Tag Archives: Kurdish community

Moscow as Medusa with All the Snakes Attached

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Islamic Small Wars, Kurdistan

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,


First posted in 2016 and posted again this day, January 2, 2019, what Ankara has unleashed on the Kurds would seem most unlike NATO — but ask: what attributes has Ankara to validate its NATO status today? Under Erdogan, Turkish democracy and related ethics, principles, and values no longer exist. The state elected a dictator and has apparently got its collective wish.

“Medieval v Modern”

It’s a trope here on BackChannels, and it has an analog:

“Feudal Political Absolutism v Democratic Checked and Distributed Power”

More state of mind than state, “Kurdistan” has already its “Medieval v Modern” civil separation, and perhaps unwittingly, the Soviet-Era PKK, a NATO and U.S. State Department designated terrorist organization, remains mired in the flipped absolutism of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Another BackChannels trope, this one about Russia: “Two major revolutions in one-hundred years (1917-2017), three forms of government, and not one change in the nation’s affections in relation to ‘paternal authoritarianism'”.

For that last label, “paternal authoritarianism”, credit the late scholar Richard Pipes, but BC will not be looking up the specific source at this time.

The affection for strongmen — and perhaps helplessness before their “politically absolute” organizations — has the medieval world clawing the modern one backward.

Of course, the defectors from medieval worlds, those made refugee by them, those left bereft and without defenses, essentially drain the tapped resources of the same, leaving those worlds to become spiritually hollow, absent of conscience, lacking in their own humanity, and burnt out and purposeless.

Moscow, that “Third Rome”, has deals — call it what it is: “leverage” — with everyone: Assad, Khamenei, Hezbollah — low-hanging fruit: the “Syrian Tragedy”, BackChannel’s term, could not have taken place without Moscow’s endorsement and direct military support in arms and occasional actions (like bombing hospitals); Erdogan: “Turkish Stream” – Big Energy project demanding Ankara’s cooperation with Moscow: France – Marine Le Pen and the Newest Nationalism — but France is more brave in its defense of its still revolutionary democracy — Le Pen lost her bid for the presidency; Germany – energy supply dependence; Hungary – Orban’s bromance and narcissism; USA – only Mueller knows . . .

FTAC: From the BackChannels Reading Page on Facebook, January 2, 2019

The text about to be quoted accompanied as introduction on the BackChannels reading page on Facebook the URL to Roy Gutman’s December 28, 2018 political analysis in The Intercept in which he lays out aspects of character and control by the PKK that had been long supported by Moscow through the end of the Soviet Era and, obviously, 26 years beyond.

The problem BackChannels has seen has been that of Moscow operating the Syrian Theater in a way that perpetuates the existence of ISIS for as long as it remains a politically useful tool against the liberal and open democracies of the west.

In essence, it appears the Soviet methods in power imparted to the PKK during Russia’s Communist Party Era have become ingrained and difficult for western or liberal allies of the Kurds to displace.

In response and with reference to https://theintercept.com/2018/12/28/syria-withdrawal-kurds-pkk/

——

The Phantoms of the Soviet, a government dissolved in bankruptcy more than 26 years ago, continue to haunt or shadow the Kurdish Community in its bid for survival against the emergent Turkish Sultanate, as BackChannels views it, still supported by NATO, and ISIS, which is “handled” by Damascus as flanked by Moscow and Tehran.

In the ganglion of the Syrian Tragedy, too many threads lead back to Moscow — and Moscow has well demonstrated its peculiar absence of conscience in the general support of Assad the Tyrant, its own repeated bombings of Syrian hospitals, and its defense of Iranian advanced missile manufacturing.

Moscow has also partnered with Ankara on the Turkish Stream energy project.

😦

The true battle is one having to do with time: the medieval world of feudal absolute power — the power known to the world’s dictatorships, none of them responsible to either the Earth or Humanity — wishes to overrun the modern one built on the freedom accompanying democratically checked and distributed power.

According to Gutman, the Kurds appear stuck with both old habits of mind and with the organizational habits that have flowed down from the Soviet Era.

Of late, Kurdish representatives online have taken to pairing the United States and NATO with the backing of Turkey, a state no longer even proto-democratic and one long bent on the cultural annihilation of the Kurds. While the rhetoric may be shrugged away, the character of the PKK, well described by Roy Gutman (as cited) but also by Kyle Orton (as referenced below) may not be so easily covered over or glossed.

