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Hi everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's me James today and I'm joined by Danny. Danny's an engineering photographer who lived in North East Syria from twenty eighteen until twenty twenty three and a founding member of the RISE, which is the Rajarva Information Center if you're not familiar, and she worked for self administration Civil Engineering while she was there. Welcome to show Danny.
Hi James, it's really good to be on Yeah.
Jas, thanks thanks for coming. I know it's like a stressful time. So what I thought we would do is there's been a lot of reporting on Syria that people have probably seen if they're living in the US or the UK. Nearly all of it has either excluded or like footnoted what's happening in North and East Syria and specifically in the areas that are under a self administration. So I was hoping today we could give people a
little more introduction to what's happening there. There's been a lot of like jubilation about what's happening in Syria, and things have been very far from universally positive.
Right.
There's a massive dis placement of civilians, ethnic lensing of areas that have been captured by the Turkish Baksterian National Army and genuine like peril for the self administration project, the like of which we haven't seen for a long time. So perhaps if listeners an't familiar, would you give them the real basics of the self administration of the AA ANDES and what it means and what's going on there.
Yeah, well that's a big question because it's like it's a big project. It's been going on for quite some time. Yeah, yeah, it really has. It's kind of been lost in discussions and news about the Serian Civil War because it has been such a complex, multipolar, multi access, multi ethnic conflict, and it's been going on for what like thirteen fourteen
years now, yeah, coming up to fourteen years. The Kurds in the northeast had been preparing for some time before the outbreak of civil war back in twenty eleven for something like this. Obviously they didn't they didn't know this
was going to happen. That they had been working on revolutionary emancipation for decades, and in particular since around two thousand, they've been working on this concept of democratic and federalism, which is moving away from a sort of what they call an old paradigm of Marxist Leninist thought to this system they've now quite effectively built up there where democracy is bottom up. It's structured around small communes and self
organizing units, cooperatives. There's a market economy, but it's not a catalyst economy where there's sort of radical emancipation of oppressed to people's particular women who are really centered in the revolutionary process and organizing there. And I think because they maybe you can't call them conflict avoided, that they haven't avoided conflict. They very famously defeated Isis amongst other groups in the northeast, they fought against Alan's Refront and
various other Hadi groups. They also didn't enter into serious conflict with either their FSA as they were, or the regime and the assad regime, and so they kind of managed to carve out a sort of democratic and semi enclave. I mean people who describe it as a state that they quite vehemently say it's not a state in the northeast of Syria. Whilst the worst of the fighting was between the Assid regime and the FSA and groups that came out of the FSA in the west and south of the country.
Yeah, I think it's very good summary. I think like it gets missed maybe because of how relatively successful it's
been compared to other democratization projects within Syria. It gets missed that like when people are talking about what will happen in Syria now bizarrely and I don't quite like I don't quite understand how we get here, but people seem to go to like Libya or I understand how we get here process like orientalism and ignorance, but we have a functioning democracy an example of like, it's not just Kurdish people, right, it's lots of communities living together
in northern East Syria, and because of democratic and federalism they're able to coexist and still feel that they have enough sovereignty to be safe. Is that fair?
Yeah? Yeah, absolutely, And I think something that it's hard to convey or fully understand unless you spend a lot of time there or you're deeply involved with any of these communities, is quite how hard that was to do. Yeah, a lot of different ethnic groups, political groups that hate each other, you know. Yeah, the Kurds, they brought in lots of different policies like their right to be taught
in your mother tongue. When they took power twenty twelve onwards, they were very keen not to just sort of replace everything with Kurdish, make a Kurdish state, you know, start being the oppressor and sort of be oppressed. They made sure that they continue us An Arabic as the majority
language because it is the majority language. That the north and east of Syria is still an Arab majority area, and this is despite the fact that they've been pretty horrendously oppressed by the Arab population through the Bath Party and its oppressive systems for decades. So it has been a pretty hard ongoing process to negotiate and to put aside pretty serious conflicts between quite a few different groups that exist there.
Yeah, it won't be any easier of across the whole country than it was there, but like, they have a system that works, and it's kind of frustrating to see these discussions of what happens next that just ignore the fact that there's a functioning multi ethnic democracy right there. So if we do just look at women's liberation, you know, I've reported from lots of places around the world, lots of places in that part of the world, and the
difference is profound in like everyday life. It's not just a kind of rhetorical commitment, right, Like, at least my impression as a man is that, like, this is a revolution by women, not a revolution and it's about women. It's not a revolution by men that like seeks to liberate women, says it's going to liberate women, you know, with the US in verie Afghanistan saying it's going to liberate women, and look what we got. And like the difference in just the way people are able to live,
like every aspect of everyday life is completely different. But that's in danger right now. The narrative I guess that people will be familiar with from Syria is that the state has been defeated, the A Sad regime has been defeated, and that therefore the revolution has succeeded. But the A Sad regime is not the only state in play in Syria, right, So, can you explain the Turkish antipathy to the project in northern East Syria and how that's manifesting itself currently.
