(en) France, Organisation Communiste Libertarie (OCL) - The new war in Iraq: Kurds against jihadists -- The decisive role of the forces of the Kurdish revolutionary left (fr, pt)

[machine translation]

Largely ignored by almost all of the press, the most important political and military 
because of recent days has been the decisive intervention of the fighting men and women, 
various Kurdish movements in Syria and Turkey, it is -to say the Kurdish revolutionary 
left within Iraq and within the same autonomous Kurdistan to break the offensive jihad. 
---- The war against Kurdish jihadists in Iraq: an introduction ---- The situation in 
northern Iraq and Kurdistan is evolving very quickly. The thrust of the jihadists of the 
Islamic State (AEs) related to the collapse of the al-Maliki regime in Baghdad (and the 
gradual dominance of this current in the military camp of the opposition Syrian) runs 
today ' hui on the Kurdish front Iraq. If at first, the Peshmerga (Kurdish fighters name 
given to Iraq) took the offensive EI and the rout of the Iraqi army to take over quite 
large areas rich in oil (the vast city of Kirkuk) and proclaim the irreversibility of the 
independence of Kurdistan since August 2, jihadists have launched a second wave of attacks 
and attacks throughout the north of Iraq and against the Kurds . Offensive who met ... 
retirement peshmerga in less than 24 hours and resulted in the start of a large-scale 
ethnic cleansing against the many minorities in this region, including the desperate 
flight of tens of thousands of Yezidis in the arid mountains of Sinjar.

The most important politico-military makes these days is undoubtedly remarkable 
intervention fighting men and women, various Kurdish movements in Syria and Turkey on 
Iraqi territory and within the same autonomous Kurdistan. Notable because it is not only 
the mere arrival of particularly seasoned reinforcements, but the sign of a substantial 
change in policy reports (strength) within the Kurdish liberation movement as a whole.

A reminder

Syrian Kurdish militias have been fighting since late 2011 against jihadi tapes and other 
Islamist movements without the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Barzani lifting a 
finger to help them. Worse, the dominant Iraqi Kurdistan party did everything to sabotage 
the process of self-mobilization of the Kurds as part of the war in Syria, even 
establishing an economic embargo against the Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), even digging a 
trench (!) to prevent the crossing of the border between Kurdistan.

The KDP controls the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has indeed thoroughly map a 
strategic alliance with Turkey Erdogan that not only is the declared enemy of the PKK and 
Kurdish left, but officially supports Free Syrian Army and the Islamic Front (dominated by 
the Muslim Brotherhood) and covertly, using all Salafi fundamentalists and groups that 
will give birth to the al-Nosra Front (al-Qaeda) in late 2011 and EIIL (Islamic State in 
Iraq and the Levant), the formal creation of April 2013 policy Axe doubled as it should be 
for economic cooperation: direct export of Kurdish oil (bypassing Baghdad) against 
facilities granted to Turkish investors.

Facing the jihadist pushed the month of June 2014 in northern Iraq, with the capture of 
Mosul by the IU, the peshmerga government led by Barzani (KRG) take Kirkuk and a large 
swath of territory in Iraq. In just days, the "armed forces" Kurdish find themselves 
having to control the surface of a territory which has increased by about 40%, with a 
front line (border Turkish-Syrian border to the Iranian border) long 1500 km, which is 
well beyond the capabilities of those forces, moderately equipped, without logistics or 
aviation or monitoring means and in any case too few.

The retreat of the Peshmerga

In early August 2014, EI launches an attack on the territories held by the peshmerga 
retreating August 3, without a fight, leaving overnight hundreds of thousands of civilians 
unprotected. Among them, a range of minorities living there for centuries among cantons of 
Sunni Arab populations created by the regime of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, Christians of 
various rites, Yezidi (Kurdish practicing a singular monotheistic religion of origin 
multimillennial), Turkmens (Sunni and Shiite especially) Shabak (related to Kurds 
practicing various heterodox religions: Alevism, y?rs?misme ...).

Officially, the peshmerga were ordered to retreat because of their lack of ammunition and 
heavy weapons at the same time, we learn that a delegation of KRG is in the United States 
to demand weapons. So leverage? Or symptom of incompetence and disorganization of a 
corrupt regime? Why retirement instead of sending reinforcements and conduct diversionary 
attacks, guerrilla? For this retreat, especially in the Sinjar area bordering Syria (where 
about 200,000 Yazidis have fled, including 50,000 in the mountains almost desert north of 
the city), is still strange leaving the field to IE (which took over the passage of new 
oil fields and the Mosul Dam), this attack can cut territorial contiguity between the 
Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan and isolate a little more Kurds in Syria face, also, a 
fantastic offensive jihad in Canton Koban?. Barzani's government criticized the rout of 
the Iraqi army in Mosul leaving the field open for IR but its own armed forces were under 
orders exactly the same in Sinjar.

