LONDON: To some, they are freedom fighters, willing to risk their lives in defense of a persecuted people, but others take a dimmer view of the Western volunteers battling Daesh alongside Kurdish forces in Syria.
On Wednesday, James Matthews, a former British soldier who fought with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) against Daesh in Syria, was charged with terror-related offenses, making him the first Briton to be prosecuted for helping a group backed by the UK government overseas.
Matthews pleaded not guilty to a charge of attending a place or places where training was provided “for purposes connected with the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism.” Another former volunteer, student Joshua Walker, was acquitted in October 2017 of terror charges for possessing a copy of the “The Anarchist Cookbook.”
The charges raise questions about the challenges facing Western volunteers returning from foreign combat zones, as well as the difficulties — amid the legal wasteland of Syria’s bloodied battlefields — of sorting the heroes from the villains as Daesh’s self-declared caliphate crumbles and the combatants disperse.
For the many foreign fighters attending the funeral in southwest England earlier this month of 24-year-old Briton Jac Holmes, who died in Raqqa while fighting as a sniper with the YPG, the prosecutions are a bitter betrayal.
“How can countries like Britain and Canada persecute guys who went and fought against Islamic State (Daesh), which is a known terrorist group — how can they be harassed, detained, questioned and possibly prosecuted, in these countries?” asked Jeff Kup, an American YPG fighter.
Kurdish analyst Wladimir van Wilgenburg described the decision to prosecute foreign fighters for battling Daesh with the Syrian Democratic Forces and YPG, groups backed by the US-led coalition, as “strange.”
“How you can prosecute someone for terrorism offenses if they fight against terrorism?”
Kup, who joined the fight against Daesh after seeing “what they were doing to women, children, the elderly, people who really couldn’t defend themselves,” described the treatment being handed out to fellow volunteers as “nerve-racking.”
Hundreds of foreign fighters from the US, Canada, UK and other European countries have traveled to Syria to fight with the YPG and its women’s fighting unit, the YPJ, whose role in defeating Daesh on the battlefield and liberating Yazidi women held captive by the terror group has been widely documented by international media outlets.
“The Kurds are seen as the ‘good guys’ among the many actors fighting in Syria,” said Robert Lowe, deputy director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economic and Political Sciences.
“The appeal lies in a combination of the radical leftist ideology, sympathy for an oppressed ethnic minority, and hostility toward Daesh.”
Many Western volunteers who travel to join the YPG have huge social media followings and hero status among supporters back home. One Norwegian volunteer, who gives his name as Mike Peshmerganor, has more than 74,000 followers on his Facebook page and 171,000 followers on Twitter.
Describing the appeal for foreign fighters in taking up arms for a campaign they often have no personal affiliation with, he said: “If you have skills (military or medical) that can be used, know you won’t break your country’s laws by joining the YPG/YPJ, and are aware you might not come home in one piece or at all, and are still willing to take that risk, then go for it. It’s a just cause.”
But while public perception of the YPG and its foreign volunteers may be largely positive, in legal terms, their status is uncertain.
“A case often made is that although the cause they fight for, defeating Daesh, making sure the caliphate crumbles, fighting in the name of freedom, preventing terrorists from conducting attacks against the West … is quite noble, the nature of their participation is problematic,” said Nick Heras, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, based in Washington.
“(Their participation) is not through the formal state militaries of their home countries, so is, in fact, illegal.”
Kurdish fighters are a key part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, but the US downplays links with the YPG because of the Kurdish group’s ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a separatist movement labelled a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and several other countries.
“The PKK is a proscribed terrorist organization in many European countries, so they’ve made a choice there,” said Rafaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the the Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London.
The YPG denies links with the PKK, although some YPG leaders have historical connections with the party.
“There is sometimes a reason to worry about some of these people and their motivations, but I certainly think they are a different level of concern than a person who went off to fight with Daesh,” Pantucci said.
According to Heras, “a very strong counter-narrative” is emerging in the “Jekyll and Hyde” situation surrounding foreign fighters.
“One of the dominant narratives on any given day could be that these are Westerners who are putting aside materialism and fighting for a cause that serves all humanity, and then, on another given day, you might have a narrative that says these people are actually breaking the law of their own countries and actively supporting a movement that is trying to undermine and destroy a NATO ally.”