Yeah, it's pretty hard to discuss any of the stuff without talking about Turkey and without understanding where they're coming from. Yeah, I think it's something that is said enough or understood enough that the modern state of Turkey is an nationalist project. And you know, I don't say that as a slur. That's like a basic founding principle of the state. It's a state founded on genocide and the mass for demographic
change across the whole country. And it's continued that way, and there have been reforms for sure, but that's still a founding principle. And even now sort of speaking a non Turkish language in the Turkish Parliament is a pretty serious violation. And the size of Turkey, the size of its economy, the size of its military, the regional power status they have in the Middle East means that they have an enormous gravity. They have an enormous amount of
power over Syria. A lot of the goods and services that Syria relies on coming through Turkey or rely on the Turkish industry, and the Turkish military is a huge supporter of their groups in the northwestam and the Syrian National Army, and of course the Kurdish question within Turkey is the main reason for their antipathy towards the What's
been built up in North East Syria. As much as the self determination for oppressed people's minorities is something that's an issue, the fact that it's Kurdish led, and in particular it's emancipating for Kurdish people threatens this nationalist aspect of their state, and they kind of they see it something that needs to be nipped in the Bud right, and they've they've sort of done that with Northern Iraq, that the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq by essentially vassalizing
the KDP, the main party there, and they know they can't do the same in North Eastyria, and the military option is their best chance, their best hope of nipping Kurdish emancipation in Kurdish sub determination in the Bud and preventing it from sort of snowboarding across the region.
Yeah, I think we should probably mention that, Like I guess if we talk about like the electoral method or the electoral path people in Turkish Kurdistan, in Northern Kurdistan, if you want to call it. In addition to the arms struggle which has been there since nineteen eighty four, they have also like tried to vote and repeatedly seen their votes ignored or changed, or their elected officials removed.
Like this is within the last year, I'm not talking about back in the eighties and nineties, and like Turkey has been aggressively attacking any attempts at like self determination within the country and then as you say, like militarily
attacking the Kurdish freedom movement within North and Eassyria. Do you want to talk about the Syrian National Army or the Turkish back Free Syrian Army, whatever you want to call them, and explain, Like, I think part of what we're dealing with is like that Turkey has a very well established state media project and they seem to do very well and like creating viral social media content. So people might not be fully familiar with who the SNA
are and specifically like Turkey's role in creating them. Do you want to explain that a bit to people?
Yeah, I mean this is this is one of the reasons why I think it's so hard for people to report on the Syrian Civil War. It's very hard to convey like a simple coherent narrative of one side versus the other, you know, like Ukraine versus Russia. The Russian world and the Ukrainian world, because there are there are so many different groups in the sna IS that it's
an important one and they are their group. Together with this concept of the rebels that have liberated Syria, despite the fact that they're not actually part of High Alshan, the liberation movement as it calls itself, that have taken over the Syria. Yeah, the Syrian National Army, it's it's kind of like a loose collection of various some of them called themselves brigades or groups. It's essentially a military proxy force of Turkey. They don't have a coherent political framework.
They're not revolutionary groups. They're not liberatory or mancipatory. They wouldn't describe themselves as that in the same way that
maybe HTS would. I mean, the Kurds in North Eastyria describe them as gangs, which kind of sounds like a propagana term, but when you actually look at what they do, they really are like a sort of a criminal enterprise, a criminal gang that's used as a convenient proxy for force by Turkey because ultimately Turkey has like a massive military then maybe is quite underfunded and not particularly ast After the air force has suffered pretty seriously from the
fallout of the cop in twenty sixteen. But the army is massive, it's relatively well funded, in their drone program is huge. The thing that they struggle with is the losses that are incurred against Kurdish groups, particularly the PKK
in the mountains between Ark and Turkey. And they need to control that because they realized that they've been fighting military because as you say, since the early nineteen eighties, and they can't have a vitnance situation right of a mass movement against their military occupation and against their military efforts.
And Syria, they can't afford financially or politically to get into a quagmire there, and so by funding this sort of collection of groups called the SNA, that's their way of being able to incur pretty massive losses without having to report on it, without that creating unrest or opposition within the Turkish population of Turkey.
Right, And I think especially when like some of the things the SNA have done, which we can maybe get into in MANPJ like, it gives them a deniability that wouldn't exist if that was regular soldiers doing that, Like some stuff which is war crimes is I guess a nice way of saying it, like a more sanitized way of saying it. Horrific stuff, really terrible stuff. This has been happening since at least twenty eighteen. But Turkey doesn't have to be held accountable for that because, like you said,
it's not Turkish, it's not the Turkish Army. Do you want to explain how the situation in North Syria has changed since what was it like two weeks ago? A week ago? I guess that they moved south from Aleppo and start the HTS Largy with some support from SNA, moved towards Damascus, and then the SNA launched its own assault on the Self Administration. Can you explain a little bit of what's happened there in terms of displacement and in terms of the terrain that's the SNA have captured.
Yeah, it's been very fast moving now, as you say, like it's only been two weeks since the Battle Aleppos started, if you call it a battle. So the SDH, so this is like the alliance of military groups that falls under the remit of the Self Administration in the north East Siria. So the YPG and the YPG are like the most famous and largest components of this force, but there are a whole bunch of Arab and Syrian and
Armenian units within the SDF. They held this sort of salient pushing out into northwest Aria towards Afrin, which was captured by the SNA in Turkey in twenty eighteen. That was on one side finded by HTS and on the
other by the SNA. When things really kicked off, the SNA started a pretty concerned campaign to capture this area and own as Shedpa, and because of its position and it's relatively difficult terrain and difficult logitical position to resupply, they pulled back from that towards Aleppo and man Beach, which is the only major city that the SDS still held on the west of the Euphrates. It's the area closest to Aleppo. They got hit pretty hard. If you follow a live upday map or and you vie sort
of update maps, it looked like that. That's pretty quickly. Actually, it ended up being a sort of large gray zone of the gorilla attacks and potential still ongoing. It's been really murking hot tell what's going on there, But essentially there's a large area of uncontrolled but heavily contested territory between Aleppo and the Euphrates River now and which the SDF and the SNA have been fighting over.
Like.
