Foreign Affairs Magazine, March 29, 2016, Europe's Lousy Deal With Turkey, is a long, technical, persuasive argument why he European Union's deal with Turkey on the refugee crisis cannot practically or legally succeed and why it should should not be put in place, from Europe's point of vies.
The article notes that "Rights groups and refugee advocates, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have denounced the deal as immoral and illegal". From the article:
A mounted policeman leads a group of migrants near Dobova, Slovenia, October 20, 2015.
The article is highly recommended.
Turkey's Kurds
From the point of view of Turkey's already-repressed Kurds, the deal is worse than for Europeans, though they have not been consulted about it:
Ankara’s citizenship plan for Syrian refugees raises Kurdish worries
By Rǔdaw yesterday at 09:00
The war in Syria has sent waves of refugees in Turkey. AP file photo.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey’s Kurdish lawmakers say the government’s decision to gradually grant citizenship to over 3 million Syrian refugees in the country’s Kurdish cities can disturb the population makeup of the area and incite ethnic tensions.
“We support efforts to embrace and help the refugees but the government’s plan is not assistance, it is part of a wider political game to strengthen its roots here,” said Mahmoud Togrul, a member of parliament from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the city of Entab.
Togrul believes Ankara is exploiting the refugee crisis, and by giving voting rights to the Syrian migrants it plans to secure votes ahead of the 2019 elections.
“Most of the Syrians will choose to stay in Turkey and that will be decisive in the coming elections,” he said.
According to the Turkish law, applicants will be granted citizenship after five years of residence in the country. This makes the bulk of the Syrian refugees eligible candidates for Turkish citizenship in the coming years, and able to vote in the next elections.
Official data also show that nearly 152,000 children have been born in Turkey whose parents came as refugees from Syria.
Ankara has said by getting citizenship, the refugees will have brighter prospects in the labor market and reduce the overall migration to Europe.
As part of an agreement with the European Union, called the Facility for Refugees in Turkey, Ankara will be receiving 6 billion euros over the next three years and resume the EU membership talks that stalled in late 2000.
Critics say giving millions of refugees citizen status will serve the strategic plans of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
“There will be over 1 million new voters in the 2019 elections if the government goes through with the proposal, which will in turn change the outcome of the elections,” said lawmaker Erdogan Toprak from the opposition Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP), quoted by Turkish daily Hurriyet.
Toprak said the government plans to create settlements for the refugees with the financial help it will receive from the EU, influencing the demographic development in the southeast where Kurds are in the majority.
The majority of the Syrian refugees in Turkey are of Arab origin, along with large numbers of Kurdish and Turkmen asylum seekers.
“What is strategically important for the government is the bordering areas connecting Kurdish lands in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, which Ankara wants to influence by placing the refugees’ families there,” said Kurdish author Fehim Ashiq.
“They will become a kind of human buffer zone,” he said.
Yemen's genocide is reported in many newspapers world-wide. The United States loses respect, word-wide, as it continues to provide Saudi Arabia with cluster bombs and logistical support.
The site of a Saudi-led coalition airstrike on a sewing workshop in Sana, Yemen, in February.CreditMohammed Huwais/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
GENEVA — The top United Nations human rights official condemned the Saudi-led coalition [For information on the participants in the coalition see Members of Saudi-led coalition in Yemen their contributions - Business Insider] fighting in Yemen on Friday, citing repeated attacks on civilian targets in airstrikes, including an attack on a crowded village market this week that killed 106 people.
United Nations officials who went to the site of the attack on Tuesday in Hajjah Province found that airstrikes there had killed 106 people, including 24 children, making them the deadliest episode in the coalition’s yearlong intervention.
The Saudis are backing the contested government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi against rebels, known as the Houthis, who are aligned with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Saudis have been pressuring the United States for support in the conflict, saying that their archrival, Iran, is backing the Houthis.[An odd and misleading statement. See comments following
this article. For an article in Foreign Affairs Magazine opposing the Saudi clim that Ian backsthe Houthi, see Iran not to hlame for Yemen]
United Nations officials recorded the names of 96 people who died in the strikes, and they found 10 more bodies that were burned beyond recognition. An additional 40 people were wounded, “but that may be a low estimate,” said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein.