What portion of the Kurdish People remain behind or with the PKK?

That’s an open question for BackChannels.

Defectors from the conscripted ranks of the organization apparently (so noted by Gutman) have some options within “Kurdistan”, but the impression made by the Soviet affiliate would today repulse all humanity-, freedom-, and peace-loving advocates of influence in western politics who would otherwise more enthusiastically support a true indigenous people’s striving for autonomy and self-determination.

This poster by the young Danish communist Rune Agerhus features three flags, and they are from left to right as follows: Socialist Party of Kurdistan; National Liberation Front of Kurdistan; People’s Liberation Army of Kurdistan. Source for Kurdish flag and pennant identification: https://fotw.info/flags/krd%7Dpkk.html

The flag better known to represent “Kurdistan” in the west (as judged at least by the “Flag of Kurdistan” page on Wikipedia):

During the seven-year course of the KGB Theater’s Production — call it “guided” (most likely) — of “Assad v The Terrorists”, Bashar al-Assad has managed to barrel bomb half his state into rubble and destroy or displace nearly half of his population (as known in 2011). He has won for his efforts the expansion of Russian and Iranian military interests on his formerly sovereign property and through related sadism — reference: Sednaya Prison — lost entirely the respect of the modern world.

As regards Soviet / post-Soviet alignment with Moscow, much less Damascus, the Kurds may not expect to sustain their alignment with the ruthless (who would even provide the useful enemy known as ISIS) while currying the favor of the democratic, humanist, liberal, and deeply socialized west.

Reference

Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine. “Kurdish Repression in Turkey.” June 1982.

Gutman, Roy. “In Syria, U.S.-Backed Kurdish Fighters Face Trump’s Withdrawal — and the Legacy of Their Own Mistakes.” The Intercept, December 28, 2018.

Horvath, Zoltan. “Kurdistan”. CRW Flags, updated June 2, 2018.

Oppenheim, James S. “Reflexive Control Process: “Allahu Akbar Terrorism” -> New Nationalism -> New Feudalism.” BackChannels, March 11, 2017.

Oppenheim, James S. “Syria — Assad — ISIL — Background.” BackChannels, December 9, 2016.

Orton, Kyle. “The Problems With the West’s Partners Against the Islamic State.” Kyle Orton’s Blog, May 10, 2017.

Wikipedia. “Flag of Kurdistan”.

W.W. “Paternalistic policy: Against baby authoritarianism.” The Economist, June 11, 2012.

Yayla, Ahmet S. and Colin P. Clarke. “Turkey’s Double ISIS Standard.” Foreign Policy, April 12, 2018.

Addendum – January 3, 2018+

Szuba, Jared. “‘This is our reward?’: After 4 years fighting ISIS, Syrian Kurds face uncertain future as US pivots to Turkey.” The Defense Post, January 2, 2018.

Syrian Democratic Council.

–33–

Will the West Abandon Its Kurdish Allies in the Battle Against ISIS as Well as Their Efforts to Produce a Democratic Modern State?

12 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Kurdistan, North America, Politics, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

America: have you no dreams, faith, ideals, memories, values?

One cannot argue with the Soviet origins of the PKK — nor today it’s probable conflation with “TAK” terrorists operating occasionally in Turkey — and the long-term effects of the Kurdish-Russian relationship that is today being leveraged by a potentially genocidal (proven once — has the world to see it again proven?) Turkish and neo-Islamist authoritarian state.  However, modern Kurdistan and the “Rojava Experiment” with liberal democracy may be more “western” than commonly acknowledged.

Kurdish-PolitParties

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kurdish_organisations

Credit Turkish President Erdogan with Soviet-style defamation when he frames all Kurds as action-producing PKK terrorists.

Credit American Revolutionary memory to with what had to be brought together to overcome an avaricious king and to mark its first steps on the road to becoming not only self-governing but uniquely so as the redoubt of freedom from all political and religious tyrannies.

The Kurdish Community may need to advance its own inter-tribal cooperation and perhaps temper the power of its own autocrats to achieve meaningful, responsible, and responsible authentic democratic governance; however, both Moscow-Damascus and “Moscow-Ankara” would seem to be working to squeeze the community back into political impotence and from there out of existence.

