The British student movement and the Kurdish struggle

Submitted by AWL on 14 February, 2015 - 4:23 Author: Daniel Cooper, NUS National Executive Council

January brought good news from Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), as ISIS was driven away from the city of Kobane. The fight to drive the killers out of Rojava completely continues, but this is a big victory.

Six months ago, the fall of Kobane looked certain. The basic reason for the turnaround is the heroic resistance put up by the people of the area and by the Kurdish fighters. International solidarity also played a role. Unfortunately the National Union of Students, on whose national executive committee I sit, was no part of this.

Many hundreds, or at the height of protests maybe thousands, of Kurdish students and school students in the UK took action, and some non-Kurdish student allies too. They were let down by their national union.

NUS National Executive let my motion on the Kurds and ISIS fall off its agenda in July, and voted down the motion I put in September. At that meeting and afterwards, it seemed as if the majority of the NEC had no interest in what the motion said, or the issue of Kurdistan at all, and were striking a pose to impress others in the small circle of NUS hacks. Some people had said the motion was racist and imperialist: well, that was that. (For the controversy on this, see here.)

In December, the NEC finally passed a motion that was pretty weak. My amendments beefed it up a bit. Unfortunately the committee disgraced itself again. Firstly by deleting the call for the Kurdish resistance to be armed: arguing for this, Vice President Colum McGuire bizarrely argued that not all Kurdish groups favour that demand. And secondly by adding a call for an end to US air support for Kobane. Again, the quality of the “debate” was unbelievably low.

(For the text of the motion and information on amendments, see below.)

Since then Aaron Kiely of the Socialist Action group, who proposed that second amendment, has used the "Stop the War Coalition" website to denounce me – without naming me – as part of a “pro-war faction” in NUS. I challenge him to a public debate on this, at a meeting or in writing.

In so far as most people on NUS NEC care about this issue at all, I doubt there is anyone on the committee who is not at least vaguely sympathetic to the Kurds, particularly in their fight against ISIS. For the likes of Kiely, however, their opposition to US imperialism is much more important. For them, pointing out the duplicitous role of the US is not enough: all US actions must be opposed, as the top priority, even if that would mean harming the Kurdish struggle.

Worse than that, however, I suspect most people on the committee voted for this position because it seemed like the "safe", popular thing to do within NUS circles.

In any case, neither NUS nor the vast majority its leaders, right or “left”, has done anything of any sort to support the Kurdish struggle. Protestations of support for the Kurds have been used to justify taking a crap stance inside NUS, but that's it.

On 31 January, not long after the liberation of Kobane, a national Kurdish solidarity conference met in Nottingham and issued a call for renewed solidarity. This is a call for the student movement to take that up.

The Kurdish resistance to ISIS, and the wider Kurdish fight for national liberation, is an incredibly important struggle – for human rights, democracy and women’s liberation. Student activists in Britain should make up for NUS’s collapse by championing it forcefully as we can.

Comments

Submitted by AWL on Tue, 10/03/2015 - 14:45

a) The following parts were successfully added by me: Believes 7 and 8; Resolves, 4, 5, 13, 14, 15.
b) The call for an end to air support for the Kurdish forces in Kobane (Resolves 18) was proposed by Aaron Kiely and also passed.
c) I also proposed a call for arming of the Kurds, which was opposed by NUS Vice President Colum McGuire and defeated, with most of the right and most of the left voting together.