The Saudi-led coalition has repeatedly denied striking civilian targets during operations against Houthi rebels and affiliated forces. But United Nations officials said they had found no evidence of any military targets near the scene of the airstrikes, and Mr. al-Hussein said that may amount to a violation of international law.
Indiscriminate attacks by Houthi forces and their allies have also caused civilian casualties and could also qualify as international crimes, he said.
The coalition airstrikes came three weeks after its aircraft bombed another market, this time in a district of Sana, the capital, killing at least 39 civilians. The latest attack pushed the number of civilian casualties to close to 9,000, the United Nations said, with 3,218 killed and 5,778 injured.
“It would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together,” Mr. al-Hussein said, in a sharp rebuttal of the coalition’s denials. He was alluding not only to Houthis and the militias fighting with them but also to groups backing Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
The coalition has “hit markets, hospitals, clinics, schools, factories, wedding parties and hundreds of private residences in villages, towns and cities,” Mr. al-Hussein said, and it continues to do so “with unacceptable regularity.”
At best, the coalition’s distinction between civilian and military targets was “woefully inadequate,” Mr. al-Hussein added, and “at worst we are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by the coalition.”
United States' and Great Britain's contribution to Yemen Genocide.
The United States provided intelligence and logistical support, including search-and-rescue for downed coalition pilots.[7] It also accelerated the sale of weapons to coalition states.[93] US and Britain have deployed their military personnel in the command and control centre responsible for Saudi-led air strikes on Yemen, having access to lists of targets.[94][95][96]
The Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, Abdallah al-Mouallim is a businessman, not a professional ambassador.
Watch as he struggles to defend the indefensible Saudi bombardment of Yemen:
Two of the many images of he bombing, on google images:
Images of the thousands of Yemeni in the Yemen capitol, protesting the bombing, many holding up signs supporting Abudahah Saleh, the billionaire former president of Yemen, now a principal financier of the Revolution.
Here is a rational, objective view of the Russian and United States success an joint objectives in Syria.
In short, both want free, fair elections. Agreement ends there.
Two of the United States' allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, want the outcome to be a repressiveWahhabist government or at least one supposed by Salafi Jihadists; another United States' ally, Qatar, supports the Muslim Brotherhood (also supported by Turkey) but Qatar's primary objective is an oil pipeline through Syria that can deliverer it's natural gas from the Pas field to Europe.
Iran wants the election of a government favorable to it --as the Assad regime is -- and one which will allow the already-planned oil pipeline from its interest in the Pars Field to Europe.
Russia's interest is negative; it does not want the Qatar pipeline to be built because it's natural gas to Europewould compete with its own sales to europe; and it does not want a Muslim jihadist government in Syria -- it has already too many Jihadists in Russian republics as it is. The Assad regime is acceptable to Russia and Russia is no weed to Assad's remaining in power.
The Kurdish objectives are straight-forward easy to state difficult to obtain. Kurds living in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran were promised an independent Kurdistan after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the Great Powers in World War I. With no advance warning Kurds were arbitrarily assigned to Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria by Great Britain and France. See Kurdistan in Seven Maps:
Kurds were badly treated by host countries except Iran. Kurds want an independent Kurdistan that includes Kurds in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Turkey violently and unwisely objets. And now, because of the battlefield success of Syrian Kurds in northern Syria and the Peshmerga in Iraq, where they re helped by he United State, they want the nation to include access to the Mediterranean Sea.
The United States has no stated territorial objectives and none is apparent. It will want to assist the oil interests in the United States and Great Britain but those interests are not apparently at stake in Syria. The United States' stated objective is to defeat the Islamic State and other Jihadists in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, who carry out attacks on the United States and the European Union (and also in Pakistan). I think the United States wants to keep a military presence in Afghanistan and in Iraq or Syria, but it has stated no such objective.
