Thread by @Matthew__Barber

1) This beautiful drawing of Salih Nasir Naso, a twelve-year-old #Yazidi boy murdered by #Turkey in #Sinjar on Wednesday, was done by @HishamHaji2:

2) The girl in the drawing is Salih’s sister, seen in a video captured moments after the bombings, screaming for help on the street, and saying "my brother is in there." At the end of the video she walks past a business named after Nadia Murad.

3) The U.S. is comfortable with Turkey murdering Yazidi children in the name of its “security.” Turkish bombings of Shingal are now in their sixth year. If the U.S. had a problem with it, it would have taken action by now.

4) The State Department tweeted a pathetic statement in which they were too cowardly to even name the boy's killer. For them, apparently, the boy was simply a "casualty," but not at the hand of any particular actor.

https://twitter.com/StateDept_NEA/status/1537503283891273732

5) Baghdad was silent for two days, but today, after pressure mounted, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs finally issued a statement. The prime minister, however, will not likely take any action against Turkey.
ina.iq/eng/20135-iraq…

6) UNICEF issued a statement condemning the boy's killing, but though the statement remains on the main UNICEF site, the Iraqi UN site REMOVED it within a day of posting it!
a - unicef.org/iraq/press-rel…
b - iraq.un.org/en/186357-unic…

7) Nadia Murad @NadiaMuradBasee called the attack "terrorism" and she's absolutely right, because twelve-year-old Salih's death serves Turkey's interests even more than its assassinations of YBŞ or PKK targets.

https://twitter.com/nadiainitiative/status/1537106444457213953

8) Turkey's attack targeted several PKK members. To attack them, it bombed a civil administrative center in the middle of a populated town—not a military site. Even though Turkey will talk about its intended targets, the "collateral" will work to its advantage, as well.

9) Terrorism is violence against civilians to produce a political change. In Sinjar, we're witnessing successful terrorism in action: after a child is murdered by Turkey, devastated people demonstrate in the streets, calling on the YBŞ to leave.

10) Turkey’s terrorism is slowly working. Unabated, this violence will eventually demoralize the people to the point where they can be forced to submit to a renewal of KDP occupation. First Trump, now Biden, and then the next administration are just waiting it out.

11) Of course, the KDP capitalizes on these moments by sending those on its payroll into the streets to maximize protest potential, and then its media outlets misleadingly report that Sinjar's majority wants the YBŞ out, all while ignoring Turkey's responsibility for the killing.

12) This political violence against a community of genocide survivors occurs because some Yazidis, when abandoned by the world, aligned with the #PKK after its affiliated militias saved thousands from jihadists—jihadists who had benefited from varying degrees of #Turkish support.

13) This began a process whereby the PKK and Turkey have mutually exported their war into a small enclave that is one of the last remaining homelands of an endangered ethnoreligious minority that has never had any desire to enter such a conflict.

14) Turkey’s war against the PKK—part of its much longer legacy of egregious abuses of the Kurds—is about much more than combatting secessionist potential on the part of Kurds who have sought to defend their basic rights; >

15) < the PKK presents a critique of Erdogan’s Islamo-capitalism and a global order that prefers status quos over the hard work of addressing complex ethno-political disputes, histories, and grievances.

16) More than about mere territory, this conflict is about competing social orders, economic philosophies, and ways of life.

17) The international PKK constellation promulgates a complex, holistic ideology encompassing an egalitarian program of social relations, the promotion of sustainable agriculture, an affirming orientation toward rural life, and a particular articulation of democratic socialism.

18) Like all human thought systems, this ideology deserves scrutiny and critique. But it is not terroristic. And aligning with this ideology, or joining one of the innumerable security entities or civil society organizations based on this ideology, does not make one a terrorist.

19) Many of those whom Turkey kills in Sinjar are noncombatants, and those who are combatants spent years fighting #IS. Many are Yazidi members of the #YBŞ, members of nonmilitary civil administrative entities, and apolitical civilians caught in the crossfire.

20) But while former IS jihadists get lengthy trials in Europe, Turkey kills #Yazidis—who have never attacked Turkey or threatened civilians—in extrajudicial assassinations with impunity. And the international community is silent.

21) Supporters of the bombings are quick to point out that the YBŞ-associated civil administrative facilities being targeted are not official Iraqi entities. But these entities have evolved over eight years of abject neglect on the part of Baghdad & a total vacuum of governance.

22) Baghdad has almost completely ignored the Yazidi issue and has not lifted a finger to resolve the lack of administration in Sinjar.

23) It is surreal to see Iraqi soldiers and officers transport Salih Naso's body to the hospital. Turkey bombs Sinjar, the Iraqi military is on hand to pick up the bodies, and Baghdad pursues no course of change.

24) A transition from partisan militias to a proper security force administered by the Iraqi state is desperately needed in Sinjar. But the state must pursue this agenda; it can't sit back and allow Turkey to bomb the militias that are currently responsible for Sinjar’s security.

25) Further, there is the real danger that dismantling the YBŞ without replacing it with a local, nonpartisan security entity could allow the #KDP peshmerga—another partisan militia—to regain hegemony in Sinjar, which it occupied for a decade before turning it over to IS in 2014.

26) Baghdad seems satisfied to allow Turkey to continue its sixth year of bombings of Sinjar; it even recently mobilized the Iraqi army to attack the YBŞ.

27) This is incredible considering that through the eight-year aftermath of the Genocide, Baghdad has never announced an intention to pursue talks with the YBŞ to negotiate a transition.

28) Baghdad is also too dysfunctional to tackle these challenges on its own. It is consumed with political fractures that threaten the very statehood of Iraq. And the U.S. has not provided the necessary support on the Sinjar issue amid the vacuum of Baghdad’s leadership.

29) After eight years of the Yazidis living in camps and five years of Shingal being bombed by Turkey, the U.S. is as culpable as Turkey for the killings.

30) The U.S. responds to the violence either with silence or with tacit approval for Turkey’s actions. For all of these years, it has ignored Yazidi pleas for international protection in #Shingal or for direct support for the creation of a local, legal, unified security force.

31) Further reading:
a - (@Free_Yezidi)

https://twitter.com/Free_Yezidi/status/1537072237869776897

b - (@amberinzaman) al-monitor.com/originals/2022…
c - (@_____mjb) kurdishpeace.org/policy/for-sta…