As it did in Alep with the help of Russ­ian forces, the Bachar regime mas­sacres civil­ians and is about to reclaim the rebel enclave of the Ghou­ta in Syria.

This a fact no one can deny. Pro­pa­gan­da will use a pro­fu­sion of images, only to deny evi­dence in the end: those who die are always the pop­u­la­tions attempt­ing to sur­vive in all the cross­fires. But deny­ing a mas­sacre because this serves one’s polit­i­cal vision, with the excuse that pro­pa­gan­da uses it, would be intel­lec­tu­al and polit­i­cal dishonesty.

Recov­er­ing Mossul required a blood bath. Recov­er­ing Raqqa was no bet­ter. In both cas­es, ISIS was respon­si­ble for the death of hostages in its hands: they were civil­ians attempt­ing to sur­vive, used wide­ly as “human shields”. In the case of Raqqa, while the SDF nego­ti­at­ed the final lib­er­a­tion in order to avoid use­less deaths on both sides, we can­not for­get his some went as far as to accuse them of “com­plic­i­ty with ISIS”.

But who can have the cyn­i­cism of assim­i­lat­ing pop­u­la­tions held hostage, even com­plic­it by neces­si­ty at times, with ISIS. Where, in the case of Raqqa and of Mosul, would the “lib­er­a­tors” have found the pop­u­la­tion that would form the base of the new admin­is­tra­tion on the premis­es, with­out the sup­port of civil­ians who had been sub­ject­ed to the igno­minies, or had tol­er­at­ed them? No one then assim­i­lat­ed the pop­u­la­tions to their per­se­cu­tors, because it was a mat­ter of replac­ing death with life and a future in need of building.

It should be like­wise for the pop­u­la­tions in the Ghouta.

But the pol­i­cy of the Bachar regime and of Rus­sia has noth­ing to do with the polit­i­cal strat­e­gy for Raqqa and the zones lib­er­at­ed from ISIS. Bachar’s pol­i­cy is a mil­i­tary pol­i­cy of crush­ing and anni­hi­lat­ing, even though every­one knows there is noth­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary left in this enclave, only pow­er games on the backs of those forced to take sides or die.

Accept­ing anoth­er vision and oppos­ing what is going on fur­ther north in Syr­ia in Afrin to what would be “pseu­do, pro­pa­gan­da mas­sacres” in the Ghou­ta is not only igno­ble and cyn­i­cal, but it does not allow an under­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tions of the ones and of the oth­ers, of the alliances and counter-alliances of inter­ests between region­al and inter­na­tion­al powers.

For years, war on the Syr­i­an soil has brought its load of deaths, exac­tions, destruc­tions, rapes, bro­ken lives and exiles.   Widen­ing the view to the whole of Mesopotamia and Turkey in its present con­for­ma­tion would increase the num­bers even more, all mask­ing unbear­able real­i­ties and new frac­tures in the human future on these territories.

List­ing the name of the peo­ples and keep­ing a grue­some account­ing between them would be adding yet more to the unspeakable.

Let us put in its prop­er per­spec­tive the sud­den hyp­o­crit­i­cal inter­est for the Ghou­ta dis­played by West­ern gov­ern­ments, the very same ones who greet Erdoğan as their part­ner and who, no lat­er than yes­ter­day, were still request­ing sim­ple “restraint” in Afrin.

This is the pur­suit of a polit­cy that would not accept that Syr­ia, freed of its tyrants and mul­ti­ple Jihadist mur­der­ers, gov­ern itself autonomous­ly for it’s own sake, in demo­c­ra­t­ic fed­er­a­tions of its peo­ples, all the oppo­site of the cur­rent rot­ting and mur­der­ous Nation-State.

These same gov­ern­ments have sup­port­ed diplo­mat­i­cal­ly and through mil­i­tary means what now pro­vokes laugh­ter when it calls itself “free”. These same gov­ern­ments have allowed an armed Islamist counter rev­o­lu­tion in Syr­ia that dis­possed the ini­tia­tors of the anti-Bachar Spring. And already, at that moment, they sup­port­ed Turkey, an impor­tant ele­ment in the civ­il war.

These same gov­ern­ments used the fight­ers of North­ern Syr­ia like canon fod­der against ISIS, with­out ever accept­ing their polit­i­cal project.

So the Ghou­ta is a reveal­er of the cyn­i­cal alliances of inter­ests, and of the con­fronta­tion of nation­al­ist wills at the region­al level.

