It Could Happen Here - War Update

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Robert, Mia, and James Discuss developments in conflicts in Kashmir, Yemen, and Kurdistan. Sources: https://anfenglishmobile.com/kurdistan/pkk-final-declaration-activities-under-the-pkk-name-have-ended-79294 https://anfenglishmobile.com/features/cemil-bayik-we-are-now-developing-a-new-paradigm-a-second-manifesto-79403 https://anfenglishmobile.com/features/new-message-from-abdullah-Ocalan-79417  https://anfenglishmobile.com/rojava-syria/mazloum-abdi-we-hope-all-relevant-parties-take-the-necessary-steps-79319 https://jacobin.com/2025/05/kashmir-india-pakistan-cease-fire-democracy https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/14/did-pakistan-shoot-down-five-indian-fighter-jets-what-we-know https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgvr4r5d2qo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyn617xv4no https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-between-india-and-pakistan https://www.brookings.edu/articles/lessons-for-the-next-india-pakistan-war/ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/world/asia/india-pakistan-conflict.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm your host, Mia Wong. With V is James and Robert. Yeah, war never changes, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, except for, yeah, I mean, sure. All the fucking time. All the time it changes. Yeah, except for all the changes. Yeah, I think it's a line from a film.

Yeah, I mean, the most important part doesn't change, which is most things in proper place at right time, right? That's what determines war winning. The things that matter are what change. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, what doesn't change, not great fun for the most part, Right? That's what determines war winning. But the things that matter are what change. Yeah. Also, what doesn't change, not great fun for the most part, not an enjoyable way to spend your time.

Not enjoyable, except for the chunk of people who tend to make most of the calls. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, enjoyable. They like it a lot. Yeah. Yeah. You're an old guy in a big house. Yeah, so we're going gonna be talking about three wars? Yeah, I think we're gonna lead off

with the India-Pakistan war, and then we're gonna do the other two wars in some order. Do you wanna announce the other two wars? Yeah, we're gonna talk about the end of the armed conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state, maybe. Yeah, we'll be talking about Yemen a little bit. Uh, yeah, man. Yeah, let's, let's... Oh, God, let's do this. Okay, so the good news is that...

Look, we do have good news, which is that we have not all died in nuclear fires. I know there are some of you for whom you are very disappointed, but we're all still here, for better or for worse. I mean, for better. Like, I'm very glad we didn't all die in nuclear fire. Yeah, so let's talk about the recent war between India and Pakistan lasted about four days. So all right, we talked about this a little bit before the very basic sort of elements of this conflict.

We talked about partition on the show before when India gained independence from the British Empire, it split into India and Pakistan, millions died, horrific sort of conflict, people killing each other, like mass migrations across the borders, very very very unstable set of borders get set up that change a bunch of times. And one of the aspects of this, of this sort of whole thing is that Kashmir was supposed to be this independent state. And then through an extremely convoluted process that I am again, once again, pushing off to another episode with like actual good experts on this, because this is a very very very convoluted

thing but the short version of it basically is that this series is sort of escalating conflicts and ends basically in a sort of short war and then Kashmir being split in two between India and Pakistan where like about a third roughly of Kashmir ends up under Pakistani control and then about two thirds ends up under Indian control now then about two-thirds ends up under Indian control. Now there's an agreement signed by Kashmir's ruler at the time to to let India like annex like two-thirds of Kashmir or so the actual dividing line basically ends up being like where the army stopped, you know, it changes over the years.

But the important thing here right is that? Peshmer is supposed to have had an independence referendum Right. That was like yeah the deal. Yeah Now in a move that is like genuinely even more stunning than the shit that like Indonesia pulled in West Papua So in West Papua, right, like Indonesia pulls a like fake independence referendum here. They've never even done that. Like, they've never even pretended to have the referendum that they're supposed to have had. It's like a sub-assad level attempt at democracy, you know? Yeah, yeah, they're just like, nope, eat shit. Like, you're basically a colony now.

Now, as part of this deal, right, Kashmir got a pretty substantial amount of autonomy. I'm gonna read... There's actually a very good Jacobin... One of the rare good Jacobin articles, which usually tend to be the ones written, like, not by the American Jacobin writers. Yeah, by some freelancer who made 50 US dollars for writing it. Yeah. Unless their rates have gone up.

