Proposed Military Strike on Syria

John Dolva · September 23, 2014

Russia pledges support to ISIS opponents, no plans to join US-led coalition

Published time: September 19, 2014 11:42

Militant Islamist fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province (Reuters / Stringer)

Tags

Arms, Syria, Thrills&Spills

Irregular armed forces have to rely on their ingenuity to arm themselves. And while rifles and mortars can be bought on the black market, getting hold of a tank or two can be a bit tricky. But you can always make a DIY version with your own hands.

At least that’s what fighters of the Kurdish militias in northern Syria do. Called People's Protection Units, or YPG, they have been dedicated to protecting Kurds from whatever the three-year-long war in the country may throw at them. Lately it’s been the Islamic State, the terrorist group that proved to be worthy of being bombed by America itself.

The People’s Protection Units don’t have killer drones or stealth bombers. They are mostly armed with small arms, with some heavier weapons such as mortars and rocket launchers, pickup trucks turned into mobile gun turrets and an occasional piece of artillery.

#jazza #ypg controlled rocket launcher pic.twitter.com/8tIEYbjyLB

— Coldkurd™ (@ColdKurd) August 23, 2014

And the Kurds also have homemade armor – an assortment of vehicles that would make Marvin Heemeyer proud. (Heemeyer, an American welder, infamously used a bulldozer, armor plating and a few guns to go on a rampage in in Granby, Colorado, in 2004 to settle grievances over a zoning conflict.)

Some of the armoured vehicles manufactured by YPG. amazing. self relying #TwitterKurds pic.twitter.com/nTQQWZY3fh

— Gudaw English (@GudawEnglish) September 9, 2014

The former cars and track vehicles may look like cast-offs from Tatooine desert scenes of Star Wars, but with proper deployment they are no less efficient in battle than the early tanks of World War I were on European battlefields.

Being on their own, #YPG continues to make armored vehicles and anti-aircrafts in #Rojava, #Syria'n #Kurdistan pic.twitter.com/MRHtmBCQ0K

— Herbert Maddison (@Herb_Maddison) August 30, 2014

Homemade Armour, smart improvisation by the #YPG S: KNN #UniteForKurdistan pic.twitter.com/VR0jCQpxnp

— ISIS to Hell (@ISIS2HELL) August 8, 2014

Kobane: Heroic defence resists ‘Islamic State’ assault

Saturday, September 27, 2014

By Dave Holmes

A Kurdish fighter in Kobane.

Besieged since September 15, the northern Syrian Kurdish-majority city of Kobane (whose Arabic name is Ayn al-Arab) has mounted a heroic, all-out resistance to the murderous Islamic State gangs.

As of September 25, despite the superior heavy weaponry deployed by the IS, it appears that fierce resistance and determined counter-attacks have halted or slowed the assault. Nonetheless, the IS has pushed closer to the city centre than ever before and the situation remains perilous.

Kobane, 135 kilometres north-east of Aleppo, hard up against the Turkish border, is a vital part of the “Rojava Revolution”. Its system of “democratic confederalism” is an inspiring attempt to build a society inclusive of all ethnicities and religious communities and to empower women.

The contrast between this humane, democratic project and that of the brutal, fundamentalist, women-hating IS could not be greater.

Kurds are the majority community in Rojava (which means “west”, as in West Kurdistan) but many other ethnic and religious groups are also part of this experiment, including Arabs, Assyrians, Syriac Christians and Turkmen). In this sense, Rojava is a model for the entire Middle East.

The defence of Kobane has become a national crusade for the Kurdish people.

While tens of thousands of residents have sought refuge in Turkey, most of the people have not left. Often residents take the elderly and children across the border and then try to return to fight.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has led a decades-long struggle for Kurdish rights in Turkey, has called on Kurdish youth to go to Kobane.

Thousands of Kurds have crossed into the city from Turkey to join the defence effort led by the Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). About 3000 PKK fighters have reportedly left their bases in Iraq’s Qandil Mountains heading for Kobane.

In the east, a YPG force is advancing on the IS-held town of Til Ebyad, west of Serekaniye (Ras al-Ayn) between the Kobane and Cizire cantons (districts) of Rojava. This new front is a bid to reduce the pressure on Kobane. The YPG has inflicted heavy losses on the IS gangs, but faces stiffening opposition.

Kurds have established a solidarity camp and vigil on the Turkish border opposite Kobane. It has been attacked by police with water cannon and tear gas.

The protesters want to stop Turkish support to the jihadis and prevent IS wounded crossing into Turkey for treatment. There are plans to monitor 160km of the border to inhibit the Turkish-IS collaboration.

Turkey, which has long oppressed its large Kurdish minority, is opposed to the Rojava Revolution ). Without Turkey’s support, the IS gangs would be in a much more vulnerable position.

Rhetoric notwithstanding, the Turkish authorities are giving direct support to the IS killers. Villagers have witnessed trains unloading tanks, weapons and ammunition at the border opposite IS-controlled villages. Just before the assault on Kobane began on September 15, witnesses reported that several thousand jihadis came in buses and were escorted across the border by Turkish soldiers.

A private hospital, supported by government-linked entities, has been established in Antep (Gaziantep, about 90km from Kobane) to treat wounded jihadis. It is hardly a secret, with photos being published in a daily left-wing newspaper.

And now the Turkish government is floating the idea of a “buffer zone”. The buffer would be on the Syrian side of the border. It would not be aimed at the IS but at buffering Turkey from the deeply unpleasant reality of a democratic, self-governing, multi-ethnic, Kurdish-majority Rojava.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used to say that achieving a settlement with the country’s large Kurdish minority was his main priority. But Turkey’s flagrant support for the Islamic State would seem to have killed off any meaningful negotiations with the Kurds.

Despite the courage and commitment of its people, Kobane faces a tremendous challenge fighting an opponent backed by state power and armed with superior weaponry. If the city should fall there will be a massacre and a question mark placed over the Rojava revolution. Conversely, if the IS can be checked it will be a great victory.