Men store bags of flour unloaded from a Red Crescent aid convoy in the rebel-held besieged town of 0, in the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, March 7, 2016. The cessation in hostilities in Syria has produced the first significant flow of humanitarian assistance in several years. (photo by REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh)
Kerry notes 'beneficial reduction' in Syrian violence
United States, Russia on right course in Syria
March 27, 2016
On March 27, the cessation of hostilities in Syria will have held for one month. Yes, there have been violations, but the agreement has held. Given where we were, and where we are, we might put the present state of affairs in the category of a small miracle, a breakthrough for US-Russian leadership and cooperation and, hopefully, a turning point for the Syrian people.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Moscow on March 24, “There has been a fragile but nevertheless beneficial reduction in violence — some say as much as 85-90% — in Syria. It’s also true that the cessation in hostilities has produced the first significant flow of humanitarian assistance to people, some whom haven’t seen that assistance in several years. But we both know that more needs to be done in terms of both a reduction of violence and the flow of humanitarian aid.”
There is of course much more to be done, and if the cessation of hostilities continues to hold and expand, it will be the result of a deep and impactful partnership between Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Kerry said March 24 that the United States and Russia have agreed to press for expanded humanitarian assistance, the release of detainees and an acceleration of the political process leading to a transition government, a new constitution and elections. The same day, UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said that both the Syrian government and the opposition delegations had taken the first round of negotiations “very seriously.” Talks are expected to resume in April.
And let’s add a bit more good news: The Islamic State (IS) is losing ground in Syria and Iraq. IHS/Jane’s reported March 15 that IS has lost 22% of its territory in both countries, mostly in Syria, since January 2015, a trend that accelerated with the Russian military intervention on behalf of the Syrian government in September. US Special Operations Forces killed top IS financier Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli last week, and as this column goes to press, Syrian government forces, backed by Russian air power, are poised to retake Palmyra from the terrorist group.
As IS loses ground in Syria and Iraq, its fighters are already seeking new territories, especially in Libya, and new targets, including in Europe, as evidenced by the deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels on March 22, which claimed 31 lives.
Maxim Suchkov wrote, “Putin now holds an important position for the shaping of a political transition in Syria. Russia acquired the air base in Khmeimim [or Hmaimim], which it did not have before. Its geopolitical standing is secured as a power broker in the Middle East, while its weapons are in great demand across the region. The global outreach is incredibly important as well. Some would even argue it was central to the idea of the operation from the very beginning. In addition, Russia showcased its military might, sending signals to those who might have been tempted to put it to the test. Russia also excelled on the public relations side of the art of modern war. Detailed daily reports from the Defense Ministry, accompanied by high-definition maps and video footage, prevented opponents from manipulating its campaign results in the media. Even if Moscow doesn’t save [Bashar al-] Assad’s presidency, his departure will be a negotiated event, not forced, an important element for Putin personally and for Russia’s vision of its role in contemporary international affairs.”
Ali Hashem, speaking with official Syrian and Iranian sources, confirmed that “when Russia decided it was time to withdraw the major part of its forces from Syria, the announcement, on March 14, came as no surprise to its allies in the Syrian civil war. The Syrian government, Iran and Hezbollah had been informed in advance.”
This column appreciates the complexity and fragility of the Syrian peace process, and the long game against IS and al-Qaeda, but we admit to being cautious optimists. The Obama administration is on the right track in Syria, with admittedly a long way to go. In our very first column, in December 2012, we identified the role of Russia as one of “four trends that might signal if and when there is an endgame in Syria — and what that endgame would be.” The Russian trend is indeed shaping the Syrian endgame, and the United States is right to work with it. Russia’s interests in Syria are not a perfect match for the United States, but neither are the interests of America’s traditional allies in the region. While some may understandably second-guess Russian intentions, and rightly criticize its at times indiscriminate bombing campaign in support of Syrian government forces, as this column has done, it might also be useful to create a scorecard or tally comparing Russia’s record with those of other regional powers in both seeking a peaceful end to the conflict and undertaking direct attacks on IS and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. Our back-of-the-envelope calculation is the Russian score on these counts would probably fare well compared to US regional allies. The attacks in Brussels last week reveal the stakes in Syria are linked to a struggle against IS, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. In Syria, as in the broader international battle against terrorism, the United States and Europe are well-served by collaboration, rather than confrontation, with Russia.