Yeah, this is written by Arish K. and I'm going to quote here from this article. Quote, central to the instrument of a session, it's the document that the ruler of Kashmir signed to sort of like hand Kashmir over to India. Quote, was the constitutional provision of Article 370, which assured the Kashmiri people autonomy over all matters besides those pertaining to defense, external affairs, and communications. The article was supposed to be temporary and provisional because there was a promise of a referendum by which the people of Kashmir would decide their own political fate, to

remain part of India, to join up with Pakistan, or become an independent state. But as we've already mentioned, this just never happened. I mean, they didn't even do a sham one. It just literally didn't ever happen. And India has just been imposing its rule on Kashmir ever since. And it is, I mean, it is also worth pointing out that Pakistan has also been imposing its rule on like its part of Kashmir. But the Indian occupation has become increasingly brutal.

Basically, since it's starting, it's just continued to get worse and worse worse and it is sort of a full-blown military occupation, right? there's just like a bunch of fucking Indian troops in the street and As it becomes clear that India is like never going to let Kashmir be free or just even let the Kashmiri people decide What they want? Militant struggles ensues and as Kay points out It's originally spearheaded by the secular Jammu Kashmir liberation front and this group is just sort of wiped out because it wanted an independent Kashmir and This was convenient to neither the Indian or the Pakistani government because Pakistan

once and Pakistan talks about this a lot internationally like one of their sort of International political things is like yeah, we want free cash for you But it's like no you don't. You want Kashmir to be part of Pakistan. That is not the same thing as it being free. Like, you're very clear about this. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and so Pakistan's engagement towards Kashmir is always been about this, right? It's always been about making sure that there wouldn't be any kind of sort of independent Kashmir. And so both India and Pakistan crush the sort of secular Kashmiri independence group that have been spearheading a lot of this.

And over time, Pakistan has sort of, through a complicated series of things, has asserted a lot of control over a lot of these groups or has intelligence relations with them. ISI kind of notoriously works with militant groups. Like the ISI is the group in Afghanistan that like really full on did the thing that everyone thinks that the US and the Saudis sort of did in terms of like funding the worst parts of the Mujahideen. Like that was really mostly Pakistani intelligence.

Yeah. So like they have a lot of relations with a bunch of people who absolutely fucking suck. And they've used a lot of these groups as a way to poke a stick at India and also attempt to obtain their domestic political goals of weakening India for their own sort of internal stability, which we'll come back to later. Although the internal stability of like military of the power of the military in Pakistan and also like taking the rest of Kashmir. Yeah. And so this has caused a really horrific conflict in which the people of Kashmir have suffered

a bunch of horrible shit. In 2019, that autonomy, you know, again, the autonomy that was... the carrot in order to like join, in exchange for Kashmir joining India, right, and supposedly getting this referendum, like the carrot was supposed to be that they're supposed to have an unbelievable amount of internal autonomy. And in 2019, it had been being eroded for a long time But in 2019 India is just like eat shit fuck you. It's gone now have fun and This causes a bunch of protests. It causes militant group attacks

It causes a Genuinely astonishing crackdown I mean like they turned off the phones in the internet in cashmere the Indian government just like did this and It became unbelievably difficult to get any information out. They arrested unbelievable numbers of people. There are, I mean, just absolutely horrifying accounts of the shit that Indian security forces were doing to people.

You know what I mean? Like this is a colonial occupation, right? The things that happen in a colonial occupation, they fucking torture people, they kill people, they like, they rape people, it's really fucked. And during this, as more sort of like, militant attacks erupt, like, India does the first version of its, well the first version but it does it does like it launches a series of attacks on southern Pakistan and This is kind of

You know there were escalations of it a couple of years ago But you know the sort of big deal this time was Insurgents and it's we have a group that claim responsibility for it. It's still I don't know It's still unclear the extent to which the Pakistani government was actually involved. There's a whole thing with this. But a bunch of sort of insurgents killed like 25 Hindu tourists in a Kashmir tourist town. And it's really fucking horrifying. This immediately causes this just unhinged wave of Hindu nationalism,

like Hindu sort of nationalism in India. We talked last time about all of these Indian government officials like literally talking about, quote, an Israel-style final solution to Kashmir. So a bunch of very, very horrific shit is happening. And then India decides that it's going to start launching attacks across the border. There's like the immediate small arms fire. There's missile strikes There's drone attacks and then as

This sort of escalates India launches attacks on three Pakistani air bases and Again, like they hit an air base that is in the city where Pakistan's army general headquarters is which is a kind of provocation that has not happened since like the last time these two countries were just straight up at war. And you know like that could have killed us all. It didn't. But it absolutely could have.

