Category Archives: Syria

Britain, Iraq, Islamic State, Middle East, Syria, United States

Western support must include arming the Kurds. More from the West is needed…

ISLAMIC STATE

It was Respect MP, George Galloway, who said that the west must ‘strengthen the Kurdish fighters, who are doing a good job of fighting IS’. Mr Galloway gave that view during a House of Commons debate on Iraq last month.

It isn’t a contradiction to be anti-war and left-wing at the same time as being pro-Kurd and in favour of supporting and arming the Kurds. Many people have been long-standing opponents of western-led military interventions in the Muslim-majority world. All campaigns from Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 to Libya in 2011, have resulted in civilian bloodshed and terrorist blowback. Many are not pacifist, either. To somehow hide and pretend that the response to those who carry out beheadings of the self-styled Islamic State need not involve an element of brute military force is either ludicrously naïve or disgracefully disingenuous.

And so too is the lazy obsession with airstrikes. General David Richards, the former chief of the defence staff, has repeatedly called for ‘boots on the ground’ and says that: ‘Wars, historically, have never been won by air power alone.’

Another foreign military occupation of Iraq – or, for that matter Syria – would be wholly disastrous. Further bloodshed would ensue, with yet more blowback. There are, however, secular and Sunni boots on the ground that the west should be backing against the jihadists of IS. There are Kurdish fighters not just in northern Iraq, where the peshmerga have fended off IS attempts to bring Erbil and Kirkuk under its terror-inspired caliphate, but also in northern Syria, where the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the Kurds’ Democratic Union Party (PYD) have been heroically holding off IS in the importantly strategic town of Kobani for more than a month now.

These Kurdish units, which include all-women militias, have to all intents and purposes become the last line of defence against the genocidal fanatics of IS. But, while, in Mr Galloway’s words, they are doing a ‘good job’, they can’t do it alone. IS are equipped with US-made tanks seized in Iraq following the desertion of whole units of the Iraqi army in the face of IS threats. Progressives in the west, which should also include those of the anti-war variety, need to get behind the Kurds. A loud public voice needs to be heard. We should do so because we owe them. Kurds constitute the biggest stateless minority in the world, with a population of some 30 million, divided mainly between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. They have been bombed in Turkey, executed in Iran, gassed in Iraq and besieged in Syria. Not to mention how they have been repeatedly betrayed by the west.

The Kurds are worth fighting for. Take northern Syria. Here the three autonomous and Kurdish-majority provinces of Rojava have avoided the worst excesses of the civil war. They have engaged in what can only be described as a remarkable democratic experiment, ceding power to popular assemblies and also to women’s and youth councils. Why would any progressive want to stand and watch the revolutionary Kurds of Kobani to fall to the murderous thugs of IS?

Another reason, too, is because of Turkey’s reluctance to do anything. The ghastly crisis unfolding in Islamic State could have been an opportunity for Turkey, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to build a new long-term alliance with his country’s embittered Kurdish minority against the brutal and barbarous extremism of IS. The PYD in Syria, however, is an offshoot of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been locked in a violent conflict with Ankara over Kurdish autonomy since 1984. Mr Erdogan took the decision to seal Turkey’s border with Syria, but this gave the green light to IS militants to seize Kobani and massacre its PKK-affiliated populace. It then bombed PKK positions in southern Turkey for the first time since the group agreed to participate in a peace process in March 2013.

At a briefing on 4 October, Mr Erdogan said that for Turkey the PKK was the equivalent of IS. Other than shamelessly echoing the mantra of Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, that ‘Hamas is Isis, Isis is Hamas’, a clear irony emerges because if the PKK had been deemed the same as IS Turkey would have done a lot more to help. The Turkish-Syrian border hasn’t been closed to IS fighters, only to PKK fighters. On 20 October, Turkey finally agreed to allow Kurdish fighters to cross the border into Syria, but only Kurds from Iraq and not from Turkey – and not with heavy weaponry either, which has been the main request of the YBG fighters in Kobani.