Followers and readers with timely information and insight into the Kurdish community’s political makeup, its arrangements with other powers — including Russia and related energy projects — and its desire for autonomy, dignity, and freedom are welcome to contact the editor through the contact page and form on this blog.

“Kurdish YPG Engages ISIS In / Near Raqqa, Syria”

Posted to YouTube Dec. 18, 2017.

Additional Reference

Adalian, Rouben Paul.  “Turkey, Republic of, and the Armenian Genocide.”  Armenian National Institute, n.d.

Dominique, Callimanopulos.  “Kurdish Represseion in Turkey.”  Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine, June 1982:

During Turkey’s war for independence, Turkish leaders, promised Kurds a Turkish-Kurdish federated state in return for their assistance in the war. After independence was achieved, however, they ignored the bargain they had made.

Months after the declaration of a Turkish republic, Ankara, under the pretext of creating an “indivisible nation,” adopted an ideology aimed at eliminating, both physically and culturally, non-Turkish elements within the Republic. These “elements” were primarily Kurdish and Armenian.

Letsch, Constanze.  “In Turkey, Repression of the Kurdish Language Is Back, With No End in Sight.”  The Nation, December 21, 2017:

On the night of December 31, 2016, 94 associations, including the institute, were shut down on allegations of “connections to terrorist organizations.” A month later, the authorities confiscated all documents, course materials, and hardware—computers, two projectors, a TV—as well as the school’s furniture. The institute’s website was taken down. In theory, the institute has the right to appeal the shutdown through a state-appointed commission, but human-rights organizations such as Amnesty International have criticized it as insufficient, as more than 100,000 cases are pending review by just seven commissioners within a two-year deadline.

Ismael, Yousif.  “Once again, Turkey Refuses Solutions in the Syrian Civil War.”  Washington Kurdish Institute, September 21, 2017.

Mohamad, Sinam.  “Once We Beat ISIS, Don’t Abandon Us.”  Op-Ed.  The New York Times, May 11, 2017.

Rice, Bill.  “America Must Live Up to Its Own Values and Support Kurdistan’s Independence.”  Washington Kurdish Institute, September 21, 2017.

Weiss, Stanley.  “It’s Time to Kick Erdogan’s Turkey Out of NATO.”  HuffPost, n.d.

For nearly seven decades, this combination of factors has been the potential Achilles heel of NATO: that one day, its members would be called to defend the actions of a rogue member who no longer shares the values of the alliance but whose behavior puts its “allies” in danger while creating a nightmare scenario for the global order.

After 67 years, that day has arrived: Turkey, which for half a century was a stalwart ally in the Middle East while proving that a Muslim-majority nation could be both secular and democratic, has moved so far away from its NATO allies that it is widely acknowledged to be defiantly supporting the Islamic State in Syria in its war against the West.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/

–33–

 

Kurdish Struggle – Kurdistan v Iran-Aligned Shiite Militia

15 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Kurdistan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

The Kurdistan region enjoys autonomy in Iraq, and that has meant running its own airports; borders; maintaining its own Peshmerga security forces; and exporting oil through its own economic management.

Baghdad now wants to use the referendum as an excuse to roll that back.

With the war on the Islamic State seemingly close to an end, Baghdad wants to punish the Kurdish region for seeking independence.

Frantzman, Seth J.  “How Baghdad is Punishing the Kurds Post-Referendum.”  Jerusalem Post, October 4, 2017.

BackChannels has turned up the following themes related to the Kurdish struggle for independence:

  1. Iranian resistance expressed in Iraq via Iran aligned and backed Shiite militia.
  2. Persistence of the Kurdish PKK and a perhaps too robust relationship with a persistently feudal and political absolute, criminal, and totalitarian Russia.
  3. Inability, so far, to attenuate the power of chiefs and produce a disciplined and power balancing democracy.

Reference – Iraq: Iran Aligned Shiite Militia

Note, please, the date year associated with reference.  Whether 2015, earlier, or later, BackChannels’ Kurdish source has cited Iraq’s Iranian-aligned Shiite militia as posting a persistent challenge to the defense of the Kurd’s ancestral land.

Khedery, Ali.  Iran’s Shiite Militias Are Running Amok in Iraq.  Foreign Policy, February 19, 2015.

Washington’s response to the Islamic State’s (IS) advance, however, has been disgraceful: The United States is now acting as the air force, the armory, and the diplomatic cover for Iraqi militias that are committing some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet. These are “allies” that are actually beholden to our strategic foe, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and which often resort to the same vile tactics as the Islamic State itself.

Vatanka, Alex and Sarkawt Shamsulddin. “Forget ISIS: Shia Militias Are the Real Threat to Kurdistan.” The National Interest, January 7, 2015:

 . . . from the KRG perspective, two Shia militia forces—Asaib Ahl Haq and the Badr militias—are uncontrollable.

Both these militias are backed by Iran, and the their military operations are effectively overseen by Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Qods Force, which serves as the external arm of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

Rudaw.  “Peshmerga commander warns Shiite militias a threat to Kurds.”  September 8, 2016.  The piece winds around but ends this way:

Hashd al-Shaabi is the defender of “Iraqi sovereignty and its unity,” he declared, and it will not fight any other group except ISIS.

Kurdish Peshmerga and Shiite militia forces have clashed several times in Kirkuk’s southern ethnically-mixed city of Khurmatu in recent months. Several people from both sides were killed in the confrontations.

 

Ahmad, Aziz.  “The Defeat of ISIS Must Mean an Independent Kurdistan.”  The New York Times, July 13, 2017.

A century after the breakdown of the Ottoman boundaries, Iraq remains a forced union of peoples whose national aspirations and sense of identity have been suppressed. Members of my family spent decades in exile from successive Iraqi governments that, since the turn of the 20th century, butchered generations of Kurdish men, women and children who struggled to find their place in this artificial state.

Thus there has always been a lingering, unresolved question of identity for the Kurds of Iraq. That identity will finally achieve resolution when the people of Iraqi Kurdistan vote in the referendum. This expression of popular will should not only close a long chapter of grief but also bring new certainty and stability to an increasingly volatile region plagued by sectarian conflict and bloodshed.

Hannah, John.  “The United States Must Prevent Disaster in Kurdistan.”  Foreign Policy, October 2, 2017:

Of special concern was the possibility that Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq could seek to gain political advantage by challenging Kurdish control in the oil-rich, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk and other disputed territories also claimed by the central government in Baghdad.

John Hannah relays a chilling list of actions taken or threatened by Iraq and Turkey in their pique with the Kurdish referendum. He goes on to note the following and then pleads for Washington’s regaining its own initiative in moral courage in partnering with the Kurds and forestalling the escalation of force applied in keeping them captive to forces clearly out of step with Washington’s moral and political missions:

I was taken aback by the intense frustration and anger directed at a critical wartime ally and longtime, loyal U.S. partner whose history of oppression and even genocide at the hands of other nations leaves it with — if nothing else — an almost unimpeachable moral case for self-determination.

Reference – Kurdish PKK

Posted to YouTube August 21, 2017.

Posted to YouTube June 29, 2017.

Backgrounder (January 2, 2014)

(More is in the works).

–33–

“Iraq . . . only its shell remains” – Kurdish Major General Aziz Weysi Bani

09 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Clarion Project, May 9, 2017.

BackChannels has repeated made the case and point that ISIL had been incubated — protected early on from annihilation — by Assad’s preferring to fight the west (and democratic liberalism in the distribution of power) first at the outset of the Syrian Tragedy, and that decision had been flanked by Moscow and Tehran.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/04/09/ftac-reprise-how-isil-serves-moscow-damascus-and-tehran/

By electing to make the primary enemy “The West” and only halting the advance of al-Nusra and other al-Qaeda-type organizations at critical points, Bashar al-Assad created conditions in which the true terrorist opposition could gather and grow.  While Syrian forces were creating the horrific conditions that would spur the influx of jihadists into Syria while also inducing mass displacement and migration, it turns out that Saddam Hussein’s old Baathist officer corps had in mind some similar ideas regarding their own lives as puppeteers.

Haji Bakr was sent by the group into Syria in late 2012, as a part of a tiny advance cluster, with the mission to help plot out the steps for the emergent “Islamic State,” to capture as much territory as possible in Syria, and from there to launch an invasion back into Iraq. Haji Bakr settled obscurely in the small Syrian town of Tal Rifaat, north of Aleppo, where he put his immense knowledge of Saddam’s intelligence and totalitarian practices to work, charting out the invasion of Syria and emergence of the “Islamic State”—plans that were later meticulously carried out by ISIS.[17]

Haji Bakr was killed by a Syrian rebel group in 2014,[18] but not before he had transmitted his knowledge and intelligence plans learned inside Saddam Hussein’s former totalitarian regime to the nascent “Islamic State.” The documents he produced, discovered after his death, consist of 31 pages of handwritten organizational charts, lists, and schedules, all of which describe how to step-by-step subjugate a nation.

http://www.icsve.org/research-reports/the-isis-emni-the-inner-workings-and-origins-of-isiss-intelligence-apparatus/ – 12/3/2016.

