Rojava Is Under Existential Threat

BY ROSA BURÇ & FOUAD OVEISY

The original article was posted on JACOBIN, please feel free to read it here

Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal from Syria would actually entrench US imperialism in the region — and open up the Kurds' revolution in Rojava to extermination and colonization.

Either way, the US withdrawal hides a grand strategy to further entrench US imperialism in the region. Americans are not leaving Syria. They’re simply transferring their interests to NATO members and allies. And since the TAF is not even prepared to replace the US Army for such a mission — given the purges the TAF’s personnel has experienced since the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016 — the United States would have to offer “substantial military support, including airstrikes, transport and logistics.” In other words, deeper US military involvement.

Unfortunately, this basic fact has escaped some on the Left, who have taken the purported US pullout at face value and, at times, been willing to believe alternative truths about the revolution in Rojava or dismiss its participants as pawn on the imperialist chessboard. Take, for instance, the infamous 2015 Amnesty International report about alleged human rights abuses by the SDF, which the UN has since debunked. Amid the cacophony raised by this charade, Erdoğan’s expansionist project disguises itself as “anti-imperialist” to silence the real leftist program — the one in Rojava.