The risk of genocide and Kurdish fighting units Syrian intervention and Turkey

Finally, the very real risk of a real genocide and ethnic cleansing on a large scale will 
totally overwhelm the system, especially since the retirement of the Peshmerga and advance 
jihadist threat now Erbil, capital of Kurdistan. Appeal - although late - the next 
mobilization of Kurdish Iraq, Kurdish forces entered Syria and Turkey (PKK) on the "Iraqi 
face" on Aug. 6 after returning jihadists the border town of Rabia with Syria and the 
mobilization of various Kurdish movements of Iran (KDP-I, ... PJAK), American first strike 
on August 8 and delivery of arms (arms) directly peshmerga , bypassing the "unity" more 
fictional than Iraq.

A Sinjar like Makhmur, are the hundreds of men and women of the PYD-PKK fighters (called a 
first contingent of 1,500 fighter-es) who stopped the advance of the jihadists, set up a 
camp for fugitive organized a humanitarian corridor in the mountains of Sinjar, hosted 
thousands of refugees in the liberated areas Rojava launched an early offensive against 
particular area Makhmur and retaking villages around Sinjar, while the peshmerga KDP 
continued to desert in the greatest confusion.

HPG column militia, the military wing of the PKK, en route to Kirkuk

The military forces of Kurds in Syria, Turkey and Iran were also sent in a third location, 
the great city of Kirkuk taken by the peshmerga to strengthen its defense to the side of 
the peshmerga, including the PUK and Gorran, and August 12 in a fourth area, Lalesh, 
Yezidi holy city located in the northwest of Mosul. For their part, the fighting units 
Rojhelat - Eastern Kurdistan and Iranian Kurdistan - (the Yek?ney?n Parastina Rojhilat? 
Kurdistan?, YRK) and female units HPJ took the road Jalawla, a town in northeast Iraq 
taken Monday, Aug. 11 by EI.

A new political situation

Too early to draft policy reviews. Beyond the humanitarian tragedy that must be taken also 
as a political fact producing effects that level, should nonetheless be noted that the 
forces of the Left Kurdish (all more or less related to the PKK) have once again scored 
points by intervening effectively and appropriately in the conflict to stop offensive 
jihad, save thousands of lives, force people to defend themselves, to organize, to 
coordinate, to fight, to regain ground lost. The consequences are unpredictable at this 
stage, but already, it can be said that political relations, contradictions and 
oppositions crossing the Kurdish reality will be severely affected and it is not certain 
that the forces more traditional not emerge unscathed, as in the current Kurdish 
resistance, Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, there has also been a process of social change 
and political ruptures.

To say that the regional map of states and borders is totally out of whack has become a 
truism today. There are a few more weeks, or almost everyone reasoned in national terms: 
war in Syria, Iraq crisis, the peace process stalled in Turkey, etc.

The rise of jihadist Caliphate of IE or Mosul is a consequence of the simultaneous 
collapse of the Syrian and Iraqi regimes and the absence or weakness of other oppositions 
(civil or military). The other consequence of this crisis is the growing assertion of the 
Kurds as a people, beyond differences of nationality, their territorial dispersion, 
separations produced by history and harsh contrasts and very marked inside this 
social-political reality. As a people, as a nation, but not in the ethnic sense of the 
word: people and nation as political realities in construction and become, as plurality. 
The defense and the call for self-defense and the cooperation of "minorities" living in 
the Kurdish territorial space and relative secularism (more or less pronounced depending 
on the political currents) is an indication of the utmost importance on nature of the 
political project emerging in the confines of four nation-states in the region. In 
addition, the will of the Kurdish revolutionary left to transform society, forms of 
government (communalism), the statist paradigm of politics and of human community, social 
relations of production, class, gender ... is fraught with all threats to the established 
powers.

Of course, the intervention of the United States is not going to encourage this evolution, 
the contrary. Militarily, the airstrikes can carry some real blows to the jihadists, 
weaken here and there momentarily and allow Kurdish fighters better resist. But also take 
credit for victories on the field. The supply of arms and ammunition to the peshmerga and 
sending "military advisers" in Kurdistan is both a military and political support to key 
allies in the region: the institutional forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, and 
particularly the Barzani clan . Clan which in turn relies on international support to 
survive this, keep in control, to continue and expand the business of oil revenues in the 
service of a small bourgeois class traditional switched to the benefits of capitalism and 
commercialism, for maintain the current social and political relations in the Kurdish 
society that would forever remain unchanged and in tradition.

Today there is mobilized throughout the Kurdish diaspora around the world, from Germany to 
Australia, Canada, France and the Scandinavian countries, with all-out efforts on the 
Internet calls for donations, street demonstrations, gathering with permanent tents set 
... An international petition has been launched for the White House withdrew the PKK from 
the terrorist list (15,000 signatures in 48 hours), the European Movement of Kurdish women 
calls August 16 rallies in a dozen countries ... while in the presidential elections of 
August 10 in Turkey, despite the re-election of Erdogan, the real winner is obviously the 
jointly proposed by the "legal" Kurdish party candidate PKK and the "alternative" left 
Turkey linked to social movements, environmentalists, feminists, LGBT, etc ...

The story is in progress ... sometimes its sudden acceleration, and those are the men and 
women who stand, struggling and transform reality that make ... and not a "subject" 
abstract, predetermined and transhistorical.

August 12, 2014

JF (OCL)