia, and “amid the silence of the international community, so there was a kind of international cover”.
They hope that by rallying western support that won’t happen again.
Salih Muslim: If Turkey insists on war, we will defend ourselves
Turkey is trying to evade the bilateral agreement on a safe zone in northern Syria in order to establish a “Turkish belt” using the example of the Baathist Arabization policy, according to PYD politician Salih Muslim.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Sunday, 29 Sep 2019, 13:30
Despite the implementation of the trilateral agreement between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US and Turkey on a “security zone” in northern Syria, the Turkish government in Ankara insists on the occupation of self-governing areas of northern and eastern Syria.
In an interview with the Etkin News Agency (ANHA), Spokesman for the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Salih Muslim explained that Turkey wanted to establish a “Turkish belt” in the border strip and thus implement the Arabization policy of the Baath regime in the Kurdish areas of Syria, valid after 1965, according to its own ideas. “The intentions of the Turkish state are no secret. But that is now a problem of the US and the International Coalition,” said the Kurdish politician.
Muslim recalled that the International Coalition has started to install a ‘security mechanism’ instead of a ‘safe zone’ trick presented by Turkey under the pretext of ‘border security’. He continued; “There are Turkish observation posts in the border strip. So nobody will be able to cross the border. But even with this, the Turkish state is not satisfied because it wants to invade the area and create a Kurd-free region. This is of course unacceptable. In our opinion, Turkey should finally break away from these ideas.”
ROJAVA IS NO DANGER FOR TURKEY
Rojava has never presented a danger to Turkey and is not hostile to the neighboring country, stressed Muslim and added that they mainly wanted them to protect the border instead. “There has been agreement on the safe zone between Turkey and the US. The SDF agreed with it and have already taken practical steps to implement the agreement. Nevertheless, the Turkish state is now looking for ways to evade the agreement. This is not our problem, but a problem of the US and the Coalition,” explained the PYD politician.
COPY OF THE “ARAB BELT”
After seizing power in Syria in 1963, the Ba’ath Party decided to build a 350-kilometer-long, 15-kilometer-wide “Arabian belt” along the border with Turkey in order to change the ethnic structure in favor of the Arab population. As part of the Arabization project, dozens of new villages were built and thousands of Arab families from Raqqa and Aleppo were settled in the area in the early 1970s. Kurds were expelled or deported from their ancestral homeland, had their lands expropriated and awarded to the newly settled Arabs. The regime also deprived the Kurds of their citizenship and Arabized all Kurdish place names.
“The Turkish government wants to create a similar situation now. A section of the population consisting of hired jihadists is reportedly meant to settle in areas that are not theirs. Can that ever be accepted? We are in favor of having every Syrian return to their hometown anyway. But the answer to the question of why Turkey wants to move people from the south of the country to its own border is clear to all,” said Muslim.
TURKEY IS RULED BY A WAR COALITION
Turkey is currently governed by a coalition made up of the AKP, MHP, the Ergenekon and the Hizbul Contra. It is a “war coalition” which, however, would collapse in the slightest prospect of peace, says Muslim.
“This equation is fact. Erdoğan will risk everything to survive, no matter how bad the consequences might be for him. Possibly, pressure from the International Coalition could lead to the collapse of this war alliance. That should not be ignored.”
WE WILL DEFEND OURSELVES
Should there actually be an attack on Rojava, as Erdoğan last signalized a week ago, the population will defend in any case, emphasizes Salih Muslim. No one would fold his hands and surrender himself to death.
“Peace always wants two sides, but war only one. Only when the other side is ready to be circumspect and act for the good of the people can problems be overcome. But if Turkey insists on war, we will defend ourselves,” said Muslim.
Organized Labor must stand in solidarity with working people in all parts of the world when they rise up to defend their rights and when they struggle to build a better, more democratic and more socialist world;
The People of Rojava, northern Syria, have risen up in order to combat ISIS and the dictatorship;
The People of Rojava, through their armed forces known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG) & the Woman’s Protection Units (YPJ) and allied militias, have liberated large sections of northern Syria from ISIS and the dictatorship;
The People of Rojava are presently defending themselves bravely against ISIS and Turkish aggression;
The People of Rojava seek to establish a libertarian-socialist, anti-fascist, secular, multi-ethnic society, with equal rights for men and woman;
The People of Rojava’s struggle for true freedom is a beacon of light in the Middle East and across the globe;
The People of Rojava are politically influenced by the libertarian and socialist writings of Vermonter Murry Bookchin and strive towards a political system similar to our own Town Meeting form of democracy;
Thousands of non-natives to Syria, including citizens of the United States of America, have seen the justice of the struggle in Rojava and, like with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, have taken it upon themselves to travel to Rojava in order to become international volunteers within the YPG;
Therefore, let it be resolved that:
The Green Mountain Central Labor Council of the Vermont AFL-CIO recognizes the struggle in Rojava to be THE liberation struggle of our day on par with Spain in 1936, and the Paris Commune of 1871;
The Green Mountain Central Labor Council of the Vermont AFL-CIO stands in solidarity with the people of Rojava, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), and the Woman’s Protection Units (YPJ) in their historic struggle to establish a free society in what is presently northern Syria;
The Green Mountain Central Labor Council of the Vermont AFL-CIO encourages Vermont Union members to lend support to the people of Rojava, the YPG, and the YPJ;
The Green Mountain Central Labor Council of the Vermont AFL-CIO (upon request from a returning international volunteer as made to the President of this Central Labor Council) shall seek to provide three months of housing and sustenance and shall assist them in finding Union employment;
The Green Mountain Central Labor Council of the Vermont AFL-CIO calls on the Governor of Vermont and the Legislature to declare Vermont a sanctuary State for all returning international volunteers who have fought alongside the YPG/YPJ;
The Green Mountain Central Labor Council of the Vermont AFL-CIO calls on the Governor of Vermont and the Legislature to consider legislation which would make all state based benefits available to Vermont National Guard veterans also available to returning international volunteers who served in the YPG/YPJ, who choose to make Vermont their home;
The Green Mountain Central Labor Council of the Vermont AFL-CIO shall donate the sum of $500 to Hevya Sor (the Kurdish Red Crescent), an organization which provides direct support to the People of Rojava, including the donation of medicine and medical equipment;
The Green Mountain Central Labor Council of the Vermont AFL-CIO calls on the Government of the United States of America to provide increased direct military assistance to the YPG/YPJ, to condemn Turkish aggression, and to refrain from any actions which would seek to influence or moderate the political development and trajectory of Rojava;
The Green Mountain Central Labor Council shall provide this resolution to our Governor, Lt Governor, Congressional Delegation, elected members of the General Assembly, all fifty State Labor Councils of the AFL-CIO, and shall make it available to The People of Vermont.
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Troops’ movement on the border has Kurds worried about a Turkish assault.
One of the two top political leaders of the Syrian Kurdish alliance and co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council Ilham Ahmed attends a press conference, in Paris, on Dec. 21, 2018. (Photo credit should read STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images)
Despite the creation of a security zone on the border between Turkey and northeast Syria that has defused some tension in recent weeks, Syrian Kurds still fear the movement of Turkish ground and aerial forces in their backyard could be a prelude to an assault on the country’s Kurdish minority population.
“If they can, they will go to Damascus,” said Ilham Ahmed, a co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, the political arm of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that are responsible for liberating northeastern Syria from the Islamic State, told Foreign Policy through an interpreter in a recent interview in Washington.
The debate over the area—which U.S. officials have labeled a “security mechanism” rather than a safe zone—is deeply personal for Ahmed, who grew up in the northwest Syrian town of Afrin. The Turks and their proxy forces swept into Afrin last year, waging a violent campaign on the Kurdish-controlled town. Ahmed’s entire family was forced to flee and now lives in tents outside the city, she said.
U.S. support to the Syrian Kurds has been a major source of tension between Ankara and Washington since the U.S. military began arming the group in 2014. The military arm of the SDF is led by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a mostly Kurdish militia that Ankara views as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Both Turkey and the United States have designated the PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey, a terrorist group.
Ankara has been pushing for a Turkish-controlled “safe zone” on the border for months as a necessary measure to address its security concerns. U.S. President Donald Trump even promised a 20-mile safe zone in a January tweet, which officials later walked back. But the Syrian Kurds fear a Turkish assault on the area’s civilian population, which Ahmed has said could be a “catastrophe” for her people.
Since the security mechanism—which involves joint U.S. and Turkish ground and aerial patrols between the Syrian border towns of Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain—was established earlier this month, Ahmed said the SDF has kept to its side of the bargain. YPG fighters have surrendered the area to local security forces, removed fortifications and tunnels on the border, and withdrawn heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery by 12 miles.
But the presence of Turkish troops and military equipment on the border is still a threat, Ahmed said. The Kurds are particularly concerned about Turkish surveillance drones operating in the area as part of the joint patrols, she noted.
“Unless the border goes back to normality, where things on the border are normal with no troops on the two sides, then we cannot say that the problem is solved,” she said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s threat to resettle 3 million Syrian refugees currently residing in Turkey into the safe zone is also “troubling,” Ahmed said. Most of the refugees in Turkey are not native to northeast Syria, and their presence there could displace the Kurdish residents in that area, she added.
“Every day, there is escalation from Turkey and threats,” she said.
U.S. defense and military officials expressed cautious optimism that an uneasy peace between the Turks and the Kurds can be maintained. But experts say continued U.S. presence on the ground as a “credible interlocutor” will be key to assuring both sides.
Dana Stroul, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that Turkey will still continue to push for more concessions.
“Probably nothing is going to satisfy the Turks 100 percent because the core issue is U.S. support for the SDF,” Stroul said. But the mechanism has “opened up space” to work through differences.
Chris Maier, the Pentagon’s director of the Defeat-ISIS Task Force, said the security mechanism—which involves joint U.S. and Turkish military patrols of the area—has “substantially” eased the threat of a Turkish incursion into northeast Syria.
But Turkish officials have expressed frustration with the slow pace of implementation. Erdogan over the weekend threatened to take unilateral steps if the United States does not complete implementation of the safe zone this month, reiterating concerns that Washington is still providing arms to the Kurdish fighters. He said his talks with Trump at the United Nations General Assembly this week could represent a “last chance” to establish the zone.
Maier acknowledged the United States is still providing “very tailored” weapons and vehicles to the SDF to help it fight the remnants of the Islamic State, which has been threatening to resurge in the country. But the United States provides Turkey a detailed list of the supplies on a monthly basis, he stressed.
He acknowledged that the security mechanism “is a work in progress.”
“We understand that there is a number of elements to this arrangement that will take place over time, removal of fortifications does not happen overnight, this is a work in progress,” Maier said, but “we feel like we’re on pace, or in some cases ahead of pace on what was agreed.”
U.S. defense and military officials stressed that the SDF is committed to removing the YPG elements that cause Turkey concern.
“They’re participating in all of the tasks that have been agreed upon in a combined manner moving forward,” said Brig. Gen. Scott Naumann, the director of operations for Operation Inherent Resolve. “We believe that this shows the total commitment to this agreement and our continuing coordination as we build on the positive momentum that we’ve achieved together.”
As part of the security mechanism, Washington and Ankara have also established a joint operational center in southern Turkey, where U.S. and Turkish military representatives are responsible for daily planning and coordination of the ground and aerial patrols, Maier said.
The depth of the zone has also been a flash point. Turkey has pushed for a safe zone that extends 20 miles into Syria, but the Kurds have balked at that number. Ahmed said the safe zone is currently between 3 and 9 miles into northeast Syria; U.S. officials declined to give a range.
The U.S. military has about 1,000 troops operating throughout northeast Syria as part of both the security mechanism and the mission to defeat the Islamic State, Naumann said. There are no plans to increase that footprint.
Ahmed also expressed frustration that the SDF is not represented at the constitutional committee or in Geneva talks to arrive at a peace agreement for the country. When asked if she felt sufficiently supported by the United States, she said, “No, it is not enough.”
“The only group that fought ISIS is excluded,” from peace talks, she said. “Who is going to write our constitution now?”
Ahmed acknowledged that the security mechanism is a good first step that “should open the door for a more sustainable dialogue.” But any permanent agreement requires a U.S. presence as a “guarantor” to both sides, she stressed.
In the long term, though, the U.S. military’s presence in Syria is still a question mark.
“The president has made clear he wants to end the military mission in Syria. At some point the question is how long is the United States going to leave its forces there and support the SDF,” Stroul said. “What happens to the U.S. military presence in northeast Syria is tied to what happens in the broader political process to maybe move toward a negotiated settlement.”
Lara Seligman is a staff writer at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @laraseligman
Syrian Kurds and Armenians fear a Turkish-run safe zone east of the Euphrates, particularly since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had threatened to establish a military safe zone east of the Euphrates and labels the Kurdish People’s Protection Units as terrorists.
QAMISHLI, Syria — As part of the US-Turkish understandings on a security mechanism east of the Euphrates to address the so-called Turkish security concerns, the United States and Turkey conducted Sept. 12 their fourth joint overflight over northeastern Syria. This mechanism includes joint land and aerial patrols in the so-called safe zone between the towns of Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain.
This came one day after the deputy commander of the US European Command, Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Twitty, and the deputy commander of the US Central Command, Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Bergeson, traveled Sept. 11 to the US-Turkey joint operations center in Akcakale, in the Turkish province of Sanliurfa, as part of the operations for the safe zone on the Syrian-Turkish border, according to a Turkish Defense Ministry statement reported on by the pro-government Anatolia news agency.
The visit came three days after the first US-Turkish joint ground patrol was conducted Sept. 8 in the border areas between the towns of Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain, as part of the second phase of the agreement for a safe zone in northeastern Syria.
On Sept. 8, Reuters quoted a witness as saying that the Turkish military vehicles entered Syria near Tell Abyad to conduct joint patrols with the US army in a safe zone. It noted that vehicles with Turkish flags joined those in Syria with US flags some 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the Turkish-Syrian border, near Tell Abyad.
At the inauguration ceremony of a number of development projects in the Turkish province of Malatya, and a few hours after conducting the first joint patrol in the safe zone, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened Sept. 9 that Turkey will embark on its own plan in late September if the buffer zone in the northern part of the country is not initiated with the Turkish soldiers.
Ankara aspires for a buffer zone to be at least 30 kilometers (19 miles) wide along its border, and to be placed under its full control. This is added to the withdrawal of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, which Ankara labels as a terrorist organization, from said buffer zone. While Ankara wants the buffer zone to be set up as far as 32 kilometers (20 miles) from its border, the United States speaks of a distance of 5-14 kilometers (3-8.5 miles).
Addressing a Kurdish tribal gathering in the city of Direk (al-Malikiyah) Sept. 12, Aldar Khalil, a member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic Society Movement (TEV-DEM), accused Turkey of not honoring its commitments in the agreement for the safe zone. The Kurdish leader said that Ankara is escaping the agreement and subsequently uncovering its objective of occupying in the region.
Fearing Erdogan’s threats, an Armenian-Syrian hailing from the countryside of Ras al-Ain in the northeast of Syria, fled to Qamishli a few months ago, where she spoke to Al-Monitor Sept. 12. She said on condition of anonymity that she is terrified that she and her family, as well as hundreds of other Armenians, suffer the same fate as her ancestors in 1915-1916, when thousands of Armenians, including her family from her dad’s side, were killed in the Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks against them.
She added, “We — the Armenians — fear for our lives and of suffering the same fate as our ancestors. Additional massacres will be committed against us and against other religious communities in case Ankara takes control over the safe zone. Similarly to the killings that were committed against the Yazidis and Christians, including the Armenians, in Afrin more than year ago.”
On July 26, Erdogan had threatened of establishing a military safe zone east of the Euphrates River and of burying the Kurds.
After the Ankara-backed Syrian opposition factions kidnapped and killed his son, Manan Mustafa, a Kurdish man in his 50s, fled Afrin into Kobani along with his family a year ago and has settled there. Speaking to Al-Monitor while he was visiting his sister in Qamishli Sept. 12, he said, “The Syrian opposition factions have been pursuing their violations against civilians in Afrin and its countryside since they took control over them, to exterminate those who remained there. A few days ago, they kidnapped and tortured to death a young guy, and killed an old couple and stole their money. They are nothing like the rebels they claim to be. They are criminals.”
He added, “if Turkey takes controls over the safe zone, its troops will commit massacres against us, the Kurds. They will displace us to have Arab Syrians from other cities resettle in ours. They seek to bring about a demographic change to our areas, similarly to what they have done in Afrin. They displaced its people and resettled the displaced from Ghouta there, and the armed opposition factions committed violations, such as the arrests, killings, kidnappings and torture against the inhabitants of Afrin. We fear that the same scenario of Afrin is replicated in case Turkey takes control over the safe zone.”
Human Right Watch accused June 14 the Turkey-backed Syrian opposition armed factions of seizing, destroying and looting the Kurds’ properties in Afrin, in northern Syria, and resettling their families in the houses of the Kurds.
The New York Times wrote Sept. 10 about Turkey’s efforts to establish a safe zone in northern Syria and described that it consists of Erdogan’s radical plan to end the Kurds’ presence in Syria through the Syrian refugees who reside in Turkey. It noted that Erdogan plans to establish a safe zone in order to get rid of the Kurds, under the pretext that they pose a threat to his country’s national security. It continued that Erdogan is ready to build cities in the safe zone for the resettlement of nearly 1 million of Turkey’s Syrian refugees. Erdogan said that in case the United States refrained from implementing the deal on the safe zone and in case the European Union did not provide Turkey with financial aid to help the refugees, his country will open the gates to Europe to them.
Lamar Erkendi is a human rights activist and journalist who works for several Arab and foreign websites.
The Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries are burning agricultural crops of the Kurdish citizens in the occupied areas of northwestern Syria, in addition to other violations affecting women as the forced marriage and the imposition of the veil.
Violations of the Turkish occupation army continue against the people in the occupied areas of northwestern Syria (Jrablos, Bab, Azaz, Afrin and Idlib.)
Violations against the people
A source from al-Bab said that the mercenaries in the villages of Noman, Tal Jarji, Nesibin, Qebasin and Qubbat Sheih are abusing indigenous people, especially in the Kurdish-majority villages.
According to the sources, the mercenaries impose royalties on the families and practice kidnappings to blackmail the residents and force them to pay money for the release of the abductees.
The Turkifiacation continuous
The same source confirmed that about 80% of the original inhabitants of al-Bab were forced out of their areas occupied by the Turkish army and mercenaries.
Since mid-August 2016, Turkey has occupied about 10% of Syria’s territory, and has followed the policy of Turkifiacation and demographic change.
The Turkish occupation army has housed tens of thousands of mercenary families in the homes of displaced people, and Turkish flags have been raised over institutions and in public squares.
Turkish language was imposed in schools, identity cards were issued by the Turkish state and young men were forced to join the ranks of mercenary groups belonging to Turkey.
Burning of crops and land grabs
The source added that the farmers in the villages of Noman, Tal Jarji, Nesibin, Qebasin and Qubbat Sheih, the predominantly Kurdish are being robbed, mercenaries do not allow them to harvest, and the mercenaries seize those agricultural lands to establish houses and shops.
Fearing angry reactions to these practices, the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries suppress any form of protest and put hundreds of abductees in prison.
Forced marriage
The source said that widowed women are forced to marry mercenaries and to wear the niqab, and women avoid going out of their homes for fear of the practices of mercenary groups.
A.H ANHA
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The emptiness of Turkey’s complaints against Syrian Kurds
James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, continues to seek to appease Turkish saber-rattling and appears ready to facilitate Turkish entrance into Kurdish-administered northeastern Syria.
This would be a terrible idea for several reasons:
The Kurds almost single-handedly defeated al Qaeda and then the Islamic State at a time when both received support from the Turkish intelligence service and members of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s family, if not Erdoğan himself. Kurdish forces allied with the United States when Turkey sought to undermine the U.S. position.
Turkish intelligence is deeply flawed and politicized.
Before President Trump and Jeffrey make any more concessions to Erdoğan and his imperial ambitions, it might be useful for them to consider whether Turkey’s stated grievances are real, or rather a tactic to extract concessions.
Turkish officials state repeatedly that Kurdish-controlled northern Syria poses a terror threat, and that the Kurdistan Workers Party uses the zone as a safe haven from which to stage attacks into Syria.
The Rojava Information Center, a Syrian Kurdish think tank, just released a database of all incidents, almost three dozen in all, across the Turkey-Syria border this year. They found that all but one of the attacks was staged from Turkey into Syria, rather than the other way around. These attacks included heavy weapons and rocket fire from Turkish positions into northeast Syria, killing 27, all of whom were civilian and one of whom was a child. In contrast, there was only one attack from northeast Syria into Turkey, with the perpetrator arrested by the Syrian Defense Forces, the Kurdish-dominated local militias.
Frankly, if Turkey’s concern is the fight against terrorism, diplomats should base their policy on reality rather than what increasingly appears to be yet one more example of tendentious Turkish demands. If either Jeffrey or his Turkish interlocutors dispute the Rojava Information Center database, it’s time they release their own record of Kurdish terrorism emanating from Syria. Their silence suggests, frankly, Turkish grievances are without merit and, therefore, U.S. efforts to appease Turkey at the expense of the Kurds to be both counterproductive and immoral. Rather than Kurdish terrorism, it is Turkey’s proposed buffer zone, Turkey’s revanchism, and its use of fake grievances to justify its imperialism that poses the greatest threat to the region.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
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The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in the Afrin Region of Rojava
In early 2018, Turkey invaded the autonomous Kurdish region of Afrin in Syria and is currently threatening to ethnically cleanse the region. Between 2012 and 2018, the “Mountain of the Kurds” (Kurd Dagh) as the area has been called for centuries, had been one of the quietest regions in a country otherwise torn by civil war.
After the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the Syrian army withdrew from the region in 2012, enabling the Party of Democratic Union (PYD), the Syrian sister party of Abdullah Öcalan’s outlawed Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to first introduce a Kurdish self-administration and then, in 2014, to establish the Canton Afrin as one of the three parts of the heavily Kurdish Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, which is better known under the name Rojava.
This self-administration—which had seen multiparty municipal and regionwide elections in the summer and autumn of 2017, which included a far-reaching autonomy for a number of ethnic and religious groups, and which had provided a safe haven for up to 300,000 refugees from other parts of Syria—is now at risk of being annihilated by the Turkish invasion and occupation.
Thomas Schmidinger is one of the very few Europeans to have visited the Canton of Afrin. In this book, he gives an account of the history and the present situation of the region. In a number of interviews, he also gives inhabitants of the region from a variety of ethnicities, religions, political orientations, and walks of life the opportunity to speak for themselves. As things stand now, the book might seem to be in danger of becoming an epitaph for the “Mountain of the Kurds,” but as the author writes, “the battle for the Mountain of the Kurds is far from over yet.”
Praise:
“Preferable to most journalistic accounts that reduce the Rojava revolution to a single narrative. It will remain an informative resource even when the realities have further changed.”
—Martin van Bruinessen, Kurdish Studies on Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds
About the Contributors: Thomas Schmidinger is a political scientist and a cultural and social anthropologist. He teaches at the University of Vienna and is both secretary-general of the Austrian Society for the Promotion of Kurdology and coeditor of the Vienna Kurdish Studies Yearbook. He is the author of a number of books on migration, cultural integration, the Middle East, and other topics, several of which have been translated. His previously translated book Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds was published by Pluto Press in 2018.
Andrej Grubačić is the chair of the Anthropology and Social Change department at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His books include Don’t Mourn, Balkanize: Essays after Yugoslavia. Andrej is a member of the International Council of the World Social Forum, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Global Balkans Network.
Michael Schiffmann is a linguist, cultural scientist, translator, editor, and author and teaches at the Universities of Heidelberg and Mannheim. He is working on a research project on the history of Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar and is active in the international campaigns to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier. He has translated works by Mumia Abu-Jamal, Homi K. Bhabha, Noam Chomsky, Mahmoud Darwish, Angela Davis, Amy Goodman, Ilan Pappé, Miko Peled, and Edward Said.
Product Details:
Author: Thomas Schmidinger • Preface: Andrej Grubačić • Translator: Michael Schiffmann
Publisher: PM Press/Kairos
ISBN: 978-1-62963-651-1
Published: 03/01/2019
Format: Paperback
Size: 6×9
Page count: 192
The distribution of mercenary groups and local councils affiliated to the Turkish occupation army in Afrin and their functional tasks confirms the Turkish strategy adopted in the occupied canton, which is based on quotas for looting, sabotaging, demographic change and harassment of the people.
NEWS27 Aug 2019, Tue – 08:152019-08-27T08:15:00 SHAHBA- JAFAR JAFO
The Turkish army and its mercenary groups occupied Afrin canton in March 18, 2018, after a brutal attack that began in January 20 of the same year, killing hundreds of civilians, injuring thousands, and displacing hundreds of thousands more from the canton as well as the destruction of infrastructure, worship places, health facilities and services
Following the occupation, the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries began attempting to impose a system based on obliterating the identity of the occupied canton and changing its national and religious character by displacing the indigenous population and settling the families of mercenaries in their place, in addition to continuous thefts, looting and daily kidnappings.
Local sources told our agency that there are three intelligence headquarters in Afrin belonging to the Turkish state.
One is directly affiliated to Erdogan’s party, the second belongs to the so-called Turkish opposition and the third is directly linked to the Turkish Intelligence Department.
Afrin is run directly by a wali in Hatay, Turkey, meaning that the Turkish state views Afrin as a Turkish state.
When the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries entered and occupied Afrin, they published a general circular among the factions and mercenary battalions.
Mercenary groups spread through the city
The mercenary groups are distributed in the city of Afrin, and each group has the right to do whatever it wants in the neighborhood under its occupation without any deterrence. The work of mercenary groups is complemented by local councils appointed by the Turkish occupation to complement the work of mercenary groups.
Ashrafiyya neighborhood is occupied by the mercenaries of Jabha Shamiya while the Sultan Murad’s mercenaries occupy the area between Zaydiyah and Mahmudiyah neighborhoods. As for Villat street, it is under the occupation of al-Hamzat mercenaries, and the area between Villat street and Zaidiyya district is under the mercenaries of Mutasim brigade with the mercenaries of Sultan Murad.
On every street in Afrin, there is a headquarter run by 10 mercenaries, whose main task is to tell the people who oppose the occupation and the people of Afrin who come from abroad.
These headquarters control the aspects of life and prevent locals from visiting their relatives without permission from the headquarters.
In each prison, the kidnapped from Afrin, who are released if their families pay large sums of money, are detained which punishment is decided according to the accusation the mercenaries themselves make.
Abductors sometimes make choices between 45 days in prison or paying $ 300.
In some cases, the abductees are transferred to prisons under the control of the Turkish authorities in Kilis and Gaziantep, Turkey, where thousands of Afrin residents are said to be abducted.
In the countryside, the situation is no different from the city and the same mechanisms are followed.
Countless mercenary groups
In addition, there are three corps in Afrin (1st, 2nd and 3rd Corps). Each corps consists of four divisions, each division has several brigades, each brigade has a number of battalions and each battalion includes 60 to 70 mercenaries.
Where does mercenaries’ funding come from?
Ahrar Sharqiya Jaish Asharqiya and Shuhada’a Badr mercenaries, and some other groups rely, financially speaking, on looting and asking for ransoms.
The rest of the mercenaries of Sultan Murad, Sultan Fatih and Firqat Hamzat are financed directly by the Turkish state.
At the beginning of the occupation of Afrin, each element used to be paid 1000-800 TL, now, each element is paid 300 TL.
How the battalion of Meshaal Tammo was liquidated
Although some of the accomplices cooperated with the Turkish occupation at the beginning of the attack, they received a humiliating fate.
Meshaal Tammo battalion participated in the occupation of Afrin and after 8 months it was liquidated by the Turkish occupation army.
The battalion was run by Mohammed al-Sheikh (Abu Mariam al-Haskawi) and Abu Mariam al-Afrini from Jalma village, and they had 300 elements and after 8 months, they were liquidated, where the Turkish army kidnapped Mohammed al-Sheikh and took them to al-Rai prison in Azaz where he was killed in prison by mercenaries of Sultan Murad, while Abu Mariam al-Afrini has been kidnapped and his fate is still unknown.
Meshaal Tamo’s mercenaries hoped to have a share of Afrin occupation, but they were left empty-handed.
Stealing women jewelry
Ahrar al-Sham mercenaries recruited a group of settler women whose job was to loot and steal jewelry and money from Afrin women through anesthesia.
This group puts a piece of cloth containing narcotic substances on the mouths of women when they enter their homes and after the loss of consciousness, they steal their jewelry and money.
Establishment of camps in Afrin
Since the Turkish occupation of Afrin, the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries have established three camps in the village of Deir Balut in Janders district, Bulbul district, Shera district, and every camp hosts thousands of displaced people, these camps were established for Afrin people to settled in.
The percentage of settlers in Afrin is estimated at 75%, and the settlers were settled in the homes of Afrin residents.
What is the function of councils?
The agent councils to the Turkish occupation in Afrin have the job of stealing money from the people, where they interfere in every single matter.
For example, when the olive harvest begins, 10% of the output is deducted to the local council, 10% to the military council and 15% to the protection committee. After transferring the olives to the press, the oil is deducted between the farms and the mercenaries occupying the village.
Hundreds of agents and traitors in Afrin
On every street in Afrin and in every village, there are agents and traitors working for mercenaries and the occupation army whose job is to report opponents of the Turkish occupation and accuse the people to collect money.
Among the agents and traitors is Filmaz Osman from the village of Deir Sawan, located in the district of Shera since the occupation of Afrin, has accused more than 300 citizens on various charges and each citizen paid $ 400 for his/her release, some of whom fate is still unknown.
KCK’s Bayik: People of northern Syria must prepare for war
Cemil Bayik describes the Turkish state with its expansionist character as a basic problem for the Middle East and says: “The Turkish state is a danger not only for the Kurds, but for all.”
ANF
BEHDINAN
Friday, 9 Aug 2019, 07:53
According to the KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union) Executive Council Co-chair Cemil Bayik, the Turkish state attacks the Kurdish freedom movement because it is a bulwark against its anti-Kurdish goals. However, the attacks are not directed against PKK alone. Turkey is trying to legitimize its aggression by denouncing the presence of the PKK in South Kurdistan and by representing North Syria as a threat to its own. However, this does not correspond to the truth, says Bayik and asks: “Is the PKK also present in the eastern Mediterranean or in Libya?”
ANF spoke to Cemil Bayik about the latest developments. Here are translated excerpts from the interview.
According to Bayik, it is clear that the AKP-MHP alliance with its big Turkish self-image cannot survive without war: “The attitude toward the Kurdish people has not changed. They will continue to practice a dirty policy against the Kurds and continue their occupation and massacres. The oppression of the peoples in Turkey will continue as well. Therefore, they want to destroy everything that bears the name ‘Kurdish’ or ‘Kurdistan’, to rebuild the nation state, to re-conquer Ottoman territory and once again reach the borders of the National Pact. To this end, they are waging a war in the Middle East, trying to strengthen their position in the region. On June 23 (in the elections) they suffered a heavy blow. Then they made the war the basis of their policy, to hide their weakness, to paralyze the democratic forces, and to stay in power.
The problem is not the PKK
The Turkish state is trying to achieve its goal by arguing that: ‘We have nothing against Kurds, we oppose the PKK and only we fight it.’ Fragmentation of the Kurds has always been a crucial tactic of Turkish fascism. Throughout its history, Turkish fascism aimed to destroy the Kurds. Those Kurdish actors who stand by Erdoğan and Bahçeli should know this very well. They are directed against themselves, their own people, not the PKK. They owe nothing to the Turkish state and they do not have to serve it. If it wasn’t for the PKK, they would have achieved no gains today. So, they owe to the PKK.
Turkey’s hatred is not only against the Kurds of Bakur (North Kurdistan) or the PKK, it is directed against the entire Kurdish people. This reality is seen clearly in Bashur (South Kurdistan) and Rojava (West Kurdistan). Some Kurds in Rojava and South Kurdistan say, ‘That’s right, the Turkish state is attacking because the PKK is here. If the PKK did not exist then such attacks would not take place. ‘For those who think so I would like to point out the situation in Libya and the eastern Mediterranean. There is no PKK in Libya, but everyone knows that Turkey is the cause of the problems there. Therefore, it is not about the presence of the PKK. The PKK defends the dignity of the Kurdish people. That’s why Turkey is attacking. Turkey attacks of all Kurds in the person of the PKK. The Kurds should see this and not put themselves in the service of the fascist Turkish state.
Turkey dangerous for everyone
Turkey is currently talking about a ‘peace corridor’. At the moment, the peoples of northern and eastern Syria live in brotherhood. They want to create and develop their own democratic system. Turkey is an enemy of democracy and liberties. It is an enemy of brotherhood and peoples. Turkey has designed its own plan and acts accordingly. The basis of this plan is the question of how to best divide the Kurds, how to separate the Kurds in Bakur from those in Bashur and those in Rojava. As part of this plan, the Kurds are meant to be expelled and replaced with other people that Turkey sees as “favorable”.
We have to understand the goal exactly
When Turkey keeps talking about invading northern Syria, it also says, ‘We will destroy this region and settle the refugees from Syria there.’ At the same time, it plans to deploy its own militias there. We can see the implementation of this plan in the case of Afrin. The Kurdish people must understand this reality exactly and oppose it with all its possibilities. The peoples of northern Syria must also understand the goal of Turkey exactly. In this sense, the peoples of the region must further concretize their brotherhood and further develop the struggle through their organization.
People should prepare for resistance to the occupation
It is now necessary to build self-defense forces against a Turkish invasion, defense and security. If this does not happen, there will be a great danger. It does not look like that peace will be ensured in Syria in the near future. In the Middle East ravages the Third World War and it will go on. This war can expand even further. That’s why it’s not about the question of a peaceful solution. Nobody should cling to such hope and deceive themselves. Therefore, both the people and the defense forces of Northern Syria should prepare for war. The defense must be expanded in every respect. That’s what has to happen. There is no other way to prevent the invasion by Turkey.
They are planning worse than in Afrin
The coalition, Russia and Syria must grasp this reality. The Arab peoples must also understand this. The Kurds, together with the Arabs, must courageously oppose the Turkish invasion. The Turkish state wants to strike a wedge between the Kurdish and the Arab population. They want to use some militia groups and cooperating Arabs for the occupation of northern and eastern Syria. They say that places like Girê Spî, Şêxler and Serêkaniyê are not Kurdish but Arab lands. They say they will settle there the Arabs who have fled to Turkey. ‘They want to repeat what they did in Afrin. Everyone knows what the Turkish state and its militias did to the people of Afrin. Everyone sees how the Kurds in particular, but also all other peoples, are oppressed. If Turkey invades northern Syria, it will be worse than in Afrin. Everyone has to understand that. Therefore, all options must be used to strengthen the resistance.”
Turkish regime and allied mercenaries attack civilians in Afrin
At least 127 artillery attacks have been carried out by Turkish forces and mercenaries on villages in Shera, Afrin, leaving many civilians wounded.
ANF
AFRIN
Friday, 9 Aug 2019, 16:28
The villages of Meyase, Soxanekê, Zirnahitê and Aqibê in Shera district of Afrin have been under the attack of the Turkish invasion army and allied mercenaries since early this morning. According to the Rojava based Hawar News Agency (ANHA), the mentioned villages were targeted by at least 127 artillery attacks.
In the Aqibê village, 5 civilians have been wounded by the attacks, among them a kid and two women.
The wounded have been taken to hospital by Kurdish Red Crescent Heyva Sor a Kurd. One of these is reported to be a baby and the others were identified as Remzî Mehmûd (30), Kîbar Berekat (50), Sozan Alîko (23) and Mîrvan Berekat.
Heyva Sor a Kurd officials stated that the wounded civilians are in good condition.
In parallel with the attacks, the region is witnessing ongoing reconnaissance flights.
HRE: Large number of Turkish soldiers killed in a retaliation operation in Shera district
Since the evening of August 08, the Turkish occupation forces shelled the inhabited villages in the Shera district especially the villages of Marnaz and Al-Malikiyah with artillery and mortar shells.
NEWS09 Aug 2019, Fri – 16:032019-08-09T16:03:00 NEWS DESK
Afrin Liberation Forces(HRE) Media center issued a statement in which it revealed the outcomes of the operations carried out against the Turkish occupation army and mercenaries,” Since the evening of August 08, the Turkish occupation forces shelled the inhabited villages in the Shera district especially the villages of Marnaz and Al-Malikiyah with artillery and mortar shells. Clashes took place between our forces and the Turkish occupation soldiers and mercenaries in the village of Marnaz, which belongs to the district of Shera, where one of our fighters was martyred after he showed heroic resistance against the occupation and its mercenaries, where we will reveal his record in detail in the coming period.
In response, our forces carried out a specific operation targeting a military base of the Turkish occupation near the areas of clashes in the district of Shera, which resulted in the death of a number of Turkish soldiers , we were unable to determine the number of wounded and dead. Helicopters hovered over the area of Afrin to transport the dead and wounded.”
A.H ANHA.
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Every place will turn into a battlefield, if Turkey attacks
The member of the General Command of the Syrian Democratic Forces(SDF), Newroz Ahmed, revealed the Turkish plan to occupy 32 km of the Syrian lands saying:” in the event of an attack by the Turkish state, the response will be decisive and every place will turn into a battlefield.”
NEWS05 Aug 2019, Mon – 07:552019-08-05T07:55:00 AL-HASKAH-MURADA KINDA-AHMED MOHAMMED
Threats of the Turkish state continue in the north and east of Syria targeting all Syrian components under the pretext of establishing the so-called “safe area” at a depth of 32 km.
The administration of north and east of Syria provided some conditions regarding the “safe area” as follows: The safe area should be 5 km deep on the border and more outside the cities and not under the control of the Turkish state.
The Autonomous Administration said that Turkish troops can make joint patrols with coalition patrols on the border and in empty areas. This proposal was discussed by the concerned authorities. If this condition is applied, the return of the Afrin residents forcibly removed to their areas must be implemented.
Statistics of border cities “safe area”
All Syriac, Kurds, Arabs , Yezidis, Turkomans, Armenians, Circassians and Chechens live in Syria.
The north-east of Syria means al-Jazeera and the Euphrates regions, al-Jazeera region consists of 2 canton Qamishlo and al-Hasakah, while the Euphrates region consists of Kobani and “Gire Spi”/ Tal Abyad.
And the towns on the border strip of the safe area being discussed, Kobani, Serekaniye, Darbasiyah, Amouda, Qamishlo, Terbispia and Derik.
Turkish state practices from 2011 until 2019 on the border
The violations of the Turkish state on the northern and eastern regions of Syria are increasing day after day, and through these practices, the legitimacy of the so-called safe area is being tried in many ways.
The question is who needs a safe area at this stage?
The crimes of the Turkish state since 2011 up to now according to the statistics of the human rights organization in al-Jazeera, which the organization documented (apart from its practices in Afrin): 223 people were killed, 3 members were robbed, dozens were raped and abducted, 15 people were subjected to torture. In addition, the residents of 129 border villages were prevented from planting and harvesting their seasonal crops with a land area of approximately 27,633.1 dunums.
In this context, the member of the General Command of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Newroz Ahmed, answered ANHA’s questions regarding the threats of the Turkish state and the Turkish military buildup on the northern and eastern borders of Syria recently.
How did the “safe zone” begin?
We never addressed the issue of the safe area, because our areas are safe by nature, but after Daesh defeat, some forces wanted to control the region, but these forces did not succeed in achieving their goals. We have had relations with some neighboring countries such as Turkey, even if they are not official but at a high level. The Turkish state is better informed that we have never attacked its borders, and we have had no attempts to create a threat to Turkish state policy, but the severity of the threats the Turkish state has increased in recent times. In the words of its leaders, ” The Kurds got a role in Başûr Kurdistan, they will get it here too, but we will never allow them on our borders,” this is the real objective of the Turkish state of these threats.”
How is the safe area on the agenda?
We do not aim to attack the Turkish state, and we are working to repel attacks against our people at home, but the Turkish state always remembers that it does not want such a force on its borders. The safe area is on the agenda of discussions with Turkish threats. We, as the forces of protection and as the people of this region, say that our region is one of the most safe areas, that our people live in safety, live with their identity and free will. In addition, there are large numbers of displaced people living in our areas.
What does Turkey want from the realization of the safe area?
We do not want the continuation of the war on our land, and the pretexts that the Turkish state raises for us to solve by dialogue. The Turkish state occupies the land of another country before the eyes of the world, the state of al-Bab, Azzaz, Idlib and Afrin clear to the world. Now the Turkish state wants to occupy northern and eastern Syria. Our regions are safe, but we are open to a safe area, and we do not want our people to face new wars. As far as possible, we want to reach a result with these forces, that means being satisfied with the removal of the reasons and the pretext of the Turkish state.
Do you accept Turkey’s supervision over the safe area?
We can form border protection forces and ensure that no attack takes place on our part, but the Turkish state prevents the people of this region from protecting themselves, and we do not accept the protection of an external force for this area. Everyone should know that the Turkish state cannot survive in the region. It has killed a lot of our people, and this people cannot accept the Turkish state in this region.
What is the purpose of occupying the territory of northern and eastern Syria at a depth of 32 km?
The Turkish state plans to impose 32 km on its relations with some forces and the Syrian regime. According to the plan, 32 km will be under the control of the Turkish state. Other forces will enter southern Syria. And thus they want to divide the region among themselves, and eliminate all the achievements and gains achieved by the great sacrifices of the people of the region.
Is the mercenaries attacks have a relationship with the threats of the Turkish state?
Attacks by mercenaries are intensifying as the Turkish state’s threats to the region intensify, and this has become apparent recently. This indicates that the goal of the Turkish state is to revive mercenaries for control of the region and creating tension and instability. The families of Daesh said in the camps there that they would be active again. According to the intelligence we obtained, the sleeping cells said, “We will take revenge and we will return soon.” This is a great danger not only for the region but also for the world. We have managed to reduce the risk of arresting them, but in reality it is also difficult for us this situation there is a need to prosecute the international mercenaries of Daesh.
You met with the Central Command of the US Army in the Middle East, “Kenneth Mackenzie, and the International Alliance’s envoy against Daesh William Rubak, at what level was the dialogue between you, and how was the result?
We discussed with the US leaders the Turkish threats, our conditions for the “safe area” and the means of dialogue for the solution and the sleeping cells of Daesh. The US side focused on finding common solutions without entering the region by war. The position of the Turkish State hampers the solution, even if the recent talks have not reached a conclusion but are continuing.
The position of our people in northern and eastern Syria is a matter of appreciation and respect. The people are well aware that the objective of these threats is not only the Kurds, but the goal is to eliminate the brotherhood of the people of the region,we have achieved great achievements thanks to the support of our people in the difficult and critical stages, and we will protect our areas with our people on the ground, and we will protect it from the attacks of the Turkish state. We are open to dialogue, and we support attempts at a solution, but if necessary, we are ready to resist everywhere.
The Turkish media has been talking about the return of the Syrian refugees recently. Before the occupation of Afrin, the Turkish state was also making these absurd pretexts. What is the reason for this trading at this stage?
In order for the Turkish state to incite its attacks on the region, the situation of the displaced is publicized, but the people are not displaced to Turkey but live on their land. There are a large number of those who were accomplices to the Turkish and fled to Turkey. When Gire Spi released some small groups fled with the Free Army to Turkey. The Turkish State cannot take the return of these people as a pretext that they have been displaced from their land and must return. The Turkish state wants to take this as a platform for its attacks and legitimize it under this curtain, but it will not success.
How will your strategy be to respond to a possible attack?
If the Turkish state does not choose the dialogue for a solution, we will be prepared for war. If an attack is launched on any region, this attack will not be limited to this region. Rather, the long border with the Turkish state will become a region of war. What the Turkish state has done in Afrin wants to repeat it in other areas gradually. Of course, the war will pose great dangers to the people. There are millions of civilians and different components living on this land. This war will change the balance of the entire region. There are various forces in Syria and even the Syrian regime will try to regain control of the region, as well as there are Iranian forces and groups of mercenaries and still remain a significant threat to the region. If such a war took place, mercenaries would benefit and continue to practice their terrorism, and there would be thousands of displaced people in the camps, and this war would be a great threat to their lives. In addition, there are detainees from mercenaries, especially those arrested in the Deir ez-Zor campaign.
Do you have meetings with the Syrian regime regarding the threats of the Turkish state.
We have had some meetings with the Syrian regime in the past, but he wants to control all areas as if nothing happened and even impose conditions. The Syrian regime is trying to accuse us of cooperating with foreign powers, as if we were the ones who brought foreign forces to Syrian territory. this is not true. Even the Syrian regime knows very well that we have not brought external forces to our regions, and the current situation is the result of what the region has experienced.
In fact, the mentality of the Syrian regime was the reason for the entry of external forces into Syrian territory. The regime has sometimes declared its positions through media statements against the threats of the Turkish state, but the mentality has not changed towards the peoples of the region. We insist on holding meetings to change the mentality of denial and liquidation. These attacks pose a danger to the Syrian regime as well, because in the end it will occupy part of the Syrian territory. When Turkey attacks, the regime will not be able to discuss or resolve the issue, but the situation will be complicated. In short, we had some meetings with the Syrian regime, but unfortunately, we have not obtained results.
A.H ANHA
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Interview: Anarchist Volunteer with Kongra Star in Rojava
Published August 2, 2019
This interview was conducted by AMW with an anarchist volunteer from the US, who worked in civil structures in Rojava, predominantly at the Kongra Star Diplomacy office. Kongra Star is the administrative body that seeks to implement women’s liberation through increased awareness and involvement in civil projects.
How long were you in Rojava?
I was there for close to a year.
What inspired you to go?
After first hearing about the events happening in Rojava, I began to research it and felt that I couldn’t form any sort of real picture of what was going on there based on what I read. There was, of course, a lot of positive stuff coming out, but a lot of it had really similar content. I began to study Kurdish, hoping that by learning Kurdish I’d have more access to material about Rojava. I was hoping to go to study in Northern Kurdistan with family of some friends of mine, but it worked out that I had a chance to go to Rojava first. I didn’t know how long it would be possible to access Rojava, so I took the chance to go. I was also hoping to find an environment where people were creating a revolutionary movement that looked toward all parts of society. In my case, I was particularly interested in youth education: what would be the approach to teaching kids of a kindergarten/elementary school age, and what sort of culture would evolve around that? As it turned out, Rojava has fairly minimal structures of this kind. I’ve hear that in Bakur (North Kurdistan) there’s been more extensive work of this kind done, but in Rojava most schooling was piggybacking on the existing structures, with the biggest change being the inclusion of languages other than Arabic.
What structures / collectives were you involved in? What sort of work did you do? What were the goals of this work?
I began at the Internationalist Commune, for three or four months, then I transferred to working with the women’s movement at the Kongra Star Diplomacy office and on the Women Rise Up For Afrin Campaign.
Unfortunately, because of the threat of Turkish invasion in mid-December, a lot of civil projects got disrupted. We’d been discussing organizing a computer class for women located at the university. We were running into the issue of lack of computers, and by the time things returned to normal I didn’t have the ability to organize the class before I left. At Kongra Star we were mostly trying to develop the capacity of people at the office. A lot of people were eager to learn more about computers or English, but there weren’t many resources available, so I was trying to spread knowledge into the local community. I was helping with web/graphic design and translation. We had some formal lessons on computer skills, but I was also working in a more informal capacity – for example, checking over the english translations with the women who translated them, so they could improve their work. We also were trying to push for a transition to more secure online practices, like using Protonmail instead of gmail. Our office all had Protonmail addresses, now it just needs to spread to the rest of Kurdistan!
What kinds of relationships did you form through your work?
I made personal friends with some of the women I worked with, and would see them after work. Others I was on good terms with, but we didn’t spend much free time together. I met a lot of my friends’ families and extended families, who I would sometimes see walking around the city. I made friends with one of the drivers (and his family) as well as some of the security guards outside, who were part of the Asayish (basically the police, which was weird). I know someone else who’s a rapper who was able to tell me about the local hip hop scene, and unfortunate lack of a graffiti scene. He’s an awesome guy who’s really open, friendly and dedicated. His perspective on the city was really unique and through knowing him I was able to see a totally different side of things than I would see with some of my other friends. I have another good friend who I got to know, we keep in touch and she hopes to come out here to study English. She’s having trouble getting her paperwork from school, which is in an Assad regime supporting area. I guess somehow they heard she was working for the Self-Administration and are refusing to pass on her transcripts.
Did you get to experience any examples of collective life?
Everyday life in Syria tends to be fairly collective, organized around the family and home. This is doubly so in the villages, where the workload often includes tending to fields, trees, sheep/goats, and so on. The villages are often quite small, a few hundred people or less, so everyone knows each other and what’s going on with everyone else. The collective/communal projects in Northeast Syria take root in these kinds of relationships, which are longstanding and intergenerational.
Even in the city, there’s a village feel to the way people are interconnected.That being said, there are a lot of hardships that even a tight knit community can struggle to face, given the economic situation of Syria overall. Spending time in civil society made me understand how and why the Kurdish movement puts such a high value on collectivity, since families are generally a pretty high-knit collective unit.
I also experienced collective life in the Internationalist Commune. People participate in all activities communally, sharing time at meals, work, tea, education and so on. Although nominally collective, power was centered in the hands of certain individuals with a specific vision they wanted to implement. I understand that the people there are different now, so perhaps those with sympathies toward more authoritarian approaches are gone now. I can’t say. Overall I found it useful to be there to understand the mindset of the Kurdish movement, but there are big cultural differences that call for different approaches to collectivity in the US or in an anarchist context.
