The struggle in Rojava (Kurdish northern Syria) is really a struggle for humanity, freedom, and human dignity.
The ‘coalition’ and its air strikes clearly do not aim to protect human life, because they’ve been useless at stopping ISIS from advancing on Kobane. The socialist Kurdish peoples’ militias have managed to evacuate all civilians now, but they are going to stay in the city until their last breath. It really is a Stalingrad-type situation.
Turkey, meanwhile, would love to see the Kurdish resistance fail, because if it doesn’t it will encourage the massive Kurdish population in Turkey to demand more autonomous self-government too. That’s why it hasn’t attacked ISIS yet. It’s walking the tight-rope between officially opposing ISIS and secretly opposing Kurdish autonomy. And its Western allies have obliged until now.
The solution has never been foreign bombing. The only solution is residents having the means to defend themselves and govern themselves. Then, they have no-one to blame but themselves if something bad happens – and that is much better than being able to blame someone else. However, the Kurdish militias (YPG and YPJ) have incredibly limited funds and arms that are pretty useless to stop the well-funded and well-armed ISIS from advancing. Those who claim to love democracy and humanity should support them, to allow them to defend themselves effectively.
The West, however, has only funded Kurds in Iraq – because they’re capitalist and they fit the Western model (though they are much less effective than the libertarian socialist Kurds of Syria). Meanwhile, it has ignored those in Rojava in the hope that their alternative model of government will disappear.
All of this is just one more example that Western governments cannot be trusted to ‘do the right thing’. They clearly only focus on their own interests in the region (or those of the capitalist elites that fund and control them). They never do what is best for the people of the region. That’s why we should be extremely critical of their actions.
Resistance Is Fertile 