Why won't the UK help the Kurdish fighters in Northern Syria against ISIS?

The flag of the Men's Protection
 Units (YPG)

I was recently able to have a meeting with government officials and put some of my questions to them.

First of all I’d like to express my appreciation for living in a country where I can get involved in political protest, without being arrested and where the authorities are prepared to put time and effort into hearing me and my concerns. My sincere thanks go to the British government for giving me the meeting, for not being patronising and for treating me with respect. Also for answering my questions with due care and attention particularly those questions regarding the progress of ISIS, the role of the UK in Syria and, in particular, why the UK will not engage with the Rojavan Syrian Kurds and consistently denies them any support.

The primary reasons for the UK's reluctance to help the Rojavan Kurds in their struggle against ISIS, as expressed to me by government officials, seem to be these: 

• There have been human rights abuses in Northern Syria- carried out by the Kurds
• The YPG/J recruits 17 year olds
• The YPG/J is linked to the listed terror organisation the PKK.

Let’s look at their first argument.

The flag of the Women's Protection
 Units (YPJ)

First of all let me make clear that my views are that any kind of abuse, torture or deaths in custody are inexcusable. So by all means let’s refuse to talk to any country that has such human rights abuses.

Going by what I was told therefore, the logical assumption is, (since we don’t talk to, or negotiate with, organisations and governments that commit human rights abuses) none of our allies will be guilty of this.

Check out Saudi Arabia:

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/saudi-arabia

Check out our NATO ally Turkey:

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/country-chapters/turkey

Check out China where many of our goods come from

https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/05/13/tiger-chairs-and-cell-bosses/police-torture-criminal-suspects-china

Check out Israel

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/

Check out the amount of people who have died at the hands of police in the USA- many unarmed 

http://killedbypolice.net/

Check out Britain’s alleged complicity in torture and abuse of prisoners:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/12/cia-torture-report-uk-must-be-honest-about-its-complicity-these-grisly-crimes

http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/countries/europe/uk

For the sake of interest here is the official letter from the YPG refuting the claims (It's slightly ungrammatical but you get the gist):

https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/23/letter-ypg-response-human-rights-watch

Sadly all these links are simply the tip of the iceberg. Go look for yourself. See what our UK ally Turkey is doing to its own citizens right now, at the time of writing, in Cizre, for example.

I feel quite confident at this point in time that any illegal actions carried out by Rojavan Kurds are not state sanctioned (unlike what appears to be happening in Turkey) and if people are accused of committing heinous acts then they will investigated by the Kurdish government, just as British citizens would, presumably, in similar situations.

I am not claiming that the links or my research are exhaustive and I’m not intending to point a finger at countries or to argue one way or another about whether or not the YPG/J are guilty of the allegations. 

All I’m saying is that there's en element of hypocrisy in the excuses made by the UK government and it should not hide behind such a paltry excuse when we can see that it has long and, dare I say it, seemingly comfortable liaisons with many countries with deeply concerning human rights records.

This is not a reason not to talk to the YPG/J UK so please- pull the other one!

Regarding the second point: The YPG/J, as far as I am aware, does not have a conscious, active recruitment process focussed on youngsters. Where the authorities are made aware, youngsters are sent home. However, given the upheaval, does everyone have documentation that can clarify age? And what would you do if you were sixteen and nine months and your whole family had been beheaded while you were visiting a relative in a different village? Would you not be inclined to say, ‘I’m going to go after the people who did this so that I can stop it happening to someone else?’ Maybe you’d be inclined to say, ‘No-one is helping us defeat ISIS. No other countries are helping. I guess I just have to help myself!' What else is left?

The bottom line is that if the UK had offered help earlier, maybe seventeen year old kids wouldn’t need to pick up weapons to defend themselves.

The final point I want to make is about the allegation that the YPG/J is linked to the PKK. Maybe it is but that doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t the PKK. It isn’t a listed organisation.

It is a legal organisation. 

Either list it or get off your butts and help. Hey, who knows, if they had help from elsewhere perhaps they wouldn’t need to be ‘linked’ to the PKK!

My final point is that Britain is talking to countries like Iran, maybe in the future even to Assad and has helped facilitate dialogue with ‘terrorist’ organisations in Northern Ireland. Surely talking to the YPG/J and their political arm the PYD should be easy in comparison since they are NOT LISTED.

UK- please! Stop with the lame excuses and help Rojava, the YPG and YPJ. 

Why I want to record everyone abducted or killed by Daesh/ISIS

I am going to make a record of every person killed or abducted by ISIS. This will include combatants and civilians. I hope it will include everyone killed or missing, including the victims of ISIS attacks in Tunisia, Libya and anywhere else.

Why am I doing it?

• There is no definitive record and there are no proper numbers of people killed or abducted.
• These people should all be remembered
•  It will help us in the fight against ISIS as we will have numbers and statistics
• It will reduce apathy as people link the murders with real people and real faces
•  It will provide a record for us to be able to hunt down and prosecute the perpetrators of the crimes when they try and return to their own countries and pick up their lives
• It will help us find the missing 
•  Finally so that when we hold a vigil for the dead we have names.

Some of the information you give me I will keep private, some I will put on a website. The website will look something like this: killedbypolice.net

I need your help for this. I need you to give me the information.

This list depends on you

Please help me do this.

Send me any of this information if you know it: 

• proper name 
• nom de guerre
•  date of birth
• father’s name/mother’s name
• place of birth
• place of death/abduction
•  religion and race
• method of death 
• the name of the person/ unit who killed them (even if those are not the murderers'proper names) and any other information about them that is known
• gender
• any other information
•  a photo if you have one.

The photo and some basic information (name, age, religion, race, gender, method/place of death) will go onto the website; for the dead and for the missing/ abducted the name, age, gender, race/ religion and place they went missing will go on. The rest of the information I will keep private, just to have records.

If you want me to keep the person anonymous I will do that but if we do that it will be harder to get people to believe what we say and act on it.

Let’s make a record to shame the governments for not doing enough. Let’s remember the dead and the missing.

When the website is made I will post the link and people can hopefully upload their own information but for now send your information to me at kostasolivetree[at]gmail[dot]com or find me on facebook.

Tunisia, France, Kuwait and Kobane.

I'm terribly saddened this last week at the news of terrorist attacks in three separate countries all of them engineered by ISIS.There was an attempt at a chemical plant in France with the brutal beheading of the manager, the shooting of holiday makers on a beach in Tunisia that has resulted in over 30 deaths, and a suicide bombing of a Shia mosque in Kuwait with a loss of over 27 lives. 

The media has been filled with terrible pictures of pain and suffering and the stunned incomprehension of normal people who were doing nothing but go about their normal business when their world imploded. But while these images, of Tunisia in particular, have flooded the news reports, there have been ISIS attacks elsewhere, in which gunmen have shot and killed children, not just adult tourists and where the death toll has been over 150 adults and children. Here you see the same stunned incomprehension, the same dreadful grief on so many faces, but this time it's Kobane, where there are so many ISIS terrorists that they qualify as an invading army, where the media coverage has been so scarce that it verges on shameful. The people in this town didn't deserve to die any more than the people in the Mosque worshipping, or the people on the beach holidaying, or the man going to work. None of them deserved to die and I'm saddened that despite David Cameron's rhetoric about stopping extremism, he still won't enter dialogue with the Kurds in Rojava to see what Britain can do to help. 

My thoughts and prayers go out to all the people suffering at the hands of ISIS wherever they are. I will keep shouting for you in the hope that my voice will be heard at some point.

Be wise, be brave, be strong.