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By Dr. Jan Best de Vries:
Solidarity event in San Francisco
When I gave some lectures about Kurdish history at the Mesopotamia Academy (Qamishlo, district Jazira) in October 2015, several students afterwards put questions like “Why don’t the democratic American and European governments help us more than they do now?”, “Why are we with our democratic society not welcome in the West?” and “Is Russia aware of what is going on in the revolution of Rojava?”.
Difficult questions to answer within half an hour. So I first had to explain that Syria as a state is an artificial construction, a former mandate made by the French in 1919 directly after World War I with no interests in the living conditions and political aspirations of the peoples within Syria’s borders, but only in oil. And then that the Americans only guarantee a no fly zone above Bashur (Iraqi Kurdistan), because of their safeguarding the oil fields in the region and the offices of their twelve oil companies in Erbil, but not above Rojava, because their NATO ally Turkey wouldn’t agree with such a policy, because in that case fewer Kurds could be killed in Rojava. In other words, that support from the West is not to be expected and that the population of Rojava should just rely upon the brave members of the YPG and YPJ in this situation. As for Russia, I explained that since the Tsarist Empire a totalitarian government has proven to be the only solution for keeping the huge land masses of Russia and Siberia together, so that any future help from this side would be just a temporary one in order to keep the Americans and Mr. Erdogan irritated. The fifty students in front of me were, to put it mildly, a bit shocked, but at least back to reality. Next day we visited in fine weather Urkesh, the old capital of the Hurrians and all of them were then happy again to see the excavations by UCLA and to pick up shards.
Back in the Netherlands I read the book by the American author Sheldon S. Wolin Democracy Inc. – Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism with a New Preface by the Author (Princeton Universiy Press, 2008) , in which the true state of democracy in the US and Europe is well analysed and described. After reading it I don’t foresee many difficulties for the Americans and Russians to find together a political solution for the civil war in Syria as their political systems now appear to be more or less the same. For both of them real democracy will not be an issue in their solution for Syria and so I wondered what drives American professional soldiers to fight in Rojava as The Lions with the YPG an YPJ against Turkey’s ally Islamic State. I guess it is the same motive which drives Dutch artists, architects and teachers to offer their professional skills to the Rojava revolution. After the failures of capitalism – Worldwide Theft – and communism & socialism – Worldwide Fear – human beings from all over the world are finally flocking together in Rojava for Worldwide Solidarianism.
Dr. Jan Best de Vries is an archaeologist and historian, decipherer of the so-called Byblos Script from Aleppo and Alalakh (‘How to Decipher the Byblos Script’, Aspekt Publishers 2014, ISBN978-946-153-420-0)