It is into this greater intersection between “east and west” — actually: feudal dictatorship and western democracy — that the pro-democratic talking Kurdish presence and armed Peshmerga have emerged as forces for modernity.

Given, perhaps, that few in the general public get this far into the machinery of war, it’s possible that “Moscow-Tehran” and “baby Damascus” (between them) may now engage ISIS  . . . more sincerely, with Moscow recovering some face and flexibility for doing so.  As much may account for the Peshmerga’s wishing to work with Moscow against ISIS, but as ISIS has made for Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran the most useful enemy, there may be a little bit of funny business in attempting that.

Duplicity would seem much less known where American forces and political resolve have been involved although Turkey’s preference for suppressing the Kurds (while developing its own dictatorship) has complicated the Yankee do-good in the Syrian-Iraq theaters.

BackChannels feels that Washington and others may try to match Moscow in the realm of corrupt “realpolitik” but may suggest that working modern ideals against bad deals may better suit everyone’s future.  Moscow may make a show of shutting down ISIS, but its clinging to dictatorship and totalitarian show business bodes ill for genuinely western and western-leaning cooperation.

“Right now, Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds can’t live together under a single administration.”

While the Hebrews are back in the Land of the Hebrews and mighty independent about being so, Baloch, Kurdish, and Pashtun communities, among others, continue to struggle against the dominance of hitherto more powerful states.

BackChannels would promote ethnolinguistic cultural community and political autonomy — i.e., what is really meant by the term “cultural self-determination of a People” — with central and margin-bearing features.  To get there, however, requires great strength in independent cultural identity plus the cooperation of tribal leaders in producing a coherent unified proto-national politics.

Is the once communist Kurdish PKK the same as it was back in the 1970s, and may that account for some turn toward Moscow today?

BackChannels hasn’t that answer today.  The last time this editor looked into that question was 2007 (as a rank political science beginner on an entirely different blog: http://commart.typepad.com/oppenheim_arts_letters/2007/10/turkeys-pkk-hot.html — Turkey looked every inch a democracy back then; and the PKK looked like old bandits holed up in caves and just about finished as a political force.

Oh my how things have changed!

At this time, it appears that fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria has brought the multiply suzerain Kurdish community together as never before.  Now it needs to sustain its cohesion and strength against the pressuring of the errant Arab and Persian worlds once swayed by the Soviet Union and still hungover from the increasingly anachronist experience.

A little BackChannels rah-rah for the home team:

What has given the American model its power has been first and foremost the immense adventurousness and imperialism of the British Empire AND it’s intellectual experience and loading with equal measures Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultural experiences.  Had the ideals of the Cyrus Cylinder held sway in the middle east, the conversation would be quite different, but its Magna Carta that has worked its will through the western experience and now returns to intercede on behalf of cultures overrun by gross and malign power.

From the Kurdish general:

“Iraq needs to be divided into three neighboring countries, and each country to govern themselves according to the reality of the region.  Sunni and Shia Arabs have different approaches in making relations with others.  The Kurdish approach is different than both of them.  These things have to be considered, so then each one will be responsible for their people, place and country.  And these three groups are better as neighbors.  Our message for the world is that Iraq is no longer the same, only its shell remains.”  

At the moment, Turkey is not what it was either!

BackChannels suggests the United States would do well to deepen the bond with the pro-democracy forces of the Kurdish political community.

–33–

Link

http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/23/exclusive-iraqi-kurdish-leader-says-the-time-is-here-for-self-determination/

23 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/23/exclusive-iraqi-kurdish-leader-says-the-time-is-here-for-self-determination/

Iraqi Kurdish President Massoud Barzani gave his strongest-ever indication on Monday that his region would seek formal independence from the rest of Iraq.