Did you get to view any of the revolutionary civil structures like HPC, the councils or work collectives? Or did you get to talk with anyone who did? What sort of impressions did they make on you?
Yes! A lot…
I was working in one, kind of. At the Kongra Star Diplomacy office the structure is more like a traditional office. We had a lot of work to do, like translation, web/social media, planning for events/delegations, and so on. We held intermittent tekmîl* but it wasn’t often necessary since our work generally proceeded pretty straightforwardly. Women were encouraged, but not required, to take part in a three-month closed education to learn some of the ideology of the Kurdish movement, which some did and some didn’t.
At the office, we were sort of what is called ‘heremî,’ which translates roughly to ‘locals’ – just average people who wound up working in the structure, whose ideologically commitment to the Kurdish struggle is not a precondition for joining. The salary was 60,000 Syrian a month, which is good but not enough to support a family on. Compare it to about 100,000 in some of the security fields like YPG or Asayiş. For some women, the pay was an important part of family income. For others, the experience of being outside the home/family was more central to why they worked there.
I also came into more superficial contact with many other civil structures, or people that were involved in them. The most impressive one was HPC-Jin (Women’s Force for the Protection of Society) which was made up of older women, mostly grandmothers or older mothers. They patrolled neighborhoods at night to make sure they were safe, helped provide security at events and marches, and did outreach to stay at home women to leach them about self defense and generally check on their well being. In my experience, the HPC-Jin women were incredibly involved in their communities both while they were in uniform as HPC-Jin and as citizens at home. They were generally very ‘welatparêz’ or pro-Kurdish movement, often with kids in YPJ/YPG. I was in Kurdish dominated areas so I don’t know what HPC-Jin looked like in, say, Hesekê.
I was in some contact with the youth movement but preferred to spend more time around the women’s movement. Many of the individuals were enthusiastic young people who were extremely genuine and dedicated to their beliefs, who I liked personally and enjoyed their company. However, I found some of the dogmatism and vanguardist approach to organizing opposed to my own preferences. I was much more at home in the womens’ movement, which is overall more open and dynamic. That being said, Jineology Ciwan [Young Women’s Jineology] was the most open and dynamic element of the youth, and was doing great educational and outreach work when I was there.
*tekmîl (said ‘tekmeel’) is a structured critique and self-critique process utilized in civil and military structures in Rojava as a way to reflect on exercises and actions
What were your observations or experiences of feminism on a day to day level?
Yikes, this is a big topic…as a female presenting person in women’s structures over there, I was around women most of the time. The rise of the women’s movement seemed to be the one of the largest changes in the region. When I asked people their feelings on the ‘Rojava revolution’ and other aspects of local politics, two things came up a lot. First, the change in living conditions for the Kurds. And secondly, the changes in the status and possibilities for women. I wasn’t there before, so I can’t speak too much to the changes that have happened. As I see things, the power of the women’s movement is putting some social force behind feminism, and helping these changes spread to the peripheries. For example, I was at a Jineology Ciwan camp. A lot of the young women were spending their first night away from home, ever, and a number of them had come from families that needed convincing to let them go.
The bulk of the work I was around was centered on feminism in some way – at times this manifested as women gaining the skills to be seen as equals as men, other times in education so women had knowledge and power about their own bodies. Sometimes gender/generational dynamics were more confrontational. For example, when I was there child brides were a controversial subject. The Self-Administration had a campaign against it, by building public awareness, some targeting of specific dressmakers that would sew dresses for child brides, and sheltering girls that ran away from their families. Girls would sometimes flee to YPJ or other structures with the aim of escaping an arranged marriage [or other reasons], which created a problem because YPJ couldn’t accept the child recruits. I met a few girls who were at YPJ-international learning English with hazy plans to possibly go to university later. I reencountered one of them a few months later and she had chosen to help in one of the camps for ISIS women and children. The girls I met seemed to be in a really good situation, but the possibility that girls will run away and join a structure in the Kurdish movement has led to families trying to marry off girls as a way to keep them from running away, sometimes at even younger ages than they would have before. When I was around there was a discussion of the pros and cons of making child marriage illegal; I believe at this time there hasn’t been a law passed forbidding it, since it’s believed that it would just continue in secret and the law would be ineffective.
Another big issue when I was there was health education. Most women haven’t had a basic know-your-body education, and young women often get false information about sex, pregnancy and similarly taboo issues. Jineology was teaching classes sharing basic information about anatomy, health and self-care.
There is some level of acknowledgment that feminism needs to become anti-patriarchy; that is, not just be a thing women talk about. Men need to confront their patriarchal behaviors, and do their own work in thinking about how internalized patriarchy has affected them. At this point, though, that’s not something that is happening in a systemic way.
If you had to take away lessons from what you observed in civil society in terms of revolutionary practices, what would they be? Or in other words, are there certain practices you think would be useful to adapt to organizing back home?
Well, the social context is wildly different from that of the US, so it’s hard to transfer things directly. The local politics of Northeastern Syria have had years to develop since the Rojava Revolution, so the problems and solutions develop out of that population. If anything, I saw the importance of knowing your local context.
One of the major things I was impressed with was the ability of people across different spectrums of life to engage in the political process. I have a number of friends who are in their late 20s or early 30s and still feel a desire to be politically active but don’t have the capacity to be involved in the standard ways. The Kurdish movement offers a lot of ways people can be involved. It’s easy to lend support financially, volunteer to house people, be involved in neighborhood self-governing structures, be educated for self defense, or make room for one’s children to do so. I wish we had this diversity of outlets for support, so my friends who are farmers, educators, social workers, parents, and so on felt like they could be meaningfully involved.
Did your political views shift at all due to your experiences?
I guess the biggest thing is that I’m more of an individualist now, in a way. I saw a bit of excess in the other direction coming from internationals, so I recognize the need for an element of individualism to uphold ideological diversity, creativity, and healthy group dynamics.
Are there any practices you experienced or saw that you think we should avoid or be wary of cultivating?
I view the projects going on in Northeastern Syria and Rojava as deserving our support and solidarity, much in the same way many people support Palestine. The ideology and political practice are very far from anarchism, but there are a lot of people from the region whose lives have been immeasurably improved by the lack of the Assad regime/ISIS.
The regional context is very different so a lot of my criticism has to do with specific things there, and don’t necessarily transfer easily to projects back home. So I have a lot of broad critiques linked to the system there, as I would any state-like structure, as well as more specific ones that would take a lot of time to explain their contexts.
From the defense of Kobane and Shengal to the establishment of the SDF and offensives on Raqqa and Deir-Ez-Zour, the character of the conflict in Rojava changed over the years. Do you think this influenced a shift in revolutionary work or outlook?
Yes. There’s a good interview on the Final Straw podcast with a Kurdish anarchist who discusses the change as the conflict there went from defensive to offensive. It’s worth listening to; I’ll link it at the bottom. That being said, I was there during Dera Zor. Other than the panic that took place about the Turkish invasion, which had a very negative effect since civil work was widely disrupted, I didn’t really see that much change. I’d imagine that now things are changing once again, with the rampant crop burning by ISIS and frequent bombings.
What do you see as the significance of having an anarchist structure in Rojava?
I believe in the importance of ideological diversity. Having structures that are ideologically different than the Kurdish movement is important in upholding this.
Violent clashes between the Kurdish forces and the Turkey-backed factions in areas at Marea city north of Aleppo
31/07/2019
Aleppo Province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: the Syrian Observatory monitored violent clashes with light and medium weapons; between the Kurdish forces who are positioned in the towns of Harbal and Sheikh Issa against the Turkey-loyal factions located southwest of Marea city in the northern countryside of Aleppo this evening, but no information about casualties.
The Syrian Observatory published yesterday that the Syrian Observatory monitored the renew of clashes in areas in Aleppo countryside, between the Turkey-loyal factions against the Kurdish Forces who are spread in the area, where the clashes were concentrated after midnight of yesterday in areas of Mar’anaz and Daghlabash in the northern and northeastern countryside of Aleppo, amid confirmed information about casualties in the ranks of both parties, and the Syrian Observatory published on the 20th of July 2019 that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitored missile shelling carried out by the Turkish forces and their loyal factions, targeted areas controlled by the Kurdish Forces in Tal Rifaat and Its outskirts in the northern countryside of Aleppo, but no information about casualties, and the Syrian Observatory published on the 15th of July 2019 that the Turkish forces and pro-Government factions continue shelling areas controlled by the Kurdish forces north of Aleppo, where the Syrian Observatory monitored by pictures the continuation of shelling on places in Ain Daqneh, Menagh, outskirts of Tal Rifaat, Tal Madiq, and Jame’e Om al-Qura since this morning, while the Kurdish forces launched rocket shells on areas controlled by pro-Turkish factions north of Aleppo, and in the same context, the regime forces shelled Hayyan town by artillery shells in the same countryside, but no information yet casualties, and the Syrian Observatory published on the evening of yesterday that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitored rocket shelling today evening, carried out by the Turkish forces targeting areas in the villages of Tal Madiq, Bailuniyyah and Sheikh Issa in the northern countryside of Aleppo province which is under the control of the Kurdish forces, without information about casualties, and the SOHR published on the 6th of July 2019, that violent clashes in the area of Maraanaz north of Aleppo, between the pro-Turkey factions against the Kurdish forces deployed in the area, amid exchange of shelling by mortar shells, and no information about casualties was reported so far, where these clashes come hours after targeting by the Turkish forces to the Kurdish forces-held positions, where the SOHR published on the 6th of July 2019, that the Turkish forces carried out rocket shelling on areas in Al-Malikiyah village which is under the control of the Kurdish forces in the northern countryside of Aleppo, without information about casualties so far.
And the Syrian Observatory published on the 2nd of July 2019 that the Syrian Observatory monitored artillery shelling carried out by the Turkish forces targeted areas in the villages of Mar’anaz and Malkiyyeh, which are controlled by YPG in the northern countryside of Aleppo, but no information about casualties. and the Syrian Observatory published on the 26th of June 2019 that at least one Turkish soldier was killed and more than 3 other soldiers were injured, as a result of rocket shelling carried out by the Kurdish Forces at the Turkish base in Kimar village near al-Basutah in the northern Countryside of Aleppo, followed by a sweep for the perimeter of the area by the Turkish forces with heavy machine guns, and the Syrian Observatory published on the 9th of June 2019 that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented the death of a Turkish soldier and the injury of 7 others as a result of rocket shelling whose source is the Kurdish Units which targeted one of the posts of the Turkish army in the vicinity of Tel Rifaat city in the northern countryside of Aleppo, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitored rocket shelling by the Turkish forces on areas where the Kurdish force are deployed in the areas of Tel Rifaat, Sheikh Issa and Menagh Military Airbase within the northern sector of Aleppo countryside, amid clashes took place between pro-Turkey factions against the Kurdish forces, in the area of Tways near Mare’ town north of Aleppo, and no information was reported so far.
Lebanese writer: Turkey seeks to eradicate the Kurds, control of Syrian wealth at same time
The Lebanese writer Hanna Saleh said that Turkey has two goals close and far from the occupation of the north and east of Syria first is to “crush the Kurds” on the pretext of protecting the Turkish national security, and the farthest goal of the Turkish hand on the Syrian wealth of oil and gas and water, so that Ankara has the lion’s share in any settlement of the Syrian issue an inevitable settlement.
NEWS01 Aug 2019, Thu – 12:012019-08-01T12:01:00 NEWS DESK
Lebanese writer Hanna Saleh said in an article published today in the newspaper al-Sharq Al-Awsat that the saying: “The Good Red Indian is the Red Indian Red” is a well-known saying. Golda Meir quoted her famous phrase: “The Good Palestinian is the Dead Palestinian.” Yitzhak Rabin, when he ordered the arrogance of the occupying Zionist army to break the ribs of the children of the stone revolution in occupied Palestine. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan outperformed everyone in targeting the Syrian Kurds, saying: “Either they are buried under the dust or accept humiliation!”
He added that the new Ottoman leader, Bassem Qasim Soleimani, who was exposing for the shedding of Syrian blood, seeking to re-establish his leadership over Syria and its people, not just the Kurds. He also revealed the Turkish targets, which were buried in Syria and at the expense of the Syrians, Under the pretext of maintaining Turkish national security, and in this particular situation, after the resounding defeat in Istanbul, seeks to achieve “achievement” on the way to achieve Turkish ambitions, and to distract the attention of its citizens, the introduction of new elements on the agenda of the concerns of the Turkish citizen.
Since the year 2016, after the light of the Russian green, was the process of «Shield Euphrates»; where the Turkish control of a large area of the north of Syria, from Jarablous to al-Bab and Azaz… Etc., Ankara begun, which highlighted in top priorities to divide the Kurdish region and dispersing the Kurds far away from its border, open old files, and talk about documents confirming its right to extend its control over 15 villages in the province of Aleppo bordering the border. It was clear by occupying Jarablous and Manbij two cities, where Turkey started Turkification policy and arbitrated the forces of «political Islam», and linked them to the Turkish administration functionally and financially and educationally, adopting the Turkish curriculum, replaced the Turkish language instead of the French
“After the Operation Olive Branch in 2018, the tightening of control over Afrin, and the beginning of a demographic change by displacing some 150,000 of its Kurdish people in particular, and settling displacement people from al-Ghouta instead of the indigenous people, who are supporting of the Turkish army’s factions, Erdogan declared that «Turkish national security requires control over large parts of all areas of Syria – Iraq adjacent to Turkey»! After giving the path of Astana to Turkey the upper hand in the province of Idlib, which was classified as “De-escalation”, Ankara began to build a concrete wall that simulates the Zionist wall in occupied Palestine, to isolate Afrin from the geographical perimeter, to link more with Turkey, and threatened to extend its military operations to include Manbij and east of the Euphrates to Ain Arab – Kobani, Tel-Abyed and Ras al-Ain, and up to Qamishli, and the stated goal to remove the Kurds.
“Turkey has put its hand on the Syrian food basket, and in the manner of the Iranian settlement occupation, it has pushed to make demographic changes, and the operations of Turkification have expanded in the Kurdish areas. Afrin has become without its inhabitants. The movement of any Syrian citizen in the areas of the Turkish occupation requires permission from the Turkish ruler in Kalis or with the American decision to withdraw from the east of the Euphrates, the Turkish ambitions moved to crush the Kurdish movement under the pretext of protecting Turkey’s national security and the longer-term objective of putting the Turkish hand on Syria’s oil, gas and water so that Ankara would have the lion’s share in any settlement of the issue. Syria, which is coming inevitably settlement, and this era unfold dictatorial regime, which recorded an unprecedented event not seen once any country in the world, eradicating his people and the deportation of about half of the Syrians from their homes, and to facilitate the naturalization and resettlement the people.
The truth is that no one has discussed how a country can impose its imperial ambitions on another country, by insisting on the creation of a large pocket that it controls in a neighboring country.” The Turkish presidency has put its ambitions on the Russians and the Americans, despite different interests and Russian and American perspectives, the outcome is similar.
Moscow withdrew from Adana Agreement of 1998, which gives Turkey the right to hunt down elements of the “PKK” about 5 kilometers in Syrian territory, provided political normalization with the Syrian regime, according to the text of the Convention. In fact, there is today a security normalization between Ankara and Damascus. Turkey has not found its way to Russia, which seeks to draw the boundaries of the roles and influence of its partners in the Astana process, despite Russian concerns over the US-Turkish dialogues. Since then Ankara has been negotiating with the Americans, and the Turkish address is to control a 30-35 km deep area east of the Euphrates, about one-third of the area of this region, to exceed Turkish control of 20 per cent of the total Syrian territory, and that the “Syrian Democratic Forces” should be removed after the dismantling of the backbone of these forces «People’s Protection Units», the Kurdish power sought by Ankara
The Turkish response was not delayed, said Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu: «US proposals on the buffer zone is not satisfactory to Turkey», threatening that «the patience of his country ran out»! But the striking part of Erdogan’s positions, recalling some of the Nazis’ ideas in 1939, when Hitler blew up the borders of neighboring Germany, the Turkish president declared that his country would “bury under the dust those who seek to create a terrorist corridor on its borders, regardless of the outcome of the talks with the Americans”! And began to alert on both sides of the border and finger on the trigger!
In the last 20 summit, President Trump said: “Erdogan wants to eradicate the Kurds, and asked him not to do (…). Imagine, some 75 years after the end of Nazism, and after 70 years of Zionist terrorism, which did not achieve security for Israel, there is a president of state did not care and facilitate the game of blood!
British revolutionaries in Syria say they will defy Home Office’s new terrorism laws
Dozens of Britons like Theo Stevens (pseudonym) have been drawn to the autonomous Kurdish region, known as RojavaCredit: The Telegraph/ Sam TarlinJosie Ensor, Northeast Syria
A group of self-styled British revolutionaries who travelled to Syria to help build a democratic society in the Kurdish north say they will defy new Government legislation which would see them prosecuted on terrorism charges.
The Home Office revealed in May that it planned to designate northern Syria a “no-go area” and that British citizens would have 28 days to leave or face a 10-year prison sentence if they attempt to return to the UK.
It said the law was aimed at tackling terrorism, but the volunteers accuse the Government of failing to distinguish between Britons in the jihadist enclave of Idlib, in Syria’s northwest, and those working in the northeast alongside Kurdish groups that helped defeat Islamic State (Isil).
The law would mean just travelling to or remaining in the northeast would be considered a terrorist act, despite the UK partnering with the Kurds in the coalition against the jihadist group.
Dozens of Britons have been drawn to the autonomous region, known as Rojava: some to fight with the People’s Protection Units (YPG and YPJ) against Isil, while others were attracted by their Marxist-inspired democratic, feminist, anti-capitalist project.
The volunteers have drawn comparisons to the International Brigades, the foreign fighters who travelled to Spain to battle Franco’s fascists in the 1930s and were made famous by author George Orwell.
More than 10 Britons are currently undertaking voluntary work on ecological and community projects as well as medical and media outreach.
The Telegraph last month spoke to three of them in the town of Derik on the border with Iraq, where they said they should not be criminalised simply for travelling to a warzone.
“On the one hand, (the Home Office) talks about the UK’s need for international co-operation with the Kurds in fighting terrorism. And on the other, it is punishing those of us who come here to do just that,” said Matt Broomfield, 25, from Shropshire, who left the UK more than a year ago after working in media.
Mr Broomfield has supported local media projects to help get news from the region out to an international audience, as well as writing articles for the British press.
“It’s a ham-fisted attempt to prosecute jihadists under a catch-all law after previous laws proved inadequate,” said Mr Broomfield, referring to the fact that only one in 10 returning Isil fighters have been prosecuted upon return to the UK.
The legislation was announced by new Home Secretary Priti Patel’s predecessor Sajid Javid, but, the Telegraph understands, she will support it.
It is not clear when the 28-day grace period will begin, but it will mark the first use of new powers given to the home secretary in the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act, which became law in February.
“I won’t be leaving, regardless of the Government’s draconian actions, as I consider their threats toward those in northeast Syria illegitimate and worthy of resistance,” Mr Broomfield told the Telegraph.
“Yes of course we’re very worried – less for ourselves than for what this means for northeast Syria’s status in the future and the future of international solidarity with Rojava.”
The Kurds have forged something of a proto-state under the cover of the Syrian civil war, inspired by the revolutionary socialism of Abdullah Ocalan, a Kurdish leader jailed in Turkey whose group is branded a terrorist organisation by the US.
However, their experiment in self-rule has faced threats from Turkey to the north and Syrian government forces to the west and south, as well as a more immediate threat from Isil sleeper cells hiding among them.
Some have accused the volunteers of adventurism and naivety, accusations those here dismiss.
“I’m not just here trying to get arrested, I want to be part of important revolutionary change,” said Theo Stevens, 29, who has been volunteering at the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, a civil society organisation, since arriving in the country five months ago. “Isil may have been defeated territorially, but there’s a lot more work that needs doing than fighting.
“When I heard about the new law I thought about it for 30 seconds before deciding I couldn’t just abandon all we’ve done here,” Miss Stevens, who had been involved in Bristol’s anarchist and Leftist movements before moving to Syria, said, using a pseudonym.
She said her family has a history of participating in revolutionary struggles. Her great-uncle fought in the Spanish Civil War and went on to write the well-known memoir, A Shallow Grave.
“My mum isn’t too worried about the new law, she trusts my decision. She met others in the community at Anna’s memorial and got to see how strong it is,” she adds, referring to Anna Campbell, from East Sussex, who was killed during the Kurds’ battle against the Turkish army and Turkey-backed rebel forces in the northern Syrian city of Afrin last year.
Anna had been a friend of Miss Stevens’ back home, who had encouraged her to come to Rojava before she died.
Eight Britons died fighting in Syria alongside the Kurdish YPG, including Anna, and Jac Holmes from Dorset, who stepped on a mine the day after helping liberate Isil’s “capital” Raqqa.
Another volunteer, Lizzie Irvine, from southeast Scotland, said she thought the Home Office’s decision would discourage other Britons from joining them, which she said was a “shame”.
Miss Irvine, 30, has been working in an all-female commune housing widows and Yazidis rescued from Isil for the last six months.
“Something beautiful is growing in an ugly part of the world and I feel a duty to help that flourish,” she said. “Britain shouldn’t be criminalising people like us.”
Mr Broomfield said the volunteers were planning to raise their concerns in Parliament via an Early Day Motion. However, he said he was also prepared to fight his case in court should the Government decide to prosecute him.
“The Britons who joined the Kurds went to fight Isil under the RAF in a coalition of which the UK was a part,” Labour MP Lloyd Russell Moyle, who visited Rojava last year, told the Telegraph. “Those still with the Kurds are participating in pluralistic, democratic and feminist social revolution in the heart of a region gripped by authoritarianism and sectarianism.
“This is a lazy law that will cause more harm than good. Locking up returning NGO workers and volunteers is absurd, antithetical to our values and a blow to development in the Middle East.”
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Building Autonomy Through Ecology in Rojava
This article first appeared on Unicorn Riot, 28 February, 2018.
Rojava – After almost seven years since the war in Syria began, battles between Kurdish-led democratic forces (SDF/YPG/YPJ) and Daesh (IS) have left the Islamic State nearly defeated throghout the region. When Rojava was liberated from direct Syrian government control in summer 2012, this set off a political revolution towards a self-organized democratic society across the northern regions of the country. On March 17th, 2016, 151 delegates from various northern regions of the Syrian state, including Rojava, proclaimed autonomy through the creation of the ‘Federation of Northern Syria–Rojava’. In recent weeks, NATO member state Turkey has attacked the Kurdish-controlled Afrin Canton (and the city named after the region) in an attempt to crush the growing revolution. Meanwhile, to the east, revolutionary forces throughout Rojava continue building an autonomous democratic society.
“With this war, the fascist Turkish state wants to break the revolution in Rojava because it can not live next to a society that builds on women’s liberation, real democracy and an ecological and communal economy.” – Internationalist Commune of Rojava
Before years of war devastated northern Syria, decades of capitalist exploitation by the Syrian state created the ecological disaster the people of Rojava face today. Through wheat monoculture, oil extraction, and neglect of waste management planning, the Syrian state has left the region with growing ecological problems. Simultaneously, the Turkish government has been expanding dam projects along rivers running south into northern Syria for decades, turning rivers into dust and making it harder for people to grow food and be self-sustainable. Turkey also built massive walls along its border, carving miles of scars through the region’s ancient forests. After decades of destructive colonial policies and war, the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, in cooperation with the Ecology Committee of the Cizire Canton, has begun taking direct action to protect the region’s autonomy. Out of the rubble of war-torn cities, the people of Rojava launched an ecological campaign to develop solutions to these problems and, as their campaign slogan proclaims, “Make Rojava Green Again”.
The ecological campaign is addressing issues related to cultivation of food, reforesting large swaths of land, providing alternative forms of electricity, limiting fossil fuel usage, preserving the water supply, and even developing waste management solutions. Many of the local committee members are young adults who consider themselves responsible for building a more just social and economic system that functions in balance with the natural world. The women’s liberation movement in Rojava also plays an important role in operating ecological pilot projects, such as agricultural cooperatives. The Internationalist Commune is made up of individuals from around the world who have traveled to Rojava to support the revolution with their expertise, ideas, and labor. Internationals organizing with local communities in Rojava are working to support ecological projects, expand awareness, and build a healthy future across the region. The campaign is still very new and much work still lies ahead.
Developing urban agriculture is one tier in the ecological campaign to expand food security and autonomy in Rojava. Monocultures, the act of growing a single crop, has long been common policy supported by the Assad government, which has controlled Syria since 1971. Decades of monoculture resulted in the loss of ecological diversity across the region, and the use of artificially supplied water and chemical fertilizers has degraded the soil and made cultivation of food impossible in some areas. In Afrin, for example, the regime cut down ancient forests to grow monocultures of olive trees, degrading topsoil. The Internationalist Commune plans to create rooftop gardens and plant on undeveloped land within cities, which will further decentralize agriculture across Rojava. The return to traditional organic fertilizer-based agriculture is also a solution being put into practice by the Internationalist Commune.
“A person alienated from nature is alienated from and is destroying himself, and no system has shown this connection more clearly than capitalist modernity.” – Internationalist Commune of Rojava
Over the last few decades, many wildlife and plant species in the region have been displaced by deforestation and monoculture practices. Many wolves, foxes, wild pigs, and birds found refuge in the Hayaka forest, one of the last forests near Derik in Cizire. In 2014, the democratic self-administration of Rojava declared the Hayaka forest a natural reserve in order to preserve the biodiversity of the region. Hunting, fishing, construction of buildings, and agriculture are prohibited within the reserve. Since then, the development of non-profit cooperative tree nurseries has become an essential part of the ecological strategy to maintain autonomy in Rojava. Through the tree cooperative, internationalists will contribute their labor into reforesting Hayaka by planting 100,000 trees throughout the reserve, which will also improve local air quality. In the Spring of 2018, the Internationalist Commune will also plant 50,000 shoots of fruit trees that will produce pomegranate, grapes, pistachios, apricots, cherries, apples, pears, and olives. The commune will also plant wheat and cotton on the plains, establish beekeeping, and plant a variety of herbs accessible for medical research and use.
Lack of access to clean water, and conflict over water sources, represent major factors in growing crises around the world. In Rojava, access to sustainable sources of water is yet another ecological issue the Internationalist Commune is working to overcome. The supply of clean drinking water mostly comes from springs and lakes. Climate change has contributed to the problem by shortening the rainy season across the region, which has decreased the amount of rainfall and significantly lowered groundwater levels. In the last two decades alone, precipitation in some areas has dropped 10-15%. Today, wells must be dug an estimated 50 meters deeper to access clean water. At the same time, Turkey has built dams upstream along the Euphrates and Xabur tributary, actively restricting the flow of water south into Rojava. In regions held by the Islamic State, Daesh has further compounded the problem of water scarcity by blocking off access to springs and wells. This lack of water has contributed to soil erosion and the dying off of once-thriving forests along river banks and lakes. Some of the remaining sources of water have also been left heavily contaminated after years of war across the region.
Across the region, access to water for drinking and agriculture has been slowly reduced for decades, due to monoculture and the building of dams. In an effort to promote sustainable use of water for growing crops, the Agricultural Protection Committee has registered all water wells and prohibited further expansion of wells for agriculture. In addition, the committee has limited the planting of crops requiring irrigation to 60%. Plans have also been implemented to begin using greywater (water from showers, the kitchen, etc) and blackwater (from toilets) for organic fertilization of agriculture. Human waste is the largest source of nutrients available to improve the soil and increase agriculture from organic waste across the region (after long composting). Much of the research, and technical implementation, for various uses of recycled water are ongoing at the International Academy.
Like most places around the world today, Rojava is still dependent on fossil fuels to drive vehicles, transport goods, and generate heat within stoves. Burning gasoline and diesel is the main source of air pollution in the region, especially in larger cities. The Internationalist Commune is currently developing plans to expand public transportation as a method to minimize this impact on the health of locals and environment. In addition, the ecological campaign is planting trees by thousands to help improve urban air quality.
“Instead of tackling the cause of the destruction of nature, capitalism itself, the symptoms are treated instead.” – Internationalist Commune of Rojava
The supply of electrical power to many regions of Rojava is a primary hurdle in sustaining autonomous self-governance. Rojava currently derives electricity from three primary sources: hydro-electric power plants, natural gas, and diesel generators. Much of the electrical infrastructure, such as power lines and substations, has been destroyed after years of war across the region. Currently, the Internationalist Commune, with strong support from the Ministry of Energy, is developing plans to create a more decentralized and sustainable infrastructure. Currently, the development of the first wind power pilot project in Rojava has begun, which will serve as a working example for communities throughout the region. Volunteers are also working to create decentralized solar solutions, using photovoltaic technology, which will provide alternative sources of power and water heating systems.
The Internationalist Commune believes this will reduce community dependency on both centralized electricity grids and fossil fuels. The Internationalist Commune in Rojava is simultaneously moving forward on plans for managing organic (food, paper, etc) and non-organic waste (plastic, metal, etc). Methods are being developed to sort, separate, and store all types of waste instead of burning or burying the waste, which causes air pollution and contamination of ground water. Organic waste is cleaned and stored for composting, and plans are underway to recycle all non-organic waste. Hazardous waste is stored far away from water sources to avoid contamination.
“The connections between the market economy, exploitation, destruction of nature, war and migration show what the result is when centralist and hierarchical systems try to subjugate nature” – Internationalist Commune of Rojava
Such a massive ecological overhaul within Rojava will not be accomplished overnight. One essential pillar in maintaining self-governance throughout the region is community education. Success for an ecological revolution in Rojava will come from sharing concrete experiences and skills at all levels of society. The Internationalist Academy will be the center of this effort and will train individuals in the principles of self-organization, women’s liberation, ecology, language, and culture. Students at the academy will participate in lectures and discussions at youth centers, municipalities, schools, and other institutions, to further develop what an ecological society in Rojava can look like and how to build it. International volunteers skilled in sanitation, renewable energy, mechanical and electrical engineering, and even physicists, chemists, and biologists continue to travel to Rojava to assist the construction of an autonomous ecological society. The academy hopes to build awareness throughout the region to “overcome the ecological and social crisis” which they see is “brought about by capitalist modernity”, and promotes the destruction of nature and humanity.
KCK: All humanity should embrace the Rojava Revolution
“Rojava Revolution and the martyrs of North Syrian peoples will be the essence of the Middle East’s democratic revolution, and the Middle Eastern peoples’ struggle for a free and democratic existence will definitively succeed.”
ANF
BEHDINAN
Thursday, 18 Jul 2019, 12:44
The Executive Council Co-presidency of Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) released a statement marking the 7th anniversary of the Rojava Revolution.
KCK vowed that they as the Kurdish Freedom Movement will always claim and stand by the Rojava revolution that has been achieved through Leader Apo’s (Abdullah Öcalan’s) paradigm for women’s liberation and a democratic ecological society.
The statement by KCK Executive Council Co-presidency said the following;
“We are entering the 8th year of the Rojava Revolution that initiated a democratization process for the peoples of the Middle East. We congratulate the people of Rojava (West) Kurdistan that have realized this revolution, we remember with gratitude and respect the martyrs who played the main role in the realization and defense of this revolution, and wish the veterans success in their future life.
With the 19 July 2012 revolution they realized in Rojava, the Kurdish people have proved to be the leading revolutionary democratic folk of the Middle East. The Rojava revolution becoming a Syrian and the Middle Eastern revolution with the participation of all Syrian peoples -Arabs and Syriacs being in the first place- has created a hope for all peoples. Achieving the fraternity of peoples and beliefs in the Middle East, that had long been made into enemies against one another, has been a mental revolution. Thus, Leader Apo has been proven to be the revolutionary leader of not only the Kurdish people but of all the Middle Eastern peoples.
The democratic autonomous system that has been built through the democratic collective organization of peoples in Northeast Syria, has become a model serving the democratization of the Middle East. As a democratic nation, Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs, Armenians, Durzis, Chechens and Turkmens have defeated ISIS and al-Nusra that have been backed by the AKP-MHP fascist government. The defeat of ISIS through the power of democratic nation and democratic society has shown how a free and democratic way of living could be achieved through a social and political system. In this way, the peoples have seen the way to overcome the deadlock and agony experienced in the Middle East.
By defeating ISIS, the peoples of Northeast Syria have not only defeated a despotic force in the Middle East, but they also neutralized a proxy organization that bears animosity against all of humanity. As a result of the attacks by the forces hostile to democracy and freedom during the past 7 years, the peoples of North Syria have given over 10 thousand martyrs and more than 20 thousand veterans. The martyrdom of hundreds of internationalist democratic revolutionaries from all around the world -socialists being in the first place- has shaped the character of this revolution. The democratic revolution of northern Syrian peoples has at the same time become the democratic revolution of all peoples on the world. This reality manifests the fact that this revolution possesses an invincible spirit.
The success of northern Syrian peoples’ democratic revolution is the success of the experience created by the democratic revolution led by the Kurds and Middle Eastern peoples for dozens of years. Its permanence shall be achieved by the democratic revolution power of all the Kurdish people and Middle Eastern peoples. Without a doubt, the democratic revolution in northern Syria has exposed the fact that freedom shall be achieved not through peoples’ struggle aiming to found a state, but through a democratic confederal structuring that is based on the fraternity of peoples. The comprehension of the fact that founding a state and a centralist statist mentality would not bring freedom and democracy for peoples, has also been a great gain for the peoples of the Middle East. The power of the autonomous system established by northern Syrian peoples, and its ability to counter any and all attacks, takes its source from this mindset and structuring. From this point of view, it is vital to deepen the democratic revolution in northern Syria by basing on an organized and democratic society.
The democratic autonomous system founded by the peoples in north-eastern Syria is an oasis of freedom and democracy for all the Middle Eastern peoples, it is the breath of peace and fraternity. In this respect, Arabs, Turks, Persians, Azeris, Armenians, Syriacs and all peoples, and all faiths, should protect this oasis of freedom as an attack against it would be an attack against all peoples’ desire for freedom and democracy.
This revolution should be claimed by not only the peoples and democratic forces in the Middle East, but by all democratic forces all around the world. Solidarity should be shown with this revolution against any kind of attack.
As the Kurdish Freedom Movement, we will always claim and stand by the Rojava revolution that has been achieved through Leader Apo’s paradigm for women’s liberation and a democratic ecological society. Our people in all parts of Kurdistan should also embrace this revolution and turn the prices paid and misery suffered by the Kurdish people for a hundred years into a joy of free and democratic living.
Rojava Revolution and the martyrs of North Syrian peoples will be the essence of the Middle East’s democratic revolution, and the Middle Eastern peoples’ struggle for a free and democratic existence will definitively succeed.”
SDF Commander: If Turkey attacks, a great war will break out
SDF Commander General Mazlum Ebdi said, “If the Turkish army attacks anywhere, it will turn into a great war.”
ANF
NEWS DESK
Friday, 19 Jul 2019, 16:00
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Commander General Mazlum Ebdi spoke to Yeni Özgur Politika newspaper and said, “If the Turkish army attacks anywhere, it will turn into a great war. We have let everybody know. Turkey knows this, so do the US and France.”
Ebdi mentioned the July 19 Revolution and said: “From now on, we will be working to protect this path, complete the construction process and to achieve a democratic solution based on equal rights among peoples within the unity of Syria.”
THE SITUATION AT THE BORDER
Ebdi spoke about the border line: “Turkey has stockpiled a significant amount of forces and weapons at the border. And I will add this, so have we. Tensions are high. This allows for provocations. Any mistake can spark a flame.”
When asked whether they were expecting any attacks, Ebdi said:
“Eastern Euphrates and Afrin are not similar. These are two separate areas. It is not possible to repeat here what happened in Afrin. We won’t let that.
We made a strategic decision during the Afrin process. We didn’t want this war to spread. We wanted to keep the Afrin battle contained in Afrin, and it was contained. For us, Eastern Euphrates will not be like that. If the Turkish army attacks anywhere, it will turn into a great war.”
“IF WE ARE ATTACKED”
Ebdi clarified his “great war” comments:
“For instance, if Turkey attacks Gire Spi, the battle front will be from Derik to Manbij. This is our decision. We have let everybody know. Turkey knows this, so do the US and France. If there is an attack against us, the 600 km border will turn into a battlefront. That would mean a second civil war period in Syria.
Turkey’s strategy is to come take Gire Spi and Kobane, then stop. But if there are any attacks, the war will continue until Turkey withdraws.”
THE US’ STANCE
SDF Commander General spoke about the US’ stance on the matter:
“We have an alliance with the US to fight against ISIS, which currently happens in Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa areas. If Turkey attacks us, YPG forces within the SDF will withdraw. Then, the fight against ISIS will stop. In fact, ISIS would recuperate. If we leave, the regime will enter the area to fill the void. Our joint efforts with the US and the coalition will be damaged.
The US does not want that. There are 73 states in the coalition. None of them want to see this cooperation fail. This is an international matter. As such, there is serious pressure on Turkey. This was not the case for Afrin.
The US’s position to avoid a war is positive. There are ongoing diplomatic efforts, they are pressuring Turkey to prevent an uncontrollable war. The US Secretary of Defense, Chief of Staff, Secretary of State have all spoken with their counterparts in Turkey.
It is not a matter of trust, that is the US’s problem. We have determined our stance and made our preparations. We will fight. Eastern Euphrates won’t be like Afrin.”
BUFFER ZONE
Ebdi spoke about the discussions on a buffer zone:
“In 2018 Erdogan said they finalized the preparations and would launch an operation to the east of the Euphrates. In 7 years, there have been no attacks against Turkey from our side. Our very presence is what they have a problem with. Look, we have been at war for the last 7 years. We don’t want a new, huge war. If there is war, it will be big. There won’t be a truce. We asked our allies to go discuss the matter. We asked US Special Envoy James Jeffrey to mediate. He said he would be happy to. That was how the process started. At first this wasn’t a project. We stated that we would not attack, that there was no threat from us. In the end the process continued.
Erdogan and Trump had a phone call where the Safe Zone project emerged. We as the SDF prepared our own proposal and submitted it to the US. Our project was very reasonable.
“LOCAL FORCES SHOULD GOVERN”
This is an issue of borders. Turkey wants a 30 km deep safe zone. We argue it could be 5 km deep. We accept a 5 km deep safe zone. We could withdraw the YPG forces from that area. We would have local forces to take their place.”
Ebdi said by local forces he means people from Kobane, Serekaniye, Qamishlo and Gire Spi: “We could also remove heavy weapons and weapons with a range to reach Turkey from this 5 km area. Some of our weapons have a 20 km range. We can pull these out of range as well. If these are ‘threats’, we are willing to remove that threat. Turkey says outsiders are governing the area. So we say, alright, let’s have locals govern. That would solve the issue.”
“A NEUTRAL FORCE SHOULD PATROL”
SDF Commander General said Turkey must commit to not attack: “We want an international force to patrol the area. It could be the Coalition or another force. Turkey is not neutral, we want a neutral force.”
“THEY MUST LEAVE AFRIN”
“We have accepted Turkish soldiers to be part of the patrols for now, on condition,” said Ebdi: “We want all people of Afrin, without exceptions, to return to their lands. Their gangs must leave Afrin. The confiscated goods and property must be returned to the people of Afrin. People brought from elsewhere to be settled in Afrin must be removed. All these must happen under guarantee of international powers, and control of the Council of Afrin. If this happens, as a gesture of good will Turkish soldiers could be part of the patrols.”
Social media campaign to celebrate the Rojava Revolution
To celebrate the 7th anniversary of The Rojava Revolution, the global RISEUP FOR ROJAVA network called for a social media campaign on 19 July.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Monday, 15 Jul 2019, 07:44
In a few days is 19 July. It will be the 7th anniversary of the Rojava Revolution.
To draw attention to this historic day, the global RISEUP FOR ROJAVA network call for a social media campaign to celebrate 19 July and the Revolution.
The Riseup for Rojava in a statement invites people around the world to “share your congratulations with the people of Rojava via video & image and make clear what the Rojava Revolution means to you and why it has to be defended.”
The appointment is on 19 July at 6 CEST. The hashtags will be #pirozbe and #riseup4rojava and the messages will be posted on Twitter & Facebook.
The stament recalls that “on 19 July 2012, the revolution started in Kobane and quickly spread to the Kurdish cities of Afrin, Qamishlo and Derik.
Seven years in which history was written. Seven years in which the lives of millions of people change radically. Seven years in which hundreds of thousands of women have organized and liberated themselves, thousands of communes and innumerable cooperatives have been founded.”
The statement added: “What began then in Kobane has become a major struggle against the fascism of our time and for the liberation of women and society. The division policy of the Syrian regime has been overcome. Today, 80% of YPG and YPJ fighters are Arabs. Hundreds of thousands of Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian and Turkmen children learn their mother tongue, a new historiography and Jineoloji, the science from the point of view of women. The children of the revolution are a living symbol of this new life. Freedom has burned itself into the collective memory of society.”
The statement continued: “The revolution is still full of contradictions and energy. Seven years in which the societies of Kurdistan, northern and eastern Syria did rise up and progressed day by day.
Seven years in which a heavy war raged and Rojava was attacked by all sides. Seven years in which resistance has been present every second and moment. The war began in September 2012 as gangs of Al-Nusra attacked the city of Serikaniye, followed by the attack by DAESH on Kobane, the last minute defense of the attack and the complete liberation of Kobane was the beginning of the end of the so-called caliphate. DAESH has found its end in Kobane’s resistance. With the resistance of Kobane, Rojava has become a symbol of hope worldwide.”
The statement added: “Kobane, Gire Spî, Til Temir, Til Hamis, Heseke, Al Hol, Minbic, Shaddadi, Tabbqa, Raqqa, Deir-a Zor, Afrin. The People’s and Women’s Defense Units (YPG / YPJ) and the democratic forces of Syria have defended free life over the past six years, freeing millions of people from the IS’s slavery and defending them against Turkish fascism.”
Riseup For Rojava continude: “On 19 March this year, ISIS was finally defeated in Baghouz. In the fight against the last positions of ISIS Revolutionary and Italian internationalist Lorenzo Orsetti (Tekoşer Piling) fell on the penultimate day of the operation. A painful death so close to the military end of the ISIS in north Eastern Syria. Lorenzo reminds us of hundreds, of thousands of revolutionaries who have fallen in the fight for the free life in the fight against the ISIS and the fascist NATO state Turkey. We are remembering every single fallen, remembering the days together, dances, discussions, difficulties and successes.”
“Can there be a more meaningful life?”
The statement ends by remembering all the martyrs of the Revolution. “The fallen are the value of this revolution. The fallen have made the revolution what it is today. Without them, there would be no more revolution, without them we would have nothing to celebrate on the 19 of July. They have made history with their determined attitude toward the universal values of socialism and their love for freedom and humanity! Lorenzo, Ivana Hoffmann, Anna Cambell, Legerin Ciya, Dilsoz Bahar and many other internationalists have become part of this story with their self-sacrifice. And it is our heritage to continue writing this story and to expand and defend the revolution.”
French researcher: Liberated areas from IS must be recognized by international society
The French writer and researcher of political philosophy Patrice Franshiski explained that the world must go from political to human rights. He said: “The fundamental task of the international community at this stage is the political recognition and then the rights of the Autonomous Administration in the liberated areas form Daesh grip.”
The International Forum on Daesh was held in Bilsan Hall in Amouda district belonging to Qamishlo canton, with attendance hundreds of personalities to discuss the trial of Daesh mercenaries.
One of the participants in the forum is the French writer and political philosophy researcher Patrice Franshiski spoke to our agency, Hawar news agency (ANHA), talked about the subject of Daesh trial. He said: “Daesh was defeated in the area and must be tried.
Daesh trial must be the issue of the world and humanity’
Patrice Franshisk explained that the establishment of the Forum in this way to define the region is very important and said: “The forum discussed the status of the region in terms of geopolitical and in general, we must find a solution to Daesh problem, with attendance of prominent figures and foreign to this forum shows that the trial of Daesh is not a subject limited to SDF or the region only, but is it tied to all the world and humanity as a whole.”
He said that Daesh should be prosecuted in north and east of Syria and said: “Daesh was defeated in this region, and committed massacres and crimes against humanity in this region, all the documents and evidence of human rights violations exist here.”
Turkey, Iran and the Syrian regime are supporting Daesh mercenaries’ cells
Franshisk pointed out if Daesh defeated militarily that does not mean elimination in full, Deash mercenaries’ cells and its ideology still remain, and in order to strike at security and stability in the region, the Turkish and Iranian governments and the Syrian regime continue to support these cells, to be eradicated these cells, a new kind of struggle must be found, because the problem of this region is not only to find a solution to the trial of Daesh detainees ,but there is a danger of Turkish schemes and the Syrian regime also on this region, so must focus on the political and legal stage.
And concluded his speech saying “Even the violations committed in Afrin must be transferred to international courts and held accountable.”
The Turkish state and its mercenary allies have kidnapped over 300 civilians in the occupied city of Afrin. The number of kidnapped civilians in the past week has reached 600.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Thursday, 4 Jul 2019, 09:47
According to the information received, Turkish soldiers and their mercenary allies have kidnapped over 300 civilians in the city in the last two days.
The invaders demand ransom from the families for the release of the kidnapped civilians.
At the beginning of July, at least 10 civilians were kidnapped in the Mabata district, while four civilians were reportedly abducted in the village of Gulikê the same day.
On 29 June it was reported that the occupiers have raided houses in the province of Mabeta. In these raids alone local sources reported that some 300 civilians, including children and women, were kidnapped.
Afrin is under the occupation of the Turkish state and its mercenary allies. The attacks against the city and region began on 20 January 2018 and the invasion of the city by land was carried out on 18 March.
Since the invasion, war crimes have been systematically committed in the region. The demographic structure of the region is being changed and crimes such as seizure of local people’s properties, kidnapping of civilians for ransom, torture or executions have been going on on a daily basis.
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Qamishlo Military Council founded
Military forces announced the establishment of a Military Council in Qamishlo
ANF
QAMISHLO
Thursday, 20 Jun 2019, 12:30
Qamishlo Military Forces declared the establishment of Qamishlo Military Council during a ceremony held in Martyr Delil Saruxan Cemetery of Martyrs.
The ceremony was attended by members of the Martyrs’ Families Institution, Military Forces, Autonomous Administration representatives, notables and civilian population.
Speaking here, Qamishlo Military Council Co-president Piling Qamişlo pointed out that the fight against ISIS has reached a new phase following the military defeat of the terrorist organization. Piling Qamişlo said that Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have entered a new period of organization in such an important process.
Speaking about the duties of regional military councils, Piling Qamişlo stated that the basic mission of the councils was to protect the region against terrorist elements, to help the people and ensure their security.
Speaking after, Qamishlo Canton Co-president Talat Yunus wished the fighters success and expressed his belief that the achievements of the people would be protected in line with the promises they had made to the people and to the martyrs.
Noting that they aim for a democratic Syria, Yunus underlined the need for military councils to maintain the security of the region.
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Al-Taqba Military Council formed
Military forces in al-Tabqa area announced at a ceremony the formation of its military council, “Al-Taqba Military Council.”
NEWS19 Jun 2019, Wed – 17:312019-06-19T17:31:00 AL-TABQA
Dozens of military and security leaders attended the ceremony, elders and dignitaries from the region, the Democratic Civil Administration of al-Tabqa, the families of the martyrs as well as leaders of the International Coalition.
After standing for a minute of silence, the leader of Al-Tabqa Military Council Mohammed Raouf welcomed the attendees, pointing out the importance of forming the military council lies in uniting the ranks and opinions in facing the challenges and protect the borders and peoples from any threat to them until reaching a political solution in the region, especially after the military defeat by the Syrian Democratic Forces over Daesh.
Among the objectives of the council is to involve local leaders in the decision-making mechanism more effectively, activating the role of women through the offices representing the Women’s Protection Units, which had the most prominent role in liberating the region from the abomination of mercenaries, in addition to activating the institutional work within the council.
ANHA
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Rojava perestroika: Is the PYD really lifting its ban on political rivals?
A Syrian Kurdish woman holds a portrait of jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan during a rally in Qamishli, northern Syria, January 2017. File photo: AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Following US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the 2,000 US troops currently stationed in northern Syria (Rojava), the Democratic Union Party (PYD)-led administration has said it will lift its ban on rival parties in the interests of Kurdish unity.
However, the Syrian Kurdish National Council (ENKS), which is backed by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), is not convinced the PYD is genuinely opening up the Rojava administration.
Nouri Brimo, an ENKS spokesman, told KDP media that Saturday’s announcement by the PYD is “baseless” as the party “does not believe in political coexistence.”
The PYD and ENKS have long been fierce rivals.
“The PYD does not have faith in political life outside their ideology and 56 of our offices are closed in Western Kurdistan (Rojava) as per their decree,” Brimo said.
“Whenever the PYD starts believing in political coexistence and allowing Peshmerga to enter Western Kurdistan, then it will issues such a decree,” he added.
ENKS will only take the PYD’s statement seriously when the Rojava administration releases its political prisoners, “because hundreds of cadres and members of the ENKS leadership are in the PYD’s prisons,” Brimo said.
The Rojava administration released a statement on Saturday saying it will lift the ban on unregistered political parties in response to calls from the Kurdish National Council (KNC or KNK) – a pro-Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) group.
