Posted on 02/19/2019 8:26:16 AM PST by rktman
For the past seven years, in the northeast wedge of Syria abutting Turkey, Iraq and Islamic State, a band of zealous Kurds have built an unrecognized state called Rojava and tried to keep it from being overrun. Rojava is governed like a 1980s Berkeley dorm discussion whose participants have acquired automatic weapons. They are anarcho-leftist, environmentally conscious, secular, socialist and radically devoted to equality of the sexes. One manifestation of this last commitment is a coed guerrilla force, including male and female snipers (féministes fatales, if you will) who have been picking off the male jihadists of Islamic State with gusto for the past five years.
A new memoir, “Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Snipers Who Broke ISIS,” tells the story of the group’s sniper battles against Islamic State, with a heavy dose of the group’s leftism. The author, writing under the name Azad Cudi, is a Kurdish sniper now in Europe. Iranian by birth, he deserted his post in the Iranian military and fled to exile in Yorkshire, England, in 2004. There he read the work of Abdullah Öcalan, the terrorist-intellectual founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and found that man’s turgid Maoism enchanting. At the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Rojava was founded on an Öcalanist model, and in 2013, when confrontation between Rojava and ISIS became inevitable, Mr. Cudi traveled to Syria to defend it.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The US will manage to get them wiped out, anyway.
Some of those Kurdish women have more balls than a lot of American guys.
This link is better, perhaps.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/long-shot-review-triggering-a-revolution-11550519520
The author writes for the Atlantic, Leftist indeed.
https://www.theatlantic.com/author/graeme-wood/
Graeme Wood is a staff writer for The Atlantic and the author of The Way of the Strangers: Encounters With the Islamic State.
The article is pure garbage. Yes, Ocalan and the PKK have that element.
Our soldiers know better than to measure them all by garbage from US based media.
The SDF have foreign leftist supporters. And they have some that support them that are anything but leftist.
The women who defended Kobane were defending their lives. To be captured by ISIS meant rape, torture, dismemberment, and slow painful death to all. Ideology was not what caused them to hang on so desperately during the Siege of Kobane or after as the battle expanded. I watched it daily and have had conversations with some of them for the past 5 years. I know what they are and aren’t. They are as brave as hell, and the women (and men) are fierce fighters but compassionate people too.
I’m proud to call some of them friends.
Hmmm. Looks like subscription requirement needed on that one. Mine worked for me so...............
Bump!
And they are good people.
“I’m proud to call some of them friends.”
As you should be. There are stories among the SpecOps world of their bravery. Awesome warriors.
I’m still in awe with their absolute bravery and at the same time with their compassion for the displaced people. I worked hard with my congressman to get them help with that. Started in February before the assault on Tabqah and Raqqa began in May. USAID did finally deliver at the absolute last possible moment. (not blaming them, it was a war zone big time. And we were not “invited” to be there) Turkey had stopped all food through their border. I hate Turkey for their vile treatment of everyone involved. They are just like ISIS.
I admire and love the Kurd spirit and the bravery of all SDF. It is not just Kurds. It evolved into joint effort: Arab, Alevi, Syriac Christians, Kurds, Ezidi’s. All pulling together in incredible ways.
I’m 71, have never watched anything quite like this. Have seen a lot before.
>>They are anarcho-leftist, environmentally conscious, secular, socialist and radically devoted to equality of the sexes.
Could have come straight out of Monty Python’s The Holy Grail.
Sorry.
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