One of the curious things for me is that the Turkish Air Force and literally did not get involved for a while, but after about a week they did, and they started hitting man Beach very very heavily. And at that point, when the center of man Beach started being contested and for over, the US stepped in. We don't know the details of it, but there seems to have been some kind of negotiation whereby the suggestion is that if the SDF fighters pulled back across the Euphrates, the
SDF would assure their protection from any further resorts. We don't know how true that is, and we know that today further negotiations on this failed. But it's really hard to tell right now as we speak what's disinformation and what's truth, because stuff's only coming out officially in ribs.
Traps, yeah, and stuff's coming out unofficially often that it's just not true, yeah, every five minutes and getting blasted by maybe people who just don't understand or who do understand, but have a certain agenda to push on social media, especially but on telegram too, and it can be really confusing, it's really frustrating.
Yeah. For instance, like just before we came on air, I saw a couple of videos being posted by pro Turkish accounts purportedly showing mass troop concentrations lined up against this border war waiting to invade. And I realized that they were from two thousand and nineteen, when Sarah Kane and Tellerbayad were invaded, and they were just reposting material from then, you know, as disinformation on these movements and whether in Ta's going to happen, what the negotiations between
the US and Turkey turned out to be. And the truth is like right now, we don't know exactly what's going on.
Yeah, and like you probably won't and that's probably a good thing. One other thing is that like the SDF tends to have much better operational security discipline than the SNA does, so you won't see as much of like media with an SDF spin or people directly streaming. I mean, one thing the SDNA likes to do is a war crime and then post it on Telegram and so like it can be easy to only see that and be like, oh god, it's terrible, and it is terrible. Those things
are horrific. But like, because you're not seeing when the SDF is making movements or making advances until a bit later, until you get something from like an official press channel, it can give the impression that the SNA is just romping around, which is not the case.
Yeah, we saw this a few times when manbut is reported to being captured by the SNA and they posted video of themselves in the middle of the city, and then an hour later, the SDF posted a video from the center of the city of twenty or thirty dead SNA litting about the streets and then flying their own flag. So yeah, yeah, it's really it's really hard to tell. It's also really hard as like anyone who cares about
the region has been there, is reported on it. Anyone interested in the kind of politics that the Kurds are built up in the region and others I should says, you know, it's been a multithink project if you care about that. It's really hard not to be glued to social media to see what's going on, but it can be quite detrimental to morrow it can be quite an active self harm to be like constantly checking on this
because it's so mucky. Yeah, and as you say, like things can turn around within two hours of infer or distance for getting out there.
Yeah, And I think it's it's a super important time to be looking at trusted sources and be considering if you need to be on telegram that much, something I
have been considering this weekend. So let's talk about like right now, certainly the focus is on Kabani, right, but there's also well, there's a lot of the self administration that could potentially be under threat if Turkey decides to go as hard as as it can against the self administration, against the existence of I guess any form of democratic project in northern Easteria of attempts to kind of bring
the whole thing under one government from Damascus. Can you explain like what might happen, what people can do, and like we should talk about what's at stake as well, especially with the prisoner our whole, which maybe we can come to after those two things, because I think that's a lot to ask you one question, but maybe people aren't familiar with our whole. We'll leave that one. But can you explain at first, like what could potentially happen if Turkey decides to go as hard as it wants to hear?
I mean, I think the best way to answer that question is to look at what's already happened. So in twenty eighteen and nineteen, they already captured three significant cities and that were under control of the self administration to the first and most famously was Afrin, which was in the far northwest of the country, like just north of Villeppo, sort of jutting out into Turkey. That was a majority
Kurdish city. I don't know exactly, does it with something like eighty or ninety percent, which I think is higher than any other city in northern Syria. And it was also like it's seen the least fighting of pretty much anywhere in Syria by that point. So the war had been going on for like what seven years, and Afin was pretty much untouched. So it was in a pretty good state. And Turkey and the SNA invaded just as the war against ISIS was winding down, and I mean,
it's become a hell on Earth. It's been almost completely depopulated. I think it's less than ten percent now Kurdish ethnically, it has been ruled by a number of different groups. We can say the SNA, but you know, different groups within the SNA and have fought over it. At the HTS at times have had control over certain parts of
the area, and there's been a in fighting. There's been horrendous war crimes committed, great murder, thousands of disappeared people, and as you say, they really like to openly put videos out of them committing this stuff. I mean, they're pretty shameless about it. There are some pretty disturbing videos that they're mutilating the bodies of fallen WIPJ soldiers, of coming some re executions, of wiping out whole towns. It's
been awful. And the same thing happened again in twenty nineteen around in October when they captured as Sarah Khane and Talabayad. And it's worth also pointing out that these were not Kurdish majority city surprise, and so I think that Sarah Karney maybe was about fifty percent and Telebiads, which is kind of close to Kurbani, I'm pretty sure wasn't Kurlish majority city. B was organized under the self administration and it was organized quite effectively, and they committed the same
horrific crimes there. They are an anti Kurdish for so if we can say that they are racist, they do have a stated goal of committing genocide against the Kurts. That's not an exaggeration. There's something they openly say. But they don't seem to care who they steal from, or who they rape or who they extort. Wherever they go,
it's death and destruction. And it still is now, And there's still something like a quarter of a million internally displaced people from these areas in North Essyria hoping to go back and now having to see the situation get even worse and not knowing if they ever well be able to.
Yeah, and I think like you were talking about, like we're seeing it right now in man Beach, right like the SNA seems to lie. You be in controlled of the city, albeit with YPG fighters kind of boring and I guess in a gorilla role, so it would seem still fighting there. But where I believe we're on the second day of a general strike in man Beach after less than a week of the SNA holding it because of looting and executions and other war crimes.
