It's important that we don't let terrorist attacks close to home deter us from doing what is right on foreign soil
Photo: KurdishStruggle
Yesterday, Caroline Lucas called for a diplomatic rather than military response to the attacks in Paris which left 129 dead and 352 injured on Friday night.
Using the well-worn aphorism that military intervention risks ‘making us less safe, not more’, her article advised against air strikes on Daesh (the newly-favoured name for ISIS due to its pejorative connotations), suggesting that they were directly related to the growth of their support base. In her solution, Russia and Iran are involved in the dealings.
After what happened in Paris, it’s easy to agree with Lucas. Nobody wants more terrorist attacks on Western soil. And public opinion, at least in 2013, was against intervention. (Though following these attacks, it stands to reason that those figures will have changed.)
The problem with Lucas’ approach is that with the breakdown of any acceptable opposition group such as the Free Syrian Army – which doesn’t even exist any more – the Kurds need, and deserve, our help. Despite the intervention of Turkey, the Kurds are still fighting against Daesh, and are the only group worth helping at this point.
Indeed, the US have been working with the People’s Protection Units, or the YPG, since October of last year, despite its alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
The YPG is well worth fighting alongside whether you agree with their struggle for an ethnically Kurdish state or not, and is a significant force in the battle against Daesh: they have steadily been gaining territory along the Turkish border since they began working with the Americans.
And even though Turkey agreed to work with the Americans against Daesh, so far their operations have been largely restricted to bombing PKK-affiliated groups.
The other problem here is that in reality, Assad is morally equivalent to Daesh. He and his government are responsible for no less than forty-nine massacres – yes, massacres; considered ‘sectarian and ethnic cleansing’ massacres – in the period between March 2011 and June 2015.
Then there are the obvious crimes: his use of barrel bombs, the targeting of hospitals culminating in the deaths of 600 medical workers, and his alleged use of chemical weapons, to name three.
Working with him to tackle Daesh, then, may be the utilitarian solution, being marginally better for us in the West. But for Syrians? He was the reason they began protesting in the first place. This makes siding with Russia and Assad morally problematic, if not outright wrong. Surely Lucas would concur?
I do agree with Lucas that it is our civil liberties which mark our society as free, and that we must retain them. I also agree that we should not stop helping the refugees fleeing the very conflict we are having so much problem preventing.
The most important part of yesterday’s article, though, was towards its conclusion: the need for solidarity within Europe, and to prevent a surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric and action.
As she so rightly put it, we must not ‘undermine the multicultural communities in which we live.’ Unity is more important than ever, and it is what most have shown, from the communal rallies in London and Moscow to the Pray for Paris and Même Pas Peur hashtags circulating Twitter.
Yesterday in the Commons, David Cameron made it clear that he was going to push for backing for bombing militants in Syria, specifically in Raqqa, Daesh’s stronghold.
He spoke of the growing threat of Daesh, and said that we needed to take our nation’s security into our own hands. I don’t agree with most of what Cameron says, but I do agree with this.
It’s important that we work closely with the Kurds, especially after Masrour Barzani, the intelligence and security chief in Iraqi Kurdistan, called for ‘more engagement and more commitment’ in the fight against Daesh earlier today. They are our one reliable ally in Syria.
And it’s important that we don’t let terrorist attacks close to home deter us from doing what is right on foreign soil; if anything, they should just give us another reason to intervene.
James Alston studies History at Cardiff University. Read his blog here
35 Responses to “Response to Caroline Lucas: the Kurds need our help”
AlanGiles
Blott is well known for using obscene langauge on Labour List but lets not hold that against him. I am afraid he is another of those sad little men who uses the word “troll” if you fail to agree with him. “Troll” comes as naturally to his lips as “and” and “but”
Lets get back to you. You say “What I AM agreeing with is Cameron’s proposals to bomb Syria, specifically Daesh, in order to help the Kurds in their struggle. We’re already bombing in Iraq, anyway”
Iraq has been marvelously successful by the way, hasn’t it?. 12 years of peaceful bliss.
While you are sitting in “Uni” studying a dead subject of no real use to anybody in the real world, you think it is OK to bomb a city. You do, of course, realise, that there will be many fatalities of innocent men women and children in the process?.
I am sure if Manchester suddenly became a hotbed of criminal lunatics, killers and suicide bombers, you wouldn’t be quite so circumspect about a bombing campaign there – you might be sitting in the student bar and a bomb could hit your lovely little university. Cameron is trying to be Blair manque’. Mrs Thatcher had her war for gravitas, Blair had several and now his clone wants one to. As we saw with Blair one war leads to another. Easy to start, very hard, perhaps impossible o end
Try not to be QUITE so pompous: the link to your blog shows a man sitting on a lavatory, which perhaps sums up your blog: does that make you feel “a bit silly” too?
What is your view on the unnamed Conservative MP who gleefully told the BBC last night “we’re going to war”?. Or haven;t you made your mind up about that yet, either?. Very easy when you have a nice, soft, safe occupation to call for others to do your dirty work. Michael Fallon has been agitating for months – the drink driver mired in expenses scandals suddenly became a saint.
Dave Stewart
Pacifism is not something “the west” has practised in a very long time. There has been a war or bombing campaign by various western nations going on almost constantly since the early 20th century. Just because we don’t see it here in our nice safe countries does not mean “the west” is pacifist.
jj
Far rather help those that are making a real difference, and that is exactly what the Kurds are doing, shame Turkey is murdering Kurds.
Mark Law
Robert Fisk is an excellent journalist and does some very good in-depth pieces on this region.
Also, he knows parts of it extremely well.
But if you were here, you might appreciate how vast the area is, and how many different groups with complex and conflicting objectives there are.
I’m glad to see that you now appear to accept that the broad coalition of anti-Assad forces – the ‘Free Syrian Army’ – DOES still exist.
‘Bombing Daesh’ (from the air) is NOT an answer – to anything. At all.
It’s so depressing to see that we have not learnt that lesson.
Why should even more innocents die in an exercise of willy-waving on the part of the West?
Bombing the oil wells and pipelines that are providing the funding for Daesh might be more fruitful, but the US will never sanction/allow that – unless they can requisition/steal the oil (like they did in Iraq) and surely that must entail US forces on the ground.
My point about Lucas is that she is COMPLETELY clueless; her “party” cannot even sort out the bin collections in Brighton, let alone the turmoil in Arabia. She should refrain from expounding her Weltanschauung until she has sorted those matters for her constituents.
GhostofJimMorisson
Ah well, if it’s from RT – those guardians of ‘the Truth’ and revered by all anti-West lefties – then of course it must be true. And as much as I respect Robert Fisk, his arguments are notoriously easy to pull apart (“Fisking” is the term I believe it’s called)