A thread to discuss methods and means to assist with with Volunteer work
>PUK Calls on Socialist International to Support Kurds in Fighting Terrorism & Extremism
>PUK urged Socialist International (SI) parties to assist the Kurds in combating terrorism and extremism during the Council of SI Meeting, which culminated with the adoption of the Rabat Declaration.
>The Council of SI Meeting took place in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, on December 22 and 23, 2024, with members from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in attendance. The meeting was also attended by SI President Pedro Sánchez, and 196 parties from 116 world countries.
>Fryal Abdullah, a member of the PUK Leadership Council and a party representative at the meeting, informed PUKMEDIA: "The declaration underscored the necessity of respecting state sovereignty and territorial integrity, the significance of international collaboration to address economic and climate challenges, and the emphasis on equality, social justice, and adherence to the Paris Climate Agreement."
>She emphasised that as the PUK, they underscored the significance of safeguarding democracy and human rights, upholding the rule of law, conducting transparent elections, and denouncing the manipulation of their outcomes.
>Concerning women's rights, she said: "We emphasised the necessity of promoting gender equality and empowering women to attain decision-making roles, while highlighting the importance of opposing factions that resist women's rights and incorporating women into peace processes to guarantee the comprehensiveness and efficacy of agreements that promote global peace."
>She asserted that "the PUK's address at the meeting effectively alerted attendees to the ongoing threats posed by terrorist organisations in Iraqi Kurdistan and the surrounding region, emphasising the necessity of continued support for combating extremism and terrorism, which have emerged as significant threats to regional security and stability."
>She further emphasised that the PUK members also mentioned "the Kurds in Syria, particularly in Rojava, oversee the largest prison for terrorists, and it is vital that this facility receives enhanced support to mitigate its potential dangers to neighbouring countries."
>Abdullah noted that "the PUK's proposals, which emphasise the adherence to democratic values, the respect for state sovereignty, and the enhancement of regional integration as a strategy to address the political and economic crises affecting the participating nations, as well as to confront the escalating violations of fundamental freedoms and to address armed conflicts, were acknowledged by the socialist parties attending the meeting."
>>2096145
>Iranian lawyers call for international action against illegal attacks on Kurdish areas in Syria
Around 200 independent Iranian lawyers made an appeal to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, European Union, UN Security Council, and other relevant international bodies and called for action in the face of the aggression against North-East Syria. The lawyers protested against the illegal attacks by Turkish-backed groups against the Syrian Kurds, warning of their humanitarian and legal consequences.
<The joint appeal by Iranian lawyers reads as follows:
“We, a group of independent Iranian lawyers, as defenders of human rights and justice, express our deep concern over the continued military attacks by Turkish-backed groups against Kurdish areas in northern Syria, as well as the targeting of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). These attacks, which clearly violate international law, the UN Charter, and human rights principles, have resulted in heavy human casualties, the displacement of thousands of civilians, and the widespread destruction of essential infrastructure in these areas. Targeting the Syrian Kurds and violating the sovereignty of nations is an act in clear contradiction to the principle of respect for the territorial integrity of States and the right of nations to self-determination.
Now that a new political system must be established in Syria, no state has the right to interfere, either positively or negatively, in the exercise of the right to self-determination of the peoples of another country. Also, all states have positive and negative obligations to respect the right of peoples in other countries to self-determination, which is a peremptory rule of international law. The positive obligation of states is to respond to interference by other states through legal means, and their negative obligation is to refrain from any interference in the exercise of the right to self-determination of those peoples.
In this regard, all states that are members of the international community are obliged, based on Article 41 of the International Responsibility of States, to protect the Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities in Syria from external interference and violations of their rights.
<Our concerns and demands:
>1. Violation of international humanitarian law:
Attacks against civilians, destruction of residential areas and vital infrastructure are clear violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and other principles of humanitarian law.
