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I don't agree that the YPG/SDF are mercenaries, Chris is right that they fight their own fight which just happens, for years and years, to be in full agreement with US aims in Syria, though at times it also corresponds to Russian aims. It's no use arguing about how many hundreds of millions of dollars: the US has lent its airforce to the YPG/SDF for years, as entire cities were obliterated. It's simply hilarious that some western YPG cheerleaders still play "anti-imperialism" and call the Syrian rebels "US-backed" etc, while of course the US never flew a single plane for any rebel group, and actively blocked them from getting manpads to shoot down Assad planes. While Assad has bombed everywhere in Syria probably 100s of 1000s of times over 8 years, the one and only time the US ever shot down an Assadist warplanes in all these years was when Assad tried to attack the US's SDF allies. Of course, all this alliance of interests with US and/or Russia could conceivably be a long coincidence, but I don't think it can be analysed outside of the arch-opportunist politics of the PYD leadership. As Louis said, its fundamental problem was that it refused, from day 1, to join the revolution against Assad, to even attempt to seek out alliances. This is now a bigger problem: can Chris find us any statement in which the PYD/YPG/SDF declares some kind of human solidarity with the people of Idlib and northwest Syria as they are facing this genocidal slaughter by Assad and Russia? Of course the answer is no. And even worse are their western cheerleaders. For example, several weeks ago Chris sent a GLW article to the list, written, sadly, by himself (I expected better of Chris), which said, in the context of this horrific slaughter going on, that the only resistance to evil in Syria is of course "Rojava", while the "conflict" in Idlib is between two bad sides. That was an appalling article. Mind you, it was written before Assad's recent reconquest of all the great revolutionary cities and towns: Maraat al-Nuuman, Saraqeb, Kafranbel, Atareb etc - ie, centres of the democratic revolution that always resisted HTS even as they fought off Assad, yet for GLW even then they were all already swept under the rug of being all jihadists or Turkey mercenaries. Even if you can't get yourself to do a little study and know these things, and even now after these towns have fallen, there is still no equivalence between the fascist regime with all the horrific means of mass killing, including its airforce, supplemented by the invading Russian imperial power, and the resistance in Idlib, no matter how vile some of the forces involved in leading military resistance are. This kind of simplistic nonsense analysis has been far and wide on Syria, but in the past SA/GLW may have been able to do more complex analysis; now all you have to do is check out what Rojavist sites are saying. Chris says when some rebel (or ex-rebel) groups jo0ihned Turkey's invasions of Afrin and northwest Syria and attacked the SDF and Kurdish populations, they had become mercenaries. I agree. Note by the way, that Euphrates Shield, when Turkey invaded alongside Syrian rebels to evict ISIS from mid-northern Syria, returning these rebel groups to regions they used to run before the ISIS conquest, majority Arab and Turkmen regions, this was entirely different; you can disagree 9there was much to criticise) but the rebels were not acting as mercenaries but in their own interests. In the case of Idlib let me go one better, and it doesn't really matter whether one decides to call Turkey whatever name (imperialist, sub-imperialist, non-imperialist, whatever you like): humanity requires we give TOTAL support to any military action by Turkey, in support of the independent rebel groups there, to resist Assad's genocidal attacks and his regime's complete reconquest of the region. Right now a frightful massacre is taking place. A million more people have fled their homes to escape Assad and Putin, and even as they flee they are bombed in the back, their IDP camps are bombed, countless hospitals and schools are bombed, children are freezing to death, graves are meticulously desecrated, and in this situation we want to argue about "neutrality" and everyone being bad and such bullshit. Of course when I say TOTAL support to Turkey's actions against Assad obviously I am not saying rebels should trust Turkey or subordinate themselves or put much faith in Turkish actions; the reality is that Turkey will do little, caught up as it is in deals with Assad's owners, Russia and Iran. Turkey did nothing to prevent the cities of the revolution falling; we all know why. However, Turkey also has 3.7 million Syrian refugees, the highest number of refugees in the world by far, and it cannot handle another million or two crossing the border; right now it is blocking them, so the displaced are trapped between Assad and Putin's genocidal bombing and Turkey's wall. To the extent that this forces Turkey to draw a line somewhere, in the northern half of Idlib, to keep it, not as a centre of revolution obviously, but as a giant refugee camp, we must say: GOOD. Not anywhere good enough of course, but that is now done. No-one ever expected the US or Turkey or Gulf countries to support a revolution and they didn't, but if Turkey's own needs now correspond to protecting civilians from slaughter, then that must be supported. A couple of weeks ago, two Assadist helicopters were shot down, and reportedly the day after, the skies were relatively quiet. This shows how easy it would have been to stem the Assadist mass murder machine if the rebels had had access to the necessary **defensive** weaponry. Of course the US blocked this and Turkey did not defy the US. IF this meant that Turkey has allowed the rebels a few manpads at this late moment, it is way too little too late, but still GOOD; these two shoot-downs were a victory for all humanity. Years ago the SA (then DSP) made an exception to its opposition to imperialist intervention "ever" by supporting the Australian imperialist intervention in East Timor; not just supporting it, but marching in the streets demanding it. Well, of course the east Timorese were kind of like us; we even knew their leaders. What did we say? That there was no alternative; the only alternative was a huge massacre by the Indonesian army. The last five years the SA makes a similar exception with the YPG/SDF; perhaps not explicitly, but of course, like all the "anti-intervention" left, no-one has ever protested the US war in Syria on behalf of the SDF, even the total destruction of Raqqa. Have to avoid a massacre of the Kurds. Yeh, we know them too. And they're secular feminists. But Idlib? Anywhere else in Syria? No alternative to a huge massacre? Who cares? Those kids in Idlib blown up in their primary school today were probably just going to grow up into jihadis. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