Last month, the Turkish military launched an offensive to drive the YPG out of Afrin, a Kurdish-majority enclave in northern Syria. Western powers have urged restraint after violent clashes left thousands of civilians homeless.
The crisis has escalated tensions between the US and Turkey, casting doubt over the nature of US support for the YPG as it seeks to mend relations with an important Middle East ally.
“How these foreign fighters who join the YPG will be remembered will depend to a great degree on what the future of Turkey’s relationship is with these Western nations,” Heras said.
“If Turkey continues to have an antagonistic relationship with the West, I do think there will be a degree of sympathy.” However, a renewal of the friendship could trigger “a significant amount of legal ramifications,” and leave Western governments “much more disposed to take Turkey’s point of view,” he said.
Ora Szekely, associate professor of political science at Clark University, Massachusetts, said that US support for the Kurds is mostly about pragmatism. “Of all of the parties in the Syrian conflict, the Kurdish forces have been by far the most effective against ISIS (Daesh), which, given American objectives in Syria, makes them the most practical choice as a local military ally.”
She pointed to sympathy for the ideals behind the Rojava revolution in northern Syria, where Kurds are establishing a multi-ethnic secular democracy that champions women’s rights.
“The ideological blueprint for governance in Rojava … is based on principles that are shared by many leftists in the US and Europe, for whom supporting the Kurds is, therefore, about supporting a larger cause.”
Szekely said: “Most international fighters who have traveled to Syria to join the YPG and YPJ are motivated by ambition for their political project.” Western volunteers have been traveling to the Middle East to support the Kurdish cause since the 1980s, but in the past five years there has been a surge in the numbers of foreign recruits. A few have gained near-celebrity status, helping to publicize their cause and highlight the suffering of Kurdish people.
Canadian YPJ fighter Hanna Bohman, who recently made a documentary film about the YPJ with actress Olivia Wilde, told Arab News in an earlier interview: “They love the Western volunteers because it improves morale, it shows that people are listening. People do care about what you’re doing.”
Spaniard Artiaga Arges, who was in the same sniper unit as fallen fighter Jac Holmes, said: “The role of Western volunteers in military terms is small, but it’s very important in terms of solidarity and justice.”
Arges said: “They stepped up against Daesh when the rest of the world was just looking at the TV.”
‘Harassed, detained, prosecuted’: Western anti-Daesh fighters feel betrayed
‘Harassed, detained, prosecuted’: Western anti-Daesh fighters feel betrayed
Reformist Pezeshkian wins Iran’s presidential runoff election, besting hard-liner Jalili
- A vote count offered by authorities put Pezeshkian as the winner with 16.3 million votes to Jalili’s 13.5 million in Friday’s election
- Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and longtime lawmaker, has promised to reach out to the West in a bid to ease economic sanctions
DUBAI: Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian won Iran’s runoff presidential election Saturday, besting hard-liner Saeed Jalili by promising to reach out to the West and ease enforcement on the country’s mandatory headscarf law after years of sanctions and protests squeezing the Islamic Republic.
Pezeshkian promised no radical changes to Iran’s Shiite theocracy in his campaign and long has held Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the final arbiter of all matters of state in the country. But even Pezeshkian’s modest aims will be challenged by an Iranian government still largely held by hard-liners, the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, and Western fears over Tehran enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels.
A vote count offered by authorities put Pezeshkian as the winner with 16.3 million votes to Jalili’s 13.5 million in Friday’s election.
Supporters of Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and longtime lawmaker, entered the streets of Tehran and other cities before dawn to celebrate as his lead grew over Jalili, a hard-line former nuclear negotiator.
But Pezeshkian’s win still sees Iran at a delicate moment, with tensions high in the Mideast over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, Iran’s advancing nuclear program, and a looming US election that could put any chance of a detente between Tehran and Washington at risk.
The first round of voting June 28 saw the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iranian officials have long pointed to turnout as a sign of support for the country’s Shiite theocracy, which has been under strain after years of sanctions crushing Iran’s economy, mass demonstrations and intense crackdowns on all dissent.
Government officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted a higher participation rate as voting got underway, with state television airing images of modest lines at some polling centers across the country.
However, online videos purported to show some polls empty while a survey of several dozen sites in the capital, Tehran, saw light traffic amid a heavy security presence on the streets.
