Archive for the ‘Kurds’ Category
Turkey attacks the Kurds.
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Turkey destroying NE Syria oil, power facilities: Kurds
Hasakeh (Syria) (AFP) – Turkish bombardment has damaged more than half of Kurdish-held northeast Syria’s power and oil infrastructure, dealing a blow to its energy-dependent economy, the Kurds’ top commander said.
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On October 5, Turkey launched a bombing campaign in Syria’s northeast after it said militants who were behind an attack in Ankara came from and were trained in Syria.
The semi-autonomous Kurdish administration has denied the claim, and says at least 44 people, including security personnel and civilians, have been killed in the attacks.
“More than half of oil and electricity facilities were damaged” as Turkey struck dozens of sites including power plants and gas infrastructure, Abdi said.
His forces spearheaded the battle to dislodge Islamic State group (IS) fighters from their last scraps of Syrian territory in 2019.
The assault has left residents without power since Thursday, in a region already struggling to provide just 10 hours of electricity per day.
“The Unites States’ position has been weak” in the face of the attacks, Abdi said.
“American forces limited their action to protecting their positions… but did nothing to stop” the onslaught, he said.
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Ankara views the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) that dominate the SDF as an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency against Turkey for decades.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Wednesday to intensify strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq.
John McDonnell Stands with Ukraine at TUC Congress Fringe Meeting.
Internationalists Stand with Ukraine.
It is good to see John McDonnell is going to speak. John stood up for the Kurds against Assad and the genociders of the Islamic State. Russia is a supporter of Assad, something that has not escaped the attention of Syrian democrats.
Elementary solidarity and decency require support for Ukraine.
The contrast with the attitude of Stop the War and its supporters is striking.
Stop the War publishes Andrew Murray who writes from a very different standpoint:
“…..the pull of Tory policy — basically the prolongation of the war to the point of a complete Russian military defeat — is powerful.
Its expression on the TUC agenda is in a motion from the GMB union. The GMB can, I suppose, be congratulated for at least asking Congress to address the war in Europe. Aslef is the only other union to do so. Ignoring war altogether is not smart policy.
However, the GMB motion is a call for the trade unions to align in support of the most hard-line elements among Nato policy-makers and push for the war to continue until Russian surrender. The key phrase is the demand for “the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territories occupied since 2014.”
Crimea, and other areas are for Murray, the crucial issues, not the defeat of the invaders. “In other Russian-occupied provinces, the situation may well be different. But self-determination under circumstances where it can be freely exercised is an important principle for the socialist left, alongside respect for sovereignty, the peaceful settlement of disputes and anti-imperialism “.Dropping the mask he warns not of Putin.s imperialism but of “the integration of Ukraine into the Western imperialist bloc and the isolation and degradation of any state that opposes that bloc, including ultimately China.”
Update, Stalinien Nick Wright in the latest Mornng Star:
“The situation recalls Gramsci’s insight when hegemony is contested: “Midway between consensus and force stands corruption or fraud.”
The Ukrainian military command is increasingly conscious of both its lack of manpower reserves and of increased resistance to the draft and is seen as unwilling to commit its troops to a sustained offensive. Rather it has switched to high-publicity drone attacks and dramatic if militarily insignificant operations inside Russia.
But from Nato’s standpoint it is necessary for Ukraine to achieve credible battlefield successes if sufficient domestic public opinion in Nato states is to be maintained in broad support for the war.”
In other words the leading CPB figure sees Ukraine at, from his position, welcome stalemate.
Wright sees a ray of hope in Germany, which is now working with the Chinese totalitarian imperialists,
Set against the US drive to mobilise the war in Ukraine to weaken Russia and impede China’s economic and political strategy along the European and Asian land mass, Germany’s new National Security Strategy envisages not just a developing and productive relationship with China — derisking but not decoupling — but even a long-term security rapprochement with Russia.
