Rojava is burning (again)

(To James Hedgehog)
13/01/25

While the West watches with cautious curiosity the evolution of the situation in Syria after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad last December 8, a tragic reality is unfolding far from the spotlight of the international media: that of Rojava and the Kurdish people. Between the complicit silence of the global powers and the brutality of the Islamist formations of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, armed and supported without too many scruples by Türkiye, the Kurds find themselves once again at the centre of a crisis that threatens to wipe out the experiment of Democratic Confederalism theorized by Abdullah Öcalan, historical founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), starting from the writings of the anarchist Murray Bookchin.

Also known as Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria, Rojava represents a unicum for the troubled Middle Eastern region. After the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011, the Kurds took advantage of the power vacuum left by Bashar al-Assad's regime to build an egalitarian and multi-ethnic society, promoting gender equality, ethnic-religious pluralism and participatory local management. However, this experiment - which has attracted the attention of international academics, journalists and politicians - remains constantly threatened by external forces. In particular, the oft-announced plan of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to create a 30 km buffer zone along Turkey's southern border has conveniently come to merge with the expansionist aims of armed Islamist groups, led by HTS, who rose to power also thanks to Ankara's economic and logistical support.

Islamist groups see Rojava as a double enemy: an ideological threat (see above) and a geopolitical obstacle to be eliminated in order to ensure control of the Syrian territory currently in Kurdish hands, which includes the oil fields of Jarnof and Qahar (south of it) and the natural gas and oil fields between Qamshili and Tal'Ads (which are located in the north-eastern tip of Rojava and would fall within the aforementioned buffer zone Turkish).

Turkey, for its part, has repeatedly justified its military incursions and bombings in Rojava – especially in the Kobane area and in the area north of the M4 highway between the Euphrates and Khabur rivers – as “anti-terrorism operations”, accusing the Popular Protection Unit Kurdish forces (consisting of the male wing YPG and the female wing YPJ) to be affiliated with the PKK, a paramilitary political group that Turkey, the EU and other Western countries (see Common Position 2005/847/CFSP) consider a terrorist organisation.

Le Popular Protection Unit they are the main formation adhering to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which also includes military groups from Arabs, Assyrians, and other ethnic communities in northern Syria. The SDF was formed in 2015 and over the past decade, thanks also to US aid, has played a central role in pushing ISIS back from the positions it gained during the Syrian civil war that began in 2011, effectively reducing its size.

Under the pretext of hitting the YPG and YPJ militias, in these first days of January the Turkish air force and artillery have targeted SDF positions along the Euphrates north of Sarrin. Specifically, the Kurdish positions protecting the Karakozak Bridge have been repeatedly bombed, with the aim of paving the way for the HTS units charged with cutting the supply lines between Kobane and Sarrin from the south, while the regular Turkish armed forces have been deployed for days along the border north of Kobane, already the scene of a heroic Kurdish resistance in 2014 against the forces of the Islamic State (when the West looked favorably on the sacrifice of the Kurds in fighting ISIS). Clashes are also intensifying south of Sarrin, near the Tishrin dam and in the village of Al Moylh where attacks with Turkish-made UAVs have been recorded, while the southernmost borders of Rojava remain unaffected by attacks for now, also in light of the greater distance from the Turkish border and the junction between Ankara's forces and the HTS.

Ultimately, although Rojava has shown that it can be a stabilizing factor for the region, its recognition as a political actor and Western support for the call for a ceasefire under the aegis of the UN still seem like a mirage. Also due to the war fatigue (exquisitely passive) of the international community for the Russian aggression against Ukraine and the role of Ankara within NATO and the Migration Deal with the EU, the Western powers seem to want to adopt a wait-and-see strategy for Syria while waiting to understand what face the "new Syria" will have.

Meanwhile, the Kurds of Rojava are fighting a battle for their survival, in the silence of the international community, and are preparing to give life to a further chapter in their history of resistance.

A new battle for Kobane (and not only) awaits us, and the ones who will pay the highest price, once again, will be the Kurds.

Photo: X