Yeah, I think this is like actually really good political education to see what's happening because what's been built up in the Northeast has been built up over decades. Right. They like to use this anology of the myosolium and the fruiting bodies of a mushroom. They appear to magically emerge from the earth in the autumn out of nowhere, but actually, you know, they've been brewing underground for years before, and they use this analogy because it took decades to
put in place these structures. That's why they were ready as soon as the regime the Acid region poured out and collapsed in the face of Isis in the early stages of the war, they were ready to build up these structures. They already had self organized militias, They had the economy planned out that they set to work immediately, and their SNA don't have any of that. They are
a force of convenience. They're mostly sort of young men who were in groups before that were defeated in Syria like Isis, who are simply taking the opportunity to enrich themselves. And that's also very convenient for Turkey because they do the dirty work against the population of North Easypyria. So I think it is worth saying that that aspect of it, that preparation, that resilience, is something that also works in favor in the event of the worst case of full
invasion of northern Assyria. I do think they are significantly better prepared than they were in twenty eighteen and nineteen. And even if the worst happens, even if militarily it's defeated, that's not going to be the end of this project, right, It's not going to be the end of this emancipation. There's now an entire generation of young people in North Eastyria who have grown up entirely living amongst a liberated and emancipated region and people that's not something you can
militarily defeat. So I you know, I'm not completely hopeless, and obviously I'll be like devastated if the worst does happen there, But like, I don't think it means the end of this incredible political And it feels wrong to call it a project because it's not. It's really is a revolution in the every possible meaning of the word, and it's deeply embedded. Now.
Yeah, and I think everyone I spoke to there, like there's a deeply held conviction that they're not going back some people who have seen like first hand the fascist violence of ISIS, and fascist is the right word. It's something maybe worse than fascism, but like certainly that like speaking to women in Chava about how they're not going back to the gendered violence of they experience for decades to include ISIS, but by no means like only from ISIS.
And I guess that kind of brings us on to I wanted to talk a little bit of the situation in the parts of Syria that are controlled by HCS and and inso much as they really are controlled, controller perhaps are on word like they haven't fully established their state project yet, but they're certainly moving towards that they've sort of captured the institutions of the state rather than
destroyed them. You'd spoken about, like there's this very I don't know, I think, I guess maybe i'll use an examples or I'm phrasing this question in a very meandering way. I sort of ce ann clip where they're they're like, Oh, we found a guy who's liberally who's like in this prison and he was stuck here, and then second part of this was not broadcast on CNN, as this person turns out to be like an Air Force lieutenant who was in fact himself someone who tortured and killed civilians.
And like, there's this very liberatory, very excited messaging coming from media in the West. I guess some of which is good, right, Like, it's good that the Assabe regime is good, Asab was fucking terrible and tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. But that doesn't mean that things are all affected Damascus. So do you want to talk a little bit about like some of the worrying stuff we see in the last few days from those areas.
Yeah, I mean this is something that I worry isn't being spoken about enough. I don't, as a non Syrian, don't want to say to people, you know, you shouldn't be celebrating your own liberation, because people should absolutely should be and it's their right to be. And I'm, like it,
extremely happy that this brutal dictator has gone. I mean, it's it's hard to summarize quite how awful he was, and it's it's deeply refiltrating that he's probably not going to see justice, but it's also really hard to see stuff which is really reminiscent of like nineteen seventy nine Tehran, two thousand and three Baghdad, of a sort of jubilation, whilst at the same time there are videos of sort of programs being carried out against minorities, minorities like the
Allites who were in control, and you don't know if the person being executed in the street was a torture an intelligence agent, and you don't know who they were. But like, this is happening, but you're also seeing like sallaphist groups raising their flag, you know, like hardline is mis raising their flag in places like the Takia and
Tatoos that have significant minority populations. I am very I mean concerned, is in the right word, Like it's hard to feel that spirit of liberation when when you see not only these things happening, but that the people who have captured these state institutions are admitted former members of al Qaida, and they are they are Jihad's hard line people that have now got a very evitably made themselves
about to be moderate. But my guart feeling is that we're going to see something like May seventy nine Tehran, of a lot of talk of reconciliation, a lot of talk of you know, the concerns of the Kurds or working with the communists, but you know, mass executions and oppression is not far around them corner. And I guess when the jubilation dies down, my question is what's going to happen when minorities do you demand their rights? Or women don't want to write a job in you know,
inside the building's inst state institutions. And I'm finding it very hard to believe that these men who are professed is themists are going to allow a moderate future to exist.
Yeah, it's I don't know. Every day we get different information, right, but like, yeah, I don't know if concerned it's the right word either, I don't quite know what the word is.
But like I'm worried. I guess I'm worried that I'm especially worried when like, rather than what we saw in the self administration was not like a continuation of institutions right when the Assad regime left in twenty eleven, in twenty twelve, and areas that the regime or isis have left since then, like it wasn't like Okay, we'll take over these institutions and minister them differently, as we will build democracy from the bottom up, not we'll just change
to people in charge versus what it seems like we're now seeing for Damascus is like, hey, can the police from the cyber regime police stay at work? Which is concerning Talking of police, the last thing I wanted to address was that our whole camp. I've spoken about it before on this show, and people can look back or other episodes, but if you've not heard about it, can you explain briefly what our whole is and then the massive risk that this Turkish backed invasion poses to our
whole and other camps. I guess the whole is not the only camp, just the biggest one.
Yeah, our whole is a really important point to talk about. Our whole is a very large camp. It's hard to sum up what kind of camp it is because it's so vast and had different sections. It's near Alhasseko, which is one of the largest cities in north East Syria. It mostly it mostly contains families who were members or
were resident in the Islamic State when it collapsed. So in the beginning of twenty nineteen ISIS was sort of squeezed into this little corner in the eastern side of Syria between the Euphrates and the Iraqi border, and when the state collapsed, for the caliphate collapse, a lot of people had nowhere to go, and a lot of them were foreignly succoming from abroad. I'm going to say a lot.
