Kobani — another Warsaw?

[alanjjohnstone]

An AlJazeera article that pricks the PKK bubblehttp://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/10/17/pkk-s-rise-in-iraqikurdistan.html

[alanjjohnstone]

For those who are still interested in what may and may not be going on in Rojava, i found this article on Libcom  and the accompanying comments a good read even though it too is short on details but still raises questions for the anarchists (the proposed parliamentary/council dual structure) and ourselves (when the Bookchin Institute of Social Ecology questions the genuine grassroots origins)http://libcom.org/blog/rojava-anarcho-syndicalist-perspective-18102014

[alanjjohnstone]

Again for those interested in claims and counter claims, Libcom has this long thread on the development of PKKhttp://libcom.org/forums/middle-east/pkk-political-evolution-17082012

[alanjjohnstone]

In many ways discussion threads are like the daily news…they move on to the next piece and one-time headline stories are forgotten and neglected although events still take place. So we now have Iraqi Pershmerga Kurds 'reinforcing' the PKK Syrian Kurds with the permission of the Turkish government with little analysis on the mainstream media of what this actually means.Pepe Escobar has an intersting article that is worth refreshing minds about what is at stake in Rojava.http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-241014.html 

Quote:

Kobani is now a crucial pawn in a pitiless game manipulated by Washington, Ankara and Irbil. None of these actors want the direct democracy experiment in Kobani and Rojava to bloom, expand and start to be noticed all across the Global South. The women of Kobani are in mortal danger of being, if not enslaved, bitterly betrayed.

Perhaps the effect will be the negative one the author expects, but on the other hand, those Iraqi's may well return inspired with new ideas and a more positive vision for their own region. One can only hope. 

[ALB]

I think the part of the quote you give about the women of Kobani being betrayed is unfair as far as the Iraqi Kurds Peshmerga are concerned as they too have women fighters:http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/oct/09/kurdish-peshmerga-fighters-women-on-the-frontline-in-pictures

[alanjjohnstone]

Female Genital Mutilation appears to be an issue in Iraqi Kurdistanhttp://www.stopfgmkurdistan.org/html/english/fgm_study.htmHow widespread the practice in PKK influenced areas, i am not so sure

[alanjjohnstone]

I thought this worth reading. From a Left Communist, ex-ICC,  of Turkish origin and ex-postal worker, if i recall his history correct.http://libcom.org/blog/bloodbath-syria-class-war-or-ethnic-war-03112014

Quote:

The working class, neither in the Middle East nor in the rest of the world, is not strong enough to stop this war just as in 1914 it was not strong enough to stop World War One or the Armenian genocide a year later. To pretend otherwise is to be prey to illusions. However, that does not mean that revolutionaries should dive headfirst into taking sides in it, and acting in a way which will almost certainly lead to the prolonging and intensification of ethnic/sectarian conflict. It is important to remember that the siege of Kobanê is but a moment in a larger struggle across the entire region being fought out by the proxies of various local imperialist powers….The alternative that internationalists pose to this is that of class struggle. It may seem far away now, but it is only four years ago that the TEKEL strike in Turkey really seemed to be breaking down barriers between Kurdish, and Turkish workers, and led to a much wider strike wave. 2013 saw massive demonstrations across Turkey sparked by police brutality against protestors inIstanbul's Gezi park. The three years since the Arab spring may seem like a long time now, but in times like these changes can occur very, very quickly. Although the working class seems weak today struggles where the working class is fighting for its own interests will return in the future, and they are the only solution to overcoming the ethnic and sectarian divide by uniting workers as workers, not as Kurds, Turks, Arabs, and Persians, or Sunni, Shia, Christian or Yazidi.

[alanjjohnstone]

Oh , btw , ALB , he too raises the women issue and why it seems so popular.  

Quote:

A lot has been made in the Western media of the female only militia units with pictures of young women in combat fatigues with guns gracing the pages of magazines, and websites. To be cynical it sells. Here we have these brave young women fighting off these 'Islamic barbarians'. The PKK marketing department certainly knows its audience. When you stop to think about it now, it’s not really exactly that radical. The Da'esh also have women only groups of combat troops. You can't imagine them having mixed groups in an ultra-Islamic group, but then neither does the PKK, and nor does the Iranian state, which also has female combat troops. In fact the PKK, has a long history of separating the sexes and sexual relationship between the sexes have long been punished, just like in any other bourgeois army.

[ALB]

Why does he put "Islamist barbarians" in inverted commas? Doesn't he think that's what they are? I'd also like to see his evidence that these barbarians do have women combat troops.

[alanjjohnstone]

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/02/02/Syria-jihadist-group-ISIS-forms-women-only-battalions.htmlhttp://www.fptoday.org/syrias-isis-recruits-female-brigades-hinting-at-changing-role-for-women/A February story so before the current events and probably the source of this articlehttp://www.businessinsider.com/isis-has-female-battalions-too-2014-10When i googled ISIS WOMEN FIGHTERS, there as a great number of stories of ISIS fearing those Kurdish females…bit like the Germans on the Eastern Front being supposedly terrified of the Red Army Female regiments. Just recalled Gaddafi supposedly had an all female bodyguard of elite Amazon soldiers..never ever hard of them doing anything during his downfall.It all makes for good news footage.

