@iyad_elbaghdadi's Threads
What are you grateful for today?
It's exactly five years since I arrived to the safety of Norway today
I guess this is as good a time as any to announce that my family (parents and sister) who were stuck in Malaysia as refugees since 2015 are now in Canada.
Dear analysts who are emphasizing with each tweets how the Turkish-backed factions are Arabs and how the SDF are "the Kurds" - you're not helping. Tomorrow you'll move on to your next assignment and we'll be left with the essentialization you helped reinforce.
Most of my very Arab friends are disgusted with these Turkish-backed factions and are sympathetic to the plight of the Kurds of North Syria. Many also recognize that the SDF-run region that has been betrayed is ethnically mixed. Please stop projecting "Arab vs Kurd" on us.
Yes the betrayal to the Kurds is deepest because they are an already marginalized ethnic group with a history of genocide and ethnic cleansing committed against them. Also yes this region will always have Arabs and Kurds living side by side.
This is a key point. Be it unemployment, poor services, high taxes, or naked repression, what's in common is feeling like you don't matter. When people rise, their most essential demand is to feel that they matter.
And here's the thing about feeling humiliated: We only feel this when we know at a very deep level that we deserve better. If we didn't think we deserve better we wouldn't feel humiliated. 
There are fundamental normative aspirations about what it means to be a citizen that underlie every slogan since 2011. This is why I've been saying that these aren't mere slogans, these are convictions that won't go away with repression.
The keys to the Middle East's future lie in Riyadh and Tehran. So long these two regimes are empowered, we will see nothing but cycles of tyranny, terrorism, and war. And these are the two regimes that Obama thought should "share the region".
The MENA region is home to half a billion people. Across this diverse region one thing holds true - broken social contracts held together by band-aids, repression, and foreign support. This will not hold. An even bigger rupture will come, sooner or later.
I don't know if I'll live to see the moment when we'll arrive, but that moment will come. And the nature of the peoples of the region is that they never forget those who stood with them, and they never forget those who stood against them.
Iraq and Lebanon, beset by recent raging protests, present unique challenges for democratic reform. Here "the system" is not a centralized autocracy but rather can be described in three words: a sectarian oligarchic plutocracy.
For this reason there isn't one single dictator to topple, but many - and this becomes an almost impossible task in practice. Citizens in Lebanon and Iraq get to vote, but their votes don't matter because politics, like the economy, is a family run business.
The real challenge isn't to destroy the oligarchy but to build an alternative. If all of this passion and energy goes into building a true national alternative, it would shake the thrones of the oligarchs more than anything else.
Third night now.
You know what we hear when you say "NATO shouldn't have intervened in Libya"? We hear: We should have let Gaddafi kill more of you
When you say "The West shouldn't have intervened* in Syria" what we hear is "Assad didn't kill enough of you guys". What was your alternative plan to end the carnage?
Incredible. Lebanon now, protesters in this video chanting "The people demand the downfall of the regime"
Context
More context
Reminder here that the Turkish plan is to establish a buffer between the Turkish border and the YPG and use that buffer to house a million displaced Syrians from elsewhere in Syria
Reminder, also, that this means a potentially permanent demographic change. Most of the refugees come from Arab majority parts of Syria, meanwhile many of the regions in northern Syria are Kurdish majority.
Turkey achieves two goals - one vs the YPG and another vs the seemingly permanent Syrian refugee crisis. It can even promise economic development in said "buffer zone", and promise to withdraw in case of a comprehensive political settlement with Damascus.
One of the most important lessons I learned early in my activism is that in the course of your activism you should not cause harm to others doing their own legitimate activism. You need to expand your focus to encompasses them rather than think narrowly only about your own cause.
Some activists, especially new ones, are too singularly focused on their own cause that they end up screwing over other activists working on other causes. Don't throw others under the bus in order to win. If you do, even if you win, you're losing.
Furthermore, you'd be shutting down the door to solidarity and synergy with others. Trust me, without that you can't last for long. And most of our causes aren't the kind that can be won in a short campaign, they take decades of serious work.
