Supporting the killing of human beings is never a simple matter, even defensive killing against those attacking oneself, or one’s friends, or innocent civilians, with an intent of brutality that even fiction can do little justice in representing. It’s clear, and beyond the margin of error from propagandistic effects, that Eastern Syria, Norther Iraq, and Kobane has been under attack by a brutal, quasi-fascist death cult, admittedly intent on slavery and the destruction of certain peoples, like the Yazidi. The Islamic State isn’t just another boogieman in the West’s arsenal of propaganda and fear mongering. They really are bad guys, even if the US State Department and Western political classes use fear of IS and extremist forms of Islamic movements to advance their interests, both at home and abroad.
The Kurds in Rojava — one of several groups the US government has, for now, and after an initial delay, determined to be the best chance of halting the Islamic State’s advance— are fighting to defend not just civilians in the crosshairs of the IS. Many are equally fighting to defend a system of directly democratic institutions built in several Syrian towns and cantons, in the last few years, just as the Syrian army abandoned vast areas of northern Syria at the commencement of the civil war. These institutions, along with the persistence of revolutionaries under the leadership and influence of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have become a new beacon of hope for secularism, feminism, and real democracy in an area of the world devastated by decades of imperialist aggression and attacks from the western powers, as well as sectarian, brutal conflicts raging in their wake.
It really is a no brainer, then, to call for a rigorous arming of those forces who have been clearly defending their own independent movement for democracy and autonomy in an area of the world that rarely sees such movements develop. Further, what’s being armed isn’t just another Leninist group centered around a cultish “great leader” (though, to be fair, there is a little of that at play in the admiration the PKK tends to have for their “Apo”), but a group that has taken a decisive turn in recent years away from the failed command & control philosophy of various Marxist-Leninist party arrangements of the past toward a more horizontal, bottom up approach to self-governance and direct democracy.
More difficult is the question of US involvement, including most importantly “coalition” airstrikes on IS positions both in and around Kobane. True, the YPG has welcomed this involvement, even requested it vigorously. Still, it should be patently obvious the danger a movement faces in calling for such “support” via the US state — a state that has armed just about every right wing, fascist and counter revolutionary movement the world has seen since WWII, not to mention waged war against over a dozen Muslim countries since 1980, and had just a decade ago invaded a country that, in result of such, spawned the very threat it now wishes to dispose of (and here we shouldn’t fail to mention the number of civilians killed in other regions of the Middle East from drone strikes, particularly in Pakistan).
War, of course, is a messy business, messier still when the sides are muddled and “lesser evil” determinations are employed. Supporting the arming of the YPG, for instance, carries the veneer of an assumption that those that are doing the supplying could have no ulterior motive. But what we know for certain is that both short term and long term US foreign policy goals inform everything the US state does. It’s rarely a question of “values”, or supporting what’s “right”, nor is it simply a question of bowing to public pressure, even in time of a forthcoming election. The US always has ulterior motives, especially in the Middle East, and acts upon them.
One could argue that what the Rojava Kurds are doing is making friends with the US government out of necessity, with little illusions about future prospects of co-optation. The PKK, as well as the Kurds in general, are very well experienced in betrayal. But there is little doubt that once the Islamic State is put squarely in its grave the US will return to its partner Turkey and Turkish interests (and Iraqi Kurdish interests) and either forget about Rojava or conspire, once again, to crush the social revolution, if it indeed outlasts the war.
In another sense, supporting groups like YPG can come at its own particular cost. Armed groups, no matter how magnanimous they seem to be (and most will claim to be doing the work “of the people”) are still fraught with brutal elements. To argue that the anarchist militias during the Spanish civil war never once committed acts of brutality or carried out a single atrocity is to miss what is the very nature of war, at its core (even “peoples war”), which is to kill the enemy. To kill.
We should therefore have no illusions about the YPG. As much as we celebrate a group of defenders born of a real political revolution in Rojava, that are, even by so called “Secular Western” standards, well ahead in terms of gender equality and democracy, nonetheless they are operating as a military combat force and will inevitable carry out brutalities of their own, even if they purportedly adhere to the Geneva Convention.
On the other hand, while we can argue all we want about the ethics of arming people to fight a war, in the end we have to make a determination based not only on ultimate principles, but on real world conditions and considerations. This does not mean we should do so uncritically. If there’s one thing the anti-authoritarian left does well, is support critically.
One can only hope that international attention on Rojava continues, and points toward a continued defense of the revolutionary gains of the last few years, as it has the tactical gains of the defense of Kobane. But not uncritically.
TFG Casper
