Tag: Kurdistan

Syria
Afrin

Turkey intransigent on Syria occupation zone

In his drive for “normalization” of his regime, Syran dictator Bashar Assad has been welcoming meetings with regional leaders in recent months. However, in comments to a reporter, he set a withdrawal of Turkish troops from northern Syria as a precondition for any meeting with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Erdogan’s objective in meeting me is to legitimize the Turkish occupation in Syria,” Assad said. Turkey’s Defense Minister Yasar Guler responded by saying: “It is unthinkable for us to withdraw without ensuring the security of our borders and our people.” Ankara continues to demand the establishment of a 30-kilometer deep “buffer zone” cleared of any Kurdish armed groups. (Photo: Mark Lowen via Wikimedia)

Syria
al-hol

UN: halt indefinite detention at Syria camps

UN Special Rapporteur for human rights Fionnuala NĂ­ Aoláin released a statement urging the cessation of “indefinite mass detention without legal process,” particularly of children, in northeastern Syria detention centers. Around 52,000 people are held in the camps at al-Hol and al-Roj in Syria’s northeast. Around 60% are children, of whom 80% are under 12. Most children are there due to their parents’ supposed links to ISIS. Many are separated from their parents, with NĂ­ Aoláin asserting that boys are often forcibly separated from their mothers upon reaching adolescence. Both camps are under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a primarily Kurdish organization which has fought ISIS since 2014. (Photo: Abdul Aziz Qitaz/UNOCHA)

Iran
iran protest

Iran: ‘morality police’ to resume hijab patrols

With the protest movement in Iran now in abeyance, Tehran’s national Police Command announced that the feared “morality police” will resume patrols enforcing the mandatory wearing of the hijab by the country’s women. Formally known as the Guidance Patrols (Gasht-e Ershad), the force created in 2006 was that which arrested Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, last September. Her death in custody three days later sparked the uprising that has lasted for months. The patrols were suspended for review as the protests mounted last December. Article 638 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code states that: “Women who appear in public without prescribed Islamic dress (hejab-e-shar’i), shall be sentenced to either imprisonment of between 10 days and 2 months, or a fine of between 50,000 and 500,000 rials.” (Photo of Melbourne protest in solidarity with Iran uprising: Matt Hrkac/Flickr)

Europe
F-16

Kurds betrayed in Sweden NATO deal

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dropped his opposition to Sweden’s entry into NATO, it was announced ahead of the alliance summit in Vilnius. In an apparent quid pro quo, the Biden administration is dropping its objections to Turkey purchasing F-16 fighter jets from the US. Sweden has also offered concessions to Erdogan. In blocking Sweden’s NATO bid, Turkey had accused Stockholm of harboring Kurdish “terrorists”—meaning supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara labels a “terrorist” group. Last November, Sweden amended its constitution to strengthen its “anti-terrorism” laws, weakening free-speech protections—clearly in deference to Turkey. The Swedish Supreme Court in June also ruled to allow extradition of the accused PKK figures to Turkey. And the rallies held in Stockholm against the extraditions by Kurdish immigrants and exiles may now be criminalized. (Photo of F-16: USAF via Wikimedia Commons)

Syria
Jisr al-Shughur

Russia, Israel both still bombing Syria

At least 13 people, nine of them civilians, were killed in Russian air-strikes within the so-called “de-escalation zone” in northern Syria’s Idlib province, with some of the strikes hitting a crowded vegetable market. The area targeted in the raid, already suffering a severe displacement crisis, is controlled by the Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist faction. Meanwhile, sporadic Israeli air-strikes on regime-held Syrian territory also continue—with apparent tacit approval from Russia, as long as they target the Iranian military presence in the country. (Photo: @SyriaCivilDef)

Syria
syria

Syria: regime ‘normalization’ —amid war and hunger

At a closed meeting in Cairo, Arab League foreign ministers approved a measure to readmit Syria after more than a decade of suspension—a critical victory for the normalization of Bashar Assad’s genocidal regime. This diplomatic coup, however, cannot mask the reality that Syria’s war is not over. Assad may have retaken most of the country, but various rebel and Kurdish forces still control much of the north. Civilians are still being killed in shelling and other violence. Even before earthquakes devastated large parts of northern Syria three months ago, continuing conflict and a debilitating economic crisis meant deepening hunger. Humanitarian needs in Syria were already at a record high. But amid mounting global crises, the UN-coordinated appeal for Syria in 2023 is only eight percent funded. And food prices are still rising, making it harder still for aid groups to meet the urgent and growing needs of millions of Syrians. (Photo: Giovanni Diffidenti/UNICEF via UN News)