The West (including the Australian government) talks about waging war on the IS but the real fight against the fundamentalists is being waged on the ground by the YPG-YPJ and the defenders of Kobane.

If the West were serious it would immediately supply artillery, anti-tank missiles and armoured vehicles to Kobane to enable it to offset the captured US and Russian weaponry of the IS. But no one should hold their breath waiting.

John Dolva · September 28, 2014

The road to Damascus

Posted by Andy Newman on28 September, 2014

Category Articles

Paradoxically, it is unusually difficult in a democratic society for politicians to oppose wars. I know that it is hard to envisage an elected government lying to take a country to war unlawfully, but this really did happen when President Polk invaded Mexico in 1846.

The war stood in stark contrasts to the ideals of the American republic, and the Whig party opposed the war. Indeed Whig Congressman Abraham Lincoln from Illinois brilliantly exposed the lies and inaccuracies that the government had used to hoodwink the public. Consequently, despite his manifest talents, he lost his Illinois seat at the next election, and its opposition to the war deeply weakened the Whig party, contributing to its extinction not long after.

British participation in a war against the soi-disant “Islamic State” is undoubtedly popular. It is also undoubtedly legal, as the Iraqi government has asked for military assistance within its sovereign territory. Even were the war to extend into Syria, this could be legally justified if it were to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe; and it could be argued that IS operates only in areas where the writ of sovereign authority of the Syrian government does not hold.

It is also true that only military action can contain and defeat ISIS. I have written before that it is a warlord polity, that has grown into a vacuum where the sovereign states have lost their monopoly of the use of armed force. As a warlord polity it has no civic infrastructure, and a coalition of interests holds together a military force through momentum, patronage and charisma. Military reverses may well see the whole structure collapse. (Historically, warlord polities have also sometimes been ended through absorption back into the state – but sectarian Jihadi ideology, global ambitions and political unacceptablity means that this simply cannot happen with ISIS)

However, this does not mean that British military action is right nor appropriate, nor that the US led coalition is going to succeed. There are real dangers in entering any war where the military objectives are open ended, and the political objectives are unclear.

General Lord Richards, former head of the UK military, today said that ISIS cannot be defeated without ground forces. Indeed, a global coalition of air power arrayed against ISIS, including the Western powers may enhance the “lost cause glamour” and defiant rebel charisma of the terrorists; unless ISIS can also be defeated on the ground.

But whose ground troops would they be, and what would their objective be? The US led coalition includes states like Qatar and UAE who themselves have backed Islamist movements, and many of the military allies assembled may regard the Damascus government of Assad as a greater enemy than ISIS. Would Turkey be happy to see ISIS defeated by Kurdish forces in northern Syria?

The USA has entered into a war that will almost inevitably be shaped by the regional aspirations of its allies; and the tail will wag the dog, as the US gets embroiled in the complexities of civil war in Syria and embroiled again in confessional division in Iraq.

It was a mistake for the British government to make an open ended military commitment without any pre-defined criteria for success, and no exit strategy. ISIS does need to be defeated, but that can only be done by first agreeing a regional political framework, and agreed military and political objectives; and this cannot be done by pretending that the Syrian government of Assad does not exist.

Not for the first time, Peter Oborne at the Telegraph has been a beacon of common sense.

The literal-minded Americans are determined to destroy ISIS, and are ready to make the necessary compromises. This is why they have opened up unofficial lines of communication with Assad through intermediaries in Damascus and elsewhere. However, Saudi Arabia (which carried on backing ISIS up to the early spring of this year, almost certainly with the tacit approval of Britain and America) remains preoccupied with the destruction of Assad.

[... ...]

For [iSIS], the Saudi role in this week’s air attack gives fresh credibility to [iSIS leader, Al Baghdadi's] claim that the regime in Riyadh is a catspaw of the United States. No wonder that the Saudis contributed only four F-16s to the attack. Meanwhile, Qatar (owner of the Shard and the Olympic Village, host of the 2022 World Cup and all-round friend of Britain) deployed its Mirages, but dropped no bombs. Turkey has done its best to remain on good terms with all sides, including ISIS. Meanwhile, Israel is reported to be cooperating with the Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al-Nusra against Assad, thus consolidating its quiet alliance with the Arab states. (The shooting down of a Syrian plane by the Israelis should probably be seen in the context of this unlikely friendship.)

Amid this military and political shambles, one central fact is obvious: the coalition has no reliable partner on the ground. Three armed groups have proved themselves capable of confronting ISIS on the battlefield – the Syrian army; Hezbollah; and the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia. America and others are not prepared to work openly with any of these, because doing so would destroy the alliance with Saudi Arabia, and hence the anti-ISIS coalition.

There is a terrible logic here that air war will lead to ground war, and that ground war extending into Syria will involve conflict against Assad’s forces, and further chaos, war and destablisation.

John Dolva · October 5, 2014

The Kurdistan Workers' Party announced general mobilization to defend Kobane on Friday, as the city was under heavy shelling from IS, the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV channel reported.

Turkey’s security forces have fired tear gas at dozens of Turkish and Kurdish activists trying to cross into Syria. On the other side of the border, a major city in Syrian Kurdistan is under increased assault from Islamic State militants.

Authorities used tear gas in the town of Suruc, Sanliurfa province, on Saturday as activists ignored calls to disperse, Turkey's Hurriyet daily reported.

Today on #Turkey #Kobane border.#Turkish Army and Police (#ISIS) attack against #Kurds #STOPturkey! @UN #TwitterKurds pic.twitter.com/yrsOOAc4fh

— Reş (@yekeres) October 4, 2014

The activists were reportedly trying to cross the border into Syria to help defend the city of Kobane against IS militants. The border city, located in Syria's north, is a strategic point for the jihadists; if the city falls to the militants, it would provide a direct link to their captured territories in Aleppo and Raqqa.