It would seem that Turkey doesn’t care whether Kobani falls to the jihadists. The Turkish government insists it won’t be bullied by anyone and rejects world opinion as to how it should be acting to help. But to balance the argument it’s fair to say that western governments have never lifted a finger either to help Turkey’s Kurds – or, by extension, Syria’s. As is gaining evermore traction, these are the wrong sort of Kurds – the victims of a NATO ally, rather than a horde of jihadists. Look no further than the interpretation of the language: Kurds in Turkey are deemed ‘terrorists’, but Kurds in Iraq are associated as being ‘freedom fighters’. No one is quite yet sure about the present status of the Iranian Kurds.

Progressives, then, need to get behind the Kurds, especially those Kurds in Kobani. There is a danger, of course, that their struggle will be co-opted by western governments, particularly by those governments which often shape outcomes in the Middle East to suit their own interests. Progressives do not have an alternative stance to pursue given how squeezed the Kurds are between Bashar al-Assad, Erdogan and IS.

In the words of an old Kurdish proverb: ‘Freedom is never given but taken.’

 

Standard
Britain, Iraq, Islamic State, NATO, Syria, Turkey, United States

Turkey: why isn’t it doing anything to curb the advances of Islamic State?

THE LACK OF TURKISH ACTION

Almost 200,000 people have been forced to flee and abandon their homes, joining 1.5 million Syrian refugees already in Turkey.

Poorly equipped Kurdish fighters – men, women and children – have tried in vain with AK-47 assault rifles to hold back the maniacal hordes of Islamic State fighters. The terrorists are armed with modern, heavy-grade American weapons.

IS now has a clear grip on at least a third of the Syrian Kurdish stronghold of Kobani on the border with Turkey.

U.S. and Arab warplanes and drones have been targeting IS positions, but to little avail. U.S. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accepts the town could fall, leaving its remaining citizens facing rape, murder and torture at the hands of the barbarians besieging it.

All the while, just a few hundred yards over the border, Turkish troops look on. As IS fighters stalk the deserted streets of the town, Turkish tanks in clear sight of the calamity stand idle.

Turkey’s inaction as Kobani falls has provoked worldwide fury. Kurdish expats have taken to the streets throughout the country, and at least 19 people are known to have died in violent clashes against the government’s troops and police.

Washington has ‘voiced concern’ about Turkey’s reluctance to engage IS, even though it has its own parliament’s approval to do so.

Less diplomatically, a U.S. State Department official reportedly told the New York Times: ‘This isn’t how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a stone’s throw from its border.’

It does, indeed, seem outrageous that Turkey, the second-largest land power in NATO with 290,000 troops, and a candidate for EU membership, is doing nothing to prevent a massacre on its doorstep. Why does it view the prospect of IS’s dreaded black banner fluttering over a town near its border with such apparent equanimity?

The main reason – and it is a very simple one – is that Turkey abhors the 1.3million Syrian Kurds more than it hates IS.

Turkey is home to some 15million Kurds – about 20 per cent of its population – many of who are locked in a violent secessionist battle with the Turkish government.

What Turkey really fears is that the Syrian Kurds will establish their own state on the Turkey/Syria border, which could prove deeply destabilising in a country with such a large Kurdish population. Anything – even IS – that weakens the Syrian Kurds reduces that threat.

****

Turkey has, for 30-years, fought a brutal war against the far-Left militant Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), until a fragile ceasefire was declared in 2013. In those blood-soaked decades, 40,000 people were killed in vicious fighting that involved suicide bombers on the terrorist PKK side, the flattening of Kurdish villages on the other – and widespread allegations of torture on both.

What makes Turkey particularly reluctant to defend the Syrian Kurds in Kobani is that they are allied to the PKK, and committed to Kurdish homeland. This explains why Turkish border guards have been stopping PKK militia and other Kurdish fighters from joining their Syrian kinsmen in Kobani to fight IS.

And why, in contrast, they turned a blind eye to foreign jihadis flying into Turkey to take the long bus journey over the border to Syria – not to mention the 3,000 Turks who have joined IS after being recruited in rundown provincial towns.

