A 21st century cockpit of horror and hope

Consider. A small middle eastern town, bordered by dusty hills and a long wire fence is now at the centre of the whole world. We are following the story of the siege of Kobane by Islamic State and its defence by Syrian Kurds. Behind the fence separating Syria from Turkey are rows of US made tanks and howitzers, dug in less than a mile from the town. They point across the fence into Syria. 

In front of the border fence, battle has been raging for two weeks, most recently on the eastern side of Kobane. The street by street fighting follows on from days and nights of bombardment by I.S. using the tanks and cannon taken by them from the Iraqi army that fled from Mosul in northern Iraq. These weapons, like those of the Turks, were also made in the US. Meanwhile regular sorties of US led 'coalitiion' jet fighter/bombers fly overhead, pounding their missiles into the hills around Kobane that have been occupied by I.S. The Kurds in the streets of Kobane are the least well armed of all. They have no US militaria. They will get none. Their main weapon is the Kalashnikov rifle and some machine guns brought in from the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq.

The Turkish armed forces are watching their traditional enemy, the Kurds, having just broken off negotiations for measures of Kurdish autonomy in Turkey. The Turks fear that the Kurds of northern Syria, led primarily by the the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, will join together in time with the Kurdish community in a disintegrated Iraq, and their Turkish based cousins, and create a new country, dividing up Turkey in the process. 

The US and now the UK's armchair general, the right honourable Philip Hammond, have already countenanced the fall of Kobane. They claim if Kobane falls it will not be significant in the big picture. They point to the disappearance of I.S.'s advances in northern Iraq demonstrating the impact of their coalition's fire power. Soon, they promise, it will be Syria's turn, where I.S. has its centre. Meanwhile the ariel defence of Kobane by the coalition's jets, let alone the idea of equipping the Kurds with weapons is an embarrassment for the US. 

Help for the Kurds offends Turkey, a key NATO link. NATO has already dubbed the PKK as a terrorist group to keep Turkey sweet and the US secretly opposes the Kurdish right to self determination across Turkey, northern Syria and northern Iraq. If I.S., defeat the Kurds in Kobane, it is therefore no bad thing, as far as the US/UK are concerned. It clears the decks and establishes who really has to be in charge. The West wants its victories on the ground firmly in the hands of its so well trained and financed Iraqi army and the ghostly shadows of the 'moderate', read pro West, Syrian opposition. And they know that will take a decade to set up that fantasy, if ever. 

Meanwhile like the Turkish leadership, Assad of Syria hopes his two enemies, I.S., and the Kurds grind each other to dust under the bombs of the third, the US. 

Of course if you live in Syria or Northern Iraq and you need to fight I.S. as they will cut your throat because you are a Shia, or a Christian, or for that matter the wrong type of Sunni, or even an atheist, everybody there knows that your best bet are the Kurds. 

Why? Because the social and political organisation of the Kurds is the most developed in terms of a model of the leadership of the whole of the Middle East. 

Kurdish history, in the Kurds' struggle for self determination, has passed through many stages. They have had to fight huge and bitter wars against many of the stooges that the West have used in the last century to prop up their interests in the Middle East. In the course of which the Kurd's minority status and constant political and military struggles have created a vision of not just national identity but a way of many different national identities and seperate cultural and religious groupings avoiding conflict and yet asserting a combined and collective right in the world. 

The Kurd's current negotiations with Turkey (if resumed) are for an autonomous and federal solution within the Turkish state. In Northern Iraq, the Kurdish enclave has established a similar entity, while committing to a federal Iraqi type solution. These are not theoretical observations by distant scholars. These ideas derive from the most 'concrete analysis of the concrete situation' and form a precious germ of the future for the whole of the Middle East. They potentially answer the failure of grotesque formulations such as those dreamed up regarding the question of Palestine, which is drowning in blood under the fantastical search for its two state solution. Yet the federal autonomy that the Kurds demand, within their wider nations and as a result of their history, includes their right, taken in practice in Iraq, to bear their own arms. These are potential models for a Jewish, indeed for any minority, seeking its assurance within a future United Arab federation of the Middle East. But the absolute precondition for such progress, and for that matter progress in Iraq and Syria, and against I.S. today, is complete and utter independence from the dinosaurs of the West - a truth that the Kurds have learned and re-learned.