I'm aware of the ML cynicism regarding it, but I've had a few friends ask about Rojava and I honestly haven't heard anything about it for a while.

  • Mardoniush [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    They're still around and self-governing and stable, they've had to submit to Syrian protection but are still nominally independent. The loss of Afrin, their most developed area was a huge blow.

    There are some nationalist and centralist tensions in the government, but still, they're overall based and just trying to hold on and preserve something of what they had under Syrian reunification. They're still kicking goals in terms of education, minority involvement, and social structures, but they're very poor and resources are almost nil.

    I don't know many MLs who were opposed to Rojava, aside from a weird Maoist or two and Hakim's insistance that it's primarily a nationalist polity (which seems to be obviously untrue despite the presence of Kurdish nationalists)

    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.

    Rojava is a tragedy, but maybe, like the original Greek tragedies, restoration and justice will follow despair.

    • ConstipationNation [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      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.

      • LeninWeave [none/use name]
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        edit-2
        3 years ago

        The thing is, the US is a known genocidal empire. Don't get me wrong, I understand that it gives context, but it's pretty clear why a lot of people were sketched out by any amount of aligning with US interests.

        Like if the US invaded Mexico and the Zapatistas aligned with them in any way, it would be... pretty fucked, no? Not a perfect analogy, but the point remains. Or if the US invaded India and the Naxalites aligned with them at all, the Philippines and the CPP, etc.

        • Civility [none/use name]
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          edit-2
          3 years ago

          I think a lot of people here don't realise how fash Assad and Ba'athist Syria is and has been.

          They're explicitly an ethnostate, the full name of the nation is the Syrian Arab Republic, they have a whole load of oppressive laws that apply only to jews (although in 1992 they expelled almost all of the remnants of Syria's jewish population), have published 3 new editions of The Protocols of The Elders of Zion in the last 25 years, gave fleeing Nazis government jobs during the cold war, support almost every Western Neo-Nazi group there is and in 2017 hosted David Duke (the former Grand Wizard of the US KKK) for a state visit, gave him medals and got him to do rallies on national TV. Until 2020 killing a female relative who had "dishonoured" you or your family by "engaging in an illegitimate sexual act" was a seperate, lesser offence than murder under the Syrian penal code (and in 2014 Syria kicked up a fuss about the Rojava just treating it as murder) and to this day in Syria it's legal for 13 year old girls to be married and women have to go through a religious court to get a divorce while for men talaq talaq talaq is legally binding.

          Like, yeah they're a lesser threat to the world at large than the US, but it's hard to blame Rojava for choosing to accept the military protection of the US rather than fully throwing themselves on the mercy of Ba'athist Syria.

          • please_dont [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Like, yeah they’re a lesser threat to the world at large than the US, but it’s hard to blame Rojava for choosing to accept the military protection of the US rather than fully throwing themselves on the mercy of Ba’athist Syria

            They are a lesser threat on Syria and even the Kurds specificaly than Assad. You can go as local as you want in the middle east and the US still is the greater Evil. More people died and suffered, die and suffer due to US presence and involvement in Syria than they would have other wise than the entire population of Rojava X5 , for sure more than shitty ass Assad regime did. They didnt just accept military protection , they gave the US free pass to do what they please from maybe the most strategic important erea of Syria and operate and occupy as they like.And they did act as they like from within rojava and that did extend their presence and ability to project power and destabilize the region further. They could never say no to the US so it was never a case of them "gettinga autonomy " from dealing with the US. Their choice was at the expense of tens of millions of Syrians and middle eastern people and in the end of the day at the expense of themselves. A Syria without US presence and involvement and a Kurdish people not in the whim of the US military wouldnt result in Turkey nearly genociding them within Syria's boarders. Its something that would never be allowed to happen if not in a Syria thrown into shambles by western intervention, fractured and weakened and if not the US didnt take what it want from the Kurds and leave them to die. It was the Syrian state that did the obvious thing and pushed jumped in without in the end of the day even destroying Kurdish autonomy or Anexing them. You can go into "well these sneaky!! they would genocide the Kurds as well if they had the chance" but its obvious at this point (and rojava accepted it) and it was obvious at all previous points in the last 10 years that a reduced autonomy allience with Assad would be both the best for the entire erea and people and in the long run would be for the Kurds in general.