John Dolva · October 9, 2014

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Havana. October 8, 2014

The war against Syria: ‘Plan B’ of Obama’s hidden agenda

Nazanín Armanian

U.S. planes are bombing Syria, killing dozens of civilians, including children; all without the permission of Damascus or the UN, in violation of international law.

Barack Obama’s "Plan B" has only brought more death and destruction to Syria. Washington’s primary objective is to eliminate the constitutional government of Bashar Al-Assad.

Given the identity of the executioner and that of its victims, neither CNN nor the BBC have shown the videos of their deaths. For this same reason, there will be no condemnation or mobilizations against the State terrorism perpetrated with complete impunity by the U.S. and its allies, who over recent decades have uprooted the lives of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Yemenis and Sudanese, to name a few.

Israel has also exploited the situation, downing a Syrian bomber which was attacking al-Nusra Front positions. Whose side is Netanyahu on? Why hasn’t the ‘international community‘condemned this act of aggression against a sovereign State?

We are facing the seventh offensive launched by Barack Obama against a county which ‘coincidently’ happens to be majority Muslim.

Demonstrators from the anti-war group Act Now to Stop War and

End Racism protesting against U.S. military intervention in Syria outside

the White House in Washington.

It is not that the president is trying to discredit the Tea Party’s accusations regarding his religious affinity, if he wanted to do that he could attack Indonesia or Saudi Arabia. His motive is another: To dominate the heartland of Eurasia; control the entire Eastern Mediterranean – which was also one of his motives for overthrowing Gaddafi; humiliate Russia in its zone of influence; destroy the Syrian army for its links with Russia, as it did with Iraqi and Libyan armed forces and will do with the Ukraine; stop the construction of the Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian mega gas pipeline; triumph on the battle field and assume military control of the world to compensate for the economic crisis it is suffering; hurt china by pushing up the price of oil; make the UN even more obsolete and surround Iran on all sides.

With these objectives, in 2007 the U.S. launched ´Plan A´ against Syria, which consisted of:

- Carrying out covert operations, financing the right-wing opposition with the aim of overthrowing President Bashar Al-Assad; fueling criminal gangs to terrorize the population and generate disorder.

- Creating and arming terrorist groups they referred to as "rebels", the very same ones which ripped out and ate the hearts of Syrian soldiers, and whom later they referred to as "extremist murderers," when they killed Western journalists. They are the living copy of the Latin American death squads of the 1980s, trained by John Negroponte who in 2003 organized the "Special Forces" in Iraq.

- Turning Syria into a snare for Israel’s rivals in the region.

- Carrying out covert military operations such as the chemical gas incident in 2013, which they blamed on Al-Assad and used as a ‘casus belli’ to launch a military attack on Damascus.

IS extremists in Syria. Washington is using the terrorist group as a pretext to fulfill its hidden imperial agenda in the Middle East.

According to 12 former U.S. government agents, Al-Assad´s administration was not implicated in the incident. In addition, Russia’s veto on military intervention, as well as the absence of an effective alternative to govern the country (despite the possibility of doing away with Al-Assad by means of "selective assassination"), the ineffectiveness of the First and Second Geneva Conferences and the fear of a chaotic situation on the Israeli border, caused the failure of this phase of the "Operation against Syria," although it did serve to militarize the region and enable the U.S. to install Patriot missiles in Turkey.

"PLAN B" IN MOTION

Plan B consists of:

- Moving the "U.S. caliphate" of the Islamic State (IS) from Syria to Iraq, allowing it to easily occupy some 90,000 square kilometers of both countries, terrorizing almost eight million people.

- Organizing a propaganda campaign regarding the cruelty of the IS, as was done with the Taliban’s stonings in order to justify the "liberation" of Afghanistan, or with the killing of Kuwati babies by Saddam Hussein in 1991. Not to mention the Anthrax letters sent to the U.S. and the sadly notorious non-existent weapons of mass destruction of 2003.

- Dusting off the shady military agreement with Iraq which allows the U.S. to "re-occupy" the country whenever it considers it opportune.

- Swiftly replacing Nuri al Maliki due to his opposition to launching attacks on Syria from Iraq

- Breaking the taboo of bombing Syria, which last year Obama was unable to secure support for, neither within nor outside his country. Now in the midst of the chaos, if someone were ´suddenly´ to assassinate Bashar al-Assad, who would cry for him? The U.S. knows that Damascus cannot shoot down the planes invading its territory. The zone controlled by the IS, once occupied by soldiers commanded by the U.S., will serve as an operating base for the whole of Syria.

- Continuing with the Great Middle East Project, changing borders and regimes. Washington will send troops to Iraq, the majority Arabs, to kill the IS Arabs.

Hundreds of Yazidis, an Iraqi ethnic group, who managed to escape the persecution of IS extremists, heading towards the border with Syria, close to the Sinyar Mountain in Iraq. Photo: Rodi Said / Reuters.

Once Iraq and Syria have been wiped off the map, they will be used as an "Iraq-Syria operating base" to add to Afghanistan and Pakistan, two other States turned into "bases" during the previous chapter of the war on terror.

- The massive expulsion of ethnic and religious minorities from their homes which IS is currently conducting in accordance with the Biden Plan: "Divide, conquer and you will rule." Breaking up large States, grouping people together in specific zones to create their planned mini States. In Iraq, with around 30% mixed marriages, the scenes of Yugoslavia will be repeated: tens of thousands of people will be forced to separate and kill one another so that each aggressor country can have its slice of cake. This can happen in a hotbed of discontent such as exists within minority communities of the region, who suffer severe economic, ethnic, social, political and religious inequalities.

- That an Islamic group called Khorasan, more dangerous than Al Qaeda and the IS suddenly appeared in the press, is scary, not only because of the CIA’s ability to create terrorist groups, but also because Khorasan "Land where the sun rises" was the name of the region which during the Achaemenid Empire included part of current day Iran and the rest of the "stans" of Central Asia. Does this mean that this group will operate in Central Asia and Iran?