>2. Displacement and humanitarian crisis:
The continuation of these attacks has led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians and is a serious threat to regional and global security. The international community cannot remain silent in the face of such tragedies.
>3. Turkey’s support for armed groups:
Turkey’s financial and arms support for groups responsible for war crimes in these areas must be investigated and prosecuted.
Our demands:
Sending an international mission for an independent investigation:
We call on the United Nations and other international institutions to send an independent mission to investigate and document the crimes committed in these areas.
Condemnation and pressure on Turkey:
We call on the international community to take immediate steps to stop these attacks and hold the Turkish government accountable for its violation of human rights principles and international law.
Supporting the rights of the Syrian Kurds:
We call for the support of the Syrian Kurds as one of the most important forces of resistance against international terrorism and defenders of peace and security in the region.
Prosecution and trial:
Legal prosecution and trial of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Kurdish areas of Syria and punishment of their perpetrators in international courts.
We hope that this warning and our request will draw the urgent attention of the international community to this humanitarian and legal crisis and that practical measures will be initiated to end these crimes.”
I don't believe the IFB is calling for volunteers, the calls seem to be for Kurds with combat experience (i.e: Peshmerga).
If you want to help, donate to/volunteer for Heyva Sor:
https://heyvasor.com/Also support your local apoist kurdish groups. The turkish state is collaborating with western intelligence to repress them.
Regarding Volunteering, I'm not going to pretend I was there, most of my information is from some documentaries and one autobiographical comic of a guy who volunteered. The actual soldiers, doctors, and engineers from Western countries were highly sought after. The doctors and engineers more so, and the real soldiers were used as instructors and occasionally worked with local units, but these guys were not the majority going, So first off, the YPG was a Kurdish ethnic militia and it did not accept foreigners (which bummed out a lot of these guys). They had to join the SDF; in most cases, they did not have any skilled labor or military ability, so they were made to do grunt work in the liberated cities. They were also encouraged to post on social media to bring international attention. They felt like they were adding to the war effort and helping to kill fascists and the Kurds would gain some credibility. Despite that, there were culture clashes, this was still a Middle Eastern nation and these guys just could not read the room. Like the queer group organising a drag-show, They actually dissolved their international brigades because there were too many of these retards coming that didn't even want to do physical labor.
This is a documentary about a group of British and American soldiers who were actually fighting. They are respected, working with local forces and training with them on the ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv9A432l3bMThe one is a podcast about the 'anarchists' in Rojava. most of it was just willful denial on their part.
https://archive.org/details/tfsr-20220123-TekosinaAnarsistThe is the comic I mentioned.by a volunteer who was made to do grunt work.
https://readallcomics.com/kobane-calling-greetings-from-northern-syria-tpb-part-1/>>2096861>They had to join the SDF; in most cases, they did not have any skilled labor or military ability, so they were made to do grunt work in the liberated cities. They were also encouraged to post on social media to bring international attention. That's the literal opposite i heard from comrades across the continent who were there, many did not use phones at all or rarely for security reasons, (and rightly so seeing the arrests and raids when many came back), they also fought and died in battles, including the retaking of raqqa, which i have a personal anarchist friend who was in the thick of.
You also say:
> So first off, the YPG was a Kurdish ethnic militia and it did not accept foreigners (which bummed out a lot of these guys). They had to join the SDF, Which is simply not true, I had a comrade who famously thought for the YPJ (picrel for proofs). Yes there was exclusively foreign groupings under the SDF but also there was mixed units, with Kurmanji language being a large part of the initial training upon entering.
A lot of this sounda likw personal head-canon.
