Kobane: Europe’s Deafening Silence

  

BARCELONA, Spain – When the European Union’s

next foreign policy chief attended a European Parliament meeting in Brussels on Monday, headlines around the world were warning about the imminent fall of Kobane in Syria.

And yet, Federica Mogherini made no reference to Kobane, except to say that ISIS is a “terrorist” group and a “major global threat.”

Last week, when a European Union statement expressed condolences to the families of recent terrorist attacks targeting civilians in both Syria and Iraq, there was again no mention of the suffering in Kobane.

It is as if European Union officials, as well as NATO and its allies, have decided on a news blackout of the suffering in Kobane.

US and partner jets intensified air raids on ISIS positions around Kobane on Tuesday, only after the jihadists had breached the city lines. After sustained air raids, the militants were reported pushed back on Wednesday. Still, Kobane remains barely mentioned by most politicians in Europe.

“In my opinion, NATO is allowing a new genocide by ISIS in Kobane,” warned Manuel Martorell, a writer and a political analyst on Kurdish and Middle East issues.

Martorell noted that the international disaffection for Syrian Kurds is due to the links between the Democratic Union Party (PYD) -- the political force in Kobane -- and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is labelled a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU and the United States.

“Legally nobody can give the excuse (that they are not helping Kobane) because of the PKK,” Martorell said. “That is because the PYD is not formally equated by the US or the EU with a terrorist organization, like the PKK.”

The PKK has fought a 30 year war for autonomy in Turkey, which refuses any moves in Syria that might strengthen the PYD. The US and EU similarly do not want to see the PKK or its affiliates growing stronger in Syria.

For Ahron Bregman, a professor at the department of War Studies at London’s King’s College, the link between the PYD and PKK has played against the Syrian Kurds.

“Washington, for instance, while cooperating with the Kurds in Iraq, is wary of empowering Kurds in Syria who are allied to the PKK. So politics and war are tightly linked here and it's going to be incredibly difficult over the coming months -- perhaps even years -- to find the right balance,”  Bregman told Rudaw. 

Jalil Tamo, a Kurd from Kobane who has been living in Spain for the past 34 years, spent more than a week with his filmmaker son on the Syrian-Turkish border to assist the refugees. He returned last week from the border town of Suruc.

“The world moves according to economic interests, and in Kobane Europe does not have any interests, unlike Iraqi Kurdistan, where they have oil wells and contracts with Western companies,” he told Rudaw.

The Western silence over Kobane contrasts sharply with the help and support that the United States and Europe have rushed to Iraq’s northern Kurdistan Region, where the Kurds enjoy self rule and where the government has no alliance with the PKK.

When ISIS stormed the Kurdish-Yezidi town of Shingal in northern Iraq in early August, unleashing a human tragedy of killings and abductions, the atrocities provoked an international outcry. The Shingal tragedy was mentioned by US President Barack Obama, when he ordered the first air raids over Iraq.

In Kobane, some 300,000 people are believed trapped, mostly refugees from other parts of Syria who had escaped ISIS attacks elsewhere. More than 160,000 washed over the Turkish border last month, but that failed to provoke anywhere close to the same Western response.

That silence has fuelled waves of protests across Europe, where angry Kurds have been staging protests at parliament buildings, TV stations, embassies and even the London tube station, demanding global action for Kobane.

Kurdish-American campaigners are also pressuring the US Government to bolster support for Kobane.

“If democratic nations fail to provide immediate military support to Kurdish fighters, Kobane will suffer the same tragic fate as Shingal,”  warned a campaign letter circulated among hundreds of Kurdish-Americans.

Zeynep Coskun, who has been staging a weeklong hunger strike with members of various Kurdish associations in Europe outside the European Parliament in Brussels, noted that the whole world knows what needs to be done, and yet Europe remains silent.

"We demand that Europe help Kobane, both with weapons and humanitarian aid," she told the Ozgur Politika newspaper on behalf of the strikers.

“While everyone knows that we are right, they are silent. We urge the international forces to take action. Otherwise, they will be responsible for the coming massacres.”