Link

http://www.dw.de/women-join-the-kurdish-fight-in-syria/a-17442218

20 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

http://www.dw.de/women-join-the-kurdish-fight-in-syria/a-17442218

But now, for the first time, Syrian Kurds – above all the women – have the opportunity to shape their own lives. Women make up 35 percent of the 45,000 fighters. “Women used to be suppressed and exploited in our society, and regarded as inferior by the men,” Canda says. “Now we have the chance to be role models for Kurds and for other ethnicities – for instance, for Arab women.”

A Lazy Meander Around the News Around Autonomous Syrian Kurdistan

14 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Regions, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

As a result of their American-enforced protections until 2003, and later as a result of the weakened central government in Baghdad after Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Iraqi Kurds were left to govern themselves for 22 years, from 1991 to present. During this period, the Kurds have literally lifted their corner of Iraq from the ashes, establishing not only one of the most prosperous polities in the region, but also by far the best approximation of secular democracy that the Middle East can currently offer.

The Plight of the Syrian Kurds | The Institute of Politics at Harvard University – n.d.

Perhaps no new war news is good news.

At least at the moment, “Syria Kurds fighting” isn’t bring up hours old reports and videos.

All may be tense on that front but, so far as the reality-to-news lag is concerned, it’s quiet, and that’s a good thing: in addition to fending off the AQTypal Out There, the Kurds in their camps and villages have a turn coming in the weather to be followed by winter.

It’s good, I’m sure, to have a few fair days ahead of what’s to come, winter being always certain.

On the theme of winter, the VOA has had a story all over the web this past week, but, deja vu, as regards the Kurdish community’s collective consciousness, the people have the memory of having been there and been through it before, war zone and all: “THE Kurds of northern Iraq are heading into winter with their political future as uncertain as ever – and with food and fuel stocks so low that even a belated international relief effort may not head off hardship” (Jim Muir, “Iraq Kurds Face Winter, Neighbors’ Discontent,” The Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 1992).

This year may be different — different zone, relief planes instead of trucks, bands of marauders instead of Saddam Hussein’s military, etc.

The web may make a difference too.

What was barely out of the laboratory in 1992 has produced its own civilization and intelligentsia. However, while the newfangled global political system may prove responsive to those in distress and more than worthy of aid, it seems not to have really kicked in yet.  In fact, the Internet’s  Emerging Global Order (I-EGO) has at this point only to watch the world, take it in, set up its emotions, think about what it will do when it’s a little more capable of urging its own defense and better attending to the security of those it loves — and there will be those it loves.

Reference

 Iraqi Kurdistan’s chief ready to strike militants in Syria, Iraq – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page – 10/13/2013.

Son of Syrian Kurdish Leader Salih Muslim Killed in Fighting – 10/10/2013

Syria’s Refugees: The Catastrophe by Hugh Eakin and Alisa Roth | The New York Review of Books – 10/10/2013.

Syrian Kurdish Refugees Fear Harsh Winter in Northern Iraq – 10/7/2013.

Syria: Red Cross, Red Crescent workers kidnapped; 2 bombs rock capital – CNN.com 10/14/2013.

Syrians find safety for Eid al-Adha holiday in Iraq – Yahoo News – 10/4/2013.

ISIS Maps Emirate Borders In Syria – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 10/3/2013.

Syrian Refugees at Erbil Camps to be Relocated for Winter – 9/26/2013.

Turkey and the Syrian Kurds: A little-noticed battle | The Economist – 9/25/2013: “A Syrian rebel fighting the Kurds told our correspondent that “Allah be praised, Turkey is giving us some weapons” though he added that the France and Saudi Arabia were “much more generous”.

Syria Crisis: Children Starving, At Risk of Malnutrition – 9/25/2013.

Syria crisis: starving children forced to survive on fruit, leaves and nuts | Global development | The Guardian – 9/23/2013.

As West blinks on Syria, jihadists begin revenge attacks on civilian population | World Tribune – 9/18/2013.

Syrian children suffering malnutrition – 9/15/2013

United Nations News Centre – Iraq: UN agency airlifts supplies for Syrian refugee children, families in Erbil – 9/2/2013.

United Nations News Centre – UN agencies fly in urgent aid for Syrian refugees in north Iraq – 8/27/2013.

www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Backgrounder_SyrianKurds.pdf
“Syrian Kurds and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) – 12/6/2012.

Terror: The Hidden Source by Malise Ruthven | The New York Review of Books 10/24/2013 (60:16).