And it was also just horrifying for it. It's worth pointing this out right. The people who are getting killed on both sides of the border here are Kashmiris. Because their home has been occupied by these two powers, when India and Pakistan go to war, the people who die on both sides are Kashmiris. Who are being killed by two states who decided, fuck you, we get to control your fate, we get to be the people who fucking occupy your land and then claim to be the people who represent you. And, you know, the civilian toll of this is fucking horrifying. There's a bunch of civilians are killed. People spend a huge amount of

time cowering in these like horrifying overcrowded bunkers. There's a good sort of BBC report on this. Like, there's so many people packed into bunkers that like you can't even like walk everyone's just like pressed against each other and three days later you come out of your bunker and your fucking house is gone. And those are the people who survived, right? It's it's just horrifying. And eventually there's a ceasefire. Everyone is now saying different things about the ceasefire. The Indian government is trying to downplay the US's role in the ceasefire. The Pakistani government has been talking about how a whole bunch of places were involved including like Iran and Turkey to some extent or Turkey more

than Iran. It seems like the US, the UK and Saudi Arabia all played a role in sort of mediating it that we can sort of confirm the US seems to have played the largest role which I guess I don't know like Marco Rubio was like we should probably not have a war between two nuclear powers which okay I'm glad that like he's finally found a thing a glad that he's finally found a level that he won't stoop to, which is we all die in nuclear war. I mean, I would rather Marco Rubio was not the Secretary of State, but of the people who could be under the Trump administration, he's not as bad as some of the other folks. Yeah, I mean, it's like, we are fully in like, which of Hitler's generals would you prefer to be in charge of this territory?

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Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so there are a few things about this conflict that are very, very bad. One is that India has demonstrated the capacity to launch attacks against Pakistan that don't involve them mobilizing their ground troops, which takes forever. It is hard. That's really fucking bad. It's also bad that again, they fucking hit like the air base next to Pakistan general army general headquarters, which means if they try to do another attack, they're going to have to hit a bigger target. And they apparently it seems like the Indian government has sort of concluded that they can do this now. It's also very bad that like most of the like domestic Indian left supported this, including

CPIM, Communist Party of India, Marxist, which is like the sort of social democratic, technically Maoist party that is supposed to be like the left in India, like back the attacks and they've always had a fucking terrible line on Kashmir. So it's also worth mentioning a little bit. There's been a lot of reporting about India, you know, Modi isn't making a bunch of noise about trying to just straight up cut off Pakistan's access to water, which is very scary. Yeah, it's worth noting. Kay talks about this in that Jacobin piece. Kay's argument basically is that like they don't

actually have the infrastructure to do this, which is good because that would be a genocide. If they just knocked out all Pakistan's access to water for agricultural purposes and for drinking purposes, it'd be really bad. But here's what I'm going to read this quote. Under the treaty regulations, India is required to share hydrological data that is essential for planning to deal with floods and or droughts during monsoon seasons. Denying Pakistan access to this data would have a damaging impact. Moreover, because of the limited storage capacity, India can change the timing of water flow,

which is crucial for many crop string sowing seasons. So there is still a lot of damage they can do. They can't straight up do like a genocide, but they can do a lot of damage. And while both sides have backed off of like direct military conflict, India still is committed to every single thing they can do to fuck with Pakistan, which affects just the people of Pakistan. This has also been politically very good for Modi, because ultra-nationalism, it's been bolstering the sort of Pakistani military government,

because there are ultra-nationalists feed off of this, and it's, once again, really fucking bad for the people of Kashmir who are the ones getting killed on both sides of the border. Yep. War is bad people of Kashmir who are the ones getting killed on both sides of the border. Yep. War is bad, free Kashmir. Hate this. Yeah, well, speaking of war being bad, let's talk about what's going on in Yemen. So if you remember from the last quarter or so of the Biden administration. After Israel launched their reprisal attacks

to October 7th on Gaza, the Houthis, which is a, depending on your stance, either the legitimate government of Yemen or a rebel group in Yemen, the international community stance is a rebel group. The Houthis stance is different. Started launching a series of missile attacks, both aimed at Israel and aimed at shipping in the Gulf of Aden, right?