This is how the U.S. is attempting to restructure Iraq to its own taste, control its resources, consolidate its positions in the region and consequently hold Russian and China to ransom in other parts of the world.

Only an international movement for peace can halt and extinguish NATO’s destructive force.

John Dolva · October 9, 2014

One of the most progressive force in the central asian theatre of war is the Kurdish Liberation Movement or the PKK. I've been aware of their struggles since the Iraq (supported by the us) - Iran war that claimed a million of the most progressive Iranioan youth and massacres of the Kurdish people caught between the two protagonists. The PKK has only grown in stature. It's time to recognise the Kurdish Peoples right to live in the world they fight for.

Bese Hozat: PKK is a social system today

The Kurdish Liberation Movement made up of a group of Kurdish and Turkish youths,

25.11.2013 ANF

The Kurdish Liberation Movement made up of a group of Kurdish and Turkish youths, known as pro-Apo (Öcalan) and -national liberation groups till 1978, became a party following the first congress held in the house of the Zoğurlu family, which supported the organization since its formation, in the Fis village of Diyarbakır's Lice district on 26-27 November. The PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party, Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan) has become a public movement addressing millions during the 35 years that have passed since the first congress which had been attended by 22 delegates.

Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council Co-President Bese Hozat spoke to ANF about the struggle PKK has given for 35 years now, what it has achieved so far and what kind of a change and transformation it has introduced to the Kurdish people.

How does the PKK define itself?

The PKK is no doubt a strong insurrection movement against cruelty and the exploitation of people and society, and for a people who were deprived of all their rights, denied any kind of fair defense, their language banned and their land occupied and exploited. The PKK is a contemporary insurrection movement with a program, ideology, philosophy and struggle strategy, not an ordinary one for a people greatly exploitated and enslaved. The PKK has the power to change the balances in the region and the world, as well as a strategic and tactical leadership, an army of thousands of guerrillas and an organized grassroots of millions of people.

In line with all these facts, it remains inadequate to define the PKK as an insurrection movement because of the fact that the party has presented the democratic nation paradigm, improved the democratic confederal system of peoples, built an alternative project of democratic peoples' system against the five thousand years old statist government system and is leading the building of this project now. The democratic, free and equal form of life and the democratic ecological system the PKK has built is the only system that will liberate the peoples. The Kurdish people are today giving a struggle to build this system on the basis of their own will. In the current state of affairs, the PKK has gone beyond a movement and become a social living system.

PKK has made a great mindset revolution for the Kurdish people, clearing their minds of slavery and fear which it replaced with the sense of freedom. This is the greatest revolution the PKK has achieved, for the liberation of a people relies on a mindset revolution and the attainment of the sense of freedom.

The party has on the other hand placed women at the center of the social liberation, and women's struggle at the center of the national struggle. This has introduced a new context and depth to the sense of freedom, because of the fact that a people can never be free without free women. Thousands of women assured by this reality in theory and in practice have taken to the mountains and assembled an army, bravely fought against the exploitative system and destroyed the mindset which defends that war is a man thing. The liberation struggle the Kurdish women are giving on mountains is not against the Turkish army alone, it is also against the male-dominant mindset and the cruel and exploitative system it has created.

This war has led to a great social change and transformation, it destroyed the ordinary perspective against women, changed the gender based morals and culture, and enabled the Kurdish women to become subjects in all areas of life, to take an active part in the social life and politics, and to lead civil commotions and public resistance. Women became the symbol of resistance and the liberation struggle, changed the social fabric of the Kurdish society, transformed the feodal culture and displayed a determining stance in the democratisation of the society. This is a women's revolution the PKK and Kurdish people have achieved by creating a free society with free women, and a sense and culture of democratic nation against the culture of tribes, which is at the same time a human revolution.

The struggle the Kurdish people are giving today under the leadership of the PKK plays a crucial role in the democratisation of the Middle East region and is the greatest hope of the peoples in the region. Kurds are taking to the stage in the history with the building of a democratic autonomous and confederal system.

The PKK defines itself not only as a Kurdish movement but also as a liberation movement. What has the PKK done for the peoples in four parts of Kurdistan, what kind of a culture has it created?

The PKK movement has never given an ethnic struggle. Those claiming the PKK to do so were the enemies of the party and the people. The PKK ideology sides with freedom and equality. PKK is a democratic socialist movement against nationalism, religionism and sexism which all are ideologies that lead up to fascism, nationalism and militarism. As an organization for the struggle of the peoples in the Middle East, the PKK has fought for the freedom of peoples and represented the human values in the region. PKK is the follower and contemporary representative of the democratic civilisation tradition in the Middle East. All these prove that the Kurdish question is not related with Kurds alone, it is an issue which concerns the entire Middle East region.

John Dolva · October 10, 2014

A wave of anti-IS protests organized by Kurdish activists has rocked many European capitals, including London, Brussels, The Hague and in Sweden’s Gothenburg.

The Kurdish diaspora in Europe is protesting that the Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria are attacking Kurdish communities with impunity, without meeting any serious opposition on the ground apart from Kurdish peshmerga militias. The assault of jihadists on the Kurdish settlement of Kobani in Syria, near the Turkish border has already claimed over 400 lives, while airstrikes by the US and its allies against IS fighters in Syria are not focused on protecting Kobani.

Meanwhile, police used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons against a students in Ankara, namely those protesting in support of Syrian Kurds in Kobani at the Middle Eastern Technical University (ODTÜ) campus and at Ankara University. At least 25 people have been detained, while one woman was reportedly injured after being hit by pressurized water in the face, Hurriyet Daily News reports. The violence has prompted the Rector’s Office of Ankara University to cancel all classes on Friday.