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Britain’s role, now outside of the EU and thus somewhat insulated from these stresses, is to double down on its support for Joe Biden’s policy of fighting the war to the last Ukrainian.
Every time Tory or Labour figures blame the energy price hike and and the cost-of-living crisis on the Russian invasion they draw attention to the self-mutilating effect of Nato’s sanctions policy.”
Cost of living crisis linked to the war in Ukraine……..
“One the eve of TUC Congress the changed military situation presents a problem for Britain’s trade union leaderships, no longer able to avoid confronting reality.
Union leaders need to make up their collective mind whether to back the present US strategy to make Europe and its economy the battleground or support a negotiated peace that preserves as much of Ukraine’s territory as is compatible with Russia’s security.“
In other words, let Russia have a partial victory….
Kurds: Muslims, Feminists and Revolutionaries – Charlie Hebdo.
More than words needed to back the Kurds.
Les Kurdes, musulmans, féministes et révolutionnaires Natacha Devanda Charlie Hebdo.
(Extracts, translated – the lyrical passages freely)
Kurds, and especially women, are at the forefront of the fight against dictatorial religious regimes.
“Jin, jiyan, azadi” or, translated : “Women, life, freedom”. These three words have resonated in Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini last September. The West has discovered that this trilogy of revolt however, comes from afar. from the “Mountains of Kurdistan, [the] plains of Rojava, [and] demonstrations and political meetings in Turkey” , noted the journalist Émile Bouvier on the site Les clés du Moyen-Orient. Because this slogan, taken up today in the streets of Iran, comes from the Kurds. More precisely from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and, specifically, from the female (not to say feminist) branches within the movement considered by Turkey and other States as a terrorist organisation.
Before they were at the centre of tragic news in Paris at the end of 2022, the Kurds were best known for their military opposition to Daesh, with armed brigades fighting relentlessly, especially in Kobané, Syria. . In the early 2010s, a female branch was created within the People’s Protection Units (YPG), these are the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), which brought together up to 24,000 combatants. These are women warriors who inspire panic and fear in Islamist terrorists, as it is dishonourable for them to risk being killed by a woman.
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….what is the origin of this Kurdish specificity in the Muslim world? “Throughout their history, the Kurds have developed a relationship with Islam that is different from that which generally prevails, particularly in the Arab world. Mainly Sunni Muslim like its Arab and Turkish neighbours, Kurdish society has shown a surprising capacity to accept religious diversity“, notes Pierre-André Hervé, geographer, specialist in Iraqi Kurdistan ….During the First World War, an officer of the English colonial empire stationed in Turkey was surprised at the mixed dances during Kurdish village festivals. “Unusual customs compared to other Muslim peoples in the region,” he noted. He considered also that, in terms of the respect between men and woman male/female the Kurds [are] closer to Westerners than to other peoples in the region”.
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The harsh living conditions, persecutions from outside and the need for a strong political organisation to shape the Kurdish identity would also help explain the progressive stand of this people. Not among all Kurds, of course, because honour killings and reactionary ideas also exist among them. But those who are politicised seem strongly influenced by the theories of Abdullah Öcalan, founder and former leader of the PKK, now a prisoner serving a life sentence in Imrali, Turkey. His texts on women are simply incredible. Lyrical, they denounce the alliance of the hunter and the shaman to expel women from power, criticise the patriarchy, which has thwarted the “progressive development of humanity and has engendered an extraordinary degree poverty in our lives”, and sets out the theoretical foundations of “jineology”, the science of women’s liberation.
In the new era that he calls for, Öcalan further notes that “the solutions to all the social problems of the Middle East must focus on the place of women “
On the ground, the Kurdish people are trying to put into practice these idea in Rojava, in northern Syria. It is a political project based on the emancipation of women, ecology and the inclusion of all ethnic and religious parts of society. It deserves to be widely known and supported. A utopia ? Maybe, but so what? We lack it as long as we die of it. And the Kurds want to live.”
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All progressive humanity stands with the Kurds.
Tendance Coatesy 