In order to disrupt, because a significant amount of the world's trade goes through there. And this took a number of forms. They have ballistic missiles. Some of them are indigenous, by which I mean made by the Houthis, oftentimes using stocks that were captured from the military and government of Yemen previously, you know, that they supplanted in a lot of areas, and other times using missiles that were given to them by Iran. Yeah.

Right? So it's a mix of tactics. They have also used drones and they have also landed troops in order to capture bulk freighters, including one called the Galaxy Leader, and I think 2023, that was full of cars. And their claim was that it was a British vessel. And obviously the Brits had been helping to arm and support Israel. The vessel was actually registered in Lebanon.

However, whenever we get into discussions about like, whose vessel is whose, none of that, none of what is registered matters. Vessels are registered all over the place for a variety of, it's always nonsense. That means nothing. It means nothing. In the Marshall Islands. Yeah.

Nothing in the entire world matters less to the reality of a situation than where the vessel is registered. I'm not saying that justifies or doesn't with the Houthis, I'm just saying it does not matter where the vessel is registered. Yeah Yeah, the ship was owned by a Lebanon based company But also given the nature of capitals doesn't all matter all that much now What also doesn't matter is that in January of this year the Houthis freed the captain of that ship? And they made an announcement that they would limit further attacks to vessels flagged as Israeli or owned by Israeli individuals or entities, right?

Now, that also doesn't mean a lot, right? Because the nature of international trade means that there are a lot of, you know, you could basically argue if you're the Houthis, well, this is owned by a multinational corporation who owns companies in Israel or who has heavy investments in companies in Israel, therefore, right? Right. As a result, you know, the Houthis continued doing the Houthi stuff, and Trump saw them as kind of a convenient target, a convenient place to flex his military muscles. And there were some people within the United States defense establishment that considered that extremely convenient, too, right? Yeah.

And this is largely due to the fact that Biden prescribed a very limited campaign against the Houthis. Now, this does not mean inexpensive or insignificant. We kept at least one aircraft carrier carrying out strikes in Yemen for like a year or so, which is kind of the first combat duty that an aircraft carrier has had in quite some time that was really like active taking incoming fire, not incoming fire that ever really threatened the carrier itself, but that's sort of beside the point. And there were people within the US military establishment who were consistently frustrated

with the Biden administration that they were not letting them operate at a high enough tempo, right? And kind of the number one guy advocating for this side of events was General Michael E. Carrillo, who is the head of central command or CENTCOM. And his attitude had been, we need a much more aggressive high tempo campaign. He pitched the Trump administration when they came in, I think it's like an eight to 10 month long campaign, where initially they would degrade Houthi anti-air assets. So first we go in there and we use our air power to establish what's

called air supremacy. Air superiority means that you have better quality air support, but also your shit can get knocked down. Air supremacy means you have complete control of the skies. The US military is fairly used to having air supremacy. If you look at like, for example, our combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, when it came to like fighter aircraft, helicopters would get shot down from time to time, obviously, and have accidents. We weren't losing F-18s in Afghanistan, right? They weren't getting knocked out of the fucking sky by the Taliban. We had air supremacy.

In Ukraine, depending on what part of the battle space you're talking about, either things have been more or less at a standstill or Russia has had air superiority but not supremacy, right? Because Ukraine has very solid modern anti-aircraft defenses and it has been able to exact a toll. We will talk to a greater extent about what's been happening with India and Pakistan. It is exceedingly unclear at the moment. Who got the better of the engagement? Did any of those Chinese anti-aircraft missiles actually knock out aircraft?

Did India lose any aircraft? Did Pakistan down any aircraft? We actually, like everyone's making different claims right now and I don't have objective evidence, right? Other than that, we know that things that look, there's at least evidence of, in at least one case, what looks like refuge of a Rafale, and in at least one case, there's what looks like a knocked down Chinese anti-aircraft missile. I'm spacing on the exact name right now, but again, that doesn't mean anything about how they actually fare in the battle space, right?

So anyway, this motherfucker, head of CENTCOM Michael E. Carrillo was like, I've got this plan. We need a much more forceful, we're gonna knock out their anti-air defenses and then we're going to basically Carry out a modified version of what Israel carried out against Hamas and Hezbollah, right? where we start targeting and killing the leadership cadre once we've knocked out their defenses and He estimated that would take about a little under a year, right? But the better part of a year and the the Trump administration said, you can have your higher tempo war, but you've got to show results in about a month, right? So in, in about a month, the U S military carried out about 1100 strikes.

