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Vol. 82/No. 7 February 19, 2018
(front page)
Kurds mobilize to fight against Turkish assault
Protests spread against invasion of Afrin
Mustafa Abdi
Jan. 25 protest and funeral in Afrin for civilians and combatants killed
by Turkish bombardment and ground attack on the Kurdish-controlled
region in northwestern Syria.
BY TERRY EVANS
The Turkish rulers invasion and war against the Kurdish people and their
allies in Syria’s Afrin province is meeting determined resistance and
making little military progress so far. Ankara’s continuous air and
artillery bombardment has killed over 100 civilians and Kurdish
fighters. Some 16,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.
The Kurds are winning support from working people in Kurdish and other
regions in Syria, Iraq and worldwide. In Turkey, the government of Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has clamped down on opposition to his war, jailing
hundreds for the “crime” of raising questions about it on the internet.
Turkey’s capitalist rulers see the gains made by Kurds in developing
autonomous areas in northern Syria as a threat to their efforts to
prevent the 15 million Kurds inside Turkey from fighting for their
national rights.
There are more than 30 million Kurds divided among Syria, Turkey, Iraq
and Iran. The capitalist rulers of the four countries share a common
interest in pushing back the Kurdish national struggle. The Kurds are
the largest nationality in the world without their own state.
Erdogan insists the Turkish rulers will take Afrin and then march across
northern Syria until the Kurds are cleared away from the areas close to
the border with Turkey up to Iraq. His government demands that
Washington withdraw its troops from Manbij, 60 miles east of Afrin and
Erdogan’s next target.
Washington has said it has nothing to do with Kurdish People’s
Protection Units (YPG) fighters in Afrin, and refuses to do anything to
get in the way of the Turkish government’s assault. They just ask
Erdogan to make it quick.
But in Manbij, and the large swath of Syria from Deir el-Zour, Tabqa and
Raqqa to the Iraqi border — where the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic
Forces has been decisive in defeating and driving out the reactionary
Islamic State — the U.S. rulers have built bases, stationed over 2,000
troops and plan to stay. They say they want to prevent any instability
that can lead to a resurgence of IS, but their central goal is to block
any further advances by the cleric-led Iranian regime.
Washington seeks to push back Tehran’s rising influence without
deploying substantial numbers of U.S. troops in Syria.
Just south of Afrin, Iranian-backed militias and Russian air forces are
backing an intensified offensive by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad
to retake the densely populated Idlib province, controlled by Syrian
opposition forces, including Free Syrian Army units and Hayat Tahrir
al-Sham, formerly the al-Qaeda affiliate there.
Idlib’s population has swelled by an estimated 270,000 in the past month
as people have fled there from other parts of the country, retaken by
the Syrian government and its allies.
The Free Syrian Army originated among units of Assad’s army that broke
with the regime as it moved to drown in blood the popular protests that
broke out in 2011 demanding an end to Assad’s rule. The Turkish rulers
gave refuge to these forces, trained and backed them, but their alliance
with other rebel forces failed to overthrow Assad. Moscow intervened and
the Iranian rulers stepped up their use of ground troops alongside
Tehran-backed Hezbollah and other Shiite militia forces to fight for Assad.
The rulers in Iran were among the big winners in Syria, carving out a
land bridge from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon to expand their
counterrevolutionary reach. But Tehran’s wars have fueled widespread
working-class unrest across Iran.
Disaster for working people
The Assad regime’s bloody attempt to hold on to dictatorial rule and
efforts by various capitalist regimes to reinforce their position have
been devastating for working people in Syria. Some half a million people
have been killed in the civil war and 13 million, more than half the
population, forced from their homes.
Working people elsewhere in the region — most sharply in Yemen — also
face disaster from the conflicts between Tehran and its central rival
the Saudi monarchy.
The rulers in Saudi Arabia continue to enforce a partial blockade of
Yemen, restricting the import of food and fuel while some 8.4 million
Yemenis are on the brink of starvation. Over a million people are
believed to have cholera and half the country’s health care facilities
no longer function.
Riyadh aims to push back Shiite Muslim Houthis, who are backed by the
Iranian regime. The Saudi rulers’ conflict with the Iranian rulers also
fuels their push to remove some of the tribal-based social and political
relations that are a hurdle to capitalist “modernization” at home.
Without this, they have no chance of taking on Tehran.
In the course of a three-year civil war between contending capitalist
forces in Yemen, the Saudi-led military alliance has launched thousands
of airstrikes against areas controlled by the Houthis, who seized
Sana’a, the capital, in 2015. Houthi leaders, with the patronage of
Iran’s capitalist rulers, now control large parts of northwestern Yemen.
The Saudi rulers aim to bolster forces loyal to U.S.-backed President
Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who now resides in Saudi Arabia.
Under both the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations Washington
has provided bombs, intelligence and support to the Saudi-led coalition.
On Jan. 30 fissures deepened within the alliance. Forces supported by
the United Arab Emirates battled their former partners and seized
control of the city of Aden and are now pressing for a revival of the
formerly independent country of South Yemen from which to organize their
rule.
Related articles:
Protest Turkish rulers’ assault on Kurds in Afrin!
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