The North­ern Syr­i­an Demo­c­ra­t­ic Fed­er­a­tion attempts to insert its strat­e­gy into this imbroglio and thus becomes hard to understand.

Call­ing on the Syr­i­an Nation to defend the bor­ders of Syr­ia against the inva­sion of Turk­ish forces and its beard­ed accom­plices, while reaf­firm­ing a project total­ly con­trary to Bachar’s Syr­ia, plays on such con­tra­dic­tions that it opens itself to every simplication…

No, this is not the Ghou­ta against Afrin.
No, this is not Bachar against Erdoğan.
No, this is not the Kurds against all the oth­er peoples…

The SDF and the PYD have demon­strat­ed they could defeat a NATO army’s project of pen­e­trat­ing deeply into Syr­ia and anni­hi­lat­ing the demo­c­ra­t­ic con­fed­er­al­ist project in the North.

The strat­e­gy of the “Coali­tions” was to let things hap­pen, so as to clar­i­fy the roles and places of each, tak­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­solve  the polit­i­cal ben­e­fits accrued in the mil­i­tary vic­to­ries against ISIS and the main fight­ing force. This strat­e­gy turns out to be unsucess­ful due to the resis­tance in Afrin.

Let’s not imag­ine these strate­gies as plots decid­ed around tables, even though they were dis­cussed at meet­ings we could mention.

The mil­i­tary defeat of ISIS, the win-win agree­ments between Europe and Turkey con­cern­ing migrants, the tem­po­rary shoring up of the regime in Bag­dad, and the back-ped­alling on the Ira­ki Kur­dish auton­o­my, the vic­to­ry of Turk­ish islamo-nation­al­ism on its Kur­dish pop­u­la­tions in the East, after three years of mas­sacres… The pre­dom­i­nant role tak­en on by Rus­sia and its Iran­ian allies in the pos­si­ble out­come, fol­low­ing the export on the premis­es of a mil­i­tary strat­e­gy… All pro­vide explic­it ele­ments of the present sit­u­a­tion, to which must be added the ambiva­lence and vari­abil­i­ty of the Amer­i­can pol­i­cy, as well the as Gulf’s involve­ment in domes­tic mil­i­tary operations…

The whole of these ele­ments, tak­en one by one, are enough to express the present con­tra­dic­tions. And in a war, these con­tra­dic­tions are sources of oppor­tu­ni­ties for alliances of inter­ests. As an exam­ple, Erdoğan’s is the eas­i­est illus­tra­tion available.

The arrival of Syr­i­an mili­tias in Afrin is one of those con­tra­dic­tions. The PYD and the SDF’s gam­ble of exploit­ing it at the polit­i­cal and the mil­i­tary lev­el is risky for the future. What is here a pro­pos­al for a tem­po­rary alliance of inter­ests rests on the pop­u­lar, human, polit­i­cal and con­fed­er­al force that welds togeth­er the defense in Afrin. All the dec­la­ra­tions issu­ing from the North­ern enti­ty show the will to move one piece for­ward on the chess­board with­out giv­ing an inch polit­i­cal­ly on their pro­pos­als for the future, thus back­ing Rus­sia up against its ambivalences.

When I see blos­som­ing here and there analy­ses on the neces­si­ty for the Kurds to advance with Bachar from here on, because he is Turkey’s best ene­my, I tell myself that Kur­dish nation­al­ism (which still exists out in real­i­ty) is sol­u­ble in Syr­i­an nation­al­ism until the next con­fronta­tion and that, decid­ed­ly, the media smoke­screens have done a good job of prepar­ing total incom­pre­hen­sion of the most absolute and sim­plis­tic kind, so dear to nation­alisms of all stripes.

Why should we ana­lyze, write, say the oppo­site of what we ana­lyzed, wrote and said yes­ter­day because, appar­ent­ly forced to mod­i­fy the rules of the on-site alliances, and more than ever, the enti­ty in North­ern Syr­ia is attempt­ing to save Afrin and its polit­i­cal project?

A polit­i­cal project that does not accom­mo­date itself to Bachar, nor to his ongo­ing mas­sacres in the Ghou­ta. The oppo­site is true, human­ly and in polit­i­cal terms. 

 Uncon­di­tion­al sup­port to the fight­ers for free­dom and democ­ra­cy in Afrin! 


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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Let­tres mod­ernes à l’Université de Tours. Gros mots poli­tiques… Coups d’oeil politiques…