      • please_dont [he/him]
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        edit-2
        3 years ago

        yeah no shit they didnt like Assad, the US tho is by far the greater devil for everyone in the region and it is and was obvious that their presence and involvement leads to death and suffering for orders of magnitude more people than Assad or any local shitty leader does. This isnt something "they didnt and couldnt know"

        • LoremIpsum [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Local ethnic conflicts are almost always incredibly intense and breed generational resentment. Even if by the quantification of evil you can trace it all back to the US, it is US bombs and weapons. The actual humans on the ground shooting at them arent americans for the most part. Even if they "know" the US is the great satan its a hard sell to throw your lot in with the people most recently and directly oppressing you.

  • please_dont [he/him]
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    edit-2
    3 years ago

    I had saved most of this from a user long ago but thi is the general syrian conflict and situation regarding Rojava-US-Assad-Turkey-Islamists

    • young, secular, middle-class students form a spontaneous anti-Assad “pro-democracy” movement in the upswell of discontent that was the Arab Spring

    • They are almost immediately given massive coverage by Western media, and even approached by Westerners giving them advice on how to conduct their protests (ie the elaborate apparatus goading and trianing color revolutionaries that has existed since the late 80s)

    • A disparate network of American and British ex-spooks rapidly organizes a elaborate propaganda apparatus designed to propagandize for all anti-Assad groups and activity

    • The destabilization of the Assad government triggered by the Arab Spring protests in turn triggers a massive upswell in hyper-sectarian Sunni fundamentalism that dwarfs the original protesters, which organize into murderous sectarian militias to conduct pogroms against non-believers

    • The Assad government rapidly loses control of the situation and its authority effectively disintegrates in most parts of the country. The original middle-class secular student protesters realize what is happening and back the government.

    • The United States, its propaganda apparatus now continuing to portray these radical fundamentalist militias as “moderate rebels”, begins flooding arms to these various sectarian Sunni fundamentalist groups. These guys are all fighting each other as well as the Assad government, not merely for sectarian reasons but because they are various proxies for rival US-allied Sunni states - Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia - jockeying for influence in the presumed successor government

    • The most effective anti-Assad fighters by a considerable margin are al-Qaeda affiliates like the al-Nusra Front/Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and Islamic State, the latter of which rapidly gains influence between 2013-2014 in the vacuum left by the Assad government’s disintegration of authority due to being experienced in fighting insurgencies and being highly organized before the conflict even started (due to having its origins in the anti-US insurgency in Iraq). Despite the US explicitly telling the proxies they’re arming not to give these weapons to groups like al-Nusra, because those people are literally the most effective fighters this inevitably happens anyways.

    • Islamic State spills across the border into Iraq in 2014. The completely unreliable Iraqi military basically disintegrates before them. Only desperate action, IS overextension, and extensive American intervention prevent the Iraqi government from collapsing.

    • Russia begins intervening extensively to protect their ally , as they have been fed up with the Americans since at least 2008 and are now acting accordingly to roll back or resist American encirclement

    • The US begins backing the Kurds against both Assad and Islamic State, in both northeastern Syria and northern Iraq, against the wishes of their Turkish allies. The Kurds turn out to be more reliable proxies. Their initial plan is to split off northeastern Syria from the Assad government and form a Kurdish state chiefly in order to deny Assad control of oil resources in the region. This is obviously contradictory with the US’s firm commitment to the Turks as a member of NATO.

    • Pretty much all players in the conflict unite against Islamic State. They are essentially defeated by 2018. The Assad government and Kurdish SDF are the biggest beneficiaries. By now the tide has turned decisively against the rebels and in favor of the Assad government. At some point (2016?) the rebel forces in southern Syria become pinned in and a massively “humanitarian” evacuation campaign led by the US and Israel either gets them out of the country or dumped into a stronghold around the city of Idlib in Northerwestern Syria. Additionally in late 2017 the recovered Iraq government moves to crush the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government by force to put down any hint of separatism and uniting with Syrian Rojava as a Kurdish state. This pretty much scuppers any US plan to partition off Rojava into a Kurdish state, but they keep the Kurds in limbo about this, deliberately telling them to stonewall negotiations from Assad, for like two years.