They killed, they say hundreds of Houthi fighters destroyed quite a bit of weapons and equipment. Very unclear how many fighters they killed. Certainly hundreds of people. Were those all Huthi fighters How many weapons and equipment were destroyed? I don't have access to that sort of data and I'm not entirely confident that anyone in the US military Has a much better idea certainly a little bit more data, but also they get that shit wrong all the fucking time

Yeah It's also like it's worth noting right when they're talking about like casualty numbers The Huthis are not a like small rebel group like they control the capital No of Yemen right like this is like the government Yeah, they are not a peer state in terms of the US and that they do not have the manufacturing base and capacity But they are equivalent to a small state actor, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so what you're bombing them, right, like, you're just, you're blowing smoking craters in apartment buildings in... And the Houthis are so experienced with getting bombed. They've been

bombed by a lot of people before. None of this is new to them, right? Yeah. So in the first 30 days, while they, you know, the US has made a lot of claims about how many people they killed and level of degradation of Huthi capacity. The Huthis have done some damage to US capacity. They have shot down seven, at this point, at least seven MQ-9 Reaper drones, which are $30 million each.

And in addition now, four F-18 jets have been lost not probably to not yeah yeah probably just to fuck ups that are a result of the tempo of activity right these all tend to be yeah craft that are landing and don't get caught by the the catapult system that they've got on these aircraft carriers or otherwise wind up in the Red Sea right right? There is some suspicion and debate as to like, is there any sort of like internal treason going on here? Is somebody on the aircraft carrier making these fuckups happen?

This is being investigated, I believe. Although there's no confirmation about like what exactly has gone down. It's weird to lose this many F-18 Super Hornets in a very short period of time Yeah, I will say my my understanding of it Also, is that the only thing that's going on here is that this aircraft carrier has been out past the point It should have been refitted. Yes, like so extraordinarily And it's also not weird that people fuck up when they are carrying out operations at a tempo

They never have before right and there's a very good chance that it's nothing more than that. The more you fly, the more accidents are going to happen. Yep. Right? Period. Also, I wanna say, imagine you are like the deck officer. Oh man, that poor, that motherfucker.

I'm not gonna say poor motherfucker, that motherfucker's getting fucked. Like, okay, like the first one goes over, right? And then the second one goes over. And now it's happened And now you've probably been you're out of the job And then first guy's kind of lucky because when the next two fall off at least maybe that's less pressure on you Yeah

Like imagine like you're the deck officer of the fourth yeah, yeah Oh fuck Jesus Christ. Fuck, fuck. What? What? What? Oh, man. Oh, God. That's gotta suck.

So in about 30 days, the US military had burned more than a billion dollars on this operation, right? At which point Trump and people around him were like, oh fuck, we can't keep this shit up. We can't maintain this tempo of operations. There were warnings given from within the Defense Department that we have used so many of our most advanced munitions

that if China makes a move on Taiwan, we're not sure we have the reserves necessary, right? These munitions, well, we talk a lot about the capacity of US firepower. People talk about shit like in 2018, how we like, we got a, there was this Al-Qaeda guy who had been responsible for the attack on the USS Cole, fucking 20 something years ago. Yeah, a long gas time ago.

Who used a cell phone he shouldn't have used briefly and then turned it off and we were able to get visual confirmation of where he was from the cell phone signal and knock his ass out with a drone, right? And we do have incredible capacity, potentially, to make unbelievably precise strikes. However, that capacity is reliant both upon a functional network of human intelligence, a functional network of operators of aircraft and drones who are not completely burnt out by the

tempo of operations, and access to incredibly advanced munitions, which we do not have in inexhaustible capacity and are reliant upon an international supply chain to continue to manufacture. Right? And all of that has been endangered by the tempo of this campaign. And ultimately, there's a great New York Times report on this that's just absolutely damning to the military that came out. It's called Why Trump Suddenly Declared Victory Over the Houthi Militia that declared that after all of this, the best we can say is perhaps a modest degradation of Houthi capacities

that they can easily recover from given enough time, which they're going to get because Trump both declared victory and stated that the Houthis had yet again agreed to stop striking Shipping in the Red Sea and he was like this is a win We made a deal with him big deal maker Donald Trump made a deal now if you look at the Houthis said all they said Is we're gonna stop striking Israeli shipping, which if you'll recall is what they had said in January so Did we win? No. Did the Houthis win? Not yet, but they're, you know, they didn't lose. And again, if you understand your insurgent warfare, you win by just not

losing for long enough, right? Yeah. Well, and it's also worth, it's worth mentioning too when you're talking about the global supply chain part of this right on the one hand like the US has Done an extraordinary amount to try to make sure that as much as the supply chain as they can is in the US on the other Hand it still requires a bunch of other places including a bunch of rare earth metals that the US gets from China now You may be noting we are currently fighting a trade war with China a bunch of our like strategic planning is about stopping a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. So, and we've just expended a shit ton of our stack pile of emissions that we can only replace by using shit we get from China.

