It has been a week since the day that the murderers of ISIS began their attack. The surrounding area has been evacuated completely. 160.000 people have abandoned the region from Rozava provinence and lower. Dead band. Every inch of the western Turkey-Syria borderline has starved life. It is a No man’s land. Just a single dot is left alive. It is a ray of light and struggle surrounded by the thickest darkness. It is a ray of light. The barricades of Kobani.
The convenient massacre in Kobani
The battles in Kobani have escaped the narrow limits of the geopolitical chessboard of Middle East. Otherwise, Turkey would not remain an observer of a slaughter some hundred meters from its borders. Turkey would not just watch the fastest growing army rising since the Second World War and the Nazi invasion, the army of ISIS that razed the last town next to Turkish territory throwing mortars even to Turkish border settlements. While the Turkish army-constabulary is beating reporters, they torment the impoverished Kurdish refugees and have already killed 13 protesters who stood up against the political tricks of Erdogan. For the Kurdish fighters, only silence. The borders remain closed for them.
The (Sunni) Erdogan is not hiding anymore. The (Sunni) soldiers of ISIS are there in order to achieve what Evren, Demirel and Ozal did not manage to do, disband the Kurdish resistance. There is no reason to pretend anymore. Erdogan sees before him, the prospect of the crush of the most powerful Kurdish liberation movement by ISIS army, and then the opportunity to take action on “clean” land potentially in his possession and collaborate with ISIS smuggling oil and more. Every country has its Melissanidis.
Guess who’s next on the line
Americans are used to these stories. They understand the confidence of Erdogan. At the same time, however, they seem to have been totally losing their access to the region. 20 years of military invasions, trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dead within two months went to hell because of the onslaught of the jihadists. The cops of the world have lost control. The Pentagon is aware of the fact that whoever they send they will return in a coffin. There are no allies, so the old classic recipe of “allies” that the great superpower drives, ends –for now- where the knife of the jihadists starts.
No one can see the next ISIS next move. If the raid on Turkish soil is excluded, the only direction left to ISIS id Lebanon. At the same time that everyone was focusing in Kobani, Jabhat al-Nusra an ally of ISIS in Syria attacked Lebanese territory, where eventually were pushed back by Hezbollah fighters. Also, 200 pounds of dynamite burst at the French Cultural Centre in the center of Gaza and the responsibility for this bombing was taken by the "Islamic State of Gaza." If these operations continue in this direction, only one will be next in the line. The ultimate cop (Robocop) of the region: Israel. «Fear and loathing in the Middle East».
Created by the USA. Rose in Saudi Arabia. Now came of age and biting.
What can one conclude from the first total war evolving during the capitalist crisis? Who is this Brave New World that is dawning? What’s behind the gloom and death?
The Greek media continue to cover these events in the same way they used to cover the first Gulf War. Whatever the gospel of State Department says. Those few placed in the channels sound like Bush and Rumsfeld, asking the West to suppress the rebellion of the disloyal, as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan. They all ask the big boss to clean up everything. But as we have said: the era of the world’s sheriff, has long gone.
The era of the lock, shot, done for the USA and NATO is finished by the start of the civil war in Syria. The last performance of the sovereignty of the Euro-Atlantic alliance goes back to extermination of the already crumbling Gaddafi in Libya. And certainly, those who nourished his father (Al Qaeda) in no way today, despite verbal dude, cannot cope with the child (ISIS) which now grew and sweeping everything in its path.
Light against darkness. Kobani means barricade.
The battle in Kobani is a clear picture of the two totally diametrical worlds that now collide. The life, the history and the class conflict do not obey the norms and manuals. Especially, those of the (majority of) the Greek left wing which soaked by the golden age of the Soviets is always looking for the only one imperialist that conspires, buys and intertwines. The imperialist chain does not only have rings, it also has edges. And these tips are not always hold by Uncle Sam. Especially today, one side keeps a guy with a turban and a blade while his “homeland” is called caliphate.
The caliphate is not only a brutal imperial regime. It is, also, a new model of capitalist accumulation. Petroleum, slavery and Koran. The jihad fanaticism actually merges with the dynamic creation of new markets in the territory of a new operating system. The Empire wants to be compact in the inside – especially in the embryonic stage – so it can crush any form of resistance. So far, ISIS crushes the unbelievers, those who have questioned the teachings of the one and only prophet of Islam. ISIS in Kobani wants to crush the other world, “the secular state of the Kurdish”. The real competitive world. The world where communists fighters dream of living that stand against them. Our world.
The Kurds have a basic difference in across all the tribes involved in conflicts in that region. The Kurdish people are not seeking for justice in the afterlife. They cannot wait to live in freedom and dignity in another lifetime. The Kurds are Sunnis chased by Sunnis. Shiites chased by Sunnis. Sunnis chased by Shiites. Jews pursued by Muslims. Muslims chased by Christians. The hunted of all Middle East, where they stood and built communities, equitable systems of self-government. And this does not only infuriate fundamentalists. It angers the “traditional” imperialism.
A new page of the impoverished humanity is being written these days and nights. Those of us who are not involved we will be judged for our solidarity.
The Kurdish resistance in Kobani is neither the Poitier nor the Fall of 2014. It is not the battle between the civilized world and the barbarians. One religion against another. It is the struggle of freedom fighters against totalitarianism. It’s the battle of the oppressed from all around the world the battle for their own lives. This battle will stand next to the great moments in human history; the Spanish Civil War, the Paris Commune, the NLF(= EAM), the Vietnam the Peasant war in Germany. It is the factor that makes, a scrap of paper, the grand geopolitical designs of those who wear turbans and those wearing a tie. That’s why we shudder, and it inflames us. Why the AK-47 are in the hands of women, elderly and children, against the American tanks of Islam-capitalists, is a picture of the past, present and future of poor humanity.
Give them a minute longer.
General Patton, addressing his soldiers before the encounter for the first time of Rommel’s Nazi army, told them that “Courage is the fear that lasts just for a minute longer”. The minute that Kobani will never end. Water, canned and bullets are enough.
This article was originally published in Greek at Barikat.gr.