(en) France, Organisation Communiste Libertarie (OCL) - The sense of solidarity with Koban? - "Anarchists solidarity of Rojava" (fr, pt)

[machine translation]

Friday, October 31, the eve of the World Day "Emergency Koban? for" a meeting was 
organized in Paris by the group "Anarchists solidarity of Rojava." A small hundred people 
participated, among many questions about the meaning of this fight and want to do 
something. Here is the text of the speech that was delivered in the introduction of this 
evening ---- Dear (s) Friend (s), expensive (e) s comrades, dear brothers and sisters 
Kurdish ---- It is with great pride that on Friday, the eve of the International Day of 
Solidarity with Koban?, I speak at your meeting, on behalf of anarchist solidarity 
initiative with Rojava, a group that s is newly formed in Paris on the initiative of 
individuals or members of non-governmental organizations and libertarians who tried in 
various ways to attract attention and to develop a political and material solidarity with 
the fighters and the fighters of Koban? more largely with the people of Rojava struggle.

For six weeks Koban? city was the scene of fierce fighting by the volunteers of the YPG 
and YPJ. Under the eyes of the world, the Kurdish struggle to defend both the territorial 
and political autonomy Rojava and resist to the death the waves of attacks by mercenaries 
of the Islamic State, it must not only respect and admiration but is now opening a new 
sequence for both the Kurdistan itself, but also for the entire region, and finally to all 
those who are interested directly or indirectly in all channels that attempts to take 
emancipation.

Resistance Koban? became the resistance of all Kurds throughout the region and throughout 
the Diaspora. It has become a prime factor in the sense of power and in that capacity 
today to take their destiny in hand, to write a new chapter in the history of the 
oppressed people but certainly that is always fought, arms in hand to uphold its dignity, 
its existence and rights.

Mobilization as evidenced by recent events in Turkey have experienced a level of violence 
reminiscent of the 1990s: More than 50 dead in a few days, curfew, army deployment in the 
cities. Mobilization of thousands of Kurds and Turks also integral to the Turkish-Syrian 
border to show their support for closer resistant and challenge vis-?-vis the Turkish 
army. Mobilization with hundreds, thousands of young and not so young who forced dams, cut 
the wire and joined for a day, for a week or more, people who refused to leave their homes 
and fighter-es of besieged city.

The exceptional nature of this battle is also qualitative: It has not escaped anyone that 
combatants and fighters are mainly coming from the left and Kurdish that he / they are 
involved in a project of political and territorial autonomy in the Rojava project based on 
the critique of the concept of the nation state, the communal power, gender, mixed gender, 
taking into account inclusive of all minorities in this region, forms of justice less 
punitive but based on the consensus and the idea of rehabilitation on original forms of 
democracy.

The revolution of Rojava and that the Kurdish movement called "democratic confederalism" 
is a proposal should be seen in the context of the uprisings of the "Arab Spring", which 
becomes important in view of their balance sheets, their failures and questions that had 
been opened and then remained unanswered. It must be considered a valid and concrete 
proposal for the entire Mediterranean and Middle Eastern region: a coherent alternative to 
all systems of oppression and plunder, without exception, from the territorial divisions 
of the colonial era and the two world wars, both chimeras "Arab nationalism" one-party and 
military dictatorships that the oil monarchies, the different variants of political Islam 
or even the colonialist state of Israel.

If the battle of Koban? has a specificity, the range of possibilities opened up by the 
victory of Kurdish fighter-es: Koban? that particular brand as a break with decades of 
imperial domination of the capitalist powers is that the particular struggle of a 
particular people for freedom is becoming the universal name of the liberation of all .

This is the meaning embodied the slogan "struggle Koban? is that of all mankind" .