Turkey’s response to IS was certainly complicated by the terrorists’ seizure of 49 Turkish hostages in Syria. But rather than refuse to negotiate, the Turks exchanged them for 180 imprisoned IS sympathisers.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has made it plain he sees no moral difference between the Kurds in Kobani and IS.

In a briefing, Mr Erdogan said: ‘It is wrong to view them differently; we need to deal with them jointly.’

One diplomat who is involved in attempting to build the anti-IS alliance says Erdogan hates the Syrian Kurds. What is more, the diplomat said, is that ‘he thinks they’re worse than IS.’

Elsewhere, the EU’s counter-terrorism co-ordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, said: ‘The Syrian Kurds are a big concern for Erdogan because he is not done with the PKK.’

Both the EU and the U.S. has designated the PKK as a terrorist organisation. The irony is that the West is now implicitly relying on PKK fighters to relieve Kobani. And the fact is that, until IS came along, the Syrian Kurds were getting ever closer to their dreams of an autonomous state.

In the chaos of the Syrian civil war, they had declared their own statelet, calling it ‘Rojava’, which straddled Syria’s northern border with Turkey like a series of cantons.

An embattled President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, locked in a lethal war with IS, tolerated this arrangement, which put Kobani right in the centre of the statelet. Little wonder IS considers the town to be of such strategic significance.

The Syrian Kurds have taken their lead from Kurds in northern Iraq, who have established their own thriving and virtually autonomous regime in an oil-rich region now known as Iraqi Kurdistan.

The difference, however, is that Turkey does not see the Iraqi Kurds – who will have nothing to do with the PKK – as a threat. Ankara invested heavily in the region and has become increasingly dependent on Kurdistan’s oil and gas to fuel its own growth.

In contrast, Turkey fears that any concession to the Syrian Kurds will fuel demands from its own restive Kurdish population for autonomy.

On top of all of this, you have the autocratic and self-determined nature of Erdogan who, in a move reminiscent of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, appointed himself president this summer after serving 12-years as prime minister.

No Turkish leader since the death in 1938 of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, has invested himself with such power as Erdogan. But whereas Ataturk wanted to distance Turkey from its religious heritage, turning it into a power player in modern Europe, Erdogan has very different ideas.

As part of his general conservative push, Erdogan has been trying to re-orientate the country away from the decadent West and towards the Arab world, which the Ottoman Turks ruled for centuries.

****

With his ambition to revive Turkey’s once-great power status, Erdogan has allied the country not only with the conservative Sunni Muslims of Saudi Arabia, but with the Muslim Brotherhood regime of former President Morsi in Egypt, and with the Sunni militant Palestinian group Hamas.

In doing so, he destroyed Turkey’s good relations with Israel, a staunch ally of the Kurds.

Relations with the newly-elected military regime in Egypt are grim, too. Erdogan’s emotional pull towards Sunni Arabs means he is implacably opposed to Syria’s President Assad, who is an ally of Shia Iran, and explains why he is so keen to back Assad’s enemies, even if it means backing IS.

That is why he is telling the U.S. that only if America extends its intervention in Syria to toppling Assad will he then move to help the Kurds in Kobani.

Erdogan will drive a very hard bargain before he contemplates any military action, not least because the Turks realise that while Western intervention comes and goes in the Middle East, Turkish intervention in Syria could involve the country in an intractable war that lasts decades.

Yet, this is a NATO country which the West hopes will put men on the ground to repulse IS. Some hope that is. For as well as supporting the terrorists, Turkey has been allowing British jihadis to cross its borders, while simultaneously claiming its desire to join the anti-IS coalition.

At this terrifying moment and juncture when IS appears to be unstoppable, it’s tragic for the West that Turkey is the country that holds most of the cards.

Standard
Britain, Foreign Affairs, Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, United States

Western intervention in Iraq…

IRAQ

The UK Government, backed by the official opposition, has returned to the scene of one of our worst foreign policy misadventures. British fighter jets are once again dropping bombs on Iraq.