Last week I received news via a private source suggesting that Saud Al Qahtani is alive. Yesterday the Saudi regime's ambassador to the UK said that Saud Al Qahtani is alive and under house arrest. So far none of this is confirmed until a journalist is allowed to meet him.
To clarify: We don't know if he's alive, but we also don't know if he's dead. The Saudi regime has maintained silence for a long time and are now saying he's alive. They haven't allowed anyone to see him.
Meanwhile, the Saudi propaganda/troll network on Twitter have been glorifying Saud Al Qahtani nonstop for weeks, even as the government claims that he's "under investigation".
There are many Western liberals who insist they care about democracy and universal human rights. They also insist they care about our struggle in the Middle East. I have no reason to doubt that they are sincere.
Often these same people say very hurtful things. When we call them out on it, instead of self-reflecting about how they have hurt us, they double down and take it personally. Fine - chalk it up to personalities or miscommunication...
But: Why is it our job as native Middle Eastern activists to reach out to them and explain just how hurtful their words often are? Why is it not their job to reach out to us? Why?
If America wants to walk away from the Middle East then it should:
- Stop all weapons sales, financial aid, and diplomatic support to dictators, *all* dictators
- Explain how they'll ensure that the weapons they already sold to dictators won't be used against us after they leave
- Stop all weapons sales, financial aid, and diplomatic support to dictators, *all* dictators
- Explain how they'll ensure that the weapons they already sold to dictators won't be used against us after they leave
- Explain how they'll provide reparations to us for the decades of weapons sales, financial aid, and diplomatic support to our dictators
- Yes I'm counting Israel among the dictators because no brutal military occupation is democratic
- Yes I'm counting Israel among the dictators because no brutal military occupation is democratic
But to arm our dictators for a century, then walk away and leave us to our fate vs dictators that have been armed to the teeth by America - that's just as racist a policy as the policy that preceded it.
A reminder for those who bring up Libya in Syria debates. It's a 2015 tweet and the numbers are old, but the argument holds even more than before.
Imagine what the MENA region would look like today had Gaddafi's regime survived in 2011.
Just ask yourself if we'd be celebrating a democratic transition in Tunisia and successful (though still in progress) uprisings in Algeria and Sudan if a triumphant Gaddafi was there to help his buddies.
If only I had the luxury of commenting on Middle East foreign policy with detachment and from a place of safety and distance, like some others on here do. If you ignore the voices of people with actual skin in the game, your opinion really shouldn't matter. And it doesn't.
They want to weep for us as we get slaughtered and complain about the injustice of it while also making sure nobody moves a finger to end our slaughter. And they call themselves allies? They're not. They value their freaking ideology more than they value our lives.
And I am *done* compromising on our dignity and pretending that I can have polite and detached discussions with people whose lives and careers will go on just fine whether ten million or us die or "only" half a million die. I'm just done.
My only promise to you is that I'll be on the battlefield until I die.
I should explain. Other dads can promise their children safety or stability. I don't know if I can promise that. This is what I can promise.
That I will fight for you and for everyone until the day I die.
Here's the lesson to us as children of the region: Never rely upon your ex-colonialists to respect your human rights or stop the flow of your blood. They don't see you as equally human. You can hope they'll do the right thing but don't get your hopes up.
We are humiliated because we are ruled by tyrants who deny us agency.
We are ruled by tyrants in no small part because these tyrants are supported by Western governments.
Then said Western government speak about human rights and equality.
We are ruled by tyrants in no small part because these tyrants are supported by Western governments.
Then said Western government speak about human rights and equality.
Just realize that when Western politicians speak about human rights, democracy, and equality they don't mean for you.
Five years ago today I met my son for the first time. Most fathers "meet" their children on the same day they are born, but then I was arrested, jailed, and then forcibly exiled a few months before his birth. When I finally got to see him, he was four months old.
