Ten years have passed since the liberation of the martyr city of Kobane
from the yoke of the ISIS jihadists. In January 2015, a multitude ofKurdish men and women organized in the YPG (People's Protection Units)
and the YPJ and (Women's Protection Units), supported by Arab and Syriac
militias, liberated the Syrian city of Kobane from Daesh attacks. ----
The battle of Kobane against ISIS, conducted with extreme heroism by the
Kurdish fighters, was followed by the media throughout the Western world
who saw in the Kurdish partisans the strength to stem the jihadist
phenomenon that was spreading in the Middle East, and that with
ferocious terrorist attacks was also bloodying the cities of Europe itself.
Rivers of ink, meters and meters of film to exalt the deeds of the young
Kurdish women who, bareheaded, opposed the medieval bloodthirsty
jihadist cutthroats.
This happened only ten years ago. In a short time the media spotlight on
what is happening in Northern and Eastern Syria has been turned off. The
same hard fight that the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of
Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian-Syriac militias) have led for the destruction
of the entire "caliphate", with the liberation of the capital of ISIS,
the city of Raqqa, in October 2017 and the liberation of all of Eastern
Syria up to the borders with IRAQ, has gone unnoticed.
But even more serious was the deafening silence that covered the
criminal actions of Erdogan's Turkey that since 2016 has been waging a
hard and dirty war against the Democratic and Autonomous Administration
of Northern and Eastern Syria.
Since 2016, the Turkish president has authorized four operations in
Syrian territory. The first is called "Euphrates Shield" and targets the
territories held by ISIS north of Aleppo. But the real purpose of the
operation was to divide the canton of Afrin from that of Kobane and thus
avoid the territorial continuity of Rojava.
The second saw the direct clash against the Autonomous Administration of
Northern Syria with the operation "Olive Branch", carried out at the
beginning of 2018. Ankara's troops entered, together with the jihadist
militias, the district of Afrin (a territory with a large Kurdish
majority) forcing more than 200 thousand residents to flee.
Before the start of the Syrian civil war, approximately 400,000
inhabitants, mostly Kurds, lived in the canton of Afrin. Subsequently,
Afrin hosted several hundred thousand refugees from Aleppo and other
areas of Syria subjected to intense fighting. The canton of Afrin was
one of the safest places in all of Syria until January 20, 2018, when
the Turkish military intervention began, accompanied by air and
artillery bombardments.
On March 18, 2018, with the entry of the Turkish army and jihadist
militias into the city of Afrin, the autonomy of the canton ended. Tens
of thousands of civilians abandoned the areas of conflict and tried to
reach other regions of Syria and the other cantons of the Confederation
of Northern Syria.
The entry into Syrian territory of troops and military vehicles
belonging to a foreign army occurred with the silence/consent of the
government of Damascus and its main ally Russia, which had a detachment
of paratroopers in Afrin, promptly evacuated before the entry of the
Turkish occupiers. The Syrian and Russian air forces have never
attempted to regain control of the airspace over the canton of Afrin.
The United States, which had supported the YPG and YPJ militias in the
war against the Islamic State, did not lift a finger against the Turkish
intervention.
In October 2019, Erdogan launched the third operation, against the YPG
in the areas of Al Hasakah with the aim of creating a 10 km security
zone beyond the border. This time too, the Americans, Russians and the
Damascus regime remain on the sidelines.
Today, after the disastrous collapse of Assad's despotic and bloody
regime, we are witnessing a new harsh offensive led by Ankara against
the Democratic Syria of the North and East.
Turkey has given free rein to the Syrian National Army (Ankara's
creation of clear jihadist inspiration) to unleash the military
offensive against the North and East Syria. The offensive by pro-Turkish
militias has seen, in addition to the forced displacement of more than
two hundred thousand people, the massacre of entire families, systematic
violence against women, and the macabre ritual of beheading female
fighters. SNA gangs have taken over several towns on the road to Kobane,
unleashing terror in neighborhoods, schools and even hospitals. On
December 1, the SNA conquered Tell Rifat, where tens of thousands of
displaced people from Afrin had been hosted since 2018; it subsequently
conquered Manbij (which the SDF had wrested from ISIS in 2016).
The risk of seeing the gains achieved in recent years by the Democratic
Autonomous Administration of the North and East (Daaes) destroyed is
real. The DAAES is under daily attack by Ankara's drones and pro-Turkish
jihadist militias.
Thousands of civilians have had to flee from the places they have
assaulted. The jihadists and the Turkish army are targeting the
infrastructures that are crucial to the survival of Rojava in terms of
food storage, silos, water, electricity and connections.
The SDF resistance is focusing on the Tishrin dam and the Qara Qozaq
bridge on the Euphrates, to stop the attack on the city of Kobane. The
damage to the dam on the Euphrates makes an environmental catastrophe
possible. Thousands of families risk being left without water.
The SDF are resisting and the jihadist offensives are being repelled for
now. The counteroffensive of the democratic forces is supported by tens
of thousands of people who have taken to the streets to support the
resistance. As it was during the battle of Kobane to defend the Tishrin
dam, together with thousands of Syrians, framed in the YPG there are
also many internationalist fighters, who testify to the strategic
importance of the defense of the revolution of Democratic Confederalism
in Rojava.
Erdogan's plan to annihilate the experience of Northern Syria fits
perfectly into the strategic game that is being played: on one side the
project of a Confederal Democratic Syria and on the other the
centralizing, patriarchal and jihadist plan that sees Al-Jolani as its
greatest executor. On one side the Democratic Autonomous Administration
of Syria (DAAES) that is trying to build a society of free and equal
people, with maximum respect for nature and where women, who have a
central role in society, are freed from the bonds of patriarchal culture
and practice. On the other a State led by the ex-terrorist Al-Jolani who
is imposing his reactionary program through sectarian executions,
humiliation of religious minorities, debasement of school programs and
marginalization of women.
Renato Franzitta
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
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