Put a CW for graphic display of torture, forced imprisonment and religious persecution/ and mark post as NSFW
I've not read up on Syria as much as I should have. This is a nightmarish situation and it's just bizarre seeing a multi-ethnic internment camp and wondering how these people got there (and the fact that the children born into this are trapped with seemingly nowhere to go).
The woman at the end from Alabama joining ISIS at 20 and then becoming stateless by the US because she was chronically online is a fuck.
Disgusting, holding 40,000+ people against their will in a foreign country, then kidnapping their young. Not that it would be much different if it was in America, but this is peak imperialism.
I first found about this morning because people on twitter were arguing about whether the SDF or the YPG were running the camps. Which I guess is an important distinction but it's a moral stain on the YPG even if not directly involved that their partners/allies are doing this.
SDF are the broad coalition opposing Assad and ISIS, which the YPG are a large member (plurality not majority from memory). But the YPG who are the communists are also quite autonomous from the rest of the SDF. The USA prefers the SDF because they are easier to bribe and manipulate, but also needs the YPG because they can actually fight and tries to divide them up by internal factions and leaders. The SDF and YPG are generally mixed with people who are fully anti-Assad and those who are willing to cut deals (which the USA does not want).
I suspect it's probably non-YPG SDF running these but I'm going to wait for more information.
It's hard to say. I didn't see any YPG markings in the video, but the commander-in-chief guy they interview is a member of the YPG and a friend of Abdullah Öcalan, and was a combatant in the PKK.
The news says SDF, which include the YPG as leader of the coalition. The interview guy also had an SDF flag on his shoulder. Flag over the camp is also an SDF flag.
To be frank, I'm not even sure what the YPG or Syria could do here. So many of these people are foreigners, and many are from countries that refuse to allow them back due to ISIS affiliation. They're in limbo. Its not like Syria is a very prosperous country, they're still technically in a civil war. China and the Soviet Union had many efforts at deradicalization post-civil war and post WW2, but they are giant countries with a ton of resources.
I mean the PKK and YPG were explicitly Marxist Leninists when founded until they changed to democratic conferederalism.
We can have a debate (well we actually can't due to anti-sectarianism rules on Hexbear) about whether that is revisionism or opportunism or radical liberalism or dialectical materialism applied to their conditions or whatever or not. I'm not really sold either way.
It's different to European social democracy, etc. Nationalism can liberatory in the imperial periphery for oppressed demographics (and it can still suck too).