Iran
toomaj

Iran: dissident rapper could face execution

The Center for Human Rights in Iran urged the international community to demand the release of Toomaj Salehi, a rapper who has become a prominent voice of Iran’s protest movement. Salehi was arrested in October, and charged with “corruption on Earth,” which carries the death penalty, as well as “propaganda against the state,” “collaboration with hostile governments,” and other offenses punishable by up to 10 years in prison. No date has been set for the trial. Toomaj has been segregated from all other inmates in Dastgerd Prison, a maximum-security facility run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. A videoreleased by state media showing Salehi with bruises on his face and a blindfold over his eyes raised concern that he had been tortured to obtain a false confession. (Image via Twitter)

Africa
Somaliland

Oil contracts at issue in Somaliland conflict?

Fighting continues in Somalia’s northern breakaway state of Somaliland, where three administrative regions—Sool, Sanaag, and Aynaba—have taken up arms in a bid to rejoin the internationally recognized Mogadishu government. Somaliland accuses the government of Ethiopia (which is officially attempting to broker a dialogue in the conflict) of intervening on the side of the re-integrationist rebels, headquartered in the town of Las Anod, Sool region. Somaliland has been effectively independent since 1991, and has seen a more stable and secular social order than the regions controlled by the Mogadishu government. But now Mogadishu is asserting its right to grant oil contracts to foreign companies within Somaliland’s territory. Local media note that the new conflict erupted just after Mogadishu announced the issuing of an exploration lease to Turkish Genel Energy in Somaliland—indeed, within Aynaba, one of the contested regions. The move was protested as “illegal” by the Somaliland government, based in the city of Hargeisa. (Map: Siirski via Ethiopia Insight)

Greater Middle East
Palestine

From Palestine to Iran: free the land

In Episode 160 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes hideous ironies in the current horrific headlines. Russia was excluded from the official commemorations of Holocaust Day at Auschwitz-Birkenau as it pursues its war of aggression and extermination in Ukraine in the perverse name of “de-nazification.” But Israeli flags were of course displayed at the commemoration—even as Israel escalates toward a genocidal solution to the Palestinian question. The fundamental contradiction driving the conflict is the expropriation of the Palestinian people of their lands, and the denial of their self-determination by Israel. The emergence of an explicitly anti-Zionist bloc in the protests against the new far-right government in Israel is a sign of hope. The US, however, is undertaking its biggest joint military exercises ever with the new Israeli regime, despite Biden’s supposed rejection of its extremist policies of settlement expansion and annexation—viewing the Jewish State as a strategic ally against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Meanwhile, the oppressive regime in Iran treats minority peoples such as the Kurds, Baluch, Ahwazi and Baha’i much as Israel treats the Palestinians. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: B’Tselem)

Greater Middle East
hdp

Turkey: Kurdish party challenges ban order

Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) asked the Turkish Constitutional Court to postpone its decision on a government request to ban the party until after upcoming general elections. Co-leader of the HDP, Mithat Sancar, told reporters: “The Constitutional Court should stop all proceedings on this case. The authorities want to use this case…as a tool to threaten us.” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government accuses the HDP of ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is banned in Turkey. The HDP won 12% of the vote in the 2018 general election and holds 56 of parliament’s 579 seats. (Image: HDP)

Iraq
Sinjar

The Yezidis, ‘esotericism’ and the global struggle

In Episode 156 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses Peter Lamborn Wilson‘s last book, Peacock Angel: The Esoteric Tradition of the Yezidis. One of the persecuted minorities of Iraq, the Yezidis are related to the indigenous Gnostics of the Middle East such as the Mandeans. But Wilson interprets the “esoteric” tradition of the Yezidis as an antinomian form of Adawiyya sufism with roots in pre-Islamic “paganism.” Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel, the divine being revered by the Yezidis as Lord of This World, is foremost among a pantheon that ultimately traces back to the Indo-European gods. Wilson conceives this as a conscious resistance to authoritarianism, orthodoxy and monotheism—which has won the Yezidis harsh persecution over the centuries. They were targeted for genocide along with the Armenians by Ottoman authorities in World War I—and more recently at the hands of ISIS. They are still fighting for cultural survival and facing the threat of extinction today. Weinberg elaborates on the paradox of militant mysticism and what it means for the contemporary world, with examples of “heretical” Gnostic sects from the Balkan labyrinth. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo via Kurdistan Source)