Barzani promises crackdown on corruption
Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, told Amberin Zaman in an exclusive interview for Al-Monitor that the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) are “exactly one and the same thing,” and that the United States turns a “blind eye” because of the priority to fight IS.
In regard to the referendum on independence for the Kurdistan Region, Barzani said “with utter conviction that, barring circumstances beyond our control, that yes, we are trying to do it this year. … I think it will be before October.” He said that the wording of the referendum question, or questions, are still being worked out, and that “we are talking to Baghdad, we will talk to Iran at the same time that we talk to Turkey. We want to do it [transition to independence] in a peaceful and balanced way.”
Barzani acknowledged popular discontent with a lack of transparency in Kurdistan Regional Government energy deals and promised “to fight corruption and to fight those people who exploited their government position for oil contracts, sales of agricultural land and things like that. Whoever will be responsible from the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Peshmerga, prime minister, any minister, any leader of the party, any security official — they all must be held responsible for what they have done.”
There is another oil issue in Central Asia which is causing as much difficulty for Turkey as Syria is. Azerbaijan is building a pipeline from its oil fields to Italy,, which would thwart Russia's position as the dominant supplier of oil to Europe.
Russia is said to have entered the Syrian conflict to stop Qatar from exporting natural gas from the Pars Field to Europe through Syria.
(Iran wants to export natural gas from the Pars field through Pakistan to India and China, so far blacked by the United States' threat of sanctions and its threat of withholding military aid to Pakistan, important to Pakistan because it perceives India as a mortal enemy.)
TheTANAP pipeline is a serious that to Russia, though not as serious as a Qatari pipeline would be, because Azerbaijan doesn't have reserves as large as the Pars field, which is the largest in the World.
But TANAP would cut into Russia's oil sales to Europe and Russia can ill afford the loss.
So Russia and he PKK, which is cutting Turkey,s oil lines, become natural allies. The United States is handed an opportunity to resolve the Ukraine dispute with Russia by siding with Russia and the PKK.
If, then, Turkey is "left with no friends but Saudi Arabia, Qatar and arguably Israel", as the al Monitor article, below, suggests, will the United State continue to support Syrian Kurds in their valiant war against the Islamic State, or will it yield to Saudi pressure, and side with Turkey?
What is important is the Kurdish determination to have their own nation, with access to the Sea. That determination will decide the outcome. The United States should continue to side with the Kurds, even after the Islamic State is defeated, and Israel should abandon the Turks or be even further isolated from the international community.
The Kurdistan Workers Party released a video on its official website Aug. 29, 2015, showing an attack on the Shah Deniz pipeline that transports natural gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey. (photo by YOUTUBE/GlobalTVz)
How the PKK is entering energy wars
The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), denounced as a terrorist group by Turkey, last month inaugurated its first representative office abroad — in Moscow. A Kurdish speaker at the ceremony hailed the event as “a historic moment for the Kurdish people” before lauding his hosts: “Russia is a big power and a prominent actor in the Middle East. In fact, it’s not only an actor, but also a scriptwriter.”
The PYD is an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which sits even higher on Turkey's blacklist. Portraits of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan adorn the walls of the PYD office in Moscow, suggesting Turkey’s accusations are not baseless. Yet Russia clearly disagrees. Turkey’s Nov. 24 downing of a Russian military jet in Syria caused a dramatic rupture in ties, and the enraged government of Russian President Vladimir Putin had no scruples about embracing “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” strategy.
In the wake of the plane crisis, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his aides moved to accelerate projects to reduce Turkey’s dependence on Russian natural gas. Russia supplies 55% of the gas Turkey consumes, and Gazprom lists Turkey as its second-largest buyer after Germany.
