Left Socialist Blog
Internationalists Back the Fight Against Daesh.
There are many people, genuine internationalists, humanitarian progressives, those simply motivated by the need to defend humanity against the Islamist genocides of Daesh, fighting with the Kurdish forces in Syria.
This hit the headlines a few days ago.
British man Dean Carl Evans killed fighting with Kurds against Isil in Syria
British People’s Protection Units (YPG) volunteer Macer Gifford, who is on his second tour of Rojava, has sent a message about developments in Manbij, the strategic town being liberated from Islamic State (IS/ISIS) by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Manbij Military Council (MMC) fighters.
In his message from the front line Gifford asks for urgent aid from Britain, Europe and America and calls for borders to be opened to Rojava.
Below we are publishing Mr Gifford’s message, which he shared with his followers on Facebook on 2 August 2016.
……
Low food and water, mixed with the stench of those that have died amongst the rubble is a morale drainer. It’s amazing to see SDF fighters coming off the front, to be given their first proper meal in weeks and then share that food with civilians leaving the city. There is a wonderful, ‘we are in this together’ feeling between the fighters and the civilians. It’s amazing to see civilians flash the victory sign at us and shout their thanks. People literally weep with relief when they get out of the hands of ISIS and into the care of the SDF. This is despite no help coming from any major charity or country.
We have to get British, European and American aid here now! We need the borders to open to all traffic, both economical and charitable.
There is not a tabur (battalion) in Manbij that isn’t fighting. The diverse peoples of Rojava will never give up and will never relent in the struggle to liberate Syria. ISIS are trapped like rats, the SDF noose is around their necks and I can feel their desperation as we squeeze it a bit tighter every night.
Manbij was a test case for both the SDF and ISIS. Although the fight continues, victory for the SDF Alliance is certain. The loss of this major city (twice the size of Kobane) proves that nowhere is safe for Daesh’s (ISIS) murderous thugs.
More on Kurdish Question site.
One cannot but be impressed by the simple courage and decency of those willing to risk everything for the cause of humanity.
These volunteers (below) are overtly left-wing and have shown true internationalism.
International Freedom Battalion
The International Freedom Battalion (Turkish: Enternasyonalist Özgürlük Taburu, Kurdish: Tabûra Azadî ya Înternasyonal) is an armed group consisting of leftistforeign fighters fighting alongside thePeople’s Protection Units in the Syrian Civil War in support of the Rojava Revolution and against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.[1][2][3] The formation of the International Freedom Battalion was announced on 10 June 2015 in Serê Kaniyê (Ras al-Ayn). The Marxist–Leninist Communist Party (Turkey/Northern Kurdistan) had been the main force behind the establishment of the group. Inspiration for the group came from the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War.[4] The political ideologies among many of the fighters include Marxism–Leninism, Hoxhaism, Maoism, and anarchism.
Keep in touch with the fight of the YPG and the Kurdish forces by reading the Kurdish Question.
This is what they are fighting:
The clear difference between Muslims and the corrupt and deviant Jews and Christians is that Muslims are not ashamed of abiding by the rules sent down from their Lord regarding war and enforcement of divine law. So if it were the Muslims, instead of the Crusaders, who had fought the Japanese and Vietnamese or invaded the lands of the Native Americans, there would have been no regrets in killing and enslaving those therein. And since those mujahidin would have done so bound by the Law, they would have been thorough and without some “politically correct” need to apologize years later. The Japanese, for example, would have been forcefully converted to Islam from their pagan ways. Had they stubbornly declined, perhaps another nuke would change their mind. The Vietnamese would likewise be offered Islam or beds of napalm. As for the Native Americans: after the slaughter of their men, those who would favor smallpox to surrendering to the Lord would have their surviving women and children taken as slaves, with the children raised as model Muslims and their women impregnated to produce a new generation of mujahidin. As for the treacherous Jews of Europe and elsewhere — those who would betray their covenant — then their post-pubescent males would face a slaughter that would make the Holocaust sound like a bedtime story, as their women would be made to serve their husbands’ and fathers’ killers.
Furthermore, the lucrative African slave trade would have continued, supporting a strong economy. The Islamic leadership would not have bypassed Allah’s permission to sell captured pagan humans, to teach them, and to convert them, as they worked hard for their masters in building a beautiful country. Notably, of course, those of them who converted, practiced their religion well, and were freed would be treated no differently than any other free Muslim. This is unlike when the Christian slaves were emancipated in America, as they were not afforded supposedly government-recognized equal “rights” for more than a century — and their descendants still live in a nation divided over those days.
