October 29—A video circulating on social media shows armed men threatening to rape and murder a Kurdish female soldier, Cicek Kobane. This has happened to at least two more Kurdish women since October 9.
Turkey is using these Syrian thugs to enforce their “safe zone” inside Rojava (see map). These forces are the worst of the anti-women religious fanatical murderers who have formed ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
Supporters of Rojava, under the hashtag #RiseUp4Rojava, are posting this video to condemn the US “betrayal” of its Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS. The US has abandoned Kurdish people half a dozen times in the last century.
The Kurdish ethnic group has millions of members, stretching over the national boundaries of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
Kurds have participated in both nationalist and working-class movements since the 1880s. Communist parties in Iran, Iraq and Syria united Kurds, Arabs, Persians and smaller ethnic groups, including many religions, in working-class struggles. Their reformist and popular-front policies defeated them. But they show the possibility of the working-class unity we need to fight for communism in this region and worldwide.
Kurdish nationalist movements have repeatedly sought alliances with imperialist powers. And have been repeatedly betrayed when this suited the imperialists’ interests.
The real betrayal of Cicek Kobane, and the workers and farmers of North East Syria is the opportunism of the political leaders they have followed.
Rojava’s history starts with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) founded in eastern Turkey in the 1970s as a Marxist-Leninist Party led by Abdullah Ocalan. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party organized a guerrilla army. They fought what they called a war of national liberation starting in 1984, supported by the Syrian rulers. They used urban guerrilla and suicide bombing tactics. The US, NATO and Turkey designated them a “terrorist group.”
In 1999, Ocalan was captured by the Turkish state. In prison, he read the work of US anarchist Murray Bookchin. As the undisputed ideological leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Ocalan reoriented it toward eco-feminist anarcho-communalism.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party now rejects the goal of state power. It claims to work for democracy and equality within existing state structures in such a way as to make the state irrelevant. Now there is a cult of personality where huge posters of Ocalan’s face are everywhere in Rojava.
Does this sound like baloney? It is! In class society, the state is always the armed force of the ruling class. In this historical period of capitalist states, promoting this dream of anarcho-feminist-democratic egalitarianism is a profound betrayal of the working-class masses. We must fight for state power—communist workers’ power.
What happened in North East Syria? A civil war began in Syria in 2011. Kurdish forces led by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) took this opportunity to consolidate power in an autonomous region along the Turkish border. They organized their own military forces, the YPG and the YPJ (the women’s militia) and began to fight to liberate territory. The Syrian government, which had its own problems, tolerated them.
Meanwhile, the US aimed to destabilize the Russian-backed Syrian regime and to defeat ISIS. The US government worried about Turkey’s hostility to the PKK. It wanted to get along with Turkey while still allying with the PKK to occupy the strategic gas, oil and wheat resources of NE Syria.
So the US asked the PKK to “rebrand” itself. And the Syrian Democratic Forces—the army of Rojava—was born. It was still led by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) but now included non-Kurdish forces. This fig leaf enabled the US to support Kurdish militias in the fight against ISIS. It has also made Rojava a tool of the US imperial project in the region.
The Kurdish militia YPG/YPJ forces have been by far the best fighters in the region. They ejected ISIS from Raqqa and consolidated Rojava as a secular, socially egalitarian society, but one that still maintains money and markets. And they have always operated at the pleasure of US imperialism. And now the US has thrown them under the bus.
The history of 20th century communist movements in China and the Soviet Union have taught us to beware of personality cults. The politics of the “Great Leader” means that the working masses are not involved in a critical analysis of history and society. And in this case it allows opportunist leaders to make deals where you’re supposedly fighting for a better world on the one hand while serving the interests of the imperialists on the other.
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