Washington Kurdish Institute
October 29, 2019
For nearly three weeks, the Turkish military, backed by a number of jihadist proxy groups, has been relentlessly assaulting north and east Syria. The stated aims of this campaign of unprovoked military aggression are to destroy the local self-governing authorities, eliminate the presence of Kurdish fighters who were victorious in the campaign against the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), and resettle millions of Arab refugees in these areas, forcibly changing their demographics. During this campaign, the Turkish military has used air power and heavy artillery indiscriminately and facilitated documented war crimes, including torture, executions, and large scale looting by jihadist militias under their command. The horrible realities of this ongoing aggression were predicted far in advance by the Kurds of Syria and their allies, and mirror atrocities carried out last year during the Turkish military’s attack and invasion of the predominantly Kurdish region of Afrin in north-western Syria.
While much of the world has condemned the Turkish state’s aggression, many of the world’s key decision makers continue to facilitate this brutality by either actively assisting the Turkish state or turning a blind eye. Along with the Turkish state and military and these complicit world leaders, there are other personalities who share responsibility for the death and displacement of the peoples of north and east Syria. These other personalities go by various titles – calling themselves think tank experts, journalists, or activists, when indeed they are none of these things. They are accomplished networkers, social media personalities and, in some cases, undeclared lobbyists. They live comfortably in Washington, DC and elsewhere in the US and Europe. Many but not all of these people have the luxury of being personally detached from Syria and the Middle East. Perhaps they have visited the region, and surely they have “contacts” in the region – but they have not been in harm’s way. To them, more often than not, the bloody conflict in Syria is a fascinating chessboard. To them, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who gave 11,000 lives to defeat the ISIS caliphate, are one of many armed factions in Syria and nothing more. To them, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), which governs the region and gives a voice to all of the peoples of north and east Syria, is just another group in the interesting mess that is the Syrian civil war.
Some of these “experts” and “activists” have been deriding the SDF for years, adopting the Turkish state’s technique of calling them separatists despite this accusation’s lack of basis in reality. Some have painstakingly documented alleged crimes of the SDF, while ignoring all evidence demonstrating that indeed the SDF has by far the best human rights record of any armed group in Syria. Now that the brutality of the Turkish military has reached the front page of all major newspapers and is finally exposed for the world to see, many of these personalities have become silent and some have even started to call for calm or draw attention to the crimes of the Turkish military and their jihadist proxies, as if these crimes were a surprise. Those who spent years calling for sensitivity to the Turkish state’s concerns, and those who spent years delegitimizing the SDF and AANES must realize that they bear responsibility for the carnage we now witness in north and east Syria. The cheerleaders and apologists of the Turkish state should not shy away from footage of the atrocities committed by the Turkish military and the jihadists under their command – the innocent children crying out because their bodies are covered in burns, the bound civilians being shot at the side of the road. Apologists for the Turkish state, these atrocities are your achievements. You worked hard for this, now enjoy the fruits of your labor. When another generation of Kurds find themselves in exile, when the Christians of Syria are discussed in the past tense, when a resurgent ISIS produces another flashy video to inspire attacks on the streets of Europe and the US, you will know that your efforts made a lasting difference!