Peter switched sides but I didn’t. You can’t be neutral on a moving train. Ever since the beginning that was the beginning I have had this justified true belief that as long as money and power oppress the masses one cannot be neutral, not on a moving train, not when evil forces collude to pull power from We The People. Yet history is kind because due to different circumstances we both ended up on the same team at the end of his life and the beginning of my work; pro-democracy, anti-tyranny, anti-fascism. But he had his superstitions, and they clashed with his choice to see power as money—this being nonetheless interesting to be a general and an economist, the world moved on, or should we say we did not see the world in the same perspectival way. I am pleased to report that the world is much different now than it was, most for the better but some for the weirder, and, furthermore that confusion and the intellectual fog of war has been the main limiting factor in spreading light and knowledge, truth and justice, and the main aims of humanity coeval. With that in mind I wish to aim higher, lift the fog of war, see the landscape of the intransitory moment, and recover what was lost, and to see that we need to lift the veil on Kurdistan.
Someone said to the Unknown Soldier in the deserts of Syria at the confluence of rivers if you sit at Tell Baydar during the sunset, you will have something to say to the world regardless of facts. Having always been the sort of man who was intended to get at the Wine of life early, he went out one afternoon and sat till dusk.
About a month later some fellow around me got really worked up about it, boldly saying after a few drinks, — Turkey? Fuck the Turks. Kurdistan is the only way forward. — He was nearly drowned out by all the information coming forth about people’s love and support for Kurdistan. And before anyone criticizes me, I believe we were talking about the Young Turks on television.
It is natural to wonder whether this actually happened because while the reasons may not have been concretely literal, it was real or so my friends report, however, in the absence of facts, could that have actually happened? The dilemma is that if it really happened but it didn’t actually happen then reality cannot be the same as actuality which calls the question, which always fails.
I have a solution to this problem which is that facts are what literally occur, such, if the reasons for what literally happened are subject to some contestation and nevertheless really happened, facts that are problematic to establish can nonetheless create actualities. “This is called reasoning from similarity and not difference,” someone said to me in the muddle of youth. It applies here.
I admit for the possibility that it actually happened.
Never before has the Unknown Soldier announced his presence so clearly to the world. I will tell him now unequivocally that in spite of vehement anti-war beliefs and the stir that it caused when those who rightly opposed the occupation didn’t want to rescue the Kurds from ISIS, I did support the Global Coalition. Moreover it was precisely for the Kurds that I did and moreover I believed the choice to advance toward Mosul from the west through Greater Kurdistan was correctly chosen. AANES reserves territorial autonomy because of it—the campaign was waged through its territory alongside the Kurds, establishing a memorial to their struggle and travail as an oppressed people overcoming great odds to maintain their identity and commonwealth. However the labor strikes that followed the capture of the city of Mosul received my solidarity along with their belief that to end the war was necessary, with a Kurdish proto-state and a strong alliance between the Kurds and the United States being the only material silver lining to the war that in all actuality was deeply felt by the world as an unknown that needed to be narrativized.
There was an online exhibit at the Smithsonian when I was growing up about the mythology critic, Mr. Campbell, who, problematic though he turned out to be, wrote a remarkable book once about the structure of universal myths and when it comes to the Kurdish campaign nothing is closer to that in story than the element of myth that involves making friends with the natives in order to win the conflict. That’s what I never forget to say about this all: without the Kurds the whole thing would have been a wash.
I don’t know how long I can linger on Kurdish Intelligence without revealing my affinity for it. Without it we would have been bogged down in a mess again this time in Syria. But instead of a leader who wanted to exploit the land, follow the leader, or even one who wants to fail, we had a leader who wanted to bring people together. It’s amazing how much comes down to choices, and profoundly undemocratic ones and so it matters who we choose to make those if you care about democracy. It could have gone another way. Kurdish Intelligence knew everything during the Mosul campaign, i.e. at least it widely seemed like that, such was the faith and trust that the soldiers put in its information. Parastin and Dazgay Zanyari worked together, they say, and Al-Istikhbarat al-Askariyya had Rekkhistin— soldiers in the front report high confidence in their battlefield metrics. The way I heard their operation explained once kindled an affinity that is still hard to ignore. It goes like this: Parastin walks into a bar and asks a question. Dazgay Zanyari is already there and has the same question, turns to Al-Istikhbarat al-Askariyya and asks the question, who in turn calls up the general and puts a request in. This is a little joke because Rekkhistin is also called General Intelligence. And then it turns out that Parastin knew the answer the whole time but it was either a rhetorical question or agreement was reached. This peculiar arrangement sparked some recognition right away. Much integrative analysis has been done on the social calculus of this arrangement that is very much the narrative. I have heard that Parastin’s internal motto is Solidarity and they do a lot of work between asking the question and knowing the answer. Nevertheless the peculiar nature of the system renders it impregnable to standard critiques about uncertainty. It has never failed actuality but facts are subject to the world and circumstance. Facts do show that it works as an idea, but it might be due to the initial productive relationship. Yes, the PKK pioneered this intersectional strategy but its roots are deeply structural and cannot be discounted.
We might be thinking pictorially again about something that is actually a system for producing what we see occurring pictorially, seeing the effect and not the cause, which is human. The cause is human allegory which produces symbol pictorially. When Leibniz was describing mass integrals, it showed cause and effect as a triad— human, environment, and society being one such triad— interacting with a binary or ternary system of perceptions— sight, hearing and touch, and sometimes people say sight and touch are the same—which leads to a modal calculus. About this I will try not to confuse other than to say if a result is produced it is satisfiable and if it produces a result for all variables it is valid. About the topic at hand I would say the narrative is satisfiable but with some knowledge about the variables that go into it it should be quickly determined to be valid referencing the above.
I’ve referenced that there might be a sort of modal logic of social engineering at play in the PKK’s operations. But could there also be a moral calculus? Many have asked me and I have to say yes there could very well be; likely it is in the passing moments that we spend with each other, when we want to know how to structure our associations, and again returning to it when we want to create a meaning to it all, that the same sort of questions arise along with the same longing to know each answer. It has been proved in the crucible of war to have served liberty’s interests but it should shine all the brighter in the forum of peace, and be it incumbent on we who say the word narrative with confidence in its meaning to show once more its capacity as a modal calculus to be a moral calculus, I should say it would exhibit our truthfulness to a principle integral to the dignity of the human. That principle: the love of truth and due honor to justice.
The PKK, far from being just Ocalan, has responded to a truth in the human condition by actualizing it. We could do far worse than to find the same truth and actualize it ourselves. I do not fear advertising this fact because its competitive advantage is that it works for liberals and therefore it works for the Kurds, because they are surrounded by authoritarian countries yet they know something their neighbors do not. I’ve heard two people say what I will say next. The first person said “Be like the Kurds. Travail but do not suffer, travail and see.” The second person said “The Kurds are the interiority of our world.”
This all reminds me of a passage from a London magazine lamenting the passage of time into the 21st century and the unresolved nature of the past. The author, she wrote: “We need a new political subject, no longer in flight from interiority, who inhabits the cracks and crevices of this world, knows how to be nobody, and when to rush to the other side to meet her double.” It might as well be Kurdish intelligence that we need. As to whether we ultimately support the Kurds: you can’t be neutral on a moving train.
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