>>2097705in fact, it even does not take the words of our comrades but a simple duckduckgo search:
https://www.france24.com/en/20150309-german-woman-hoffman-killed-battling-militants-syria-kurds>Ivana Hoffman, 19, died on Saturday while fighting with the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) near the Syrian village of Tel Tamr, YPG spokesman Nawaf Khalil said.>Hoffman, a member of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party in Turkey, joined YPG fighters about six months ago, Khalil said.This comrade was literally a commander of a mixed unit:
https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=446523705550463&id=297459630456872>German YPG commander Kevin Joachim (Dilsoz Bahar) has been confirmed martyred in the village of Silûk-Şergirat near the city of Kobane in battle with ISIS.>Commander Heval Dilsoz was 22 years old and came from Germany to join the YPG three years ago. He was well known for speaking Kurdish fluently, but also for his courage and sense of solidarity. He was an Idealist from the very start and was deeply convinced that ISIS has to be defeated and that the Kurdish people need to have their own state.For Fucks Sake.
>>2097365>who the fuck are they, gatekeeping the struggling and hoarding\jogging the actions?That other anon literally just made that up out of thin air.
How the fuck do you think all the volunteers died, retard?
>>2097365Edgy boy. You don't trust every tourist that comes. Standard opsec. Although many people have pointed out that foreigners did take part in active combat in Rojava.
>>2097730Terrorist attacks by ISIS
>>2099424>>2099717there are like a HUNDRED separatist movements across the Earth ,tho.
why cherrypick the most meme-able ones, and not the ones most near oneself?
>>2096861>They actually dissolved their international brigades because there were too many of these retards coming that didn't even want to do physical labor.>>2097705>That's the literal opposite i heard from comrades across the continent who were there, many did not use phones at all or rarely for security reasonsI listened to an interview with Brace Belden a few years ago, and he said the YPG didn't use phones. Or, like, phones were around but their cadres wouldn't use them as a general rule and those were the Kurdish regulars. He volunteered with a Turkish communist organization. One of the big culture shock differences was that their cadres commit to it for life, it's a do-or-die thing, it's not like in the West, and they basically had zero personal property. They lived a collective life.
In terms of foreign volunteers, he said early on they had a lot of psychopaths showing up. People who just wanted to kill other people, and various ideological basket cases, including one guy who was a cannibal (who was eventually arrested). So by the time he was there, they had switched to wanting leftists to come over. So it was a mix of leftists and Americans who almost universally had been kicked out of the U.S. military.
>>2097760>Edgy boy. You don't trust every tourist that comes.Wars attract crazy people.
Incidentally, I met one guy (American) who joined with some group of Iraqi peshmerga (not YPG). He was showing up at leftist stuff where I lived, but gave off strange vibes. You know the online freak type. Like… this guy has posted on 4chan before….
And he said he had fought with "the Kurds," but didn't say which ones. Well it was the Iraqis and he apparently went over there initially because he was a far-right guy who wanted to kill Muslims. No idea what happened while he was there, but I know for a fact he did go, and I saw a pic. He had one of those online freak social media accounts where he was posting a lot of edgy stuff from far-left and far-right, and he was in the process of converting to Orthodox Christianity. I obviously didn't trust him, and he had attempted suicide multiple times in the past, but I hope that he has found some kind of peace.
>>2101616As an ex-Muslim who was somewhat radical-leaning at the time, you have to understand the social context of that period. Most Socialist and leftist institutions, organizations and rhetoric had either been destroyed or reduced to near irrelevancy (thanks to the USA). The resulting social and economic issues plaguing our nations were then also blamed on the US. The US's disastrous invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan put this situation into overdrive. Jihadist networks that had been formed decades ago now experienced surges of new volunteers, many of whom might have not been Islamists originally but were drawn into these movements because they were the largest and most public. The US support for various rebels during the Arab Spring was also problematic, as the largest rebel groups were already jihadist and this led to the growth of jihadist groups until we saw the emergence of ISIS. While many of their followers were hardcore Islamists, some were Arabs who despised Iran and the Assad ruling family and many others were common criminals or psychopaths who wanted to kill people. The vast majority of foreign volunteers were Islamists, but quite a few were bored Muslims from the diaspora who sought violence(this guy) The guy you posted was some lonely teenager, but upon joining ISIS, he received praise, got married to a Muslim girl(his wife is in a Kurdish camp) and ultimately died in an irrelevant suicide bombing where he was declared a martyr, despite HTS's victory, global jihadist movements are essentially dead; they all invested everything into ISIS, and it's gone now, hard to say what will replace them
>>2096124The Kurdish Liberation Movement | A Talk by Christopher Helali
https://leslie.dartmouth.edu/events/event?event=50610ACP is a compatible leftist organization just like the DSA, it even has its own Brace Belden. Americans are so cute and gullible
>>2102095Except Helali is the real deal and became a Marxist Leninist from his experiences in Syria.