“The KNK has an initiative to form unity in Rojava because everyone knows that today is an historic and sensitive situation. Kurds are fighting for their existence. All Kurdish parties have to reach a consensus on all current internal and foreign issues. The KNK has requested our support for the initiative by lifting the ban on illegal parties as a goodwill gesture in order to realise the initiative,” the Rojava’s administration’s legal team said in its statement.
Jadan Ali, head of the ENKS office in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, welcomed the decision but expressed regret over the poor condition of ENKS-PYD relations.
“They have put us in a condition where Kurdish people do not have faith in our agreements [with the PYD]. They are the ruling party, therefore they have to return trust,” he said, adding that a decision is “useless as long as prisoners are not released.”
An ENKS delegation has arrived in the Kurdistan Region to meet with KDP leader Masoud Barzani to discuss the latest development in Syria and Rojava.
The enclave has entered a new period of uncertainty since Trump declared he intends to withdraw US forces, which have been assisting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against ISIS.
The withdrawal could leave Rojava vulnerable to a Turkish invasion similar to the 2018 Afrin operation. It could also push the Syrian Kurds into the arms of Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers.
Before Trump announced his planned withdrawal, the US had been trying to broker a détente between PYD- and KDP-backed groups – with minimal success.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: ENKS is allied to the Iraqi Kurdish Kurdistan Democratic Party, which is an ally of Turkey. Turkey has vowed to destroy Kurdish autonomy in Rojava, Draw your one conclusions]
Turkey-backed Syrian rebels launch attack into Kurdish-held area
(4 May 2019)
BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) – Turkey-backed Syrian rebels launched an offensive into territory held by the Kurdish YPG militia north of the Syrian city of Aleppo on Saturday, seizing some territory before heavy shelling forced them to retreat.
The operation marked an escalation on one of the most complicated theatres of the multi-sided Syrian war. Though the rebels are targeting the YPG, Syrian government forces are also deployed nearby as are their Russian and Iran-backed allies.
The Turkey-backed Syrian National Army took three villages before withdrawing “because of heavy shelling and the lack of an ability to sweep the area completely in the light of the targeting of our forces”, said Yousef Hammoud, its spokesman.
He said pro-Damascus forces had shelled the advancing National Army fighters.
The YPG, which has fought alongside U.S. forces against Islamic State in eastern and northeastern Syria, has lost ground in the northwest since early 2018, when Turkish forces and their Syrian allies drove it from the Afrin region.
A military source in the Afrin Liberation Forces, which is close to the YPG, told Reuters the Turkey-backed rebels had advanced into an area where the Kurdish forces had no presence before being forced out.
“Now, after strikes from our forces, the opposition forces were forced to withdraw from those positions,” the source said.
The National Army was formed with Turkish backing from a number of rebel Free Syrian Army groups. Its main foothold is a chunk of territory northeast of Aleppo known as Euphrates Shield that is secured with help from Turkish forces on the ground.
The FSA groups have long vowed to take the YPG-held territory north of Aleppo including the town of Tel Rifaat, taken by the Kurdish militia since 2016.
The Turkish defence ministry said one Turkish soldier was killed and another was wounded in a YPG attack in Tel Rifaat on Saturday.
Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency on Turkish soil for autonomy in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast since 1984. The PKK is deemed a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
The YPG is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the main Syrian partner of the U.S.-backed coalition against Islamic State. The SDF controls northeastern and eastern Syria, approximately one quarter of the country.
Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Khalil Ashawi in Turkey and Rodi Said in Qamishli; Writing by Tom Perry.
Repression against ecological campaign ‘Make Rojava Green Again’
‘Make Rojava Green Again’ Initiative condemned the repression against Danish activist Anne Dalum.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Thursday, 18 Apr 2019, 15:45
After the Danish secret service (PET) found out that Anne had planned to travel to Rojava (Northern Syria) to participate in the ecological projects of ‘Make Rojava Green Again’ her passport was taken away by Danish police. A court case to try and overturn this decision is now underway in Frederiksberg, Denmark.
In a statement about Anne Dalum’s case, the Initiative said the following;
“We see this action by the Danish state as part of a wider context of repression in general against activists supporting the democratic project in Rojava. In particular, international fighters of the self-defense forces YPG/YPJ returning to Europe are facing high repression. (i.e. in Italy, the UK, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Spain).. YPG/YPJ and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are the structures defending the people of Northern-Eastern Syria. They defeated the Islamic State and therefore saved not only the people of Rojava, but humanity as a whole. In this fight against fascism thousands of fighters, including internationalists, gave their lives.
Only because of this heroic resistance are we now able to work on the construction of an ecological-democratic society here in Northern Syria. In this way we see people coming to Rojava to participate in either the civil or military structures of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) not as criminals but as honorable people fighting against injustice.
Make Rojava Green Again’ has already been affected by repression through the shutdown of the Kurdish publishing house Mezopotamya by the German state and the confiscation of more than 10.000 books, including the self-titled book of our campaign It seems that the governments of many European states are afraid of people seeing the reality and talking about the Revolution in Northern Syria. We see the participation of international activists from all around the world as important and meaningful.
We call on everyone to continue supporting the people in Rojava and the whole of Northern-Eastern Syria. At the same time we demand that the governments change their hypocritical stance against AANES and finally stop their support of the authoritarian regime in Turkey, which is directly threatening this democratic project through its support of reactionary Islamist forces in the Middle East.”
BACKGROUND
Below is the translation of a Danish newspaper article about Anne Dalum’s case.
“Traveling to the Rojava region in northern Syria and participating in a reconstruction project is not a creditable purpose [anerkendelsesværdigt formål, literally ‘purpose worthy of recognition’], says the Copenhagen Police. This passport revocation is the first of its kind to be tested in court.
A Danish woman has had her passport revoked and gotten a travel ban for a year when she wanted to travel to the Rojava region in northern Syria to participate in the reconstruction project Make Rojava Green Again.
The woman, 33-year old Anne Dalum, had bought the ticket for January 7, but the day before departure Copenhagen Police knocked on the door to her residence and revoked her passport.
It happened by referring to the tightening of the Passport Law in 2015, which among other things were supposed to help prevent the recruitment of foreign fighters into armed conflicts.
Rebuilding the region
The revocation has shaken this woman.
“It was never my intention to go to Syria to go to war. I wanted to participate in the civic work to rebuild the Rojava region. Make Rojava Green Again is working with ecological restoration, wind use and reuse of water,” said Anne Dalum.
She has made no secret of her sympathy for the reconstruction efforts and has mentioned it on Facebook.
Rojava, which is also known as the Democratic Federation in Northern Syria, is an autonomous, stateless area run by the Democratic Union Party, PYD.
PYD has two military units, YPG and YPJ, both of which currently forms part of the international coalition in the fight against ISIS, and which are under the protection of US forces and aircraft in the area. Denmark is part of the coalition with YPG and YPJ, and various international forces stationed in Rojava.
The Syrian civil war has never spread to the area in question.
To be tested in court
The 33-year-old woman has taken the opportunity to get the passport revocation tried in court. The case was opened last Thursday at a preliminary hearing in the court in Frederiksberg.
It is the first time a case of passport revocation from someone declared not to be a foreign fighter to be tried in the court system.
It was revealed at the hearing that the police apparently does not suspect Anne Dalum to participate in an armed conflict. The prosecutor from the Copenhagen Police, Sabine Mosegaard Sørensen, declared that the very presence in the region and the very purpose of the project is not creditable.
Copenhagen Police brought a statement from the Danish intelligence services PET that a person traveling to Syria will pose a danger to national security and be a significant threat to public order unless the person has a creditable purpose.
Subsequently, the prosecutor did not want to comment further on the case.
Questions about the purpose of the law
Anne Dalum’s lawyer, Erbil Kaya, calls the case unusual. He does not believe that she should be subject to the passport law.
“The purpose of the law was to stop radicalization, so people subsequently do not become a problem. This is something else. She does not want go to fight. Neither are there any information indicating that.
She wants to travel for humanitarian reasons. She wants to go down there and help. Is the law intended to stop her if she wants that?”, he asks.
In the preliminary work to the passport law, which came into force in January 2015, the focus is specifically on the ISIS fighters, holy warriors and to stop people who go out to fight, and thus may pose a threat.
Justitia out with a warning
In a hearing in 2014, the legal think tank Justitia warned that the tightening of the passport law could lead to a situation like Anne Dalum’s.
According to Director Jacob Mchangama, he remarked back then that the scope of the law was vague and should be qualified.
“We problematized the required suspicion in the decisions and said that there should be clearer evidence of whether you pose a danger. And also that a travel ban should require weighty reasons. We warned that more or less loose utterances on social media could lead to a risk. That’s exactly what happened here,” he says.
Erbil Kaya has previously appeared for two other people, Joanna Palani and Martin from Esbjerg, which he’s called, as the surname is not public, both of which have previously been deprived of their passports.
In both cases they had openly declared that they would travel out to fight against the Islamic State. Joanna Palani is today serving imprisonment for violation of the travel ban.
The case at the court in Frederiksberg has not yet been scheduled, but is assumed to be completed before the summer.”
Mazloum Abdi points out, “After Daesh was overwhelmingly defeated in al-Baguz village, and after the evacuation of civilians and the surrender of hundreds of terrorists, SDF’s fighters, with the participation of the International Coalition to Fight Daesh, fought strongly in the battles to eradicate Deash, declaring to the entire world the destruction of the so-called Caliphate.”
Abdi asserts that the elimination of the region and strongholds of the terrorist organization was the result of great efforts and sacrifices made by the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Coalition.
“High-level coordination takes place between the two sides and their strong relations will soon put an end to the nightmare that has engulfed the entire world and transformed the region into a center of terrorist activity,” he said.
Mazloum Abdi notes that the joint decisions which were taken by SDF and the International Coalition Forces have made the liberation of a city after the other possible, while there was avoidance of leaving civilian casualties through the use of precise military tactics that were under full control.
Abdi believes that the US President Donald Trump’s decision to leave some US troops in Syria is crucial for the next stage of the battle against Daesh, which involves eradicating its intellectual and ideological roots and requires long-term sustained action.
Abdi points out that the US political and military leadership, as well as the members of the US Congress agree that the threat posed by IS’ terrorist organization is still far from the goal of eliminating it. By keeping the US forces in the region and rearranging the US strategy, the next phase of the war against terrorism will help SDF to maintain the gains that have been achieved so far.
“We want to emphasize the role of the US Department of Defense, especially the commander of the US Central Command, Joseph Votill, in winning the battlefield against Daesh, and ensuring security and stability in the liberated areas of darkness,” Abdi said.
“We recognize the important role of the former presidential envoy of the International Coalition Britt McGuck in this victory, and thank him for bringing together different countries under the banner of the International Coalition and building a bridge of cooperation between them and Syrian Democratic Forces.”
Abdi said, “We must pay attention to some of the main challenges before us: the sleeper cells planted by the terrorist organization, the danger of Daesh’s ability to reorganize itself by using and employing individual terrorists’ tactics (individual wolves) in terrorist acts such as bombings and assassinations.”
He stresses that there is also an increasing need to restore the community’s cohesion, reorganize people and return them to their societies. “The areas occupied by the terrorists have turned into rubble and must be revived. The rehabilitation requires ongoing support and rehabilitation at all levels so that the citizens can return to their normal lives.”
“In accordance with the UN resolutions, the continued cooperation between the Syrian Democratic Forces and the International Coalition to confront Daesh will contribute to ending the Syrian crisis,” the General Mazloum Abdi said.
SDF announce Daesh’s defeat, start of new phase to fight its sleeping cells
The General Command of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said that they defeated Daesh mercenaries depending on the principles of the democratic nation and the co-existence, calling on Damascus to dialogue and recognize the specificity of SDF, demanding Turkey to stop interfering in the Syrian affairs and leave the Syrian territory, declaring the start of a new stage to fight Daesh terrorism.
23 Mar 2019, Sat – 15:51
DEIR EZ-ZOR
The General Command of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) issued on Saturday in al-Omer field in Deir ez-Zor countryside a statement to the public opinion, announcing the defeat of Daesh.
Before reading the statement, the attendees held a minute of silence which was accompanied by a military parade performed by the fighters of SDF, and listening to the Kurdish national anthem “Hey Reqib.”
Then, the general commander of SDF Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Women Protection Units (YPJ) Newroz Ahmed, and the US envoy to the International Coalition to fight Daesh William Rubak raised the curtains on the monument that symbolizes this historic day.
The statement was read by the general commander of SDF Mazloum Abdi in the presence of leaders of the International Coalition against Daesh, SDF commanders and fighters, officials in the Autonomous Administration (AA) of North and East Syria, representatives of the political parties, and the clans’ heads and notables in north and east Syria.
The statement included,
“On behalf of the General Command of SDF, all their fighters, and all our allies who fought with us in the same trench, we announce the destruction of what was called the organization of the Islamic State and the end of its field control on the last enclaves in al-Baguz region.
After our forces defeated al-Qaeda organization’s terrorists and their followers who used to receive support and facilities from regional forces and with our own modest potentials through the heroic resistance of 2012 and 2013, our regions were attacked by Daesh in early 2014, and the battle of Kobani was the symbol of the global resistance against terrorism and the beginning of Daesh’s defeat. Now, after five years of fighting, we stand here to declare the field defeat of Daesh.
We are proud of what we have achieved in the result of our battle against Daesh and al-Qaeda, and that is represented by rescuing nearly 5 million inhabitants of north and east Syria with all components from the clutches of terrorism, the liberation of 52 thousand km2 of the Syrian territories and the elimination of the terrorism that used to threaten humanity.
This victory was very expensive as more than 11,000 of our forces; commanders and fighters martyred, civilian victims were left, and more than 21,000 of our fighters injured. On this occasion, we cannot but commemorate those great heroes. We bow in tribute to the martyrs and wish the speedy recovery for our wounded as without their sacrifices, this victory would not have been achieved.
Likewise, we express our deepest thanks to all those who contributed and participated in this battle against terrorism, particularly the International Coalition against Daesh.
The main factor of SDF’s success in their battle against terrorism was their adoption of the democratic approach, the principles of the democratic nation and the freedom of women and the principles of co-existence and peoples’ fraternity which brought together the Kurdish, Arab, Syriac, Assyrian, Turkmen, Chechen and Circassian fighters and the international fighters under the flag SDF.
Just as SDF have helped the people of the liberated areas to establish their administrative and security institutions, they will also create the stability of the regions so that these areas would be able to rebuild their administrative and legislative councils through democratic elections.
In conclusion, we affirm that our battle against Daesh’s terrorism will continue until the full victory is achieved and its total existence is eliminated. At the same time, we call on the Coalition Forces to support us in the new stage to fight Daesh terrorists through the continuation of accurate military and security campaigns aiming at eliminating Daesh’s secret military presence completely.
After announcing their complete victory over the Islamic State (IS) at the shattered town of Baghouz al-Fawqani in eastern Syria — ending the five year existence of the murderous IS caliphate — – fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) now have to contend with the real possibility of a war against Turkey supported by its patron, Russia.
The Kurds also face the possibility president Donald Trump will fulfill a vow made in December 2018 to abandon them with the defeat of IS.
The world is celebrating the historic victory of the Kurds along with their allied Arab, Assyrian/Syrian and Christian militias over IS was announced on March 23. Since the U.S.-backed SDF was founded in October 2015, the mission of the SDF is to establish a secular, democratic and federal Syria.
French President Emmanuel Macron praised the SDF’s announcement about the end of IS as a territorial entity.
“Syrian democratic forces announced that the last bastion of Daesh had fallen. I pay tribute to our partners and the armies of the international coalition, of which France is a part. They fought the terrorists with determination, for our security,” tweeted Macron.
“We do not forget the victims of Daesh. The stage reached today is immense: a major danger for our country is eliminated. But the threat remains and the fight against terrorist groups must continue.”
British Prime Minister Theresa May also welcomed the news, and vowed to do “what is necessary” to protect British people and others from the threat of IS.
The SDF held a ceremony on the afternoon of March 23 to mark the victory over Daesh. The ceremony was attended by U.S. Ambassador William Roebuck and Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) co-chair Ilham Ahmed. Roebuck congratulated the SDF on its victory over the jihadists.
“This critical milestone in the fight against ISIS delivers a crushing, strategic blow and underscores the unwavering commitment of our local partners and the global coalition to defeat ISIS,” said Roebuck, reading a statement from Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“We could not have achieved any of this without the unwavering commitment and unity of our coalition and the tremendous sacrifice of our Syrian partners on the ground who have lost thousands of lives, taking back their homeland and helping to protect coalition homelands at the same time.”
“We honor the sacrifices and the valor of the Syrian Democratic Forces in achieving this victory and express condolences for the many lives lost in the campaign,” said Roebuck.
SDC co-chair Ahmed congratulated the Syrian people, but warned the fight to destroy ISIS sleeper cells and the group’s ideology must continue. There are anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 jihadists in these sleeper cells.
British Army General Sir Nicholas Carter, chief of the Defense Staff, offered his “deep and most sincere condolences to the families of the many who have fallen (from the SDF) in the important and noble endeavor. We also have great admiration for the humanity and care that your forces have shown during this difficult and final battle to try to avoid civilian casualties and to receive those fleeing Baghouz.”
Practically the entire SDF consists of Kurdish men and women fighters led by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a mostly Kurdish militia declared a terrorist organization by Turkey and its dictator, Recip Tayyip Erdogan.
The horrific campaign to destroy IS cost the SDF 11,000 dead. Of this total, 8,000 were Kurds of the YPG, more than 1,800 were Kurdish Peshmerga fighters with the rest of the dead spread among the other SDF militias.
Analysts agree that without the superhuman sacrifice of the Kurds, IS would still exist today. Kurds now have to turn their attention towards defeating an offensive by the Turkish Army within the year.
In December 2018, Erdogan said he had postponed a military offensive in northeastern Syria against the Kurds, citing conversations with Trump and other American officials. He did make it clear Turkey will eventually follow through on plans for an assault on Kurdish forces in the area.
Fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) stand atop a roof next to their unfurled flag at a position in the village of Baghouz in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province near the Iraqi border on March 24, 2019, a day after the Islamic State (IS) group’s ‘caliphate’ was declared defeated by the US-backed Kurdish-led SDF. Photo: GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP/Getty Images
“In the upcoming months, on the ground in Syria, we will follow a style of incursion that eliminates both PKK-YPD elements and remnants of Daesh,” said Erdogan.
This announcement came after Trump declared his intention to withdraw United States forces in Syria without consulting his military commanders, Arab allies in the region and NATO.
Trump’s decision to withdraw delighted Turkey, Russia and Iran, Syria’s main backers. It angered the Kurds and many American officials who saw it as a shameful abandonment of the Kurds. Israeli officials also said they felt abandoned by Trump, whose decision will strengthens Iran’s hold on Syria and create a strategic threat to Israel.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced his resignation the day after Trump’s order, making clear he opposed the Syria withdrawal, along with other presidential actions.
ROSA GILBERT salutes her comrade, the Italian revolutionary killed this week in the fight between Isis and Kurdish-led forces in Syria
Lorenzo Orsetti was part of an international anarchist group attached to the the armed units Turkish Communist Party/Marxist Leninist fighting Isis in northern Syria
ON MONDAY morning came the devastating news that an Italian YPG volunteer, Lorenzo “Orso” Orsetti, had been killed by an Isis ambush in Baghouz, the small town on the Deir Ezzor front where the remnants of the Isis caliphate are surrounded. Orsetti, also known by his nom-de-guerre Tekoser Piling, had been in northern Syria since September 2017 when he travelled from his hometown in Florence, Tuscany to defend the revolution in Rojava led by the Kurds in northern Syria, one he described as “the most beautiful revolution in the world,” “the closest thing I’ve ever found to my ideals and it is a pleasure and an honour to take part.”
Clarifying his motivation for taking up arms in Rojava, he said that it wasn’t because he liked war or wanted fame, that he didn’t have any mystifications or delusions, simply that “freedom cannot exist without taking risks.” According to countless stories, Orso (“bear” in Italian) was an incredibly brave and selfless fighter, and whilst he always impressed on friends and comrades the need to act in an altruistic manner in his dispatches from the front line, he never boasted or exalted his own activity.
He never even told people how, whilst fighting in the hills of Afrin against the Turkish/FSA invasion in spring 2018, with defeat in sight, he refused to be evacuated with the rest of his internationalist unit, insisting on staying with the civilians to defend them from the invasion at huge risk to himself until civilians themselves were evacuated. Fighting in the hills of Afrin in incredibly difficult conditions surrounded by jihadists and bombarded day and night by Turkey’s air force (equipped by both Britain and Italy), his dispatches from the front line sounded like epic tales of guerilla warfare from the partisan resistance, swapping the olive tree-filled mountains between Florence and Bologna for those of the north-west Syrian Kurdish enclave.
Orso came from a very ordinary family in Rifredi, a working-class neighbourhood in Florence filled with monuments and plaques to the anti-fascist partisans, many of whom hailed from the area in which he grew up. Bored by successive menial service jobs, mainly as a waiter and chef, he looked to Rojava as an escape from the drudgery and trappings of individualistic capitalist society. Not coming from any particular political faction, he was known more socially in Florence than as an activist or political raconteur, so although he had strong political ideals of an anarchist-libertarian disposition, above all he was not given to orthodoxy or dogmatism.
His anti-sectarianism was typical of his political and moral ethos of surpassing egoism and individualism, supporting solidarity events in the city from any and all political factions, fighting in an anarchist unit that was attached to TiKKO, the armed wing of the Turkish Communist Party/Marxist Leninist (TKP/ML) from which he took great inspiration.
It was perhaps his knowledge of the history of the Spanish Civil War and the anti-fascist liberation of Italy that gave him this anti-sectarian drive, but also perhaps his amenable personality and his very well-attuned balance between ideological rigour and pragmatism. Quietly well-read and intelligent, he would happily defend the need for strong ideology within a coherent, disciplined movement, revolutionary practices of self-criticism and rebut attacks on socialism as “dehumanising” or “impersonal” as liberal propaganda promoting individualism.
It was this anti-individualistic quality to life as a revolutionary that gave him a sense of profound belonging in Rojava, so far away from his hometown, his friends and family, his beloved dog and the high quality tinned tomatoes that he missed so dearly — despite the paltry ingredients, his unit were always delighted when it was his turn to cook.
Addressing a meeting in Florence by video last October, where two of his internationalist comrades were speaking, Orso spoke directly to his YPG comrades to a room packed with activists clinging onto every last word: “I love you guys so much, we went through so many crazy situations together, I love you like a family. In life, even amongst comrades there’s always this deep individualism that permeates everything, but here it’s different… care and attention for others, it’s beautiful.”
Having come very close to being killed in Afrin and numerous close calls on the Hajin and Deir Ezzor fronts, Orso was philosophical about death, writing in detail about fallen comrades and reflecting on conversations with locals as much as about the geopolitical machinations and his tales of war, which he recounted in an utterly level-headed way but threaded through with intimate minutiae. As he wrote in his final letter to be published in the event of his death (reproduced below), his dedication to the revolutionary cause in Rojava was such that, whilst wanting to live and continue the struggle, he was always ready to die, to sacrifice his life, for what he saw as a social and political revolution.
Today as I see Orso’s name and photo across every newsstand in Florence, on the front page of every major newspaper, I’m reminded of the words in his final letter encouraging us all to inspire each other and to have hope; already Orso has inspired so many, and the reaction to his death has provided hope — hope that there is still something worth fighting and dying for, where the victory is in sight, and hope in the Italian left which has reawakened, producing a deluge of tributes, banners, graffiti, just hours after his death was announced.
Last year during the Afrin invasion, his presence there and his regular dispatches from the front line were the guiding light for the huge mobilisation of solidarity in Florence, demonstrations, events, club nights, films, with the involvement of his musician friends collecting money for the Kurdish Red Crescent using the name “From Rifredi to Afrin.”
When his father stood up on the stage to proudly speak about Orso at the annual celebrations on April 25 — marking the anniversary of the anti-fascist liberation — we heard that the local ANPI section “Potente” (named after one of the Florentine partisans killed during the liberation of Florence in August 1944) was planning to grant him honorary partisan status in tribute to his bravery and continuance of the partisan cause.
It is a tragedy that this honour will now be posthumous. Unfortunately we don’t get to welcome Orso home, as in the partisan song “Fischia il vento” about the free, victorious partisan returning home. Instead, as in “Bella Ciao,” Orso will be buried under the shade of a beautiful flower where he fell in Rojava. But the story of the partisan bear (“orso”) who travelled from Rifredi to Rojava to fight fascism and defend a socialist, feminist revolution will serve as an inspiration for future generations in this city and across the world, just as the partisans, who have by now all but passed away, kept alive the cause of liberation, and the hope that one day we will win.
“Hello. If you are reading this message then it means that I am no longer of this world. Don’t be too sad, though, I’m OK with it; I don’t have any regrets and I died doing what I thought was right, defending the weak and staying true to my ideals of justice, equality and liberty.
So in spite of my premature departure, my life has been a success, and I’m almost certain that I went with a smile on my face. I couldn’t have asked for more.
I wish all of you all the best in the world and I hope that one day, you too will decide to give your life for others (if you haven’t already) because that is the only way to change the world.
Only by combatting the individualism and egoism in each of us can we make a difference. These are difficult times, I know, but don’t give in to despair, don’t ever abandon hope, never! Not even for a second.
Even when all seems lost, when the evils that plague the earth and humanity seem insurmountable, you must find strength, you must inspire strength in your comrades.
It is in the darkest moments that we have greatest need of your light.
And remember always that “every storm begins with a single raindrop.” You must be that raindrop.
I love you all, I hope you will treasure these words for time to come.
Serkeftin!
1 Turkish soldier and 2 gang members killed in Afrin
Afrin Liberation Forces carried out a sabotage action along the Tirinde road. 1 Turkish soldier and 2 gang members were killed in the action.
ANF
AFRIN
Friday, 8 Mar 2019, 11:55
Afrin Liberation Forces issued a statement on the action and said:
“As part of actions our fighters carried out against the invading Turkish army and the terrorist groups under their control positioned in and around Afrin;
On March 7, our fighters carried out a sabotage action against the checkpoint where soldiers and Firqat al Hamzat terrorist units were positioned in along the Tirinde road in Afrin center. 1 soldier and 2 terrorists were killed in the action, while 2 terrorists were wounded. The checkpoint was also damaged heavily.”
A Glimmer of Hope: The extraordinary story of a revolution within the Syrian civil war
By Shawn Hattingh• 5 March 2019
For the past few years, most people would have come across news stories of how Kurdish fighters in Syria, especially women, have been crucial in battling the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Very few, however, would be aware that in the north and eastern parts of Syria these same Kurdish fighters are part of a revolution as progressive, profound and potentially as far-reaching as any in history.
In the north and eastern parts of Syria, an attempt to create an alternative system to hierarchical states, capitalism and patriarchy is underway and should it fully succeed it holds the potential to inspire the struggle for a better, more egalitarian Middle East, Africa, South Africa and indeed world. As in any revolution it has had its successes and shortcomings, but it is already an experiment worth reflecting on as it shows a far different world could be built to the extremely unequal and increasingly right-wing and authoritarian one that exists today.
The start of Rojava
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring in Syria, most of the country descended into a hellish nightmare as a vicious civil war erupted between the brutal Assad regime and equally reactionary groups claiming to be inspired by Islamic fundamentalism. Compounding this was the intervention of imperialist powers such as the US and Russia, and regional powers such as Turkey, Israel and Iran. One area where there was a difference was the mainly Kurdish enclave in the north of Syria known as Rojava.
There, on 19 July 2012, popular protests erupted against the Assad regime. Government buildings were occupied and taken over by the people. Many of the people involved in this had been building a popular movement for almost a decade that had the vision of implementing a radical concept — Democratic Confederalism.
The vision of Democratic Confederalism
Democratic Confederalism was first outlined by Abdullah Ocalan, who began his political life as an adherent of Stalinism and was the head of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PPK) that had been engaged in a guerrilla war for the national liberation of the Kurdish people in Turkey.
In 1999, Ocalan was captured in Kenya — in an incident involving intelligence agencies from Turkey, the US and Greece — and tried for treason by the Turkish state. He was initially sentenced to death, but that was commuted to a life sentence as, at that point, the Turkish state had aspirations of joining the EU.
Since then, he has been held on the prison island of Imrali, often as the only prisoner, and now in total isolation since April 2015 — indeed the right-wing Erdogan regime has even denied visitation by his family members and lawyers (presently hundreds of people across the world are on hunger strike demanding an end to his isolation).
In the early 2000s, Ocalan nonetheless began a process of reflecting on what went wrong with past revolutionary struggles, most notably the Russian Revolution and the communist party’s rise to power as head of the Chinese state. During these revolutions, the energy of millions of people was released, a hope of a better future grew, only to flounder on the rise of the totalitarian states that emerged.
At the same time, Ocalan also began reading the works of libertarian socialist and social ecologist Murray Bookchin, as well as studying the experiences of the anarchist-syndicalist inspired Spanish Revolution of 1936 (which was one of the most radical revolutions in terms of worker democracy and control; although it too is not well known).
Ocalan came to the conclusion that the main reason past revolutions had failed is that they did not put an end to the structure of the state. Rather, communist parties entered the state and through that process, the leaders of these parties became rulers and a new elite within those societies.
In these states figures such as Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao and those loyal to them held real power; not the majority of people. Ocalan, therefore, argued that all states, whether claiming to be revolutionary or not, were hierarchical and subjugated, oppressed and exploited the majority of people.
He also argued states were inherently patriarchal and first arose in societies where a minority became an elite ruling class, but also importantly, in ones in which men began oppressing women and exploiting their labour. He concluded, due to their very structures — which centralised power — states could not escape or be altered to fundamentally shift away from their original purpose: Enabling an elite to hold power and rule over society.
Ocalan maintained that if a revolution was to be achieved, women’s liberation would have to be a central component. He also reasoned that capitalism needed to be replaced, but so too did the state. To replace these he argued for a communal economy that was based on the socialisation of the means of production and production for need, not profit.
He also argued such an economy needed to be ecologically sustainable and democratic. To replace the state, he maintained federated assemblies and councils should be created and they should function on the basis of direct democracy.
This, he felt, would prevent the emergence of an elite as within direct democracy there could be no hierarchy as delegates were always subject to the will of assemblies at the base of society. Monopolisation could not take place in a socialised and democratic economy.
By the mid-2000s most people involved in the Kurdish national liberation struggle in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran had come to adopt Democratic Confederalism. With this, they began to attempt to forge a new world in the shell of the old by building a mass movement of community-based councils and assemblies across southern Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq and northwestern Iran.
In this, direct democracy, feminism and participatory praxis replaced undemocratic notions of hierarchy and vanguardism as defining features of the Kurdish national liberation struggle.
Implementing Democratic Confederalism
Since 2012, when the Syrian state left the north and eastern parts of the country, people in this area known as Rojava — Kurds, Turks and Arabs — expanded these structures of direct democracy. As part of this, they set up thousands of communes — made up of 60 to 100 households — right across Rojava to run the society from the grassroots on the basis of a radical democracy without a state.
People themselves, through participation in the communes, decide through direct democracy on policies, plans, and how to meet needs in their own communities. They democratically deal with issues such as crime at a local level and use restorative justice as opposed to punitive justice in order to constructively heal communities.
This includes dealing with issues such as gender-based violence. Due to having a history of being involved in a movement based on direct democratic organisations, people were already familiar with such politics and putting such a system fully into practice was not alien.
The communes, in fact, have full autonomy and are where true power resides. Through mass meetings, they are the sole decision-making bodies regarding the economy, services, development, education and defence in the areas they cover. No structure or institution has any right or ability to override decisions made by the communes.
The communes, while being autonomous, are federated into neighbourhood assemblies — in this, the communes send mandated and recallable delegates to neighbourhood assemblies to share their ideas, views and plans to ensure co-ordination from below. Recallable delegates from the neighbourhood assemblies are then sent to City Assemblies. These are all linked through delegates that are sent to a structure that covers the entire region, named the Syrian Democratic Council.
By 2016, a form of representative democracy had also been introduced in the Syrian Democratic Council. Other parties and formations — who were not mandated delegates from the communes and assemblies — also began to participate in the Syrian Democratic Council through an election.
This has proven to be a controversial issue. Some argue that the introduction of a form of representative democracy in the Syrian Democratic Council undermines the direct democracy envisioned in Democratic Confederalism. They contend it introduces practices similar to those of a state. Others argue that it was a necessary step to ensure unity of the people of Rojava in the face of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria(ISIS) attacks and some form of international recognition.
Linked to this argument, its proponents contend that as a minority of parties and organisations had refused to participate in the communes and neighbourhood assemblies some form of representative democracy in the Syrian Democratic Council was necessary to also give such people a say. Those defending this move also point out that the communes remain the real holders of power and the Syrian Democratic Council cannot override their decisions nor impose any policy, practice or law on them.
Ultimately it does seem to be the case that the communes do hold real power, although introducing elements of representative democracy in the Syrian Democratic Council holds the real danger of introducing new hierarchies. An important development, though, is that women play a central role in this system of Democratic Confederalism. Each assembly or council — including the Syrian Democratic Council — have to ensure gender parity among delegates. To have a quorum in commune meetings at least 40% of the participants have to be women.
In the process of the revolution, real strides have been made to create a genuinely democratic form of people’s power with women playing a central role. As the fighters from Rojava have rolled back ISIS, new areas have joined the system of self-governance based on Democratic Confederalism. Presently 4.6 million people live and participate in this system, now known as the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.
On the economic front, there has been an attempt to replace capitalism with a communal economy. At the heart of this experiment are worker self-managed co-operatives that produce not for profits, but to meet peoples’ needs. Besides being based on workers’ democracy, these co-operatives are also accountable to everyone involved in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria through being answerable to the federated communes.
Large industries, of which oil is the only real one, and ex-state-owned commercial farms have also been socialised — that is, ownership is by all. By some estimates, 70% of economic activity is conducted through co-operatives. Small-sized businesses still do exist, but these are required to be based on meeting peoples’ needs and are reportedly accountable to the communes — to temper profit motives and price gouging.
Threats from many sides
Over the course of almost seven years, the people of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria — mainly through democratic militia — have fought off the many dangers that have been posed to the revolution, which have included the forces of the Syrian state, ISIS and the Turkish state.
In the process a tactical military alliance was formed in 2015 with the US — it only arose because the Kurdish forces proved the most capable in combating ISIS. The US, as always, has only adhered to the tactical military alliance for its own purposes and has categorically refused to politically recognise the existence of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. It recently mooted that its troops would pull out of Syria in a move that will give the Turkish state a free hand to militarily intervene against the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.
In January 2019, the Turkish state in fact began to make plans for the invasion of northern Syria to end the revolution. The Turkish state fears the revolution will spread into Turkey itself and it does not want an experiment in direct democracy, feminism, ecology, anti-statism, and anti-capitalism to succeed.
Already in 2018, the Turkish state invaded part of Rojava, Afrin, and is now unleashing plans to invade the rest of north and eastern Syria. These plans have been condemned by the peoples of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. They have called for a genuine international peacekeeping force to be deployed to prevent the invasion. Indeed, if such an invasion occurs there will be a massive escalation of the war in Syria, which will at the very least lead to thousands more deaths and hundreds of thousands of new refugees.
Showing us the potential for a better way
Despite some weaknesses and the threats the revolution faces, it is a beacon of hope. For South Africans, the revolution in northern and eastern Syria holds real lessons and potential hope.
When the liberation movement in South Africa gained state power, it promised to use this to improve people’s lives, end racism, address sexism and bring about equality. This has flatly failed to happen.
Ocalan’s analysis that once in state power, former liberation movements become a new elite and new rulers that develop self-serving interests precisely due to their new power and privileged positions they occupy, has proven to be correct. It is exactly why we sit with corruption throughout the state in South Africa as officials abuse the hierarchical power they have to enrich themselves.
Democratic Confederalism, as is shown in Syria, offers another way to run society. Its direct democracy can temper corruption and create greater equality as power cannot be centralised in such a system and wealth cannot be accumulated individually.
Developments in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria also demonstrate how a non-racial society can be built through a radical democracy and that gender relations can be changed through a participatory revolutionary process. This is something that is desperately needed in South Africa where gender-based violence, sexism and racism are everyday occurrences.
In South Africa, we are saddled with one of the most corrupt private sectors in the world. Practices such as price gouging, collusion, transfer pricing and tax evasion/avoidance are prevalent in the private sector.
Working conditions, especially in the agricultural sector, are often harsh and even brutal. Pay is often low, which is one of the reasons we are one of the most unequal societies in the world. Unemployment, too, is rife and precarious work a growing phenomenon.
Past revolutions have shown, however, that nationalisation is often not the answer. Developments in Syria to create a socialised communal economy that is democratic shows another path could be followed.
In order to create a more democratic and egalitarian path (which Democratic Confederalism shows can be done), a new mass movement with a new vision, clear ethics, sound principles and truly democratic practices in South Africa is needed.
Without such a movement we will remain mired in a society defined by exploitation and corruption. To build such a movement will be no easy task, but it is what is needed: What the revolution in northern Syria shows is that it can be done. DM
Shawn Hattingh is a Research & Education Officer with the International Labour, Research & Information Group.
Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters enter the center of Afrin on March 18, 2018, and destroy the Kurdish Kawa statue. (Photo: Social Media)
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A representative of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) in the United States has welcomed the latest report the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria released on Thursday that described the practices by Turkish-backed groups in Afrin as war crimes.
Sinam Mohamad, an SDC representative in the US, said the UN report is “a good sign and start” to shed light on the violations in Afrin, but emphasized that more had to be done.
According to Mohamad, the Turkish occupation in Afrin must end, and the Turkish-backed groups need to leave. Turkey and its armed groups occupiedthe former Kurdish-held region on March 18, 2018.
“Nobody mentioned anything about the violation of human rights, the kidnapping of women, the taking of lands of people, the selling of Afrin’s olive oil by Turkey to Europe, and the demographic change, which is the most dangerous,” she stated.
In its report, the UN said that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that armed group members in Afrin committed the war crimes of hostage-taking, cruel treatment, torture, and pillage.”
“Due to the glaring absence of the rule of law, it similarly remains unclear whether Turkish forces were capable of exercising overall control over any armed groups present in the district,” it added.
Several civilians from Afrin who were displaced to the Kurdish city of Kobani confirmed to Kurdistan 24 that many human rights violations had taken place, including torture, kidnapping, and the pillaging of Afrin’s olives.
According to one civilian, Turkish-backed rebel groups arrested him on several occasions.
“I was arrested. They tied my leg with a rope, hanged it on the roof, and beat me with cables,” the civilian, who identified as the pseudonym Ali, recounted.
One Turkish-backed group detained Ali for two months before eventually releasing him.
After this, he attempted to flee from Afrin by going to Idlib and tried to cross the border to Turkey. However, groups in control of the border arrested Ali and brought him back to Afrin.
He eventually paid $1,100 to a Kurdish member of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to bring him to Ain Dadat, close to Manbij. From there, Ali was able to reach areas the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control and now lives in Kobani.
Mohamad underlined that the return of Afrin civilians to their original homes, and the departure of Turkish-backed groups is of paramount significance.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Turkish attack on Afrin resulted in the collapse of the local health system and displaced 167,000 people. Local Kurdish officials say the number is even higher.
“We need a solution,” the SDC official said. “The war crimes are ongoing there, and they have not stopped.”
Furthermore, Turkey has settled thousands of families and fighters from areas like Eastern Ghouta, Douma, Homs, Idlib, and Deir al-Zor to replace the local population.
Mohamad called on the Turkish army to leave Afrin and end its violations, so “the people in the camps can go back to their city and villages.”
Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal from Syria would actually entrench US imperialism in the region — and open up the Kurds’ revolution in Rojava to extermination and colonization.
Local residents speak with a Kurdish soldier while an oil well burns in the distance on November 10, 2015 near the town of Hole in the autonomous region of Rojava, Syria. John Moore / Getty
With local elections and another contest against his electoral nemesis, the leftist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), just around the corner, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is wasting no time rallying the country around a common cause: destroying Rojava. “A strategic alliance with the US can only be possible if we wipe out terrorists from the north of Syria,” Erdoğan declared in December. “We have done so in Afrin and in Shengal. We have buried them in the trenches they had dug and we will continue to do so. If they don’t leave, we will make them disappear because their existence disturbs us.”Erdoğan is itching to wage war across the border, against the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, the enclave commonly known as Rojava. The revolutionary region’s political program shares many similarities with the HDP’s electoral platform in Turkey, which promotes egalitarianism, peace, and radical democracy.As for the messages that Erdoğan is telegraphing to the public, they are threefold. Domestically, to the Turkish nationalists and his coalition partner, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Erdogan sells the old war against the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a militant Kurdish group). He does so by flattening all distinctions between the PKK and its civic sister in Syria, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which leads a pluralist coalition in Rojava. To the ISIS-crazed global media, Erdoğan is selling the security discourse of the “war on terror” by promising to create an ISIS-free “safe zone” right through Rojava, which also buys him favor with the European Union’s anti-refugee membership.And to the Middle Eastern and Western left, Erdoğan sells his agenda as an anti-imperialist one, portraying the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Rojava’s self-defense forces — made up of Kurdish, Syriac, Arab, and Christian units, among others — as a US lackey. This he accomplishes by smuggling in the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF), the second-largest NATO army, as an alternative to the US presence in Syria, justifying the war against Rojava as, somehow, a war against imperialism.But rhetoric aside, the facts are this: Erdoğan is clamoring to continue Turkey’s ongoing ethnic cleansing project, extending his tentacles from Afrin into the rest of Rojava. Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal from Syria does not amount to an end to US imperialism in Syria — it simply transfers the maintenance of long-term US interests to its proxies in the region. And the region’s Kurds, long colonized by multiple powers, have once again been caught in the middle — trying to fight for their liberation while grappling with the cruel realities of geopolitics.
A Colonial Handover
How would the US relate to the Syrian Kurds and Turkey under Trump’s withdrawal?
In a 2017 report, James F. Jeffrey, the Trump-appointed special representative for Syria engagement, prescribed a change of course.
“Turkey, a NATO member, sits on prime real estate . . . of central importance for U.S. policy in southern Europe and the Middle East,” Jeffrey observed. However, Washington’s “mishandling of the Syrian civil war, along with its tilt toward the PYD in the fight against IS in eastern Syria, risks forcing Turkey ever more into the Russian camp.” To remedy this risk, Jeffrey promoted a “transactional reordering” of relations with Turkey and the wider Middle East, hoping to appease Erdoğan’s drive for “Ataturk-like power.” For example, “the United States can quietly guarantee Turkey that the Armenian Genocide resolution in Congress will not pass,” or adopt a bilateral “model like the US-Israel arms sales relationship to ensure” smooth sales of the costly “F-35” program. If Washington reaches “an agreement with Turkey on its northern Syrian safe zone that would support the Turks and their Syrian opposition allies with advisory teams and airpower . . . and refuse to recognize PYD autonomy, much of the rancor in the current relationship would dissipate.”
That’s one plan. Then there is National Security Advisor John Bolton’s alternative five-point plan, which proposes what amounts to another “safe zone,” this one manned by the Kurdish National Council’s (ENKS) Rôj Peshmerga militia, the Syrian wing of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq (which has strong ties to Erdoğan’s party). Bolton’s plan is favored by the establishment in Washington because it would shift political decision-making in Rojava to the safe neoliberal center. Air support from a potential KSA-UAE-Egypt alliance would then mollify the worries of some Arab states, as well as the Israeli military, about further extension of Iran, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s reach in Syria. Here, the United States would save face by not “abandoning the Kurds” and slow down ongoing talks between the PYD and Assad, while retaining de facto control over North and North Eastern Syria.
Either way, the US withdrawal hides a grand strategy to further entrench US imperialism in the region. Americans are not leaving Syria. They’re simply transferring their interests to NATO members and allies. And since the TAF is not even prepared to replace the US Army for such a mission — given the purges the TAF’s personnel has experienced since the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016 — the United States would have to offer “substantial military support, including airstrikes, transport and logistics.” In other words, deeper US military involvement.
Unfortunately, this basic fact has escaped some on the Left, who have taken the purported US pullout at face value and, at times, been willing to believe alternative truths about the revolution in Rojava or dismiss its participants as pawn on the imperialist chessboard. Take, for instance, the infamous 2015 Amnesty International report about alleged human rights abuses by the SDF, which the UN has since debunked. Amid the cacophony raised by this charade, Erdoğan’s expansionist project disguises itself as “anti-imperialist” to silence the real leftist program — the one in Rojava.
More fundamentally, the ready celebration of what is in fact a colonial handover suffers from a lack of awareness about the histories and specificities of oppressed peoples’ struggles in the Middle East against the region’s neoliberal and imperialist states.
Kurdistan, a Colony
Adopting Frantz Fanon’s words, we can say that for the Kurd there is only one destiny: to become a non–Kurd. Assimilation or disappearance has been the colonial reality of the so-called “Kurdish Question” in the Middle East since the beginnings of the modern nation-state, particularly in Turkey and Syria.
The plans for a “safe zone” controlled by Turkey would involve resettling millions of Arab Syrian refugees, currently in Turkey, in Rojava’s Kurdish areas near the Turkish border. The Erdoğan regime, known for pushing neoliberal policies driven by the twin profit motors of construction and energy, have put housing projects for the settlers on the colonial agenda to boost the Turkish economy. The scale of it would be staggering.
In fact, such a colonial-settler project surpasses, in both size and scope, Syrian president Hafez al-Assad’s 1973 completion of the original “Arab Belt” project, which deported 140,000 Kurds from 332 villages in Rojava over ten years to Syria’s southern desert regions, replacing them with twenty-five thousand Arab families in forty-one “model villages.” Demographic engineering lies at the heart of colonial Turkification and Arabization policies that have dominated the region’s political and social realities, from Syria to Turkey and then to Iraq and Iran, against Kurds and Armenians among others.
In the case of Turkey, the state has always attempted to integrate and homogenize the dissident Kurdish regions in its territory into a common cultural stream, first by invading their traditional home places and then by razing them to create spaces of control and discipline. For example, after the 1938 Dersim massacre, which saw tens of thousands killed following a Kurdish uprising against state repression, the Turkish state redistributed the remaining Kurdish population of the area to various majority-Turkish cities. The Turkish state employed the same approach again in the 1990s, when the military burned down more than four thousand Kurdish villages, displacing the entire rural population of the majority-Kurdish Southeast. In both cases, the Turkish state’s primary aim was to domesticate those resisting its aggressive Turkification policies.
Scholars like Ismail Beşikçi, a sociologist of Turkish origin, have shown that the Turkish state’s institutionalized policies against its Kurdish population exhibit a “genocidal character.” Beşikçi also argues that despite the political appearances and differences between Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the four nation-states share the cooperative goal of denying their Kurds the right to dignified existence, forging the Kurdish Question in the process — or in his words, the “international colony of Kurdistan.”
The colonial reality of the Kurdish Question, however, is not limited by its territorial determinations and histories either; it is not reducible to the division and allocation of predominantly Kurdish lands in the early twentieth century to the newly born states of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq by imperialist powers. The international colonization of Kurdistan must be understood as a continuum that appears in how citizenship is defined and distributed by state powers across the Middle East.
In Turkey, the state traditionally considered Kurds “pseudo-citizens” who stood outside the boundaries of the Turkish nation, only granted citizenship rights (and an assimilated Kurd identity card) if they relinquished their mother tongue, history, and identity. Beşikçi recalls an ironic scene from the martial law court of Diyarbakır, Turkey, in 1971, where “persons who spoke Kurdish and not even one word of Turkish were said to be Turks, despite the fact that the courts were forced to hire interpreters to communicate with the accused.”
Historically, Kurdistan has therefore been a sort of hybrid colony — assaulted by the various colonial practices of four nation-states, intertwined with the geopolitics of imperialist powers.
“Playing One’s Own Game”
The Kurdish liberation movement is marked by the contradiction that, as Gramsci put it, “whatever one does one is always playing somebody’s game.” He added: “The important thing is to seek in every way to play one’s own game with success.”
Statelessness is one such hurdle. In Syria, a special census, decree No. 93, ordered in 1963 by President Nazim al-Qudsi, stripped 120,000 Kurds of citizenship. By the onset of the Syrian revolution, the descendants of this group numbered more than three hundred thousand, divided into the two extra-legal categories of ajanib, or foreigners, and maktumin, literally undocumented migrants in their own country.
Kurds have tried to make the best of this situation, orienting their strategy and theory toward overcoming it. Abdullah Öcalan, the Kurdish liberation theorist, developed his theory of Democratic Confederalism as one rooted in statelessness, which Syrian Kurds took up as a framework for grassroots organization in the decade preceding the Syrian revolution.
Öcalan’s writings on women’s liberation in the Middle East are no less Machiavellian in both strategic foresight and liberatory aptitude. He regards women’s emancipation “as a tool to destroy the structures of feudal Kurdish society,” where “women were at the bottom of a tribal hierarchy.” He recognizes that “feudal family and tribal structures presented an obstacle to [political] recruitment” and so “breaking down the established patriarchal social order would allow for the emergence of a new society in which women would take part equally.” (The destruction of the patriarchal family structure is doubly important, since the TAF arms and co-opts conservative Kurdish tribes in its war against the PKK.)
The implicit and explicit contradictions of this agenda only underscore the agency and remarkable accomplishments of the Kurdish women’s revolutions in Turkey and Syria. A gender distribution ratio in government, local feminist courts, a social contract that women have played a central role in writing and executing, indigenous and autonomous communalism — all are part of the feminist program in Rojava.
