While it is understandable why the international left should offer the maximum solidarity to the Kurdish struggle centered in Kobane, a Jacobin article by Errol Babacan and Murat Çakır offered in that spirit and titled “The False Friends of Kobanê” does require some scrutiny. Published originally in Infobrief Türkei, it vehemently opposes outside intervention, particularly from Turkey. The article reflects a fairly widespread belief on the Turkish left that there was nothing of value in the Syrian uprising since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was backing it. If it wasn’t enough that Erdoğan was intervening, he was implicitly intervening on behalf of the worst elements:
Given that IS militants have reportedly been crossing the Turkish-Syrian border with ease, and in the context of Turkey’s longstanding hostility to Kurdish interests, it was clear that such a plan would amount to the fox guarding the henhouse.
And as is so often the case with pro-Kobane material, there is a sharp distinction between the pure as the driven snow PYD—the Kurdish militia—and the sneaky Syrian rebels who apparently conspired to draw imperialism into the fray from the beginning:
The PYD had previously made known that its activities were independent of the wider Syrian opposition. When the latter began conferring with Turkey and, with Western support, took up arms against the Syrian government and started calling for foreign military intervention, the PYD spoke out against such outside intervention and stressed that a democratic Syria could only be the collective project of all Syrians.
If you click the link to “calling” above, you will be directed to an article in Jadaliyya.com by As`ad Abukhalil—the “Angry Arab”—that was written in 2012. My friendly advice to Errol Babacan and Murat Çakır, if they ever stumble across this article, and to Bhaskar Sunkara who surely will, is to avoid referencing the Angry Arab if they want to be taken seriously as analysts rather than cheap propagandists. The Angry Arab’s article is a long diatribe describing the war in Syria as an American-Israeli cabal and is just one brick in the edifice he has been constructing for the past four years to demonize the FSA. There are far better Baathist propagandists than him, like Nir Rosen or Joshua Landis. That is, if you want to be taken seriously.
Babacan and Çakır describe a virtual socialist utopia in Syria that was threatened by the imperialist-beseeching Syrian rebels:
Democratically decided price controls, a constitutional justice system, and free schooling in any student’s mother tongue are additional distinguishing features of Rojava’s egalitarian structures. Under exceedingly adverse conditions, the region has managed to sustain its people on the basis of self-organized production collectives.
At the outbreak of civil war in Syria, Rojava’s representatives did not merely reject outside military intervention. In negotiations with the Syrian opposition, they also argued for the autonomy of the Kurdish region in a possible future Syria. The Syrian opposition organized under the umbrella of the Syrian National Council categorically rejected both these stances.
Once again it would behoove the authors, and the editors at Jacobin, to look a bit more closely at these matters before drawing such a sharp distinction between good and evil, or black and white. As it turns out, it was not just between the Kurds and the SNC. There was another important player, namely the Baathist dictatorship in Damascus that decided to focus on destroying the FSA rather than the PYD just as it would also for Machiavellian purposes refrain from attacking ISIS.
As it turns out, the co-leader of the PYD had come around to the conclusion that Syria’s future and the preservation of the Baathist dictatorship were inextricably linked. That’s what ALMonitor reported in October 2013:
Salih Muslim, co-chairman of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said a solution in Syria without President Bashar al-Assad is not easy. “A solution without Assad means the death of 2 million Alawites,” he said.
Muslim, who gave an exclusive interview in Rojava to Hilmi Hacioglu of the popular Turkish TV news program The 32nd Day, said his party wanted to participate in the Geneva meeting not as part of the Syrian National Coalition but as an independent Kurdish movement. Yet, some countries, including Turkey, were trying to block this.
Muslim said a solution without Assad would have been possible two years ago, but it was now impossible. “All Alawites now support Assad. Insisting on a solution without Assad means the death of 2 million Alawites in the country,” he added.
Asked if they were cooperating with the Assad regime, Muslim replied: “No, never. Whoever says this is disrespecting our martyr brothers. We have been fighting with the regime since the 2004 Kurdish uprising. We have nothing in common with them. They don’t recognize Kurdish identity. But others are worse than the regime.”
In terms of whether the PYD was collaborating with the Assad regime, there are different opinions on that as well. Here is one that departs from the socialist utopia narrative that came from Eva Savlesberg, a scholar responsible for the website http://www.kurdwatch.org, which reports on human rights abuses against the Syrian Kurds.:
For more than a year, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People’s Defense Forces (YPG) have exercised state-like power in the Kurdish regions of Syria. Supported by Iran with weapons and ammunition moved through central Iraq, the PYD—a Syrian affiliate of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)—controls large parts of the border region between the Kurdish areas of Syria, Turkey and Iraq. Activists criticizing or not cooperating with the PYD have been abducted, tortured and sometimes killed. The PYD imposes taxes on gasoline, collects border fees and has established a system of courts. Since summer 2012, the Syrian regime has handed over the administration of an increasing number of cities and villages to the PYD. The fact that the PYD took over all the cities they now control without any significant fighting indicates that there was a deal between the regime and the PYD and PKK.