For Turkey, the only quick alternative lies in the rich gas fields of neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan. With 5 trillion cubic meters (176 trillion cubic feet) of gas reserves, Iraqi Kurdistan whets the appetite of international investors and is eager to put its gas on the global market. Ankara’s game plan is simple: Begin building a pipeline this year, and get the gas flowing in 2019. Officials say the pipeline will have an initial capacity of 10 billion cubic meters a year, before a twofold increase in a short period of time.
That timing would be perfect, as some of Turkey’s major gas contracts with Russia expire in 2020, including the Blue Stream deal for 16 billion cubic meters, and half of the western route contracts that cover 4 billion cubic meters. In short, if everything goes as planned, Ankara hopes to get rid of Putin’s noose in several years.
Quickly rolling up its sleeves, Turkey collected bids for the Turkish section of the pipeline Feb. 9. In an intriguing coincidence, the PYD office in Moscow opened with fanfare the following day. And a week later, the Kurdistan Communities Union, the PKK's executive council, announced it would not allow the pipeline project to proceed. To show it meant business, the PKK leadership put on a little show of force. On Feb. 17, PKK militants blew up a Turkish section of the oil pipeline that ships Iraqi and Kurdish crude to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The conduit, which carries 600,000 barrels of oil per day, remained closed for 23 days, dealing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) a reported blow of $300 million and further shaking its already struggling economy.
This, however, was not the first attack on what is often described as the Iraqi Kurds’ “economic lifeline.” PKK militants had also bombed the pipeline on July 29, disrupting exports for 21 days — which cost the KRG $250 million.
According to Akin Unver, a scholar of international relations at Istanbul’s Kadir Has University, the PKK’s pipeline bombings are a calculated strategy. “The attacks aim to derail Turkey’s ambition of becoming an international energy hub,” he said. “An increase in these attacks would either discourage investors from projects via Turkey or push financing costs above the estimates.”
Unver’s point is indeed critical. To overcome its financial bottleneck, the KRG needs to put its natural gas on the market as soon as possible, along with its oil. So it now has two options: either make a deal with the PKK or look for other routes to export its gas and oil.
In another twist here, a new player — Iran — has stepped into the game. Last week, Tehran was reported to have offered the KRG a new pipeline via Iran to safely export its oil.
Meanwhile, the PKK is targeting another major energy project — the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), designed to carry Caspian gas to Europe via Turkey in a bid to reduce European reliance on Russia. The conduit is to carry 36 billion cubic meters of gas per year, of which 21 billion cubic meters will go to European countries. Construction began a year ago, and on July 30 the PKK attacked a freight train transporting construction materials for TANAP, killing a railway worker. Intriguingly, reports emerged the same day that Turkish-Russian talks on the Turkish Stream — a rival project to carry Russian gas to Europe — had been suspended.
The PKK also has targeted a pipeline that carries 6 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas to Turkey annually, via Georgia. The conduit was blown up twice in August. The 13-day interruption in the flow meant some $200 million in losses for Azerbaijan.
According to Fatih Ozbay, a scholar at Istanbul Technical University specializing in Russia, Ankara’s crisis with Moscow was a long-sought opportunity for the PKK. “The PKK leadership had long scrambled to enlist Russia’s support. The rupture between Ankara and Moscow handed them this opportunity on a silver plate,” he said.
Commenting also on Russia's thinking, he said, “For the Russians, energy means both money and power. While half of its federal budget revenues come from oil and gas sales, Russia sees energy also as an efficient diplomatic weapon and doesn’t hesitate to use it when necessary.
"The truth of the matter is that the Kremlin was already unhappy with the projects to carry gas from the Caspian and northern Iraq because they are bound to curb its influence over Turkey and the European Union. So the plane crisis came in very handy, providing the PKK with legitimacy and Russia with an opportunity of direct contact with the forces that could disrupt those projects.”
Whether Ankara can break free from Putin’s pincers depends on how the PKK problem in Turkey develops. In 2012, Erdogan managed to bring the PKK to the negotiating table, enlisting the support of the United States, Britain, the EU and Russia. Today, he is left with no friends but Saudi Arabia, Qatar and arguably Israel. He could hardly bring the PKK back to the table at a time when the Kurds — unlike him — enjoy strong Western sympathy for their fight against the Islamic State.