I mean like tens of thousands. There were something like twenty thousand families left within SUSA and that was like the last parts of the Califate to hold out, and they didn't have anywhere to go. And there were already camps set up for IDPs for members of ISIS and families in North Assyria, but alcohol was rapidly expanded to
take these on. So it's a sort of semi prison, semi open camp that I think peaked at seventy five thousand people, which it sounds like a lot on its own, but when you consider that a large city in northern Eastsyria is about one hundred and fifty thousand people, it still is significant. I don't you probably have work of recent because I mean, but I think the current population is about forty thousand.
Yeah, it shrunk definitely. I'm not sure what it is exactly.
The big problem that the self administration have had is multitude. Really many of the people there are foreigners. Many of them don't have papers. Many of them come from countries that I either don't want them back or will almost certainly execute them if they're sent back like a rock, which is against the policy of the abolition of death penalty. Inn Asyria. There are some in al whole, but mostly
other camps in the North and East Asyria. Former ISIS members like Shamama Begam who come from countries like the UK who simply won't take them back, and the uk IS taken back some families that simply refuses to take back their since you joined ISIS, says, you know, card carrying members. So they've made a pretty massive effort to repatriate as many families as possible. They've made a big effort to rehabilitate and deradicalize as many people as possible.
They have strung the camp massively, but they're still, yeah, forty thousand or something left there. And these are like really a lot of them are really radical, Like I think, I don't know what an exact number is, but something in the order of ten thousand of them are still like professed being members of ices, and they have a
lot of children. And this was something that shocked me when I was at the end of the Caliphate and back Goods and witnessed tens of thousands of people coming out, and I could not have imagined how many children that were. And this was like what five years ago now coming up to six years ago. So some of them who were you know, seven, eight, nine years old are now like heading towards their mid teens. They've spent their entire lives being radicalized, and like what do you do with them?
And it's no I think there's no coincidence that in previous Turkish attacks, because Turkey's been attacking the north and East Assyria for the last five six years now through the air, through national warfare, and a lot of their attacks have focused on trying to break these people out.
They have bombed the entrances to prisons multiple times, They provided funding and arms and ammunition to groups that are trying to break them out, and they provide a safe passage back to Turkey for those who have managed to escape.
So it's massively in their favor, but of course it's a Pandora's box, because you know, if that does break over, and if these people aren't repatriated or aren't you radicalized, then that's a lot of people who have pretty much only known their whole lives a extremely radical fascist Islamist ideology. And I don't think they're just going to give it up. Yeah, No, that they're not going to join this moderate future Syria.
No, And like those people have probably experienced, like probably have terrible experiences within that camp, and that's not going to make that they don't tend to be moderated and sort of pacifying experiences. And I'm sure that they will. There'll be a lot of hate coming from there when those people come out. And I don't want to lick a portion blame too much, but we've had a long time to deal with this. The world has had a long time to deal with I mean, I would.
Happily blame this is entirely on the hands of the coalition. Northern Assyria is a very poor places. It's deeply impoverished. It's been kept in poverished by by sanctions by Turkey. You know, the oil refining is that the industry, the economy has been smashed to pieces that they've held on really well, and that like all credit to them, they have maintained this camp. They have tried to give these
people alive, but it's it's pretty awful conditions. Yeah, and this could have been sold if the international community, if the coalition, particularly United States, had helped with these repatriations, so put political pressure on European comeses some particulars take back their citizens and had just provided the funding, you know, for they have provided funding. I'm not saying they haven't ready much, but like it's a drop in the ocean
compared to the Department Defense budget. You know, we're talking a few tens of millions here and there as opposed to a concerted effort to deradicalize and repatriate people that could pose a serious threat to Europe and the US.
Yeah, and like you've got Britain doing the opposite of what's helpful, which is fucking like removing people's passports right the naturalizing them, leaving these people stateless and like saying it's not our problem, which is pathetic and I'm.
Very incredibly short sighted. Yeah. You know, I don't like using the word terror or terrorism because I think it's they've become meaningless terms. But like ISIS did commit horrendous acts of terror in Europe and the United States, and these people, a lot of them, I'm sure would happily do so given the opportunity. So I don't think that the threat is like sufficiently understood in the West.
Yeah, No, And like it's going to end up biting them in the ass because they've you know, they've put this off and put this off, and wouldn't spend the money to like have justice related to go through a system and to have a chance to plead their cases or have a tribune or whatever it is. Instead, these people have just been essentially abandoned by most of the world. The self administration has been forced to take care of
the people who did horrific things right there. And yeah, at some point, this population will continue to grow if we don't keep removing people from it, and that's going to be a problem for the whole world, even if the whole world wants to pretend it's not happening right now. And it is just endlessly frustrating to see it not even be covered, let alone kind of addressed in the West.
Yeah, I think that's a really important point when similar atrustees have been carried out in Europe. We see international tribunals, we see the ICC and the ICJ step in. We see arrests, we see prosecutions, you know, like Molossovich, like the newer Bent trials, and Isis was a massive state.
It had some ten million inhabitants. It committed multiple genocides, you know, and this is just you know, people in the regions saying, oh, they're committing just these are like Western highly studied, highly understood, accepted by Western states as genocide against like the Uzds. They committed horrendous atrocities. They posed an international threat and a massive regional threat, and at the end of the caliphe as a territorial realm, as a serious military presence. It just, yeah, it just
disappeared off the radar. And I think this is like a you know, a really is really shows the sort of racist and clonal mindset behind this rules based international order that the people who were their victims and who have left to pick up the pieces after it's got very little support or recognition. And they've been calling for for tribunals for years and it's just fallen on deaf ears.