t. I know him.
>>2102089I've gotten into a fight with a neo-Nazi and I am less of a physical threat to other human beings than he is. It's not that hard.
>>2101657Thanks for the insight. I had the chance to talk to a guy who embedded as a journalist with jihadis at various times in multiple wars and probably met hundreds of them over the course of his career, and he didn't think it had much to do with religion. Maybe others disagree but he basically just believed they were sociopaths and psychopaths who believed in bizarre stuff about how you'll smell like flowers when you die. Just weird stuff that's almost like Scientology.
>>2101610>Incidentally, I met one guy (American) who joined with some group of Iraqi peshmerga (not YPG). He was showing up at leftist stuff where I lived, but gave off strange vibes. You know the online freak type. Like… this guy has posted on 4chan before….Probably a fed.
>>2101616>if these guys didn't join ISIS, then they'd become mass shooters or hitmen for the mafia or something.This just plays into Western counterterrorism theories which is basically: political violence isn't actually political but done by crazy unhinged chuds. Searching for the roots of "jihadism" (something that doesn't exist) in individual or group psychology is a distraction from real political causes that downplays the extent to which these groups have real political demands. There is no mental template of the average jihadist. They are as diverse in their motivations, attitudes, and beliefs as any other group of people. Saying they are just crazy edgelords is both false and ignores the issue of politics. Its no different to Israelis insisting Palestinian militants are antisemitic chuds driven by sexual frustration.
I don't think ISIS are a bunch of bloodthirsty nihilists, at least not substantially more than any other group. Kurdish forces behead people, have shot civilians, and are basically running massive concentration camps and US special forces are notorious for scalpings, beheadings, and torture. For some reason, Western audiences are only offended when the killing is done by masked men with knives but not with F-16s. ISIS tactics often mimic French Jacobin revolutionaries, a group leftists love to cheer but who did the exact same things: mass slaughter of civilians, blowing up historical architecture, beheadings, public executions, burning people alive etc.
>>2101657It was less "thanks to the USA" and more irrelevancy. Leftists (outside of maybe China and Latin America) have consistently failed to put forward coherent programs or meet the populations needs. The failure of third world socialism has less to do with the US, and more to do with socialists intellectual dogmatism and stupidity and decades of spectacular policy failures.
>>2103873Why are you just lying?
They spend the last ten years flying to ukraine and building a pan-european movement. Americans had there aut-right..
Wait, you're going to argue they're 'not real neo-nazis' aren't you?
>>2104342> a lot of western volunteers(with the exception of ex-military guys) including him were mostly playing a PR role.I still don't buy this argument.
If it was such a PR move why doesn't anyone except some cunt in the intelligence agencies even know most of their names? How is a much of radical Marxists and anarchists who want to destroy their states going to 'get terrorist training in Syria!!!!!' good PR, exactly?
>>2104421What does 'shown in combat situations' even mean?
If they like you say, are there for 'PR', isn't the fact that they were not filming themselves in combat simply proving my point further?
>>2110052>Why volunteer abroad, when poor, desperate ,and hungry, sick, families and peoples exist right within your own country?If you contact any of the local groups that's what they're probably going to tell you, to organise at home.
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