The danger in this Gramscian game, however, is that one might become too prone to playing another’s game. For example, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has maintained military bases and airports in Rojava throughout the civil war, since it handed control of Rojava over to the PYD at the outset of the Syrian revolution. (So sure was Bashar al-Assad of continued Kurdish subservience that he even left some guns behind, so the Kurds may fend for themselves.)
One might call this development inevitable, given the PYD’s mistrust of the Turkish-backed opposition umbrella organization, the Syrian National Council (SNC). But it was a position that only alienated the Syrian opposition, who then refused all PYD overtures to join opposition talks on Syria’s future — and who, save for the too-late and even-then-ambiguous Kurdish Issue Charter, had refused to recognize Kurdish demands for federalism. In fact, it is another one of the flaws of some parts of the international left that it continues to condemn the Kurds for refusing to embrace the Sunni and Arab vision of the Spring in Syria.
The PYD’s brief spring of autonomy came to a near end in 2014, when a well-armed ISIS found its way well into the gates of the city of Kobane. Here, the United States entered the Kurdish picture, seeing that its support for a failing Free Syrian Army (FSA) only amounted to a handover to ISIS of the military equipment it supplied to the FSA via Saudi intermediation – weaponry lost to ISIS in battle after battle. US airstrikes against ISIS positions in Kobane then enabled Rojava’s People’s and Women’s Protection Units (YPG and YPJ) to mount a resistance that has since become known as the Stalingrad monument of the war against ISIS.
Of course, the US deployed the narrative of a “war on terror” only as a pretext to attach itself to the PYD/YPG, and as a means to preserve its many interests in the Middle East, one of which is to obstruct the Iranian Shiite Corridor — a path laden with missile depots and stretching from Iraq to Western Syria to the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, ending right at Israel’s doorstep. In return, the YPG sought to wipe out ISIS by taking over oil fields in central Syria that funded the group’s reign of terror. In the process, the logistical necessities of driving ISIS out of Rojava also rendered the YPG/J dependent on the US’s might and tact. Add to such military exigencies the severe psychological impact of the atrocities committed by ISIS in Kurdish-majority areas, and it becomes evident that in the formation of the SDF in 2015, under US supervision, we are dealing with a situation in which Rojava’s revolution — built on confederalism and radical democracy — has been pushed toward an anti-ISIS and pro-security and territorial insurrectionary discourse.
Now, with the end of the war against ISIS and with US positions firmly anchored in Syria, the restoration of the status quo in Syria returns the Gramscian Rojava to the status of the odd one out, once again. And having put aspects of its internationalist project on hold, in favor of an understandable drive for security, Rojava finds itself dispensable and replaceable by any bully with a bigger gun — such as Turkey, who can lay claim to securing the remaining pockets of ISIS in Syria. Perhaps, then, the political lesson here is that if a revolutionary force engages in a “war of maneuver” with the aid of a hegemon, it should not lose sight of how that hegemon might be engaged in a careful, atrocious “war of position.”
The SDF’s alternatives to the US’s plans are less clear cut. Damascus’s Russian-dictated reaction to the list of ten reconciliation demands put forward by the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the SDF’s political wing, has been lukewarm. Assad is likely weighing the perils of making peace with an armed and organized Rojava in a postwar scene where he will already have his hands full with the reconstruction capital pouring in from Arab states. But after the bloodbath and the chemical bombs, he must also be wary of another resurgence from Syria’s repressed Sunni majority, who kickstarted the revolution and who live between the Damascus strongholds and Rojava. Maintaining Turkey’s Kurdish problem might deter Turkey from sponsoring future revolts, while keeping a leash on Rojava.
As for Trump, his administration will likely seek a deal between the PYD and Turkey that aims to pacify Turkish fears by driving a wedge between the YPG/J and their PKK forbears in Turkey.
What the International Left Should Do
The people of Rojava have fought for their revolution, and their victories have been significant given the challenges. Without an amenable leftist state or party to aid them, their options were simple: die, or die. They have refused that result, fighting instead for a new state of life and politics.
What can the international left do to aid them now, at this crucial juncture? We should support shutting down arms sales to the Turkish state, including from Germany, England, and, of course, the United States. We should staunchly oppose the economic blockade Turkey has imposed on Rojava: items entering from Rojava’s border with Iraq are restricted to no more than the bare necessities of sustenance. Here, the international left could raise the costs of the Turkish embargo on Rojava by highlighting its counter-revolutionary character — an old imperialist measure also imposed on other revolutionary enclaves, such as Cuba — or circumvent state actors altogether by organizing direct international aid to Rojava’s people via leftist parties and sympathizers.
Unfortunately, the news from Rojava rarely makes it to the mainstream media, buried instead in a swamp of propaganda and fake news produced by Erdoğan’s cyber army. The news of the ethnic cleansing in Afrin has not been given center stage in the media, anywhere, for more than a year. So the international left must become a louder voice against the perpetuation of humanitarian disasters.
Both the United States and Russia should get out of Syria, and the international left should pressure the Assad regime to settle for a democratic program of the country’s transition to confederalism. It is crucial that a neutral and international peacekeeping force guarantees the peacefulness of such a transition for all inhabitants of Syria by barring the expansion of interventionist states already present in Syria, such as Turkey and Iran. Returning control of the province of Idlib, occupied at the moment by al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, to a local civilian administration, is integral to such a transition plan. Finally, the international left should support the HDP’s peace process in Turkey, so that Erdoğan’s war machine is deprived of preemptive pretexts once and for all.
Rojava, the site of a remarkable peoples’ revolution, is on the brink of colonization and extermination. The international left must stand against it.
The leadership of the Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) discussed the future of Syria’s northeast after the Islamic State’s territorial defeat, Feb. 17, 2019. (Photo: Hawar News Agency)
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The General Military Council of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Sunday said they would focus on the liberation of Afrin, which Turkey occupied in March last year, and combat Islamic State sleeper cells after the extremist group’s military defeat.
Among the SDF’s priorities after the Islamic State’s defeat isthe return of Afrin’s original inhabitants to their homes and an end to the demographic change in the region, the local Hawar News Agency (ANHA) reported.
The SDF leadership underlined in a statement that after the militant group is defeated, the Kurdish-led forces would focus on the elimination of sleeper cells through precise “military and security campaigns” with support from the US-led coalition.
It emphasized that the Islamic State is trapped in a small area in the Baghuz village and that the battle would end after they liberate prisoners and civilians from the extremist group.
The SDF also highlighted the importance of drying up the Islamic State’s “ideological and economic ground,” which the terrorists depend on.
Mustafa Bali, the head of the SDF media center, previously warned that the Islamic State as an ideology is not defeated yet.
“We, as the SDF, think that dealing with and finishing off the Islamic State militarily was the easy step, but now comes the more challenging phase,” he told Kurdistan 24.
The leadership of the Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) discussed the future of Syria’s northeast after the Islamic State’s territorial defeat, Feb. 17, 2019. (Photo: Hawar News Agency)
In a meeting on Sunday, the SDF’s General Military Council discussed the future of northeastern Syria after the Islamic State’s defeat and the upcoming US withdrawal. Senior SDF leaders, such as Mazlum Kobani, the commander of the SDF, took part in the meeting.
In its statement, the General Military Council denied they are a danger to the Turkish state, underlining that Turkey is occupying Syrian territory, such as the town of Afrin, Al-Bab, Jarabulus, and Idlib.
Despite the occupation of Afrin and other cities, the SDF said they are ready “to solve problems with the Turkish state through dialogue and mutual respect,” noting they are ready to protect their areas “in any case of aggression.”
Regarding the establishment of a safe-zone or buffer zone under international supervision, the SDF said they would welcome it “to establish security and peace on our northern border.”
Senior US lawmakers and military officials are pressing America’s allies in Europe to commit hundreds of troops to create a buffer zone along Syria’s border with Turkey, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin reported on Friday.
On relations with the Syrian government, the SDF military council said they are ready for dialogue in the framework of a united Syria, as long as it recognizes the special status of the SDF and constitutional recognition of the Democratic Autonomous Administration (DAA) of North and East of Syria.
The Most Feminist Revolution the World Has Ever Witnessed
In Rojava, a Kurdish anarchist collective led by women is at the heart of the fight with ISIS, and behind a political upheaval putting equality front and centre.
Something extraordinary has happened in a corner of north-east Syria. It is a little-known story that defies the usual narratives about Syria or Assad, civil war or ISIS. It is nothing less than a political revolution, which bears important lessons for the rest of the world. In this revolution, women are in the vanguard, both politically and militarily, often leading the fight on the frontline and sacrificing their lives against the most atavistic and anti-woman enemy there is: the so-called Islamic State – or Daesh, as it is more derogatorily known.
This place is called Rojava, the Kurdish name for western Kurdistan, located in north-eastern Syria. After the collapse of the Assad regime in 2012, Kurdish parties began an extraordinary project of self-government and equality for all races, religions and women and men. I visited Rojava, in a personal capacity, in the summer of 2015 to try to understand what’s going on there for a documentary film about anarchism, which you can watch on iPlayer.
Few journalists visit this swath of land along the Turkish border, which is about half the size of Belgium. It’s difficult to reach and thus expensive, requiring a long journey from northern Iraq and a crossing of the Tigris by small boat onto Syrian soil. The Kurdish Regional Government of northern Iraq (KRG) is not sympathetic to the Kurds of Rojava, and makes access very difficult and sometimes impossible.
The few journalists who make it there tend to focus on the fight with ISIS, assuming that this is what most concerns western audiences. Rojava is safer than the main combat zones of Syria, but still suffers horrific suicide bombings, and western visitors would of course make a fine catch for Daesh kidnappers.
As a result, very little has been reported about the remarkable political experiment of Rojava.
What little commentary appears is often secondhand. It therefore frequently repeats earlier misconceptions or hostile propaganda put about, above all, by Turkey, which opposes the leading political party of the Rojava Kurds – the PYD – and the armed forces of Rojava, the People’s Self-Defence Units, which comprise the mostly male YPG and all-female YPJ. Nor does the political character of the Rojava revolution fit familiar pigeonholes; it is neither a nationalist Kurdish project for an independent state, nor is it Marxist or communist, nor driven by religious or ethnic motives.
Perhaps most remarkably – and, sadly, uniquely – this is perhaps the most explicitly feminist revolution the world has witnessed, at least in recent history. Previously, this area was home to traditional peasant norms, including child marriage and keeping women at home. These traditions have been overturned: child marriage, for instance, is now illegal. There are parallel women’s organisations in every field, ranging from the separate women’s militia, the YPJ, to parallel women’s communes and cooperatives. Self-defence is a principle of the Rojava revolution, which is why women are so active in the armed struggle – but the concept extends towards the right of self-defence against all anti-woman practices and ideas, including those of traditional society, not just the extreme violence of Daesh.
“From what I saw, this political transformation enjoyed widespread support from all: Kurds, Arabs, women and men, young and old. Why wouldn’t it? The whole point is to give everyone a say in their own government.”
In addition to ensuring complete equal rights for women, the feminist politics of Rojava aims to break down domination and hierarchy in every aspect of life, recasting social relations between all people regardless of age, ethnicity or gender, with the aim of achieving an ecologically and socially harmonious society. In terms of historical comparison, this project resembles most closely the short period of anarchism witnessed by George Orwell in Republican Spain during the Spanish civil war in the late 1930s. But the representatives of Rojava also reject the label of anarchism, even if much of the inspiration for this revolution came originally from an anarchist thinker from New York City, Murray Bookchin.
The political heart of the Rojava project is in the local communal assemblies, in which local people take decisions for themselves about everything that concerns them: healthcare, jobs, pollution… boys riding their bikes too fast around the village, as one woman complained about at an assembly I visited. Women and men are scrupulously given an equal voice. Women co-chair every meeting and every assembly. Non-Kurdish minorities, mostly Arabs but also Syriacs, Turkmen and Assyrians, are also given priority on the speaking list; at meetings I witnessed, interpreters were provided. This is self-government, where decisions for the village are taken by the village or region. If decisions cannot be made solely at the local level, representatives attend town or regional assemblies, but these representatives remain accountable to the communal level and may only offer views that are approved locally. It is a very deliberate attempt to keep decision-making as local as possible – a rejection of the top-down authority of the state.
Ironically, however, the inspiration for the revolution was very much top-down. Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK (the Kurdish guerrilla movement in Turkey), read Murray Bookchin’s works while in a Turkish jail on an island in the Sea of Marmara (where he remains). Once a Marxist-Leninist and a ruthless military leader, Öcalan became convinced that self-government without the state was the way forward for the Kurdish people. He moulded Bookchin’s philosophy for the Kurdish context, calling it “democratic confederalism”. The Syrian Kurdish PYD is closely associated with the PKK. Following Öcalan, its cadres adopted democratic confederalism and implemented it in Syria.
Some have accused the PYD of domineering tactics, particularly at the start of this democratic revolution. Such conduct has given room for critics unreasonably to dismiss the whole project. From what I saw, this political transformation enjoyed widespread support from all: Kurds, Arabs, women and men, young and old. Why wouldn’t it? The whole point is to give everyone a say in their own government – a radical innovation anywhere, let alone in Syria, a country long accustomed to dictatorship and repression. I spoke to many people at random. They were uniformly positive, and many argued that the Rojava model, of highly decentralised government, should be adopted in the whole of Syria and indeed beyond. But it’s also a work in progress. In some of the assemblies I attended, women and men sat separately, a mark of the journey from traditional practice that this revolution is still navigating.
The revolution has suffered considerable assault. Turkey opposes Rojava and has prevented all supplies, trade and humanitarian aid from crossing its border into the region. Today, Turkish forces are attacking the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which subsumes the YPG/YPJ and Arab militias into a common anti-ISIS front. The SDF has been the most effective force in fighting ISIS and has driven it back across hundreds of miles of territory, at the cost of thousands of lives. Now, the SDF – led by a woman commander, Rojda Felat – has started the attack on ISIS’s “capital”, Raqqa. The SDF currently enjoys US and allied military support, primarily from the air but also from American and allied special forces on the ground.
Therefore, US and indeed western governments are involved in a grotesque contradiction in which they permit NATO “partner” Turkey to attack the SDF – their most important ally in the fight against ISIS – while also proclaiming unyielding commitment to defeating ISIS. Thanks to an almost total absence of press coverage, this absurdity attracts no controversy in western capitals. Kurds worry, with reason, that once Raqqa falls the US will abandon the Kurds to Turkish aggression. Indeed, with Turkish attacks against the SDF intensifying in northern Syria in a canton called Afrin, some argue that this betrayal has already begun.
The hypocrisies of international geopolitical manoeuvring, however, should not obscure the importance of the Rojava democratic revolution. Thanks to its horrific tactics, ISIS attracts the attention, but in fact it is Rojava that carries the more important message for those who care about democracy. Rojava offers an alternative and practical example where the people are in charge, and it works. Rather than replicate the disastrous centralised governments of Iraq and Assad’s Syria, Rojava’s self-governing institutions have proposed their model for the whole of Syria once the Assad dictatorship comes to an end – and indeed, Rojava has renamed itself the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria in order to emphasise its multi-ethnic character and its acceptance of Syria’s existing borders, another divergence from the lazy western presumption that “the Kurds” want their own separate state.
But thanks to Turkish hostility, representatives of the Democratic Federation are excluded from the UN talks about the future of Syria – an injustice in which the US, UK and others acquiesce. The UN continues to pretend that “the Kurds” are represented by a party that is in fact a proxy of the KRG in Iraq. It is telling that international officials – mostly men who have never visited the area – still prefer outdated ethnic stereotypes to the more accurate cosmopolitan and feminist character of this project.
Meanwhile, the Rojava model is no less relevant in the west, where few can claim that democracy is in good health, with disillusionment and right-wing reactionary extremism – and, indeed, overt hostility to women (expressed not only by Donald Trump) – both ascendant. There are scores of westerners who, like the International Brigade of the Republican forces in Spain, have gone to join YPG and YPJ ranks. Several have lost their lives, including in recent days a former Occupy Wall Street activist from New York City. Some of these brave men and women have been prosecuted on their return home, punished for their commitment to democracy and equality. All suffer from the misrepresentation of their struggle in much of the international press. In reporting the death of the young Occupy activist, the Washington Post described the Rojava revolution as “pseudo-Marxist”, when it is the very opposite. In this democracy, there is no place for the state, at all. The people govern, the antithesis of state communism.
The author, Carne Ross, and Viyan who his film is dedicated to
Thousands of YPG and YPJ fighters have died for this cause. During my visit, I met Viyan, a young woman YPJ soldier, on the front line – a huge gravel berm that stretched from horizon to horizon across a barren plain in southern Syria. ISIS positions were a few hundred metres away. A rifle over her shoulder, she told me that never before in her country, or the region, had women been equal to men. Without equality for women, there could be no justice in society. She was prepared to die to defend this dispensation. Tragically, Viyan was killed several months after our interview, fighting ISIS in the town of Al-Shaddadi.
Our film about the search for a better democracy is dedicated to her.
Carne Ross’s documentary film, Accidental Anarchist, is available to watch on iPlayer. This article represents his personal views only.
Unrepentant parents, such as Shamima Begum, could radicalise their children in sprawling Syrian desert camps, where security forces could lose track of them.
Ilham Ahmed, co chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces, said Britain must repatriate citizens who traveled to Syria or be prepared to commit “significant” resources to trying and detaining them in Syria.
“Them remaining in our area is a huge liability,” she told the Telegraph.
“We have fulfilled our duties. We have captured them and we have held them. We are now making sure they don’t escape,” said Ms Ahmed.
“Here in the West you have all the opportunities to try them. You have courts, you have the laws, you have prisons. All the means to give these people a trial and convict them… on behalf of these governments that these people are citizens of, ” said Ms Ahmed.
Shamina Begum, right, has said she does not regret joining Islamic State
Ms Ahmad said Ms Begum’s attitude was typical of many detainees.
“The majority of them say that – that they don’t have any regrets. And you can see that in the way they raise their children: they raise them in the ideology of Isil, and they still think that ideology is correct,” she said in an interview in London.
“That’s why it is not just enough to take these people back. They also need to be treated. The children, they need special care. So do the mothers.”
“The alternative would be that we receive a lot of support and assistance in trying these people in our region, in terms of courts, in turns of legal procedures and so on.”
Donald Trump, the US president, last week called on European governments to repatriate an estimated 800 foreign members of Isil who have been taken prisoner in Syria.
A Syrian Democratic Forces fighter walks down an empty street in As Susah, a town destroyed in fighting with Isil Credit: Chris McGrath/ Getty Images Europe
But Theresa May’s spokesman rebuffed the American suggestion on Monday, saying the fighters should be put on trial in places where they committed their crimes.
“Foreign fighters should be brought to justice in accordance with due legal process in the most appropriate jurisdiction,” Downing Street said. “Where possible, this should be in the region where the crimes had been committed.”
France and Germany have also rejected the idea, citing the difficulty of securing sufficient evidence and witness testimony to guarantee prosecutions.
Isil’s last redoubt in the eastern Syrian village of Baguz is expected to fall to the SDF and coalition forces imminently. Ms Ahmed is one of a number of senior Kurdish leaders taking part in a diplomatic blitz to convince Western governments not to abandon the SDF when it does.
They fear Mr Trump’s announcement in December that he will withdraw US forces from Syria will open space for a resurgence of Isil sleeper cells and allow Turkey to launch an attack on Kurdish forces.
“We do not even want to talk about the prospect of withdrawal without security guarantees,” she said. “We want aerial protection so there are no airstrikes. And we’d like to see observation on the border. We are concerned about a Turkish military attack.”
“We are now experiencing the last days before the announcement of the end of the operation. But after that we expect to begin a new process of getting rid of these sleeper cells and getting rid of other elements of Isil, and for that we will continue to need support,” she went on.
“In Raqqa there are daily explosions, kidnappings, and violence. Likewise in Deir Ezzor. So these things are still happening.”
Turkey considers the YPG, the Kurdish armed group that forms the core of the SDF, a terrorist organisation.
Ms Ahmed said Mr Trump had been supportive about the idea of a security zone when she met him in January, but that he had not mentioned any details. Kurdish leaders have rejected a proposal for a Turkish-controlled 30 kilometre “security area” inside Syria.
Turkey is a key Nato member and regional power, putting the United States and other coalition members, including Britain, in the uncomfortable position of choosing between two allies.
Ms Ahmed said the SDF could seek accommodation with Bashar al-Assad’s government and his Russian allies if Western coalition partners fail to guarantee security against potential Turkish attack.
“One solution could be regional protection forces in the north could become part of a new Syrian army – and note that I said ‘new’ Syrian army. It could not be under the current status quo, but if there is a new structure within the framework of a political solution.
“In the light of sudden announcements of withdrawals, without guarantees, without leaving us any kind of means to do things another way, this could be a solution,” she said.
Such an arrangement could be part of a proposed post-war constitutional settlement that Kurdish groups have drawn up as the fighting in Syria draws to a close.
Under the plan, powers would be devolved to the regions, and local parliaments would have representatives in Damascus. The rights of minorities and gender equality would be written into the constitution and Assad’s fate would be decided by an election.
The co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, Ilham Ahmed, is currently leading a Kurdish delegation to Washington DC, Paris and London. Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP
The leader of the Syrian Kurds has called for a small international observer force to be stationed on the Turkey-Syria border to protect Kurds from what she says is the threat of crimes against humanity committed by Turkish forces.
Ilham Ahmed is co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council – the political arm of the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which have been responsible for liberating much of north-eastern Syria from Islamic State.
Described as one of the most powerful women in Syria, Ahmed is leading a Kurdish delegation touring Washington, Paris and London to persuade western countries not to betray the Kurds by leaving them exposed to the threat of a Turkish attack.
Ahmed said a final SDF assault on the last Isis redoubt would finish within days. Plans requiring “time and patience” were being drawn up to eradicate sleeper cells, she said.
She was speaking in the wake of the shock announcement by Donald Trump that 2,000 US troops will leave north-west Syria on the basis that Isis had been defeated.
US troops were supporting Kurdish fighters against Isis in northern Syria. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images
Ankara views the Kurdish forces in Syria as a terrorist threat and an extension of the Kurdish separatist movement within Turkey’s own borders.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has repeatedly warned America that a Turkish military operation against the US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Manbij is near. “Our patience is not limitless, he said over the weekend. “If the terrorists are not removed from Manbij within a few weeks, our waiting period will end.”
Ahmed said: “After all that has happened, if there is an attack, we will regard those that remain silent in the face of those threats as guilty of crimes against humanity.
“It is not just there will no longer be any trust in the coalition forces who we have fought alongside, and that their credibility will have been lost forever. It will mean the emergence of very big wars in this area.
“Any attempt by the Turkish state to establish a safe zone in the north of Syria will be an occupation, and no matter that the Turkish state wants to convince others that it will be a force for calm in the region, this is not what will happen.
“We saw this in Afrin last year as they tried to erase our culture and remove people from their homes. Huge massacres have been committed by the Turks. A further attack will only bring more war, displacement, occupation and an attempt to destroy our culture.”
An international protection force would provide aerial defence, she said, but “we would like to see an international power on the border as observers to ensure that Turkey does not attack”.
The force would be composed of “states that have actively participated in the war against IS, and the UN should also play a role”, she said. She added discussions were continuing now on the size and composition of the force, but it could be a symbolic number.
She also said Kurds were willing to put foreign fighters on trial in Kurdish Syria if they were given major international support on the legal procedures. “It would be better if they were tried in their own countries,” she added.
She said 800 to 900 Isis foreign fighters were currently held in prison by the Kurds and about 4,000 wives and children in refugee camps. She said: “We have not said we will let the fighters go, but if the Turks attack then it is true we will be fighting for our own existence and it is possible we may not be able to keep them under control and they may return to Europe. That is also at stake when we talk about an attack by the Turkish state.”
Ahmed denied the Kurds were actively discussing forming a security alliance of convenience with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, if the West decided it could not protect the Kurds from a Turkish assault.
“The regime has shown no signs of interest in a meaningful dialogue with us about Syria’s future,” she said.
Turkey is seen as the Kurds’ mortal enemy but it uses German tanks and British helicopters: this is an international outrage
Kobane, Syria, March 2015. A member of the Women’s Protection Unit defends the city. Photograph: Maryam Ashrafi/The Guardian Foundation
Remember those plucky Kurdish forces who so heroically defended the Syrian city of Kobane from Isis? They risk being wiped out by Nato.
The autonomous Kurdish region of Rojava in Northeast Syria, which includes Kobane, faces invasion. A Nato army is amassing on the border, marshaling all the overwhelming firepower and high-tech equipment that only the most advanced military forces can deploy. The commander in chief of those forces says he wants to return Rojava to its “rightful owners” who, he believes, are Arabs, not Kurds.
Last spring, this leader made similar declarations about the westernmost Syrian Kurdish district of Afrin. Following that, the very same Nato army, using German tanks and British helicopter gunships, and backed by thousands of hardcore Islamist auxiliaries, overran the district. According to Kurdish news agencies, the invasion led to over a 100,000 Kurdish civilians being driven out of Afrin entirely. They reportedly employed rape, torture and murder as systematic means of terror. That reign of terror continues to this day. And the commander and chief of this Nato army has suggested that he intends to do to the rest of North Syria what he did to Afrin.
I am speaking, of course, of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is, increasingly, Turkey’s effective dictator. But it’s crucial to emphasize that these are Nato forces. This not only means they are supplied with state-of-the-art weaponry; it also means those weapons are being maintained by other Nato members.
Fighter jets, helicopter gunships, even Turkey’s German-supplied Panzer forces – they all degrade extremely quickly under combat conditions. The people who continually inspect, maintain, repair, replace, and provide them with spare parts tend to be contractors working for American, British, German or Italian firms. Their presence is critical because the Turkish military advantage over Northern Syria’s “People’s Defense Forces” (YPG) and “Women’s Defense Forces” (YPJ), those defenders of Kobane that Turkey has pledged to destroy, is entirely dependent on them.
That’s because, aside from its technological advantage, the Turkish army is a mess. Most of its best officers and even pilots have been in prison since the failed coup attempt in 2016, and it’s now being run by commanders chosen by political loyalty instead of competence. Rojava’s defenders, in contrast, are seasoned veterans. In a fair fight, they would have no more problem fending off a Turkish incursion than they had driving back Turkish-backed Jihadis in the past.
A “fair fight” in this case would mean having access to anti-tank and anti-air weapons. But this is precisely what the Trump administration promised Turkey it would not let the Kurds have. Even those forces directly working with the US and British troops to defeat Islamic State were never to receive the defensive weapons needed to fend off the Turkish air and armored assault that would inevitably follow – which, if Afrin is anything to go by, may be backed by napalm and cluster bombs.
The moment those forces are withdrawn, however, their former allies will be sitting ducks, unable to defend themselves against the advanced weaponry that Britain and the US themselves help provide to Turkey and maintain.
Typically, the western media treats Turkey as some kind of peculiar rogue state whose periodic outbursts of violence directed at Kurdish civilians – the bombing and destruction of its own south-eastern cities in 2015, the reported ethnic cleansing of Afrin, and the ongoing attacks on villages in Iraq – must be tolerated lest it aligns with enemies like Iran or Russia. Similarly, pundits and politicians seem to whistle and look the other way as Erdoğan arrests or jails tens of thousands of people, including teachers, journalists and elected parliamentarians for saying things he doesn’t like – or even when or even when he publicly declares that “no European in any part of the world can walk safely on the streets” if they defy him.
It is only because Turkey is a member of Nato that its government managed to have the Kurdish guerrillas of the PKK (the Kurdish Worker’s Party), the guerrilla insurgents that have been fighting for autonomy in south-east Turkey since the 1990s, placed on the “international terror list” in 2004, at precisely the moment the PKK renounced demands for a separate state and offensive operations and attempted to enter into peace negotiations. It should be noted that this “terror” designation applies almost exclusively among Nato countries; the PKK is certainly not listed as a “terror” organization by the United Nations, India, China or even Switzerland.
If all this is difficult to comprehend, it’s partly because so many of us – including many who fancy themselves “anti-imperialists” – seem to have forgotten how empires actually work. The British empire didn’t send British troops into combat very often either. Nato powers are arming and maintaining the security forces of their official ally, Turkey, to fly its Nato planes and drive its Nato tanks and shoot at refugees, in the same way Turkey is reportedly employing al-Qaida and Isis legions to do its dirty work of human wave attacks and ethnic cleansing. We have defanged the terrorists by, effectively, putting them on retainer, in much the same way Rome once employed Alaric the Goth, or the US, Osama bin Laden. And we know how well that worked out.
There are alternatives. International powers could lift the de facto Nato embargo that prevents the forces that defeated Isis from defending themselves. There are calls for an international no-fly zone, preferably on the authority of the UN security council, enforced by a country other than America – possibly France, or even Russia. This too would allow the YPG/J to fight on equal terms. Rojava’s defenders are perfectly capable of fending off the Turkish army if that army’s high tech advantage is neutralized.
In the long run, the Turkish government needs to stop reacting to those who have a different vision of how life could be lived by trying to murder them, and return to the peace table. The same could be said for Syria, where Rojava’s decentralized model could be key to resolving the conflict.
But for now, we need an urgent response to the risk faced by Kurds in Rojava. The situation is growing more dire by the day – and it is quite possible that Nato will soon conduct one of the worst genocidal massacres of the 21st century.
SDF spokesperson Kino Gabriel reads a statement at a base in rural Deir al-Zor province, Syria, Sept. 11, 2018. (Photo: SDF Press)
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The US-backed, Syrian Kurdish-led forces say they are ready to help form an international-backed safe zone in northern Syria as long as there is no “foreign intervention,” in reference to a possible Turkish incursion.
In a statement on Wednesday, the General Command of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said they would “offer all the support and necessary aid to form the safe zone that is being circulated regarding the north and east of Syria.”
The statement said the safe zone would “ensure the protection of all ethnic groups and [protect] them from dangers of extermination through an international guarantee.”
It added that the safe zone would prevent foreign intervention by Turkey through “the protection of the components of the region and… factors of security and stability.”
According to the SDF, it has never posted “an external threat factor against any of the neighboring countries, especially Turkey, with which we hope to reach mutual understandings and solutions which would ensure the continued stability and security in the border regions (with it).”
The SDF statement added that since its establishment they had exerted all efforts to combat terrorism, including against the Islamic State and other radical organizations.
“We have achieved great successes in these difficult and painstaking missions, through work and coordination with our partners in the international coalition led by the United States.”
Different ethnic groups such as Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, and Assyrians inhabit Syria’s northeast. Moreover, there are also Muslims, Christians, Yezidi’s, and other religious minorities living in the area.
According to the SDF, their primary task is to protect all ethnic components in northeast Syria. “We could almost say that our region is the only region in which all components of Syria coexist,” it stated.
On Monday, US President Donald Trump suggested in a tweet that a 20-mile “safe zone” would be created in northeastern Syria. A day later, his Turkish counterpart, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Ankara would set up a security zone some 30-kilometers (18 miles) deep into northeastern Syria in coordination with Washington.
However, top Syrian Kurdish official Aldar Xelil told ANHA news agency that the Kurdish self-administration would not accept a Turkish-controlled safe zone.
“We would not accept that. We can accept a security area under the auspices of the UN,” but not Ankara, Xelil emphasized.
On Jan. 2, the chair of the German Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee argued that the UN should create a buffer zone to protect Syria’s Kurdish population.
Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, told German media outlet Deutschlandfunk in an interview that France and Germany could propose this idea in a UN Security Council meeting.
Meanwhile, Ibrahim Murad, the representative of the self-administration of North and East Syria in Germany, told Kurdistan 24 in early January that the international community should establish a no-fly zone.
“We hope the international states like the US, France, Germany, and the UK will prevent [a Turkish attack] and create a no-fly zone area for the people,” Murad said. “This would help us eradicate ISIS and find a solution to the Syrian conflict.”
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany
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Turkey rejects Trump adviser John Bolton’s Syria plan, insisting it will fight Kurdish militia
‘John Bolton made a serious mistake on this issue. Whoever thinks like that is making a mistake,’ says Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Hardline White House national security adviser John Bolton’s last-ditch attempt to secure his faction’s goals for a planned US withdrawal from Syria appeared to go down in flames on Tuesday as Turkey’s president rejected any protection for the Washington-allied Kurdish militia, and even refused to meet with the firebrand conservative.
Instead, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took to the floor of parliament in Ankara, announcing that Turkish armed forces had “mostly completed our preparations for a military offensive against” Isis elements in Syria as per an agreement with US president Donald Trump forged last month.
“Likewise, we are determined to take our steps against terror organisations such as the PYD/YPG [Kurdish People’s Democratic Union and its allied militia and political organisation in Syria] along with Daesh [Isis],” he said. “We will act to neutralise those terror organisations in Syria very soon.”
Mr Bolton, a Washington fixture known for his hawkish foreign policy positions, arrived in Ankara with his own travelling press in an apparent attempt to convince Turkey to avoid attacking Syrian Kurds. He has also demanded that any US withdrawal be conditioned on Iranian-backed forces leaving Syria, and steps put in place for the political change in Damascus.
Instead, Mr Bolton left Ankara without even meeting Mr Erdogan, who was cited by the pro-government Daily Sabah newspaper as insisting “his busy schedule prevented him from meeting” Mr Bolton, whose public positions have contradicted those of his boss and US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who is also visiting the Middle East.
Mr Bolton and anti-Isis envoy Jim Jeffrey, arriving after a visit to Israel, met privately with Mr Erdogan’s senior adviser Ibrahim Kalin, who helped organise a 14 December phone call in which Mr Trump agreed to withdraw 2,000 or more US troops from Syria and hand control of anti-Isis efforts to Turkey.
“It is not possible for us to accept and swallow the message that Bolton gave from Israel,” he told lawmakers. Turkey, along with most independent analysts and US intelligence agencies, considers the YPG inseparable from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, an outlawed separatist organisation deemed a terrorist group by Ankara, the US and Europe.
“If the US evaluates them as ‘Kurdish brothers’ then they are in a serious delusion,” Mr Erdogan said, in a televised speech interrupted by chants of “allahu akbar”, or God is great, by supporters. “John Bolton made a serious mistake on this issue. Whoever thinks like that is making a mistake.”
Many have voiced doubt over Turkey’s ability to fight Isis in Syria without continuing US air and intelligence support. But in a New York Times opinion piece published on Monday, Mr Erdogan spelt out Turkey’s plans for Isis-controlled Syria, noting that Turkish troops and allied local fighters left northern Syrian towns they liberated from extremists in far better shape than the US aerial bombardments that destroyed Raqqa and Mosul in their efforts to dislodge the jihadi group in 2017 and 2018.
YPG: 2422 Turkish soldiers and mercenaries killed in 2018
YPG Press Office announced that 2422 members of the occupant Turkish army and allied mercenaries were killed during 2018 while 544 YPG fighters were martyred.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Thursday, 3 Jan 2019, 16:30
The Press Office of People’s Defense Units (YPG) released the balance sheet of resistance for 2018.
Full text of the YPG statement is as follows;
“People of Kurdistan, who have been fighting the good fight to protect basic values of humanity and particularly of the peoples of middle east, have again spearheaded the fight against evil in form of ISIS recently. Our people and fighters have fought have been fighting against ISIS barbarism and Turkish invasion and putting up a legendary resistance.
Our struggle today has turned into a legendary resistance which includes hundreds of internationalist fighters from all over the world and is ensuring co-existence of peoples in North Syria and Rojava Kurdistan. 2018 has become a year in which our struggle made a great progress and came to a prominence in region. At a time ISIS is on the brink of collapse, our people had to fight against invasion attempts by Turkey. The outcome of the battles and resistance by our fighters throughout the year is s follows;
1- Outcome of the resistance of Afrin which began on July 20 and ended in March 18
Airstrikes: 1098
Heavy weapons attacks: between 3577 and 4000
Engagement: 900
Operations with unclear results: 176
Destroyed military vehicles and aircrafts: 2 combat helicopters, 2 unmanned aerial vehicles, 122 military vehicles, 2 car bombs, 1 motorcycle
Damaged military vehicles: 32 (tanks, APCs, armoured vehicles)
Civilians killed: 224 (51 children, 42 women)
Civilians injured: 650 (87 children, 93 women)
Killed Turkish soldiers and mercenaries: 2422
544 fighters were martyred during the resistance as result of intense airstrikes and engagements with the occupying forces.
2- Outcome of the second phase of resistance of Afrin, which began on March 18, is as follows
Our units in Afrin have carried out 147 operations against Turkish invasion army and its jihadist proxies. As result of assassination, raid, ambush and bombing actions;
– 350 terrorists have been killed (65 Turkish soldiers and 258 mercenaries)
– 18 AK-47, 1 MG-3 machine gun, 2 pistols along with a large amount of ammunition have been captured
– The results of 5 operations couldn’t be clarified
– 36 military vehicles, 1 APC, 1 pick-up, 3 motorcycles, 1 HQ and T55 tank were destroyed; 4 military vehicles have been damaged
– Turkish invasion army has carried out large scale combing operations with the participation of hundreds of its mercenaries and under protection of air cover in Afrin 13 times. All of the operations have been retreated without achieving any results.
– Since March 18, 56 fighters, including 16 fighters of YPJ, were martyred in airstrikes. 1 of our fighters was injured and another fighter was captured in a state of being heavily injured.
3- During 2018, occupying Turkish army attacked the bases and positions of our fighters and civilian settlements, violating the borders.
– Turkish invasion army has attacked positions of our fighters and civilian settlements 53 times
– 13 civilians (3 children) were injured, 2 civilians (1 child) were killed in the attacks.
– 2 Sanadid forces fighters, 2 Self Defense forces fighters and 2 journalists were injured.
– An UAV of Turkish army was captured by our fighters in Kobani.
– Our forces retaliated to all the attacks according to engagement rules and legitimate self defense. 2 soldiers were killed in operations by our forces.
4- During 2018, counter-terrorism units (YAT) have carried out 45 operations against ISIS and other sleeper cells across Rojava and northern Syria. Special Operation Teams have also conducted 590 operations.
– 107 ISIS terrorists including 5 foreigners were captured in the operations
– 204 ISIS members, including 2 leaders and 31 terrorists of other sleeper cells that were preparing for attacks were killed.
– 161 ISIS members were injured
– 55 attacks were foiled
– 6 Yazidi women and a child were rescued from ISIS
– 25 vehicles and a motorcycle were destroyed, 8 vehicles were damaged
– Our units have confiscated a large amount of explosive, 1345 mines, 2 car bombs, 35 missiles, 3 tank shells, 11 mortars and their shells, 126 SPG-9 shells, 575 AK-47, 3 LAV weapons and 2 rockets, 3 12.7mm DShK machine guns, 6 14.5mm ZPU machine guns, M2 Browning ammunition, 6 A4, 40 BKC, 12 Dragunov sbiper rifles, 15 G3 rifles, 17 M16 rifles, 27 RPG and 267 warheads, 1004 grenades, 121 suicide vests, 7 binoculars, 11 pistols and their ammunition, 4 radio devices, 19 cell phones.
5- 2018 has been a long year with resistance and fierce battles across Rojava and northern Syria. 894 fighters were martyred during 2018; 600 in Afrin, 201 during operation Jazeera Storm, 61 as result of traffic and other accidents, 20 as result of illness, 7 during mine clearing operations in Raqqa and due to attacks by Turkish invasion army on borders 5 of our comrades were martyred.”
The Rojavan Revolution has inspired us over the years; from the fierce resistance to ISIS and Turkish fascism, to its rejection of patriarchy and statism. But with the US saying that it will soon be pulling out of the region, many are left wondering what the future holds for the autonomous territories. Wanting to know more, we spoke with someone from Internationalist Commune, the authors of the Resistance is Life column here on IGD, to learn more.
IGD:What are your thoughts on the US withdrawing from Syria?
IC: When the news of Trump’s decision broke, many of us internationalists in Rojava were frantically checking the news, scrambling to prepare new work, calling one another up and discussing what this would mean for the millions of civilians here, for the future of the revolution – for our lives.
I noticed that our Kurdish comrades reacted differently. They felt angry and betrayed, of course. But to them it was also something expected. The Kurdish freedom movement has 40 years’ experience of armed struggle against a ruthlessly self-serving capitalist state under the NATO banner, and the Kurdish people have known nothing but betrayal for centuries.
They never relied on anything but the strength and resilience of the Kurdish movement. This decision which shocked the world was met with a new surge of pride in what has been won here at such enormous cost. This is the attitude we must take forward into the coming struggle.
IGD:Is the US actively working with the Turkish State?
IC: A lot of media effort has been expended on which imperial powers are the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the situation here though it changes every day, what the ‘Kurds’ ridiculously taken as a homogenous mass stand to gain, above all what Putin stands to gain from it all.
Some such analyses – like this from Lower Class Magazine – give an excellent picture of how the Kurdish movement has exploited the faultlines opened by the global power struggle between imperial powers, and how it now faces a severe test of its strength as these interests realign against the democratic-confederalist project.
But I have no special insight into what has been said behind closed doors in the last days and years between the various imperialist forces vying to suck the life out of this land. The Americans did what they did. Now our task is clear: to resist the massacre Turkey is threatening by any means necessary.
IGD:Many people are afraid that ISIS will join with Turkish forces and attack Rojavan territories, as it did in the invasion of Afrin. How has the YPG/YPJ responded to this reality?
A couple of days ago, false news was once again released by world news agencies, spreading the propaganda statements of imperialist forces as though they were objective fact – this time, that the Syrian state army had entered into the center of the city of Manbij. When this news arrived in Manbij, the response of the local population was not to panic or flee but to flood en mass into the city center, singing the songs of the Kurdish resistance.
This is the crucial point. Not only the Kurdish-led YPG and YPJ, but also Arab, Turkmen and Assyrian Christian militias united with YPG/J under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces are ready to fight Turkey every inch of the way. Turkey talks of making a so-called “security belt” which would obliterate all of the major cities in Rojava, where millions of people have been making a free and democratic life together under constant threat of Turkey’s cowardly carpet-bombing war. YPG/J is a people’s army and the people will never accept the destruction of their homes, their communes, all that has been created here.
If the Turkish state really does launch a full-scale assault, it will take nothing short of genocide to drive the people from these lands. But as we have seen time and again, the Turkish state is quite capable of such atrocities. Tens of thousands of martyrs have given their lives for this revolution. Whether tens of thousands more must also die remains to be seen.
IGD:Many people in the US and beyond have wondered what to do in light of the current situation. Should we be calling on the US not to leave or should we be finding material ways to support?
IC: It is right that the American people, in particular, rise up against this cowardly decision by their leader. But as internationalists we must stand together outside these lines of state force, with the tireless conviction of our Kurdish comrades.
To be precise: we need serious anti-fascist mobilization against entities linked to Turkish power and interests at home in the West. We need that 3.5 billion dollar Patriot missile sale to Turkey, made in the days before Trump told Erdogan he was pulling out, to be taken down as a message to the Turkish state. We need comrades and journalists to travel here and put their lives on the line.
This revolution’s survival will not be ensured by begging western governments for favors. But the burden on the shoulders of the Kurdish liberation movement will be lightened when Turkey is made accountable for its atrocities, when it is made impossible for other capitalist states to make their dirty deals with this war-criminal state.
IGD:What things are Internationalist Commune working on in the midst of this reality?
IC: Our main focus now is on spreading the news of what is happening and may happen here, seizing back the narrative from our enemies. So much of what is written and said about here, even by our supporters, is framed as though Rojava is a black box about whose people and material reality nothing can be known, just another pawn on the chessboard middle-east.
“we are working together with Kurdish and other local comrades in the media structures here to counter Turkish propaganda and spread the truth of the revolution as best we can.”
As the internationalist commune, we feel a responsibility to combat this, and to make what is happening here and how it will affect millions of real, struggling people if Turkey does invade. We want to bring their voices and the message of the Kurdish liberation movement into the west.
The Turkish state employs a cyber-army of 6,000 social media trolls disseminating their propaganda, and spends millions on lobbying foreign governments each year. Sometimes it can feel like all we have to counter this is a handful of comrades with limited media experience and a few busted-up laptops. But we are working together with Kurdish and other local comrades in the media structures here to counter Turkish propaganda and spread the truth of the revolution as best we can.
IGD:What are some key news sources/website people can follow to get news on the unfolding situation?
IC: We will share as much as we can from our facebook at Internationalist Commune, twitter @communeint and website internationalistcommune.com.
For in-depth analyses in touch with the thought of the Kurdish movement, the Komun Academy website is great. The Region is another site whose reports are generally in touch with what’s going on here and can put them in a larger political perspective.
If you follow the Kurdish academic Dilar Derik (DilAr on Facebook), you will see a lot of well-selected articles and analyses. Dr. Hawzhin Azeez on Twitter here is another example of this.
If you’re looking for a journalist external for the movement who has up-to-date and accurate information and understands what’s going on here better than most, Wladimir Van Wilgenburg (@vvanwilgenburg) is a prolific and useful source.
A few other accounts on the ground in Rojava who are in touch with what’s going on here: @zana_med (especially good and will debunk incorrect information when it’s spread), @HosengHesen, @riseupforafrin, @starcongress.
IGD:Anything else you’d like to add or touch on?
IC: We think it is vital that Turkey’s coming assault is not understood as ‘just another part of the Syrian Civil War’, as it is currently being discussed in our voyeuristic yet ultimately weary and disinterested mainstream press. The death of any civilian anywhere in Syria is a tragedy, of course. But what is happening here is far larger than that.
“The choice between socialism and barbarism was never more stark than here and now.”
Total war against Rojava would not just be the crushing of the revolution here, but of forty years’ ceaseless toil under circumstances of brutal repression across all four parts of Kurdistan. This is a war against the woman, against the right of all peoples to self-determination, against one of the world’s only flames of resistance against state-capitalist might. The choice between socialism and barbarism was never more stark than here and now.
Comrades, with pride in our own strength and knowledge that we are stronger still together, knowing that our enemies are strong but knowing too that they can never grasp the strength and beauty of solidarity forged in resistance, we ask for your support.
2018 ends on an ominous note for Rojava. Betrayed by the United States, Turkish invasion seems inevitable. Can it be averted, except at the cost of other tenuous alliances between the Kurds and the Syrian regime or even Russia ? Of course, there is one solution. If the Kurdistan Regional Government supported their fellow Kurds in Rojava instead of Turkey any impending invasion could be blocked, since Turkey would hesitate to become entangled with the Pesh Merga and make an enemy of the KRG who it needs as a counterweight to the Iraqi government. But, as ever, power, money and trade mean more to the KDP than real Kurdish freedom
An Anarchist in Syria Speaks on the Real Meaning of Trump’s Withdrawal
Following Donald Trump’s surprise announcement that he is withdrawing US troops from Syria, we’ve received the following message from an anarchist in Rojava, spelling out what this means for the region and what the stakes are on a global scale. For background, consult our earlier articles, “Understanding the Kurdish Resistance” and “The Struggle Is not for Martyrdom but for Life.”
I’m writing from Rojava. Full disclosure: I didn’t grow up here and I don’t have access to all the information I would need to tell you what is going to happen next in this part of the world with any certainty. I’m writing because it is urgent that you hear from people in northern Syria about what Trump’s “troop withdrawal” really means for us—and it’s not clear how much time we have left to discuss it. I approach this task with all the humility at my disposal.
I’m not formally integrated into any of the groups here. That makes it possible for me to speak freely, but I should emphasize that my perspective doesn’t represent any institutional position. If nothing else, this should be useful as a historical document indicating how some people here understood the situation at this point in time, in case it becomes impossible to ask us later on.
Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria is not an “anti-war” or “anti-imperialist” measure. It will not bring the conflict in Syria to an end. On the contrary, Trump is effectively giving Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan the go-ahead to invade Rojava and carry out ethnic cleansing against the people who have done much of the fighting and dying to halt the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS). This is a deal between strongmen to exterminate the social experiment in Rojava and consolidate authoritarian nationalist politics from Washington, DC to Istanbul and Kobane. Trump aims to leave Israel the most ostensibly liberal and democratic project in the entire Middle East, foreclosing the possibilities that the revolution in Rojava opened up for this part of the world.
All this will come at a tremendous cost. As bloody and tragic as the Syrian civil war has already been, this could open up not just a new chapter of it, but a sequel.
This is not about where US troops are stationed. The two thousand US soldiers at issue are a drop in the bucket in terms of the number of armed fighters in Syria today. They have not been on the frontlines of the fighting the way that the US military was in Iraq.1 The withdrawal of these soldiers is not the important thing here. What matters is that Trump’s announcement is a message to Erdoğan indicating that there will be no consequences if the Turkish state invades Rojava.
There’s a lot of confusion about this, with supposed anti-war and “anti-imperialist” activists like Medea Benjamin endorsing Donald Trump’s decision, blithely putting the stamp of “peace” on an impending bloodbath and telling the victims that they should have known better. It makes no sense to blame people here in Rojava for depending on the United States when neither Medea Benjamin nor anyone like her has done anything to offer them any sort of alternative.
While authoritarians of various stripes seek to cloud the issue, giving a NATO member a green light to invade Syria is what is “pro-war” and “imperialist.” Speaking as an anarchist, my goal is not to talk about what the US military should do. It is to discuss how US military policy impacts people and how we ought to respond. Anarchists aim to bring about the abolition of every state government and the disbanding of every state military in favor of horizontal forms of voluntary organization; but when we organize in solidarity with targeted populations such as those who are on the receiving end of the violence of ISIS and various state actors in this region, we often run into thorny questions like the ones I’ll discuss below.
