Monthly Archives: December 2016

Fighting on all fronts: Women’s resistance in Syria

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“As the state collapsed women have often taken a leading role in supporting their communities and building alternatives to the state’s totalitarianism. Today they work as doctors, nurses and teachers in underground clinics and schools. They volunteer for the White Helmets and sacrifice their lives to pull victims of airstrikes from the ruins. They provide logistical support for armed groups and in some instances have taken up arms themselves, establishing women-only battalions. In the case of the Alawite general Zubaida Al Meeki, they have even trained Free Army fighters”.

Leila's blog

123%d8%ad%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%8a%d9%94%d8%b1_%d8%b3%d9%88%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%a7This was originally published in Al-Jumhuriya

As eastern Aleppo falls, pounded by regime and Russian airstrikes, and stormed by Iranian sponsored militia on the ground, one young woman risks everything to communicate to the outside world the horror of the last days in the liberated part of the city.

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Save Aleppo! Oh, hang on, Aleppo is not Kobani …

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I like the passion and anger and the use of the term ‘left-fascists’ in the article below. But the author falls short of the obvious logical conclusion: the west, led by the US, must now intervene on the side of the people, and that means militarily. No matter what the risks, the situation cannot be allowed to continue as it is. The point has been reached where the UN has to be bypassed and a coalition of the willing brought together. The millions of refugees in Germany and Turkey and elsewhere could be given the option of forming an army of liberation, as part of an expeditionary force to liberate Syria from Assad. Sorry, but all the rage and anger, and identifying the ‘fascist-left’ is meaningless and hard to take seriously unless the option of external military intervention on the side of the Syrian people is considered and recognized as valid. Boots on the ground will also be necessary to protect the Alawite enclave once Assad is overthrown and, of course, to maintain the peace and ensure that elections are democratic and free and fair.

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Syrian Revolution Commentary and Analysis

Please help the people of Aleppo, just like we helped the people of Kobani. Oh, hang on, Aleppo? Kobani? Oh, that’s right. In Kobani they were Kurds. Civilised, secular, “progressive”, feminists, even green warriors apparently. They were like “us.” “We” (western imperialists and western … “anti-imperialists”) understand them. Therefore, they deserved to be saved from ISIS beasts, said the imperialist leaders, and their “anti-imperialist” echo in unison. Aleppo? Facing a fascistic enemy that has massacred twenty times as many people as ISIS fascists could ever manage, is not full of Good Kurds. It is full of Arabs. And we all know what western imperialist leaders, the far-right, neo-Nazis, Trumpists, racists, and “left-wing anti-imperialists” think of Arabs, especially when they live in Syria. They are all backward, blood-thirsty, barbaric, “jihadis” and “head-choppers,” *all* of the above categories tell us, yes, the left-fascists just as emphatically as any of the others. So…

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