Yeah, and sadly idgy that changing given the incoming administration in the United States. Like it's it's deeply concerning, deeply concerned. Their own word, it's just fucked. I want to ask, like, people I think want to be in solidarity with the revolution, They want to help if they can, they want to support. I did the fundraiser last night. Thank you to everyone who gave their money and came. That was really nice.
But what can people do to you know, it's one thing to like be in solidarity or post or whatever, but like, what concrete actions can they take to help.
This is This is a question that I gets asked a lot. Yeah, I think and doing anything is helpful. Yeah, it's also a question that's really hard to answer given how things are just across the border in Palestine. You know, I personally find it hard to to engage and ask for help and ask for solidarity when you know there's a there's a genocide being committed next door. But we might be about to see the same thing happened in Syria, and I do think we should be taking it seriously.
And yeah, anything from raising awareness to actually going there and lending support, anything on that spectrum it's not just like it's not just the material contribution that you can make. It's the people that do really feel left doubt, they feel betrayed, they feel let down by the international community, by the rest of the world, and any act of solidarity goes out incredibly well. Like the first year I was there, I was basically useless because I didn't speak
the language, I didn't know my way around. I was like a burden on society more or less. And for people just like happy that you're there, you know, showing solidarity. And it's not about being useful, it's about that act. It's about more than that. That's what I'm trying to say. And if you can show solidarity in any way you can, like this is incredibly incredibly important to find to do it.
Yeah, I think, like I don't know, if I go back to when I move to the US, which was two thousand and eight, George W. Bush as president, and like I have my little free Palestine badge when I got off the plane in my little kafir and like was immediately sent to secondary inspection by the customs people because like that was not really of course, there were Palestinian people and people in solidarity with the people of Palestine and the US in and they were for a
long time before. But like I would never have imagined that I would see thousands of people in the streets for the Palestinian cause, and like that the only thing that has materially held back the genocide of the Palestinian people has been the solidarity that they've experienced, And like
that shows the power that people have. Though obviously it's been able to do comparatively little in Israel still seems to be killing bill children every day, but like it shows that we can build solidarity really quickly and really meaningfully. And like you don't have to go, but you can go.
You get.
It's much harder to get to Palestine than it is to get to northern Newsyria. I went last year, And I think people who are already organizing can bring that into their organizing too. These things don't have to compete like they can be. There's a lot of solidarity to go around. But I would say a lot of the news we see, unfortunately from Turkey and that will unfortunately give you information that the extremely biased when it comes
to Naughsi Siria. So being conscious of your media consumption is very important.
Yeah, absolutely, I think I would just add that to say that solidarity with any group is a long term project, right, You're not going to jump in and be able to make a huge difference immediately. But also at the same time, like if the worst happens, if Turkey invades Ullon and as genocide and North Assyria, that isn't the end of it.
It's a massive international movement and there are practices from it that are being put in place in things that actually don't even have anything to do with the curves
of the nation. And there are always organizing, there are matters that they use as personality analysis, there's criticism and self criticism that there's a lot of that that goes far beyond a single geographic region, and I think engaging with that can and I've seen with my own I since I've been back, like there's a lot of groups around the UK that use techniques for self organization within land rights movement, within worker struggle, within ant Cutts campaigning,
and the's got nothing to do with with Rajava, but they have seen that through solidarity with Rajava and Kurdistan that there are ways that can improve their own practice and their own actions.
Yeah, I think that's really important too, and those are things maybe we'll cover in the future. And there are plenty of good resources online. Are there any resources you'd like to plug or like personal social media's things? Do you think people could follow to get good information on what's happening.
Definitely the ri C, that's the Java Information Center. They are probably the best source on the ground in Java, and they are a collective of journalists, a mixture of locals and internationalists who've been working there for six years now, so they're a rejar. But I see on various social media platforms you can follow me as at lapinesque la p I n E, s q u E. I'm also
posting about it, although I'm not there anymore. I'm using updates from friends, people I know there and my take on the situation based on my experiences being there from five years.
Yeah, I think good to follow if you can. Thank you very much, Danny. What we're going to do now is I got some voice notes from some friends who are at the front with a technosina and assist, which means anarchist struggle in Kurdish. They're a group within the SDF that is an anarchist group that they're fighting, and in this case as to doing frontline medical support on behalf of the self administration, on behalf of the revolution. They sent me some notes this morning, Monday today their
positions on the front line. So obviously those notes will be a little bit they'll be like twenty four hours old by the time you hear them. But I still think it's very important to hear from people who are there. One we can not from, like someone who's supposed to be an expert but hasn't set for in Syria in fifteen years and hasn't really talked to anyone who's Syrian either.
So we'll drop those in after the advertising break here, and with that I will say thank you very much, Danny, thanks for giving us your time, and he'll be really appreciate all you're insight today.
Thanks very much, James, talking from the Provisional branch after divisions.
We want to share the situation here.
Because you're probably now the regime has fun. You've left the country after a big offensive that started from Italy that took over quite soon, quite fast, the city of Aliba and continued moving.
We wanted to explain how is the situation right now on the ground and also give some insight on the.
Situation of North in Syria and what the media is not covering of the different events and situations that are unknowing here. The main thing to remark that this can be a bit of a confusion confusion interview for those that are maybe not familiar with the unknowing situation. To give a short context, we can mention that there are right now two main conflicts ongoing military conflicts.
One is when you reported they're not so much.