This stalemate has come to threaten not only Turkey’s national security but also its energy supplies. Any delay in the energy projects, meanwhile, means more money flowing to Russia’s coffers.
But any Kurdish drive to seize those areas would be certain to bring a response from Turkey. . . .
Syrian Kurds are certain to do what they must to create a unit that stretches from Iraqi Kurdistan to the Mediterranean Sea. That is surely desire by Cordite which is landlocked. Syrian Kurds would also be landlocked otherwise
Turkey has serious problems with Kurds internally and His ExcellencyRecep Tayyip Erdoğan is becoming a full-fledged dictator by the day. His takeover of Turkey’s Zaman (English language version, Today’s Zaman), a major, high-circulation daily newspaper in Turkey, should sink his bid to join the European Union.
Erdoğan will, in time, see the United State’ and the European Union’s support fall away and Russia is already his enemy. He will be left with only the demonic and temporary tIsraeli Regime as his friend and it will prove unreliable.
Over the long haul, Kurds will have their own nation, and the nation will not be landlocked.
These democratic, multiethnic, multicultural, religiously inclusive, egalitarian, feminist Syrian Kurds will have the World’s support and will prevail.
The Kurds organize for the long haul. Iraqi Kurdistan is now de facto its own country, and Kirkuk is de facto a part of it, in spite of Bagdad's futile objections.
Read the works of Ali Kemal Özcan, now jailed by the Turks, who is the architect of the Kurdish resistance in Turkey; and Murray Bookchin, who relived and recently died in Brooklyn, and who was a anarchist and libertarian socialist author, influential in Kurdish, and especially in Syrian Kurdish, political discourse.
You may think of Kurds as simple, backward, ignorant people, and certainly some are. Some in the United States are too. And not only in Texas.
The leaders and the valiant female figures among the Kurds are as sophisticated and politically-well-educated a any persons in Europe or Hawaii. Good on them! The Times article, well worth reading:
Syrian Kurds Hope to Establish a Federal Region in Country’s North
Photo
A member of a Kurdish militia on the eastern side of the Euphrates River in Sarrin, Syria, in October.
CreditTyler Hicks/The New York Times BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian Kurdish parties are working on a plan to declare a federal region across much of northernSyria, several of their representatives said on Wednesday. They said their aim was to formalize the semiautonomous zone they have established during five years of war and to create a model for decentralized government throughout the country.
If they move ahead with the plan, they will be dipping a toe into the roiling waters of debate over two proposals to redraw the Middle East, each with major implications for Syria and its neighbors.
One is the longstanding aspiration of Kurds across the region to a state of their own or, failing that, greater autonomy in the countries where they are concentrated: Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, all of which view such prospects with varying degrees of horror.
The other is the idea of settling the Syrian civil war by carving up the country, whether into rump states or, more likely, into some kind of federal system. The proposal for a federal system has lately been floated by former Obama administration officials and publicly considered by Secretary of State John Kerry, but rejected not only by the Syrian government but by much of the opposition as well.
What Syrian Kurdish officials described was likely to alarm many of the other Syrian combatants: a federal region on all the territory now held by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led group supported by the United States military against the Islamic State extremist group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Some of the officials said the zone would even expand to territory the Kurds hope to capture in battle, not only from ISIS but also from other Arab insurgent groups — some of them, like the Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the United States.
But Syrian Kurdish officials sought to play down the move, portraying it as nothing radical and calling it an effort to keep an already tattered and divided Syria from disintegrating further.
“Federalism is going to save the unity of a whole Syria,” said Ibrahim Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Democratic Union Party, or P.Y.D., the leftist Syrian Kurdish party that plays a leading role in the Kurdish areas of Syria
They emphasized that the entity would not be called a Kurdish region but rather a federal region of northern Syria, with equal rights for Arabs and Turkmens.
And they strongly hinted that it was not their idea, but that it was being pushed by the Americans and other powers. A former senior administration official, Philip Gordon, and others recentlyfloated a proposal to divide Syria into zones roughly corresponding to areas now held by the government, the Islamic State, Kurdish militias and other insurgents.