So absolute just genius brain shit that's happening here right now at the highest levels of the regime. Myanmar has a lot of rare earth metals, but China is currently a lot closer to securing those than the United States is. Yeah, it is not great. Well that's all I got. That's the Houthis. Let's have another ad break real quick here.

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we are taking a vulnerable look at why mental health is so hard to talk about and all the science and psychology behind some of life's hardest moments and transitions. Prepare for our conversations to go deep. Everything from grief to heartbreak, career burnout, anxiety, all of the things that you would only talk about with your closest friends. I spent the majority of my teenagers and my twenties

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We are now back. I know many of you have been asking me about what is happening in Kurdistan. So I'm going to try my best to very briefly explain that in the last segment of this show. So the PKK, right, the PKK being the branch of the Kurdish Freedom Movement that has operated in Turkey, Turkey or Northern Kurdistan, and mostly since the mid-20 teens has been based in Iraq or Southern Kurdistan and mostly since the mid-20 teens has been based in Iraq or Southern Kurdistan. Right. It convened its 12th Congress in the second week of May and it decided to disband itself, lay down its arms.

And I think the phrasing it used was to cease armed activities under the PKK name, which is a way of saying things. More broadly, it did genuinely seem to indicate a commitment to like this sort of ballot, not the bullet approach. I'm going to quote kind of extensively here from the statement that the PKK released and then from other statements from like people, Jemil Bayek, the leader, one of the co-chairs of the KCK. The KCK, if you're not familiar, it's the Kurdistan Communities Union.

That is the group that allows the different areas of the Kurdish freedom movement, all of which are inspired by the political thought of Abdullah Ocalan to sort of come together and discuss their paradigm, their goals, their methodologies, I guess. So I want to read from the PKK statement to begin with, quote, the process initiated by leader Abdullah Ocalan's statement on February 27th and further shaped by his extensive work and multi-dimensional perspectives culminated in the successful convening of our 12th party congress between May 5th and May 7th. Despite ongoing clashes, aerial and ground attacks, continued siege of our regions, and the KDP embargo, our congress was held securely under challenging conditions. Due to security concerns, it was conducted simultaneously in two different locations.

With the participation of 232 delegates in total, the PKK 12th Congress discussed leadership, martyrs, veterans, the organizational stretch of the PKK, an armed struggle, and democratic society building, culminating in historic decisions marking the beginning of a new era for our freedom movement. It's a very long statement as tends to be the style of statements from the Kurdish freedom movement. It talks a lot about Abdullah Ocalan as tends to be the style of statements from the Kurdish freedom movement. I've linked to it in the show notes if you'd like to read all of it.

I'd encourage you to if you're interested in this sort of thing. They talk a lot about the democratic nation concept and the idea that Kurds and Turks have coexisted in Turkey for a long time. I thought this part was of interest. I'm going to quote again here, the decision of our Congress to dissolve the PKK and end the method of armed struggle offers a strong basis for a lasting peace and a democratic solution. Implementing these decisions requires that leader Apo lead and guide the process that has right to democratic politics be recognised and that solid, comprehensive legal guarantees be established. At this stage, it is essential that the Grand National Assembly of Turkey plays its role

with historical responsibility." So a couple of things sort of note there. One is that they're talking about this transition towards democracy or brotherhood of nations, they talk about somewhere else, right? Brotherhood of peoples. It's occurring under the leadership and direction of Abdullah Öcalan. If you are not familiar with Abdullah Öcalan,

you can listen to Robert's theories, the women's war, which has a great job of explaining a lot of the stuff that we won't have time to get into today. Very briefly, Apo has been in Imrali and various other Turkish prisons since 1999. For long periods of that time, no one was able to see him. He was held completely incommunicado. At times there were hundreds of troops guarding

