ConstipationNation [he/him]

The main critique was accepting the poisoned chalice of US help, rather than cutting a deal with Assad. I can’t blame them too much, they had a hard, hard choice and a deal with the devil in exchange for true independence might have seemed very attractive.

Occasionally I read news sites based in Rojava and I feel like one thing that some leftists don’t understand is that a lot of the people in that region legitimately hate Assad and the Syrian Government, so accepting the return of the Syrian government would have been a very bitter pill for people to swallow. Not only was the Syrian government discriminatory towards Kurds and treated Northeast Syria as an internal colony, but apparently it was also just incompetent, corrupt, and centralized to such an insane degree that municipalities were incapable of maintaining themselves properly.

In the Southwestern US tamarisk trees are a huge problem, they spread really fast along rivers and streams and their leaves have a lot of salt in them and shed constantly so they choke out native plant species. When I was a kid I used to play in the river a lot and I can remember tamarisk trees were the only thing that grew there, any other type of tree or plant was pretty much nonexistent. Luckily though there is a species of beetle that feeds on tamarisk and nothing else, they were brought in a few years ago to control the tamarisk population and they seem to be helping a ton. They cleared out all the dead tamarisk trees and now the riverbanks are filled with cottonwoods, willows, and reeds, it’s really nice to see.

You accused me of not listening to Assyrians, so I provided an example of an Assyrian who rejects the claim that the Kurds are ethnonationalist, and you automatically dismissed him as a “mascot”, whatever the fuck that means. That podcast is like an hour long so I’m 100% sure you didn’t even listen to it, despite the fact that Assyrian perspectives are supposedly so important to you.

Then you claim that the Syrian government is pluralistic, which is false because it denied that Syrian Kurds were legitimate citizens of Syria and tried to forcibly Arabize them.

You seem to think that Kurds in general are just lying Western puppets with no legitimate stake in the region, and you completely ignore the fact that they’ve been oppressed by the Baathist governments of Syria and Iraq and even accuse Iraqi Kurds of stealing oil despite the fact that they were gassed by Saddam, which is why I think you’re an Arab nationalist.

If it’s a question of whether or not Rojava conforms to leftist values, I think the answer is yes. They’re not perfect, they’re not the anarcho-communalist utopia some Western leftists think they are, but they’re committed to feminism, they’re committed to multiculturalism, and they’re committed to building a democratic system that provides for the poor and doesn’t just favor the capitalist class.

There are a lot of powers that want to see Rojava fail. Turkey wants to see Rojava fail. Syria wants to see Rojava fail. Russia wants to see Rojava fail. Western support for Rojava is tepid and I’m sure the US would love it if the PYD was replaced with the ENKS, which is the right-wing Kurdish opposition in Rojava. A lot of people on this site argue that we can’t believe everything negative we hear/read about Communist states because there is a lot of propaganda against them. I think the same thing applies to Rojava. There is a propaganda campaign against them coming from multiple fronts which is designed to make them look like tyrants and stoke ethnic division in the areas they control. Until I see strong, hard evidence to the contrary I’m inclined to believe that any accusations the Kurds are carrying out ethnic cleansing are either exaggerated, blown out of proportion or just outright false.

Yes Baathist Syria is very pluralistic, that’s why they didn’t allow Syrian Kurds to hold full Syrian citizenship and pursed assimilationist policies against them. Again you’re just ignoring the Kurdish perspective, I’m starting to think you’re an Arab nationalist.

Also read my other fucking posts in this thread, I never claimed that Rojava is a utopia.

It’s Going Down podcast interviewed an Assyrian living in Qamishlo, and he claims that the Syrian government stoked ethnic tensions in order to maintain social control and that the Rojava revolution has done a lot to break down ethnic divisions between people:

https://itsgoingdown.org/this-is-america-92-an-anarchist-in-rojava-speaks/

Your post also ignores the fact that the Kurds themselves have been victims of genocide, forced assimilation, etc.

The framing of that article and your post, which claims that the Kurds are “occupying” the wheat is kind of ridiculous. Prior to the revolution the Kurdish areas of Syria were treated as an internal colony, and the Kurds were forbidden from building any sort of industry or growing crops other than wheat. Rojava isn’t “occupying” Syrian wheat fields, the wheat fields are part of Rojava due to the Syrian government’s own policy.

Rojava is very explicitly in favor of multiculturalism and equal rights for all ethnic groups within Syria. The claim that they’ve carried out ethnic cleansing is just propaganda. I think there are probably a lot of instances where the Kurds could’ve handled things in Arab majority areas better, but when you look at their actual policies it becomes clear that they are trying to get all ethnic groups involved with the Autonomous Administration project, they are not trying to create a Kurdish ethnostate.