Motion 5: Kurdish Solidarity

NEC Believes:

1. The Kurdish people have been fighting for freedom and democracy throughout the course of history and are amongst the largest stateless groups in the world.
2. They have experienced mass genocides committed by surrounding states, followed by mass
displacement and millions of refugees.
3. There is a new democratic structure in the 3 cantons of Rojava which has been set up by the people of the region and enacts women’s rights as well as other forms of social justice for all those oppressed.
4. Kurdish women have played a key role by co-leading the resistance in the region, with non patriarchal and anti-sexist methods which has also been the case throughout history.
5. The Kurdish people in Kobane are restricted in healthcare, food and clothing.
6. The Kurdish struggle aims to protect co-existence between the different ethnic and religious groups.
7. That our opposition to ISIS should not make us forget the crimes of some fighting it – eg the Syrian regime which, backed by Russia and Iran, has murdered tens of thousands of civilians and is using the current crisis to step up its violence and repression.
8. That we should not trust or support the role of the US and UK governments and their allies, who helped created the conditions for the rise of IS; continue to back all kinds of reactionary regimes and forces in the region; and by their very nature act for reasons that have little to do with democracy or liberation.
9. The humanitarian crisis and massacre of Kurds that has been taking place in both the north of Syria and north of Iraq.
10. ISIS is a reactionary terrorist organisation that carries out atrocities against Kurds, Iraqis, Syrians, Assyrians, Turkmen, Alawite, Ismaili, Christian, Druze and others across the region.
11. ISIS is currently maintaining a siege on the Kurds of Kobane in northern Syria.

NEC Further Believes:

1. That all peoples have the right to self-determination.
2. Rojava is entitled to its independent political establishment which is inclusive of all the communities within the region.
3. That the Kurdish struggle should be recognised and supported by the international community.
4. That the Kurdish people should lead in defining their freedom and making demands of solidarity.
5. That kidnapping sexual abuse and trafficking of Kurdish women and children are crimes against humanity.
6. That ISIS should be condemned for its atrocities, against the Kurdish people and all others who have been affected.
7. That aid should not be prevented from reaching the Kurdish people.
8. Provisions should be put in place to cater for the people in the Kurdish region, namely Rojava, Shingal, Mosul and Sinjar.
9. That following the US/UK invasion of Iraq a decade ago, chaos, sectarianism, civil war and terrorism have been unleashed across the region.
10. That Turkey has been preventing the Kurds fighting ISIS in Kobani from receiving humanitarian aid and assistance.
11. Western military involvement in the region has already created the current chaos and further
intervention will only exacerbate the situation.
12. Within Britain the government is fanning a reactionary Islamophobic agenda which falsely equates Muslim communities with support for terrorism, and that this is latched onto by the far right and encourages attacks on Muslims.

NEC Resolves:

1. That Kurdish emancipation will neither be obtained through groups like ISIS nor imperialist endeavours.
2. To meet with and support the UK Kurdish groups and community’s solidarity efforts and the
international Kurdish diasporas.
3. To call on the international community to recognise the Kurdish resistance.
4. To call for the UK government to formally recognise the three cantons of Rojava.
5. To call for the lifting of the ban on the PKK, which aids repression of the Kurdish nationalist movement.
6. To support the international movement to find and bring back all the Kurdish people who have been captured by ISIS.
7. To raise awareness about the situation and support Kurdish societies within Students’ Unions to show solidarity.
8. To pressure the UK government to meet the needs of the Kurdish community in the UK and within the region.
9. For relevant officers to campaign to support the Kurdish struggle.
10. To condemn the atrocities committed by ISIS and any other complicit forces.
11. To call on the UK government to meet the needs of refugees from the region.
12. To support women’s organizations which help young girls and women who have been abducted and trafficked.
13. To call for refugees to be allowed freely into the UK, and given equal access to education and services.
14. To build solidarity with the Middle East’s hard-pressed student, workers' and women’s liberation movements.
15. To condemn and fight attempts to use the situation in Iraq and Syria to stir up anti-Muslim racism / Islamophobia. To oppose the anti-civil liberties and anti-Muslim measures the government is promoting (eg the right to confiscate passports/abrogate rights of citizenship).
16. To express our solidarity with the Kurdish people and their struggle in the region.
17. To condemn ISIS, and the atrocities it commits.
18. To oppose US and UK military intervention in Iraq and Syria.
19. To support the demands of the Kurds in Kobane for a humanitarian corridor through Turkey to enable provisions to reach the civillians there.
20. To challenge Islamophobia and all forms of racism being whipped up.

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