[ALB]

These are only policewiomen not combat troops. As the person you are quoting from is ex-ICC he seems to have kept their view that there is no difference between political democracy and fascism. Obviously there is, and we've always taken the position that political democracy is a gain for the working class but that supporting a capitalist state in a war is not a legitimate way of defending it.People like him are saying that there is no difference between the very limited political democracy that exists in parts of the Middle East and an ISIS-type Islamic State. There clearly is. In fact ISIS is worse than the pre-war fascist regimes, both in ideology and practice. And we shouldn't be afraid to say so.

[alanjjohnstone]

Found a thread where David Graeber supports the bombing of Gadaffi and expresses his sympathies for th Libyan "rebels '" of Benghazi and was basically accepting the interpretation of events as presented by NATO so his call for intervention in Rojava is even more suspect since in Libya there was no libertarian/Spanish Civil War precedent to try to bolster.http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/popular_rebellion_and_imperialist_designs1Okay he offers a caveat that he didn't voice support of NATO but he tacitly approves of its actions as covering fire for "…the good guys, in the sense of, people who share our principles, values, dreams…" who just possibly might be able to "outfox and outflank NATO’s determination to avoid a genuine insurrectionary situation" and while acknowleding that there are also bad guys on the rebel side, he fails to recognise the benefits of NATO intervention to them…and as we saw , we know who prevailed and how they themselves divided and are now involved in a civil war shelling and bombing civilian areas.  After reading his appraisal , i have little confidence in any of his military insights.

[alanjjohnstone]

This analysis of the PKK by the Anarchist Federation may be helpful in understanding just who they are, were and will be.. http://libcom.org/news/anarchist-federation-statement-rojava-december-2014-02122014

Quote:

What we are saying might not be popular at the moment, but we feel that our analysis will be borne out by unfolding events

Oh, deja vu…We have been there so often ourselves.  

[alanjjohnstone]

Davd Graeber interview on Rojavahttp://libcom.org/forums/news/no-genuine-revolution-interview-graeber-evrensel-newspaper-29122014Despite whatever misgivings  we may have, there are possiblies some things that Graeber cites that bolsters our case against the anarchists

Quote:

What was the most impressing thing you witnessed in Rojava in terms of this democratic autonomy practice?There were so many impresive things. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anywhere else in the world where there’s been a dual power situation where the same political forces created both sides. There’s the “democratic self-administration,” which has all the form and trappings of a state – Parliament, Ministries, and so on – but it was created to be carefully separated from the means of coercive power….. 

i think Graeber confirms that the form of democracy is less important than the content and intent which flies in the face of the usual anti-parliamentarian arguments. That we can transform existing structures to make them fit for purpose and no reason why town and city councils here cannot be adapted into administrative organs.

[alanjjohnstone]

Janet Biehl, who is if i recall (a Bookchin acolyte) report on Rojova http://roarmag.org/2014/12/janet-biehl-report-rojava/

Quote:

Under their Third Way, Rojava’s three cantons declared Democratic Autonomy and formally established it in a “social contract” (the non-statist term it uses instead of “constitution”). Under that program, they created a system of popular self-government, based in neighborhood commune assemblies (comprising several hundred households each), which anyone may attend, and with power rising from the bottom up through elected deputies to the city and cantonal levels.

This is another report from another member of the delegation.http://peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/2014/12/22/a-revolution-in-daily-life/

Quote:

The point of the revolution, many people told us, is not to replaced one government with another, it is to end the rule of the state. The question, the co-president of the Kurdish National Congress put it, is “how to rule not with power but against power”. State power is being dispersed in a number of ways….The new administration (with a parliament and 22 ministries), appointed for now by various political parties and organisations but to be eventually be elected, has taken responsibility for some state functions…The old state also continues to operate in parallel with new structures…Meanwhile, the new administration is balanced by multiple autonomous elements. Separate from it, communes (weekly open neighborhood councils, with their own local defense units and sub-councils dedicated also to youth, women, politics, economy, public services, education and health) and city and canton-level councils consisting of delegates elected by them, deal with immediate practical problems that can be resolved immediately. Both the administration and the communes were set up by TEVDEM, a coalition of organisations including the PYD, co-ops, academies, women’s and youth organisations and sympathetic political parties. These organisations all have their own decision-making structures and sometimes there own education programmes in their “cultural centers” “houses” and “academies”. The result of all this, is both that all political forces have complex, cross-cutting reliances on each other and that there are plenty of meetings to go around.

 Just how much reliance can we place on these witnesses? After the Russian Revolution we had numerous political tourists report their observations. Most were through rose-tinted glasses but i'm not so sure we can imply Graeber et al are liars or dupes and i'm very reticient in doing so. But I also have that niggling feeling of deja vu in the sense of the wishful thinking expresed in much of Lenin's State and Revolution.I have posted my own impression on Libcom that if they say is true then indeed there exists an overlap of PKK and ourselves in taking control of the state (in their case it can only be the local one and not the central Turkish one) and adapting it the organ of liberation, lopping off its class coercive bits and using the state to protect the socialist revolution and at the same time abolish itself http://libcom.org/forums/news/no-genuine-revolution-interview-graeber-evrensel-newspaper-29122014#comment-549616http://libcom.org/forums/news/no-genuine-revolution-interview-graeber-evrensel-newspaper-29122014?page=1#comment-549657Perhaps i am too being a little optimistic in generalising from a very particular event taking place in unique circumstances ….but so did the Paris Commune, of course.  It is strange though that some on the forum emphasise Brand for potentially bringing revolution on to the agenda, but there is little ongoing debate and discussion on a revolution that is taking place …with that enormous caveat…IF it is really happening as many seem to suggest.

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