We are talking about the war that HDRS or the offensive that HDS launched against the CERN or a part me. And the other is the offensive that the SMA and Turkish proxy forces the writin or the name of that Syrian National Army, but that they are trained, paid and supported by the Turkish state. The offensive they have been launching against Northern Asyria and the Democratic Administration of North Asyria is the area also known sometimes as Forgiver that is started as the.
Court Desilberation movement leaving the world.
Of Islamic state and establishing this autonomy's administration. So let's go shoot it to the first conflict. This offensive of its theater of the faith of Reaction, but it's Islamis group direct heritage of.
An austral that was the Syrian.
Branch of the GUIDO that has been governing having somewhat govern and the strict region in the Region of Europe in the north west of Syria and was under heavisage from the region. Process of Syria Army and the twenty seventh of Nanda Bay count is the offensive.
That led to the collapse of the region.
We could reflect about the regions now on one side, the Syria appeny was exhausted the two years of war here in Senia, but especially their main allies and supporters were also in that situation.
We were talking mostly about Russia and Iran.
As we currently know, Russia has been in change in a war in Ukraine for three years almost Iran recently had been also engaged in supporting the militias in the conflict against Israel after the virtual occupation that Israel started on another year ago. These two conflicts create a situation that both.
Partners that Russian Iran were not able to support the army as they within the past.
And this led also to the collapse of the front lands of the Serra Party, allowing the offensive of HDS to overrun very fast the defenses in the city of Alipo and also take in control of the city of Hamma. These sparked also all the groups that also opposed the region for a long time to start also the in action and in southern Syria and the regions of the Sula and and Couneta, there was also an autonomous military operation room that started coordinated insurgeons and the vision.
These sparked the collapse of the region.
A lot of soldiers were defect in their positions and finally the different military groups leaving the offensive.
To the mass Post.
This was an offensive that was really not very builded in the sense of a lot of the similar party souldiers who were.
Just leaving their positions and running away.
And offensive was able to do advance very fast, very easily.
Right now.
The offensive led to the transition that we are seeing in the mass Post, where the leader of HDS.
Had been doing really.
Public speeches and the carrying the trium of the revolution, trying to harvest.
And the revolutionary spirit of the twenty eleven for their.
Own benefit, and they imposed or composed a traditional government that is from exclusively by like members connected to aligned to HDS. Could be good to discuss more about HDS, but maybe it's not the focus of.
Our interview right now. Just mentioned that the authoritarian.
Government in Egypt has been also really criticized by local population organizing protest against it and right now running this interim government, they are already making proposals for like a morality police, is amy courts.
So I don't know how much this comparison has been really shared. That clearly what we saw in Afhanistan with Taliban.
Taking over the state destructors is probably a good guide to understand what could be happening in Syria if HBO states control of the the state as it's.
To be happening.
So this is one of the confident going that is widely reported. The only one maybe is not so much reported. We see how the Turkish has been for a long time to bested, has been for a long time and attacking the vision of that Norway Syria, especially the Cooltish areas, and.
This is connected not to their war against the.
Condliberation movement that has been known for more than forty years and the last chapter of US started in coordination with this offensive of Hds where the Appropi forces and started to attack, mainly the region of Takifact that was an area where a lot of the refugees from a friend were living. A frin was a region that was a ray occupied by thirty in twenty eighteen and a lot of the people from the city was displaced and living in refuge.
Avants in the in the region of.
Hinda and the civil Tetrifact, and these Turkish pecty forces attacked and conquered that vision, forcing all these people that already had to leave their homes more than five years ago two thousand eighteen. Yeah, so forcing them to flee once again. A lot of these people was trapped in a caroline that suffered brutal grades attacks, kidnapping, ransoms like it has been like a really terrible experience for a lot of people that was trying to flee the offensive
of the Turkish practy forces. And most of them are now arriving to do bad. Time to write to the visions of the self administration when where they are founding and they can find shelter and for those willing to help with the mention that Hava Shirt is the humanitary organization one of the biggest humanitarior organizations working in other Syria and has been providing tans and fought and blankage and everything they can to support all these people that is arriving on these areas.
So those willing to support.
Economically and the humanical and crisis that we are experiencing, they can easily.
Find the right side and the Banga Kama.
Favasa to donate to them to support all these people that went again, those in their homes that the offensive didn't stop on An Shaffa and the SMA continued their attacks and took over the city of man Ma gerally right now and this was a really heavy classis that it was a really serious military conflict that has been totally supported by Turkish artillery.
And air force. We are talking about.
Drones sitting different positions and even airplanes.
That of course nature air force have been.
Bombing positions of the Cerum democratic forces, allowing.
These different is on groups that part of.
This coalition of the SMA, these poklish pactic forces to control of the city. At the moment, there is already several days that manage this city have been organizing protests and even in general strike that started yesterday and in the occupation because these groups that occupy the city are looting and even killing local populations in a really terrible situation. Of this experience in the local people living in Manage,
and they are willing to continue. They have been threatening the city of Colony, the symbol of resists terms of the visual revolution against the designed state and the straits and the city are not just the bombings of the top air force and artillery, but also a lot of military personal of the Turkish Prepsy forces gathering on the bridge that connects the divisions.
Of man Beach and Commanding and all across the air for this river.
So this war is not so reported that it's been really both times against the self administration in Northeastyria. We are trying to report and update about the situation. We also published two studments to to call out attention for comrade what is ongoing here and maybe also.
Talk a bit about the work that we have been doing on the ground.
We need to remark that this offensive of the Mambage and now districts and Colony have not been the only adults.
Of the Turkish army and the party forces and.