only him on this Turkish prison island. That is no longer the case. He made this statement on the 27th of February. And since then, the Kurdish freedom movement has had access to Oshulan. He actually made another statement on the 18th of May where he said, and I quote, a new contract is needed based on the law of brotherhood. What we are doing represents a major paradigm shift. The nature of the Turkish Kurdish relationship is fundamentally different. What has been broken in the bond of brotherhood. It seems like through the Dem Party, which is a left-leaning party in Turkey, which has supported the Kurdish cause and

for a long time has served as the interlocutor between Turkey and the Kurdish freedom movement, through the Dem Party they have access to Oshulan and they're able relatively frequently, it seems like these Dem Party officials to go to him rally and talk to him. And so they're talking about his leadership continuing through this democratic transition for the Kurdish freedom movement. Jemil Bayek, Jemil Bayek again is the co-chair of the KCK in institutions within the Kurdish freedom movement. Jim Il-Baik, Jim Il-Baik again, is the co-chair of the KCK. In institutions within the Kurdish freedom movement, there's a co-chair system, right, which means that a man and a woman both share the chairmanship of an institution such that patriarchal structures aren't replicated in the movement. That's the goal of the co-chair system. He has a

two-part interview in ANF, which I've linked again in the notes. He talked about how like the first role of the PKK of the movement, even before it was called the PKK, was to quote unquote, reveal the Kurdish, quote unquote, Kurdish question, right? That's how they refer to it. Other times I'll talk about how Kurdish people were on their knees and like under the leadership of Ocalan, they stood up. They talk about also how on Mount Ararat, Turkey has a plaque apparently where it says, here

is buried the imaginary Kurdish nation. The Kurdish nation is certainly not buried anymore. It's very active. Kurds are very politically empowered in two of the four countries where Kurds live. In Turkey, they are to a lesser extent, but they're still present, right? No one can deny their presence. In Iran, it's still, I guess, more difficult at the time for the Kurdish freedom movement. Bayek said, within our initial paradigm and our first manifesto, the Kurdish identity, the Kurdish people and Kurdish society were formed. A society in love with freedom was formed.

A people emerged that would fight for freedom under any circumstances. On this basis, we are now developing a new paradigm, a second manifesto. This paradigm of this manifesto aimed to resolve not only the Kurdish question, but also the issues of the peoples of the Middle East and humanity as a whole. Reba Rapo is no longer leading only the Kurdish people. He's leading all peoples and humanity. Um, incredible line. Yeah.

Oh, it's a yeah. I mean, yeah, it's, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's the sort of rhetoric we can expect from the KCK, right? Like, um, they're very dedicated to Auschelin as a leader. Yes. Yes. And Robert and I have both been to Roshava. I've heard a lot of No Life Without Our Leaders speeches and seen a lot of those

posters as well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you can't really go into a space. You'll see other, like, it's not just Auschelin, right? You're going to see Irine Mercan and you're going to see, it's not like just a guy with a mustache, you're going to see a Rine Mercan, it's not just a guy with a moustache, you're going to see women idolizing the movement too, but Augellan to the greatest

extent is their dear leader figure. You can see his face all over Rojava and they're very dedicated to Augellan's leadership. This change in structure does not change that, or this change in approach does not change that. This change in approach does not change that. In fact, it underlines that. From the letter that Ouslan wrote, and he wrote letters to different parts of the Kurdish freedom movement, came this change. It's still at the instruction of Ouslan, albeit with the consent of these delegates who went to this PKK Congress and voted.

I've reached out to the KCK to ask for comment on exactly what this means in terms of like most of the KCK, as I said, are in the mountains of southern Kurdistan now. They have fought Turkey there for years. We've covered that on this podcast, northern Iraq, southern Kurdistan, however you wish to call it. Like, like Turkey has been bombing. They were bombing it last time I was there. I'm sure they were bombing it last time Robert was there. They've been bombing it ever since.

And the villages that have really suffered as a result, right? People have lost their children. They've lost their lands. They've often had their crops burned, by these bombs. So I'm interested to know, look, will the idea of the Kurdish freedom movement leaving the mountains there is, I mean, it would be a hell of a sight. They've been in those mountains for a long time, but I don't know what this means for the Kurdish freedom movement in But I don't know what this means for the Kurdish freedom movement in southern Kurdistan, but I've asked. I don't know if this means that they will attempt like a straight up electoral strategy, when Auslan's asking for a new contract, like a new social contract. That's how in Rojava,

they literally have a social contract. The social contract is generally like a theoretical construct in most neoliberal democracies. The idea that you and the state enter into an agreement whereby you give up some freedom and you lose some danger and the state gives you some safety and it takes some of your freedom. In Rojava, the social contract is a real thing, right? Like it's a thing that is formed in consultation with society. So when, when we see Apo asking about a new contract, does that mean that they will engage like on the basis of a new Turkish constitution? I don't know.

