The Situation in Syria and the Western Silence: Kobani is Burning
Bayan Saleh
In a discussion with one of my Danish leftist-oriented friends about the situation in Syria, I told her:
What is happening now in Syria is a reconfiguration of the capitalist order in the region, where a new geographical map of Syria is being drawn and a state is being imposed based on terrorist and nationalist foundations, far removed from a citizenship-based state.
The United States stands with its allied partners consisting of Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in constructing this criminal project. The military and terrorist assault on civilian populations in northern and eastern Syria, their killing, displacement, and deprivation of water and electricity by the Islamist terrorist forces represented by the "legitimate" government imposed on the Syrian people, is a barbaric attack that protects the political and economic interests of America and Israel and their Gulf state allies, in addition to fulfilling the aims of the chauvinist Islamic bourgeoisie in Turkey.
These reactionary wars against the masses of Syrian Kurdistan are wars aimed at strengthening Islamist political terrorism in the region. It is unfortunate that the solution to the Kurdish question and the protection of Kurdish people's rights have become tied to the strategies and plans of capitalist and imperialist powers and their allies, as demonstrated by Kurdish forces and currents such as the SDF, whose alliance partnership was discarded in the new deal.
Kobani, the Tragic Reality on the Ground: Testimonies from the Heart of Hell
Through my professional work with some Syrian Kurdish families, and through their ongoing communication with their relatives in the Kobani area during these days, an extremely harsh human picture emerges. Nearly half a million Kurdish people are completely besieged, cut off from water, electricity, food, and essential medical supplies.
The picture coming from there is terrifying: children are dying, the sick are dying due to the lack of medicine, and families are trying to survive on the bare minimum. The intermittent phone calls with besieged residents carry an increasing tone of despair, trembling voices recounting the details of daily life under siege: "No drinking water, no electricity for days, the children are hungry and the hospitals are unable to receive more wounded."
With this suffocating siege, the suffering of Kurdish civilians has worsened due to astronomical price increases, as some traders have exploited the dire security situation to raise food prices in an inhumane manner. A kilo of bread that used to be sold at a small price has become prohibitively expensive for most families. Speculators profit from the misery, turning hunger into a trade and human need into a chance for quick profit. Even in the worst conditions, capitalism finds a way to drain the blood of the poor.
The tragedy is not limited to hunger and siege. It extends to the constant fear of forced displacement, and the terror of the brutal practices of ISIS and its well-known inhumane treatment and horrific violations against defenseless civilians. The collective memory of the region's peoples still carries scars of what ISIS did in the past: mass executions, the enslavement of women, the destruction of cultural identity, and the erasure of every trace of civil life.
Today, the people of Kobani live with a dual horror: the horror of death by hunger, thirst and cold, and the horror of something worse if the city falls into the hands of Syrian forces. The Kurdish people fear for the fate of women and daughters, and the masses know that forced displacement means losing everything: land, home and identity. This is not merely a military siege. It is a systematic attempt to erase an entire people from the map of the region.
Shameful Western Silence: When Human Tragedy Becomes a Footnote
My friend said with deep sadness: "What is happening today in those areas is extremely tragic, and it is happening before the eyes of Western and European states without any real media coverage of civilian suffering."
Our discussion continued about how here in Denmark, only two leftist parties supported the cause, with limited support from a few other parties, while the Danish media remains almost entirely silent and does not address what is happening in its news programs. This is, in one way or another, explicit complicity with the imperialist project underway in the region. Western capitalist democracy reveals its true face: human rights are selective and humanitarian values are merely bargaining chips in the game of major interests.
A few Danish newspapers have pointed to the current humanitarian disaster in Kobani, noting that the city suffers from a complete cut of electricity, water and internet, along with a severe shortage of flour and medicine, making daily life nearly impossible. They reported news of children dying due to freezing temperatures, shortages of heating fuel, and the lack of adequate shelter amid the heavy snowfall that recently blanketed the region.
Western states that boast of democracy and human rights are turning a blind eye to the tragedy of half a million people in besieged Kobani who are facing slow death. Western media, which shines its spotlight on every event that serves its political agenda, chooses absolute silence when it comes to the crimes of its allies.
Stopping This Terrorist Campaign Immediately and Opposing Chauvinism
I told her: I see in what is happening in Syria a stark example of the intersection of various forms of oppression: imperialism, capitalism, nationalist fascism, and political Islam, all allied to crush peoples and the working masses, reproducing injustice in ever-renewed forms.
I support the immediate halt of this terrorist campaign, and I oppose all nationalist chauvinisms, whether Turkish or Arab nationalists, as well as Kurdish nationalists. The Kurdish people and all other peoples have the right to protect themselves from all chauvinist terror, and they have the right to speak their mother tongue, and their right to self-determination.
In the end, the two of us agreed that the class struggle against capitalism cannot be separated from the struggle against national oppression and the patriarchal system. They are all facets of the same order based on domination and exploitation, and true liberation will not be achieved unless all of them are confronted together.
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