The worst case scenario now is that the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA), backed by the Turkish military itself, will overrun Rojava and carry out ethnic cleansing on a level you likely cannot imagine. They’ve already done this on a small scale in Afrin. In Rojava, this would take place on a historic scale. It could be something like the Palestinian Nakba or the Armenian genocide.
I will try to explain why this is happening, why you should care about it, and what we can do about it together.
To understand what Trump and Erdoğan are doing, you have to understand the geography of the situation. This site is useful for keeping up with geographical shifts in the Syrian civil war.
First of All: About the Experiment in Rojava
The system in Rojava is not perfect. This is not the right place to air dirty laundry, but there are lots of problems. I’m not having the kind of experience here that Paul Z. Simons had some years ago, when his visit to Rojava made him feel that everything is possible. Years and years of war and militarization have taken their toll on the most exciting aspects of the revolution here. Still, these people are in incredible danger right now and the society they have built is worth defending.
What is happening in Rojava is not anarchy. All the same, women play a major role in society; there is basic freedom of religion and language; an ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse population lives side by side without any major acts of ethnic cleansing or conflict; it’s heavily militarized, but it’s not a police state; the communities are relatively safe and stable; there’s not famine or mass food insecurity; the armed forces are not committing mass atrocities. Every faction in this war has blood on its hands, but the People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) have conducted themselves far more responsibly than any other side. They’ve saved countless lives—not just Kurds—in Sinjar and many other places. Considering the impossible conditions and the tremendous amount of violence that people here have been subjected to from all sides, that is an incredible feat. All this stands in stark contrast to what will happen if the Turkish state invades, considering that Trump has given Erdoğan the go-ahead in return for closing a massive missile sale.
It should go without saying that I don’t want to perpetuate an open-ended Bush-style “war on terror,” much less to participate in the sort of “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West that bigots and fundamentalists of both stripes have been fantasizing about. On the contrary, that is precisely what we’re trying to prevent here. Most of the people Daesh [ISIS] have killed have been Muslim; most of the people who have died fighting Daesh have been Muslim. In Hajin, where I was stationed and where the last ISIS stronghold is, one of the internationals who has been fighting Daesh longest is an observant Muslim—not to speak of all the predominantly Arab fighters from Deir Ezzor there, most of whom are almost certainly Muslim as well.
The Factions
For the sake of brevity, I’ll oversimplify and say that today, there are roughly five sides in the Syrian civil war: loyalist, Turkish, jihadi, Kurdish,2 and rebel.3 At the conclusion of this text, an appendix explores the narratives that characterize each of these sides.
Each of these sides stands in different relation to the others. I’ll list the relations of each group to the others, starting with the other group that they are most closely affiliated with and ending with the groups they are most opposed to:
Loyalist: Kurdish, Turkish, jihadi, rebel
Rebel: Turkish, jihadi, Kurdish, loyalist
Turkish: rebel, jihadi, loyalist, Kurdish
Kurdish: loyalist, rebel, Turkish, jihadi
Jihadi: rebel, Turkish, Kurdish and loyalist
This may be helpful in visualizing which groups could be capable of compromising and which are irreversibly at odds. Again, remember, I am generalizing a lot.
I want to be clear that each of these groups is motivated by a narrative that contains at least some kernel of truth. For example, in regards to the question of who is to blame for the rise of ISIS, it is true that the US “ploughed the field” for ISIS with the invasion and occupation of Iraq and its disastrous fallout (loyalist narrative); but it is also true that the Turkish state has tacitly and sometimes blatantly colluded with ISIS because ISIS was fighting against the primary adversary of the Turkish state (Kurdish narrative) and that Assad’s brutal reaction to the Arab Spring contributed to a spiral of escalating violence that culminated in the rise of Daesh (rebel narrative). And although I’m least sympathetic to the jihadi and Turkish state perspectives, it is certain that unless the well-being of Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria is factored into a political settlement, the jihadis will go on fighting, and that unless there is some kind of political settlement between the Turkish state and the PKK, Turkey will go on seeking to wipe out Kurdish political formations, without hesitating to commit genocide.
It’s said that “Kurds are second-class citizens in Syria, third-class citizens in Iran, fourth-class citizens in Iraq, and fifth-class citizens in Turkey.” It’s no accident that when Turkish officials like Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu list the “terror groups” they are most concerned about in the region, they name the YPG before ISIS. Perhaps this can help explain the cautious response of many Kurds to the Syrian revolution: from the Kurdish perspective, regime change in Syria carried out by Turkish-backed jihadis coupled with no regime change in Turkey could be worse than no regime change in Syria at all.
I won’t rehash the whole timeline from the ancient Sumerians to the beginning of the PKK war in Turkey to the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS. Let’s skip forward to Trump’s announcement on December 19: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”
Has ISIS Been Defeated? And by Whom?
Let me be clear: Daesh has not been defeated in Syria. Just a few days ago, they took a shot at our position with a rocket launcher out of a clear blue sky and missed by only a hundred yards.
It is true that their territory is just a fraction of what it once was. At the same time, by any account, they still have thousands of fighters, a lot of heavy weaponry, and probably quite a bit of what remains of their senior leadership down in the Hajin pocket of the Euphrates river valley and the surrounding deserts, between Hajin and the Iraqi border. In addition, ISIS have a lot of experience and a wide array of sophisticated defense strategies—and they are absolutely willing to die to inflict damage on their enemies.
To the extent that their territory has been drastically reduced, Trump is telling a bald-faced lie in trying to take credit for this. The achievement he is claiming as his own is largely the work of precisely the people he is consigning to death at the hands of Turkey.
Under Obama, the Department of Defense and the CIA pursued dramatically different strategies in reference to the uprising and subsequent civil war in Syria. The CIA focused on overthrowing Assad by any means necessary, to the point that arms and money they supplied trickled down to al-Nusra, ISIS, and others. By contrast, the Pentagon was more focused on defeating ISIS, beginning to concentrate on supporting the largely Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) during the defense of Kobane in 2014.
Now, as an anarchist who desires the complete abolition of every government, I have no love for the Pentagon or the CIA, but if we evaluate these two approaches according to their own professed goals, the Pentagon plan worked fairly well, while the CIA plan was a total disaster. In this regard, it’s fair to say that the Obama administration contributed to both the growth of ISIS and its suppression. Trump, for his part, has done neither, except insofar as the sort of nationalist Islamophobia he promotes helps to generate a symmetrical form of Islamic fundamentalism.
Up until December, Trump maintained the Pentagon strategy in Syria that he inherited from the Obama administration. There have been signs of mission creep from US National Security Advisor John R. Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who ultimately hope to undermine Iran on account of it supplying oil to China. This far—and no further—I can understand the concerns of a pseudo-pacifist “anti-imperialist”: war with Iran would be a nightmare compounding the catastrophe brought about by the war in Iraq. So yes, insofar as the YPG and YPJ were forced to coordinate with the US military, they were working with unsavory characters whose motivations were very different from their own.
To sum up: what has brought about the by-now almost total recapture of the territory ISIS occupied isn’t rocket science. It’s the combination of a brave and capable ground force with air support. In this sort of conventional territorial war, it’s extremely difficult for a ground force without air support to defeat a ground force with air support, no matter how fiercely the former fights. In some parts of Syria, this involved the YPG/YPJ on the ground with US backing from the air. Elsewhere in Syria, it must be said, ISIS was pushed back by the combination of Russian air support and the loyalist army (SAA) alongside Iranian-backed militias.
Outside Interventions
It would have been extremely difficult to recapture this territory from ISIS any other way. The cooperation of the YPG/YPJ with the US military remains controversial, but the fact is—every side in the Syrian conflict has been propped up and supported by larger outside powers and would have collapsed without that support.
People employing the Turkish, loyalist, and jihadi narratives often point out that Kobane would have fallen and YPG/YPJ would never have been able to retake eastern Syria from Daesh without US air support. Likewise, the Syrian government and the Assad regime were very close to military collapse in 2015, around the time Turkey conveniently downed a Russian plane and Putin decided that Russia was going to bail out the Assad regime no matter what it took. The rebels, on their side, never would have come close to toppling Assad through military means without massive assistance from the Turkish government, the Gulf states, US intelligence services, and probably Israel on some level, although the details of this are murky from where I’m situated.
And the jihadis—Daesh, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, and the others—would never have been able to take control of half of Iraq and Syria if the US had not been so foolish as to leave an army’s worth of state-of-the-art equipment in the hands of the Iraqi government, which effectively abandoned it. It also helped them that a tremendous amount of resources trickled down from the above-mentioned foreign sponsors of the rebels. It also helped that Turkey left its airports and borders open to jihadis from all over the world who set out to join Daesh. There also appears to have been some sort of financial support from the Gulf states, whether formally or through back channels.
The Turkish state has its own agenda. It is not by any means simply a proxy for the US. But at the end of the day, it’s a NATO member and it can count on the one hundred percent support of the US government—as the missile sale that the US made to Turkey days before the withdrawal tweet illustrates.
In view of all this, we can see why YPG/YPJ chose to cooperate with the US military. My point is not to defend this decision, but to show that under the circumstances, it was the only practical alternative to annihilation. At the same time, it is clear that this strategy has not created security for the experiment in Rojava. Even if we set aside ethical concerns, there are problems with relying on the United States—or France, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or any other state government with its own state agenda. As anarchists, we have to talk very seriously about how to create other options for people in conflict zones. Is there any form of international horizontal decentralized coordination that could have solved the problems that the people in Rojava were facing such that they would not have been forced to depend on the US military? If we find no answer to this question when we look at the Syria of 2013-2018, is there something we could have done earlier? These are extremely pressing questions.
No one should forget that ISIS was only reduced to their current relative weakness by a multi-ethnic, radically democratic grassroots resistance movement, that incidentally involved international volunteers from around the globe. In view of Trump’s order to abandon and betray the struggle against ISIS, every sincere person who earnestly wants to put a stop to the spread of apocalyptic fundamentalist terror groups like ISIS or their imminent successors should stop counting on the state and put all their resources into directly supporting decentralized multi-ethnic egalitarian movements. It is becoming ever clearer that those are our only hope.
What Does the Troop Withdrawal Mean?
I’m not surprised that Trump and the Americans are “betraying an ally”—I don’t think anybody here had the illusion that Trump or the Pentagon intended to support the political project in Rojava. Looking back through history, it was clear enough that when ISIS was beaten, the US would leave Rojava at the mercy of the Turkish military. If the forces of the YPG/YPJ have dragged their feet in rooting ISIS out of their last strongholds, this may be one of the reasons.
But it is still very surprising and perplexing that Trump would rush to give up this foothold that the US has carved out in the Russosphere—and that the US military establishment would let him do so. From the perspective of maintaining US global military hegemony, the decision makes no sense at all. It’s a gratuitous gift to Putin, Erdoğan, and ISIS, which could take advantage of the situation to regenerate throughout the region, perhaps in some new form—more on that below.
The withdrawal from Syria does not necessarily mean that conflict with Iran is off the table, by the way. On the contrary, certain hawks in the US government may see this as a step towards consolidating a position from which that could be possible.
However you look at it, Trump’s decision is big news. It indicates that the US “deep state” has no power over Trump’s foreign policy. It suggests that the US neoliberal project is dead in the water, or at least that some elements of the US ruling class consider it to be. It also implies a future in which ethno-nationalist autocrats like Erdoğan, Trump, Assad, Bolsonaro, and Putin will be in the driver’s seat worldwide, conniving with each other to maintain power over their private domains.
In that case, the entire post-cold war era of US military hegemony is over, and we are entering a multipolar age in which tyrants will rule balkanized authoritarian ethno-states: think Europe before World War I. The liberals (and anarchists?) who imagine that this could be good news are fools fighting yesterday’s enemy and yesterday’s war. The de facto red/brown coalition of authoritarian socialists and fascists who are celebrating this are hurrying us all helter-skelter into a brave new world in which more and more of the globe will look like the worst parts of the Syrian civil war.
And speaking from this vantage point, here, today, I do not say that lightly.
What Will Happen Next?
Sadly, Kurdish and left movements in Turkey have been decimated over the past few years. I would be very surprised if there were any kind of uprising in Turkey, no matter what happens in Rojava. We should not permit ourselves to hope that a Turkish invasion here would trigger an insurgency in northern Kurdistan.
Unless something truly unexpected transpires, there are basically two possible outcomes here.
First Scenario
In the first scenario, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) will make some kind of agreement with the Assad regime, likely under less favorable terms than would have been possible before the Turkish invasion of Afrin; both sides would likely make concessions of some kind and agree to fight on the same side if Turkey invades. If Russia signs off on this, it could suffice to prevent the invasion from taking place. Either YPG/YPJ or SAA will finish off the Hajin pocket, and the war could be basically over except for Idlib.
Both the Assad regime and the various predominantly Kurdish formations have been extremely hardheaded in negotiating, but perhaps the threat to both Rojava and the Assad regime is so extreme that they will choose this option. It is possible that this is one of the objectives of the Turkish threat, or even of Trump’s withdrawal: to force YPG to relinquish military autonomy to the Assad regime.
YPG, PYD, and company are not in a very good bargaining position right now, but the regime knows it can at least bargain with them, whereas if northern Syria is occupied by Turkish-backed jihadis and assorted looters, it is unclear what would happen next. Rojava contains much of Syria’s best agricultural land in the north, as well as oil fields in the south.
I can only speculate what the terms of this theoretical agreement might be. There’s lots of speculation online: language rights, Kurdish citizenship being regularized, prior service in YPG counting as military service so that soldiers who have been fighting ISIS all these years can return to being civilians rather than immediately being conscripted into SAA, some kind of limited political autonomy, or the like. In exchange, the YPG and its allies would essentially have to hand military and political control of SDF areas over to the regime.
Could Assad’s regime be trusted to abide by an agreement after they gain control? Probably not.
To be clear, it’s all too easy for me to speak abstractly about the Assad regime as the lesser of two evils. I’m informed about many of the atrocities the regime has committed, but I have not experienced them myself, and this is not the part of Syria where they did the worst things, so I more frequently hear stories from the locals about Daesh and other jihadis, not to mention Turkey. There are likely people in other parts of Syria who regard the Assad regime regaining power with the same dread with which people here regard the Turkish military and ISIS.
In any case, there are some signs that this first scenario might still be possible. The regime has sent troops to Manbij, to one of the lines where the massive Turkish/TFSA troop buildup is occurring. There are meetings between the PYD and the regime as well as with the Russians. An Egyptian-mediated negotiation between the PYD and the regime is scheduled to take place soon.
This first scenario does not offer a very attractive set of options. It’s not what Jordan Mactaggart or the thousands and thousands of Syrians who fought and died with YPG/YPJ gave their lives for. But it would be preferable to the other scenario…
Second Scenario
In the second scenario, the Assad regime will throw in its lot with Turkey instead of with YPG.
In this case, some combination of the Turkish military and its affiliated proxies will invade from the north while the regime invades from the south and west. YPG will fight to the death, street by street, block by block, in a firestorm reminiscent of the Warsaw ghetto uprising or the Paris Commune, utilizing all the defensive tactics they acquired while fighting ISIS. Huge numbers of people will die. Eventually, the Assad regime and Turkey/TFSA will establish some line between their zones of control. For the foreseeable future, there would be some kind of Turkish-Jihadi Rump State of Northern Syrian Warlordistan.
Any remaining Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, Christians, and other minorities would be expulsed, ethnically cleansed, or terrorized. TFSA and related militias would likely loot everything they could get their hands on. In the long run, Turkey would probably dump the Syrian refugees who are now in Turkey back into these occupied areas, bringing about irreversible demographic shifts that could be the cause of future ethnic conflicts in the region.
We should not believe any assurances from the Turkish state or its apologists that this will not be the result of their invasion, as this is exactly what they have done in Afrin and they have no reason to behave differently in Rojava. Remember: from the perspective of the Turkish state, the YPG/YPJ are enemy number one in Syria.
Now let’s talk about Daesh. Despite the looming threat of invasion, SDF is still finishing off the Hajin pocket of ISIS. If it weren’t for the fact that Turkey is throwing Daesh a lifeline by threatening to invade, Daesh would be doomed, as they are surrounded by SDF, SAA, and the Iraqi army. Let me say this again: Trump giving Turkey the go-ahead to invade Rojava is practically the only thing that could save ISIS.
Trump has repeatedly said things to the effect that Turkey is promising to finish off ISIS. To believe this lie, you would have to be politically ignorant, yes—but in addition, you would also have to be geographically illiterate. This describes Trump’s supporters, if no one else.
Even if the Turkish government had any intention of fighting Daesh in Syria—a proposition that is highly doubtful, considering how easy Turkey made it for ISIS to get off the ground—in order to even reach Hajin and the Euphrates river valley, they would have to steamroll across the entirety of Rojava. There is no other way to get to Hajin. If you’re unfamiliar with the area, look at a map and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
The Assad regime holds positions right across the Euphrates River from both the SDF and Daesh positions, and would be willing and able to finish off the last ISIS pocket. As far as I’m concerned, I’d rather see the regime take the losses there to accomplish that than see YPG overextend itself and bleed any further. But the point here is that when Trump says something to the effect that “Turkey will finish off ISIS!” he is sending a blatant dog whistle to Turkish hardliners that they can attack Rojava and he won’t do anything to stop them. It has nothing to do with ISIS and everything to do with ethnic cleansing in Rojava.
If nothing else, even if Assad allies with the Turkish government, we can hope that the forces of the regime will still finish off ISIS. If Turkey has its way and does what Trump is talking about, beating a path all the way through Rojava to Hajin, they will likely give Daesh’s fighters safe passage, a new set of clothes, three meals a day, and this village I’m living in in exchange for their assistance fighting future Kurdish insurgencies.
So there it is: in declaring victory over ISIS, Trump is arranging the only way that ISIS fighters could come out of this situation with their capacities intact. It’s Orwellian, to say the least.
The only other option I can imagine, if negotiations with the Assad regime break down or PYD decides to take the moral high road and not compromise with the regime—who are untrustworthy and have carried out plenty of atrocities of their own—would be to let the entire SDF melt back into the civilian population, permit Turkey and its proxies to walk into Rojava without losing the fighting force of the YPG/YPJ, and immediately begin an insurgency. That might be smarter than a doomed final stand, but who knows.
Your silence is the echo of the bombs—a solidarity demonstration in Milan, Italy.
Looking Forward
Personally, I want to see the Syrian civil war end, and for Iraq to somehow be spared another cycle of war in the near future. I want to see ISIS prevented from regenerating its root system and preparing for a new round of violence. That doesn’t mean intensifying the ways that this part of the world is policed—it means fostering local solutions to the question of how different people and populations can coexist, and how they can defend themselves from groups like Daesh. This is part of what people have been trying to do in Rojava, and that is one of the reasons that Trump and Erdoğan find the experiment here so threatening. In the end, the existence of groups like ISIS makes their authority look preferable by comparison, whereas participatory horizontal multi-ethnic projects show just how oppressive their model is.
Overthrowing Assad by military means is a dead project—or, at least, the things that would have to happen to make it plausible again in the near future are even more horrifying than the regime is. I hope that somehow, someday, there can be some kind of settlement between the regime and YPG/YPJ, and the regime and the rebels in Idlib, and everyone else who has been suffering here. If capitalism and state tyranny are the problem, this kind of civil war is not the solution, although it seems likely that what has happened in Syria will happen elsewhere in the world as the crises generated by capitalism, state power, and ethnic conflicts put people at odds.
What can you do, reading this in some safer and stabler part of the world?
First, you can spread the word that Trump’s decision is neither a way to bring peace to Syria nor confirmation that ISIS has been defeated. You can tell other people what I have told you about how the situation looks from here, in case I am not able to do so myself.
Second, in the event of a Turkish invasion, you can use every means in your power to discredit and impede the Turkish state, Trump, and the others who paved the way for that outcome. Even if you are not able to stop them—even if you can’t save our lives—you will be part of building the kind of social movements and collective capacity that will be necessary to save others’ lives in the future.
In addition, you can look for ways to get resources to people in this part of the world, who have suffered so much and will continue to suffer as the next act of this tragedy plays out. You can also look for ways to support the Syrian refugees who are scattered across the globe.
Finally, you can think about how we could put better options on the table next time an uprising like the one in Syria breaks out. How can we make sure that governments fall before their reign gives way to the reign of pure force, in which only insurgents backed by other states can gain control? How can we offer other visions of how people can live and meet their needs together, and mobilize the force it will take to implement and defend them on an international basis without need of any state?
These are big questions, but I have faith in you. I have to.
A solidarity demonstration in Germany.
Appendix: Rival Narratives
Drawing on this helpful overview, here is a review of the narratives we often see from different sides in the Syrian civil war:
Loyalist narrative:
Emphasis on how the US and other countries supported and financed rebels for their own geopolitical ends as the main cause for the escalation of the conflict.
The existence of ISIS is mostly attributed to rebel support landing in the wrong hands and more fundamentally as a result of the fallout of the 2003 Iraq war.
Emphasis on links and cooperation between so-called moderate rebels and groups like Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in order to argue they are all part of the same problem.
Varying views on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and its legitimacy. This seems to be different from loyalist to loyalist, with some thinking they are almost as bad as traditional rebels and others seeing them as allies against ISIS and Turkish-supported rebels.
Western, gulf Arab, and rebel narrative:
Emphasis on the Arab spring and how the brutal suppression of (relatively) peaceful protests led to an escalation of the conflict and armed rebellion and eventually full blown civil war.
Existence of ISIS mostly attributed to Assad’s actions. Often claiming how his brutal actions and reliance on sectarian militias created an environment in which ISIS could grow and gain support. Moreover, the point is made that Assad’s military deliberately targeted other rebels more than ISIS, and hence is for a large part to blame for its rise.
Emphasis on how there is a clear distinction between moderate rebels and radicals, and we should separate the two in honest analysis.
Views on SDF ranging from unfriendly to outright hostile. Often coushed in emphasizing cases in which the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the SDF worked together. In milder forms, this narrative criticizes a perceived overreliance on Kurds in majority Arab areas, while still recognizing the legitimacy of the organization in majority Kurdish areas.
Turkish narrative:
The Turkish narrative is basically the same as the previous on most issues, with the important exception that the hostility towards the SDF intensifies to the extreme. Here, the links between the SDF and the PKK are emphasized and the SDF is characterized as an illegitimate terror organization that is a threat to Turkey and suppresses local Arabs.
Western, Kurdish narrative:
The conflict is often seen as a historic opportunity for the Kurdish peoples in their quest for nationhood. Emphasis on how Kurds were discriminated against before the war and how they can take matters into their own hands now.
The existence and expansion of ISIS is mostly blamed on Turkey. Especially Turkey’s passivity during the battle of Kobane is highlighted, along with accusations of direct support of ISIS and importing ISIS oil.
Regarding rebels, the views tend to come closer to that of loyalists. Rebels (in relevant areas, anyway) are seen either as Turkish proxies or as radical lunatics to whom Turkey can turn a blind eye. The line between rebels and ISIS is often blurred, though they aren’t lumped in together to the same extent as in the loyalist narrative.
SDF is seen as one of the only sane and moral armed actors in a battle otherwise characterized by bad versus bad. Both rebel and loyalist atrocities are emphasized to support this point of view.
ISIS and radical Islamist narrative:
The start of the conflict is seen as a great awakening of Muslims against their apostate Alawite overlords. Emphasis on the solidarity of foreign fighters towards their suffering Syrian brethren.
This perspective includes ISIS itself and also Al Qaeda and similar radical groups, who see ISIS as a group that betrayed the jihadi cause.
The rebels are seen as naïve sellouts serving the interests of foreign governments and implementing non-Islamic ideals on their behalf. Emphasis is also put on how rebels negotiate and reach deals with loyalists, only to be betrayed and lose territory.
SDF are seen as atheist apostates on the US payroll. The chief difference with Turkey is perhaps the emphasis on lack of religion rather than connections to the PKK.
There is a monument in Kobane marking the furthest point that the territorial expansion of ISIS reached in Iraq and Syria in 2014 during the battle of Kobane. ISIS took 85 percent of the city; they made it as far as this intersection before being turned around by fierce resistance.
In Hajin, where the last ISIS stronghold is, the American position is way behind the front, in artillery range but out of range of any weapons Daesh has, so they can sit there and pound away without being hit back, while the risks are run by ground troops of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). This is precisely what the Turkish army would do to us if Turkey invades Rojava. ↩
In fact, there are two major parties in Iraqi Kurdistan in addition to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). They each have their own armies and police; they fought an actual civil war once. They do not like each other at all. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Barzani family dynasty, is more closely aligned with Turkey and the US; it was more closely aligned with Saddam Hussein before. They have bad relations with the administration in Rojava; they are roundly despised here because they basically stood aside and let the catastrophe in Sinjar happen in their own backyard while the PKK scrambled to rush into the breach. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has better relations with Iran, PKK, and the administration here. There is a KDP-related militia called Rojava Peshmerga in Rojava; again, they have a poor reputation because they’ve spent the whole war doing very little while YPG has died in droves fighting ISIS. All this is simply to say that there is no single Kurdish position; there are reactionary Kurdish groups, too. ↩
Mind you, the Syrian rebels were never homogenous; among them, you can find both an element aligned to Turkey and jihadis and an element aligned more closely with YPG/YPJ. Unfortunately, many of those who were interested in more “democratic” solutions to the situation in Syria were forced to flee the country years ago. ↩
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A local council in the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor announced that its co-head had been assassinated on Saturday.
According to the media center of the Kurdish-backed Deir al-Zor Civil Council, Marwan Fatih was killed by unknown assailants while on the road between the city and Hassakah, to the north.
The legislative body was formed in September with the aim of providing public services and managing the affairs of towns and villages liberated by US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Deir al-Zor Civil Council has over 400 members, not a single member is a Kurd.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) later released a statement that said Fatih had been killed when fired upon by “unknown gunmen from active cells in the east of the Euphrates River… bringing the total number of people killed since August 22, 2018 to 119, in different ways and new targets, in line with previous targets.”
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the killing.
In the past, the Islamic State (IS) and armed groups backed by Turkey have announced that they were responsible for previous assassinations of SDF-affiliated leaders. Many observers have also blamed the Syrian government for such incidents.
The leader’s death comes ten days after the surprise decision of US President Donald Trump to withdraw from Syria amid continued threats by Turkey to launch an invasion over its southern border into areas of Syria east of the Euphrates.
It’s not the first time prominent officials working with councils established by the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) have been targeted.
Prominent tribal leader Bashir Faisal al-Huwaidi was assassinated in a vehicle in Raqqa in early November. IS claimed responsibility for the murder soon thereafter.
On March 15, Omar Aloush, a senior Kurdish official who played a key role with the US on stability efforts in Raqqa, was also assassinated in his home in Tal Abyad.
SDC Co-head Ilham Ahmed told Kurdistan 24 in December that she blamed Turkey for the killing of Aloush. She also claimed that Turkey and Turkish-backed rebels were behind any and all “explosion[s] in Manbij.”
Editing by John J. Catherine
UpdatedDecember 29-2018 06:14 PM
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Turkey ‘determined’ to drive out Kurdish forces from Syria
ISTANBUL — Turkey said Tuesday it is working with the United States to coordinate the withdrawal of American forces but remains “determined” to clear U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters from northeastern Syria.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters that “if Turkey says it will enter, it will,” in comments carried by private DHA news agency.
For weeks, Turkey has been threatening to launch a new offensive against the Kurdish fighters, who partnered with the U.S. to drive the Islamic State group out of much of northern and eastern Syria. Ankara views the Kurdish forces as terrorists because of their links to an insurgent group inside Turkey.
President Donald Trump announced the planned withdrawal of U.S. forces after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this month.
The minister also said Ankara and Washington have agreed to complete a roadmap on the northern Syrian town of Manbij until the U.S. withdraws. Under the June deal, Kurdish forces would leave Manbij, in the western Euphrates valley, but delays have infuriated Turkey.
“It is crucial that the U.S. doesn’t appear as not having kept its promises,” Cavusoglu said.
He argued that Turkey has the “strength to neutralize” IS on its own and criticized France, which has promised to stay in Syria despite the U.S. decision.
Cavusoglu warned it would not benefit France if it was staying in Syria to protect the YPG, the main Kurdish militia in Syria.
Erdogan, speaking to reporters in Ankara, said Turkey was taking into account Trump’s announcement on Syria rather than French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision. The future of the international coalition against IS, which includes Turkey, the U.S. and France, remains unclear.
The Turkish president also announced that a delegation was heading to Moscow and that he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Turkey has been negotiating on behalf of the Syrian opposition with Russia and Iran, which support the Syrian government, as part of efforts to end the nearly 8-year civil war.
Trump announced last week that the U.S. will withdraw all of its 2,000 forces in Syria, a move that will leave control of the oil-rich eastern third of Syria up for grabs. Russia launched its military operation in Syria in 2015 to back its longtime ally President Bashar Assad.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryakov said Tuesday in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency that it would be a “big mistake” to dismantle a hotline that Russia and the U.S. use to prevent potential clashes in Syria, despite the U.S. withdrawal, and said he sees no indications the Americans would do that.
Associated Press writer Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed.
YPG-YPJ INTERNATIONAL MARTYRS (Photo by Chris Scurfield)
An SDF fighter attends the funeral of a colleague killed in the battle for Hajin. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images
Islamic State extremists have withdrawn from their last urban stronghold in Syria after weeks of intensifying clashes with Kurdish-led fighters that have splintered the remnants of the group’s leadership and raised fresh questions about the fate of its founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Isis forces retreated to villages to the east of Hajin in the early hours of Thursday after several days of US airstrikes, which allowed Kurdish proxy forces to sweep into the town on the eastern bank of the Euphrates river. Clashes continued throughout the day, and western observers cautioned that the militants may be attempting to regroup for a counter-assault.
The fall of Hajin comes after the fight against Isis had stalled for several months, weighed down by the increasingly fraught politics of the seven-year war in Syria and its numerous spinoffs. Friction between two of its main protagonists, Turkey and the US, over Washington’s use of Kurdish proxies to lead the fight had been central to the slowdown, which raised fears that Isis was using it to consolidate after many months of withering losses.
The US had been urging Kurdish leaders to send experienced members to lead its proxy force in Hajin against a diehard contingent of around 2,500 Isis veterans of battles in Iraq and Syria, which have stripped the group of cross-border lands it once controlled and forced it to revert to guerrilla warfare. The US presidential envoy in the fight against Isis, Brett McGurk, said this week that nearly every Isis member in Hajin is thought to have access to a suicide vest.
Senior Isis leaders were believed to have sought refuge in Hajin over the summer, and Baghdadi is understood to have spent some time in the town since it became Isis’s de facto capital in late 2017. The surrounding province of Deir Ez-Zor was pivotal to the rise of Isis. Nearly 60% of the group’s revenues came from five nearby oil fields that were repeatedly attacked by US jets and quickly brought back online.
The province was an essential hub for Baghdadi’s couriers, drivers and intermediaries as the oil trade surged from 2014-15, and was seen as one of the few places left in a crumbling caliphate where Isis fighters could lay low.
Baghdadi is thought to have remained far from the fight in recent months, and western intelligence officials believe the fugitive leader to be in the northern half of Anbar province in neighbouring Iraq. Iraqi officials, however, suspect their quarry may have have been in Hajin more recently. “Most of the senior Isis leaders are based in Hajin,” said one senior official. “Moreover, the confessions of arrested Isis members all point to Baghdadi being there with his family.”
Isis’s leadership structure has collapsed over the past two years, leaving local leaders and sleeper cells to act without higher instruction. In north-eastern Syria, the focal point of the fight against the organisation, there has been aincrease in attacks in areas that had been cleared by the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), particularly the city of Raqqa, which had been one of two main hubs of power, Mosul in Iraq being the other.
The durability of the US-Kurdish alliance had been increasingly challenged since earlier this year, when the SDF suspended operations against Isis in eastern Syria as Turkey launched an operation to oust Kurdish forces from near its border in the country’s north-west.
The SDF has drawn heavily from local Arab populations to anchor the fight against Isis, but its leaders come from the ranks of senior Kurdish officials. As the fight against Isis winds down, the Kurds of Syria’s north-east have been weighing their options. A pledge of ongoing US patronage and weapons has kept the SDF in the fight in Hajin, but doubts about Washington’s future intentions and loyalties are increasingly testing the alliance.
Turkey’s announcement on Wednesday that it intends to send its military into north-eastern Syria poses a further challenge to the US-Kurdish pact. The US has described the planned move as unacceptable, but Ankara says it will defy the wishes of its Nato ally and will soon launch an operation aimed at pushing Kurdish groups allied to insurgents inside Turkey deeper into Syria.
A spillover from the fight in Syria is also believed to have energised an Isis revival in Kirkuk and Salaheddin in Iraq, local officials say. The number of assassinations and roadside bombs, trademarks of earlier insurgencies, have increased sharply in recent months.
KCK: The US decision is part of the international plot
KCK said: “This unwarranted decision by the US is a continuation of the international plot against Leader Apo. Our people and forces of democracy must rise up at once against the attack that is part of the plot against Lead
ANF
BEHDINAN
Thursday, 8 Nov 2018, 15:30
Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council Co-presidency protested the US issuing warrants for PKK founders and administrators KCK Executive Council Co-chair Cemil Bayik and PKK Executive Committee Members Duran Kalkan and Murat Karayilan, saying: “Our people and forces of democracy must rise up at once against the attack that is part of the plot against Leader Apo. The stance against this attack must be combined with the fight for Leader Apo’s freedom and the fight against the plot, and this multi-faceted struggle must be continued everywhere the Kurds live together with all forces of democracy.”
KCK Executive Council Co-presidency issued a written statement and said:
“The US has issued warrants for PKK founders and Kurdish Freedom Movement’s leading cadres, PKK, KCK and HPG administrators comrades Cemil Bayik, Duran Kalkan and Murat Karayilan with baseless excuses, and put rewards on them. This hostile approach against our Freedom Movement and the decisions that were made have no justification in politics, society, ethics, conscience, or universal law. This is an utterly ideological and political decision. This decision that could only be made with a hostile approach constitutes an attack against not just the PKK, KCK or HPG, but all Kurdish people fighting for freedom and democracy.
THE DECISION IS A CONTINUATION OF THE PLOT
Without a doubt, the states who implement the Kurdish genocide against Leader Apo, PKK and the Kurdish Freedom Movement they lead have been hostile since the beginning along with their international supporters, and have wanted to disband the movement through attacks. This attack has the same goals as the plot against Leader Apo launched on October 9, 1998 and ended with his imprisonment in Imrali on February 15, 1999. This unwarranted decision by the US is a part and a continuation of the plot against Leader Apo. There is a direct connection between this decision and the 1999 plot being foiled for the most part by Leader Apo’s power of great thought and our freedom struggle led by the PKK, and the Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom achieving a political power that affects Middle Eastern politics greatly.
On the other hand, the Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom has affected the Middle Eastern peoples’ struggle for freedom and democracy, and opened a new frontier for the peoples of the world in their struggle for freedom and democracy. Leader Apo’s understanding of democratic nation and democratic confederal social governance as an alternative to the state becomes an alternative for the whole world for the solution of political, social and economic issues. This decision being made at a time when trade unions in the UK, the birthplace of unionism, and democratic forces, writers and intellectuals throughout the world launch a campaign for the safety, health and freedom of Leader Apo; when the Kurdish people and forces of democracy fight for the freedom of Leader Apo with the slogan ‘Let’s break the isolation, demolish fascism and free Kurdistan’ is an approach geared towards stopping these developments as well.
Considering the timing of this announcement that constitutes a hostile attack against our Freedom Movement, and Leader Apo’s influence and PKK’s role in political developments in the Middle East as a whole, this attitude is a plot against the Freedom Movement and an immoral attack against the Kurdish people. The Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom has developed everywhere and Kurds have come very close to achieving a free and democratic life. This plot against the PKK means supporting the genocidal colonialist powers’ hegemony over Kurds through pushing back our freedom movement.
In all the developments in Kurdistan in the last 40 years, the PKK has had a determining role. This 40 year long struggle has a role in the presence and political influence of Kurdish political powers who oppose the PKK as well. It is impossible to make an analysis without considering the PKK’s role in all national, political and social developments in all parts of Kurdistan. Anti-Kurdish sentiment manifesting most frequently as an animosity against Leader Apo and the PKK is an expression of this reality.
PKK CARRIED OUT THE GREATEST RESISTANCE AGAINST ISIS ATTACKS
The issue most prominent in Middle Eastern and world politics in recent years has been ISIS attacks. The PKK has prevented a genocide in Shengal against Yazidis, who have the most ancient faith and culture of humanity, presenting a lesson in ethics and saving international and especially regional political powers from a heavy burden. It was the HPG-YJA Star guerrillas who held the Hewler gate during the ISIS attack and stopped ISIS from entering Hewler. It was again the HPG-YJA Star guerrillas along with the Peshmarga who removed the ISIS attacks and threats in Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah. The HPG-YJA Star guerrillas who fought valiantly alongside YPG/YPJ fighters had a great role in the victory for the Kobanê resistance, supported by all peoples of the world and forces of democracy. The PKK didn’t just fight against ISIS, but took very important steps in creating a new Middle East based on the fraternity of Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs, Armenians, Circassians, Persians and Turks with the understanding of democratic nation.
The whole world knows that the YPG/YPJ fighters, who say they fight with Leader Apo’s line in mind, have been received in the French palaces, and representatives of the Rojava Revolution have been received in the US foreign relations halls. Throughout these years, the ones whose relationship with ISIS was most questioned and talked about have been Tayyip Erdogan and his government. Now the US putting rewards on administrators of PKK, KCK and HPG, who have paid a heavy price in the fight against ISIS, means support for Tayyip Erdogan’s and the AKP’s anti-Kurdish and anti-democracy policies. Those fighting against ISIS are attempted to be disbanded and those with a relationship with ISIS are being rewarded.
OUR PEOPLE AND FORCES OF DEMOCRACY MUST RISE UP AT ONCE
The peoples of the world and forces of democracy know that Leader Apo is the leader of freedom on the women’s freedom line, PKK is the leader of the struggle for freedom, and HPG is the guerrilla force fighting the struggle for freedom for the Kurdish people who are one of the most ancient peoples in history. The US can’t overturn this reality with ideological and political motives and unwarranted excuses. The US administration can’t make the American people, who they get their legitimacy from, believe these ugly lies. This approach and decision by the US has been made on political and financial interests, and made them into accomplices for genocidal and colonialist powers. Our people and the forces of democracy expected an approach that would show self-criticism for the 1999 plot against Leader Apo from the US, but they have taken on such an approach today, which will be put on trial by the peoples today and history tomorrow.
In the face of this unwarranted and immoral decision, the Kurdish people, the peoples of the Middle East and forces of democracy throughout the world can’t be expected to stay silent. At this point in time when people demand Leader Apo’s freedom and discuss removing the PKK from the terrorist organizations list in Europe, our people and the forces of democracy must take on a stand, and a fight against this attack on our comrades Duran Kalkan, Cemil Bayik and Murat Karayilan. Our people and all forces o democracy must rise up at once against this attack that took place as part of the plot against Leader Apo. The stance against this attack must be combined with the fight for Leader Apo’s freedom and the fight against the plot, and this multi-faceted struggle must be continued everywhere the Kurds live together with all forces of democracy. It must be put forth with great force that there will be a fight against these attacks geared towards disbanding the Freedom Movement in the person of these comrades.”
Syria Kurds vow to fight off new Turkish attacks near Kobane
YPJ units Photo: Kurdishstruggle/Creative Commons
SYRIAN Kurds vowed to defend their lands as Turkey launched a new set of attacks on the border towns of Kobane and Tall Abyad today.
Members of the Women’s Union gathered at a stadium in the city of Manbij where they condemned the latest invasion by the Turkish state and highlighted the silence from the international community.
Banners declared: “Young people of Manbij will not accept the Ottoman invasion” as those gathered heard a statement read by youth activist Nesrin Berkel.
“The peoples of Syria will never be silent against the attacks and will defend their lands,” she promised.
Manbij Women’s Council spokeswoman Nadia Milhim called for resistance against the Turkish invasion and to escalate the struggle for the liberation of Afrin, Jarablus and al-Bab.
“The unity of the peoples of Syria will defeat Turkey and reject the attacks,” she said.
The latest offensive began on October 27, soon after an international summit was convened in Istanbul between Russia, France, Germany and Turkey to discuss the future of Syria.
It forced the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose main component is the largely Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) to pause the fight against Isis in Deir ez-Zor in order to defend the towns of Kobane and Tall Abyad from the Turkish invasion.
An SDF statement said: “We call on the international community to condemn the Turkish provocations in the safe areas in Syria, and we demand our partners in the International Coalition show a clear attitude and stop Turkey from launching attacks on the region.”
Turkey insists that the SDF is a terrorist organisation linked to the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and claim that operations are necessary to secure its borders.
Turkish forces, allied with jihadists from the Free Syrian Army, invaded the peaceful city of Afrin in northern Syria in January.
Thousands of Kurds fled their homes amid allegations of chemical attacks and extrajudicial killings, along with the destruction of Kurdish statues and cultural icons.
The international community appeared to support the invasion and subsequent occupation by Nato’s second-largest army, allowing Turkish forces to act with impunity.
Syrian Democratic Council co-chair Emina Umer today paid tribute to six-year old Sara Rifat who was killed after she was shot in the head during a Turkish army attack on Tall Abyad.
“The invading Turkish state attacks against northern Syria target women and children.
“She has been martyred as the result of the agreements among foreign states that want to break the will of the Syrian peoples.”
Syria: Turkey must stop serious violations by allied groups and its own forces in Afrin
Turkish forces are giving Syrian armed groups free rein to commit serious human rights abuses against civilians in the northern city of Afrin, Amnesty International said today, following an in-depth investigation into life under the Turkish military occupation.
Research released today reveals that residents in Afrin are enduring a wide range of violations, mostly at the hands of Syrian armed groups that have been equipped and armed by Turkey. These violations include arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and confiscation of property and looting to which Turkey’s armed forces have turned a blind eye. Some of these groups, and Turkish armed forces themselves, also have taken over schools, disrupting the education of thousands of children.
“Turkey’s military offensive and occupation have exacerbated the suffering of Afrin residents, who have already endured years of bloody conflict. We heard appalling stories of people being detained, tortured or forcibly disappeared by Syrian armed groups, who continue to wreak havoc on civilians, unchecked by Turkish forces,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Middle East Research Director.
“Turkey is the occupying power in Afrin, and therefore is responsible for the welfare of the civilian population and maintaining law and order. So far, its armed forces have failed utterly in these duties. It cannot evade responsibility by using Syrian armed groups to carry out its dirty work. Without further delay, Turkey must end violations by pro-Turkish armed groups, hold perpetrators accountable, and commit to helping Afrin residents rebuild their lives.”
In January 2018, Turkey and allied Syrian armed groups launched a military offensive against the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the military force of the autonomous administration led by the Syrian Kurd Democratic Union Party (PYD). Three months later, Turkey and its allied forces seized control of Afrin and its surrounding areas, forcibly displacing thousands of people who fled and sought safety in the nearby al-Shahba region where they are now living in dire conditions.
According to several residents in Afrin, Turkey’s armed forces have a significant presence in the centre of the city, and in several surrounding villages. On 1 July, Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that its armed forces will stay in Afrin to continue working on the development of the area.
Between May and July 2018 Amnesty International interviewed 32 people, some of whom were still living in Afrin and others who had fled to other countries or different areas of Syria. Interviewees named pro-Turkey armed groups including Ferqa 55, Jabha al-Shamiye, Faylaq al-Sham, Sultan Mourad, and Ahrar al-Sharqiye, as responsible for serious human rights violations.
On 16 July, Amnesty International communicated to the Turkish government a summary of its preliminary findings, requesting a response. On 25 July, the Turkish government responded questioning impartiality referring to the use of terminology such as ‘al-Shahba region’ and ‘autonomous administration’ without providing a concrete response to the findings.
Pro-Turkey forces responsible for arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances
Amnesty International interviewed several residents and internally displaced people who reported that armed groups had arbitrarily detained civilians for ransom, as punishment for asking to reclaim their property, or on baseless accusations of affiliation to the PYD or YPG. Local sources told Amnesty International of at least 86 instances of arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearance.
A woman displaced from Afrin told Amnesty International that her uncle had been taken away by members of a pro-Turkey armed group after he had returned to his village three months earlier. She said: “We don’t know where he is. He was head of ‘Komine’ [the local committee]. He is not affiliated with the PYD or YPG. He went back to Afrin because he was afraid he would lose his house. He stayed with his wife in another house because our village became a military base for the Turkish forces. One night he decided to ask the armed groups to take him to check on his home. The armed group escorted him to his house, but he hasn’t returned since then. They wouldn’t tell his wife where they took him.”
Two former detainees Amnesty International interviewed said they had been held by Sultan Mourad and accused of being affiliated with the YPG. They told Amnesty International they had seen journalists, teachers, engineers, activists, as well as former employees of the PYD and YPG fighters in the prison in Azaz where they were held.
One said: “I was detained near Afrin for two months. I was transferred to multiple detention facilities including in Maamalou, Damliou, and Baadino, all surrounding villages near Afrin, where I was interrogated by members of two armed groups and Turkey’s armed forces. All of the questions focused on my activities on social media, and accused me of being affiliated with the YPG since I reported on violations committed by Turkey during the military operation.
“I was taken to the al-Ra’i prison in Azaz operated by Sultan Mourad. I wasn’t tortured, but I saw men being beaten in front of me by members of Sultan Mourad just for fun, and at night the sound of men screaming echoed through the building. I was released without seeing a judge. I thought I would never make it out of there.”
Pro-Turkey forces responsible for property confiscation
Since March 2018, when Turkey and allied armed groups seized control of Afrin, hundreds of people have been returning to the city by foot through a mountainous route, as the YPG has blocked the official routes into the city, deliberately preventing displaced people from returning to Afrin. Many of those who managed to return found that their properties had been confiscated and their possessions stolen by armed groups allied with Turkey.
Ten people told Amnesty International that Syrian armed groups had confiscated properties and shops in Afrin. Displaced residents said they were informed by their relatives and neighbours that their homes were either being used by the pro-Turkey armed groups as military headquarters, or occupied by displaced families from Eastern Ghouta and Homs.
One teacher displaced in a camp in the al-Shahba region told Amnesty International that his house in Jenderes had been confiscated by Faylaq al-Sham. He said: “My neighbour told me that my home was confiscated. He sent me images that clearly show the name of Faylaq al-Sham written on the wall of the entrance door.”
Amnesty International also interviewed three displaced residents who reported that armed groups had confiscated their shops. A man and his son, a graphic designer, who owned three shops in Afrin said a relative had told them their home had been confiscated by the armed group called Ferqa 55. They also received pictures showing one of their shops converted into a butcher shop by a family from Eastern Ghouta. An owner of a supermarket in a village near Afrin told Amnesty International that a relative had told him recently that his supermarket was first looted, and was now being run by family from Eastern Ghouta.
One woman told Amnesty International: “The families from Ghouta are not to be blamed. They have been displaced like us, and are maybe in an even worse situation than us.”
Pro-Turkey forces responsible for looting of homes and businesses
Twelve people told Amnesty International they had witnessed or been victims of looting. Several displaced people were told by their relatives that their home had either been completely looted or were missing expensive appliances such as their TV sets, computers, washing machines or refrigerators.
In April 2018, a representative of the military court claimed in a media interview that there had been looting incidents during the military operation, by both armed members and civilians, but that the court had begun to return the belongings to their owners. The court representative explained that, in coordination with the military police in Azaz and Turkey’s armed forces, the individuals responsible for the looting had been arrested and referred to court. But one person who returned to Afrin in May told Amnesty International: “I went to my parents’ home and it was empty. They stole every piece of furniture, appliances, and everything else. The neighbours saw the Free Syrian Army packing all the furniture in trucks. There are at least four armed groups in control of the village, so they don’t know which one was responsible.”
A resident from Afrin who sought refuge in Germany told Amnesty International: “I have five apartments in Afrin city and a commercial shop. My friend told me that two of my homes are now occupied by displaced families. I managed to get the phone number of two families, one from Harasta and another from Eastern Ghouta. I called them to ask them to take care of the house but they told me that the house was already looted when they moved in. I had just renovated the house. My problem is not with the families living in the house, but with the armed groups.”
“All parties to Syria’s conflict, including the YPG, Turkey’s armed forces and local armed groups, should facilitate the safe and voluntary return of people to Afrin”, said Lynn Maalouf.
“As the occupying power, Turkey must provide full reparation to those whose homes have been confiscated, destroyed, or looted by security forces or by their allies. It is Turkey’s duty to ensure that displaced civilians are able to return to their homes in Afrin and are afforded restitution, or where this is not possible, compensation.”
Turkey and armed groups responsible for the military use of schools
Since January 2018, access to education has been nearly impossible for people in Afrin. Residents told Amnesty International that since March, children had been able to access only one school in Afrin city, while Afrin University has been completely shut down after it was destroyed and looted. According to former teachers displaced to the al-Shahba region, Turkish forces, alongside allied Syrian armed groups, are using Amir Ghabari School in Afrin as military headquarters. Amnesty International reviewed satellite imagery from 20 April 2018 showing several armoured vehicles and a recently built-up structure. These vehicles and structure were not present before Turkish forces and armed groups gained control of Afrin on 18 March 2018.
According to local media sources and residents, Turkish forces and the armed groups converted the public school in Shara to a police headquarters in June 2018. Turkish forces are also using another school in Jenderes as a field hospital, according to residents.
