The Reactionary Nature of the Kurdish Contras - Featured Commentary and Link Roundup

Illustration by political commentator and cartoonist, Bill Purkasthaya. Original image found here.

Geopolitically-illiterate radlibs in the West still seem to be under the delusion that the Kurdish YPG and PKK -- nothing more than just another set of U.S.-backed terrorist proxy forces -- are the "most oppressed-est", matriarchal-pantheist, utopic peoples like the blue Na'vi people, which are fictional sentient extraterrestrial humanoids found in the film Avatar. Supposed Kurdish "victimhood" is quite the fashionable trend in many Western "progressive" circles these days (despite it being wholly ahistorical and largely exaggerated or outright fictitious), so much so that they are angry at the thought of U.S. troops pulling out of Syria and ending support for the Kurdish Contras even though it should be seen as a positive. The Syrian Arab Republic are the real effective fighting force against ISIS, not the Kurds (an imperialist propaganda construct). The Kurdish Contras did nothing, except aid ISIS fighters in escaping and stealing Syrian oil and selling stolen Syrian oil to Israel -- in addition to ethnically cleansing Syrian Arabs from the Syrian district of Raqqa. The only reason why they were called in by the United States to "fight" ISIS was because U.S. troops needed to do some damage control after ISIS (another U.S. proxy force) accidentally destroyed one of the U.S.-controlled oil fields in Iraq (near the Syrian border) and needed to reign in the terror group. Thus, the Kurdish Contras do not deserve the amount of adulation they have been given for the work that has been effectively been done by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies such as Russia and Hezbollah. 

As I've referenced in a previous blog entry, Syria has indeed become a new terra nullius, in the words of author Maximilian Forte, for the U.S. Empire and its lackeys. Saudi-backed Wahhabi terrorists want to carve up Syria into 'the Caliphate', Turkish-backed Salafists want a neo-Ottoman Empire, and the Kurds want to carve out "Rojava". All three U.S. stooges who are largely foreign forces want to destroy Syria in order to bring to life their respective imaginary fantasy lands, not caring if it costs the lives of Syrians. Nor do they realize that such fantastical delusions will probably never come to full fruition even if the United States succeeds in overthrowing the Ba'athist government and destabilizing Syria, because what will most likely happen is that these groups of terrorists will be locked into a seemingly never-ending bloody competition over territory. The U.S. couldn't care less if Syria turned into a fractured, chaotic warlordist state like Afghanistan and Libya; they only care that they can steal its wealth and resources easily, exploit its labour, and protect Wall Street's profits -- and the easier that will be if it were a failed state. 

Either way, actual Syrians living in Syria are looked at with contempt by the imperialist powers for daring to defend their independence and sovereignty and continue to be denied a voice on the international stage. 

I leave you here with some recommended reading below.

-Janelle

*

FEATURED: Brief History of Kurdish Contras and their ethnic cleansing campaigns

By Laith Marouf

If you are really interested in the issues of Kurdish future, please begin by reading about history of the region. You have to understand the roots of Kurdish presence in the areas we are talking about in northern Syria and Assyria.

I will take a moment here to explain geographic names for you. Syria geographically, is the land bordered by the Taurus Mountains in the north, the Kurdish Mountains in the east, the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and al-Hijaz and Najd in the south. Syria can be further divided into four subculture zones: -Costal Syria stretching from Adana to Gaza - Syrian Desert and Nabatea in the Aqaba-Dead sea basin -Assyria the island between the two rivers, locally referred to as al-Jazeera. -Assyria ends at Baghdad, where the two rivers meet and Iraq starts. Syria, Assyria and Iraq, together are the Fertile Crescent and the lands of the Canaanite people, the people who birthed Aramaic, and through marriage with the Qahtaanites of Yemen birthed Arabic.

At the end of the 1800s, the Fertile Crescent was still occupied by the Ottomans. As the empire was collapsing, and fearing an Arab revolt, Turkish nationalists within the empire began a program of ethnic cleansing and population transfers across all of the area. Part of the plan included building a chain of villages populated by transferred Turkic peoples, stretching from the Anatolian Plato to Aleppo, Mosul, Damascus and Jerusalem. This is where you get all the Turkmen villages and militias you heard about in the last few years in Iraq and Syria. This is how Erdogan can talk about protecting Turks in Iraq and Syria. The plan to transfer Turkic populations was not successful, not many wanted to move from their far away Turkic territories, and Arabs and Assyrians resisted violently.

