Update, and Saleh Muslim in Leicester 19 November 2016

Hi, for updates on the situation for Kurds, especially those in Syria please see http://supportkurds.org which has a blog a day. There are Facebook pages for International Support Kurds in Syria and for Leicester Kurdish Solidarity Campaign.

I’m pleased to say that Saleh Muslim came to speak in Leicester. These are some notes from his speech:

PYD and young people are the future. The international crisis need solving.

Things will change like they have since World War 1 and World War 2.

This is War World 3: policies and the systems need changing.  The world has become a small village. People are looking for democracy. There is a lot of talk about nation states – the situation has to change … people don’t want to lose their power.

Dictatorship- this did not allow people to practice their politics and organise themselves. They arrested people and tortured them, but in Syria the Kurds were very well organised.

The Kurds’ role before was to fight for other powers, however in Syria the Kurds were the only organised people. PYD in 2003 had experience of how to deal with the regime, and they had some insight into what was going on. Their democratic self-organisation project started in 2007.

PYD organised for a 2 year fight, and established YPG and YPJ.

The Regime is a dictatorship and should be gone.

The Kurds do not want to replace al-Assad with ISIS.  They established a society with diverse people living there and made a social contract in 2013. They established the 3 cantons.

Turkey is behind the assaults – especially Daesh. They were directing the war with ISIS and others, and are directing the situation in Syria.

Kurds have established a model of social contract. Women are empowered, and they are leading society in the Middle East, defending democracy and secularism, a model for the Middle East.

Previously the world looked at Kurds as soldiers for rent, and this was agreed in 2009 and before.

A new breed of Kurds have appeared with freedom, their own will and the concept of self-protection.  No-one created them.  The victory at Kobane was the turning point. No-one factored in the newer Kurds.  It was not in the plan to give Kurds any past of the cake.

The one Nation state is not valid now; Kurds are expecting to look for a democratic state. Nation states are against the reality of the Middle East. How can we help Turks, Iranians and Arabs see this? We need to change the mentality.

Kurds should support a secular society because they have a lot of different religions.  We need democracy. We lived with Syrians and should live with them. This is the first experience of running this model.

We don’t know everything about how to manage this – we need training for politicians and decision-makers and we are asking for help.

We will make mistakes …