(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
20. January 2018 launch the second largest NATO army attack on Afrin with aircraft and ground forces. Afrin, which is both a city and a district in the Aleppo government, is slightly smaller than Oppland county. I address two issues here: the special feature of the revolution in the Kurdish part of Syria in 2012 and the Kurdish-American alliance against IS (Islamic State) in Northern Syria.
The revolution in Rojava in 2012. It is said that a revolutionary situation arises when a regime no longer exists is capable of to rule the old way, and the population no longer find themselves in to rule. PYD (the Democratic Unity Party) seized the day and hour when in July 2012 thought this was the situation in Rojava, which is the Kurdish name of the three-part Kurdish majority region in the far north of Syria, along the border with Turkey. PYD demanded that Assad's armed men leave Rojava – without weapons. It was not a complete break with Syria, not a plan to create a Kurdish state. Assad got around a part of the city of Qamishlo and some more.
PYD mobilized many in building a new social order, but they also had powerful enemies: Turkey, the Assad regime, various jihadist groups and others who fought against both Assad and Rojava. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) included several groups and received military assistance from Turkey.
PYD has long-term goals that are similar to my ideas about a classless society.
The change in women's position is a key issue in the new social order. One Kurdish soldier put it this way: "It does not make sense to talk about democracy. Some women do not have the same rights and power to power as men do." Quoting is not enough. Shared tenancy is an innovation. One woman and one man share the tenancy. This has been introduced at various levels in PYD, in several other organizations and in local and regional governing bodies. Several men suffered a downturn when they came to the polling station in October 2017 – they could no longer use their wife's ID card and vote for two. Many women could vote for themselves for the first time. From day one, the YPJ women's defense forces – our self-organizing, have been equated with the YPG people's defense forces.
The new social system has more features than this: All governing bodies are secular. All ethnic groups have the same right and duty to participate in the governance of society. Democracy must be built from below. Decisions are made at as low a level as possible. PYD has long-term goals that are similar to my ideas about a classless society.
In November 2012, the Syrian air force went on the offensive. I saw the bomb crater in a residential area and at a hospital in the Kurdish border town of Sere Khaniye. A few weeks later, the FSA tried to take the city. They came from Turkey with tanks and heavy weapons, and after hard fighting they returned there. The following year, Turkey invested in cooperation with IS. In 2014, the jihadist group went from say to say and conquered most of northern Syria. Turkey-allied IS surrounds the three-part Rojava.
The alliance with the United States against IS. In September 2014, IS launched the offensive against Kobanê in the central part of Rojava. With loud loudspeakers, the militant Islamists gave a clear message to the defenders: "We have 14 soldiers and 000 tanks. They are doomed to lose. Surrender dive. ”
During the third week of the war, I was standing a few hundred meters from the city, on the Turkish side of the border fence. The Kalashnikov bullets from the YPG and YPJ could not stop IS tanks approaching the center. It was a matter of time. Turkish radio reported that IS had already conquered Kobanê. At the same time, the situation was critical for the United States. Weapons and billions of dollars for armed groups in Syria were a Middle East failure. US pilots killed civilians and strengthened sympathy for IS.
I have not met anyone in Rojava who believes that the United States is fighting for anything other than its own interests in Syria.
Both the United States and the defenders of Kobanê were in a desperate situation. The United States had decided to kill its own baby, IS. It could not be done without ground war. And only the YPG / YPJ, which ideologically are twins with the US enemy PKK, could wage such a ground war. The YPG / YPJ, for their part, saw that they could not stop the IS army with only Kalashnikovs and fighting spirit. In Kobanê it was a matter of days. Thus arose a military alliance that no one had planned. President Obama was a tactical ally of a revolutionary movement that wants to create a democratic, federal and united Syria – the exact opposite of the United States' goal. Both the United States and the PYD went to bed with the enemy.
Today there is no doubt. Without the US airstrikes starting on October 3, 2014, IS would have conquered Kobanê. Since 2012, the PYD and its allies in northern Syria have only had enemies around them. From week to week, they must consider and take a stand on short-term and long-term alliances.
I have not met anyone in Rojava who believes that the United States is fighting for anything other than its own interests in Syria. Politician Ercan Ayboga writes that the PYD is aware of the risks involved in military cooperation with the Americans. He emphasizes that the United States is not for democracy, and that the interests of the United States are in conflict with the interests of the Kurds and the other ethnic groups.
He says that PYD talks openly about the risk, in their own environment as well as in public. He thinks this is unusual when a local power cooperates with a great power. It is common to avoid talking about it, or just to mention the benefits of the collaboration. The PYD's approach from October 2014 means that the population understands both the positive and the negative aspects, that they trust their own forces and not in the cooperation with the USA, and that they are not "disappointed" when the cooperation ends.
Ercan Ayboga puts it this way: Thanks to "revolutionary diplomacy", which does not change the revolutionary core, it has been possible to survive during the war in Syria and gradually develop a new political model, first in Rojava and then in other parts of the North. -Syria. Without this "diplomacy", IS would have conquered Kobanê in the autumn of 2014. The IS caliph of Raqqa and President Erdoğan – the new sultan of Ankara – could have embarked on the next stage in the fight against democracy in Rojava.