John Dolva · October 11, 2014

SOCIALIST UNITY Kobane

Posted by John Wight on6 October, 2014

Category Articles Tags ISIS Kurds Syrian conflict Turkey

Men and women fighters of the YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Unit) are literally fighting for their lives resisting an attempt by the forces of Islamic State (IS) to take the town of Kobane in northern Syria, just across the border from Turkey. They are doing so with light weapons against an enemy which has tanks and heavy artillery, and at time of writing their prospects look bleak. Indeed, if the most recent reports are to be believed the Kurds’ resistance in Kobane is about to be drowned in blood.

The sheer bankruptcy of Western policy vis-a-vis the region and with regard to IS is now laid bare. In northern Iraq we are talking about a Sunni uprising in response to the Western puppet and corrupt government of Nouri al-Maliki, which extended itself whilst in power in excluding Iraq’s Sunni majority in central and northern Iraq from the political process, as it set about imposing Shia control over the government and the Iraqi economy. The irony here is that it was only with the cooperation of the very same Sunni tribes in the north of the country that the US occupation forces were able to defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq between 2005-09.

Those same tribes are now supporting IS, viewing the Baghdad government as the greater enemy. The Iraqi Army, moreover, after the US spent a fortune building, equipping, and training it, has proved utterly inept – to the point where IS are almost at the gates of Baghdad.

In Syria both Turkey and the West are prisoners of their enmity towards the Assad regime. The reorientation in stance towards Assad that is urgently required, involving entering an alliance with the Syrian government to defeat IS rather than continuing a wrong headed policy of trying to topple it, isn’t going to take place any time soon. This means the suffering of the Syrian people, including the Kurds, is set to go on.

As for the Saudis, it is a badge of shame that this gang of corrupt religious obscurantists, who’ve been fomenting and funding this carnage and chaos, remains a close ally of the West.

The courage of the men and women of the YPG, currently mounting a heroic resistance to IS barbarism in Kobane, stands in sharp and shameful contrast to the West and its allies in the region.

John Dolva · October 12, 2014

Syrian Kurds need support

Posted by SU Editorial Team on11 October, 2014

Category Articles Tags Kobane Kurds NATO Syria YPG

Morning Star

Editorial

Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) battling to defend Kobane are effectively fighting on two fronts — against both Isis terrorist forces and Turkey’s corrupt government.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who presides over a big business administration with an Islamist tinge, has announced baldly that Kobane will fall.

He is urged by Washington to help defeat Isis but remains indifferent because his priority is to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Erdogan makes clear that Turkish intervention will have clear guidelines — a Turkish buffer area on Syrian territory to corral refugees, a no-fly zone to ground Syrian warplanes and the explicit aim of replacing the Assad regime.

Millions of Kurds and their supporters are in the streets of Turkey and other countries demanding that Ankara ends its de facto collaboration with Isis.

The BBC informs us that the demonstrators demand Turkish army action to relieve Kobane.

Nothing like it. The last thing that the Kurds of Kobane or Kurdish regions of Turkey now subject to a state of emergency need or want is Turkish troops marching over them.

Kobane needs reinforcements and weapons supplies, but Ankara has closed the border to obstruct Turkey’s Kurds from assisting their cousins in Syria.

What a contrast to the Turkish government’s earlier stance of allowing thousands of jihadists, trained and financed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, free entry into Syria to join the anti-Assad struggle.

US Vice-President Joe Biden hit the nail on the head last week when he told a Harvard University meeting that these states had “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons against anyone who would fight Assad.”

All these supplies, together with the military assets surrendered by the corrupt and unmotivated Iraqi army, have ended up in the hands of Isis and the al-Qaida-affiliated Al-Nusra Front.

That’s why the siege of Kobane is fought between one side that has tanks, artillery and mortars and another with automatic rifles and grenades.

Washington’s much-touted anti-Isis military alliance has launched some air strikes around Kobane and may have eased the tightening stranglehold on the town, but it is window dressing that covers up a lack of clear thinking.

Nato-led imperialist forces, including Britain, have been up to their necks in boosting Isis and other obscurantist elements because of their hostility to Assad, Iran and their allies in Lebanon and Iraq.

If David Cameron had had his way, British bombers would have played the role of the Isis air force a year ago.

Barack Obama appears now to view Isis as a greater threat to the US than Assad, even though he forced Biden to apologise so as not to alienate his Turkish and Arab allies.

The US president understands what a propaganda boost it would be for Isis to capture Kobane in the face of US air strikes and what a humiliation it would be for Washington and its allied air armada.

Kobane will not be saved by token air strikes. Nor will they rid Syria and Iraq of Isis.

The Syrian, Iranian and Iraqi governments are key to resolving this issue, as is the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is falsely labelled a terrorist organisation.

Nato member states, including the US, have to rethink previous self-defeating positions, drop their sanctions against the anti-Isis alliance and send arms to those in the front line of this epic struggle.

John Dolva · October 13, 2014

"

ISIS is the progeny of those in Washington and London who, in destroying Iraq as both a state and a society, conspired to commit an epic crime against humanity. Like Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, ISIS are the mutations of a western state terror dispensed by a venal imperial elite undeterred by the consequences of actions taken at great remove in distance and culture. Their culpability is unmentionable in "our" societies.

It is 23 years since this holocaust enveloped Iraq, immediately after the first Gulf War, when the US and Britain hijacked the United Nations Security Council and imposed punitive "sanctions" on the Iraqi population - ironically, reinforcing the domestic authority of Saddam Hussein. It was like a medieval siege. Almost everything that sustained a modern state was, in the jargon, "blocked" - from chlorine for making the water supply safe to school pencils, parts for X-ray machines, common painkillers and drugs to combat previously unknown cancers carried in the dust from the southern battlefields contaminated with Depleted Uranium.

