By Dr Jan Best de Vries: If the present-day province of Aleppo would have covered the same large area as that of the ancient realm of Yamkhad with its capital Aleppo, Yamkhad might have become again the future name of Syria after the deconstruction of this former, rather haphazard, mandate handed over to the French…
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Category Archives: Syria
The Dawn of an Independent Kurdistan
By Dr Jan Best de Vries: Hawler (Erbil) is the international capital of Bashur, public life is well organized, both streets and offices of American and many other foreign oil companies are well protected by the police, and, notwithstanding the permanent threat of IS at the borders of this part of Kurdistan, the atmosphere is…
Kurdish-Jewish Covenant of Friendship Azadi Shalom
By Dr. Jan Best de Vries: Winter has arrived in Kurdistan and many babies born in the cold tents of the fugitives from the killers of the “Islamic State” will die. My bodyguard Azad Kardoi and I visited in Erbil a camp of 62 tents within a church compound and are sure that the inhabitants…
De-islamization in a Free Kurdistan?
Dr. Jan Best de Vries: I am grateful that, as an outsider from Europe, in December 2014 I had the opportunity to relate in broad terms, to staff and students at the Mesopotamia Academy in Qamishlo, the history of the Kurds. When combining all the data from archaeology, history and linguistics at our disposal, one…
Women Gyn Doctors Urgently Needed by Yazidi Refugees
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: Over 400 Yazidi girls and women have escaped from the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria and made their way to Dohuk in northern Iraq. Some have been bought back for ransoms. Since their kidnapping last August 2014 from their homes in Shingal, Iraq,…
Recruiting the Right Rebels in the Mideast: Myth of McCain’s Moderate Muslim Militants & Obama’s Good Islamist-Jihadist-Terrorists
By Dr. M. Koohzad: There is no such mortal as a moderate Muslim militant in the Mideast. They all are Islamist-Jihadist-Terrorists, SOBs. We love them if they are our IJTs SOBs. Introduction All of the issues of political economy in the Mideast are related to the imperial arrangements of the Western powers. They imposed all…
Aleppo’s Fate
By Dr. Jan Best de Vries: One hour a day access to electricity and water and insufficient food – that’s the daily fate of two million inhabitants of Aleppo in wintertime. Meanwhile the bombardments by the Assad regime’s fighter jets continue, his weak army being incapable after three years of controlling the city, notwithstanding the help…
Carving a Country Called Terroristan in Kurdistan
By Dr. M. Koohzad: What IS in a Name Game of the World’s Worst Islamic Jihadist Terrorists or WWIJT? This article first appeared on CounterPunch Introduction Development of the world’s worst Islamist Jihadist terrorist group began with chaos of the sectarian civil war in Syria. It slowly matured to become the most mighty and dreaded…
The war against Turkey/ISIS
By Dr. Jan Best de Vries: To my friend Salih Muslim “Under the pretense of stopping an ISIS attack on Turkey (for ISIS fighters constantly attack Kobane from Turkey – JBdeV) , the Turkish army bombarded the center of Kobani with tanks and artillery”, Kurdish newspaper Rudaw quoted Anwar Muslim, the co-chairman of Kobani, as saying…
The future of Rojava
Dr. Jan Best de Vries: Sunday afternoon 30 November, Salih Muslim, the male co-president of the PYD (the largest party in Rojava), who normally lives in Kobane, flew in from Stockholm to attend at The Hague a Kurdish feast in celebration of the anniversary of the foundation of the PKK, which is regarded by the government…
Broken lives
By Dr. Sherzad Al-Khalifa: Just imagine yourself: You have a house to return to every day, you prepare your children in the morning to go to school; you make food for the family; you feed them when they come back home; you have a TV and you wait for your favourite programme; you cover yourself at night with a warm blanket; you…
Time to Recognize the True Ally
By Rauf Naqishbendi: The rise of fanatic Islamist Caliphates has brought a deplorable economic and social epoch to Kurdish history. At the same time, it has heightened the spirit of nationalism, and is issuing an emergency call for unity amongst Kurds. Jihadists from different terrorist affiliations have been ganging up on the Kurds. Although the…
Kobani Guerrillas, a New Era of Feminism
By Vian Faraj: After numerous defensive activities by the YPJ (Womens Protection Units) in Kobani, evidently equality concepts are going to be reborn from under the sleeveless jackets of guerrillas in a small city-state located at the man-made border between two colonialists, Turkey and Syria. What the egalitarian Kurdish female fighters in Al-Jazira, Al-Hasakah, Afrin,…
Aleppo is the prize again
Dr. Jan Best de Vries: In Northwest Syria, between 1700 BCE and 1630 BCE existed the state of Yamkhad with its capital Haleb (Aleppo), in which Yarimlim reigned as king. In Alalakh (Tell Atchana), on the Mediterranean coast at the time, now belonging to Turkey (and not yet to Rojava), reigned his vassal king Ammitaku,…
EU’s Resolution on Yazidis: Read Between the Lines
By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: As reported by ekurd.net Nov. 20, the European Parliament held a special conference to address the Yazidi refugees (also spelled Ezidi) who suffered a genocidal attack on Aug. 3, 2014, by the Islamic State (also referred to as Daesh, ISIS, and ISID). The European Parliament passed the following Resolution: Urgent assistance…
