on 5 Feb 24 by thefreeonline and Manish Rai at North Press
Rojava/AANES has always been in a perilous situation, but in 2024 the autonomous region is especially threatened.
Its multi-ethnic army, the 100K strong Syrian Defense Forces (SDF), was sponsored by the USA to fight and win against the ISIS caliphate, eventually conquering their capital Raqqah and expelling them from the Deir ez Zor, a fairly oil rich Sunni Arab area on the Iraqi border.
Then president Donald Trump declared the US were only there for the oil, and the SDF is always accused of being just the police force of US looters, although it is over half composed of Arabs. The Coalition by now is a ‘de facto’ US force.
Surrounded by the Syrian state, Turkey, Russia, Islamic Militias (FSA/Nusra/HTS), and Iranian sworn enemies Rojava cannot afford to lose its marginal international and theoretical US protection. But the US is now under great pressure to pull out.
The US bases can only be supplied by air or across the Iraqi border, but that will make little sense as the US is finally “negotiating a phased withdrawal” from its illegal and unwanted Iraqi bases – leaving its small Syrian presence isolated.
The Syrian war is basically over and Syria is being recognised by the rest of the Arab world, yet the US persists with strangling the economy as well as Lebanon with the draconian ‘Caesar Sanctions’ regime. This makes no sense either.
Caesar Act Sanctions, a kind of ‘s0ur grapes punishment’, stupidly and cruelly condemning the Syrian population (and Lebanon) to continued blockade and penury, even as Syria is readmitted as an Arab partner State.
In addition due to US support and sponsorship of the atrocities of the Gaza genocide it’s bases in Syria and Iraq are regularily attacked by Iraqi Shia militia groups(IRI) supported by Iran, with a tit for tat bombing and drone battle that threatens a disastrous and unwanted major war everyone would lose (Feb 2024).
A US pullout may make sense but it would betray Rojava to genocidal neighbours, although the US has done this twice before, and allowed Turkey to invade. It would also empower a revival of the ISIS extremist guerillas, (who initially were promoted by the US and Turkey as a pawn against Syria).
Al Hol Camp| We Can’t End the ‘Forever War Without’ Stopping “The CITY of ISIS” prison camp in Rojava |
Up to 70,000 of ISIS (Daesh) fighters and their families who were defeated by the SDF and the US led coalition are still imprisoned or held in the vast Al Hol camp, which would have to be opened and abandoned if the US left and international supplies were cut. Also half of the SDF could switch sides to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) if the US stopped subsidizing their meager salaries.
Despite repeated efforts the Damascus ‘Arab only’ government refuses any autonomy for the Rojava/AANES area and promises a return to a new generation of Kurdish repression, with Turkey swiftly grabbing all the North East it can. Russia likely cannot now act as honest broker as it must placate Turkey due to the Ukraine war.
Iraq military bases: US pulling out of three key sites – BBC News The US army is pulling out of al-Qaim and two other key military bases in Iraq in the coming weeks. For years Iraq and Syria have been demanding US forces leave their countries.
Iran is the rising power in the region, but is strongly against the Rojava Revolution for ideological reasons, having bombed Kurdish supporters in eastern Iraq in 2022 for backing the Iranian women’s uprising.
The only reason the US would stay is if it really cares about leaving chaos and an ISIS revival, or if it thinks its worth retaining an isolated target in the region to provoke Syria, Iraq and Iran.
So how can the invaluable Rojava Revolution survive? If it can keep US protection for a few more years the region may have totally changed as US hegemony disappears and regional alliances adapt.
One practical but unlikely outcome in the longer term might simply be a reconciliation with Damascus. Another might be for a new anti-ISIS coalition, without the US aggressor and western colonists, and guaranteed perhaps by BRICS, that is China and India in a multilateral future.
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Sole aim of Turkey’s attacks is to crush Kurdish aspirations
By Manish Rai – at North Press Feb 2024
For the last few months, Turkey has been constantly attacking Northeast Syria which is the only Middle East area run by a democratic multi-ethnic and feminist Kurdish administration.
Thousands of people joined a demonstration in Tel Rifaat town of the Shehba Canton in protest at the Turkish state’s invasion and genocidal practices in northern Syria. 40% of the population of Efrin (Afrin) now survive in a semi no-man’s land, defended by the multi-ethnic SDF of AANES, after expulsion by the Turkish invasion, plantation and Turkification of their homes and properties
Currently, the world is distracted from the Israel-Gaza war and the crisis in the Red Sea. Turkey sees this as a good opportunity to escalate its aggression towards Syrian Kurds on the pretext of self-defense.
The recent upswing in the conflict started when nine Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters in northern Iraq. Ankara responded by increasing its relentless air strikes and illegal ground military operations against Kurdish guerilla hideouts in the mountainous Iraqi area, as well as in northeast Syria.
The PKK, a leftist armed movement which transitioned from traditional communism to a unique policy of horizontal self government and sponsored 2 long ceasefires, broken by the far right Islamic Turkish state. The PKK was formed in the late 1970s by its still-imprisoned visionary leader Abdullah Ocalan, dubbed the “Nelson Mandela” of Kurdistan. .