Just before Christmas 1999, the Department of Trade and Industry in London restricted the export of vaccines meant to protect Iraqi children against diphtheria and yellow fever. Kim Howells, parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Blair government, explained why. "The children's vaccines", he said, "were capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction". The British Government could get away with such an outrage because media reporting of Iraq - much of it manipulated by the Foreign Office - blamed Saddam Hussein for everything.

Under a bogus "humanitarian" Oil for Food Programme, $100 was allotted for each Iraqi to live on for a year. This figure had to pay for the entire society's infrastructure and essential services, such as power and water. "Imagine," the UN Assistant Secretary General, Hans Von Sponeck, told me, "setting that pittance against the lack of clean water, and the fact that the majority of sick people cannot afford treatment, and the sheer trauma of getting from day to day, and you have a glimpse of the nightmare. And make no mistake, this is deliberate. I have not in the past wanted to use the word genocide, but now it is unavoidable."

Disgusted, Von Sponeck resigned as UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq. His predecessor, Denis Halliday, an equally distinguished senior UN official, had also resigned. "I was instructed," Halliday said, "to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults."

A study by the United Nations Children's Fund, Unicef, found that between 1991 and 1998, the height of the blockade, there were 500,000 "excess" deaths of Iraqi infants under the age of five. An American TV reporter put this to Madeleine Albright, US Ambassador to the United Nations, asking her, "Is the price worth it?" Albright replied, "We think the price is worth it."

In 2007, the senior British official responsible for the sanctions, Carne Ross, known as "Mr. Iraq", told a parliamentary selection committee, "[The US and UK governments] effectively denied the entire population a means to live." When I interviewed Carne Ross three years later, he was consumed by regret and contrition. "I feel ashamed," he said. He is today a rare truth-teller of how governments deceive and how a compliant media plays a critical role in disseminating and maintaining the deception. "We would feed [journalists] factoids of sanitised intelligence," he said, "or we'd freeze them out."

On 25 September, a headline in the Guardian read: "Faced with the horror of Isis we must act." The "we must act" is a ghost risen, a warning of the suppression of informed memory, facts, lessons learned and regrets or shame. The author of the article was Peter Hain, the former Foreign Office minister responsible for Iraq under Blair. In 1998, when Denis Halliday revealed the extent of the suffering in Iraq for which the Blair Government shared primary responsibility, Hain abused him on the BBC's Newsnight as an "apologist for Saddam". In 2003, Hain backed Blair's invasion of stricken Iraq on the basis of transparent lies. At a subsequent Labour Party conference, he dismissed the invasion as a "fringe issue".

Now Hain is demanding "air strikes, drones, military equipment and other support" for those "facing genocide" in Iraq and Syria. This will further "the imperative of a political solution". Obama has the same in mind as he lifts what he calls the "restrictions" on US bombing and drone attacks. This means that missiles and 500-pound bombs can smash the homes of peasant people, as they are doing without restriction in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia - as they did in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. On 23 September, a Tomahawk cruise missile hit a village in Idlib Province in Syria, killing as many as a dozen civilians, including women and children. None waved a black flag.

The day Hain's article appeared, Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck happened to be in London and came to visit me. They were not shocked by the lethal hypocrisy of a politician, but lamented the enduring, almost inexplicable absence of intelligent diplomacy in negotiating a semblance of truce. Across the world, from Northern Ireland to Nepal, those regarding each other as terrorists and heretics have faced each other across a table. Why not now in Iraq and Syria."

full article :

From Pol Pot to ISIS: “Anything that flies on everything that moves”

http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything-that-flies-on-everything-that-moves

"

In transmitting President Richard Nixon's orders for a "massive" bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, "Anything that flies on everything that moves". As Barack Obama ignites his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger's murderous honesty.

As a witness to the human consequences of aerial savagery - including the beheading of victims, their parts festooning trees and fields - I am not surprised by the disregard of memory and history, yet again. A telling example is the rise to power of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who had much in common with today's Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They, too, were ruthless medievalists who began as a small sect. They, too, were the product of an American-made apocalypse, this time in Asia.

According to Pol Pot, his movement had consisted of "fewer than 5,000 poorly armed guerrillas uncertain about their strategy, tactics, loyalty and leaders". Once Nixon's and Kissinger's B52 bombers had gone to work as part of "Operation Menu", the west's ultimate demon could not believe his luck.

The Americans dropped the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on rural Cambodia during 1969-73. They levelled village after village, returning to bomb the rubble and corpses. The craters left monstrous necklaces of carnage, still visible from the air. The terror was unimaginable. A former Khmer Rouge official described how the survivors "froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half-crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told... That was what made it so easy for the Khmer Rouge to win the people over."

A Finnish Government Commission of Enquiry estimated that 600,000 Cambodians died in the ensuing civil war and described the bombing as the "first stage in a decade of genocide". What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot, their beneficiary, completed. Under their bombs, the Khmer Rouge grew to a formidable army of 200,000."

John Dolva · October 13, 2014

Turkey's war on Rojava

Saturday, September 27, 2014

By I. Zekeriya Ayman

The People’s Democracy Party (HDP) leader Selahattin Demirtas, who won nearly 10% in the recent presidential election. The HDP is leading a big campaign of solidarity with Rojava against the IS assault.

With the US and allied nations, including Arab countries, carrying out air strikes in Syria, the Turkish government is trying to convince the West it does not support the Islamic State (IS) forces the US is targetting.

Newly elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (the former prime minster) linked the adjective “terrorist” with “IS” for the very first time on September 23 during a US TV interview while attending the United Nations climate summit.

“Turkey will do whatever needs to be done to stop this terrorist organisation, militarily, and politically,” he said.

But the truth is that IS has received vital support from the Turkish government. It is known that IS has received crucial support from Turkey, which includes:

* Turkey positioning itself as an easy bridge for IS foreign militants to reach Syria, and Iraq;
* Trapped IS militants in Syria and Iraq escaping to Turkey to regroup and train;
* IS casualties being treated in Turkish hospitals and even having an hospital exclusively for their use;
* Turkey providing basic needs to IS under the guise of “humanitarian aid”;
* The Turkish government providing weapons and ammunitions directly to IS and provided safe passage for arms deliveries from elsewhere; and
*Turkey opening and closing its borders to suit IS.

