The war in Rojava has carried over to Geneva

The war in Rojava has carried over to Geneva

The war in Rojava is coming to an end. In this war Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar openly supported al-Qaeda; the United States and the EU openly supported the Free Syrian Army. However this broad alliance has suffered a strategic defeat at the hands of the YPG.

After the victory Kurds proclaimed self-administration while asserting their control over Rojava. At just this point the United States, the Turkish State and the KDP began a war to neutralize the agents of these developments – the Kurdish High Council and the PYD – in the political field. Activities to discredit and slander the PYD’s legitimacy are still continuing in different forms. It is worth investigating the recently published report of ‘Reporters without Borders’ – an organization with its headquarters in France – as just one part of this slander campaign. This report claims that the Assad Regime, al-Qaeda and the PYD are obstacles to democracy and oppressing the people in Syria. They are painting the PYD, the regime and al-Qaeda gangs all with the same brush.

While there was no sign of popular support as the “Emirates” and the “Islamic State or Iraq and Syria” were being proclaimed in Damascus, Aleppo, Raqqa, Hama, Haseke and Lazkiye, the Kurdish people rose up together at the proclamatıon of a temporary administration. Those who have lost the shooting war against the Kurds not want to continue this war in Geneva.

The United States, Great Britain, France, Turkey and Iran are all showing their opposition to the legitimate representation of Rojava Kurds, whether by themselves or together with other powers, at the Geneva meetings. They are trying to keep the political leadership  - who in the war in Rojava have defended the Kurdish people and the other peoples living there, and who for this cause have given hundreds of lives, and who are today organizing life there – out of the meetings. Internatıonal powers claiming to want a political solution to the civil war and fighting in Syria, want to bypass the actual representatives of the Kurdish people and create a “solution” with their own partners.

The USA, Great Britain, France, Turkey, Iran and the KDP are on the same page. This coalition does not accept real Kurdish participation at the “Geneva 2” meetings or that the Kurdish issue be on the agenda as a separate heading. Partıcipation in these meetings by either the Kurdish High Council or the PYD is being forcibly rejected. As a Kurdish representative Abdulhakim Beşar, the leader of El-Parti which is connected to the KDP, is seen as suitable. Perhaps even Russia will not side with the PYD in insisting that it participate at Geneva.

The Turkish state signed an agreement with Abdulhakim Beşar and Ahmet Carba, the president of the Syrian National Coalition, on August 27th, 2013 in Istanbul. As part of this agreement, the Kurdish National Committee – which is under Barzani administration – decided to participate as part of the Syrian National Coalition, in which there are also gang elements, and not with the Kurds of Rojava. So who is this Abdulhakim Beşar who has been so recognized by the United States,  Great Britain, and the Turkish state?

He is the president of the El Parti in Rojava. Abdulhakim Beşar lives in Hewler (Erbil). The party’s funds and salaries are paid for by the KDP. In Rojava it has neither a serious organization, nor popular support nor a military presence. It is a “kith and kin” organization at its fullest. A kind of typically Middle Eastern partnership which thinks that putting on a tie and wearing a business suite is enough for politics. He [Abdulhakim Beşar] himself admitted as much after the agreement in Istanbul.

“I have met with representatives of the US, British and French embassies about Kurdish rights in Syria. They said that they would support Kurdish demands in Syria and and they gave a ‘international guarantee’ on the subject” he said. Abdulhakim Beşar is one of the new ‘Hamid Karzai’s fulfilling the needs of the USA and Great Britain in the Middle East. The most significant and valuable thing about him is this.

Among the political forces in Southern Kurdistan the Goran movement, the YNK, Yekgurti İslami Kurdistan, Hizbi Şui Kurdistan, Komaleyi İslami Kurdistan, Zahmetkaşan e Kurdistan, Bizutnewey İslami Kurdistan, PÇDK, Hizbi Ayinde, Partiya Rizgariya Kurdistan, Yekiti Neteweyi Demokrati Kurdistan, Bizutinewey Demokrati Gele Kurdistan, and Partiya Karker û Rencdarene Kurdistan all want the Kurdish High Council and the PYD to represent Rojava in the Geneva meetings. This is to say that in the KRG only the KDP is against the Kurdish High Council and the PYD.

34 parties and political organizations in Rojava are supporting the Kurdish High council and the PYD. The KCK, KNK, PKK, HDK, BDP and 100 municipalities also support the Kurdish High Council and the PYD. Both by quantity and quality, the line of the KDP, supported by the United States and the EU, is in a marginal position.

As a parallel to these debates, agreements are being made between the KDP and the Turkish state, as well as between the KDP and corporations such as Exxon Mobil, Total, Gazprom and Chevron for oil exploration, pipelines and transportation. However thousands of kilometers of the land over which this petrol will be extracted and transported are within the geography of Kurdistan. Under the control of Kurdish guerillas; that is to say a wide geography over which neither the United States, nor Qatar, nor the KDP, nor Abdulhakim Beşar can guarantee security. It follows therefore that any plan to implement peace and a solution in which the KCK, PKK and PYD – who are real parties in the ongoing war in the region – do not participate is imaginary and impossible. This is the reality that the United States, Great Britain, France, Turkey and the KDP do not want accepted.

* Translation of “Rojava savaşı Cenevre’ye taştı” by Ferda Çetin, which originally appeared in Yeni Özgür Politika by The Rojava Report