trapaholics_

Thank you for your answers. I wish you and your comrades the best of luck, and hope that the Rojava project truly manifests itself as a great example for the rest of the country. Thank you very much for your efforts in Syria!

1. Can you please comment on the relationship between Al Qaeda and YPG. In 2014, the YPG signed an agreement with Al Qaeda (in the form of Ahl al Sham which includes Jabhat al Nusra and co) to cooperate on military events, cooperate on sectarian genocidal sieges and to have Al Qaeda checkpoints within YPG land. Immediately after this cooperation was announced, ISIS (which was in opposition to Al Qaeda) began their attack on the YPG. Why is this piece of history intentionally left out of the narrative? How do you feel working with a group that has ties and relationships with the group behind 9/11? Here is a copy of the agreement.

2. Earlier this year YPG signed an agreement with the Levant Front (a Turkish backed group of militias that are closely aligned with Al Qaeda groups in Idlib and Aleppo) to have shared Shariah courts. How do you feel about YPG supporting Shariah courts? Here is a copy of this agreement (As a side note, the de facto leader of the Levant Front, Zahran Alloush, declared all residents of Damascus as "Shabiha" on Twitter a few months ago and made threats to the effect of killing everyone in Damascus)

3. Can you comment on the execution of Assyrian fighters by YPG?

4. Jordan Matson stated that YPG will allow land to fall to ISIS just so they can go in and claim it (he said it again here). How do you feel about this? Is it a standard YPG tactic to allow ISIS victories so that YPG can go in and "liberate" the areas? Do you consider that YPG-ISIS cooperation, even if it is indirect? When ISIS enters an area, they usually execute all of the anti-ISIS fighters, raid most of the places of value and subjugate the locals (with random executions, slavery and imposition of borderline delusional levels of Islamism). Does the YPG consider it an "ends justify the means strategy" by allowing the locals to suffer under ISIS control until the YPG can liberate the area weeks or months down the track?

5. Why does YPG claim to be hostile to the Syrian government, and downplay any cooperation, but reporters on the ground show a completely different story?

6. Why are Kurdish women lied to and told that ISIS is scared of them for religious purposes? Who started this lie? Is it corrected? Is the person who started the lie punished?

7. The YPG has a fairly intensive conscription program which involves taking at least one man from every household. Why don't they also conscript women? How do you feel about conscription within YPG? This is contributing to a significant part of the refugee crisis from Northern Syria, do you feel that it should be reversed? Is the forceful conscription applied only to Kurds or to other ethnic groups as well? Why/why not?

8. YPG has previously been found to take child soldiers as young as 12 years old and then claimed that they have discontinued the practice, but Human Rights Watch claims that the practice is still on-going. How do you feel about child soldiers? Have you fought or met with any child soldiers? Has the issue been brought up to your commanders or leadership within the YPG and attempts to lobby them to stop doing it?

9. YPG is currently occupying a number of privately owned buildings as military headquarters even when they're far from ISIS frontlines, in nonstrategic positions and not something required for general YPG function. One of these things involves the occupation of an Assyrian school (English) which is causing lots of issues for the locals and students in Hassakah with no end in sight or explanation of why these buildings are being occupied. Can you comment on this?

Also, since I have you here, it has been reported that the PYD leadership has begun to replace all Arabic textbooks with textbooks in Kurdish. Will this be applied to all regions? What happens to students who cannot speak Kurdish? I understand if this last segue can't be answered, it's still just a rumor and I doubt you have much familiarity with the education wing of the PYD.

Thank you for your time!

Many of those questions have answers readily available, and asking something like "How do you feel working with a group that has ties and relationships with the group behind 9/11?" is an extremely loaded question.

Actually none of them have answers available, which is why I asked them.

"How do you feel working with a group that has ties and relationships with the group behind 9/11?" is an extremely loaded question

It's an extremely important question, because this issue has been ignored by the YPG, the foreign fighters with the YPG, the general media and the governments aiding them. It is very likely that the fighters themselves might not even know this, and it's a very important issue to raise with their command.

The political benefits of striking deals with the FSA factions is obvious to anyone with serious understanding of what is happening int he region

"FSA" is a very broad group of people which includes some of the very best through to the very worst scum of the Earth. I asked about a very specific situation in the Afrin canton about joint Shariah courts with a very notorious and untrustworthy group. Your "ends justify the means" line of reasoning is not appropriate for a group who claims a model of anarchism to be working with fascists and jointly managing religious courts.

Other questions, like "Why are Kurdish women lied to" is also loaded and has little to do with what OP is willing to answer.

This is extremely important, because just as it is extremely wrong to lie to a woman so she sleeps with you, it's also extremely wrong to lie to a woman so she dies for you thinking that she's invincible. It reminds me of the militias in Liberia, such as those under the command of General Butt Naked, who told their fighters that nakedness would make them impervious to bullets.

If that lie is still on going within YPG ranks, then it is in contrast with their feminist/equality ideology. Women fighters should be fully aware that ISIS will happily kill them just as they would do to men, and that they do not have any sort of advantage among their comrades.

You say my post shows cognitive dissonance, but yours shows nothing but pretentious bias.

There is no bias. Bias would suggest I think he's not there to do the right thing: I disagree, he is there to fight ISIS and deserves our praise and respect. But let's be real and challenge the idea that it's a perfect group so that we don't run into another Mujahideen situation in 10 years.

People dodged very similar questions that were put to the FSA group "Syrian Revolutionaries Front" and their commander Jamal Maarouf, saying that cooperation with Al Qaeda-linked elements was necessary or outright denial, and as time went on they reared their ugly head, to say the least (funny enough, reportedly Jamal fled to Turkey and then returned to fight alongside the YPG in Northern Aleppo).

No, but your comment shows a lot of cognitive dissonance. They're very real questions that go to the core of the YPG and what they claim. OP presents the fundamentals as "Direct democracy, women's empowerment, economy of cooperatives, and political plurality" and is asking for money and recruits, but the history of YPG is shady and unclear at best. What I posted is swathes of unanswered and buried facts of the YPG over the last two years that no one wants to answer and everyone who can answer it tries to bury it.

Or I can just ask something stupid like "whats your favorite Kurdish food? :3" and get upvotes. Would that satisfy you?