CounterVortex

Greater Middle East

Rojava and the Rohingya: fearful symmetry

Three weeks after the fall of the Bashar Assad dictatorship, the only fighting in Syria remains between Arab and Kurdish militias—holding grim potential for destabilization of the democratic revolution. Kurds had been persecuted and even denied citizenship under the Assad regime, but the invasion of their autonomous territory of Rojava by the Turkish-backed rebels of the Syrian National Army (SNA) drove them into a paradoxical tactical alliance with the dictatorship. The tragic situation in Burma’s Rakhine state mirrors this disturbing reality. The Muslim Rohingya people had been persecuted, denied citizenship and finally targeted in a campaign of genocide by the military, but are now facing attacks by the Buddhist-supremacist rebels of the Arakan Army—driving some Rohingya into a paradoxical tactical alliance with the military junta. In Episode 258 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers this analogy in the hope that the peoples of Burma can unite across religious lines to defeat the junta, and that Syrians can find a way toward co-existence in the new revolutionary order and avoid ethnic war. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army-ARSA rebels: Burma News International)

Planet Watch

Podcast: nullify the election! IV

Around the world, with inspiring heroism and courage, people are putting everything on the line to defend democracy and prevent the consolidation of dictatorships. In the Republic of Georgia, protests continue in the wake of contested elections that consolidated the rule of an authoritarian pro-Russia party, and the incumbent opposition-backed president is refusing to step down until new polls are held. In Romania, where a Putin-favored right-wing populist won the first-round vote for the presidency, that round has now been annulled by the country’s high court in response to a public outcry over Russian meddling. In South Korea, President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law was met with defiant protests, prompting an overturn of the declaration by the National Assembly, followed by a vote to impeach Yoon, and the opening of a criminal investigation on charges of “insurrection.” Mozambique has seen months of angry protests since contested elections that saw yet another victory for the entrenched machine FRELIMO—despite a deadly police crackdown. And in Brazil, ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, indicted for leading a Trump-style attempted auto-golpe in 2022, has been barred from office. In Episode 257 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg again asks: Why is everyone so quiet here in the United States, the seat of the empire, where the stakes are the highest? (Photo of protest in Tbilisi, Georgia: DerFuchs via Wikimedia Commons)

Syria

Israeli troops fire on Syrian protesters

One was wounded as Israeli troops opened fire on Syrian protesters near the village of Maariyah, in southern Daraa province. Local residents gathered at a position the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had established in the area, chanting “Free, free Syria; Israel get out!” One protester was shot in the leg. The IDF said its soldiers had fired in response to “a threat.” The incident came after villagers said that the troops, stationed in an abandoned Syrian army outpost, were preventing local farmers from accessing their fields. Maariya is near the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, but outside the demilitarized “buffer zone” established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Syria. The news appears to confirm reports that IDF troops have advanced beyond the “buffer zone.” (Image via Twitter)

Southeast Asia

Burma: Arakan Army seizes border zone

The rebel Arakan Army announced its full control of Burma’s border with Bangladesh after the seizure of the last junta base in Maungdaw township. The rebel army said it had taken captive a general and dozens of other soldiers, including around 80 Rohingya fighters—raising fears of further reprisals against the Muslim minority. The Arakan Army seeks autonomy for the ethnic Rakhine people and is part of an alliance of armed groups that has also seized key towns in eastern Burma. The Rohingya, having long faced massive ethnically targetted attacks by the military, are now facing such attacks by the ethno-nationalist Arakan Army. In addition to Rohingya youth being press-ganged into the military to fight the rebels, some Rohingya militias are now collaborating with the junta against the Arakan Army. (Map: PCL)

Africa

Human rights crisis deepens under Sahel juntas

Two attacks on “defenseless civilian populations” along Niger’s border with Burkina Faso left some 40 dead, authorities said. Niamey’s defense ministry said 21 were killed in Libiri village and 18 in Kokorou, both in Tillabéri region. The statement blamed “criminals,” but the borderlands are a stronghold of jihadist insurgents. An even worse attack was reported days earlier, but is being denied by Niger’s ruling junta. Authorities suspended the operations of the BBC in Niger after it reported that jihadists had killed 90 soldiers and upwards of 40 civilians at Chatoumane, also in Tillabéri. According to the monitor Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), at least 1,500 have been killed in jihadist attacks in Niger in the past year—more than double the 650 killed from July 2022 to July 2023. Human Rights Watch meanwhile released a report detailing killings of civilians and other serious abuses committed by Mali’s armed forces in collaboration with Russian mercenaries of the Africa Corps following the withdrawal of a UN peacekeeping mission last year. (Map: Wikivoyage)

Syria

Podcast: Free Syria and the Kurdish question

Amid jubilation following the overthrow of long-ruling dictator Bashar Assad, the only fightingin Syria is now between Arabs and Kurds—as the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) expels the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the town of Manbij. Ankara’s design is clearly to expunge the Kurdish autonomous zone in the northeast region of Rojava. Yet there are also positive signs of an accommodation between the Rojava Kurds and the new revolutionary administration in Damascus. In Episode 256 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the new political landscape in Syria and tries to identify a way forward—past the threat of ethnic war and toward a multicultural democracy. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image: Rudaw)