The main reason the Turkish regime has supported IS, besides its interest in the toppling the Syrian regime, is the growing Kurdish resistance in Syria and the creation of a revolutionary “liberated zone” in the Kurdish territory of Rojava.

The “Rojava Revolution” is the first revolutionary project in the Middle East not supported by any major political power since the 2011 Arab Spring. This is a real people’s revolution, led by the Kurdish liberation movement, that is generating hope in the Middle East. It suggests that revolution may be possible without the backing of the super powers.

The Turkish government had a secret policy of maintaining a “buffer zone” on its border with Syria to stifle the Rojava revolution.

So what has changed? The US has declared its intention to “destroy IS” and the Turkish government believes this may revive its failed attempts to demolish the Rojava uprising.

Turkey has been the most enthusiastic government in the world about the demise of the Assad regime. At the start of the Syrian uprising the then-Turkish foreign minister, now Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu, boldly predicted that “Assad’s days were numbered.”

The Turkish government believed it. But it was the prediction that collapsed, not the Assad regime. These recent US air strikes have renewed hopes that Assad may go.

The Turkish government also seems to have calculated that it cannot rely on the IS to crush Kurdish resistance. Its best bet is actually the US.

If a ground operation follows air strikes in Syria, Turkey will be more than happy to occupy Syria from north ― providing an excellent opportunity to deal with the Kurds.

The US attacks on IS in Iraq and Syria send a clear message to all that the US is not finished in the region, yet. The US pushed hard for Sunni Arab countries and Turkey to come on board with the air strikes.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Turkey had no choice but to support the US-led anti-IS “coalition”.

Turkey won’t change its policy to kill the Rojava revolution but will try to kill it from within this coalition.

The Turkish government will pay a hefty price, domestically, for its support of the US led coalition against IS. Its religious base will ask questions. But it is a lower price than it would pay if it went against US interests.

The Turkish left is well aware of US plans in Iraq and Syria. The People’s Democracy Party (HDP), which gained significant support at the recent presidential elections, is leading a huge campaign in solidarity with defence of the Rojava city of Kobane against IS attack.

Thousands of Turkish-Kurdish youth trying to enter Syria to join the war against IS have clashed with Turkish police at the border ― but many have managed to join the fight. HDP MPs have visited the Syrian border to show their solidarity with Kobane resistance and now many other groups are visiting in solidarity.

[i. Zekeriya Ayman is a Kurdish–Turkish leftist living in Melbourne.]

Saleh Moslem: Turkey has not kept its promise

ANF/ALİ GÜLER - BRUSSELS 08.10.2014 18:30:18

In an interview with ANF, PYD (Democratic Union Party) co-chair Saleh Moslem made important statements on the present situation in Kobanê, the details of the meeting with Turkish authorities in İstanbul, and the Kobanê decision of France.

Moslem said he had a meeting with the Turkish authorities last week in İstanbul and added: “The Turkish authorities promised us that they would help to Kobanê. But they don’t keep their promise despite all our insistence”.

Stressing that it is only the Kurdish forces effectively fighting the ISIS gangs in the Middle East, the PYD co-chair emphasised that they welcome the decision of France to help Kobanê. Müslim also stressed that the attacks on Kobanê are aimed at the will of Kurds, and greeted the Kurdish people rising up for Kobanê in North Kurdistan and Europe.

Are there any civilians in Kobanê except for the fighters?

There are currently around 10 thousand people in Kobanê, including women, children and elderly. These people don’t want to leave the town. Our forces are defending these people at the cost of their lives.

Today (Tuesday) the coalition forces bombarded some bases of ISIS around Kobanê at noon. What was the influence of these strikes?

The air strikes didn’t produce any result till yesterday. All the strikes were some 15-20 km away from Kobanê. And those bombings were not influential. But, yesterday they were quite.

How do you evaluate the air strikes?

According to us, it is a late decision. They must have been carried out earlier. But despite all, the conduction of strikes is positive move that we expect should continue to take place.

Why is ISIS attacking Kurds?

I have not understood it so far and I really want to get it. But we have to know this; ISIS, according to us, is an evil. They try to take people 2000 years back in time when the world and humanity have achieved this much progression. This is an absolutely meaningless and unrealistic idea. Humanity has left caliphate behind some 2000 years ago. This is why the strategy of ISIS cannot be put into practice. They have plundered all the places they reached until now and massacred the people without distinction. They spoil things wherever they go. And this is indeed what the powers sending them to there want to happen.

Which powers?

The powers that do not accept and do not recognise the Kurds, those who are against the system we have established in Rojava.

Why do they see your system this much threatening?

In our system, all the Arabs, Armenians, Syriacs, Syrians and Kurds live under equal conditions. There is a social contract. The women and the children are also enjoying equal rights. The women are represented in all the cantons with 40 percent quota, and additionally there is the co-chair system. This is what they do not accept. Imagine, the Syriacs enjoy the right to officially use their own language only in Rojava in the world. All the balances in the Middle East are changing with this system. This is why it has quite many enemies; primarily the states having divided the Kurds up; Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Many commanders of the Baathist regime from Iraq are currently taking place in the ranks of the ISIS. These are the ones who have not accepted the Kurds throughout the history. Their aim is to destroy this system.

What is the exact role of Turkey here?

The USA vice president Joe Biden has also voiced it clearly; there is a cooperation between Turkey and ISIS ranging from logistic support to allowing the passing of the militants. All these are clear and apparent.

Kobanê is facing a massacre which is happening in front of the eyes of the whole world. Despite everyone being against this massacre and the ISIS, the silence remains. How do you comment on this?

