[Peace-discuss] ISIS, Double Standards, and the Fight in Kobani

[David Johnson via Peace-discuss]

Green Shadow Cabinet <http://greenshadowcabinet.us/>


  Green Shadow Cabinet <http://greenshadowcabinet.us/>

ISIS, Double Standards, and the Fight in Kobani

October 10, 2014
Ajamu Baraka, Public Intervenor for Human Rights 
<http://greenshadowcabinet.us/member-profile/7568>

*/While ISIS moves to slaughter Kurds in Kobani, the current situation 
is part of the cynical farce that is the fight against ISIS
/*

The U.S. is not interested in altering the balance of forces on the 
ground in Syria by seriously degrading ISIS militarily and undermining 
  its primary short-term strategic objective of regime change in Syria.

/Common Dreams/ 
<http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/10/isis-double-standards-and-fight-kobani>

The U.S. is conducting a curious humanitarian war against ISIS in Syria. 
While Kobani, the largely Kurdish district that straddles the border 
with Turkey is being attacked by ISIS forces and facing the very real 
possibility of mass civilian killings if it falls, U.S. military 
spokespersons claimed that they are watching the situation in Kobani and 
have conducted occasional bombing missions but that they are 
concentrating their anti-ISIS efforts in other parts of Syria. Those 
other efforts appear to consist of bombing empty buildings 
<http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/09/24/us-bombed-empty-buildings-in-raqqa-in-airstrikes-on-isil-in-syria/>, 
schools, small oil pumping facilities, an occasional vehicle and grain 
silos 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/29/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idUSKCN0HO0EV20140929> 
where food is stored to feed the Syrian people. Turkey also seems to be 
watching as the Kurds of Kobani fight to the death against ISIS.

The humanitarian concerns of officials in the U.S. with the plight of 
Kurds in Kobani could not be more different than what occurred in Iraq 
when ISIS forces made a push into Kurdish territory. When the Kurdish 
city of Erbil was under attack by ISIS, U.S. forces unleashed the full 
power of its air force in tactical coordination with Kurdish forces to 
push ISIS back.

So what is the difference in the two situations?

The difference and the reason why the Kurds of Kobani are to be 
sacrificed stems from the fact that they are the wrong kind of Kurds. 
  Masoud Barzani and the bourgeois Kurds of the Kurdish Democratic Party 
(KDP) are the "good Kurds" and the predominant force among the Kurds of 
Iraq.   Their control of almost 45% of Iraqi oil reserves and the 
booming business that they have been involved in with U.S. oil companies 
and Israel since their "liberation" with the U.S. invasion makes them a 
valued asset for the U.S. The same goes for Turkey where despite the 
historic oppression of Kurds in Turkey, the government does a robust 
business with the Kurds of Iraq.

The situation is completely different in the Kurdish self-governing 
zones in Syria. In Kobani, it is the Kurdish People's Protection Units, 
or Y.P.G., that is linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (P.K.K), a 
Turkey-based Kurdish independence organization that both the U.S. and 
Turkey have labeled a "terrorist" organization, that provides the main 
forces resisting the ISIS attack. Also, the ISIS attack in Kurdish 
territory neatly converges with the strategic interests of Turkey. Both 
the U.S. and Turkey saw the control of territory by militant Kurds as a 
threat. Turkey in particular wanted to undermine the self-governing 
process among Kurds, Christians and Sunni Arabs in those self-governing 
zones and turn the territory into a battlefield in order to steal Syrian 
territory and isolate and attack the "bad" Kurds of the PKK.

Turkey pushed and apparently secured an agreement from the U.S. that it 
will not oppose it taking parts of Syrian territory. To consolidate that 
land grab Turkey also wants to establish a "buffer zone" along the 
Syrian-Turkey border.  This is why U.S. government spokespersons have 
been floating the idea of a no-fly zone in Northeastern Syria 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/27/world/middleeast/us-considers-a-no-fly-zone-to-protect-civilians-from-airstrikes-by-syria-.html?_r=1> 
in the U.S. state/corporate media. The zone is being framed as necessary 
to protect civilians from attacks by the Syrian forces -- the 
humanitarian hustle again.

Yet for the "bad" Kurds of Syria like the "bad" Palestinians of Hamas 
and Gaza, there will be no humanitarian intervention.

To placate the Turkish government in exchange for its increased 
cooperation in what is being set-up as a final push on Damascus, the 
people of Kobani will be delivered to ISIS.

The transparency of Turkey's plan and the collaboration of the U.S. in 
the planned massacre of YPG combatants at Kobani could be easily exposed 
in the U.S. if the news readers in the corporate press were actually 
able to "see" the world more critically and allowed to question the 
state sanctioned narratives without running the risk of ending their 
"careers." For example, the obvious question regarding a no-fly zone in 
Northeastern Syria is why is it necessary when the only civilians being 
attacked in Northeastern Syria are Kurds and they are being attacked by 
ISIS forces that don't have an air force, at least not yet.

But those questions are not being asked very often because they don't 
comport with the official narrative that the U.S. is compelled to act 
once again to save the world against an intractable enemy that can only 
be defeated by U.S. military might. All of this is part of the 
imperialist hustle that even large segments of the "left" in the U.S. 
has fallen for.

However, the non-bombing of ISIS at Kobani and the theatrics of bombing 
fixed, empty buildings confirm what should be obvious based on the 
history of U.S. interventions -- that the real objective of U.S. 
intervention in Iraq and Syria is the reintroduction of direct U.S. 
military power in the region in order to secure continue control over 
the oil and natural gas resources of the region, undermine Iran, block 
the Russian Federation, and break-up cooperative economic and trade 
agreements between counties in Central Asia and China.  In other words, 
the objective is to secure U.S. and Western colonial/capitalist 
hegemony.  The U.S. and its allies just needed a pretext to get back in 
without alienating large sectors of their domestic populations. ISIS 
give them what the sarin gas attacks could not -- mass acceptance in the 
West for another war, however limited it is being sold in its first phase.

The militarists in the U.S. political establishment never wanted to 
abandon their plans for a permanent military presence in Iraq, even in 
the face of the fact that it was costing the nation an enormous price in 
blood,  treasure and domestic legitimacy to remain. They concluded that 
the road back to Bagdad and on to Tehran went through Syria. A position 
that despite reports to the contrary, Obama signed on to early in his 
administration. All Obama wanted was some plausible deniability during 
the first phase of the plan to destabilize Syria.

The current situation in Kobani is part of the cynical farce that is the 
fight against ISIS.  Turkey has no interest in preventing Kobani from 
falling to ISIS when it suits its strategic interests to deny the Kurds 
any semblance of self-determination.  And the U.S. is not interested in 
altering the balance of forces on the ground in Syria by seriously 
degrading ISIS militarily and undermining  its primary short-term 
strategic objective of regime change in Syria.

With the creation of ISIS, the neocons and liberal interventionists now 
have their war and a sizeable portion of the U.S. public is in support, 
at least at this point .  But that support will change as soon as it 
becomes clear that the political elite has plunged the U.S. back into 
another quagmire. The real shame and expression of the white supremacist 
colonial/capitalist global contradiction is that until that awareness 
takes hold among the people at the center of the empire and the people 
there move to alter U.S. war policies, thousands more will die in Kobani 
and throughout Syria, Iraq and the world.

~///Ajamu Baraka/ 
<http://greenshadowcabinet.us/member-profile/7568>/serves as Public 
Intervenor for Human Rights on the Democracy Branch of the Green Shadow 
Cabinet./

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