I don't think any of us have answers to these questions. And I imagine that they don't either, right? Like they have decided to pursue this strategy of peace. They've decided that through their armed conflict, they were able to prove that they exist. And that's a phrase that specifically people have said to me in the Kurdish Freedom Movement, like we had to pick up arms to prove that we exist. And now that there's no denying their existence, they can use different methods, right? Like they'll put down their weapons and talk and establish with Turkey how to co-exist,

having established that they exist through the arms struggle. So for them, this is like they're celebrating it, right? They'll draw the analogy very often to like Sinn Fein in Ireland. That's one that you'll hear pretty often. And that this is their Good Friday. Now in the Good Friday agreement, Britner released people from prison. A number of very highly cherished, very highly respected members of the Kurdish freedom movement are still in prison.

Of course, Ocalan being the most sort of widely loved and respected member of the Kurdish freedom movement. I don't think we're seeing Ocalan come out of prison. I don't think there's a world in which Turkey would let that happen. But maybe we will see some other people released. Maybe we will see those people, I don't know, enter into electoral politics. Some of them have been in the struggle for 50 plus years, right? Like 50 years living in the mountains and constantly being worried about being bombed.

Yeah. So it'll be fascinating to see how this, this has been a long, bloody conflict. It's been going for longer than any of us have been alive. If the friends are happy, then I'm happy for them. Right. And if peace is what they want and they can get away to continue, like General Bajik says, like the people in love with freedom, like if they can keep their freedom and they could do it without war, then I'm happy for them.

Because like I've talked to a lot of Kurdish parents who have buried their children. Yeah. God almighty. I've been to too many of the graveyards in Northern Syria. Yeah. Yeah. There's little white graveyards with little children's faces like that. Will stay with me forever.

Yeah. Whatever stops that, you know. Yeah. Like if one of the things that kind of struck me when I was in Rojava last time is that like, death just falls from the night sky sometimes. Yeah. And maybe, maybe it's your baby. Maybe it's you. Maybe it's your grandma.

And it's a pretty horrible way to live. And going through that for your freedom is something very brave. And they have endured some of the worst conflicts on the planet in the last few decades. They fought some of the worst fucking people on the planet and won. And if there is a way that the people of Kurdistan can enjoy peace, I want that for them, because they've been at war for a very long time. Yep. If you're wondering about Rojava, just to finish up, Masloum Abdi made a statement. Masloum Abdi, leader of the Syrian Democratic forces, right?

Sometimes called General Masloum, Hoval Masloum, depends who, depends what side of things you're on, I guess. Masloum Abdi made a statement congratulating the PKK, saying he hoped all parties supported the peace process. The STF is still in clashes with remnants of the so-called Islamic State and increasingly with Sunnis within the Syrian revolution who are growing disheartened with what they see as al-Sharah's moderate turn, the Damascus government being too lib for some of these Sunni groups. And so ISIS, the Islamic State, whatever you want to call it, Daesh, is using that as a chance to recruit people. And that is why we are seeing ongoing fighting.

I literally, I saw that they were, they were burying one of their SDF fighters in Kalmykshila today. Yeah. So unfortunately for the people of Rojava, um, the, the killing and dying continues, which is sad. Yes. Yeah. I want peace for my friends there and in Burma, like, uh, despite the fact

that Robert and I get paid to go to war sometimes, it doesn't mean we don't want our friends to live in peace. Yeah. I would, I would like there to not be any more to go to. Yeah, that would be great. Uh, I'll find something else to do. Yeah. Fuck it.

I'll go run with the bulls again. I went white-rotter rafting yesterday. It was nice. I could just do more of that. Hell yeah. Yeah, no. I'll rock climb. All right, everybody.

We're done for the day. Go hopefully not live in a war zone. But if you do, hopefully that stops soon. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I know a lot of cops and they get

asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but Thanks for listening. there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts.

This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deep fake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott.

And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war this year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes, we met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers,

but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap away, you gotta pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov, brought to you by the US Department of Health

and Human Services and the Ad Council. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.