“Under international humanitarian law, and particularly in situations of occupation, schools benefit from special protection and the education of children must be provided for. We urge Turkey to take all necessary measures to ensure that children are able to return to school and that the university is promptly rehabilitated and reopened as soon as possible”, said Lynn Maalouf.
Violations by the Syrian government and YPG
Following the offensive in January 2018, thousands of people fled to the nearby al-Shahba region. At least 140,000 people are now living in camps or damaged houses without proper access to services, especially medical care. The injured and chronically ill have to wait for government permission to be allowed access into Aleppo city, the nearest place where they can receive adequate medical care.
The Syrian government has also prevented any movement from the al-Shahba region to other parts of Syria that enjoy better living conditions. This has forced many people struggling to survive to pay large amounts of money to smugglers to counter these movement restrictions.
Furthermore, the YPG has blocked the roads from the al-Shahba region to Afrin, deliberately preventing displaced people from returning to their homes. Since the end of the military operation in March, hundreds have returned to Afrin after walking through a long and arduous mountain route.
A woman who returned to Afrin in early April told Amnesty International: “My aunt, who is 60 years old and suffered from a severe type of diabetes and other health conditions, died on the way back to Afrin from severe dehydration. The YPG didn’t let us take our cars through the official road so we walked for around five hours. She ran out of water halfway through. Her daughter went to find a spring to get her water but she didn’t make it back on time.”
According to several people, including members of the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Syrian government has restricted the medical evacuation of sick and wounded civilians from the al-Shahba region to Aleppo. The Kurdish Red Crescent and medical staff told Amnesty International that there is only one hospital and two clinics providing basic medical care and medicine in the al-Shahba region. They said that they lack both the medical expertise and equipment to perform surgeries or treat chronic diseases.
At the time of writing, around 300 people suffering from chronic diseases and serious injuries had been waiting for their medical evacuation to be approved by the Syrian government. Since mid-March, only 50 people have been allowed to travel to the national hospital in Aleppo for treatment.
“The Syrian government and YPG are exacerbating the suffering of people who have been displaced from Afrin, by trapping them in the al-Shahba region for no apparent reason and depriving them of adequate access to education, food and medical care. People, especially the sick and the injured, should be allowed immediate safe passage to wherever they wish to go,” said Lynn Maalouf.
“We are calling on Syria and the YPG to respect the freedom of movement of civilians, and to facilitate the safe and voluntary return of the displaced. Syrian authorities must expedite the medical evacuation of all sick and wounded who cannot receive adequate treatment in the al-Shahba region.”
Şehîd Şahîn Qereçox, known as Waka to his many friends, was sadly martyred in the fight against Daesh in Hajin on 7th October. He had been serving in the YPG, fighting for the revolution in Rojava for 4 months. For as long as I’d known him he was a loving comrade and a true revolutionary. I’m still struggling to find the words to describe him – he was so thoughtful and creative he defied simple generalisation. Whatever I write will merely scratch the surface of what he meant to me and so many people.
I will never forget his brave actions and efforts fighting for a world he knew was possible. One free from oppression, patriarchy and ecocide where people live cooperatively in the spirit of mutual aid instead of being made atomised and afraid by capitalism. He was always willing to risk repression or police violence defending what he believed in. In Hambacher Forest, Germany, he never hesitated putting himself in harm’s way to stop the exploitation and destruction of the earth. In Pont Valley, England, his creativity and hard work put fire in a campaign to defend communities and wildlife from opencast coal mining. Şahîn’s resourcefulness made him a valuable member of every community he was in. He was often hard at work building structures, cooking and just making the whole space more welcoming for everyone to enjoy themselves. He always brought his charming wit to every conversation and you could learn a lot from what he had to say.
His temperament was never aggressive, nor was he keen on physical confrontation and initially it was a surprise to hear he wanted to fight with the YPG. But actually, thinking about his many other brave exploits, it shouldn’t at all have been a surprise that he would fight for what he believed in this way. His unwavering courage and self-discipline without falling into macho behaviours is one of the many things for which I admired him.
[9/10 12:51] Botan Siria: This was one of the things that made him a true revolutionary – he knew a revolution isn’t just something you make or build, it’s something you do and it’s a part of who you are. Everything he did was very consciously and unapologetically political. He never shied away from criticising his own behaviour or that of his comrades. He wanted to make the most of every day of his life and any spare moment was spent learning a language, training, reading and sharing new ideas. A week or so before he died he was made co-commander of the YPG International Tabur and he was steadfastedly motivated in training not only everyone’s physical condition, but also building the revolutionary culture in the unit.
One treasured memory I have of him before he came to Rojava was when we were hitchhiking together in Europe. I remember no matter who gave us a lift he would immediately engage with them in conversation as if they were an old friend. He was always keen to talk about his ideas and never felt the need to be dishonest about his beliefs. His disarming friendliness and honesty left everyone we encountered on that journey fond of him, even if they had met him all too briefly.
I would like to send this message in memory of a true heval. A land defender, hunt saboteur, anarchist, expert hitchhiker & dumpster diver, revolutionary, friend, and a beautiful comrade. I only regret I didn’t tell him all this to his face, but the fight for freedom goes on and I will do so in his memory, inspired by everything he did and everything he taught me.
The battle of Idlib Province in Syria is decisive and crucial for the future of Rojava
By: Zaher Baher
05 Sep 2018
“We are at the final stage of solving the crisis in Syria and liberating whole territory from terrorism”, stated Walid al-Moualem, Syria’s foreign minister when he met Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, in Moscow.
The Assad Regime and its allies are preparing themselves for the upcoming battle for Idlib. The military launch might start this month, September, or the beginning of October. The war will likely bring victory to Assad and catastrophe to the 2 million citizens of Idlib where 1.6 million are already in need of humanitarian aid.
Idlib, near Aleppo, Hama and Homs, is a stronghold of over 60,000 anti-regime rebels and over 10,000 jihadists. To justify attacking Idlib, Assad often claims the province is full of terrorists.
Although the battle of Idlib looks rather small with any parties like the US, Russia, Turkey and Assad and their other allies’ involvement directly or indirectly, it will, no doubt, be a big battle. Each of these parties has their own stake in Idlib and the region. Assad is trying to control the whole country by defeating opposition rebels and terrorist groups. He also wants an open hand over the Kurdish in Rojava either to suppress or negotiate with them on his own terms and conditions. Turkey, which has supported anti-Assad forces and terrorist groups throughout the war for many reasons, has its own interests too. The US and Russia have been the major powers in the region and are arch enemies. Their intervention and involvement in Syria only serves their own interests economically, politically and financially and protects the power of their friends in the region.
As for Rojava’s situation, its future within the Idlib battle scenario is quite complicated. In my opinion, Rojava’s position has been weak since Jul 2015 when Erdogan launched a brutal attack on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) forcing them to become involved in war. On the other hand, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) has been aligned with the US in the war against Islamic State (IS), and has committed many deadly mistakes mentioned in my previous article. Please see the link below:
The battle of Idlib will happen sooner or later. It will be decisive and crucial for the major powers and their allies in the region and also for Rojava. At the moment, US opposes the attack because it would lead to a “humanitarian catastrophe “. The White House warned on Tuesday 04/09 that the US and its allies would respond “swiftly and appropriately” if Assad used chemical weapons. The question here is why the US and its allies were not concerned about a “humanitarian catastrophe” when Turkey invaded Afrin and massacred hundreds of innocent people? In Idlib,the US is probably concerned with defeating the terrorist groups rather than innocent people because they want the game to last longer to achieve completely what they planned in the first place.
Rojava and its self-rule administration and the SDF cannot be ignored during the attack on Idlib and after the battle as well. It cannot be left as it is. The Rojava question and its future must be resolved either way. Rojava is facing many possible scenarios. If Assad prevails in this battle, as commonly predicted, the position of the Kurdish in Rojava will be weaker. Assad will be in a very strong position, securing his hold on power for a while. In this situation, he can impose his terms and conditions on the PYD and SDF while they are in a weak position. There is also the possibility of the SDF joining Assad’s forces for the battle of Idlib while the PYD is negotiating with the regime. As we can see, the PYD and SDF are in a very complicated situation. The SDF may join Assad’s forces against the rebels; an action which is opposed to US interests. In this circumstances the PYD and SDF might be abandoned by the US which, in the near future, may encourage a Turkish attack on Rojava or, at least, Turkey may try to occupy the towns on its border currently under control of the SDF.
If Assad fails to defeat the rebels in Idlib, it won’t be in the interest of Rojava either, because Assad’s defeat will also be a Turkish victory who will then be in a better position to attack Rojava as happened to Afrin.
However, whatever the outcome of Idlib’s battle, it will be critical for Rojava as its future is tied to the battles between the forces mentioned above. The situation may become so complicated in Rojava that it will become difficult for the Kurdish to maintain their principal aim of Democratic Confederalism.
What keeps Rojava alive is the continuing war with Isis and other terrorist groups and, also, the economic embargo imposed by regional powers. Saying this does not mean that Rojava’s movement will collapse. In my opinion, the Kurdish have proved themselves and resolved many questions positively so they cannot be ignored or marginalized by any sides of the major powers and Assad’s regime I believe that, in the end, there might be some compromise between the US and Russia over Syria and its regime. The power struggle between them and their allies to reach their own aims forces Assad, or a future government in Syria, to offer cultural autonomy and some cultural rights. These rights would be far short of building Democratic Confederalism.
Zaherbaher.com
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KCK STATEMENT ON MARTYRDOM OF ZEKI SHENGALI
To Our Peoples and the Public Opinion
Zeki Şengali (İsmail Özden), the revered Mâm Zeki of the Yazidis, our comrade and the 35-years-long cadre of our Freedom Movement, was assassinated by the Turkish state on August 15, 2018, in Sinjar, Iraq. Aided by some local collaborators, the Turkish fighter jets attacked the vehicle carrying him; and he fell martyr as a result. As we pay tribute to our martyr comrade, a member of KCK Executive Council, we take the oath to substantiate his aspirations to Free Kurdistan and Free Êzidîxan(Sinjar).
The attack against our distinguished comrade, the revered Mâm Zeki of the Yazidis is, in fact, a genocidal attack against the Yazidis. It is a continuation of ISIL’s genocide against the Yazidis on August 3, 2014. Bu launching this air raid, the greatest accomplice to the August 3, 2014 Sinjar massacre, known as 74th Ferman, has revealed itself. It has once again been proved that the Turkish state has been the main driving force, abettor, and prompter behind the 3 August massacre in Sinjar.
According to the information from Sinjar, there are claims that the KDP and pro-Iraq circles have connived to this assassination attack. It is worth noting that this attack happened after the visit by Iraqi PM, Haydar Abadi, to Ankara. Mâm Zeki Şengali has represented the Yazidis in his many meetings with the Iraqi officials. This is a fact that necessitates the Iraqi government to make a statement on this assassination attempt and attack on Sinjar. The Iraqi government had previously stated its opposition to any attack on Sinjar. Have they now reached an agreement with Turkey and given it the permission to attack? The public opinion and the Yazidis are expecting a statement from the Iraqi officials. If the Iraqi government and the KDP have no ties with this attack, they have to state it publicly and condemn the attack. The Yazidis have risen up everywhere. While staging protests against the genocidal policies of the Turkish state, the Yezidi community are expecting clarifications from the Iraqi officials and the KDP authorities.
The Turkish state had launched air raids against Sinjar. Iraq, US and the KDP are responsible for any violation of Iraqi air space. They let the Turkish jets bomb Sinjar. These bombing happen because these forces don’t oppose it, even approve it. Those who failed to deter the ISIL genocidal attack on Sinjar are accomplices to the last attack. If they don’t want abetting further genocidal attacks on Sinjar they have to immediately close the Iraqi airspace to Turkish fighter jets.
The only way to protect the Yazidis from further massacres is the establishment of the democratic self-administration of Sinjar and the recognition of this self-administration by Iraq and international forces. The August 3, 2014 ISIL attack on Sinjar has revealed that there are no other ways to save the Yazidis from genocide.
It is publically known that the forces who protected the Yazidis against ISIS’ genocidal attack were HPG-YJA Star and YPG/YPJ guerrillas. Any denial of this fact is socially and politically immoral. Yazidis were saved from genocide in Sinjar, with the guerrilla defending them, and they have since built their autonomous life and wish to secure themselves against genocidal attacks. That is why they have started building institutions for autonomy on the one hand, and formed their self-defense forces, YBŞ and YJŞ, on the other hand. After the YBŞ/YJŞ were founded, the guerrillas withdrew from Sinjar stating that ‘we are ready to defend Sinjar in case of any other attack’. The latest attack happened after the guerrillas’ withdrawal, exposing the genocidal policies of the Turkish state against the Yazidi people. By attacking Sinjar they want to follow through the Yazidi genocide they have long committed in Bakur (North) Kurdistan. Attacking the self-defense and autonomy of Yazidis is a direct genocidal crime.
Mâm Zeki headed towards Sinjar immediately after ISIS attacked there. He arrived there in a very short time and spearheaded the Yazidis’ efforts to hold on to Sinjar and build up a self-administration there. He worked round-the-clock to organize Yazidis, ensure their stay in Sinjar and create a self-administration for Sinjar. His efforts won the hearts of the Yazidis and he soon become their Mâm Zeki. The Yazidi people will never forget their Mâm Zeki, and will certainly substantiate his aspirations to an autonomous Ezîdxan.
Aware of the genocidal aims of this attack, the Yazidis have risen up everywhere; for an attack against the leader of a people is a genocidal act. Waging a 35-years-long struggle for the rights of the Yazidi people, Comrade Zeki had become the leader of the Yazidis. In this sense, we call on all Yazidis and the Kurdish people to protest this attack, rise up against the genocidal attacks on the Yazidis and defend and defend the self-administration of Êzîdxan. Mâm Zeki’s aspirations have turned into a goal for all Yazidis. We call on all Yazidis all over the world stand in solidarity with the Sinjar self-administration structure, join the YBŞ and YJŞ, strengthen their self-defense, stand against all attacks against Sinjar, substantiate Leader Apo and Mâm Zeki’s aspirations to a self-administered Sinjar and get it accepted by everyone.
We would like to reemphasize that the Turkish state, by doing such massacres and assassinations, is heading for a fall. Our Movement and our people will step up their struggle against this genocidal power and will know how to hold them accountable.
Down with the genocidal colonialist Turkish state, the enemy of all the Kurds
Long live the democratic self-administration of Êzidîxan
Salih Muslim, former co-president of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), currently a top official in Rojava Foreign Relations Body, speaks to Kurdistan24 from the Syrian predominantly Kurdish northeastern city of Qamishlo, Rojava, Syria, July 29, 2018. (Photo: Kurdistan24)
QAMISHLO (Kurdistan 24) – The former co-chair of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the ruling party in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), on Sunday revealed several details related to the latest official meeting of the Kurdish-run self-administration delegation with Syrian government officials in Damascus.
In an exclusive interview with Kurdistan 24, Salih Muslim said the meeting with government officials might be followed by another series of meetings to extend talks and include political and military issues.
FIRST OFFICIAL MEETING
Muslim said negotiations in Damascus began following an official invitation by the government.
“The meeting with government officials was to get to know each other and establish confidence, develop reciprocal relations,” he said.
He added that subsequent meetings could help chart a roadmap for Syria’s future and form committees to operate across the country.
“The atmosphere of the first meeting was positive and promising, as they accepted to discuss the notion of a decentralized system,” Muslim noted.
Regarding the committees, Muslim said they would be formed to address the delivery of public services first, before political and military concerns.
“The committees will be linked to central authorities in the region, but not to the government in Damascus. The government will have their own committees,” he said.
Regarding reports that northern and eastern regions would be handed over to the Syrian government, Muslim assured the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) does not have the authority to discuss such matters without referring to the local councils.
SYRIAN GOVERNMENT THREATS
Answering a question on recent Syrian regime threats against the Kurdish administration, Muslim said, “The Syrian regime has always thought it could control the situation by force, like Ghouta and Daraa, but for our region, things are different.”
Muslim said those who attended the meeting on the government side were “top officials.”
“If there are conditions, we are ready to discuss them, but when it comes to threats, of course, this is unacceptable; if we want to find a solution for the whole country, it cannot be discussed under threats,” he further asserted.
TALKS OR NEGOTIATIONS?
Muslim said the initial meeting was just preliminary and introductory talks, but if it comes to legitimate negotiations, a third party should attend.
“We have informed international powers to guarantee a third party is present during any negotiations.”
US STANCE
Regarding any role the US might have played in talks taking place with the government, Muslim said the Kurdish self-administration did not wait for permission from international powers to do so, instead simply informing them.
“We informed all relevant international powers that we were going to meet government officials. It was our decision to accept the government’s invitation, and it’s our responsibility to seek solutions to the crisis,” he said.
“We accepted the invitation to talks with the government because we do believe dialogue is the optimal means to start recovering from the crisis,” Muslim affirmed.
Just as with the Americans, Muslim further added, no other international player expressed reservations about the talks.
“International powers know political decisions are taken by our administration, not by any other party or force, and this is why they will have a positive stance toward our decision,” he stated.
IDLIB OPERATION
On military operations against Turkish-backed militants in Idlib and Afrin, Muslim stressed that “wherever there are terrorists, we ready to fight them, as we fought them in Serikani, Raqqa, and many other parts of Syria.”
He said militant groups in Idlib are not different from those in Afrin.
“Fighting in Idlib or Afrin is our duty and responsibility, and when we fight in Idlib, it will be our decision as we are not tools in the hands of others,” he said.
US-RUSSIAN AGREEMENT
Commenting on the effect of any agreement between the US and Russia on their respective allies in Syria, Muslim said it would not be easy to implement on the ground.
“It’s difficult for the regime, backed by Russia, to change its mind as it still thinks it can win everywhere by force. So, even if the Russians come to an agreement with the Americans, forces on the ground may not change their stances,” he said.
Muslim further commented that Syria could never be as it was before the civil war and that the regime should take that “into consideration.”
“If the regime accepts our vision and project of a decentralized system, and accepts all groups and factions, then our views will be more aligned, and we may actually reach a solution,” he said.
Whether the Syrian regime can take the country’s north by force, Muslim said, “We always say we prefer dialogue, but if the government resorts to violence, we are ready to fight for ourselves and protect our territories.”
KURDISH INTERNAL PROBLEMS
About the Syrian Kurdish National Council (ENKS) which is considered the opposition to the PYD-led administration, Muslim confirmed the door is open for any party to join the self-administration.
ENKS, a part of the Turkey-based Syrian Arab opposition, has been engaged in political disputes with the PYD-led administration of Syria’s Kurdish-held northern areas known as Rojava.
“We accept all forces on the ground to participate in finding a solution, and our delegation to Damascus contained not only Kurds but other factions as well, including Arabs and Syriacs,” he said.
NEW SYRIAN CONSTITUTION
Muslim cautioned that while there are Kurds in government and opposition delegations, and in the committees working on the drafting of a new constitution, whether in Geneva or Sochi, none of the Kurdish members represent the Kurds as an entire group.
“There should be no Kurdish member claiming to represent the Kurds as a whole, and any decision that comes from them would not bind us as well,” he said.
Editing by Nadia Riva
(Interview conducted by Kurdistan 24 office in Qamishlo and Kurdistan 24 Presenter Jamal Batun in Erbil
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Syrian Democratic Council ready for ‘unconditional talks’ with Assad regime
A Syrian child walks past a gun among destroyed buildings in Kobane on May 27, 2018. Photo: Delil Souleiman / AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), a Kurdish-Arab alliance and political wing of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), announced on Sunday it is ready for peace talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
In a statement, the SDC said it wants to resolve the deadly conflict in Syria, now in its eight year, through dialogue and would not “hesitate to agree to unconditional talks” with the Syrian government, as reported by AFP.
Hekmat Habib, head of the SDC, told AFP both the council and the SDF “are serious about opening a door to dialogue” with the Syrian regime.
“With the SDF’s control of 30 percent of Syria, and the regime’s control of swathes of the country, these are the only two forces who can sit at the negotiating table and formulate a solution to the Syrian crisis,” he said.
Kurdish authorities hope to avoid military confrontation and attempt a rapprochement with the Syrian regime.
In an interview with the Kremlin-backed Russia Today (RT) network last month, President Assad said the SDF is “the only problem left in Syria” and threatened to use force if negotiations over Syrian territory proved unsuccessful.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said the regime is holding informal talks with the Kurds, but negotiations have not officially started. Details have not been shared by either side.
The conflict in Syria began after mass protests in March 2011 escalated into a full scale civil war between pro-Syrian regime forces and rebel factions.
The rise of ISIS across Iraq and Syria in 2014 further complicated the situation, causing regional and global powers to be drawn into the conflict.
Kurds in Syria’s northern provinces carved out their own autonomous region of Rojava. They have generally maintained an uneasy truce with Assad over the course of the war.
The US-led anti-ISIS coalition has been working with the SDF to oust the terror group.
Turkey has been a main backer of opposition groups trying to remove Assad from power, while Russia and Iran have been among his main allies.
However, Turkey, Iran and Russia have teamed up to help mediate a peace settlement to end the conflict.
They have failed to negotiate a lasting ceasefire through several rounds of peace talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana, which officially began in December 2016. United Nations-led talks in Geneva have also failed to end the conflict.
SDC chief Habib told AFP all non-Syrian military forces should leave the war-torn country, including roughly 2,000 US troops.
“We are looking forward, in the next phase, to the departure of all military forces from Syria and the return to Syrian-Syrian dialogue,” he added.
More than half a million people have been killed over the course of the war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Around half of all Syrians have been displaced at one time or another, sparking the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
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UN report details large-scale human rights abuses in Afrin under Turkish military control
Turkish military on Sunday completed its 11th round of patrolling in the northern Syrian city of Manbij .
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in a monthly report for June details large-scale human rights abuses in areas under Turkish military control, specifically Syria’s Afrin province, which was wrested from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) by the Turkish military in March.
OHCHR has called on the Turkish government to ensure that rebels under the umbrella of Turkey’s ally the Free Syria Army (FSA) adhere to international humanitarian law, Wladimir van Wilgenburg writes in a report for Kurdistan 24.
“Civilians now living in areas under the control of Turkish forces and affiliated armed groups continue to face hardships, which in some instances may amount to violations of international humanitarian law and violations or abuses of international human rights law,” the OHCHR report said.
Turkish-backed FSA forces and the Turkish army took vast territory in northern Syria during Operation Euphrates Shield (August 2016-March 2017) and Operation Olive Branch (January-March 2018) to prevent the Syrian Kurds from creating an autonomous region.
As a result of these operations and agreements with Russia and Syria, Turkey now controls a large contiguous area from Jarabulus to Idlib. According to the report, the security situation under Turkish-backed rebel control remains volatile, with internal fighting among Turkish-backed groups.
“Sources in Afrin and other areas in northern Aleppo Governorate report to OHCHR that there are high levels of violent crime,” the report says. “With civilians falling victim to robberies, harassment, abductions, and murder. OHCHR continues to receive allegations of discrimination against civilians perceived to hold sympathies or affiliations to Kurdish forces.”
“OHCHR has received reports of lawlessness and rampant criminality committed by armed groups in areas under the control of Turkish forces and armed groups operating under their control in northern Syria,” the report adds.
“Civilians have informed OHCHR that a number of members of armed opposition groups operating in the area are former well-known local criminals, smugglers, or drug dealers.”
Furthermore, OHCHR confirms reports that large-scale looting of private property from houses and shops along with government and military facilities, and seizures of private real estate by fighters from various Turkish-affiliated armed groups took place.
“Large-scale looting is believed to have taken place immediately after each area was taken, although reports continue to be received that looting – particularly of vehicles and agricultural equipment – continues on a daily basis,” the report added.
According to the report, a substantial amount of looted property is believed to have been sold in marketplaces in Azaz, despite claims that the local “police” in Azaz have detained many individuals accused of responsibility for the looting.
Furthermore, the report details the abduction of civilians, which information indicates is often motivated by ransom. “OHCHR has documented at least 11 cases in which civilians including women and children were abducted, some of them later released after paying ransoms ranging between USD 1,000 to 3,000, while the whereabouts of others remain unknown,” the report said.
The report confirms that thousands of fighters, their family members and civilians displaced and evacuated from the Eastern Ghouta, rural Homs, and Hama governorates are now occupying homes of mostly Kurdish civilians who fled violence in Afrin in February and March.
“Many civilians seeking to return to their homes have found them occupied by these fighters and their families, who have refused to vacate them and return them to their rightful owners,” the report said.
OHCHR is concerned that permitting ethnic Arabs to occupy the houses of Kurds who have fled effectively prevents the Kurds from returning to their homes and may be an attempt to change the ethnic composition of the area permanently.
Furthermore, there are reports that civilian property is being confiscated under the pretext that the person had in some way been affiliated with Kurdish forces.
OHCHR also continues to receive complaints that civilians, including women, are taken from their homes or detained at checkpoints, based on accusations of being affiliated to Kurdish forces.
“The whereabouts of a large number of such civilians remain unknown,” the report states.
“As a matter of priority, OHCHR urges the Republic of Turkey to ensure that all armed groups over which it exercises control in Afrin and other areas of Syria strictly adhere to their obligations under international humanitarian law. Furthermore, OHCHR urges all parties to strictly adhere to all applicable rules of IHL in relation to the protection of civilians.”
The report also calls on Turkey and Turkish-backed rebels to ensure that displaced persons are facilitated in returning to their homes in dignity and safety in full compliance with humanitarian principles.
Meanwhile, the Turkish military on Sunday completed its 11th round of patrolling in the northern Syrian city of Manbij as part of a deal with the US to rid the area of the YPG/PKK. In a message posted on its official Twitter account, the Turkish General Staff said both countries’ forces conducted separate coordinated patrols in the area between the Operation Euphrates Shield region and Manbij.
The first patrols by Turkish and US troops in the region began on June 18. The Manbij deal between Turkey and the US focuses on the withdrawal of the PKK-affiliated YPG from the city in order to stabilize the region. Should the Manbij model prove to be a success, Turkey will push for a similar arrangement in eastern Syria.
The ‘Turkification’ policy in Northern Syria goes on
Turkey wants to make its presence a permanent reality in Afrin and the other zones it occupied in Northern Syria.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Sunday, 8 Jul 2018, 15:30
The Turkish state has been seeking to establish a buffer zone in Northern Syria since the beginning of the Syrian war. The presence of Turkmens in Shehba constitutes the basis for this plan.
The Turkish state has been active in the region through operation “Euphrates Shield” and on 24 August 2014 it has received Jarablus from DAESH mercenaries.
After the occupation of Jarablus, the Turkish state has provided extensive military support to DAESH mercenaries to prevent the SDF (the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces) forces from liberating Raqqa.
The Turkish state occupied centers such as Jarablus, al-Bab, Azaz and Cobanbey in cooperation with mercenaries belonging to DAESH and al-Nusra while maintaining the policy of Syrian regime forces in this region.
The Turkish state forced the Kurdish and Arab peoples in the region to migrate towards eastern Euphrates and Aleppo.
After the Turkish state forced the Kurdish and Arab families in the region to migrate, Turkmens from different regions of Iraq and Syria began to settle in the now semi-empty Kurdish and Arab cities. The Turkish state carried out massacres and killed thousands of people as well as seizing their goods and houses.
The Turkish state quickly brought these cities and areas under its control and implemented new policies aimed at making its presence permanent.
The Turkish state hanged photographs of the soldiers killed in the conflict at the entrance of the cities, while posters of Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Turkish flags were hanged in all the institutions in the cities.
The city of Afrin was brutally assaulted by the Turkish regime. Attacks extended to Shehba Canton as well. The Turkish state established stations in Idlib appointing “responsible” officials and it also put up many observation points in the region under the pretext of being a “war zone”.
Turkish telephone companies quickly started to establish network stations in the region. Turkcell company, which set up network poles in many areas of Shehba, has now begun to set up network poles in Idlib and Afrin.
The Turkish state is rapidly implementing its policies of Turkification in the cities it has occupied.
SDF: 31 villages liberated in Operation Cizire Storm
SDF General Command has issued a statement on the Operation Cizire Storm and said, “As part of the ongoing operation from two sides, Shaddadi and Hawl, an area of 330 square kilometers including 31 villages have been liberated.”
ANF
NEWS DESK
Saturday, 7 Jul 2018, 12:05
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) General Command issued a written statement on the actions carried out as part of the Operation Cizire Storm against ISIS gangs between June 24 and July 5.
SDF Press Center announced that after the Dashisha town to the south of Hesekê was liberated as part of phase two of the Cizire Storm, SDF forces carried out a series of actions against gangs between June 24 and July 5, 2018 and continued:
“As part of the ongoing operation from two sides, Shaddadi and Hawl, an area of 330 square kilometers including 31 villages has been liberated.The villages of Tiwêmiyê, Se’ida, Soyan, Hewîca, Reyhaniyê, El-Seracî, Xedîr Ebdella, Elmedîna, Wadî Elşok, Celxem, Xêra xerbî, Zixîr, Eldebça, Cilêb Neda, Xêra şerqî, Seqar, Wadî Ebû Hemdî, Wadî Elşeca, Sehayêm, Kulêb Foqanî, Elsîha, Ebû Fas, Riwêh, Xezîm, Mişêrfa, Kulêb Tehtanî, Abar Elebid, Elecraş, Elecrûş and Kelka, as well as dozens of subdistricts, have been liberated and hundreds of civilians have been rescued.
Our forces have entered clashes with ISIS mercenaries at least 4 times using heavy, medium and lightweight weapons.
On Thursday, there were intense clashes between our forces in both fronts and ISIS gangs. The gangs’ attempts to stop the advance of our forces failed, 4 gang members were killed and a further 8 were captured alive.
Our forces have confiscated large amounts of weapons and ammunition. The confiscated weapons and ammunition are as follows: 1 radio, 3 Kalashnikovs, 1 M60, 1 RPG, several hand grenades and one mortar shell.
In clashes, one of our fighters was martyred and three were wounded.
International Coalition aircrafts carried out 4 bombings against ISIS bases, killing 8 gang members and destroying 2 vehicles and 1 motorcycle. An ISIS base was also completely demolished.”
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Back to society‘s roots: witnessing the battle for history at Rojava`s archaeological sites
Rojava is home to many of the oldest sites of human society, culture and history, dating back 5000 years or more. Members of the Internationalist Commune, together with archaeology students from Rojava’s Tevgera Xwendekaren Demokratik (TXD, or Democratic Students’ Movement), recently visited several of these ancient sites as part of a joint education. We saw how remnants of over settlements, cities and temple complexes have stood the test of time, hidden beneath the earth.
But since the beginning of the 20th century, excavations have taken place. Many of the objects that have come to light, such as the Pergamon Altar, are since this time in the hands of the Western colonial powers. The objects are now displayed far away from their original location and completely ripped out of their context in the museums of Europe.
“It is an essential part of colonialism that the colonized peoples are deprived of the history which forms a vital part of their identity. To this day, this form of oppression and exploitation continues.”
Moreover, the fascist Turkish state deliberately bombed and destroyed ancient monuments and religious sites – including UNESCO world heritage sites dating back 3000 years – during their violent onslaught on Afrin. They sought to obliterate the history of religious diversity in the region, and wipe out Kurdish society’s ancient connection to the land.
We visited sites dating back thousands of years, like this ancient hillside town since appropriated by Daesh
Daesh likewise plundered ancient sites before their defeat by Rojava’s democratic forces, with many of the treasures they stole ending up for sale in Western auction houses.
It is an essential part of colonialism that the colonized peoples are deprived of the history which forms a vital part of their identity. To this day, this form of oppression and exploitation continues.
Before and during these excursions, there were seminars on archaeological and historical topics, along with discussions on jineologi, the history of Kurdistan and the principles of the revolutionary movement here. The aim of the education was to give as broad as possible an overview about the history of societies, and to show how this history lives on to this day and is reflected in the social structures of the present.
We were studying alongside Kurdish and Arabic students, some of whom were well-connected to the revolutionary movement but some of whom were hearing these revolutionary analyses of history for the first time. For many of us this was our first time in Kurdish society, and studying in Kurmanci for a week was a big challenge – but also a chance to rapidly improve our language skills, and see the movement’s ideology in action among the local youth.
For our first trip we visited the ancient community of Til Bede near Heseke. Many remains of temples and houses were dug up and reconstructed there, on foundations from about 3000 BC. During this time about 20,000 people lived there. It was very impressive to see this old place full with history and to walk through the streets and houses, seeing how the holy quarters were kept divided from the general population as social hierarchies emerged in this nascent society.
Our visit to Tel Bede showed us how ancient society became regulated and divided by the powerful
European archaeologists fled the site with the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, and the earthworks were now sadly untended and full of trash. When we do not care for ecology, or are forced to abandon this priority by war, we begin to lose touch with our history.
The next day we visited another ancient site, dating back to the Assyrian civilisation. Remains of walls dating back thousands of years are located directly next to a reservoir, half-buried next to an inconspicuous hill. There are also some caves, ancient earthworks repurposed by Daesh to use for shelter against airstrikes.
There are potsherds and bones scattered all over the place, which are obviously very old, even dating from the beginnings of these settlements several thousands of years ago. A friend found – to the surprise of all and entirely by chance – a stone plate marked with cuneiform. The teacher estimated it was 3000 years old, yet it was lying there there just like that.
The official excavations have not started there yet and it will probably take a long time for this to happen. Our teacher told us that the reservoir was deliberately located there by the Assad regime, destroying many other architectural links to the past which now lie decomposing below its dirty waters. Meanwhile Daesh can plunder the sites with impunity, in effective collusion with Western states who turn a blind eye to the sale of looted goods.
Only the king of Gire Moza was allowed into this holy place to commune with his ancestors, reinforcing his status
We made a final visit to Girê Moza. This place has been excavated very widely and many of the remains of temple complexes have been uncovered and partly reconstructed. Here, we saw how the proto-state’s physical structure came to mirror repressive social hierarchies at this time in human history, with only the king granted access to a holy place where he could commune with his ancestors.
This reflects Abdullah Öcalan’s work on archaeology, which we studied in the classroom in between trips. As humans moved into larger settlements, they left behind the natural society in which they lived in egalitarian, decentralised groups without patriarchal structures.
With the accumulation of wealth in the hands of powerful men came oppression, sexist domination, and the abuse of religion to keep the general population under the dominion of the elite. Having met these ideas in education, we could see them in reality on the land before us.
“The enemies of the revolution are working to destroy both the present and the past.”
As ANF found in their recent report on Rojava’s archaeological heritage, “Northern Syria is the direct cultural and geographical continuation of cultures on the historic hill of Göbekli Tepe and Newala Çori, and has many places of immense historical significance…. The history of the Neolithic, in particular, acquired a new meaning for society through the revolution, which it understands as part of its essence.“
The enemies of the revolution are working to destroy both the present and the past, demolishing and denying Rojava‘s links to millennia of human struggle. On our travels around Rojava we saw clearly that the two cannot be separated. By defending archaeology, we are defending our history, our land – and our future.
KCK Executive Council Co-Presidency issued a written statement on the outcome of the June 24 elections and said Erdoğan’s election and the fascist bloc achieving parliamentary majority can’t be considered legitimate.
ANF
BEHDINAN
Tuesday, 26 Jun 2018, 12:03
The written statement issued by the KCK said the AKP-MHP fascist alliance usurped the presidency and took parliamentary majority with all kinds of tricks and fraud in the elections. The statement added: “This is not a success, this is not getting stronger.” KCK pointed out that the fascist alliance was only able to remain in power through state resources and oppression. KCK stated that a new era of oppression against forces of democracy is around the corner and stressed that democracy can only be achieved through struggle. KCK also commended the Kurdish people and the forces of democracy who all came together around the HDP and made the party overcome the election threshold despite all the pressure.
THERE MUST BE A STANCE AGAINST THE ILLEGITIMATE FASCIST GOVERNMENT
The KCK statement is as follows:
“Elections were held under the State of Emergency, in conditions of pressure and inequality, with much fraud. These elections held to legitimize the AKP-MHP fascist government’s anti-democracy and anti-Kurdish policies used every trick, pressure and method to achieve that end. The conditions the elections were held under, the pressure during the election process and interventions with the ballots illegitimize these elections. The AKP-MHP fascit government, who don’t want to step down through elections and consider winning the elections to be a matter of independence for Turkey, have resorted to all kinds of tricks and pressure to remain in power. In this sense, neither the presidential election nor the fascist alliance taking parliamentary majority cannot be considered legitimate. Forces of democracy must not consider these results legitimate, they must take a stance against this illegitimate fascist government and make their struggle permanent.
HDP’S SUCCESS
In these elections, the biggest goal for the AKP-MHP fascism, along with their lesser goals, was to push the HDP below the election threshold. But all the tricks and the pressure was not enough to do that, as the Kurdish people and the peoples of Turkey embraced the HDP. For that, we commend the Kurdish people and the forces of democracy who gathered around the HDP.
THE AKP-MHP ALLIANCE ONLY REMAINS IN POWER THROUGH STATE RESOURCES AND OPPRESSION
The AKP-MHP fascist alliance usurping the presidency and taking the parliamentary majority through all kinds of tricks and fraud must not be seen as a success, or them gaining strength. In truth, the peoples of Turkey have hown that they don’t want to be under the rule of this fascist government. They can only remain in power through state resoures and oppression. If not for these, it is not possible for this government, who pit the peoples of Turkey against each other and create an unhappy social spirit where everybody feuds with their neighbors and coworkers, would never be accepted by the peoples. When the people fight, they won’t be able to stand against the will of the peoples of Turkey. When forces of democracy fight against this fascist government, the government won’t live long.
THE AKP-MHP ALLIANCE HAS LOST SOCIETAL SUPPORT IN TURKEY
AKP and MHP are not political parties that can be the governing power in a society. They are only fascist and genocidal forces that aim for government through animosity against the Kurdish people, all peoples and all diversity. No understanding of governance that riles up chauvinism in society through animosity against Kurds and different social groups and then gathering strength or votes through that chauvinism is acceptable in terms of morality or societal values. No society or country deserves to be ruled by such parties.
The AKP-MHP alliance has lost societal support in Turkey. As such, when they understood that they would lose in the election, like all fascist governments they have chosen to rile up chauvinism. Although there is no activity against Qandil but routine air strikes, they lied and said they were conducting a ground operation, that they were close to Qandil to trick society. As if that wasn’t enough, they aimed to increase their votes with the lie that they hit 35 PKK-KCK administrators. The rule of these political parties that tell these lies that don’t comply with any ethics and increase votes through such means should not be seen as legitimate and should not be accepted.
A NEW PERIOD OF OPPRESSION AGAINST FORCES OF DEMOCRACY
The AKP-MHP fascist alliance is an alliance of war against the Kurdish people and the forces of democracy. In this sense, they will claim their policies are approved and continue with the wars and attacks. As they continue their aggression against the Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom, they will increase oppression to make the forces of deomcracy and democrats in Turkey surrender. They will try to make the whole society and all the forces of democracy complicit in their policies of war. In this sense, they will launch a new period of oppression against forces of democracy.
DEMOCRACY CAN ONLY COME THROUGH STRUGGLE
The Kurdish people and the forces of democracy should know that democracy can come to Turkey only through struggle against this fascist government. There is no other way but strugle to resolve all issues Turkey has within democracy. It is now understood that the AKP-MHP alliance won’t step down through elections. Because this is not governing a society. This is a government of war that aims to crush the forces of democracy. And against such a government, it is high time to organize and develop the struggle without a day’s delay. In this sense, it is important for all the forces of democracy in Turkey come together in the widest possible alliance for democracy. On this basis, the widest alliance for democracy must fight the AKP-MHP fascist government in all possible areas.
KURDISH FREEDOM MOVEMENT WILL FIGHT EVERYWHERE
The AKP-MHP fascist alliance has declared that they will continue their genocidal attacks against Kurds everywhere following the June 24 elections. Kurdish youth must respond to this by rushing to the areas of the freedom struggle and to raise the struggle against fascism anywhere they are.
We as the Kurdish Freedom Movement will fight this fascist government that is against democracy and peoples everywhere. Our struggle will continue with a strong will and great resolve until this fascist government is defeated and our peoples are free. This fascist government doesn’t have long to live. Our people’s struggle for freedom and democracy will bring the end of this fascist government.”
The Kurds in Iraq and Syria have been engaged in an epic battle against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, an organisation that stands in opposition not only to the Kurds, but also to the region as a whole, in its attempts to create a Salafist system. This attempt poses an immense threat to humanitarian values, beliefs and democratic norms. In the war against this barbaric gang the Kurds have played a deeply significant role, opening the path for their final defeat. Today, ISIS is losing ground and their capacity to threaten the West, especially the EU countries, has been significantly reduced.
However, the AKP government, which has been complicit with ISIS in its barbaric attacks, is not satisfied and having realised that it could not neutralise the Kurdish Freedom Movement with ISIS, has begun a more direct attack. It now aims to destroy all the gains and progressive developments made by the Kurds in both the South and West of Kurdistan.
The Turkish state’s illegal bombing and invasion of Afrin in Northern Syria
The Turkish state has illegally bombed and invaded Afrin, a Kurdish-majority region which had been a peaceful oasis in a war-torn country, a site of refuge, and stronghold of the democratic confederal project. This criminal invasion has led to hundreds of deaths and a further wave of mass displacement. Most alarming are the indications of plans for full-scale ethnic cleansing of Kurds.
Turkey’s potential invasion of Iraqi Kurdish territory
There are increasing signs of an imminent full-scale invasion of Iraqi Kurdish territory, including the mountainous Qandil region of northern Iraq, in an attempt to further encircle and strangle the only place of freedom in the region. Turkish warplanes have carried out frequent bombing campaigns in the Kurdish areas ( Metina, Avasin, Zap, Basyan, Gare, Xakurk and Kandil) in Kurdistan- northern Iraq and have killed many civilians.
Representatives of the Kurdish people have repeatedly raised their fears and called upon all governments and international organisations (the UN, NATO, the EU and the Arab League) to prevent Turkey’s military border incursions and violations of Iraqi sovereignty.
As yet there has been no international response, and the state of Turkey is emboldened to make further incursions and to attempt to take control of the region by deploying additional troops and establishing new military bases ( in addition to the 18 bases already established) and intelligence outposts in the region. With the Turkish Gendarmerie engaging in military parades in the villages within the Sidekan district of the province of Diyana, region of Hewler (the capital of KRG) governorate, it is clear they are treating the occupied land as their own territory.
Break the silence against Turkey’s invasion of Kurdistan
We call on all relevant bodies (political parties, human rights organisations, trade unionists and activists) to stand with us and take action against this violation of international law, to unambiguously condemn this crime of aggression, and to demand that Turkey withdraws its troops from Kurdistan.
We call upon all governments and international organisations (the UN, NATO, the EU and the Arab League) as well as the world’s democratic peoples, to oppose this Turkish aggression.
The 30 year-old from Wythenshawe has been fighting ISIS with the Kurdish militia in Syria for over seven months and is determined to continue to do so until the end.
Recently, however, he has been told he needs to take some time off for a while, to rest and regain his strength. So he has decided to focus more on civilian work.
He is hoping to raise £700 to help install a new water well in Nashowa, a small village in Syria.
Water supplies have now depleted in Nashowa, putting many men, women and children at severe risk, especially with the brutal summer approaching, when temperatures can hit over 50 degrees for days or even weeks.
“We need to hire the equipment to dig down, pipe up and supply the village with the water,” says Daniel.
“We will be using local businesses for supplies, so donations are injected back into the local community. We have a team of both local and international volunteers working for us.”
His initiative is dedicated to his best friend Oliver Hall, who died fighting ISIS in Raqqa last year.
“Ollie and I had the same mindset of defeating ISIS and then helping the people who have been deeply affected by their sickening crimes. We wanted to work in remote villages, where help is needed the most, but where aid cannot reach them due to safety reasons.”
Daniel joined the British Army as a paratrooper before being deployed to Helmand, Afghanistan in 2008. On his return he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after an incident that also cost him his career in the army.
After getting help from the Kathe Locke Centre in Moss Side, he decided to focus on his career in the construction industry.
“I made a rather comfortable life for myself. I moved out into the countryside with my girlfriend and had a lovely house and a very good job. But my mind couldn’t rest knowing what was happening over there.”
Daniel had several contacts in the Middle East who were sending him pictures and stories which made him eager to want to help. He applied to volunteer in early 2015/16 but cancelled due to his family severely criticising his decision and his girlfriend persuading him to stay.
“They didn’t understand the whole situation, regardless how many times I told them. I was trying to lead a normal life, but with the attacks happening all over Europe and knowing all the pain they (ISIS) were inflicting all over the Middle East, I decided to start my application again in late 2016, near Christmas.”
The terror attacks in London and Manchester only made Daniel even more certain that enrolling was the right decision to make.
Daniel, who proudly wears an I Love Manchester badge on his uniform, has been sending us video updates, explained the unimaginably difficult situation he finds himself in.
In one video he says: “Last night was a freezing cold night. The position we’re in isn’t great because you can’t see if anyone sneaks in. Nearby where we are there was a suicide attack with a car bomb last night. Not sure how many people were killed there because a mine exploded.”
Despite the hunger, the cold and the loss Daniel’s tone is usually stubbornly positive. He talks about the camaraderie between those fighting in Syria and doesn’t seem to be startled any more by the sound of gunfire you can hear in the background.
“Most of the guys I live with are Arabs. We slept on the streets together, in the blistering cold and we fought together. It’s hard to communicate but we make it work though. It really is a band of brothers, because you rely on each other so much,” he says.
Another one of his videos shows the place he’s currently living in, together with his comrades. It’s a ramshackle compound where the whitewashed walls are covered with pictures of their fallen friends.
Daniel gets emotional when he mentions Ollie Hall. The last few months since his passing have been really hard, he says.
“He passed away in Raqqa after triggering an IED (a type of bomb) while trying to save two children who wandered into a building laced with IRDs (an improvised explosive device).
“He truly was a great friend and he died doing the job he came here to do: to save the civilians and help them in any way possible.
“We were both looking at going into the civilian section after the fight is over, to help rebuild this lovely country.”
When things get really hard, Daniel remembers why he is there and who he’s fighting for.
That’s why he likes spending time with civilians and has been doing work with a local charity trying to help Syrian children.
“As we were clearing through Abu Hammond (region South of Deir Ezzor) we could see families returning back to their houses, wearing normal clothing.
“Even the children started approaching us with smiles on their faces. The locals would bring out food to us and sit down and drink tea. It’s really good to see people returning back to normal life.
“There’s a lot of bad here but amongst the ashes, there’s a beautiful nation who really needs our help.”
Determined to end on a positive note, Daniel says ISIS are now cornered and that they are now making a move towards what they hope to be the last assault.
However he added they’re quite limited on ammunition and transport at the moment and that numbers of people on the ground have dropped quite significantly too.
“We’re on our way to Hajin now – one of the strongest ISIS points left, that’s where they reckon the fire’s going to be the worst. It’s has been nicknamed the mini Raqqa.”
Once the fight is over, Daniel hopes to work with a construction team to build a new hospital and a university for the local community.
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Orders from the MİT, murders from the Kiyam Movement
It has come to light that the MİT and ISIS are behind the Kiyam (“Mutiny”) Movement, which poses as an independent organization of Syrians.
BÊRÎTAN SARYA/HEYSEM MÜSLİM
ANF
Wednesday, 11 Apr 2018, 12:55
There have been sabotages and assassinations against Raqqa Civilian Council and Manbij Military Council administrators in Northern Syria in the last three months.In the first assassination against Raqqa Civilian Council administrators in 2018, Council Administrator Lawyer IbrahimHalil was targeted in the Turkmen Hamam village of Gire Spî. Halil was heavily wounded in the attack on 11.01.2018. During the investigation process by the Rojava Security Forces on the assassination, one of the suspects was a former ISIS member Ismail Ahmet Necim. Necim himself is also from the Turkmen Hamam village, and was taken under surveillance on suspicion. After he was detained in a covert operation, he confessed to committing the assassination.
Necim stated that he was made to carry out the assassination by Huseyin Muhammed Salih from the Euphrates Shield Forces, and that he in turn had received his orders from Turkish intelligence.
Some time after Necim was arrested, in October 2017, a group called the Kiyam (“Mutiny”) Movement emerged in the north of Aleppo. The Kiyam Movement announced its founding with the claim that they would “fight against separatist groups”, and their murders were reminiscent of the counter-guerilla murders by the MİT during the ‘90s. They also published a video of the assassination on social media. The Kiyam Movement targeted administrators in the PYD, YPG, Manbij Military Council and Raqqa Civilian Council -like the Turkish state does- and carried out assassinations. However much they try to look like they are independent from Turkish intelligence and an organization formed by Syrians, Ismail Ahmet Necim’s confessions have confirmed that the organization was founded by the MİT.
One of the most important murders the MİT-made Kiyam Movement committed but did not claim was the murder of Ömer Alluş.
“THE INSTIGATORS WERE EUPHRATES SHIELD FORCES IN JARABLUS”
Confessions by Ismail Ahmed Necim (born 1991) are as follows:
“I went to Jarablus in 2017 to cross into Turkey. My goal was to go to Turkey and work. There I saw Huseyin Muhammed Salih, he was also from my village. I had also gone to school with him. I had seen him once afterwards when I was doing some business with my father. Other than that, we didn’t have a relationship. Years later, I saw him again in Jarablus for the first time. He was under the Euphrates Shield forces. I stayed there for ten days. I wanted to cross the border into Turkey but I couldn’t, so I went back to my village. Some 4-5 months after I went back to my village, I saw him there. He came to me one day before he killed that lawyer.