The Kurdish discussions about northern Syria are becoming public just as a new round of United Nations-sponsored peace talks, heavily promoted by the United States and Russia, begins in Geneva, aiming to broker a political solution to the Syrian civil war.
The Syrian Kurdish move — still under discussion by Kurdish and other parties in the area — would fall well short of declaring independence. But it is still likely to rile the Syrian government and the main Arab-led opposition group, the High Negotiation Committee. They have both declared opposition to federalism, seeing it as a step toward a permanent division of the nation.
The New York Times Magazine recently published a piece by Wes Enzinna about his experience teaching a journalism class in Rojava, an automous region of Syria (not recognized by the Assad regime, the UN, or NATO), a "secular utopia in ISIS's backyard" whose political philosophy is heavily informed by the work of Murray Bookchin.
Rojava, the center of the the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)—a Kurdish anti-statist separatist group led by leftist revolutionary Abdullah Ocalan—has been thrust into global geopolitical significance as a major site in the fight against ISIS.
Last Februrary, the PKK successfully repelled the attempted siege of Kobani, though they remain on the frontlines of fighting ISIS. As Patrick Cockburn wrote in The Rise of the Islamic State, ISIS's attempted siege of Kobani exposed the weakness of the US-led coaition against ISIS, as Turkish President Erdogan "would clearly prefer ISIS to control Kobani rather than the PYD [the Syrian branch of the PKK]."
The PKK, led by Ocalan, has been fighting for independence from Turkey since 1978, and the U.S. State Department designated the PKK a terrorist organization in 1997. But as Enzinna details, the U.S.'s views towards the PKK have shifted, at least strategically: PKK afiliates People's Protection Units (YPG) and the all-female force (YPJ) have become key American allies. While Turkey continued to bomb Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Syria, President Obama sent Special Operations troops to assist Rojava.
Though Ocalan has been imprisoned since 1998, he remains the intellectual leader of the revolutionaries in the PKK. From his prison cell, he read Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, Murray Bookchin's "The Ecology of Freedom," and then, after that, everthing Murray Bookchin has ever written. Whereas PKK members were formely "unabashed Maoists," Ocalan's readings led him to theorize libertarian municipalism, an alternative to the modern-nation state. Enzina describes the fascinating correspondence between Ocalan and the late Bookchin, and the influence Bookchin's social ecology on the PKK:
In solitary confinement, Ocalan studied Bookchin’s magnum opus, ‘‘The Ecology of Freedom,’’ at once a sweeping account of world history and a reimagining of Marx’s ‘‘Das Kapital.’’ In it, Bookchin argues that hierarchical relationships, not capitalism, are our original sin. Humankind’s destruction of the natural world, he argues, is a product of our domination of other people, and only by doing away with all hierarchies — man over woman, old over young, white over black, rich over poor — can we solve the global ecological crisis.
In another work, ‘‘Urbanization Without Cities,’’ Bookchin proposed an alternative to the modern nation-state that he called ‘‘libertarian municipalism.’’ Bookchin believed that the lesson of both Marxist and liberal governments was that the state was an inevitably corrupting influence and antithetical to human freedom. Bookchin favored what he called the ‘‘Hellenic model’’ of democracy, the type of direct, face-to-face government once practiced in ancient Greece. He argued that only by recovering this system could humanity address injustice, and only in this way could radical movements avoid reproducing the same inequalities they had initially set out to defeat.
It was, needless to say, pretty dreamy stuff. But Ocalan saw in it a path toward a new type of revolution. Bookchin’s proposal for achieving independence through ‘‘municipal assemblies’’ suggested to Ocalan a way of finally achieving the elusive Kurdish dream. Maybe the P.K.K. didn’t have to take state power. Maybe it could obtain Kurdish rights by creating its own separate communities inside existing countries, resorting to violence only if attacked. Maybe all along, Ocalan had been mistaken to think that liberation could be achieved by creating a Kurdish-run nation-state, Marxist or otherwise.
