The Turkish state has its jihadist proxies, who rape and torture and imprison and execute at will: but through NATO the Turkish state is itself a proxy, of precisely the chauvinist, authoritarian class-interest nationalism which Trump peddles. The National Liberation Front (30,000-45,000 militants(NLF) was formed in May 2018 when Turkey sponsored the consolidation of approximately 10 Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions in Idlib, Turkey is encouraging (with higher salaries) the al-Qaeda-linked HTS to join under the NLF umbrella. Along with the FSA mercenary Arab factions they are being sent to attack Rojava.

If Turkey seizes the oilfields and riches of the DFNS, who do these anti-imperialists think they will be doing business with? One NATO army may be leaving, but this does not mean Syrian soil is being restored to Syrian hands. The Democratic Federation of Northern Syria always was in Syrian hands, Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian. It may not be for much longer.Trump’s decision makes clear what Rojava’s supporters have been saying all along: some imperialist powers view the Kurds as vermin to be exterminated and some view them as a useful tool, but in the end there is little to choose between them.

In 2018, the United States offered a $12 million reward for information on three PKK leaders. The PKK Kurdish guerillas had a truce and a Peace Process with Turkey, and had renounced the National Liberation struggle in favour of Democratic Confederalism. ….The truce was broken when Turkey set its ISIS proxies on the town of Kobane. .It had been classified as Terrorist by NATO countries (US controlled) for resisting a much greater Turkish terrorism and this classification still exists. .

See how steadfastly the people here take to the street in support of the banned guerrilla, in defiance of all international-relations logic. There is no love for imperialists here, only the necessities of war.

‏@YPJInternation3 ANNA CAMPBELL & thousands of international volunteers traveled to Rojava to stand side by side with us, many including Anna lost their lives. Join us 2 raise our voices against Turkish threats to invade & ‘bury us in ditches’. Join us in memory of Anna to # StopTurkeyDefendRojava

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The message of the people was not a plea for aid, but that they shamed the decision of the American leader (biryara Trump hat şermezarkirin, as it was described on the evening news) and demanded that their sacrifices were respected. Their action was made from a position of strength. Not military or material strength, perhaps, but strength nonetheless.

“We won’t beg anyone not to attack us, or beg to be protected,” Salih Muslim continued. “We are here, we can handle our own defence. We are resolved for a total resistance. We rely on our people and our own defence system. Everybody will fulfil their duty.”

Even if there is total war and Turkish airplanes massacre the cities and the revolution is driven into the desert and the mountains, the Kurdish movement was forged in friendless hardship and is stronger now than it has ever been.

When I spent that evening in my Kurdish friend’s house, laughing with his daughters, afterward chain-smoking and swapping dirty jokes, I remembered other lines of Auden’s which have given me much comfort in these hectic and uncertain days:

“To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death,

The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder…

To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette,

The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scraping concert,

The masculine jokes; to-day the

Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.”

Here on the ground one clearly sees how makeshift this revolution is, the home-made tanks falling apart at the checkpoints, the derelict regime outposts repurposed as women’s centres, the meals and shelter constantly offered to us by poor villagers as we travel for our work, the cheaply-produced videos projected onto bedsheets reminding the local youth of their long history of struggle. And one sees that this hand-to-mouth existence is the source of its strength.

In her excellent piece commenting on some reactions to Trump’s decision – which you should read in full – Kurdish feminist Dr Hawzhin Azeez writes:

“Who taught you that this was a smooth path? Have we not learned anything from the past history of betrayal? Have we forgotten that no matter what, the sheltering mountains of Kurdistan will always call us back into their defensive embrace? That the freedom fighters sit on the peaks and watch over us, committed to our inevitable liberation? At what point did we give away our power to the neocolonialists and the imperialists?”

The call she makes to her Kurdish kin, I would repeat to our international comrades. If there are American planes here to cover us, so be it. It is right that the American people, in particular, rise up against this cowardly decision by their leader.

But as internationalists we must stand together outside these lines of state force, with the tireless conviction of our Kurdish comrades. We need support, mobilisation, mass anti-fascist action against targets at home in the West. We rely on our comrades, not the self-serving will of capitalist states.

Rojava has restored a sense of critical internationalism to revolutionary movements across the West, where it has long been dwindling in favour of a parochialism borne of liberal neuroses. We now call on these movements to act materially and across their own sectarian divides.

Unlike the fallen dinosaurs of state communism, we cannot offer financial or military aid in return. What we can offer is the burning of an anti-fascist, anti-imperialist hope on the horizon, uniting and driving on struggles across the globe. Do not allow it to be extinguished.

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