A woman mourns the death of five more fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces
The PKK has resisted apartheid and severe repression for four-decades against the Turkish state, demanding autonomy for the up to 20 million Kurds in the southeast of the country. To placate Turkey the movement, which is not secessionist, is still on the terrorist list of NATO nations.
The Turkish government strongly opposes Kurdish women’s freedom and insists that the People’s Defense Units (YPG), a powerful Kurdish armed group mainly based in Northeast Syria, is an extension of the “terrorist” Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
But the fact is that the YPG and PKK share a similar ideology, but they are separate entities with different goals.
Right from the beginning of the ongoing Syrian war, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been exploiting the conflict to further his expansionist agenda. However, Syrian Kurds are the major obstacle in Erdogan’s expansionist policy in Syria.
Ankara had repeatedly tried to justify its fierce hostility towards the Kurdish forces. Turkey wants to sell a false narrative to the world that its internal security is getting threatened by the quasi-autonomous Kurdish statelet on its doorstep, dubbing it a “terror corridor” where the PKK could hide or easily attack from.
Turkey has, however, despite 3 invasions and occupations of parts of Rojava, failed so far to provide any evidence of any Kurdish-related terror attacks carried out from Syria.
Turkish intense bombardment has damaged more than half of Kurdish-held northeast Syria’s power and oil infrastructure, dealing a blow to its energy-dependent economy.
Moreover, these attacks have caused massive damage to the vital infrastructure facilities that were already in dire condition after more than a decade of war and economic crisis.
The most prominent of these is the Sweidiya power station, which was the only power source supplying northeast Syria’s Jazira region with energy. The plant is currently out of service following the Turkish air raids.
The supply of potable water in the region is also dependent on electricity therefore, local people are currently deprived of both the essential needs of power and water.
Hence, Turkish aggression in Northeast Syria is by no means an act of self-defense; rather it’s done to punish Kurds and to curb their aspiration for autonomy.
Turkey had always been against any form of a Kurdish entity in its territory or its neighborhood.
Turks took an extreme position, not only against establishing an independent Kurdish body as it did when it opposed the results of the Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum in 2017, but also against Kurd’s legal rights in Turkey and Syria.
Turkey has rejected the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) that runs the Rojava area which the Kurds founded with other actors, women and religious and ethnic groups in the region and has also restricted the activities of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party inside Turkey, imprisoning even their deputies as “terrorists” even though these are legitimate groups.
Jineolojî… center attracted many an international woman – ANHA …
The intensity of Turkey’s hatred toward the Syrian Kurds can be visualized from a recent act by the regime. Turkish authorities that control parts of northwestern Syria refused for seven days to allow for the transport of humanitarian supplies from residents in the AANES to cross over into earthquake-affected areas of Syria.
But this is not a new policy of Turks. Since the creation of the Turkish state in 1923, the Kurdish minority has been subject to severe repression and marginalization, using the tactic of smearing and blaming minorities to reinforce their own power.
In the past, this has included a ban on the Kurdish language, and severe repression of any expression of Kurdish identity, such as the celebration of the Kurdish festival of Nowruz.
Indeed, the Turkish state for a long time denied the existence of the Kurds as an ethnic group, describing them as “mountain Turks”.
That’s why Turkish authorities can’t tolerate that in their immediate neighbourhood the Kurds are empowering themselves. Hence for several years, Turkey has been trying hard to destroy Rojava now called AANES, a Kurdish-led enclave that seeks autonomy within Syria..
The Turkish government wants to eliminate the region’s revolutionary Syrian Kurds, who have created the autonomous region inside Syria while providing a unique hoirizontally democratic model of self-government based on Ocalan’s teachings, which have spread to Turkey’s 20 million Kurdish population.
Unfortunately, northeastern Syria, previously one of the most stable regions in the war-ravaged country, has become a warzone because of Turkey’s eliminationist policies towards Kurdish minorities.
Turkey, with NATO’s second-largest army, has a nearly free hand to do as it wishes in the region as long as the international community remains passive. The current crisis in northeast Syria requires a concerted effort from international actors. 
2022.. Aerial photo – a camp in Al-Shehba enclave where 170 thousand refugees
from Turkey’s genocide in Afrin await a promised new invasion.. Why Why Why? The 2nd biggest NATO army starts artillery and deploys with its jihadi mercenaries to invade and ‘Turkify’ 5 big refugee camps of families it already expelled from Afrin. Families who survive constant blockades, drone and Artillery attacks..
Due to Turkey’s 3 invasions and ethnic cleansing of Afrin and the border area the are at least 500,000 ‘internally displaced’ mainly Kurdish refugees mostly surviving in barely provisioned camps in the arid countryside.
The refugee camps, especially in Shehba and Sere Kaniye are often under fire from Turkish artillery and drones as well as the various large Turkish sponsored SNA Islamic militias set up with western and Arab backing during the Syrian civil war.
If the current situation persists, the consequences will be felt beyond the region and it may include the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands more civilians and the resurgence of ISIS and other similar groups that can pose a threat to global national security.
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(Author is a columnist for Middle-East and Af-Pak region and Editor of the geo-political news agency
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