And this was the moment. Three days later, I would leave for Norway, where I'd apply for asylum. I wouldn't see him again until his first birthday.
I missed the entire first year of my son's life, except for those three days. I'll live for the rest of my life as a father making up for it.
It's really sad that in the MENA region, so many of us are unaware of the often deep and intergenerational traumas of others. Everyone is too caught up in their own story to care about the tragic stories of the others.
I've been around long enough to know that a lot of the hurtful comments leveled by some against others are a result of ignorance. Yes some are intentionally hurtful but with most people most of the time it's ignorance.
We don't talk to each other about each other's grievances and don't have the patience or compassion to hear people express their pain without taking it personally as if it's somehow a statement against us, or takes away from *our* pain.
I've come to see our collective "us" not as a single ethnicity called "Arabs", but as a constellation of ethnicities who share a common language, and hence a common literature, and a common public & cultural sphere
We also share a common history, spiritual values, and similar political experiences and aspirations. The things that unite us are far more than what divides us, and in diversity there is strength and beauty. We don't need to deny the specific in order to assert the general.
And so when I say "Arab" I do not mean some sort of race, I'm using it to mean Arabic speaking peoples. There are many. And they're all my people regardless their origins. In this region we're all mutts anyway.
For the record, Hassan comes from the parts of Syria that ISIS held the longest; the "heart" of their caliphate. Many members of his family lived under ISIS's rule. He had and continues to have skin in the game.
To point the finger at a native Syrian analyst and say he has "blood on his hands" is so shameful I don't know where to start. Ex-Obama officials, unable to own up to their own tragic mistakes, lashing out at the very people who warned them that they were fucking up for years?
We saw this coming a long way away. You never fucking listen to us, you called us all sorts of name then. And now that what we warned will happen has happened, you call us names again. Nobody should trust the US again, nobody. Especially the idiots who ran ME policy under Obama.
When Syrian school children in Daraa wrote those slogans on the walls of their city in 2011, did anyone expect what hell we're going to see in the next eight years? It's 2019 and we're helplessly watching ethnic cleansing and demographic engineering. In 2019.
The SDF were never perfect. But they presented the best governance structure and the best model for coexistence in the Syrian theater. Many civilians, regardless of ethnicity, preferred to live in SDF areas than others.
There will be many counterfactuals. Many "what ifs". Many "we should haves". But nothing will take away the tragedy of this moment and the collapse of what was, for a good while and all things considered, the freest part of Syria.
I see what you're saying, but it's inaccurate to describe my message as populist. Populists present themselves as "the people" (and those who oppose them as enemies of the people). Their message is one of exclusion and supremacism. I don't think this describes what I do.
You also used the word "utopian" - which is again inaccurate. My vision isn't unachievable and isn't quixotic. Many regions of the world that have bitterly fought each other for centuries have achieved a collective peace.
If we accept our present condition, we get to keep it. If we keep arguing for our limitations, we get to keep them. If we shoot down every positive vision for the future as "utopian", we'll continue to sit in this rut.
My team & I are engaged in multiple important projects and investigations that, for security reasons, we cannot speak about publicly. We are independent and our main financial support comes from you. Please step up and support us with as little as $1 / mo: patreon.com/kawaakibi
Our job is to create headaches for tyrants and terrorists, and for that reason, they want us dead and they want our work to stop. The people we're up against have virtually unlimited financial resources. But as for us - we only have you. We'll get nowhere unless you step up.
Please also help by retweeting the tweets above. It makes a difference.
The Kurds, Turks, Arabs, and Persians are all native people of the Middle East. As a son of the Middle East, they are *all* my people and their blood is my blood. Kurdish blood is my blood. Turkish blood is my blood. Persian blood is my blood. And Arab blood is my blood.
(And this extends to all the native people of the MENA. I only mention those above because they're the ones that seem at each other's necks at this particular moment.)
We have a bitter dispute, but it's ultimately a family dispute. So long we think that we can achieve dignity by crushing that of our sisters and brothers, then dignity and peace will keep evading us.