The election came amid heightened regional tensions. In April, Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel over the war in Gaza, while militia groups that Tehran arms in the region — such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — are engaged in the fighting and have escalated their attacks.
Iran is also enriching uranium at near weapons-grade levels and maintains a stockpile large enough to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so. And while Khamenei remains the final decision-maker on matters of state, whichever man ends up winning the presidency could bend the country’s foreign policy toward either confrontation or collaboration with the West.
The campaign also repeatedly touched on what would happen if former President Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, won the November election. Iran has held indirect talks with President Joe Biden’s administration, though there’s been no clear movement back toward constraining Tehran’s nuclear program for the lifting of economic sanctions.
More than 61 million Iranians over the age of 18 were eligible to vote, with about 18 million of them between 18 and 30. Voting was to end at 6 p.m. but was extended until midnight to boost participation.
The late President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a May helicopter crash, was seen as a protégé of Khamenei and a potential successor as supreme leader.
Still, many knew him for his involvement in the mass executions that Iran conducted in 1988, and for his role in the bloody crackdowns on dissent that followed protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by police over allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
Femicide in North Africa exposed but legal protection lags
ALGIERS: Femicide and domestic violence against women in North Africa are increasingly reported online and by the media but rights groups say legal measures to protect the victims are still lacking.
In Algeria, at least one woman is killed each week, according to the watchdog Feminicides Algerie, which has been documenting murders since 2019.
Across the border in Tunisia, femicide rates quadrupled between 2018 and 2023, reaching 25 murders compared to six in 2018, according to the NGOs Aswat Nissa and Manara.
The situation is also alarming in Morocco where Stop Feminicides Maroc, another group, has recorded five killings so far this year, with at least 50 cases in 2023 and more than 30 the year before.
The latest gender-based killing in Algeria took place on Monday in the eastern city of Khenchela, where according to media reports a man aged 49 stabbed his 37-year-old wife several times before slitting her throat.
Imad, who asked to use a pseudonym, told AFP how his 23-year-old sister was murdered by her husband last year.
A mother of three, she was preparing a meal for the Ramadan fast when she was killed.
“Her husband found her taking selfies with her cell phone while frying some borek (stuffed pastries). He got angry and poured oil on her face then slit her throat,” Imed said.
His brother-in-law was tried and sentenced to just 10 years in prison for his crime after his lawyer submitted medical records claiming he suffered from depression, he added.
Farida, a 45-year-old Algerian, who also asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of retribution from her ex-husband, told AFP she nearly died when he attempted to choke her with a rope.
“My married life was very unhappy, with beatings and death threats,” the journalist and mother of four said. “He once strangled me with a rope until I collapsed.”
They eventually divorced but the husband got custody of the children and threatened to harm them if she filed a complaint, she said.
Femicide “is not a new phenomenon,” Algerian sociologist Yamina Rahou told AFP. “But it has become more visible with social media.”
Rights groups have also been raising awareness of the killing of women by their husbands or other male relatives, but they argue that known cases only represent the tip of the iceberg.
Tunisia’s most recent known attempted murder took place at the end of June in the southern region of Gafsa where a husband is suspected of dousing his wife with gasoline and setting her on fire, according to judicial sources.
The woman survived but was hospitalized with critical injuries while her husband escaped.
In 2017, Tunisia adopted a law aimed at fighting gender-related violence but its implementation has been slow, according to Karima Brini, head of the Tunisian Women and Citizenship group.
“Cultural obstacles” are among the main stumbling blocks, said Brini, noting that Tunisian schoolbooks continue to describe women as people “whose place is in the kitchen” while men “watch TV.”
Brini and Algeria’s Rahou said such views must change.
“We must raise awareness among both sexes from a young age about equality, shared responsibility and mutual respect,” in particular through state-run media, said Rahou.
Relying on law and law enforcement was “not enough,” she said.
At least 13 death sentences have been handed down in Algeria since 2019 for perpetrators of femicide, but a moratorium on executions has meant the convicts were sentenced to life in jail.
Sexual harassment, verbal or psychological aggression, and violence against women are also punished by law in Algeria since 2015.
In Morocco, violence against women has been punishable by law since 2018, but rights groups say it has not changed the reality on the ground where women continue to be victimized.