So the Turkish elite figured out a better solution, use the Kurdish peoples that inhabit the close by, infertile Kurdistan Mountains, and entice them with the fertile lands of Arminians, Arabs and Assyrians. The results are the Arminian genocide, followed by the genocide of Assyrians and Arabs. All the scenes that played out at the hands of ISIS in north Syria and Iraq in the past 7 years; they are nothing in comparison to what Kurdish militias did to the local inhabitants, men, women and children, at the time. This is where all the local resentments to Kurdish people in Iraq and Syria comes from. No one excepts their claim to oppression, it rings hollow to the ears of survivors of their ethnic cleansing campaigns. Resentment is even more exasperated when Kurdish refugees on our land, claim the land, and demand a state.

By the end of WW1, the newly relocated Kurdish populations, emerged as a very important tool in imperial pressures on the defeated Turks. Iran, at the time a British vassal state, started to maneuver for a piece of Turkey. Here I will take a moment to point out that Kurdish people and their language are actually a subcultural isolate of Persian language and culture. The majority of the indigenous lands of the Kurdish peoples, the Kurdistan Mountains is actually in Iran and not Turkey. The negotiations, through the use of the Kurdish card, resulted in Turkey accepting most of the conditions for the end of the war. In return, France allowed Turkey to complete the ethnic cleansing of northern Syria and Assyria, and in the late 1920s and early 30's, Turkey expelled all the Arab, Assyrian and Greek inhabitants of all the major cities stretching from Adana in the west to Mardin in the east.

It should be noted that while Syria had Kurdish citizens prior to the partition of Sykes-Picot; they were a very small minority concentrated in the cities as migrants within the former Ottoman Empire. In the 40s when the new Turkish State was done with ethnically cleansing the Armenians, Arabs, Greeks and Assyrians; it turned against its former henchmen, and began ethnically cleansing the Kurds. Many moved out of the cities they ethnically cleansed in upper Syria/Assyria, now in Turkey, and took refuge in Syria which gave them citizenship. A larger wave of Kurdish refugees arrived in Syria in the 60s when they started an armed struggle against Turkey. That batch was not given citizenship in Syria, but instead the state armed them and hosted the PKK to help in their liberation struggle; receiving the same rights as Palestinians in Syria that include all public services except the right to vote.

Since that day, almost all regional and international powers used the transferred Kurdish populations as tools in the war for territorial control. Israel using them against Iraq, Iraq using them against Iran, Syria using them against Turkey, the US using them against Iraq, the US using them against Syria, the US using them against Turkey, and probably soon, the US using them against Iran.

Syria was almost invaded by Turkey at the beginning of 2000; Turkey even cut off all water from the Euphrates river to force Syria to give up the Kurdish liberation movement. In 2013, when the Syrian Army had to retreat from the margins and the country sides to defend the cities and major population centres; Syria naturalized all Kurdish inhabitants, opened all weapon storages in the north, and armed them to the teeth to fight against the Wahhabi Contra invasion. Unfortunately the Kurdish Contras repaid all the Syrian people hospitality with treason, by joining the Empire and attempting to steal our land for a fabricated state with a freshly minted name; Rojava.

In any case, if you are still a supporter of Kurdish separatism in Syria, one based on conquest by genocide, I offer one last point: Kurdish transferees and refugees in Syria represent less than 10% of the population of the country. And when looking at North Syria alone, Kurdish people represent only 30% of the population! So are Arabs and Assyrians to live as a majority ruled by a minority! Wouldn't that be Apartheid? Are Kurds to be given the same uber-rights that Zionists have?

I am all for equality and internationalism, but please understand that I will never accept your versions of equality and internationalism; for they seem always paved with Arab blood and under the feet of colonial armies. Go ahead, read more history, before you pontificate, these are events that are fresh on peoples mind in my homelands.

Originally published as a Facebook status update on March 1, 2018 on the author's profile.

*

Links:

1) "The Myth of the Kurdish YPG’s Moral Excellence" by Stephen Gowans

2) "It’s Time to Denounce the YPG as U.S. Puppets" by Jason Unruhe

3) "The Kurds: Washington’s Weapon Of Mass Destabilization In The Middle East" parts 1, 2, and 3 by Sarah Abed

4) "It Was Kurds' Big Mistake to Stop Syrian Army From Entering Afrin – Politician" Sputnik

5) "Stop whining about poor "Rojava" being betrayed..." by Jay Tharappel (Facebook status update)