There are several reasons for the Syrian regime’s cooperation with the PYD. First, the PYD has, particularly in the second half of 2011 and the first half of 2012, violently suppressed dissident demonstrations on behalf of the regime, for example in Afrin. This allowed the Syrian army to concentrate on fights elsewhere and avoid having to open a second front against the Kurds, back then hesitant to join the revolt.
Second, since the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Islamist groups have started to operate in Kurdish areas, handing over control of those areas to the PYD means the YPG—not the Syrian army—is fighting the armed opposition there.
Finally, Syria is once again playing its Kurdish card against Turkey. In summer 2011, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) angered Damascus by siding with the opposition. Like his father before him, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is using the Kurds to apply pressure on Turkey. The AKP cannot afford—politically or militarily—for the PKK and PYD to establish a major stronghold in Syria.
So ironically as Bashar al-Assad was leveling Aleppo and Homs to the ground, two experiments in social/economic development were being conducted in Syria in relative safety—all because of deals struck with Damascus. ISIS was building its dungeon caliphate with its own medieval laws while the PYD was building something that was inspired by Murray Bookchin’s anarchist writings. While clearly Bookchin is more inspiring than ISIS barbarism, the most pressing need since 2011 has been unity among all people living in Syria for a republic based on equal rights rather than privilege protected by torture.
Turning now to the question of outside intervention, it is remarkable that an article so consumed with the need to demonize the FSA for supposedly being a tool of Israel and the USA will in the same breath motivate the need for more “effective” delivery of weapons to the PYG, the Kurdish militia in Kobane:
It is perhaps conceivable that the US had to react to public pressure, but other questions persist. Why weren’t more arms delivered directly to the people’s self-defense forces (YPG/YPJ)?
Maybe the authors should have submitted their article to Foreign Affairs rather than Jacobin if their intention was to make the case for a more effective arms delivery mechanism. And while they are at it, maybe they can make a pitch for the weapons-starved FSA that fought on behalf of the PYD, even after its co-leader accused them of virtually plotting the extermination of the Alawites as he rallied around Bashar al-Assad.
I would add that unlike Errol Babacan and Murat Çakır, the PYD sees the question of where it gets weapons or who bombs on its behalf as a tactical question, just as has been the case for most of the 20th century when the Irish and the Indians conspired to get weapons from German imperialism to use against the British Empire. For the pro-Assad left defying Russia, Iranian or Syrian policy goals became an act of class treachery. This is a debased “anti-imperialism” hardly worthy of the name.
On October 17, 2014 Business Insider described how the PYD and US-led warplanes worked closely together to smash ISIS:
US-led warplanes pummelled jihadists attacking the Syrian town of Kobani on Friday as the Pentagon said there was no imminent threat to Baghdad despite a wave of deadly bombings.
Six strikes hit Islamic State group positions close to the front line in the east of Kobani, taking advantage of new coordination with the town’s Kurdish defenders, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In neighboring Iraq, sandstorms hampered the US-led air campaign against the jihadists, but despite recent advances west of Baghdad, IS is not poised for an assault on the capital, the Pentagon said.
The dawn strikes in Kobani came after US Central Command said American warplanes struck 14 times around the town on Wednesday and Thursday, including “successful” raids on 19 IS-held buildings.
“There is coordination between the Kurdish forces and the Americans,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
“The Kurds are giving them the exact coordinates of where the fighting is.”
So what conclusions do we draw from all this? My position—put simply—is to oppose American intervention everywhere and anywhere. It does not have the right to function as the world’s policeman. More to the point, it has largely been lost on the “anti-imperialist” brigade that its actions in that capacity helped keep the filthy tyrant Bashar al-Assad in power largely by permitting his air force a free rein. In one of the most underreported stories of 2012, we learn how the USA blocked the shipments of weapons that could have turned the tide of war:
U.S. officials say they are most worried about Russian-designed Manpads provided to Libya making their way to Syria. The U.S. intensified efforts to track and collect man-portable missiles after the 2011 fall of the country’s longtime strongman leader, Moammar Gadhafi.
To keep control of the flow of weapons to the Syrian rebels, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar formed a joint operations room early this year in a covert project U.S. officials watched from afar.
The U.S. has limited its support of the rebels to communications equipment, logistics and intelligence. But U.S. officials have coordinated with the trio of countries sending arms and munitions to the rebels. The Pentagon and CIA ramped up their presence on Turkey’s southern border as the weapons began to flow to the rebels in two to three shipments every week.
In July, the U.S. effectively halted the delivery of at least 18 Manpads sourced from Libya, even as the rebels pleaded for more effective antiaircraft missiles to counter regime airstrikes in Aleppo, people familiar with that delivery said.
“We were told that we need to get our house in order on the ground, and that it wasn’t time yet,” said a rebel representative involved in the delivery.
Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2012
The slogan of a genuine anti-imperialist movement might have been “CIA out of Syria–Let the MANPAD’s in!”