ORDERS FROM TURKISH INTELLIGENCE
He told me he came to Jarablus on business, and he would handle it and go back. I asked him what business he had. He said, ‘My business is killing people.’ Then he told me, ‘You are part of the Euphrates Shield Forces.’ I said I wasn’t, and he said, ‘It’s OK, don’t do anything, just be my lookout. I will give you $500.’
I asked him who we were doing this for. He said it was for Abu Azam, who is from the Euphrates Shield forces and does the job of the Turkish intelligence.
“HE TOLD ME I HAD TO KILL HIM TO LEARN”
The next day he came again. We went by the lawyer’s house on a motorbike. He said, ‘Go ahead, you kill him, so you will learn.’ He gave me the gun. ‘Put up the gun, and shoot when you see the lawyer,’ he said. He had done the full surveillance before, and told me the bathroom is away from the house, I could hide behind the bathroom and shoot when the lawyer came out. So I did. I fired 7 bullets when the lawyer came.
They told me there was a silencer on the gun and it had 7 bullets. After I shot him, we flung ourselves over the fence and took a complicated route with the bike out of there. He dropped me off at home. I asked him for the money. He said, ‘Come to my house tomorrow, I will both pay you and prepare you for a new job.’
“HE SAID HE WOULD COME FOR NEW JOBS”
I went to his house several times but I didn’t see him. 3 days later, I sent a message over WhatsApp and asked about the money. He said, ‘I will be back in 4 to 6 weeks, I both have other business there and I will be giving you your money.’ Then I sent a voice message over WhatsApp, but he didn’t respond. I waited for him for 1.5 months, and then I got caught.”
FOOTAGE FROM THE ASSASSINATION PUBLISHED
Ismail Necim was caught in a covert operation by the Rojava Security Forces and his capture was kept a secret. The counter-guerilla organization called the Kiyam Movement published footage from this assassination on March 7, i.e. after Necim was captured. The footage shows Ismail Ahmet Necim targeting Ibrahim Halil by the bathroom, like in his confession.
TRACES OF KIYAM IN THE MURDER OF ÖMER ALLUŞ
The comments of Huseyin Muhammed Salih, who is the instigator and supervisor in the murder mentioned in Ismail Ahmet Necim’s confessions and who claims to have received orders from a MİT officer, are also significant for the murder of Ömer Alluş on March 15, 2018.
Huseyin Muhammed Salih told Ismail Ahmet Necim that his business is killing people. Then he said he would return in 4 to 6 weeks. The murder of Ömer Alluş in his home coincides with these dates. He was also killed with a gun with a silencer.
The Kiyam Movement assumed the Ibrahim Halil assassination by publishing footage, but didn’t assume the murder of Ömer Alluş, who was a Kurdish administrator in the Raqqa Civilian Council in Gire Spî and was from the family Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan first visited in Rojava.
But the main agency of the Turkish state the Anadolu Agency announced that Alluş was killed in his home with a gun with a silencer, right after the incident happened and before the Rojava Security Forces issued a statement on how it was committed. The pool media also claimed that Alluş was “executed by the PKK” for “going against the PYD”.
With this murder, Ömer Alluş who played an imprtant role in the future of both Raqqa and Syria was neutralized in accordance with the goals of the Turkish state, and they attempted to pin the murder on the PYD and Northern Syrian officials.
As such, all assassinations and sabotages by the Kiyam Movement to date were committed in areas the Turkish state has on the agenda, and have coincided with their political and military goals.
ISIS-MİT PARTNERSHIP: THE KIYAM
The suspect in the Ibrahim Halil assassination Ismail Ahmet Necim is a former ISIS member. After Gire Spî was liberated, he crossed into Raqqa. According to his own account, he was a guard in an ISIS hospital. Necim fled Raqqa and surrendered to the YPG, and after he remained in prison for a while, and it became clear that he was not involved in armed attacks, he was released with a pardon.
Rojava Security Forces looked into the matter, and took Ismail Ahmed Necim under surveillance after the assassination as he is a former ISIS member. Then they determined that the individual in question still had a relationship with ISIS.
This piece of information provided by the security forces and the confessions of Ismail Ahmed Necim shows the relationship between the Turkish state gangs that call themselves the Euphrates Shield Forces, the MİT and ISIS, and that the counter-guerilla organization that calls itself the Kiyam Movement is also made up of ISIS, MİT and Euphrates Shield gang member
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To the press and the public !! YPG General Command in Afrin | May 4, 2018
Within the scope the second phase of the Resistance of the Age, our forces have carried out effective actions against the invading Turkish army forces and terrorists, including those who were appointed by the Turkish intelligence agency (MIT) for special duties ın Afrin.
The terrorist named Jamal al-Zakhlool, who was responsible for organizing the placement of terrorists and their families brought to Afrin from various places in Syria, and who had been being followed by our forces, was killed in the organized action. (Second picture)
Al-Zakhlool who was forcing Afrin residents to flee their homes and was placing FSA terrorists and their families in the abandoned homes of Afrin people had two meetings with MIT officials earlier. Al-Zakhlool was also tasked with establishing internal security forces, civilian administration and courts in occupied Afrin.
One day before the action, Al-Zakhlool was patrolling in the village of Basutah with Al-Hazma Brigade and Failaq al-Sham terrorists with him, ordering the people to be dressed in accordance with Shari’a principles and women not to leave their homes through the loudspeakers. He also asked the people to hand their weapons over to them warning those who don’t hand over the weapons would be exiled.
Yesterday our forces have carried out an attack against Al-Zakhlool’s vehicle in the area between Kurzalah and Basutah villages which was resulted in the death of Al-Zakhlool and all of the terrorists with him. Failaq al-Sham gangs, who wanted to intervene after the operation, were also targeted by our forces, three more terrorists were killed and two military vehicles were destroyed as a result of the successful actions.
Recalling the earlier statements we issued regarding the attempts by Turkey and its terrorists to demographicaly change the region by settling terrorists and their families in the city after the people of Afrin have been displaced, we once again stress that settling of these families in Afrin is illegitimate in terms of fundamental human rights and is a clear violation of international law. We reiterate that these terrorists and their families are the main targets of our forces. Our forces will target all the elements in the Afrin Canton that are in contact or cooperation with the Turkish invasion state.
For these reasons, we warn that no one should be a crime partner of the Turkish state and a matter of dirty negotiations in the hands of the Turkish invasion army.
We once again salute the resistance and the struggle by our people that have been forcibly displaced and reiterate our determination to liberate Afrin. The resistance will go on until we give our people their land back, no matter how long it will take.
by Giuseppe Acconcia 02/05/2018 05:33Internationalist Commune of Rojava
The initial demonstrations and riots in Northern Syria between 2011 and 2012 sparked the formation of new means of popular mobilisation and triggered mass participation in alternative networks that aimed at recruiting ordinary citizens to provide social services, security and self-defence. On the one end, there emerged Local Coordination Committees (LCC’s), set up by grassroots activists who were committed to nonviolence and direct, radical democracy. These became, to many leftist and secular activists, the basis from which Syria would be rebuilt and the basic structure of a grassroots Syrian revolution, lying below and to the left of the official opposition which was now basing itself in Ankara, Turkey.
On the other end, particularly within Kurdish areas, there emerged popular mobilization committees that were inspired by the thought of Abdullah Ocalan and the ideological perspectives of the PKK. In Turkey, their counterparts had already built communes and popular grassroots power to construct their own stateless democracy. Like their Syrian counterparts across the country and their Kurdish counterparts in Turkey, the popular mobilization committees that were built by TEV-DEM (Movement for a Democratic Society) in northern Syria were, too, infused with a radical democratic spirit and predicated on the commune form.
Due to the war, there emerged in Syria popular committees all across the country which provided a blueprint for alternative forms of governance, as opposed to the centralized, bureaucratic, and despotic Assad government which most Syrians rose up against in 2011. Later on, in the context of war in Northern Syria between 2012 and 2016, and with the further emergence of a very diverse range of jihadist groups, including ISIS, the participants within the Local Coordination Committees (LCC) and the popular mobilization committees felt the need to be involved in direct action, including the armed struggle, in order to protect their neighborhoods and substitute the constant absence of security personnel. Thus, in Syria, those social movements evolved into militarised organisations all across Syria.
At that stage, in Northern Syria the Local Committees were pivotal in forming armed entities, such as the People’s Protection Units and Women’s Protection Units (YPG-YPJ) [Yekîneyên Parastina Gel-Yekîneyên Parastina Jin], that began to provide systems of patrols to guarantee local and external security, building up an embryonic autonomous government. When these committees were set up across the country, as self-defence committees, none could imagine the future. It was unpredictable for everybody at the time.
Rojava: A project of radical democracy
Compared to mid-20th-century approaches to guerrilla warfare (e.g. Mao, Che Guevara), the Kurdish communalist project provided a non-violent critique of hierarchical and capitalist societies after Ocalan’s “paradigm shift” in prison. Abandoning the quest for a Kurdish State, Abdullah Öcalan – the ideological figurehead for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – proposed theories of democratic autonomy, ecology and women’s liberation as a way forward for the Kurdish Freedom movement, and the peoples’ of West Asia more generally. In Syria, his followers saw a potential to put these ideas into practice with the outbreak of the civil war. As Bookchin explained in order to define his notion of “libertarian municipalism”, “Communalism seeks to recapture the meaning of politics in its broadest, most emancipatory sense. Thus, in Northern Syria popular assemblies have been organised; local councils have been formed in respect to ethnic and gender differences, and work has been coordinated in cooperation with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
In the context of war, voluntary networks of self-defence, forged in an environment of increased political participation, evolved into a more structured military force to confront the growing emergence of jihadist fighters. This process entailed a stronger level of hierarchical organisation and the institutionalisation of daily practices at both the military and civilian levels. Those soldiers were working both to manage and defend Kobanî and its surroundings sometimes with similar tasks or overlapping duties with the security and political apparatus.
This determined the need for a very structured division of duties and a continuous mobilisation of the popular mobilisation committees working simultaneously as service providers and self-defence groups. Women’s participation both within self-defence groups and resistance units has been noticeable. Equality between men and women fighters is an essential part of the political formation of those fighters, as much as their gender awareness. “Love is essential, it is part of everyone’s instinct. The philosophy of death is a way of living. In past times, everyone knew death could come quickly; now it is different and this disconnects us from nature and does not allow us to accept the idea of death. Religion exploits death: if you are a martyr you go to heaven. For us love and death are in contradiction, one YPJ fighter told The Region.
The Enemies of the Kurds after ISIS
If, at an initial stage, YPG/YPJ joined local Committees only with the aim to protect their homes from a lack of security, with the emergence of ISIS’s fighters and their permanent occupation of Rojava, they became highly motivated to be part of the armed struggle. Some of them had a relative killed by ISIS and this was enough to motivate him or her to join the armed struggle. Others felt a duty to defend their homes. “One of my brothers is a martyr” said one participant to us over the course of this research.
The al-Assad government does not have a strong reputation among the YPG/YPJ. In Syria, the major Kurdish political party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) has always fought its autonomous struggle, characterized by being neither supporting al-Assad nor the rebel opposition, but taking a pragmatic and situational position, depending on what would best benefit their cause. On the one hand, the Arab-led opposition has appeared to be hostile to the Syrian Kurds’ demands. They often accuse the PYD of being in agreement with al-Assad against the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and have even enlisted their own fighters to help Turkey take territory from Syria’s Kurds. On the other hand, the PYD has accused many of the anti-Assad militias of working in coordination with the Turkish army. Whereas some Free Syrian Army battalions work in a strong alliance with their Kurdish counterparts in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the relationship between the Kurdish-led PYD and the Syrian Opposition, is quite simply, based on mutual resentment.
The PYD is also quite hostile to the Turkish State, which returns the hostility in kind. Ankara accuses the PYD of being an extension of the outlawed PKK. The PYD believes that Ankara’s disdain for them goes so far as to push the Turkish government to deliver weapons and fighters to ISIS through the Syrian border.
Then there is the relationship between the PYD, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Iraq (KDP). The KDP, an ally of Turkey, resents the PYD. It’s political extension on the ground in Syria, the Kurdish National Council, is also equally hostile to the PYD. Both have accused the PYD of being too utopian, and exclusionary (The KNC refuses to acknowledge the autonomous administration of Rojava as legitimate).
And whereas the PYD, in the most literal sense, finds itself surrounded by hostile armed and political forces. The YPG/YPJ, its armed wings, have gained some tactical support from the US coalition against ISIS, due to their effective combat performance against IS.
Territory under the governance of the PYD, moreover, has not had to deal with the vicious bombardments of the al-Assad government, particularly as the Syrian Arab Army and its affiliated militia’s have focused themselves more on fighting against the rebel opposition with the strong military support of Russia and Iran.
It has been over six years since the first popular mobilization committees were formed in Syria. Due to shifting geopolitical dynamics, the Rojava revolution is now under threat.
With the beginning of the Turkish “Olive Branch Operation” on January 20, 2018, it has been even clearer that the Rojava project was perceived as a danger by the neighbouring countries. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, engaged in strengthening his ties with Iran and Russia, considered, both internally and externally, as more dangerous a pro-workers, pro-ecology, pro-women liberation and communalist movement than ISIS or the regional chaos. A month and a half later, Erdogan successfully occupied the Kurdish held enclave of Afrin, a place of relative peace in war-torn Syria, and a haven for IDP’s. It’s only crime, it seems, was that it implemented the radical democratic vision of the Kurdish Freedom movement in practice.
The Rojava Project and the Afrin attacks
After the Turkish army entered into the Afrin Canton on March the 18th, pro-Turkish rebels have been in complete control of the town, declaring who goes in and who goes out, and holding the enclave under a total occupation. They are joined by Euphrates Shield territory, taken by Turkey in 2016 to separate Afrin from the other cantons of Jezira and Kobani. All what is left, territorially, for Rojava are the cantons of Jezira and Kobani which are, at this point, secured by the US and the anti-ISIS international coalition.
Turkey has threatened to attack these territories as well. And given that the U.S. is an ally of Turkey, it is not clear for how long these cantons will be secured from a Turkish incursion. In these circumstances and with the latest invasion by Turkey, the United Nations estimates that hundred thousands of civilians have been forced to leave Northern Syria.
The Turkish invasion of Afrin, to be sure, is part of a broader reaction from nation states; an ongoing targeted campaign against any kind of left-wing project made possible by the 2011 uprisings in the MENA region. Put succinctly, to be left-wing in West Asia and North Africa today is to be considered a threat for the internal stability by the states of the region. This happened with the labour unions in Egypt and Tunisia, and it happened with the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey. The persecution of the YPG/YPJ in Syria, and the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria is part of this same pattern.
The leaders of the Turkish left and other pro-Kurdish leftists are in prison. Parliamentarians within the HDP, a pro-peace alliance between the Turkish left and Kurdish leftists, have been stripped of their immunity. Moreover, the June 24 early elections might have as their first aim to erase the HDP presence in the Turkish Parliament. However, the Rojava project, as the most relevant vanguard against ISIS, is not over yet. “The resistance in Afrin is still strong”, one YPG fighter simply put it to me, so Turkey will not stop until it successfully gets rid of the Kurdish presence across its border.
Despite the tactical support received by the Syrian Kurds, the US, Russia and the al-Assad government did not react to the Turkish attacks on Afrin (with the latter only sending very scant reinforcements), carried out during the UN ceasefire. Thus, the anti-Turkish state sentiment among the Kurdish fighters has flourished again. “Erdogan supported jihadist groups who perpetrated war crimes, murders, tortures and looting” one fighter told The Region. “We knew that the military alliance with the US and Russia would most probably finish after the victory over ISIS” another said.
However, despite the Turkish attacks and a lack of consistent external support for the Syrian Kurdish fighters, the recent opening of the first university in Kobani confirmed that the Rojava dream of forging a more equal society based on gender liberation and a permanent grassroots mobilization in Rojava, regardless of national borders, is still alive. “When we will be back to Afrin, we will be more motivated, as it happened in Kobani after the liberation from ISIS” one fighter hopefully told me. With their morale, he just may be right.
Dirk Campbell was shocked when his 26-year-old daughter said she was going to join Kurdish forces in Syria. Following her death in action, he talks about her journey from idealist to freedom fighter
Anna Campbell was killed by a Turkish missile in Afrin, northern Syria, on 15 March. Photograph: YPJ/PA
When Anna Campbell told her father of her plan to join Kurdish forces fighting Isis, he made a joke that he will forever regret. It was May last year, and the 26-year-old had travelled from her home in Bristol to his, in Lewes, East Sussex, to break the news.
“By then, I knew enough to know that it would imperil her life,” says Dirk Campbell, 67, “but all I could think of to say was: ‘Well, Anna, it’s been nice knowing you.’ I think I was trying to be funny, but she just looked miffed. I think she wanted me to engage with it and either go, ‘Oh, how wonderful,’ or to try to argue her out of it. But I sort of just accepted it. Ten months later, she is dead.”
Anna Campbell died on 15 March when her position was struck by a Turkish missile as she and five other female soldiers helped to evacuate civilians from the besieged city of Afrin in northern Syria. She was one of eight British nationals killed fighting alongside the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) since the first foreign volunteers arrived in the autumn of 2014.
“People have called Anna a hero and a martyr,” her sister Sara says. “But what’s really difficult for the public to fathom is that she was also this big walking bundle of love: idealist, activist, dedicated bookworm, lover of insects, storyteller, creator of everlasting childhoods …”
Yet it was as a soldier that Anna died, a beaten-up AK-47 in her hand and a pair of old trainers on her feet. Having smuggled herself into Syria, after being recruited by Kurdish activists online, she had signed up with the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) – all-female affiliates of the YPG, a guerrilla group in which officers are elected by their troops.
Dirk Campbell: ‘I was really proud of her. She was a 26-year-old woman. I had to trust her.’ Photograph: Teri Pengilley for the Guardian
She gave her life defending Kurdish-held territory from a Turkish invasion. Some might call it someone else’s war. To Anna, her family says, it was personal.
“It was almost as if she was searching for the perfect way of expressing all the values she held closest – humanitarian, ecological, feminist and equal political representation,” says Dirk. “Those were the issues she came to dedicate her life to, and she came to the conclusion that Rojava was where she had to go.”
This Kurdish stronghold in northern Syria is in the throes of revolution. Inspired by the ideology of Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey, and triggered by 2011’s “Arab spring”, people have organised themselves into grassroots assemblies and co-operatives, declaring their autonomy from the state and their wish for real democracy. Anti-capitalist, Marxist and feminist ideas are flourishing, including a system of co-presidentship whereby a man and a woman share power at every level.
“We were shocked when she told us she was going there,” says Dirk, a silver-haired man with a warm smile. “But we weren’t surprised.”
Anna was 11 when Dirk realised there was something different about her. “It seems a small thing, but I remember when she was at school she protected a bumblebee from being tormented by other kids,” he says. “She did it with such strength of will that they ridiculed her. But she didn’t care. She was absolutely single-minded when it came to what she believed in.”
We are sitting in the living room of Dirk’s flat, where three of Anna’s five sisters and her brother have gathered to support their dad. Sophia, at 28 the eldest sister, brings tea. A gallery of obscure musical instruments hang along the wall, all of which Dirk, a folk musician and composer who was a member of the seminal prog band Egg, can play. Books on ecology, veganism, philosophy and politics – some Kurdish – line the bookshelf.
The Campbell household was one where politics was always discussed. “Her mother Adrienne and I were once arrested for staging a sit-in in Boots after they moved the HQ to a Swiss tax haven,” Dirk chuckles.
“Most of her early interest in activism came from Adrienne,” he says. “I remember in 2011, they went to a demonstration at the Houses of Parliament to commemorate the first Suffragette protest. They stormed the Houses of Parliament in Edwardian clothes.”
But really, friends say, it was when Anna went to university in Sheffield to study English and French that those seeds of political activism began to sprout. “The coalition had just started and the government began introducing cuts and increasing fees,” recalls one friend, who prefers not to be named. “It was a big thing and there were student occupations all over the country.”
She was soon reading less of her beloved English classics in favour of books about anarchism, feminism and ecology. She became vegan and dropped out of university after her first year because, as Dirk puts it, “she was much more interested in doing what she was passionate about”.
Anna with her mother Adrienne, who died from cancer in 2012. Photograph: Family handout
That same year, 2012, Adrienne died of breast cancer four years after being diagnosed. Anna, then 21, threw herself deeper into the life she had chosen. She had started training as a plumber, but was increasingly drawn to anti-fascist, animal and human rights protests across Europe. She became an anarchist, too, and had the letters ACAB (standing for the punk-era slogan “All coppers are bastards”) tattooed on her ribcage. “She was one of the first people to go into the Jungle in Calais to protect refugees from the gendarmes,” says Dirk. “She wrote letters to prisoners. She gave blood, was a hunt saboteur, protested the Dale Farm eviction and would always rope me into playing the Highland bagpipes at prison demos.”
In 2015, she was beaten unconscious at an anti-fascist march. “She told me a woman had been dragged into the crowd by some fascists and no one was helping her,” recalls sister Rose, 24. “So Anna covered her face so they wouldn’t know she was female and ran in head first after this woman. The fascists beat her to the ground with sticks until a policeman dragged her off.”
By the summer of 2017, her attentions had turned towards the Middle East, where the war in Syria was entering a bloody new phase. The YPG/J, backed by US airstrikes, had all but flushed Isis from large swaths of Syria’s north. But, with the jihadi group now on the run, Turkey saw an opportunity to finally cleanse its borderlands of the Kurdish forces and their revolution. Ankara has long-argued that the YPG/J is linked to its own insurgent group, the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK). The US and EU, however, do not consider the YPG terrorists, and have supported them since 2014.
With the Kurds’ fight for existence now on two fronts, Anna’s mind was made up. She didn’t tell her friends of her plans, just her family. She made them promise not to tell a soul. “Of course, I was seriously worried,” says Dirk. “Then, the day that she flew out, the Turks bombed a YPJ position and killed 12 women. I panicked.”
Over the months, Anna stayed in regular touch, sending texts, WhatsApp voice messages and the odd call when she could. “The thing is, whenever Anna called, she gave us a false sense of security,” says Dirk. “Every time she would say: ‘Hiya, everything’s fine. I’m just growing vegetables, sitting at a lookout post. I’m not in any fighting. It’s all a bit boring, really.’ We thought she wasn’t actually in any danger, and that she was coming back in a few months.”
What he didn’t know was that she had, in fact, been deployed to Dier ez-Zor, the stage for Isis’s bitter last stand. “I think if I had known that she was facing lethal fire I would not have been able to sleep,” says Dirk. “I would have tried to get there, to be with her. After all, who’s going to fire on an unarmed white-haired old man?”
Then, on 20 January, Turkish-backed rebels attacked the Kurdish city of Afrin. “It was like nothing I’d ever seen,” another British YPJ fighter, who asked to be known only by her nom de guerre, Ruken Renas, told me from her frontline position last week. “The bombing was really heavy, especially just before the city fell. They hit the hospital; people were fleeing. It was chaos. Hundreds died.”
Anna (on right) with a fellow YPJ fighter in northern Syria. Photograph: YPJ/PA
Nevertheless, Anna was determined to help defend the revolution she had joined. She dyed her blond hair black, and begged her commanders to let her go to Afrin. Finally, they gave in. Two weeks later, she was killed.
When Dirk thinks about the afternoon when Anna told him she was going to war, emotions conflict. “I should have taken her far more seriously,” he says. “I should have got on the internet and looked up everything that was going on. I just didn’t know enough about it. All I knew was that it was a war zone. Perhaps I could have stopped her.”
He pauses for a moment. “But, at the same time, I was really proud of her. I don’t think I had any right to stop her. She was a 26-year-old woman. I had to trust her.”
Of course, there is still the issue of Anna’s body. The Campbells want it back, but with Afrin now under Turkish control, they aren’t sure where to begin. “They’re not going to be putting bodies in a morgue waiting for someone to identify them,” says Dirk. “They’ve probably collected them all up, dumped them in a truck and buried them in a mass grave, which means that if she’s going to be repatriated, it’ll depend on DNA evidence. That will take a very long time. There will be a lot of bodies to examine.”
In the meantime, he will commemorate his daughter by continuing her fight. “I would be betraying Anna’s memory if I didn’t do everything in my power to bring the Kurds’ plight to the attention of the world. Something must be done. And it needs to be done now, before anyone else’s children are killed.”
The AKP-MHP fascism has been waging a genocidal invasion operation against Afrin for 51 consecutive days. This genocidal aggression aims at eliminating the democratic system of Afrin and deterritorializing the Kurdish society living there. Therefore, infringing all the laws for war, they have been bombing all villages and towns, killing hundreds of civilian, particularly women and children. They have been destroying the olive groves, raised at great pains. This genocidal invasion operation is being carried out under humanity’s very eyes. One city faces elimination by NATO’s second largest army supplied in arms by many countries. This aggression is being legitimized by regarding it as though it happens between two state’s armies. Those forces which supply arms to the state of Turkey, particularly the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, are all accomplices to this crime.
The people of Afrin have been defending their olive groves and naturalwonder lands against the barbaric attacks of ISIS, El-Nusra, and many other jihadist thugs for seven consecutive years. They have beaten off, at great costs, all the aggressions of these inhumane jihadist thugs. Thousands fell martyr in their defense of Arin against the aggressions of ISIS, Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and all the other bandit groups. Once all these aggressions failed, the AKP-MHP fascist rule, sustaining and supporting these bandit groups for years, took over their duty. Those supporting ISIS and El-Nusra are now attacking the forces who resisted, at great costs, against them. Russia, which claims it is against ISIS and El-Nusra, has, through dirty deals, shown the green light for these aggressions. Opening the airspace for Turkish warplanes, it has abettedthis invasion and genocidal assault. The United States, as the main partner of the anti-ISIS coalition, has, by stating that Afrin is not their area of concern, normalized and legitimized the aggression of AKP-MHP fascism on the area. In doing so, they have punished, with genocide, those forces which resisted against ISIS and El-Nusra, while rewarding the Turkish state, as main sponsor of these jihatist groups. This fact shows the extent to which the political relations and attitudes are going through the most corrupt era of their history.
The people of Afrin, have been heroically resisting against this invasive and genocidal aggression for 51 consecutive days, while many forces, particularly UN, US, Russia have, by opting to be the onlookers tothis aggression, encouraged and thus abetted it. The AKP-MHP fascist rule’s “Afrin does not belong to the Kurds” statement clearly reveals the genocide they want to commit. In the absence of any external support, the people of Afrin have drawn on their own resources to stop this genocide and protect their homes and lands against an army equipped with state-of-the-art warfare technology. They have staged an unprecedented resistance in this unbalanced war circumstances. And now the Kurdish people, the peoples of the world, the democratic circles, and the Permanent Members of UN Security Council should actively intervene to sop this genocidal aggression. Particularly, the peoples and the democratic circles face the historical responsibility of showing their resolve to stop this inhumane and fascist aggression.
The Kurdish people have mobilized to stop this invasive aggression. Our people in Europe have taken to streets to further activate the demonstrations they have consistently been staging since the start of the invasion. It seems that more effective legitimate and democratic actions are needed to raise the awareness and conscience of the world public opinion. Demonstrations in Europe need to be supported and complemented by uprisings in all parts of Kurdistan and throughout the world. Our people in Europe and anywhere in the world should stage more effective protests in front of the headquarters and representatives of UN and the European Union and call on them to take actions to stop the genocide in Afrin.
Our peoples, democratic forces and all those who stand in solidarity with the legitimate cause of the Kurdish people should carry on with protests in front of the embassies of Turkey – as the invasion force – and Russia and the US who have shown the green light for the invasion. They should call on these forces to stop attacking and abetting.
Our people in Rojava and Bashur (South Kurdistan-Irak) who can afford going to Afrin, should march there in thousands, as living shields against the genocidal aggression.
Bashur (South) Kurdistan is under the occupation of the Turkish state, which, through many institutions, has turned into a colonialist state. Our people in Bashur should take actions against the military forces and institutions of the occupant Turkish state. The very being of the Kurds and their free and democratic life in all parts of Kurdistan is closely interrelated. Keeping this fact in mind, all the Kurds in all parts of Kurdistan should mobilize all their resources against the Turkish state’s aggression on Afrin. We are approaching Neworz, the day of resistance and survival struggle. Our people should start Newroz preparations from this very day and, inspired by the spirit of Newroz, take to the streets and squares and protest against the Afrin occupation.
These days are the days of uprising for our people. If they don’t rise up today, the people of Afrin and all the peoples of Rojava will face genocide. Recognizing “If not now, so when”, our peoples and the democratic forces should rise up to protect Afrin, the Middle East’s oasis of democracy, stability, and gender emancipation. This will not only be the uprising of the Kurdish people for Afrin, but also that of the peoples of the Middle East and all humanity against fascism.
Believing that the AKP-MHP fascism will fail and an era of democracy in Syria and the Middle East will emerge, we call on our people and all humanity to fulfill their responsibilities.
Co-Presidency of KCK Executive Council 11 March, 2018
US-backed Kurds brace for dramatic escalation of Turkish invasion that could be bloodier than Aleppo, Raqqa or Eastern Ghouta
The wars in Syria: Kurdish fighters are streaming in their thousands from the front line with Isis to stand up to Erdogan’s forces. But given their six years’ battle experience against a fanatical enemy, Turkey is unlikely to beat the YPG on the ground
PATRICK COCKBURN , MANBIJ, SYRIA, 8 MARCH 2018 , FOR THE INDEPENDENT.
Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army fighters by Lake Maydanki, north of Afrin, after they took control of the nearby village of Ali Bazan on Sunday AFP/Getty
In a field beside an abandoned railway station close to the Turkish border in northern Syria, Kurdish fighters are retraining to withstand Turkish air strikes. “We acted like a regular army when we were fighting Daesh [Isis] with US air support,” says Rojvan, a veteran Kurdish commander of the People’s Protection Units (YPG). “But now it is us who may be under Turkish air attack and we will have to behave more like guerrillas.”
Rojvan and his brigade have just returned from 45 days fighting Isis in Deir Ezzor province in eastern Syria and are waiting orders which may redeploy them to face the Turkish army that invaded the Kurdish enclave of Afrin on 20 January. Rojvan says that “we are mainly armed with light weapons like the Kalashnikov, RPG [rocket propelled grenade launcher] and light machine guns, but we will be resisting tanks and aircraft”. He makes clear that, whatever happened, they would fight to the end.
Kurdish and allied Arab units are streaming north from the front to the east of the Euphrates, where Isis is beginning to counter-attack, in order to stop the Turkish advance. Some 1,700 Arab militia left the area for Afrin on Tuesday and Turkey is demanding that the US stop them. The invasion is now in its seventh week and Rojvan and his fighters take some comfort in the fact that it is moving so slowly. But the Turkish strategy has been to take rural areas before mowing methodically to surround and besiege Afrin City and residential areas.
The big battles in Afrin are still to come and are likely to be as destructive and bloody as anything seen in Eastern Ghouta, Raqqa or East Aleppo. YPG fighters have battle experience stretching back to at least 2012, much of its gained against fanatical opponents like Isis. The likelihood is that, as in Ghouta, the Turkish generals will seek to avoid the heavy losses inevitable in street fighting and pound Afrin into ruins with air strikes and artillery fire. Civilian casualties are bound to be horrendous.
The Syrian Kurds believe they are facing an existential threat. They believe Turkey wants to eliminate not just the enclave of Afrin, but the 25 per cent of Syria that the Kurds have taken with US backing since 2015. Some think that defeat will mean the ethnic cleansing of Kurds from Afrin, which has traditionally been one of their core majority areas. They cite a speech by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the day after the start of the invasion started, claiming that “55 per cent of Afrin is Arab, 35 per cent are the Kurds … and about 7 per cent are Turkmen. [We aim] to give Afrin back to its rightful owners.” There is a suspicion among Kurdish leaders that Erdogan plans to create a Sunni bloc of territory north and west of Aleppo which will be under direct or indirect Turkish control.
Areas of control across Syria
The Kurdish leaders are convinced that Erdogan is determined to destroy their de facto state in the long run, but differ about the timing and objectives of the present attack. Elham Ahmad, the co-president of the Syrian Democratic Council that helps administer the Kurdish-held area, believes that the Turkish assault on Afrin, if successful, will set “a precedent for a further Turkish military advance”.
Ahmad had just returned from Afrin where she was born and where her family still lives. “Our convoy of 150 civilian cars was hit by a Turkish air strike,” she said. “We ran away from the cars, but 30 of them were destroyed and one person killed.” She is angry that the outside world is exclusively preoccupied with the bombardment of Eastern Ghouta by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, but ignores similar bombing and shelling in Afrin where, she says, 204 civilians had been killed, including 61 children, as of last weekend.
She expects that the next Turkish target, if its so-called Operation Olive Branch succeeds in Afrin, will be the Arab city of Manbij that was taken by the YPG in 2016. Strategically placed on the main road from Aleppo to the Kurdish heartlands, with a diversion where part of the highway is held by Turkish forces, it is a prosperous looking place full of shops crammed with goods and produce. Local rumour has it that one small shop recently changed hands for $1m (£720,000). It is the main supply line to the Kurdish zone, the highway crowded with oil tankers bringing crude oil from Kurdish-held oilfields far to the east to the Syrian government refinery at Homs.
If local people are nervous about the prospect of being submerged by the impending battle for northern Syria, they are not showing it. After being occupied by Isis and besieged by the YPG, they have strong nerves. They may also reflect that, if war is coming to their city and its 300,000 people, there is not a lot they can do to avert it. The main reason they might feel secure is a US pledge to defend their city against a Turkish attack, a promise backed up by regular and highly visible patrols of five or six US armoured vehicles carrying large Stars and Stripes. But the US willingness to confront its Nato partner Turkey is nuanced, particularly since Isis was defeated last year, though the movement is not entirely dead.
The People’s Protection Units (YPG) on Tuesday evening confirmed in a statement received by the region that after several days of negotiations the Syrian government affiliated forces entered Afrin.
“After more than a month of the legendary resistance of our forces against the Turkish invasion army and the terrorist groups aligned with it from Jabhat al-Nusra, Da’esh and others, and causing severe losses for the invaders in equipment and ammunition, as our units considered to call the Syrian govt and its army to undertake its duties in participating in defending Afrin and protecting the Syrian borders against this evil invasion,” YPG spokesperson Nouri Mahmoud said.
“The Syrian government has thus heeded the call and responded to the obligation call and sent military units today on 20 Feb 2018, and that is to concentrate on the borders and participate in defending the unity of Syrian lands and its borders,” he added.
The entry follows days of negotiations. On Monday evening, there were also reports that Syrian government-affiliated forces would enter, but officials said no agreement was reached yet.
But on Tuesday, it was confirmed regime-affiliated forces entered Afrin to stop the attacks by Turkey.
Turkish officials said they would continue attacking Afrin if Syrian government forces entered. Al-Mayadeen reports that Turkish forces have already begun shelling close to the Syrian Government convoy escorting fighters loyal to Assad
International Freedom Battalion’s statement on 3 fallen fighters
The International Freedom Battalion released a statement over the deaths of three comrades, Samuel Prada Leon, Oliver Francois Jean Le Clainche and Sjoerd Heeger.
ANF
AFRIN
Tuesday, 20 Feb 2018, 00:10
Full text of the statement is as follows:
The Afrin Resistance Marches to Victory with Internationalist Martyrs!
Spanish Samuel Prada Leon (Baran Galicia) and French Oliver François Jean Le Clainche (Kendal Breizh), and Dutch Sjoerd Heeger (Baran Sason), internationalist fighters who have participated in the defense of the Rojava revolution and who had been fighting in the Afrin fronts for a while have been immortalized in Afrin and Deir Ez Zor. Comrades Baran and Kendal were martyred on February 10 in Afrin as they resisted the invasion attacks of the AKP fascism. Comrade Baran Sason became immortal on February 12 in Deir Ez Zor, fighting ISIS fascism. With their internationalist awareness and hearts filled with hope, they fought against ISIS regression and against Erdoğan and his gangs in Afrin just the same. They were the most beautiful response to the unifying character of internationalism, against international regressive ideologies that wanted to smother the resistance.
Our internationalist struggle has grown at all points in history with the labor and daring of comrades like Samuel, Oliver and Sjoerd. They followed on the footsteps of Ivana Hoffman, Reece Harding and Michael Isrel. They learned from the struggles of Halil Aksakal, Alper Çakas and Muzaffer Karademir. They fought to defend the revolution of the oppressed against the fascist colonialist invasion and went down in history with their dignity.
Internationalists Continue to Increase Hope in the Afrin Trenches!
In the wave of lies from “We will take Afrin in 3 hours”, to “3 days”, to “we can’t give an exact date”, our resistance has continued for 30 days. The people of Afrin increase their honorable resistance every day against the AKP fascism and Al Nusra/ISIS derivatives with their fearless and daring stance. The union of the Northern Syrian peoples in this resistance, and the fight of SDF, YPG, YPJ and internationalist fighters respond to the invasion attempt by the second largest army in NATO with this resistance of the age. As fighters of the International Freedom Battalion, we increase our will to fight shoulder to shoulder with the self-defense forces of the peoples in the region in the fight against ISIS in Afrin today. Internationalist fighters who have become immortal in Afrin and Deir Ez Zor will continue to be by our side in this struggle.
We the Internationalist Freedom Battalion fighters act today in Afrin with the same will that knows how to pay a price and how to demand a price in Stalingrad, Vietnam, Kobanê and in every inch of liberated land in Rojava and Northern Syria. We take our place on the battle fronts with this consciousness. There is a harsh and unequal war, we are fighting an enemy without honor. But we have not the tiniest doubt that we will prevail. In all fronts, in all positions, we crack down on the colonialist, invading gangs. Our veterans and our martyrs light our way in this struggle.
Our response to Erdoğan’s and his gangs’ inhuman invasion and massacre attacks will be resistance and the victory of our peoples. The stance of Avesta Xabur and all martyrs who became immortal in a self-sacrifice will be our bar to clear in all our actions throughout our resistance. The courage of comrades Baran, Kendal and Baran Sason will continue to light the path of our internationalist struggle.
We remember with respect our comrades who defend our revolution and the gains of our revolution with their lives and fly the flag of internationalism in Afrin. We offer our condolences to our brothers and sisters in arms in YPG International, the families of our martyrs and our peoples.
Pinar Dinc and Kamran Matin explain what Erdogan, Iran and Russia have to gain from a bloody war on Afrin’s restive Kurdish population.
RED PEPPER January 31, 2018
On January 20, Turkey and its allied Syrian Islamist rebels began an unprovoked military offensive on Syria’s predominantly Kurdish region of Afrin paradoxically codenamed ‘Operation Olive Branch’. Despite its sheer size the operation has made very slow progress and there are independent reports of significant civilian casualties as a result of Turkish army’s indiscriminate aerial bombing, artillery shelling, and reported use of illegal ‘napalm’ bombs.
Turkey claims that its attack on Afrin aims at securing its borders from ‘terrorist’ operations by the ‘People’s Protection Units’ (YPG). Turkey considers YPG an extension of the ‘Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK), which has been in armed conflict with Turkish state since the mid-1980s. Unlike Turkey, US and other Western governments do not consider YPG a terrorist organisation.
However, there has never been any independent reports on any anti-Turkish attack launched from Afrin. In fact, Afrin has been one of the most peaceful regions of Syria throughout its six years old catastrophic civil war. It is also host to nearly half a million refugees from other parts of Syria especially Idlib and Aleppo regions.
Turkey has been hostile towards Syrian Kurds ever since they carved out an autonomous region in north-eastern Syria amidst the civil war. But its current war on Afrin is the first large-scale direct military action against them. The reasons behind this violent gear-change lies in a particular conjunction of domestic politics and regional geopolitics.
Blood for Votes
Domestically, Erdoğan and his ‘Justice and Development Party’ (AKP) pursue a strategy of political entrenchment that has increasingly come to centre on winning elections through fanning nationalist fervour against the Kurds and religious sentiments against the secular dissent and foreign powers.
The first trial of this strategy occurred in 2015 following the electoral success of the pro-Kurdish rights ‘Peoples’ Democratic Party’ (HDP) and the brilliant performance by its co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, which deprived the AKP lost from its parliamentary majority. Shortly afterwards Turkey resumed war against the PKK, unilaterally terminating peace talks it had been holding with the PKK since 2012. AKP’s resumption of war against the PKK aimed at attracting Turkish ultra-nationalists’ votes and suppressing HDP in the November 2015 snap elections.
In the ensuing conflict hundreds of Kurdish civilians were killed, large parts of several cities were destroyed and historic sites were gentrified, pro-Kurdish politicians (including co-chairs, deputies, and mayors from the HDP) were suspended or detained, and a large number of journalists and human rights activists were jailed. Even academics were not spared. Several hundred of Turkey’s academics who signed the peace petition have been purged on terrorism charges.
AKP recovered its parliamentary majority but political violence continued. It even expanded. Following the attempted military coup in the summer of 2016, Erdoğan orchestrated an extreme and nation-wide campaign of purge and persecution. His motive was twofold. He wanted to destroy once for all his erstwhile Gulenists allies, who had failed to agree with Erdogan over power-sharing, and to win the popular referendum on a revised constitution that would enshrine an executive system with widespread powers for himself as Turkey’s life-time president.
Erdoğan intensified the policy of social polarisation he had started in 2014. He not only demonised the Kurds but also stigmatised the Alevis, Zazas, and non-Muslims, and promoting antisemitism. In fact, in his ‘new Turkey’ Erdoğan made a clear distinction between the virtuous people with a religiously cemented national identity and impious ‘others’ including Kurds, Alevis, leftists, seculars, liberals and Gulenists. Today, even mild criticism is not tolerated as Erdoğan labels all those who do not support his open-ended autocracy collectively as ‘terrorists’.
The final act of Erdogan’s political entrenchment will be the 2019 presidential election in line with the new constitution. And some recent polls suggest that AKP’s popularity has significantly declined standing well below 50%. This can be chiefly attributed to a sustained economic downturn, which has eroded AKP’s petit-bourgeois social-base and disillusioned some sections of Turkey’s conservative capitalist class known as ‘Anatolian tigers’, with the status-quo. A recent split in AKP’s ultra-nationalist allies in the ‘National Movement Party’ (MHP) and the continued popularity of HDP have further reduced AKP’s popular support.
Against this background, Turkey’s war on Afrin is Erdoğan’s attempt to re-stage the ‘blood for votes’ tactic that he successfully tried following the electoral failure in the summer of 2015. And just like 2015, the main instrument to mobilise Turkish ultra-nationalism is an anti-Kurdish war overlain with opposition to the US which Erdogan accuses of the orchestrating the 2016 coup and supporting the Syrian Kurds with the aim of partitioning Turkey.
Erdogan’s pursuit of relevancy in post-ISIS Syria
Erdoğan’s ‘blood for votes’ electoral strategy at home has a mutually reinforcing geopolitical dimension abroad in Syria. Russia’s foray into Syrian civil war killed any hope for Turkey’s strategy of replacing the Assad regime with a friendly Sunni-Islamist government aligned with its ‘neo-Ottomanist’ project of regional hegemony.
At the same time, Syrian Kurds’ effective resistance against ISIS won them international sympathy and Western support. Erdoğan’s Syria policy therefore duly shifted from the overthrow of Assad towards the containment of Syrian Kurds. For any form of autonomy or political recognition of Syrian Kurds would diminish Turkey’s influence in Syria and weaken the AKP’s position vis-a-vis the HDP and the PKK domestically.
Erdoğan’s new anti-Kurdish policy in Syria was initially pursued through ‘active neutrality’ towards ISIS allowing its recruits reach Syria via Turkey and use Turkish soil for staging attacks against YPG and its female-only counterpart ‘Women’s Protection Units’ (YPJ). This circumstance reached a climax during the siege of Kobani by ISIS when Turkeys’ mighty army silently stood by across the border while Erdoğan himself gleefully declared Kobani will fall.
Syrian Kurds’ determined resistance and eventual defeat of ISIS in Kobani paved the way for US’s tactical military partnership with Syrian Kurds. This was vehemently opposed by Turkey. US was able to allay Turkish fears by emphasising the temporary, tactical and anti-ISIS focus of its partnership with the Syrian Kurds, who came to dominate the new multi-ethnic ‘Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF). Turkey therefore expected an end to US support for Syrian Kurds after the fall of Raqqa and ISIS’s strategic defeat.
However, Russian and Iranian entrenchment in Syria and the lack of any other effective military-political force with or through which US could affect the eventual political settlement in Syria have led the US to keep its roughly 2000-strong force in north-eastern Syria and continue its military partnership with SDF. This has seriously concerned Turkey, which views this as a prelude to the international recognition and political consolidation of the ‘Democratic Federal System of Northern Syria’ dominated by Syrian Kurds.
Continuing US support for Syrian Kurds have also set the alarm bells off for Russia, Iran and Assad’s regime. Russia and its Syrian and Iranian allies fear that US will try to use the Kurds to direct the peace talks towards a new Assad-free Syria. Iran has its own restive Kurdish minority and fears that Kurdish political consolidation in Syria will have ripple effects reaching Iran across Iraqi Kurdistan where with Turkey’s vocal support and US’s tacit approval it intervened to reverse the results of a Kurdish independence referendum last October. Iran is also concerned that its Syria-based ‘strategic depth’ doctrine will be undermined by Syrian Kurds, who currently control much of Syria’s most fertile agricultural lands and oil fields.
Russia’s rationale for allowing Turkish attack on Afrin is also twofold. It seeks to remind the Syrian Kurds of their vulnerability and therefore force them into compromise with the Assad regime and moving away from the US. In this way, Russia seeks to cement its military success in Syria with a political victory at peace settlement favouring Assad.
At the same time by facilitating Turkish attack on US’s key partner in Syria, Russia is further undermining the strategic alliance between US and Turkey and hence NATO. Russia therefore views Turkey’s war on Afrin as a win-win game. US on the other hand is mindful of Turkey’s irreversible drift towards Russia; a trend that has gathered pace after the 2016 failed coup and the ruthless purges in Turkey’s armed forces. The purges have led to the domination of pro-Russian ‘Euroasianist’ faction of Turkish military and marginalised pro-Western ‘Atlanticists’. This is why US has consistently maintained that it understands Turkish security concerns and at times seems to have made concessions regarding the scale and nature of its support for Syrian Kurds. The US failure to take any meaningful action against Turkey’s current offensive on Afrin is a case in point, one which has expectedly angered the Kurds. However, the zero-sum nature of Turkey’s approach to Syrian Kurds is seriously testing American commitment to supporting them.
All the major actors in the Syrian war therefore see some benefit in Turkey’s war on Afrin. For Syrian Kurds in the firing line, however, the picture is radically different. War has so far brought great loss of civilian life, destruction of cultural and historic sites, and damage to economic infrastructure; a perplexing reward for their heroic and successful resistance against IS. But in resisting Turkey’s aggression, they also see another historic opportunity to affirm their collective existence, cultural recognition, and political autonomy after decades of political and cultural denial and suppression. They deserve support and solidarity from the left.
On January 20, Turkey and its allied Syrian Islamist rebels began an unprovoked military offensive on Syria’s predominantly Kurdish region of Afrin paradoxically codenamed ‘Operation Olive Branch’. Despite its sheer size the operation has made very slow progress and there are independent reports of significant civilian casualties as a result of Turkish army’s indiscriminate aerial bombing, artillery shelling, and reported use of illegal ‘napalm’ bombs.
Turkey claims that its attack on Afrin aims at securing its borders from ‘terrorist’ operations by the ‘People’s Protection Units’ (YPG). Turkey considers YPG an extension of the ‘Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK), which has been in armed conflict with Turkish state since the mid-1980s. Unlike Turkey, US and other Western governments do not consider YPG a terrorist organisation.
However, there has never been any independent reports on any anti-Turkish attack launched from Afrin. In fact, Afrin has been one of the most peaceful regions of Syria throughout its six years old catastrophic civil war. It is also host to nearly half a million refugees from other parts of Syria especially Idlib and Aleppo regions.
Turkey has been hostile towards Syrian Kurds ever since they carved out an autonomous region in north-eastern Syria amidst the civil war. But its current war on Afrin is the first large-scale direct military action against them. The reasons behind this violent gear-change lies in a particular conjunction of domestic politics and regional geopolitics.
The AKP-MHP fascist rule, in collaboration with the anti-human gangs has launched an occupation attack against Afrin. They want to totally strip Afrin, an oasis of democracy for Syria and the Middle East, of the Kurdish population and replace them with these gangs. The AKP-MHP fascist rule has once again demonstrated its enmity towards the Kurds. Through this occupation attack, they want to shore up and nurture the reactionary forces in the Middle East. Knowing that a ground operation is doomed to fail, they began the occupation by using the Syrian air space, opened to them only after a dirty deals. They have attacked the city using approximately 100 fighter jets, an unprecedented case in the history of warfare. This occupation has faced the historical resistance of the people of Afrin and its self-sacrificing freedom fighters. The Afrin occupation attack has not only revealed the true anti-human nature of the Turkish state in the person of AKP-MHP fascist rule, but also has, at the same time, proved how a people empowered by democratic community principles can strongly resist. The people of Afrin and their self-sacrificing girls and boys, inspired by freedom and democracy ideals, have given the “no parasan” response to the occupation forces. They have rebuffed all the attacks during the last 6 days. We salute the people of Afrin and their self-sacrificing fighters who defend their homeland and democratic values. We congratulate them in advance for the victory they will gain in the most rightful battle of history.