    • Turkey, which has been heavily supporting the Sunni fundamentalist rebel groups throughout the war, intervenes directly by invading the SDF’s enclave in Afrin in early 2018. This is due to long-running concerns about the Kurdish communist-nationalist-separatists that have plagued the country for decades, and them potentially becoming emboldened and strengthened through cross-border cooperation.

    • In 2019, the Turks invade Rojava, intending to secure a “buffer zone” all along the border where they can expel the Kurds and resettle the region with their Sunni jihadist proxies. Rojava, who again have been discouraged from negotiating with Assad by the US for years, are cut loose and thrown to the (grey) wolves. In desperation, they cut a deal with Assad where they will presumably be able to negotiate regional autonomy after the war is over. The SAA takes positions with the SDF in northeastern Syria and effectively halts the Turkish-jihadist advance

    • In very late 2019 the SAA begins a renewed offensive against the Idlib Pocket. They are rolling them back rapidly and it seems an end to the war is in sight. Then a (probably Russian) air strike kills like 60 Turkish special forces “advisers” near Idlib. This causes the Turks to again escalate their intervention and they inflict severe losses on the SAA, halting their advance.

    • With decreased US occupation of the erea the Kurds were forced to strike ,a hopefully long lasting now, deal with the Syrian state and governent to avoid getting completely genocided by the Turks and continue with some very limited regional autonomy since the Syrian state . They neither got genocided nor assimilated Rojava since that would mean again exasterbating the situation into an utterly chaotic and violent civil war, becoming even weaker against the islamic oposition groups and destroying their country. The thing Kurds lost and would lose is a big degree of regional autonomy that in many ways never had cause they never could say no to any of the US requests and decisions about what will happen in their erea

    And on the opposite side, US presence has and had the goal of Assad being defeated by the US-led coalition which would not lead to a better outcome for the Syrian or Kurdish peoples based on the primary opposition inside syria.In this sequence of events there is effectively no scenario where the secular Syrian Government can become stable economicaly and geopoliticaly with US prolonging their occupation in the erea since its very presence and action there is for it to not happen. Prollonging the current situation of even a decreeased US presence in the erea (which can always and probably will be attempted to ramp up) means misery and suffering for millions of syrian citizens with no future where they will have a full belly and a safe ans stable life. You pretty much have three scenarios for that case :

    • Islamic foundementalists win. This probably triggers a direct and large-scale intervention by the United States, which will mean prolonged war and insurgency for decades.

    • The Assad government collapses entirely, without Islamic State as the primary beneficiary. Syria essentially turns into a Libya-style anarchy except worse, as the jihadist proxies for various actors in the region begin conducting sectarian pogroms with no resistance and fighting each other for their share of the ashes. Eventually one faction will win out and impose a Sunni fundamentalist regime that is a puppet for either Turkey, Qatar, or Saudi Arabia.

    • The same as Scenario 2 except the SDF carves out an independent Kurdish state in northeastern Syria in the process. Then 1.Turkey invades and crushes them, then either annexes the region outright or eventually hands it off to a puppet government they help set up in Damascus. 2. The US completes morphs that erea into a semi-vassal state under the guise of "protecting the second only democracy in the middle east" with continued pressence for influencing anything military or geopolitical in the erea strengthening their position against Iran and rival forces. The Kurds can never exist without the US and can never say no to anything the US decides to do in and from their erea since again any US pulling back would mean Turkey /and or the worse than Assad power that controls syria now invading them

    So all that considered i always had an issue with supporting them as a project existing under and only through US presence . Mostly against the mainstream in the left narrative that it HAD TO and that there WAS NO CHOICE and THAT ASSAD AND TURKS WOULD SLAUGHTER THEM OTHERWISE and so US presence is the lesser evil for them.Which like we laid out is not the case. The Americans are the greatest opressors in the erea by an insane degree, and anything else that comes close (isis) is basicaly a result of their presence and interference. People that became downtrodden by the american empire and resist against its opressive presence and occupation are both the majority comperatively to the Kurds and the group that takes precedent regarding my supporth (as long as they arent straight up islamic foundementalists) and supporting them means the complete removal of US from the region means that Rojava as a project will just lose its percieved “autonomy” and be set back massively.

    So im happy to support the form it takes without US presence even if it is less politicaly and economicaly “autonomous” ,its better for everyone in the long run

  • CyborgMarx [any, any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    According to the Complete”anarchy” ghouls it “went full tankie”