[lbo-talk] A young Canadian veteran of Afghanistan joins the Kurds

[Marv Gandall]

The secular Kurds are attracting both left-wing volunteer fighters and more conservative young males with military backgrounds like Dillon Hillier, profiled below in the Ottawa Citizen and other major Postmedia dailies across Canada. The leftists identify in particular with the revolutionary democratic Kurdish forces in Turkey and Syria who have become widely admired internationally because of their inspiring defence of Kobani. Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan appear to be attracted to the fight against the vague menace of “Muslim terrorism” promoted by Western politicians and the media and most graphically represented by ISIS. Such political views as Hillier holds, for example, are undoubtedly derived from his experience in the military and from his father, Randy, a Conservative member of the Ontario provincial parliament from a rural riding. 

Such are the contradictions of the Kurdish struggle, led by militias attached to left-wing parties who trace their origins to Marxism, heavily dependent on the military and political support of the US, itself a close NATO ally of the Turkish state which describes these militants as “terrorists” and has tried to crush them. In any case, it’s principled and necessary for the besieged Kurds to draw support from wherever they can get it.  And in the case of Hillier and other volunteers like him, idealists at heart, their engagement with the Kurdish struggle is more likely than not to have a positive effect on their political understanding.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/calgary/Canadian+volunteered+fight+with+Kurds+against+ISIS+says+right/10402040/story.html