Selected Views through a Fractal Prism
All the news today is about Turkey attacking Afrin, a Kurdish governed city in northern Syria and threatening another Kurdish run city named Manbj. This is a very dangerous situation and another devastating assault on the Syrian people who have already suffered so much from a war that that was started by foreign manipulation and fed by foreign fighters, foreign […]
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States had a hand in that decision as well. Meanwhile, the time has passed and circumstances are changed. The countries that currently exist in the Middle East may or may not survive but for us here to decide their fates is a continuation of a gross imperial violation of the rights of the people of that region.
We can’t decide which force in these war torn regions is really the one that will be best for the people there based on our assumptions about their reality. That is why we have to withdraw from the field rather than attempt to determine what is best for the people and manage events so it will happen. We can’t control the empire. We can only resist it’s drive. For us to decide what is best for the people there is like religious people who think they can apprehend God and God’s will in a particular way. Our imaginations aren’t big enough to encompass God. We can’t play god and make decisions for these regions where imperial decision makers have bee wreaking havoc for two centuries.
Rojava is and interesting example of this phenomenon.
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An article in the Russian blog, Russia Behind the Headlines asks the question “Why does Moscow need Syrian Kurdistan?” I think they are asking the wrong question. The Russians initially allied with the Kurds to make sure that the Syrian border with Turkey would be sealed. To end the Syrian war, it is necessary to bar the flow of fighters and goods for ISIS and al Nusra crossing the border. It is necessary to end the flow of oil crossing into Turkey from Syrian wells under ISIS control. There was no problem with being allied both with the Syrian central government (with Assad as President) and with the Kurds, because the Kurds have been allied with the central government throughout the war. They may have wavered for a moment when the U.S. came in and supported them in Kobani, but that is an old story now.
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