The build all around the Street that they occupied in twenty eighteen and two thousand nineteen. In the areas around the city of Sylvania and Anisa next to the border with Tricky also host a lot of islam As groups that are part of this Turkish Party coalition and they have been intensively bounding the areas and their surroundings and there have been quiet widespread forms. This ze group togethering forces to continue their results on the self administration of
Nordestria and the ward of the Syrian Democratic Forces. We from the Casinosis, we have been working in the medical capacity, provide i think materials for the medical points in the in the fundance and being present in the foundlands together with the Syrian Democratic Forces in case that a new invasion and is happening right now, the bombings are hitting.
Different areas and it has been really intense in the last days.
The Syrian Democratic Forces are in maximilar and especially there is an important call in solidarity with the city of Covany, a symbol of resistance that is small ones again under threat. We have been seen as demonstrations are around the world in solebarity with like the revolutions here and this has been also bringing lots motivation to continue the resistance underground.
Right now, these situations of the instability and political tradition is still plain in ways that are difficult to predict.
We can see how the self administration has been sending political.
Realizations and to the masters to never shad with this new provisional government with the attempt to reach autonomy for the region that connects with the ideas of democratic conferenism, the DEAs of democratic confulism. Don't expect to run a state institutions.
Because we don't want to live.
In a society that is ruled by a state, and are calling for tums economy in a lot of governments where that the different communities can live together, colleges together, administering their social forms together, and also with their defense. We'll see how the democratic forces is at a military coalition of different local military forces that it's blade on
the principles of self defense. Maybe to give a bit of context also of what we have been doing here for several years that our organization has been operating in another Syria.
As anarchists. We can hear in.
Solidarity international society with this revolution because their political values.
And their political project is really close to our ideas.
We see big similarities with the ideas of libertarian socialism and social ecology and thinkers and model Bootin have been a big inspiration for unvers In, leader of the Court Desirition movement that has been proposing this political friend called democratic confromism, where especially with the principles of one liberation, social ecology and studios andocracy has been political campus of the revolution here.
Building autonomy in the.
Different regions has been also a very important element to develop the project, and especially during the war and the Islamic State, as soon as the different territories were liberated, there was a big emphasis on creating local councils civilian and military councils both that.
Around their own affairs.
This is very interesting from anarchists perspective not to see how one of the main political points is these promotings of defense and creating a military force that is not based on a centralized monopoly of balance, but on allowing every community to take care of their own defense and their own affairs.
This is a really inspiring.
Element that for us as I mean also a really extraordinary learning process.
Being part of a revolution.
Leaving day to day the developments that are happening here and seeing what doesn't mean to make a revolution because in something that sometimes we anarchists look back often in at the epic times of like Spain on thirty six Ukraine in the twenties to see examples of like an anarchist revolution.
And this is something that today is happening here.
Good.
This tant has been for a long time leaving a resistance against.
The logic of national states, especially in turky but we saw how it has been funding in Syria where like this movement found the space to put in practice these ideas and to develop the revolutionary society that has been theorized for a long time. So even if we cannot save Vergialism an anarchist region can say how at his principles inspired the project and that it's been developed here and implemented. This is a really an important school. It brings a lot of lections of the big challenges of
reorganizing a society with principles of libertarian socialism. It is especially complicated here because of external reasons like the situation of the Marble, the constant threat of the Tutis army, and this is something that for sure we can point out as like, well, it's very difficult to make a revolution with these factors. But this is also a lesson that making a revolution will always be.
Difficult, and we always have really big.
Factors that make the situation very difficult. If making a revolution would be easy, we would already have done it. So of course it's something that brings a lot of difficulties, a lot of compleation, and a lot of challenges and use here day to day living what it means to build their evolutionary society, a lot of a lot of equations from the reflections that we also able to translate and to reflect together with.
The artist movements from around the world, to learn family.
Experience, and to be able to analyze together and reflect and discuss together of what it means to build anarchism in the twenty first century, what it means to build libertarian socialism nowadays.
In the current society with all the different elements that we see, and of course in.
The military council division going, it can seem maybe sometimes far away of community in western countries, but I think it's important to remember that revolution and war have been always to site. At the same time, it's in these mode of instability of war where the logic and the established school of national states is more weak, because we can actually see.
Nine other times in another moment or.
Even in other places nowadays, what is happening for example, and there now what is happening in the different areas where the logic of a national state has been questioned, creates in the stability to create a situation where the different actors will push to take control.
And we know that often those actors will be met by.
A nationalism and forces mentality with an authoritarian logic to just impose their ideas and their aims by force. And it's very important that we think and we reflect and reorganize force that is able to react to that situation because a traitarian and hierarchic miter structures.
Are quite false.
To react, we as anarchists, we need time to organize arizon pay because our structures.
Function based us on trust also make knowing each other and even if I really believe that they are much more solid and much more.
Reliable in a long term, in a short term we can face.
Big, big challenge. So it's important.
To see fascism is as with advancing all around the world, and we can see how the intentions are growing.
So maybe this isn't.
As a call min to learn from the lessons here, to learn from how the Kurdish movement have been working and preparing for decades and what happened in Syria made possible for the revolutionary movement to put the cards on the table, to organize together with the people and to defend their people and their communities, building these rebuffering process that nowadays that so many people have been like taking inspiration from.
So yeah, probably this is a bit confusing and maybe not so clearent.
Sorry, we have been quiet some hours. We've had several weeks that have been extremely challenging with really few hours of sleep. But I hope this is more or less clear, and this is doing is something that it's not so understandable and always welcome new and new questions and helping answer, answer and share more perspective.
We have been answer writing some statements and we are answer trying to answer all.
Those people interested in learning more about the situation here and in ways to support the revenue.
It could happen. Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website. Folzonmedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions.
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