Judges in Morocco “tend to think that (domestic) violence... is a private” matter and as a result, the sentences meted out do not provide a sufficient deterrent, said lawyer Ghislaine Mamouni.
Camelia Echchihab, founder of “Stop Feminicides Maroc,” said Moroccan laws are a “farce” when it comes to violence against women and urged “more concrete” legislation.
In 2023, the brutal murder of a woman who was cut into pieces and hidden in a refrigerator sparked outrage across Morocco.
“The case is symbolic because it shows that there must be a certain level of horror for journalists to write about it, when in truth all femicide is horrible,” said Echchihab.
Gaza’s biggest soccer stadium is now a shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinians
- They’ve been displaced multiple times, Um Bashar said, most recently from Israel’s renewed operations against Hamas in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip: Thousands of displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza have sought refuge in what was once the territory’s biggest soccer arena, where families scrape by with little food or water as they try to keep one step ahead of Israel’s latest offensive.
Their makeshift tents hug the shade below the stadium’s seating, with clothes hung out to dry across the dusty, dried-up soccer field. Under the covered benches where players used to sit on the sidelines, Um Bashar bathes a toddler standing in a plastic tub. Lathering soap through the boy’s hair, he wiggles and shivers as she pours the chilly water over his head, and he grips the plastic seats for balance.
They’ve been displaced multiple times, she said, most recently from Israel’s renewed operations against Hamas in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City.
“We woke up and found tanks in front of the door,” she says. “We didn’t take anything with us, not a mattress, not a pillow, not any clothes, not a thing. Not even food.”
She fled with about 70 others to Yarmouk Sports Stadium — a little under 2 miles (3 kilometers) northwest of Shijaiyah, which heavily bombed and largely emptied early in the war. Many of the people who ended up in the stadium say they have nothing to return to.
“We left our homes,” said one man, Hazem Abu Thoraya, “and all of our homes were bombed and burned, and all those around us were as well.”
Hundreds of thousands of people have remained in northern Gaza, even as Israeli troops have surrounded and largely isolated it. However, aid flows there have improved recently, and the UN said earlier this week that it is now able to meet people’s basic needs in the north. Israel says it allows aid to enter Gaza and blames the UN for not doing enough to move it.
Still, residents say the deprivation and insecurity are taking an ever-growing toll.
“There is no safe place. Safety is with God,” said a displaced woman, Um Ahmad. “Fear is now felt not only among the children, but also among the adults. ... We don’t even feel safe walking in the street.”
Iran holds runoff presidential vote pitting hard-liner against reformist after record low turnout
- Vote unlikely to change policies, may shape Khamenei succession
- Authorities seek high turnout to offset legitimacy crisis
- Supreme Leader Khamenei, not the president, has the last say
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Iran held a runoff presidential election on Friday that pitted a hard-line former nuclear negotiator against a reformist lawmaker. Both men had struggled to convince a skeptical public to cast ballots in the first round of voting that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.
Early results reported by Iran’s election authority on state television showed reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian narrowly ahead of hard-liner Saeed Jalili.
Mohsen Eslami, the election spokesman, said Pezeshkian had 2,904,227 votes trailed by Jalili with 2,815,566 votes, with 5,819,911 votes counted in 13,277 polling stations. There are some 60,000 polling stations and more than 61 million eligible voters.
Government officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have predicted a higher participation rate as voting got underway, with state television airing images of modest lines at some polling centers across the country.
However, online videos purported to show some polls empty while a survey of several dozen sites in the capital, Tehran, saw light traffic amid a heavy security presence on the streets.
Polls closed after midnight, after voting was extended as had become tradition in Iran.
Khamenei has insisted the low turnout from the first round on June 28 did not represent a referendum on Iran’s Shiite theocracy. However, many remain disillusioned as Iran has been beset by years under crushing economic sanctions, bloody security force crackdowns on mass protests and tensions with the West over Tehran’s advancing nuclear program enriching uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.
“I want to save the country from isolation we are stuck in, and from lies and the violence against women because Iranian women don’t deserve to be beaten up and insulted on the street by extremists who want to destroy the country by cutting ties with big countries,” voter Ghazaal Bakhtiari said. “We should have ties with America and powerful nations.”