The Kurds have not sought Rojava a "right to difference". They emphasized the legitimacy 
of their struggle against the criteria internationally accepted as the right to 
self-determination. But they also highlighted their project, their achievements, proposals 
and argued that, which is why they were fighting and they could be taken anywhere else and 
national oppression against identities issues were denied or manipulated by the States 
that their proposals could help to reverse the course of history, to deviate from its 
course and put an end to centuries of colonial and imperial domination, that this is of a 
struggle for humanity as had also said the Zapatistas it a few years ago in the depths of 
the mountains of southeastern Mexico ( "against neoliberalism and for humanity" ).

What is new and noteworthy is that the great wave of sympathy expressed increasingly in 
recent weeks against resistant and resistant to Koban? is not oriented figures restarted 
the "victim" vulnerable, without speech and helpless and request a "humanitarian aid" to 
the "international community".

Koban?, did not request that the "saviors" come to fight for them (for a ground 
intervention in particular), Koban? asked something else much more important politically: 
they have asked for and ways to fight them -Same, and especially weapons, ammunition, 
equipment, to defend themselves as political subjects asserting control of their destiny 
and fighting for their rights, for their emancipation and freedom .

This is a fundamental break in the period also opens for us and potentially for millions 
of people worldwide, a new situation in which resistance to attacks on, as an idea and 
practice is not automatically synonymous with defense of the gains or return to a glorious 
past, but it can be interpreted and live as opening up a new horizon on conquest, 
progress: a way forward, a path of liberation , a offensive struggle that challenges the 
current idea, the hypothesis and the possibility of transforming the established order and 
that this transformation takes a revolutionary course .

It was obvious that this position could only be combated and condemned by both local and 
imperialist Western powers.

Turkey first. After locking the fighters and Kurdish fighters in Koban? blocking exits 
north of the city and preventing reinforcements and supplies arms and ammunition to arrive 
after detained hundreds of Syrian Kurds who sought refuge across border, after bloodily 
suppressed the demonstrations in support Koban?, after reaffirming want to establish a 
"buffer zone" (proposal supported by the Netherlands) on the Syrian side of the border, 
that is to say where exactly are Rojava territories, Turkey remains the main threat to the 
Kurds. The Turkish state since 2011 that helps Islamism various currents and movements, 
has clearly chosen the Islamic state against the Kurdish liberation movement .

The United States is not on the same line as Turkey. For them, Koban? is not a strategic 
objective. On the other hand, officially, their mission in Syria is limited to jihadists. 
It should be remembered that officially the US, unlike France, have never believed in the 
imminent overthrow of the Assad regime. They are for a transition and thus a Syrian 
coalition government (this was the meaning of the Geneva talks in February 2014). Recall 
that the approach of the United States is done by taking into account the interests of 
Russia and Iran (where the agreement on the destruction of chemical weapons), while France 
(and Britain) wants running into the pile, overthrow Assad, to fight the Iranians retired 
and inflict a defeat for Putin. Today, most "hawks" in the Western region are at the Quai 
d'Orsay and the Elysee.

Throughout history, wars and revolutions have always found intertwined: refusal of 
inter-imperialist wars leading to revolutionary uprisings, revolutionary attempts turning 
into war caught up homes smoldering war and devoured by the armies of gravediggers of the 
revolution ... We know from experience that all the logic of war, even those that must be 
assumed, contain the dangers of militarism, harden reports, centralized forms of power and 
command, closing the space and time reflection, debate and reject the contradictions that 
make the wealth of a process of transformation and ultimately go against the revolutionary 
dynamic.

As in all other circumstances, the Kurds now find themselves having to jointly conduct a 
war and a revolution. They probably will not have the luxury of choosing between favoring 
one over the other, but one thing is certain: the kind of solidarity they receive may help 
tip the balance to one side rather than the other. For our part, we believe, within the 
Kurdish society and the Kurdish liberation movement as within the solidarity movement, and 
particularly preferred support practices and initiatives that tend to autonomy and 
self-organization populations and human communities, support trends that drive the 
political emancipation and social revolution.

