An open letter to comrades in the Kurdish anarchist movement

Dear comrades in the Kurdish anarchist movement

We got your reproach for being late in issuing a solidarity statement with the Kurdish people and minorities in northern Iraq and Syria, which are under brutal attacks from the fascist organization called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Perhaps you have every right to that admonition, you have always been proactive in supporting and communicating with us (the anarchist movement in Egypt). But what prevented us from issuing such a statement is a feeling that any words are deficient and dwarf against what the minorities have been exposed to in northern Iraq and Syria. All the harassment we suffered in Egypt is worthless compared to the horror people face under ISIS’s reign of terror. What kind of statement can we issue? And what words can express the anger, sadness and pain we feel? The statements of solidarity and condemnation no longer mean anything, and we will not dwarf your tragedy by issuing a mere statement of condemnation and solidarity.

Although they suffered from lack of awareness and a shallowness of objectives and mechanisms, the popular uprisings named ‘the Arab Spring’ were an earthquake which terrified not only dictatorships and proxies in the region, but also the authoritarian imperialist powers, which saw uprisings transferred to their own countries – the United States, Greece, Spain, Turkey, and elsewhere. The uprisings promised a new era in which people would act and take the initiative without reliance on authoritarian parties or organizations. It was this factor which led global capitalism to utilize its old, well-tested weapon of religious fascism to divert and destroy those popular uprisings as well as the hopes and ambitions they gave rise to. Religious fascism was used to seize power, a substitute for the traditional nationalist fascism which was now revealed as decayed, aging and corrupt. The criminal entity named ISIS is nothing but a reproduction of every horror of the Nazi regime, practising ethnic cleansing and genocide. This anti-human entity, which was used to destroy the popular revolution of the Syrians and eliminate any hope of a popular revolutionary movement in Iraq, is now destroying the people of the region themselves, materially and morally, through massacres and genocide, unleashing unbelievable horror against Kurds, Christians, Yazidis, and all ethnic and religious minorities in the region, even as it overpowers the Sunni Arab majority, subjecting them to the diabolical ISIS vision.

We realize that we libertarian socialists find ourselves in the front row of the battle against this barbarous brutality, and realize that we need to develop a collective strategy on the scope of the whole world to find ways and means by which we -militant for socialism and freedom and all the values opposed by those neo-Nazi entities– can stop this brutality and eliminate it and prevent from rising ever again. Our struggle against the ugliness of the Islamic State thugs and murderers of the people is a fundamental part of our struggle against the brutality and viciousness of traditional dictatorship powers in the Middle East in particular and the world as a whole. We have to find a way to mobilize the working people against this brutal, inhuman entity as an essential battle in the war against capitalism and authority. We have to find a way to mobilize against the darkness that threatens any revolutionary popular movement in the Middle East.

Dear comrades, we stand with you shoulder to shoulder, and stand with all the people that are exposed to this monstrosity. And we promise you that we will not fail to do our part to support the cause of socialism, liberty and the right to life. We believe that the day will come soon when we stand together physically, not only morally, in the same trench against fascism and authoritarianism.
Long live the struggle of the peoples.
Long live freedom.
Long live the libertarian socialist .
LSM-Egypt