The Afrin resistance is the resistance of all Syrians, the peoples of the Middle East, and all humanity. There is no difference between ISIS and AKP-MHP fascism and its collaborating gangs attacking Afrin. ISIS’s attack on Kobani and AKP-MHP’s attack on Afrin share the same goal. Recognizing this fact, all the peoples of the world and democratic circles have united around the historic resistance of Afrin. The attitudes of different states regarding this occupation may be driven by interests and have thus heartened it; However, regardless of these attitudes, the peoples all over the world have supported the Afrin resistance. We salute the democratic humanity and all the peoples for their support. Humanity’s conscience and sense of freedom and democracy united around the Afrin resistance have once again showed that humanity will not let fascism triumph. Afrin is a manifestation of the accumulation of humanity’s sense of freedom and democracy. Leftists, socialists, environmentalists, feminists, pro-labor circles and peace activists should organize their stance more effectively so that the sense of solidarity and the power of struggle needed for victory will emerge. Once AKP-MHP fascism is defeated, the wave of freedom and democracy, starting from the Middle East, will spread all over the world.
The Afrin resistance provides the peoples of Turkey with a historical opportunity for achieving peace and democracy. Once this anti-democratic and anti-freedom fascist rule, joined by CHP, is defeated, the hurdles in the way of freedom and democracy will be removed and the peoples of Turkey will achieve fraternity, democracy, and freedom. We salute all the democratic forces who have opposed the AKP-MHP fascist attacks and resisted the anti-democratic and anti-freedom attitudes of CHP. We believe that tomorrow’s Turkey will be found on the basis of your honorable and courageous stance. We reiterate our commitment for staying in solidarity with your hard struggle.
The Afrin occupation has once again had the Kurds see the anti-Kurdish nature of the Turkish state, as the vanguard of enmity against the Kurds. It has been revealed that unless this fascism is defeated, no part of Kurdistan will achieve freedom and democracy. Afrin resistance instantiates the unity, common stance and struggle of the Kurds in all parts of Kurdistan and the diaspora. We congratulate our people in Kurdistan and in Europe for their stance. We would like to reiterate our commitment to a Free Kurdistan and democratic Middle East, goals to be achieved through the unity of the Kurds, their unity with other peoples, and their common struggle. We call on the Kurdish people and all the peoples of the Middle East and all over the world to unite and stand in solidarity with the Afrin resistance.
The Afrin resistance will prevail, AKP-MHP fascism will be defeated, all Syrians and the peoples of the Middle East will achieve their freedom and democratic rights.
Co-Presidency of KCK Executive Council 25 January 2018
The AKP-MHP fascist rule in Turkey has begun the air and ground invasion operation against the Kurdish town of Afrin. This comes after months of threatening and targeting campaign. Turkey wants to destroy the democratic system which was established on the principle of brotherhood of Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen peoples. There are two main reasons for these attacks. Firstly, the anti-Kurdish AKP-MHP fascist rule wants to destroy Kurdish people’s gains in Afrin. Secondly, the AKP-MHP which have come to the point of losing their power; so they try to shore up their fascist rule by carrying out this invasion operation.
From the early days of the Syrian civil war till now, the people of Afrin have been defending their area against the anti-human jihadist bandits. They have managed to beat off all the attacks of anti-human thugs, particularly those of ISIS and Nusra Front. Afrin has been a safe and free area within Syria, letting no jihadist foot on its ground. Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from the conflict in other parts of Syria, particularly in Aleppo, have found a safe haven in Afrin. During all these years, the people of the Afrin area have been administering their cities and towns. The women have had a leading role in this form of administration based on self-sufficiency. This has not only turned Afrin into a model for the democratization of Syria but also an example of democratization for the peoples in Turkey, too. The AKP-MHP fascist rule tries to curb this democratic model, because they now the fact that the democratization of Syria will have implications for the solution of the Kurdish question. Recep Tayyip Erdogan got ISIS attack Kobani with the aim of strangling the desire of the Kurdish people for a free and democratic life. Once ISIS failed in fulfilling such an aim, Erdogan has decided to intervene himself. The AKP-MHP fascism stigmatizes all the democratic forces inside Turkey and abroad as terrorists. In doing so, they want to eliminate all the democratic forces resisting their fascist rule. The motive behind their suppression of journalists, academics, and politicians is the same as the motive behind the attack on Afrin.
The AKP-MHP fascist rule’s enmity towards the Kurds is inextricably intertwined with its anti-democratic nature. Therefore, they attack all the democratic circles which they think may pose a threat to their dictatorial reign. They want to portray the freedom fighters of Afrin as the enemies of Turkey and thereby deepen chauvinistic sentiments in a bid to increase support for their rule while they attack democratic circles within Turkey. Therefore, the attack on Afrin is an attempt to shore up the fascist rule of AKP-MHP and at the same time is a campaign to suppress all the democratic circles opposing AKP-MHP rule.
Russia and Syria which had closed the Syrian airspace to Turkey, have given the Turkish regime the permission it desperately needed to conduct air attacks. The people of Afrin have been waging a fierce struggle against bandit groups like ISIS, and Nusra Front. Considering the fact that the freedom fighters of Afrin and Syrian states fought the same enemy for years, letting Turkey use Syrian air space for air attacks against Afrin is a clear sign of a dirty deal against the Kurds. The Syrian regime and Russia have made a dirty deal which will not be in their own interests too. They have made a historical mistake which has pitted the Kurds against them. Russia and the Syrian regime can in no way justify their opening of the air space to Turkish jet. This policy will be called into question and they will be regarded as accomplices to this invasion and aggression.
The people of Afrin has had no aim other than a free and democratic life on their own land. Their self-defense struggle has had one focal point: resisting the aggression of the jihadist bandit groups on their land. And they are now defending their free and democratic life against the offensive of the Turkish army.
While Russia and the Syrian regime let the Turkish state to use the Syrian air space USA motivated the AKP-MHP fascists’ invasion by declaring that Afrin is outside the areas of shared struggle against ISIS. Therefore, USA once again became a party to the Turkish state’s enmity towards the Kurds while it helped Tayyip Erdogan and Devlet Bahceli shore up their fascist rule. Motivating and giving approval to the attack on Afrin and conniving at the aggression means supporting Erdogan and Bahceli fascist regime against the democratic circles. At a time when the Erdogan-Bahceli fascism is about to collapse, not opposing the Afrin invasion only secures Erdogan’s stay in power. Not opposing the invasion of Afrin, both the USA, and the EU countries have supported Erdogan-Bahceli’s oppression against the peoples of Turkey. Thus, Russia, USA, and Europe have become parties to the crimes committed by Erdogan-Bahceli fascism.
During the 20th century, the Kurds were subjected to genocidal policies. International forces supported and connived at these policies. As a result, one of the most ancient peoples of history has been brought to the brink of elimination. Whenever the Kurdish people have resisted the genocidal policies of the Turkish state, the USA and EU have supported the NATO-member Turkey. The main of Turkey in joining the NATO is seeking support for its genocidal policies against the Kurds. Even today, securing this support is the main condition in Turkey’s EU accession talks. These countries’ silence towards Turkey’s genocidal policies against the Kurds means they have are accomplices to the genocide of the Kurds just for securing some economic interests. If USA and EU don’t oppose this genocidal and invasion attacks they will be regarded as accomplice to genocide against the Kurds.
The invasion attack on Afrin is at the same time an act of aggression against all the libertarian and democratic circles in Turkey, Syria and all the Middle East. AKP-MHP fascist rule have targeted all the democratic dynamics of the Middle East with the aim of creating a fertile ground for all the reactionary and despotic forces, particularly ISIS and Nusra Front. Therefore, not only the Kurdish people, but also all the peoples in Turkey, Syria, and the Middle East who want democratization should stand against the Turkish invasion of Afrin. The resistance in Afrin is not only the resistance of the Kurds, but also the resistance of all the democratic forces of the Middle East and the world.
The Turkish offensive against Afrin is neither in the interest of US, nor that of Russia, Syira, EU, and the peoples of the Middle East. Therefore, Russia, US, and the Syrian regime who let and motivated Turkish attack on Afrin should review their policies and take clear attitude against the invasion. Irresponsible attitudes cannot sustain the ground for peace, democracy, and stability in the Middle East created by paying heavy prices.
The Kurdish people in all parts of Kurdistan, particularly in North Kurdistan, and in diaspora should support the Afrin resistance. All the peoples of Syria, particularly the Arab, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Turkmen people living in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria should see the fact that this attack is against them, too, and should participate in the Afrin resistance.
The peoples of Afrin are one the basic democratic dynamics of the Middle East. All of them, particularly the youth and the women should resist shoulder to shoulder against the invasion forces. They should defend their villages, districts, towns and cities against the aggressors and turn Afrin into a grave for the AKP-MHP fascist gangs.
All the peoples in the world, , who defeated ISIS by standing in solidarity with the freedom fighters of Kobani on November 1, 2014, World Kobani Day, should stand by the resistance forces of Afrin and defeat AKP-MHP dictatorship which has become a center and guardian for the reactionary and despotic forces of the Middle East. Once the AKP-MHP fascist rule is defeated, the dark days of the Middle East will come to an end and the sun of freedom and democracy will rise. As Kurdish Freedom Movement, we will stand by the people of Afrin with all our strength. Neither the Turkish state nor any other force will be able to stop our people’s march for freedom and democracy. Turkey will surely be democratized and the peoples of the Middle East will attain their freedom and democratic rights.
Co-Presidency of KCK Executive Council 21 January, 2018
The dark clouds of 21st-century fascism are once again hanging over the heads of the people of northern Syria. As if the inhabitants of the region often referred to as Rojava haven’t suffered enough over the course of the past 7 years of war, the Turkish state has come to the conclusion that the time is ripe to pick up the fallen, bloodied sword from the corpse that is Islamic State. Together with Salafist mercenaries carrying flags of the Syrian ‘rebels’ – one of the many components of what at one historical juncture seemingly all so long ago was a cohesive ‘Free Syrian Army’ – Erdogan’s regime vows a ‘swift operation’ to destroy ‘terrorism’ in Afrin.
It is Afrin that has been a beacon of stability in Syria over the course of the war, not only taking in tens of thousands of refugees from elsewhere in the country, but establishing the principles of direct democracy, women’s liberation and ecology in the midst of an otherwise catastrophic and tumultuous period. It is precisely this model of a socialistic, multi-ethnic, feminist canton advocated by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) that Erdogan’s AKP government sees as ‘terrorism’. The irony could not be more obvious.
For those who have been following closely over the past few years the events in not only Afrin, but in the other two cantons that make up the Rojava region (officially the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria), the current battle faced by the Kurdish forces is strangely reminiscent of the 2014-15 battle for Kobane. At that point, the so-called Islamic State was on the verge of reaching the Syria-Turkey border by securing the city known officially as Ayn al-Arab (a brutal reminder of the Arabization and monolithic nation-state mentality of the Ba’athist government). The Kurdish forces of the YPG and YPJ found themselves fighting off the fascist forces as Turkey allowed Daesh militants to enter Syria freely. Turkish tanks sat idle at the border, and soldiers watched the action, hoping for the elimination of the ‘terrorists’ – not Daesh, of course, but of the Kurds! The so-called international community was silent, until the U.S. intervened with airstrikes after an enormous amount of pressure in the form of massive global protests.
Today in Afrin, as Turkish planes and tanks aim to finish the job that the Islamic State was incapable of accomplishing, world leaders are again silent. Although a relationship had been forged in recent years between Russia and the YPG/J in Afrin, Moscow now seems to have withdrawn its forces, clearing the way for the Turkish incursion. The United States, although supportive of the YPG/J’s operations against Daesh east of the Euphrates River, has wiped its hands of any association with their ‘allies’ in Afrin. The Syrian government has said that it will shoot down Ankara’s planes – yet it seems as if the actions of Erdogan’s regime have so far gone unopposed.
This understandably leaves the Kurdish people and their forces in Afrin feeling as if the old maxim ‘the Kurds have no friends but the mountains’ is once again deeply relevant. Perhaps they understood throughout the complexities and twists and turns of the war that this was always the case.
After all, my experiences in Rojava last year confirmed to me that the YPG/J was far from a ‘pawn’ of ‘puppet’ of anybody, despite the often misunderstood relationship between them and Washington. In fact, it was clear to me that they were preparing more than a year ago for not only an eventual Turkish military operation, but for the moment that self-reliance would have to be stepped up and a fight undertaken on their own to protect the territory of Rojava and the gains of their revolution.
My inability to Understand Rojava Before 2015
Today, I am yelling at the top of my lungs in support for the people of Afrin and for the Kurdish forces of the YPG and YPJ. There are hundreds of solidarity demonstrations taking place across the western world. Yet, just over three years ago when the Islamic State was threatening to take Kobane, I lacked the understanding of the situation in the country to adequately provide that same solidarity. I didn’t attend any of these protests despite the considerable threat that was being manifested toward an anti-fascist militia that espoused principles largely in line with my own.
Indeed, this is part of my confessions – or rather, self-critical assessment. I wasn’t always the most supportive of the idea that what was taking place in northern Syria constituted a real revolutionary process. In fact, much of the reason that I have decided to undertake such a considerable amount of writing since the time I spent in Rojava last year is that my experiences there made me feel a sense of urgency about being critically reflective of my previous erroneous positions. I knew that if ‘observation and participation’ in the revolution has altered my understanding of Syria, there was at least the possibility that my work could have that kind of impact on others who perhaps hold positions akin to those I used to.
Let me break it down from the beginning. In 2013, exactly five years ago next month, I visited Kurdistan for the first time. This trip took me to the territory controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq. Although I may have set foot in Kurdish lands, the week that I spent there did little to reveal the true nature of Kurdistan as a whole – or perhaps I simply didn’t bother to look hard enough or investigate aptly. Nonetheless, I was convinced that the KRG was little more than a puppet entity of the United States. That assessment may not be so far off the mark – but the problem was that I failed to grasp the differences between ‘the Kurds’ of Bashur (Iraq) and Rojava (Syria), not to mention Rojhilat (Iran) or Bakur (Turkey). [see my previous article ‘The Kurds: Internationalists or Narrow Nationalists?]
Throughout 2013, the focus of the United States was on whether it should engage in a direct intervention in the Syrian war by means of airstrikes on Syrian Arab Army targets. Understandably, this put the anti-war movement and socialist activists in the U.S. in a position of putting its emphasis on opposing any machinations of the Obama administration to launch a wider war in Syria. At this time, my principal obligation seemed clear – oppose the aggression of the Obama administration and my own government. I believe such a position is pivotal. However, all too often socialist activists in the western metropoles have a tendency to put anti-imperialism on ‘steroids’ – in other words, to reduce geopolitics to a single contradiction, refusing to seriously investigate the contradictions of the state in question, or of the other dynamics at play.
To be clear, it’s not as if I saw the Ba’athist government as one that I was ideologically aligned with. It’s not as if I didn’t engage in some level of investigation of the situation on the ground throughout the whole of the country. In fact, in songs like ‘Hands Off Syria’ – which I released in the Spring of 2012 – I explicitly mention that ‘there’s been problems in Syria for quite a long time.’ Perhaps this was too little in the way of expressing the reality in the country, but it did try to account for the fact that the dynamics in the country were complex and that any defence of the Syrian state vis-à-vis imperialism wasn’t the same as overt support for the policies of that state.
Grappling with Kobane and the Resistance of the Kurds
However, the general tendency that I grew to express was more and more toward full solidarity with Syrian Arab state. The problem with this position wasn’t so much the fact that I explained the machinations of imperialism toward a government that defied its diktat in the region, particularly in regards to the colonial settler entity of Israel. The problem also wasn’t that I expressed how the U.S. government’s support for the so-called ‘rebels’ was creating a situation in which Shia, Christian, or even Sunni communities were facing genocidal consequences. It was simply that I was simplifying the narrative, and not giving voice to those who had been the victims of a monolithic Syrian state based on racial and ethnic prejudice for decades.
I first began to grapple with this during the battle of Kobane. It was obvious that the so-called Islamic State was enemy number one in the country. This was largely agreed across political lines – by so-called ‘moderates’ within the FSA, by the Syrian state, and of course by the Kurdish forces who were bearing the brunt of their fascistic attacks.
Kobane first highlighted the fierce resistance of the YPG/J to the world at large. Although these forces had defended predominately Kurdish lands in Syria since the beginning of the Rojava Revolution in the Spring of 2012, this battle would finally bring these fighters’ struggle to international attention, as well as that of the Kurdish question in general. Suddenly, the nearly 40 years that the Kurdish movement had fought the genocidal policies of the Turkish state also began to achieve a certain level of recognition.
It is true that the women’s revolution in Kobane and Rojava was fetishized in the mainstream western press. Beyond the H&M adverts, a more thorough examination showed that it was the consequence of a deliberate policy to liberate women from patriarchal oppression that was first undertaken in the ranks of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), not in Syria, but inside of Turkish borders.
It was not until the martyrdom of Ivana Hoffmann, a German internationalist in the ranks of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP) in Syria in March of 2015 that I began to seriously reflect on the correctness of my political understanding of Syria. I knew that there were communist parties in Syria that had been in a de-facto alliance with the Syrian state against the moves of imperialism. Yet, I did not realise that there had been Turkish communist groups that had been fighting side by side with the Kurdish forces. Not only were these cadres from Bakur but many of them – like Ivana – were young internationalists. Ivana did not die in Kobane, but her death became linked to that decisive battle in historical memory.
Investigation and Participation
I knew that I needed to investigate the matter further. Therefore, I made it my business to make sure that I travelled to Rojava to see for myself what was taking place in the areas of Syria which were experiencing what the Kurdish forces called a ‘revolution’. Was this really the case? Or was this a mere attempt by the U.S. to carve out a proto-state in a part of Syrian territory?
Any doubts I may have had about whether or not the ‘Rojava Revolution’ was a genuine revolutionary process were put to bed within mere days of arriving in Syria. I soon realized what an absolute travesty it was that people who are generally aligned with the left in the west had fallen into the mistaken position of referring to these Kurdish forces as ‘Zio Kurds’ (despite a historical relationship with the revolutionary Palestinian movement), ‘separatists’ (despite an unflinching opposition to any plans to partition Syria), or imperialist proxies (despite fighting imperialism for nearly 40 years).
Let me be honest: admitting that I have been wrong, especially for years on end on such a key political question, wasn’t easy. In fact, the hardest thing about being in Syria was having to engage in the daily ‘tekmil’ – criticism and self-criticism sessions. Coming from our western experiences, it just isn’t that easy to not take such sessions deeply personally, even if their focus is on improving the character of revolutionaries.
To be clear, this does not mean that I think those journalists and activists who have been to government-held areas of Syria are necessarily wrong in the positions they have put forward in the so-called western alternative media. Given the malicious war propaganda put forward by the western mainstream press, particularly in the U.S, it is important to defy these perspectives. I do not doubt that the Ba’athist state enjoys considerable support in many areas of Syria. Personally, I know countless Syrians who may have been critical of the state before the war, but who have increasingly sympathised with Bashar al-Assad’s leadership and view his presidency as a stabilising factor. This is particularly true, from my experiences, among Christians from Syria who see the Ba’athist government as a secular and moderate force.
In fact, it does not surprise me that many who have been to Damascus and other regions of the country see the government as a progressive entity. Especially given the war and the outlook of the factions opposed to the state, this seems to be an entirely understandable conclusion. In some parts of Damascus, I am certain that the Ba’athist state may be viewed as the bastion of progressiveness, secularism, and inclusiveness. I do not doubt the sincerity of the journalists and activists who have reported on this reality within the country. The only thing I doubt – and have come to understand – is that their views are incomplete.
What is a secular, progressive government to an Arab Christian, Alawi, or even Sunni living in a considerable part of the country is the same government that I came to see that for an Assyrian, Kurd, or other ethnic minority in the north of the country was a ‘fascist’ regime. The stories I heard of the repressive policies of this state were harrowing. For sure, if I had simply gone to Damascus, I may have just reinforced my existing beliefs and perspectives. Yet, I was eager not to do precisely that. I was eager to see more of the country, to do what many of my other journalist colleagues as yet hadn’t done.
It is true that the Syrian Arab state has been part of the so-called ‘resistance axis’ to Zionism and imperialism in the region. Yet, everything has a dual character. The state’s orientation vis-à-vis imperialism may be progressive. It may be anti-colonial. However, it is internal policies have also exhibited a considerable degree of colonialism as far as the Kurds are concerned. It seems laughable to many in the north of the country to seriously speak of a ‘resistance axis’ to occupation when their lives have been characterised by exclusion and suppression of their language and culture.
The Left Must Express Its Solidarity With Afrin
Things changed post-Rojava. Gone was any conception or idea that perhaps the administration behind this region’s transformation was anything less than revolutionary. Gone was any semblance of thought that this governing structure was a proxy of imperialism. Gone was any notion that this system should not be supported overtly. I knew that I had to turn over a new leaf in raising my voice in solidarity with Rojava, and of convincing those who thought as I previously had – who were at the very least sceptical about ‘the Kurds’ – that this was a historical process worth supporting, even if critically.
Of course, I’m well aware that just as the views of those who have only travelled to Syrian government-held areas are limited in scope, so are mine. My assessments are frank, sincere, and I believe correct. However, I certainly won’t fall into the trap of claiming that I am a Syria ‘expert’ or that I possess all of the answers. I will only assert that what I have seen gives me tremendous hope in the potential for humanity and for socialism’s revival.
Until now, I do not think I have clearly expressed that I know my previous position on Syria to have been incorrect – or perhaps to phrase it better, to have been far too simplistic and incomplete. In that regard, take this as my public self-criticism. I will never again be so arrogant and simplistic to believe that major world conflagrations can be boiled down to a single contradiction. I will do my utmost never again to fail to express my solidarity with the struggle of the oppressed and downtrodden resisting fascistic structures and barbarism.
Three years ago, I should have been in complete solidarity with the resistance of Kobane. Honestly, I failed. Today, I am demanding the international left engage in a serious assessment of just how significant the Rojava Revolution is at this historical juncture as the radical left reconstitutes itself globally. Solidarity with Afrin should be front and centre at this moment. I fully believe that anything less than this is a full betrayal of the principles of humanity and abandonment one of the most progressive forces currently in existence.
Although it is, of course, true that my writings on Rojava may be reflective of the human flaw of containing romantic sentiments – and I believe they probably are – I would not consider it an overstatement to say that the revolution being defended with the gun by the YPG and YPJ is akin to the vanguard of humanity.
That makes it all the more difficult to be within the confines of western capitalist modernity while this attack on Afrin takes place. My soul and my spirit are in Rojava at this crucial moment. I yearn to be able to be there to physically resist the attacks of the fascist Turkish government and mercenaries against this radical, democratic experiment. Although I know that this is not possible for the time being, what is possible is that we do all we can in the western metropoles to raise our voices to make sure that Afrin does not become a victory for the neo-Ottoman ambitions of the Erdogan government. Anything less is indeed to betray the principles of revolution and internationalism.
After a multi-day artillery barrage, the Turkish Army has begun its push into Afrin, a district of Syria which has been governed by Syrian Kurds ever since they defeated al Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists. Turkish officials say they plan to set up a buffer zone extending almost 20 miles into Syria from the Turkish border. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a blistering speech threatening Turkey’s Kurds if they speak up on behalf of their Syrian counterparts and promising victory within “a very short period of time.”That may be a fatal miscalculation, one which could cripple Turkey. Erdogan’s paranoia and political meddling in the military have taken a toll. Once the pride of NATO, the Turkish military and security services are a shadow of their former self. They lack the experience, training, and discipline of their predecessors. One in four Turkish pilots is in prison; many Turkish F-16s are grounded for lack of trained pilots. In 2012, Syrian forces downed a Turkish F-4, and Kurds have downed Turkish helicopters.Nor is it clear the Turkish army can fight effectively. The Turks may occupy pockets in Syria, but their presence has long been more symbolic than real. One of the reasons the Turkish intelligence service (MIT) supplied and supported the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front and allowed the Islamic State free transit across Turkish territory was a quid pro quo in order to protect Turkish interests inside Syria. In short, Erdogan wanted to assume the status of military commander without actually having to fight the tough battles that originally elevated Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, to prominence.Turkey’s competence gap can be seen in the few incidents where Turkish forces have come into contact with adversaries in Syria or Iraq. In 2016, the ISIS burned to death two Turkish soldiers that it captured in Syria. That ISIS terrorists were able to kidnap them in the first place demonstrates massive security lapses, and that Turkey was unable to determine their location prior to their execution reflects gaps in Turkish intelligence. Rather than acknowledge their murder, Erdogan responded as he often does with denial and deflection, refusing to acknowledge the accuracy of the video and then imposing a media blackout on the murders.Turkey’s weakness is also reflected in deteriorating internal security. Terrorists have for decades targeted Turkey, but Turkish security forces successfully exposed and disrupted terrorist plots. After Erdogan purged senior military and security officials and rotated others out of territories and portfolios they knew inside-out, terrorism surged not only inside Turkey but even in the once-safe cities of Istanbul and Ankara. This should not have been unexpected to any leader cognizant of history. The Red Army hemorrhaged effectiveness after Soviet dictator Josef Stalin purged the officer corps prior to the Nazi invasion during World War II. Iraqi inroads into Iran in 1980 were due not only to the element of surprise, but also to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s hobbling of the Iranian officer corps during his post-revolutionary purge. More recently, ISIS seized Mosul after former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki replaced more professional officers with political loyalists who chickened out and ran at the sound of the first shot.Turkey has fought the PKK since 1984. The group suffered a blow in 1999 when Turkish commandos, perhaps assisted by U.S. or Israeli intelligence, seized PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. While Turkish officials for more than a decade insisted the imprisoned and isolated Ocalan has become irrelevant, Erdogan transformed him into an indispensable Kurdish political leader by agreeing to negotiate peace with him. Erdogan may like to depict the PKK as terrorists — and, without doubt, they have engaged in terrorism — but in recent years, they have transformed themselves into more of a traditional insurgency. And while the links between the PKK and the Syrian-based Popular Mobilization Units (YPG) are real, Turkish officials are hard-pressed to attribute any attacks inside Turkey to Syrian Kurds from Afrin.But while Turkey’s military is a shadow of its former self, the same can’t be said for the YPG. The Kurdish militia has been the most effective fighting force on the ground in Syria against al Qaeda and ISIS. For years, they operated alone — ignored by the United States and Russia, isolated by other Syrian opposition groups, and embargoed by Turkey. And yet, at Kobane and elsewhere, their discipline, high morale, and cohesion paid off. If they could operate against all odds against ISIS, they can likewise be a formidable opponent against Turkey, especially with home field advantage.Nor is the PKK amateurish, especially after years of hardening in battle. In another incident censored by Turkey, PKK operatives managed to capture two of Turkey’s leading intelligence officials.Nor are Turkey’s aims clear. There is hardly a Kurdish farmer or shopkeeper that Turkish officials — in assessments blinded by racism and ignorance — don’t see as terrorists. If Turkey seeks to wipe out “terrorists,” does that mean engaging in ethnic cleansing inside Syria? And, if that happens, what is to stop a blowback that will not only send hundreds of Turkish troops back home in body bags, but will also ignite the already repressed Kurdish population inside Turkey? If Turkey has been unable to defeat the PKK in Diyarbakir and Hakkari, will they be able to do so in Istanbul and Antalya? Just as Erdogan’s forces once supplied al Qaeda and ISIS with weaponry, what might happen if other countries — Russia, Israel, the Syrian regime, or even the United States — decide covertly to provide the means for the YPG to better defend themselves? If Kurds bring the fight into Turkey, can Turkey’s economy survive as the multi-billion dollar tourist industry shrinks 75 percent?Erdogan operates in a domain of ego and ambition unencumbered by reality. He brands those who question him as terrorists, and so top aides understand they must tell him only what he wishes to hear. The result, now that Turkish forces are moving into Afrin against an opponent stronger than Erdogan realizes, could be disaster for Turkey. Erdogan may expect a quick victory. Not only is this not realistic, but he may soon find that what he sees as an ignorant terrorist group is strong enough to bleed Turkish invaders dry and run the Turkish economy into the ground.Erdogan may set the stage not for triumphant victory but for a defeat that will shake Turkey to the core.Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
We are trying to build Democracy in Syria. So why is Turkey attacking us?
Washington Post
By Hayvi MustafaJanuary 22 at 2:16 PM
Hayvi Mustafa is co-president of the Executive Council of Afrin, a region in northern Syria of 1.5 million people that currently includes some 500,000 internally displaced people.
Three months ago, I was sitting here in my office with my colleagues, celebrating the liberation of Raqqa from the Islamic State. The Islamic State’s fighters were vanquished by our own Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with the help of our American allies. We had great hopes that day: Eliminating the security threat meant that we could finally begin investing in education and social services. As a woman, I was especially keen to empower others of my gender, which I saw as a crucial part of our plans to transform our society into a true democracy after our lives under the totalitarian state of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. My duties evolved to include supervising the work of 15 governmental departments that provide security and services to people regardless of their ethnicity, religion or politics. Among our accomplishments is a new university that offers instruction in engineering and social sciences and provides full access to women as well as men.Today I am sitting in that very same office, listening and watching as Turkish jets bomb us and artillery shells our homes. We are getting calls from local officials warning that Turkey pushing deeper into our territory, perhaps even hoping to take the city of Afrin itself. Turkey accuses us of being an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). All of the region’s leaders and U.S officials have denied these allegations. Nonetheless, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains determined to wage his war against Afrin. His invasion in our territory also serves the purpose of distracting his own people from his authoritarian power grab at home.Our region is religiously and ethnically diverse. Our population includes Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, Yazidis and Alawites. Many of us are descendants of the survivors of genocides that were committed by Turkish states against the non-Turkish peoples during and after World War I. All of these communities have refused to leave Afrin despite the threat from the Islamic government in Turkey and the jihadist groups associated with it that publicly threaten us with ethnic cleansing. All of these communities are working together to build a democratic alternative in Syria.Erdogan wants to destroy this freedom; his forces have already killed 18 innocent civilians. Though ostensibly a U.S. ally, Erdogan is not ashamed to use jihadist groups to eliminate Afrin as a democratic alternative. Not only did Erdogan allow al-Qaeda to grow along Turkey’s border with Idlib, but he has also coordinated with al-Qaeda to facilitate the entry of the Turkish troops into our region. Erdogan doesn’t fight al-Qaeda — he works with them.Since 2011, when Assad’s regime started to collapse, the democratic political institutions of our region have worked tirelessly to mobilize people in a struggle for democracy and security against the barbarism of the Islamic State and the chaos of the Syrian civil war. We have organized our self-defense and enforced universal human rights. Most importantly, our security forces do not perform summary executions — with one man as judge, jury and executioner — as frequently happens in the other lawless areas of Syria. Our forces abide by the laws written in our legislative assembly.Ironically, the fact that the Islamic State never took control of our region has limited the American presence here, and we are now paying the price. Unlike some other regions in northern Syria, we do not have U.S. military bases or even military observers. This encouraged Erdogan to wage war against us under the pretext of “fighting terrorism.” He accuses all Kurds of being terrorists by virtue of their birth. But today it is not only the Kurds who are being attacked by Erdogan. Turkish prisons are filled with peaceful political activists from a wide variety of backgrounds, yet all are accused of terrorism.We should not be destroyed because our struggle for democracy and freedom curtails Erdogan’s ambitions. We should not be destroyed because we kept the Islamic State and al-Qaeda out of our region. We look to Turkey as a neighbor and seek a better relationship with its people. We differentiate between Turkey as a government and its people, between Erdogan as an Islamist dictator and his oppressed subjects. We believe that this is a distinction that our friends in the United States and Europe should also make.U.S. diplomacy appears to be having little effect on Turkey, and this is not a surprise. Erdogan failed to support a democratic alternative to the Assad regime and refused to help the United States defeat al-Qaeda in Syria. Our defense forces have recruited many democratically minded Syrians from the areas where al-Qaeda is now concentrated, and we are prepared to work together with the United States to end this threat to global security. To do this, the United States needs to enforce a no-fly zone similar to agreements between the United States and Russia preventing the Syrian air force from bombing SDF targets, and to establish closer cooperation with our security forces in the region. But Washington must act soon. Time is running out.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Sunday said they have repelled attacks by the Turkish army and affiliated rebels in Afrin. This, while the Turkish government media claimed the Turkish-backed forces took some villages near the border of Afrin.
On Sunday heavy clashes took place between the Turkish-backed rebels and the SDF. This comes a day after heavy Turkish air strikes pounded the city of Afrin and the villages near the border.
Speaking to The Region, a local official Mustafa Shan said that “A half an hour ago, the Afrin suburb was shelled but the morale is high and we hope nothing will happen,” he added.
Roj Moussa, a local journalist in Afrin told The Region that the Turkish-backed rebels failed to enter into YPG strongholds. “The militants couldn’t cross to the villages of Shinkal and Kurdo. The clashes continued and the YPG forces confronted them and bombed a tank in the Kordo village and two tanks in the Dikmash village,” he added.
Nevertheless, later in the evening several civilians were killed, an official of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) told the Region.
“The Turkish army shelled Afrin today again and until an hour ago the planes were flying in the sky. Today, a massacre took place in the town of Siruj in the north-east of Afrin and some children were killed,” the YPG official based in Afrin said.
“9 civilians were killed, including 6 children and the rest we couldn’t recognize because not much was left of their bodies” the YPG official in Afrin said.
However, the official denied Turkish soldiers were captured.
“The clashes were strong today, especially in Rajo and Bilbil. The operation was carried out by the Turkish army and its militias and is continuing so far in the villages of Adama and Surki in the south of Afrin,” the official added late in the afternoon.
According to a statement made by the SDF, the Turkish-backed rebels and army were repelled later during the day.
“The Turkish occupation army, which failed to advance into Afrin on the ground, once again targeted civilians with multiple airstrikes. The bombardment carried out on Rubar IDP camp, Cilbir village of Sherawa district and the area surrounding Afrin city center caused many civilian deaths,” the SDF said.
The SDF also accused the Turkish Army of attacking Hatay city and placing the blame on the SDF. They rebuked what they insinuated what was an orchestrated media campaign by Ankara.
“The Turkish occupation army attacks Reyhanli district of Hatay city itself only to legitimate the ongoing massacre and blames our forces for this.” the SDF stated in a public statement. “We once again stress that the social media rumors and the allegations delivered by some media outlets should not be trusted unless officially confirmed by General Command statements. SDF General Command will keep the public up to date about the results of the battle and resistance,” the SDF said.
The SDF said they would announce more details on the operation later.
Another SDF official in a public statement suggested that the Turkish-backed forces faced heavy losses after attacks by the SDF, recapturing lost positions and seizing the bodies of dead soldiers and rebels and destroying some tanks.
“Some tanks were left being destroyed on the battlefield, while soldiers escaped. The number of deaths, injured are still not clear, but will be released later. The situation is good, the moral is high and the guerrilla-style attacks are continuing,” the SDF official said.
Syrian Kurdish YPG says ‘no choice but to resist’ after Turkish strikes
Reuters Staff
BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said that Saturday’s Turkish air strikes on Syria’s Afrin region left it with no choice but to fight back, saying Ankara had hit civilian neighborhoods.
Smoke rises from the Syria’s Afrin region, as it is pictured from near the Turkish town of Hassa, on the Turkish-Syrian border in Hatay province, Turkey January 20, 2018. REUTERS/Osman Orsal
“We will defeat this aggression, like we have defeated other such assaults against our villages and cities,” the YPG, which has battled Islamic State with U.S. backing, said.
The YPG urged men and women in north Syria to join its ranks to protect Afrin.
Turkey opened a new front in Syria’s war on Saturday, striking the Afrin region and raising the prospect of deeper strains between Ankara and NATO ally Washington.
Reporting by Ellen Francis; editing by Alexander Smith
SULAIMANI – The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will not remain silent over the Turkish attacks on Afrin canton, member of the group’s executive council committee said.
Speaking to PKK-affiliate media on Saturday (January 20), PKK Executive Council Committee member Murat Karayilan said the PKK would defend Afrin if Turkey attacks the canton.
“Attack on Afrin is like an attack on the entire Kurdish nation,” Karayilan added, calling on the international community not to back Turkey.
Before formal airstrikes started he said, “If Turkey launches any airstrikes on Afrin, we will consider it as if Russia has allowed Turkey, because the Afrin sky is under control of Russia.”
PKK knows Turkey cannot enter Afrin alone because the group has been fighting Turkey for 35 years, Karayilan said.
Afrin, a hilly region that falls in Syria’s northern Aleppo province, is home to more than a million people including displaced families.
Turkey and allied Syrian rebels on Saturday began an air and ground operation, dubbed operation “Olive Branch,” aimed at ousting the People’s Protection Units (YPG) from the Kurdish-majority pocket.
Russia on Saturday said its troops were withdrawing from the Afrin region, where they had been stationed to manage a buffer zone between Kurds and Turkish-backed rebels and also train to Kurdish fighters.
In a statement issued late Saturday, the YPG said it would “hold Russia responsible for these attacks just as much as Turkey.”
Turkey vehemently opposes the YPG because of its links to PKK, which has waged an insurgency inside Turkey for three decades.
But the YPG has been the key ally of Turkey’s fellow NATO member, the United States, in the fight against Islamic State (ISIS), playing a key role in pushing the extremists out of their Syrian strongholds.
The people of Afrin today said no to Turkish occupation and no to Turkish attacks
Thursday 18 January 2018 14:16 UTC
Last update:
Friday 19 January 2018 10:00 UTC
Thousands of Kurds on Thursday protested in Afrin against Turkish invasion plans, while also denying Turkish claims civilians were fleeing the Syrian canton. “Afrin is a cemetery of Erdogan,” one banner read at the protests.
“The people of Afrin today said no to Turkish occupation and no to Turkish attacks on their ground, against their civilians,” Roj Moussa, 20, a journalist, said after the protests.
“It was a huge protest, despite the rain and wind – I’ve never seen such huge protests before,” he added.
The people of Afrin today said no to Turkish occupation and no to Turkish attacks
– Roj Moussa, Afrin resident and journalist
The protests come after days of mobilisation of Turkish armour and artillery on its border, and threats from Ankara that it will destroy the YPG militia in the canton, which it considers to be a terrorist organisation. Afrin was hit by Turkish artillery on Thursday morning.
The district of Afrin is home to about 500,000 civilians, a population which has doubled with refugees from fighting in other areas of the country.
It has been mostly spared such violence and is protected by the YPG – and the threat of Turkish invasion brings defiance from its people.
Azad, an IT engineer who marched against the Turkish threats on Thursday, said the protest was aimed against the recent shelling of villages by the Turkish army.
“A number of missiles targeted Afrin city centre, but it did not leave much damage,” he said.
“The number of people leaving is limited compared to what the media says,” he said about reports in the Turkish media that people in Afrin were leaving.
A woman holds a picture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan during a rally in Afrin (Reuters)
‘We are not afraid’
According to Serbest, 37, who works at the local university, the Kurds in Afrin will not flee their homes.
“We have our mountains and caves, we will defend and stay. I was a half-hour ago in the streets, life was ordinary, markets were open, young people in the coffee shops,” he said.
“Some expect an attack and others not. But some people are worried.”
Nariman Hesso, a 25-year-old pro-Kurdish journalist, told Middle East Eye that despite Thursday’s shelling “men, women and children came to the streets and sent an answer to Erdogan that they are never afraid”.
“The morale of people is very high and they will never give up their land. We will stand until the end against the Turkish attacks until the last drop of blood in their body,” she said.
The sons and daughters of the entirety of Rojava can resist the Turkish invasion in Afrin
– Roj Moussa, Afrin resident
Roj Moussa added: “Life is normal in Afrin, despite the Turkish occupation threats we are here, and we are here to stay.
“All the attacks in the last four days of the Turkish government made the people more powerful.”
“The sons and daughters of Afrin took part in the liberation of Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, and Manbij. Arin Mirkan [a female fighter from Afrin who died in Kobani in October 2014] was a symbol of the Kobani resistance,” Moussa added.
“The sons and daughters of the entirety of Rojava can resist the Turkish invasion in Afrin,” he added.
YPG and US soldiers have fought side by side against IS in Syria. But the US says it has no interests in Afrin (AFP)
Kurds look to Russia
Anger has also spread in Afrin over the US declaration that it had no interests in Afrin. Mohammed Bilo, another journalist in the canton, said all eyes were on Russia, which has military observers in the area.
“Afrin is under the influence of Russia,” he said.
Abdulkarim Omer, the head of foreign relations for Jazira canton in northern Syria, called on both Russia and the US to pressure Turkey.
“A Turkish attack on Afrin will complicate the crisis in Syria,” he told Middle East Eye. “It will affect the political process. We call on the international community and the US-led coalition to pressure the Turkish government.
“Both Russia and the United States should stop the Turkish government from attacking Afrin.
“Any attack on Afrin means the beginning of the end for the [Russian-sponsored] Sochi talks and the entire negotiations process will return to square one,” he added.
“We hope the international community will not stand still and condemn such attacks and pressure Turkey to reconsider its policies in Syria,” he stated.
Turkish tanks are transported to the border with Afrin (Reuters)
Doubts over Turkish threats
However, Omar Aloush, a senior Kurdish member of the Raqqa civil council, which controls the liberated city, doubts Russia or the US would allow a Turkish invasion.
“The US is trying to adopt a policy of dual containment, to ensure our participation in the war against terrorism, and to ensure Turkey does not support Russia,” he added.
“In the meantime, Russia does not want Turkey to have a larger role [in Syria],” he added.
On Thursday, the Syrian government warned it is ready to destroy Turkish planes should they enter Turkish airspace
“This is a Russian message to avoid an agreement with Turkey [on Afrin],” an anonymous YPG official told MEE.
KCK: 2018 will be the year of collapse for AKP fascism
KCK Executive Council Co-presidency stated that the struggle of 2018 will bring about the end of AKP-MHP fascism and all other centralist and authoritarian governments in the Middle East.
ANF
NEWS DESK
Monday, 1 Jan 2018, 12:50
The statement by KCK stated the following:
“2017 became a year of great struggle for the peoples of Kurdistan and the Middle East that gave a great fight in order for freedom to prevail in the Third World War centred on the Middle East. Peoples of Bakurê (Northern) Kurdîstan and Northern Syria led the struggle for freedom and democracy with the fight they have developed. The uprisings in Bashurê (Southern) Kurdîstan and Iran at the end of the year have manifested all Middle Eastern peoples’ desire for a free and democratic life. The democratic revolution developed in Kurdistan on the path of Leader Apo (Abdullah Öcalan) has spread to entire Middle East. The democratic revolutionary struggles based on Leader Apo’s libertarian ecological democratic society paradigm will continue to be the hope of peoples during 2018 as well.
The despotic, authoritarian and centralist forces of the Middle East will obtain no results no matter how cruelly they might attack the peoples’ freedom and democracy struggle. History and society has risen up in the Middle East. Fascist governments in countries like Turkey cannot achieve a result in spite of all their efforts to oppress the people’s freedom struggle. Despite the fact that Turkey has become the center of Middle Eastern reactionism and despotism, the AKP-MHP government is being through its weakest period, so much so that they are afraid of their own shadow even. A slightest criticism and popular movement shakes the AKP-MHP fascism. This fascism brings about its own end as it increases its repression.”
“AKP GOVERNMENT WILL BE BROUGHT TO AN END”
The statement by KCK Executive Council Co-presidency continued;
“Kurdish people and Turkey’s democratic circles gave a significant struggle during the year of 2017. Guerrilla defeated the attacks of annihilation with the self-sacrificing resistance they mounted, and brought the Turkish state to the brink of economic, social and political collapse. Despite the AKP-MHP fascism trying its best to prevent their collapse by stepping up its chauvinism, the struggle to develop during 2018 will counteract this chauvinism and bring about the end of AKP government.
Peoples of the Middle East want to get rid of despotic, authoritarian and centralist governments. The uprising of people even in the areas of most cruel oppression manifests the fact that such governments will not be able to survive. All centralist authoritarian governments, the fascist AKP-MHP government in the first place, will come to an end.
“2018 WILL BE THE YEAR OF ENHANCING THE STRUGGLE”
Stressing that the peoples of Middle East deserve a free and democratic life with all the sacrifices they have made, KCK said;
“Rojava Revolution and forces of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria have proven that significant gains could be made on the path to a free and democratic life in the event of making sacrifices.
The Middle East has entered a process when history will be re-written with regard to freedom, democracy and societism.
We call upon the peoples of Kurdistan and the entire region to enhance the struggle on the basis of democratic nation perspective and make Middle East a territory of socialist free and democratic life during the year of 2018.”
On September 26, 2017, whilst he was filming the historic liberation of Raqqa from ISIS and doing media work for the People’s Defense Units (YPG), Mehmet was murdered by the cowardly fascists of ISIS. Mehmet’s blood — just like that of thousands of his fallen comrades — is nourishing the soil of that land, where the determined struggle of the people is forming the foundation of a free and just life, in a time and place of chaos, war and brutality.
Until his last breath, Mehmet lived with the pure joy of having finally reached the lands that realized his utopias: Rojava. He traveled there to become the worthy comrade of the free woman. He documented the lives and struggles of the Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, Turkmen, Chechens, Syriacs and Assyrians fighting side by side against the forces of darkness.
By transforming himself into a militant of justice, a comrade of peoples, a fighter for truth and defender of life, his direct action made him become a realizer of utopias that many no longer dare to dream of. In his own words: “Don’t surrender to capitalism. Don’t surrender to materialism, ugly relationships, lovelessness, disrespect, degeneration and inequality.”
Today, the heroes that have liberated Raqqa are mourning him, as they promise to make him live on in the futures they create in a free Middle East.
It is impossible to tell the story of a twenty-first century revolutionary, of somebody who smiled at death with the knowledge that the future will be ours. The words that could do him justice can only be found in our constant, tireless efforts to resist fascism and keep his struggle alive.
We don’t have the words to describe this historic loss, not even with the ink of our bleeding hearts. With the deepest revolutionary respect, we share a selected excerpt from Mehmet Aksoy’s last letter to his family:
I am writing this letter to you from South Kurdistan. When you read this letter, I will have crossed to West Kurdistan, to Rojava. Don’t be upset with me for not having let you know beforehand; I did not want you to be worried.
In fact, I should have written this letter to you years ago. For years, I kept writing and re-writing this letter over and over again in my head, but I did not want to sadden you. Even at the cost of living in a system that I reject, of being unhappy, I tried to live this life, but I did not succeed. Time is passing now. Now is the time to take more courageous and more determined steps, and I am trying to take those steps.
References to the Kurdish and Turkish revolutionaries Deniz Gezmiş, Mahir Çayan, Ibrahim Kapakkaya, Mazlum Doğan, and Berîtan (Gülnaz Karataş). Mehmet chose his nom-de-guerre — Fîraz Dağ — in honor of his martyred uncle Fîraz, and Halil Dağ, a guerrilla fighter and filmmaker.
In this sense, I am taking these steps and writing this letter not with my own pen, but with the pens of all the Deniz, Mahir, Ibrahim, Mazlum, Berîtan, Fîraz and Leaders and the faith and courage that I have gained from them. I want you to understand this.Do you know that my return to the homeland is above all for the liberation of women? I have come here to support, live with, and be in common struggle with the women who resist, fight and create a new, free life with their own hands.
Lastly, I can say this: from now on, I want to live my future life in my own country, up close with my own people. An infinite amount of labor, events, love, pain, happiness, thought, people and hope that have all made me who I am pushed me towards this decision. It could not have happened otherwise. I have never lived for individual things, for money, for power, for force or material things. Since my childhood, I have always sought, created and tried to increase love, friendship and sharing. And I am lucky, I have had very beautiful friends. I am sending them my greetings and love from here. Each one of them is invaluable to me. However, I have found the most beautiful friendship in this movement, in this party. I am above all here for that comradeship. And of course, connected to that, for all our martyrs and our leader, who have created this comradeship.
It is serving this movement and people, which provides me with the most valuable and meaningful form of happiness. I hope I can live up to it. Don’t worry about me.
In the wish to meet again in a free country, with a free leader…
Your son, your big brother, who loves you to eternity,
Mehmet
– We do actually eat a lot of popcorn in Rojava. And, in fact, last week, myself and 10 life long Kurdish revolutionaries sat around and watched Ice Age II together laughing and chatting. Of course notwithstanding critiques of Hollywood, Positivist culture, food supply chains and so on. Source: Personal experience
Turkish-backed Syrian security forces patrol the highly secured market area of downtown Afrin. (New York Times)
Since the occupation of Afrin by Turkish-backed forces in March 2018, more than 150 women and girls have been kidnapped. (
A Russian soldier stands guard as troops escort a convoy of Syrian civilians leaving the town of Tal Tamr in the northeastern Hasakah province, to return to their homes in the northern town of Ain Issa in the countryside of the Raqqa region, via the strategic M4 highway on Jan. 10, 2021. The town of Tal Tamr is on the front line between the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian factions supported by Turkey. Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images. 
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Madeleine Khamis
Assyrian Church in Til Temir
Church damaged during attacks
Lorenzo Orsetti was part of an international anarchist group attached to the the armed units Turkish Communist Party/Marxist Leninist fighting Isis in northern Syria
Syria: Turkey must stop serious violations by allied groups and its own forces in Afrin
By Davide Grasso
A woman holds a picture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan during a rally in Afrin (Reuters) 
YPG and US soldiers have fought side by side against IS in Syria. But the US says it has no interests in Afrin (AFP) 
Turkish tanks are transported to the border with Afrin (Reuters) 
Underground Histories 