The race pits former negotiator Jalili against reformist Pezeshkian.
Jalili has had a recalcitrant reputation among Western diplomats during negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, something that is paired with concern at home over his hard-line views on Iran’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab. Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon, has campaigned on relaxing hijab enforcement and reaching out to the West, though he too for decades has supported Khamenei and Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Pezeshkian’s supporters have been warning Jalili will bring a “Taliban”-style government into Tehran, while Jalili has criticized Pezeshkian for running a campaign of fear-mongering.
Both contenders voted Friday in southern Tehran, home to many poor neighborhoods. Though Pezeshkian came out on top in the first round of voting on June 28, Jalili has been trying to secure the votes of people who supported hard-line parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who came in third and later endorsed the former negotiator.
Pezeshkian offered no comments after voting, walking out with former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who struck Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. A rambunctious crowd surrounded the men, shouting: “The nation’s hope comes!”
Both Pezeshkian and Jalili hope to replace the 63-year-old late President Ebrahim Raisi died in a May 19 helicopter crash that also killed the country’s foreign minister and several other officials.
Jalili voted at another polling station, surrounded by a crowd shouting: “Raisi, your way continues!”
“Today the entire world admits that it’s the people who decide who’s president for the next four years,” Jalili said afterward. “This is your right to decide which person, which path and which approach should rule the country in the next four years.”
But as has been the case since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women and those calling for radical change have been barred from the ballot while the vote itself had no oversight from internationally recognized monitors. The country’s Interior Ministry, in charge of police, oversees the result.
There have been calls for a boycott, including from imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, though potential voters in Iran appear to have made the decision not to participate last week on their own as there’s no widely accepted opposition movement operating within or outside of the country.
Khamenei cast one of the election’s first votes Friday from his residence, TV cameras and photographers capturing him dropping the ballot into the box. He insisted those who didn’t vote last week were not boycotting the government.
“I have heard that people’s enthusiasm is more than before,” Khamenei said. “God willing, people vote and choose the best” candidate.
One voter, 27-year-old Yaghoub Mohammadi, said he voted for Jalili in both rounds.
“He is clean, without depending on powerful people in the establishment,” Mohammadi said. “He represents those who have no access to power.”
By Friday night, both hard-line and reformist figures urged the public to vote as lines remained light in Tehran.
“Until a few hours ago I was reluctant to vote,” said Ahmad Safari, a 55-year-old shopkeeper and father of three daughters who voted despite skipping the first round. “But I decided to vote for Pezeshkian because of my children. Maybe they’ll have a better future.”
The vote comes as wider tensions have gripped the Middle East over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. In April, Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel over the war in Gaza, while militia groups that Tehran arms in the region — such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — are engaged in the fighting and have escalated their attacks.
Iran also continues to enrich uranium at near weapons-grade levels and maintains a stockpile large enough to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so. And while Khamenei remains the final decision-maker on matters of state, whichever man ends up winning the presidency could bend the country’s foreign policy toward either confrontation or collaboration with the West.
More than 61 million Iranians over the age of 18 were eligible to vote, with about 18 million of them between 18 to 30. Voting was to end at 6 p.m. but was extended until midnight to boost participation.
Raisi, who died in the May helicopter crash, was seen as a protégé of Khamenei and a potential successor as supreme leader.
Still, many knew him for his involvement in the mass executions that Iran conducted in 1988, and for his role in the bloody crackdowns on dissent that followed protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by police over allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
A look at how settlements have grown in the West Bank over the years
JERUSALEM: Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades and advanced plans to build thousands of new settlement homes, according to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement monitoring group. They are the latest steps by Israel’s hard-line government meant to cement Israel’s control over the territory and prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
This map shows the expansion of settlements and outposts from 1967 until now.
Half a century of settlements
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians seek all three areas for their future state. In 56 years, Israel has built well over 100 settlements scattered across the West Bank. Settlers also have built scores of tiny unauthorized outposts that are tolerated or even encouraged by the government. Some are later legalized.
Dwindling two-state prospects
The international community considers the settlements illegal or illegitimate, and the Palestinians say they are the main barrier to a lasting peace agreement.
But with more than 500,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, it will be difficult – some say impossible – to partition the territory as part of a two-state solution.