Enthralled and seeking guidance, Ocalan had his lawyers send an email to Bookchin. Biehl was sitting at their computer one morning in April 2004, spring snow still covering the streets of Burlington outside, when it popped up in Bookchin’s inbox. Bookchin was lying nearby on a day bed, unable to sit up because of his joint pain. He and Biehl had watched Ocalan’s arrest on television, but Bookchin dismissed him as ‘‘just another third-world Leninist.’’ Now, as Biehl read the email aloud, Bookchin discovered that Ocalan considered himself Bookchin’s ‘‘student,’’ and ‘‘had acquired a good understanding of his work, and was eager to make the ideas applicable to Middle Eastern societies.’’
A few weeks later, Bookchin replied, expressing reluctance to engage in a dialogue. ‘‘You should know that I am quite an elderly man … who is virtually incapable of walking because of osteoarthritis and heart problems,’’ Bookchin wrote. ‘‘Much remains to be explored, which my health and age prohibit me from doing. If you care to write to me further, I ask you to please be patient with an old radical.’’
In March 2005, Ocalan issued the ‘‘Declaration of Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan.’’ By then, Bookchin had cut off communication. (‘‘Bookchin was heartbroken,’’ Biehl told me. ‘‘He was devastated that the revolution had never happened, and he didn’t trust anybody.’’) The manifesto called on all P.K.K. supporters to implement a version of Bookchin’s ideas; Ocalan urged all guerrilla fighters to read ‘‘The Ecology of Freedom.’’ He instructed his followers to stop attacking the government and instead create municipal assemblies, which he called ‘‘democracy without the state.’’ These assemblies would form a grand confederation that would extend across all Kurdish regions of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran and would be united by a common set of values based on defending the environment; respecting religious, political and cultural pluralism; and self-defense. He insisted that women be made equal leaders at all levels of society. ‘‘The worldview for which I stand,’’ Ocalan told his lawyers privately, ‘‘is very close to that of Bookchin.’’
When news spread throughout the P.K.K. of Ocalan’s conversion, some were naturally hesitant to abandon the old model of Marxist-Leninist terrorism. ‘‘Who cares about some marginal anarchist with 50 followers?’’ one P.K.K. commander supposedly complained. But in the end, they followed orders. The female leadership, in particular, embraced the new ideology. The P.K.K. set about forming clandestine assemblies immediately in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, waiting for the opportunity to expand. Bookchin ‘‘was the greatest social scientist of the 20th century,’’ according to a P.K.K. tribute sent to Biehl after Bookchin’s death in July 2006. ‘‘Bookchin has not died. … We undertake to make [him] live in our struggle.’’
∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼
His ExcellencyRecep Tayyip Erdoğan
∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼
Syria Kurds' Women Warriors
WOMEN PLAY A PROMINENT ROLE IN THE KURDISTAN ARMED FORCES. FOR EXAMPLE, THE PEOPLES PROTECTION UNITS IN SYRIAN KURDISTAN (YPG) ARE COMPRISED OF 35 PERCENT FEMALE SOLDIERS. THIS INCLUDES A 7,500 ALL-VOLUNTEER FEMALE GROUP CURRENTLY BATTLING ISIS IN SYRIA. BY COMPARISON, THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS HAS ONLY 14,000 FEMALE SOLDIERS.
Efelin, a 20-year-old fighter vowed that if Isis tried to come back, they "won't leave a single one of them alive".
As far as I know, the Islamic state is the only organization that has religious texts written by justifying rape. Who rapes an unfaithful (a non-Muslim woman) automatically becomes Muslim. (Report here). Besides causing horror, is this too is a strategy for enlisting soldiers in those cultures where dating and sex are prohibited. The guy comes to EI to be able to have sex and ideology constructed the free of any blame. It is an unprecedented cruelty. The members of the EI believe that killing and raping rather go to heaven, where they will receive 72 virgins. (On the origins of belief). [This blog does not assertthatthis is true, but only that many Syrian Kurds believe it is. And perhaps many Islamic State recruits.]