We should remember that the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the chaotic dismantling of the Ba’athist state, was meant to be an exercise in enlightened ‘liberal intervention’.

Today, however, Iraq is a broken and corrupt state, and is a country that is ravaged by sectarian conflict. Its border with Syria, fractured by perpetual civil war, no longer exists. A self-declared caliphate has been established by Islamic State (IS), a group of barbarous Sunni supremacists, who are highly motivated and well-trained. Many of the militants are from Europe, and the overarching objective of IS is one of genocide. Air strikes may have halted their advances in northern Iraq and parts of Syria but the militants will inevitably regroup, just as the Taliban has done in Afghanistan.

The Yazidis, a group of ancient religious minorities, along with Christians and Kurds, are being persecuted, murdered or cleansed from their ancestral homes. For these groups this is now an existential struggle for survival.

Throughout the region, too, tensions fester. The conflict between Sunnis and Shias shows no sign of abating, and President Assad and his fellow Alawites, a heterodox Shia sect, are holding onto power in what is largely left of Syria. Assad is holding on largely through the proxy support of Iran and through Lebanon’s Shia militia Hezbollah, which itself has sustained heavy losses fighting rebel groups in Syria.

The convolutions and corrupt autocracies within the Gulf, some of whom have been funding and arming the various anti-Assad groupings but now fear blowback, have joined Barack Obama’s fight against Islamic State. Saudi Arabia, for instance, looks both ways on terrorism: it musters all in its power to promote Wahhabism worldwide while simultaneously posing as an ally of the US and Britain, from which it buys fighter jets and other military hardware. For some, IS became a product of Saudi foreign policy.

We should wonder whether President Obama has a coherent strategy for the Middle East. The President was, after all, deeply reluctant to become embroiled and sucked into another Middle East war. In August last year, the US and British were preparing to intervene in Syria on the side of the rebels after the murderous Assad regime used chemical weapons against his own people in Aleppo. Now, the US-led coalition is bombing IS and the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra in Iraq and Syria, while remaining (ostensibly) opposed to President Assad.

Given the disastrous interventionist approach in both Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003, citizens of the Western world should be asking what Mr Obama’s plan is. What stamina does the US have for nation-building in the Middle East? How does it intend to tackle and defeat IS when its hardened fighters are so adept at melting back into the civilian population and when the president steadfastly refuses to countenance the use of US ground troops? What plan does America have for brokering peace between Sunni and Shia factions in Iraq? And what of geopolitical and diplomatic relations with Iran, without which there can be no lasting peace in the Middle East? Turkey, too, a NATO ally, needs to be fully engaged. The ultimate solution to the conflicts in the Middle East must come from within the region itself.

****

Without our aerial support, responsibility for containing IS falls on Iraq’s weak army, overstretched and poorly equipped Kurdish peshmerga fighters, the forces of Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad, and a ragtag coalition of secular Syrian militias. Whilst the West should continue to support the Kurds diplomatically and arm their fighters, this alone will not be enough to prevent the genocide of the religious minority groups. If IS is allowed to gain strength and momentum, its deadly threats may well soon extend beyond the Middle East.

Following the democratic debate in the House of Commons Britain is right to join the US air strikes in Iraq. The Baghdad government’s plea for help and assistance makes this war legal. The campaign also has broad regional support, and is a last resort, given that you cannot negotiate with a ruthless and barbaric terrorist organisation.

The UK’s involvement is an admission of culpability for the condition of Iraq. Iraq is what it is now because of what has transpired since that ill-judged invasion of 2003. But while the British Parliament has been eager to support the Americans in the most of limited circumstances, i.e. it has backed intervention in Iraq but not in Syria, with the RAF having allocated six GR4 Tornados, based in Cyprus, to deal specifically with IS positions in Iraq, anything beyond this symbolic support would be a profound mistake. No matter how enthusiastic the Prime Minister is to engage IS in Syria, there is no desire or willingness among the British people for British involvement in a regional and intra-Islamic conflict that David Cameron has already said could last 30-years or more.

Standard