______

▶ Inside the Syrian crisis: The Needs of Children (September 13, 2013) – YouTube

Help the IRC respond to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. | International Rescue Committee (IRC)

______

These two are not even remotely “on topic” but they’re telling of the type of wars being fought, i.e., two wars of annihilation and enslavement and a smaller one about democracy.

Fire fell ‘like rain’ in Syria – CNN.com – 10/12/2013.

Opinion: Syrian war’s brutality isn’t going away – CNN.com – 10/11/2013.

# # #

Programming – Nihilism – Islamists

09 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Religion, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

By labeling the acts of radical Islamists as mere “terrorism” we imply that there is an Achilles heel to expose — a political demand or a territorial gain with which they might barter, with which we might naively appease.

The reality is completely different. Their goals are nihilistic and non-negotiable: they want the total elimination of all who are not with them. Nairobi was possibly the most explicit demonstration of such.

Qanta Ahmed – The new jihad — a violent, intrusive and dangerous threat to world order | Fox News – 10/9/2013.

Someone raised expectations, perhaps; someone provided explicit instruction; someone’s words were received amplified, heightened, deified, perhaps; and someone challenged The Wisdom, saying in effect, “Prove it – it is either of the stars or not.”

Along the line of the Christian anti-Jihad, there is no way away from elements of scripture delivered in practical and literal terms.  Their experience of what on this blog I call “shimmer” starts with their examination of the Quran plus impression from history plus, finally, an acquaintance with Hadith.  None of that ends well, and less for Christian pride than its basis in Jewish thought after Hillel.

For the Jews, the noise starts somewhere beyond the arguments and themes inspired by — but seldom stated explicitly in — the Torah.  Even with something as simple as “The Binding of Isaac”, the reader is never told whether the test is of Abraham’s obedience, which is the common interpretation, or one given to children by their parents, or of conscience, which is a little bit more incisive and likely to arrive as epiphany with sufficient fascination and reflection.

The Jews long ago formed a culture apart and have learned a great deal about themselves and others.  Credit the Torah for that.  Or credit the necessity of separation given the humanity that must have gathered in the ancient desert appalled with the world, and, later, with Pharaoh.  Muslims, by comparison, have formed of the seduced or the conquered of the world, and whatever spirit predated Muhammad would seem to persist in expression now conflated with Islam.

Whether what is in Qanta Ahmed to grasp as a modern Muslim woman a progressive and humanist Islam is actually in Islam, I don’t know, for there are many forces in the Ummah — the “Islamists” but a facet, the “sword verses” another, the conflations with child marriages and honor killings producing yet additional self-slander and fuel for critics, and the  history of conquest (start with the wholesale slaughter of the men and rape of daughters and wives of the Banu Qurayza) — that would belie the assertion.

For the Kurds fighting Al Qaeda today in northern Syria, nothing has changed: they know their old enemy.

Additional Reference

Concerns with terrorist atrocities in Christian or western states may overlook the inkblot spread of Al Qaeda-defined conflict in ungoverned or autonomously governed spaces.  That context tells of a format in warfare as familiar to the 7th Century as it is to the morning news sifted by foreign affairs wonks.

The Kurdish community in northern Syria hasn’t to care about the modern humanist assertion, reformation, or survival of Islam: a Muslim army, self-appointed, self-defined, has arrived on their doorstep to convert or annihilate them, and they know it and have taken up defensive positions and initiated diplomatic efforts congruent with that.

Syrian Kurdish Leader Urges Turkey to End Support for Salafists – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 10/9/2013.

Syria: Al-Qaeda wants to control Iraq and Turkey border zones | News | World | Mail & Guardian – 10/5/2013.

Syria: Al-Qaeda Branch Battles Kurds, Threatens Ankara | Al Akhbar English – 10/1/2013.

Al-Qaida claims rare attacks in northern Iraq Republican American – 10/8/2013.

Addendum

Abdul Hakim Quick – a preacher from the Islamic Education and Research Academy, who has called upon God to “clean and purify Al-Aqsa from the filth of the Yahood [Jews]” and to “clean all of the lands from the filth of the Kafirun [non-believers].” He has also stated: “They said ‘what is the Islamic position [on homosexuality]?’ And I told them. Put my name in the paper. The punishment is death. And I’m not going to change this religion.”

UK Charity Commission Permits Hamas Charity :: Gatestone Institute – 10/4/2013.

# # #