Workers Solidarity Movement

This image is fresh from Rojava, posted by @bobcrowbrigade to their twitter stream with the caption "International Freedom Battalion in solidarity with our sisters in Ireland fighting to #repealthe8th"

August 31st outside the GPO in Dublin and over 100 people gather to protest at the Turkish invasion of northern Syria.  The invasion seems to be intended to stop the two sections of Rojava linking up - a linkup would cut off ISIS from the Turkish border.

The demonstration was called by Rojava Calling and Saoirse Jin groups.  Saoirse is the Irish word for Freedom and Jin the Kurdish word for women. There were speakers from the Kurdish community, political organisations including the WSM and Sinn Fein and a trade union speaker.  You can hear most of these speeches in the video.

A little over ten hours ago (24th August) Turkish tanks crossed the Syrian border to supposedly attack ISIS. For the last couple of years Turkish troops and ISIS militants have been exchanging hand waves across the border as month by month hundreds of ISIS recruits have been allowed to cross it.

What changed? Over the last weeks the SDF fought street to street though the town of Manbij, just south of Jarablus. Eventually they forced ISIS out and started to advance towards Jarablus, these advances in effect closing the ISIS supply route across the border. Turkey really didn’t want the SDF which includes the Kurdish YPG and YPJ to capture Jarablus, hence this last minute invasion.

To mark todays 80th anniversary of the Spanish revolution and what is also the 4th anniversary of the Rojava revolution in Kobane this recording of a Kurdish version of A Las Barricadas has just been released.

It's recorded in Qamişlo, Rojava by members of the Mohamed Şêxo art and culture centre. The performers say "What happened in Barcelona on 19th July 1936 was repeated 76 years later. We started in Kobanê, and it was there that we put up our fiercest resistance. Countless comrades have fallen to defend this city against the fascists, just like the countless comrades who gave their live to defend the revolution in Catalonia and Spain.

At least 84 dead in Nice as a truck is deliberately driven through the huge crowds marking the anniversary of the French Revolution. The driver who was shot be police after plowing through the crowd for 1.2km is reported to be a French citizen of Tunisian descent. The method of attack which is very similar to one advocated in the ISIS magazine strongly suggests an ISIS /Daesh attack.

The cartoon on the left is from a few months ago but expresses how Kurds saw the role of the Turkish state towards ISIS and the conflict in Syria. Considerable evidence of support for ISIS from the Turkish state has been published in the international media over the last months. An ISIS commander told the Washington Post on August 12, 2014, "We used to have some fighters -- even high-level members of the Islamic State -- getting treated in Turkish hospitals."

This Sunday the Observer revealed details of a US Special forces raid on an ISIS compound. “One senior western official familiar with the intelligence gathered at the slain leader’s compound said that direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now “undeniable”.” Oil smuggling was what that ISIS leader was co-ordinating with the Turkish officials and ISIS were getting an “estimated $1m-$4m per day in oil revenue”

Dublin protested last night against ISIS and the support it has received to date from the Turkish state. The protest was called by Lookleft in the aftermath of the Suruc bombing. 32 humanitarian volunteers on the way to help in the rebuilding of Kobane were killed in the bombing, at least 2 anarchists were amongst those killed.

The bomb went off on Monday at a community centre in Suruç a small mostly Kurdish town just across the border in the Turkish state. The Amara Culture Centre which was where 300 people on a Federation of Socialist Youth Associations stayed on their way to Kobane. 32 of them were killed by the bomb including at least two anarchists and over 100 injured, some critically.

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.

The latest news from Kobane indicates that the YPG/YPJ have continued to slowly push ISIS out of the town and are now conducting regular ambushes in the surrounding towns including one 10 km south where the YPG reported that "Our forces ambushed &killed ISIS emir [leader] Abu Khansaa & bodyguards in Tel Ghazal south of Kobani." 

Zaher Baher of the Kurdistan Anarchists Forum spoke at the 2014 London Anarchist Bookfair about the two weeks he spent in Syrian Kurdistan in May 2014, looking at the experiences of self-management in the region, experiments that have become more widely discussed as the result of the defense of Kobane against ISIS. Zaher is also a member of Haringey Solidarity Group

Anarchist Eyewitness to self-management in Kurdish Syria / West Kurdistan by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud