ISIS

Rojava: ISIS Almost Driven Out of Kobane

Date:

Very positive news coming out of Kobane where as these maps, from different sources, show ISIS have almost been driven out of the city.

Overnight the YPG/J announced they had liberated Suk Al-Hal & the Industrial Zone on the eastern and north-eastern edges of the city. Earlier in the week. There are also rumours of clashes in Helince village south east of the city. If ISIS lose that local commentators say their remaining forces in Kobane will be entirely cut off from supply.

When ISIS reached Kobane about 130 days ago, equipped with US armour captured at Mosul, they appeared unstoppable. The Kurdish defenders were pushed into a small defensive zone in the north west of the city but Kobane became ISIS's Stalingrad. Unable to admit defeat they kept pouring men & equipment into the city, at one stage managing to even mount a suicide VIBED attack at the Turkish border. Now not only have they almost been driven out of Kobane but they are being driven back by Kurdish forces elsewhere.

 

WSM International Secretariat on the defence of Kobane

Date:

The WSM considers the struggle for Kobane and the autonomous zones of Rojava to be crucial for the development of a political alternative for the region. We view Daesh as the toxic excrescence of the results of global and regional imperialist intervention in Syria and Iraq.

Dublin Solidarity rally with Kobane

Date:

On October 8th about 200 people marched though Dublin to show solidarity with Kobane under attack by ISIS in an emergency demonstration organised at short notice.

What was intended as a rally turned into a march on the Dail (Irish parliament) when more than the expected 30-40 people turned up. The attendance was made up of members of the Kurdish community in Ireland, Turkish leftists and anarchists, left-republicans and other socialists.

Tell Us Lies About Kobanê -unpicking the demand for Turkish & western intervention

Date:

The notion that the fall of Kobanê could be prevented by the intervention of the Turkish army is a smokescreen that covers the truth that they are already intervening - on the side of ISIS. The Turkish state's selective blockade of the border, which allows arms and volunteers to cross for ISIS, but strangles them for the YPG defenders of Kobanê is the decisive intervention that is giving ISIS the upper hand.

This fundamental truth has been put forward by some minority voices in the mainstream media. Chiefly those intrepid reporters on the ground trying to cover the story. Honourable mention should be made of the BBC's Paul Adams amongst others. But these marginalised voices have been drowned out by the official media line issuing from the central editorial offices downwards, that the Kurds of Kobanê and Turkish Kurdistan are protesting "against Turkey's inactivity" or "failure to intervene". This is the world turned upside down. And Orwellian newspeak where the exact opposite of the truth is reported as accepted fact. The banners the protesters are holding say "Turkey Stop Supporting ISIS".

Origins of the hostility and the split between Al Qa’ida and ISIS

Date:

ISIS control of Syria & Iraq as of Sept 2014 from WikipediaGeo-strategically the Al Qa’ida leadership (Azzam, bin Laden, Zawahiri) are products of the Cold War, specifically the Afghan Mujahidin war against the USSR. Rather like their American neo-con previous employers, Al Qa’ida view the end of the Cold War as a victory over the USSR by their own side. The Al Qa’ida perspective is that, having “defeated” one superpower, the global jihad now needs to turn its offensive against the remaining superpower.  Al Qa’ida worry that the Zarqawists of ISIS may be restricting the struggle to a parochial Mesopotamian sectarian struggle that could fail to engage Muslim jihadists around the world, outside the MENA region, say in West Africa or Indonesia and the Philippines  where the US is a more credible #1 enemy than Iran.

ISIS Jihadism and Imperialism in the post Arab Spring period- an anarchist analysis ( Audio & Video )

Date:

Following on from the rapid spread of Isis in Iraq & Syria Paul Bowman presented an update intended to inform on the contemporary politics of Jihadism and its entanglement with regional and global imperialist power plays.

He starts by looking in detail at the ideological / religious background of the Salafist movements including ISIS and how such movements differ from those of the Muslim Brotherhood / Ikwanite.

Syndicate content