All of this would be done, not for racism, nationalism, or political lies, but to make the word of Allah supreme. Jihad is the ultimate show of one’s love for his Creator, facing the clashing of swords and buzzing of bullets on the battlefield, seeking to slaughter His enemies — whom he hates for Allah’s hatred of them.
Ross Wolf at the Charnel-House who publishes these words, from the Daesh publication, Dabiq, comments,
Much of this is clearly meant to serve a propaganda function, the group’s genocidal aims laid out matter-of-factly, in keeping with their apocalyptic imagery. It would of course be foolish to dismiss it all as empty posturing. Daesh actually does systematically murder, enslave, and rape within its shrinking territory. Some of the lines excerpted here seem almost designed just to scandalize mainstream liberal sensibilities, which are identified with the West. For example, the standard boilerplate complaint about “political correctness” is something one frequently sees on Alt-Right and RadTrad forums and message boards. Here IS is daring them to take the green pill instead of the red, an even more heady traditionalist concoction than the one they’re already accustomed to fantasizing about.
Tendance Coatesy 
That I.S. opposes ‘political correctness’ (like the alt-right) and champions imperialist brutality should come as no surprise given the group’s fascist character. The lessons of Spain 1936 and World War Two have never been more relevant than they are today in Iraq and Syria.
@pplswar
August 5, 2016 at 4:32 pm
Ross’ article is important to read in full pplswar, it comes from a text we leftists tweeted and talked about on Facebook.
https://thecharnelhouse.org/2016/08/02/the-green-pill-political-correctness-and-jihad/
He also makes this point,
“Returning to the paragraphs quoted from Dabiq, one has to admit that the bit about continuing “the lucrative African slave trade” is a nice touch. Under the auspices of Sharia law, of course. Incidentally, there’s a book out in French by Tidiane N’Diaye provocatively titled The Veiled Genocide [Le génocide voilé]. He chronicles the “Arab-Muslim slave trade” [la traite négrière arabo-musulmane], which lasted roughly twelve centuries and perhaps represented the first racialized system of slavery (with black Africans congenitally treated as chattel).
N’Diaye’s scholarly credentials are quite solid. Plus, he’s a non-practicing Franco-Senegalese Muslim, so I don’t think he can be accused of trying to demonize Islam. Of course right-wing websites have already seized on his scholarship and deployed it in typical opportunist fashion, as if European civilization is somehow absolved of centuries of enslavement by the fact that others were doing it beforehand. But N’Diaye can hardly be blamed for this abuse.”
Andrew Coates
August 5, 2016 at 4:37 pm
The text I linked in my first comment addresses this topic in the following way:
“This struggle of the ummah, for the ummah, by the ummah is a struggle in which non-Muslims can only play a subordinate, supportive role. Unfortunately, non-Muslim politicians in the West — eager to signal how virtuous and anti-Islamophobic they are — have publicly inserted themselves into this intra-ummah fight by mindlessly repeating the mantra that ‘IS is not Islam.’ By weighing in on religious matters, they make a mockery of the secular underpinnings of their political systems and make fools of themselves since they have no Islamic authority, credentials, or knowledge. The more forcefully liberal do-gooders insist that IS has ‘nothing’ to do with Islam, the more Western electorates become cynical of such claims. All across the West, far right parties and candidates are riding this illiberal backlash to gain mass influence.”
Unfortunately, bourgeois liberals are not alone in defending the thoroughly reactionary aspects of Islam and Muslim culture, there is a veritable cottage industry of pseudo-leftist intellectuals (usually but not always academics) who come out and shamelessly peddle the same ‘politically correct’ garbage after every massacre perpetrated by ISIS, whether in France or in Iraq. I understand that the president of the National Union of Students in the U.K. even killed a resolution denouncing ISIS on the grounds that doing so was somehow inherently ‘Islamophobic.’
This blog’s robust support for leftist comrades who are quite literally fighting ISIS is commendable but all too rare. It — and not ‘anti imperialism’ — should be the default starting position of all socialists, internationalists, and democrats in any ISIS-related discussion.
@pplswar
August 5, 2016 at 7:11 pm