Syria

Syrian revolution met with US, Israeli air-strikes

The same day the Assad regime fell and rebel forces took Damascus, the US military carried out a series of air-strikes against Islamic State positions across central Syria. The Pentagon’s Central Command announced that it “struck over 75 targets using multiple US Air Force assets, including B-52s, F-15s, and A-10s.” The targets included “ISIS leaders, operatives, and camps.” Also that day, Israeli warplanes conducted dozens of raids across Syria, including in Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) counted more than 100 Israeli strikes on military and industrial targets, including a research center believed to be linked to chemical weapon production. Israel said it was acting to stop weapons from falling “into the hands of extremists.” Israel has additionally seized control of a demilitarized “buffer zone” in the Golan Heights, saying the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria had “collapsed” with the rebel take-over of the country. (Photo of B-52 bomber: USAF via A&SF)

Syria

Syria: after the fall of the regime

As Syrian rebels advanced on Damascus in a surprise lightning offensive, the Rojava Kurds seized territory from the Bashar Assad regime, and the Druze took up arms in their own region. After years of the lines in the conflict being frozen and the genocidal Assad dictatorship being “normalized,” the unthinkable happened and the dictator fled. Suddenly the 13-year aim of the Syrian Revolution has been realized—the fall of the regime. But the lead rebel faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has an ugly past, its partner the Syrian National Army (SNA) is in the political orbit of Turkish aspiring dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the threat of Arab-Kurdish ethnic war in northern Syria looms closer. Amid a conflict now dominated by armed actors, can the unarmed civil resistance that began the revolution 13 years ago re-assert itself, and revive the secular-democratic spirit of 2011? In Episode 255 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes a hard look. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of Aleppo Citadel in rebel hands via social media, e.g. Twtter)

Palestine

Annexation agenda escalates West Bank conflict

The Israel Defense Forces killed four Palestinians in an air-strike on the village of Siir, in Jenindistrict of the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that Israeli forces “prevented our teams from reaching the bombing site,” declaring it a “closed military zone.” Two days later, an IDF drone strike near the village of Aqaba in the Jordan Valley left two dead. The IDF again reportedly prevented ambulances from reaching the site. Two days after that, fire-fights erupted in Jenin as Palestinian Authority security forces responded to the theft of military equipment. A PA statement said “a group of outlaws opened fire on the headquarters of the security services” and stole two vehicles. Despite the designation of “outlaws,” the vehicles were reportedly paraded through the streets by a band flying the flags of Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has meanwhile introduced legislation to bar use of the term “West Bank” by the US government in favor of the official Israeli designation “Judea & Samaria.” (Photo: delayed gratification via New Jewish Resistance)

South Asia

Pakistan: truce follows weeks of sectarian clashes

A ceasefire agreement was reached between two warring tribes in Pakistan’s restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province following weeks of clashes that left 130 people dead in Kurram district, along the border with Afghanistan. A Grand Jirga of tribal leaders was called to mediate the truce. The violence exploded when a convoy of Shi’ite pilgrims traveling to a shrine in Peshawar was ambushed by armed assailants, killing at least 42. The ensuing clashes pitted members of the mostly Shi’ite Bagan tribe against their Sunni neighbors, the Alizai, with shops and homes ransacked and whole villages displaced. A land dispute between the two tribes had also caused clashes that led to 50 fatalities in September, and ended when some 100,000 local residents marched for peace. (Map: USAID via ReliefWeb)

Syria

Threat of Arab-Kurdish war in new battle for Syria

With the Syrian city of Aleppo now mostly in rebel hands following a surprise offensive, the danger emerges that Kurdish forces could be drawn into the conflict on the side of Assad dictatorship. Kurdish militias have for years controlled their own enclave within the city, the neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are now trying to open an evacuation corridor between Sheikh Maqsood and the Kurdish-held town of Tal Rifaat to the north. An evacuation of Tal Rifaat itself to Kurdish-held areas to the east is also being prepared. This effort is being blocked by one of the rebel militias, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), with clashes between the two forces reported. The SNA has been repeatedly implicated in abuses against the Kurdish population in areas it took from SDF-aligned forces in a 2019 offensive. This offensive drove the SDF into a tactical alliance with the Assad regime—although this alliance has repeatedly broken down over the regime’s rejection of the SDF’s principal demand of Kurdish autonomy. (Map: Google)

North America

Podcast: nullify the election! III

In Episode 254 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case for mass pressure to demand nullification of the election—on the constitutional basis of the Insurrection Clause. Trump indisputably instigated an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and the Supreme Court has ruled that invoking the Insurrection Clause to bar him from the presidency is the prerogative of Congress. And the Electoral College has the power to refuse to seat him on the same grounds. A candidate for county commissioner in New Mexico has already been barred from office on the basis of having participated in the Capitol insurrection—and MAGA congressional candidate Madison Cawthorn could also have been barred on that basis if he hadn’t been primaried out as the case over the matter was still pending before the courts. Leading Democrats like Rep. Jamie Raskin have spoken in support of such disqualifications—yet are mysteriously silent with the country now on the countdown to a fascist takeover. Furthermore, some cybersecurity experts are calling for a forensic audit of the election, citing evidence of software breaches and other irregularities. In Romania, where a Putin-favored right-wing populist has won the first-round vote in the presidential election, a recount has been ordered by the courts in response to a public outcry. And protests continue to mount in the Republic of Georgia, following a contested election in which a Putin-favored right-wing populist party cemented its majority. Why is everyone so quiet here in the United States, the seat of the empire, where the stakes are the highest? (Image: WTFA)