I reported that, but no action was taken.

Calling for ethnic cleansing of Kurds at the hands of Islamic fascists should be against the rules… right?

  • redtea
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    13 days ago

    I’ve been through the comments now. I’ll refer to Rojava as the western region of Kurdistan and the Rojava Project (RP) as the political institution(s) seeking to carve out an autonomous polity in Rojava.

    I did not read @multitotal@lemmygrad.ml as apologising for imperialism or as criticising China. My interpretation of their argument was as follows:

    • rejecting the RP outright was hypocritical if the rejection was based on working with the US; lots of countries, including China, have worked alongside the imperialists in the past (they are not criticising China or praising US actions in West Asia)
    • the RP is/was an attempt to protect Kurds from their historic oppression, this time coming from militias based in Syria and the constant threat from Turkey
    • the RP is not an ethnostate, although it is unwilling to back down on the protection of Kurds
    • calling for the destruction of the RP without addressing how otherwise to protect Syrian Kurds is equivalent to calling for, at a minimum, the mass murder and further oppression of Kurds, especially now that they would not be facing Assad’s government but whatever ISIS-Zionist-HTS horror is about to happen

    @GlueBear@lemmygrad.ml disagrees and sees the RP as:

    • an opportunist attempt to wrestle land off Syria
    • an attempt to create an ethnostate, out of land that should be governed by the Syrian central government
    • (possibly) an extremist US proxy
    • partly responsible for Syria’s collapse (perhaps for being a thorn in its side and denying essential resources)

    There are issues with framing RP as a US proxy, given the nature of democratic confederalism. It’s not, or doesn’t seem to me to be, an entirely unified bloc. There are clearly elements of the RP willing to work with the US. Maybe there were some who weighed up the pros and cons and aligned despite the disadvantages, as self-preservation, as Multitotal suggests. Maybe there were some who were always compradors willing to support the US’ interests if it achieved interim RP goals, regardless of the effect to Syria, as GlueBear suggests. Things may be clearer in a few decades as records get released and the dust settles but it’ll be too late by then.

    I’m not sure I’m qualified to say who is ultimately correct. GlueBear has certainly challenged my view of Rojava, so I’m going to have to do some research and self-crit before I’m able to conclude as to what the RP is. There’s a lot going on, here. The references to China aren’t helpful on either side, because it’s apples and oranges, although the question of (hypo)critical is a persuasive one. Comparing the successes of a massive, stable China run by communists with those of war-torn Rojava are unfair and it doesn’t seem to be what multitotal was asking for. A comparison with the Kurds in Turkey might be illuminating. One main question is whether the RP managed to protect the people of Rojava (more than if the RP hadn’t existed). This thread probably isn’t the place to try to work it all out.

    As for GlueBear’s comments about wiping Rojava off the map, I take this to mean the RP rather than the Kurds in the region but it is hard to be sure without asking for clarity. Given the ‘temporarily-embarressed ethnostate’ I would suggest that GlueBear means the RP rather than the people of Rojava, being opposed to anyone oppressing any ethnicity.

    It seems that GlueBear approaches the topic from the perspective of what Rojava has done for Syrian Arabs (and others and general stability in the region) while multitotal approaches it from the perspective of what Rojava has done for Kurds. Easy to see how the one will be distraught and the other hopeful. That’s a recipe for disagreement even if both share the approach of ‘what’s best for stability in the region and worst for US imperialists’. I’m fairly sure both would agree that Anglo-European meddling from before Sykes-Picot to today is a bastard and has a lot to answer for.

    The arguments are rather muddied throughout the thread (not just between multi and Glue) with some speaking-past-one-anothoer and irrelevant argumentation. It doesn’t seem as though GlueBear wants the Kurds eradicated (at least, I highly doubt it on the face of what’s presented), which is the key thing. @AlbigensianGhoul@lemmygrad.ml hit the nail on the head, I think.