Some want to intervene but lack the power to do so. And some others don’t want to render themselves the target of ISIS. And some others aren't doing it because of their own interests. At the moment it is the Kurds who are under the danger. This is why it is the Kurds who have to resist. Today, our forces and the coalition forces are the onlyones fighting against ISIS.

Are you satisfied that the strike of the coalition forces has helped? Which demands do you have from them?

We have been saying from the very beginning that we do not demand that they “come here and fight for us”. We just ask them to open the border gates, and sell us the anti-tank and missiles we need and we will pay for. They aren't doing that even. This is what resents us. It would not be true to say that “ISIS occupied there and seized the weapons”. No. Some forces provided these heavy weapons to ISIS. They are using it against us. This is clear and apparent.

How would you comment on the statement of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs who said “We will help Kobanê"?

We find it very important. But it is late decision. We have been telling the same for two years but no one has paid attention to us. We are fighting ISIS on our own lands for one a half year now. This is not the war of the Kurds alone. It is the war of the whole humanity and for democracy. Everyone finds us right but they remain silent. We fight with kalashnikovs against tanks and missiles. We put a great human will. If we had anti-tanks and heavy weapons, no one would be needed. There would also be no need to have all those warplanes take off in order to hit ISIS targets. But when it is a matter of interests, things turn out to be different.

How moral is this while on the hand there is a city under the threat of massacre, and on the other hand, there are the interests of the states?

This is immoral. First and foremost, the human values should be protected, whatever the consequences might be. ISIS set dozens of churches on fire when it entered Mosul. It is a thousand-year-old history and the history humanity that was burnt down there. This is how the matter must be treated. Humanity and values must be preserved. These are the enemies of humanity.

France has made a statement but when will they take action? Days, if not hours, might be too late for Kobanê. What would your call be regarding this?

When we tell them to act urgently, we talk on the basis of this sensitivity. I have just returned from France (Tuesday evening). We held meetings with high level authorities,- and we told in all details how urgent the situation is. Whatever will be done must be done now. I repeat here once again that there's no time to lose.

Erdoğan made a statement yesterday saying that the PKK and YPG are also terrorists to them, just like ISIS is. After this, people who took to the streets in North Kurdistan were targeted in armed attacks. Many people have died so far. What would you say on this attitude of Turkey?

This is blackmail. There is hypocrisy here. We are protecting the values of humanity against the ISIS gangs. Erdoğan is not honest. This shows us that his mentality is not different than that of ISIS. Kurds feel under threat and take to the streets. Firing bullets on these people proves that he has the same mentality with ISIS. Because, today it might be Kobanê, but tomorrow it might very well be Hewler, Amed and Mahabad facing the same threat. One is killing civilians in Rojava, the other those in North Kurdistan.

You visited Turkey last week. With whom and what kind of meetings did you have?

Yes, three days ago I met the Turkish authorities in Istanbul.

On what?

They promised us to “help Kobanê”.

What kind of a promise?

They told us that they don’t want Kobanê to fall. “We will open a corridor to help you. We have to be in unity against the ISIS” they said. We found it positive. Now they are taking time. We insist that they keep their promises. They told us “not to explain the content of the meeting to the press” but they themselves are attacking us.

Do you have any message to the Kurdish people demonstrating everywhere for Kobanê now?

What is targeted in Kobanê is the will of the Kurds. Everyone should know it as it is and act accordingly. We find it important that our people take to the streets and stage protests. It is sacred to us. I am greeting all of them. By protecting Kobanê, we are protecting the will of Kurdish people. Kurds must be resisting. They must step up their actions to the highest level. They have to show it to the whole world so that no one would ever dare to attack Kurds again.

I also criticize the silence of South Kurdistan. Some TV channels in the south say that “this war is between the PYD and the ISIS”. This is not true. People from parties other than us were also beheaded and massacred. They were not members or supporters of the PYD, they were killed because they were Kurds. They shouldn’t feel comforted today as South Kurdistan is also among the targets of the ISIS. Once they find the opportunity, they will attack Hewler as well because according to them Kurds are nonbelievers and they have to be annihilated. The government of South Kurdistan and the people must be aware of this fact and stand with Kobanê.

John Dolva · October 15, 2014

Turkish warplanes have bombed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) targets near the country’s border with Iraq. The strikes highlight rising tensions in Turkey over Ankara’s perceived unwillingness to aid besieged Kurdish fighters in the Syrian town of Kobani.

The Turkish General Staff dispatched F-16 and F-4 jets to the southeastern village of Daglica in Hakkari province on Monday, the Turkish daily Hurriyet reports.

The daily says the airstrikes caused “heavy damage” to the PKK.

The PKK's military wing, however, said in a statement on its website that its forces had not suffered casualties during the strikes, Reuters reports.

Turkey says the bombings came in response to three days of attacks on the Daglıca military guard post with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. PKK insurgents for their part blamed the Turkish military of violating the ceasefire.

Monday’s strikes were the first to be conducted since the Kurdish rebel group declared a ceasefire with Turkey in March 2013.

The incident underlines simmering anger among Kurds in southeastern Turkey over Ankara’s failure to intervene against so-called Islamic State (IS) militants, who launched a massive offensive on the predominately Kurdish town of Kobani – not far from Syria’s border with Turkey – on September 16.

At least 35 people were killed throughout Turkey’s Kurdish majority south-eastern provinces last week after protests against Ankara’s inaction descended into violent street clashes.

Kurdish protesters set fire to a barricade set up to block the street as they clash with riot police in Diyarbakir October 7, 2014.(Reuters / Stringer)

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of PKK, has threatened to call off peace talks to end nearly three decades of insurgency if Ankara does not act by Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a "symbolic" amount of military supplies sent from Iraqi Kurdistan to Syrian Kurds is stuck in Syria’s northeast after Turkey refused to open an aid corridor, German daily Deutsche Welle cites Syrian Kurdish official Alan Othman as saying on Tuesday.

Proposed Military Strike on Syria

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