The draft Kurdish autonomy is not a revolutionary anarchist and anti-capitalist project, 
it does not address the establishment of libertarian communism and the abolition of all 
hierarchies, capital and wages: but against, his victory or defeat depends on it will be 
possible or not, to pronounce and to debate certain ideas, certain requirements , such as 
equality, the fight against capitalist exploitation of living labor and domestic 
exploitation of women, taking collective responsibility for decisions on all issues 
affecting the lives of people in production, housing, education, attention to agriculture, 
a critical development and high productivity ...

We do not usually ask the protagonists of the struggles that they accept it supports all 
of our references and our positions in exchange for solidarity. Otherwise, it remains in 
the inter-se. The most common tendency is to affirm solidarity with some struggles and not 
others depending on the presence or absence of a number of criteria and partial and 
potential transformation elements they contain and show . Stand in solidarity with the 
Kurdish struggle for autonomy, follows the same rules: it's not delude themselves and 
support a "revolution" closed or unconditionally share the ins and outs eyes.

It is, according to what has been suggested previously on the meaning of this struggle in 
the period and context, several things simultaneously:

support resistance against attempts to extermination ,
support the political meanings that have produced this fight against victimization and the 
emergence of a third or fourth lane in the Syrian context ,
and at the same time, it is defended in the very process of this resistance it is possible 
to take their destiny in hand , to assert gestures of equality and assert itself as a 
political subject and the subject of history, tracing a path of emancipation.
In fact, contribute to the possibility that a social revolution would be deeply 
qu'envisageable it, make a few are met pre-requisites for a transformation of this nature 
can emerge, can be expressed as an option, find an echo, relays, support points, manages 
to translate into conflicts, practices, ways of being and living, if any answer to a 
socially shared need, then turns in a kind of evidence and reality.

Therefore, if combatants and non-combatants and their Kurdish Kurdish allies are now in 
the front line to face, with their bodies, their intelligence, their generosity and 
weapons in hand, bloodthirsty bands of crackpots the Islamic state, and that therefore 
they need and have the means to fight, it is very important that they are less dependent 
on the possible various powers, including the United States which, in addition to their 
position imperial superpower (especially military) is in itself very problematic for any 
attempt at revolution in the world. It is not possible to trust them (remember the 
massacre of Halabja in March 1988 subsequent to the call of the United States in the 
uprising of the Kurds), especially as the foreign policy of the United States is known to 
run in cycles, it is likely that the approach ?tatsunienne rather "pragmatic" now will 
turn sooner or later a new offensive to "hawks" neo-conservatives, the same people who 
once heavily involved in the US war Vietnam (Nixon) and later in the wars in Iraq (Bush 
father and son), effects that we know.

As anarchists / libertarian communist / anti-authoritarian anti-capitalist France, must be 
given a special mention in Holland . The French head of state has indeed quickly aligned 
positions in Turkey expressing his support for the creation of a "buffer zone" in the 
Rojava and along the entire Syrian-Turkish border. But if the Turkish army enters Syrian 
soil is both a declaration of war against Syrian Kurds, but also against the regime in 
Damascus. This is another true goal. Be aware that this is what France wants, government 
and opposition alike: an air and ground war, not primarily against the jihadists but to 
undertake the road to Damascus to the presidential palace.

France, unlike the United States, has since the beginning of the uprising in Syria 
(February-March 2011) aligned with the axis Turkey-Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are the 
main suppliers of financial and material assistance Islamist fighters, that is to say in 
the most position going into the war to topple the Assad regime and to replace it with 
anything, except by a Sunni Islamist regime, which will further with or without 
dismemberment of the country, a colony / protectorate of these regional powers (especially 
Turkey, which has a long common border, which is by far the largest military power and 
would see the region once again placed under cutting a new Ottoman Empire) and a new 
lucrative market for multinationals. By aligning Turkey, the French state is the goal of 
annihilation accomplice draft Kurdish autonomy in Syria today, and Turkey soon.

The campaign of solidarity with the liberation struggle of the Kurds can not, in France at 
least, identify and denounce the dangerous criminal and cynical policy of the French 
government.

See also the latest news from Koban?

Koban?, nearly two months of resistance
http://oclibertaire.free.fr/spip.php?breve575