Dilip Simeon's blog

A home in Afrin, March 31, 2018 Nazeer al-Khatib/AFP/Getty Images When Raqqa fell in 2017, after a long siege by the US-backed, Kurdish-led  Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) , it was generally thought that ISIS was defeated, save for some mopping up. But in January of this year, Turkey invaded Afrin one of three cantons in Rojava, also called the  Democratic Federation of Northern Syria . This meant that scores of SDF fighters had to leave the battle against ISIS in order to  defend their homes, families, and neighbors in Afrin .  After extensive air strikes, the city of Afrin fell on March 18 confronting the already troubled region with yet another humanitarian crisis, as thousands fled to escape the Turkish army and its Syrian National Army allies (which include jihadist rebel groups and some fighters who are either openly aligned with al-Qaeda or even  recent members of ISIS ) .  Many of those who fled Afrin are now sleeping in open fields or in te...

Turkey’s attack on Kurdish-run territory in northern Syria will likely snuff out a radical experiment in self-government that is unlike anything I have seen in more than 30 years studying the Middle East. In a surprise Oct. 6 statement, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw its troops from northern Syria. Approximately 1,000 American soldiers had been stationed in that region as a buffer separating Kurdish forces – who had been working with the Americans in the fight against the Islamic State – from Turkish troops. Turkey feared that the Syrian Kurds would link up with Turkey’s Kurdish minority who have demanded autonomy or independence. On Oct. 9, the Turkish military began its assault, pummeling Kurdish-held territory with artillery and airstrikes. Kurds are rapidly evacuating the region and at least 24 people have been killed in northern Syria. Retaliatory strikes from Syria have killed civilians in southern Turkey. According to Turkish president Recep Erdogan,...

Since last August, when I first heard about the fight against ISIS in Kobani, I have been wondering why so few people in the United States are talking about the Rojava cantons. You’d think it would be big news that there’s  a liberated area  in the Middle East led by kickass socialist-feminists, where people make decisions through local councils and women hold 40 percent of leadership positions at all levels. You’d think it would be even bigger news that their militias are tough enough to beat ISIS. You’d think analyses of what made this victory possible would be all over the left-wing press. YPJ (Women’s Defense Forces) in Kobani, December 8, 2014   (Biji Kurdistan / Flickr) But many on the U.S. left have yet to hear the story of the Rojava cantons—Afrin, Cizîre, and Kobani—in northern Syria, or western Kurdistan. Rojava—the Kurdish word for “west”—consists of three leftist enclaves making up an area slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut, in territo...

Two years ago this month, the Islamic State  attacked  the Yazidis, a Kurdish religious minority who live around Sinjar Mountain in  Iraq . The militants came down on unprotected villages like Byron’s wolf on the fold, slaughtering the men and taking away thousands of women and children  to be sold as sex slaves .  Any Yazidis who could escape fled  higher into the mountains  without food, adequate clothing or even, in some cases, shoes. They remained trapped there for days, in harsh conditions and with  little international support . Those who had originally promised to protect them, the pesh merga soldiers of Masoud Barzani’s political party in Iraqi Kurdistan, had melted away in their hour of need.  It was  Kurdish guerrillas from Syria  and Turkey who eventually fought their way over the mountain through Islamic State territory, opening a corridor to bring Yazidi survivors to safety in the self-declared autonomous area of S...

The Kurdish people have sacrificed 13,000 lives in the fight against ISIS. Progressives should support their effort to build a secure base for direct democracy, feminism, and pluralism.    In the night of Thursday, January 20, ISIS mounted a  fierce attack  to free its prisoners, several thousand of whom were being held in Sina’a prison in Hasaka, a city in the autonomous, majority-Kurdish area of Syria often called Rojava. As a car bomb ripped into the prison gates, fighters from ISIS sleeper cells attacked with gunfire and a coordinated riot began inside the jail.  In the battle that followed, prisoners took human shields and ISIS snipers occupied nearby buildings while the Rojava militia—the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF)—brought in as many as 10,000 soldiers, with air and ground support from the United States. After prematurely declaring the battle over on Wednesday, the SDF discovered 90 more ISIS fighters hidden in a basement, while sniper and suicide attacks...

Rather than soothing Erdogan, the United States should induce him to stop persecuting the Kurds in Syria and Turkey and re-open negotiations with the PKK, as well as return Turkey to a condition approaching democracy. In the long run, the ethnic nation-state model is long overdue for a change, and support for the federalist approach to governance proposed by the Kurds is the clearest path forward in countries as heterogeneous as Syria, Iraq, and even Turkey. Even if Washington is not able to recognize that, we should... Last week Turkey opened a new front in the Syrian war by using its air force against the Syrian Kurdish canton of Afrin - which had done absolutely nothing to provoke this attack—even while the battle against ISIS continues in Deir Ezzor, where the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by the Kurdish YPG-YPJ, are fighting with US support. Turkey’s attack on the Syrian Kurds has opened up a new front in the war, jeopardized its already fragile relationship with the Un...

In 1937, my father volunteered to fight in the International Brigades in defence of the Spanish Republic. A would-be fascist coup had been temporarily halted by a worker’s uprising, spearheaded by anarchists and socialists, and in much of Spain a genuine social revolution ensued, leading to whole cities under directly democratic management, industries under worker control, and the radical empowerment of women. Spanish revolutionaries hoped to create a vision of a free society that the entire world might follow. Instead, world powers declared a policy of “non-intervention” and maintained a rigorous blockade on the republic, even after Hitler and Mussolini, ostensible signatories,  began pouring in troops and weapons to reinforce the fascist side . The result was years of civil war that ended with the suppression of the revolution and some of a bloody century’s bloodiest massacres. I never thought I would, in my own lifetime, see the same thing happen again. Obviously, no histor...

The bombing of the Amara Cultural Center was meant to inspire fear and keep people from acting in solidarity with Kobane. We must not let ISIS succeed. The bomb attack that took place at midday on Monday, July 20, at the Amara Cultural Center in Suruç will go down in history as a tragedy. Suruç is a border-town within 15 kilometers of Kobane, and has been the center for relief operations and the logistical hub of all support activity. To many, Amara was a place of sanctuary and refuge for refugees fleeing the conflict in Kobane for many months. It acted as the base of coordination for the relief effort at the dozens of refugee camps scattered across the city, and as a center for international solidarity and delegations visiting the area. Throughout the conflict, which began last September, journalists and activists have come to offer their support, and Amara was their home. I spent many weeks at the cultural center over numerous trips to the border, and it was a p...