Chris is unwell, so he is resharing The Double Bind with Meredith Tax

[00:00:04] Hello everybody, it's Chris here, I hope you're well. Unfortunately I'm a little bit under the weather so my plans of releasing an episode this week have gone a bit out the window as I'm just sort of focusing on recovering.

[00:00:17] So what I am doing today is I'm just resharing actually my first ever interview I did on a podcast which was with Meredith Tax about her book The Double Bind which looks at the problematic relationship between the Anglo-American left and the Islamic right.

[00:00:33] I sadly feel that this book is still very relevant today as it was when it was first published and when I first did this interview back in 2016.

[00:00:41] So I thought I'd just reshare this interview this week just because of its relevance and we will be back next week with Espresso Martini and we've got an awful lot of interviews lined up ready to share over the coming weeks ahead.

[00:00:54] So thank you very much, I'm sorry we're not with you a fresh episode this week but we'll be back next week with more. Take care, thank you for listening.

[00:01:17] Please can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[00:01:21] Well, I'm an American. I grew up in the Midwest, moved to New York in the 70s, late 70s. I've been in the women's movement since it began and before that I was in the anti-war movement and have always thought of myself as a left-wing feminist.

[00:01:40] I've written a book called A Road Unforeseen Women Fight the Islamic State which is mostly about the Kurds and is going to be published in August of this year in the US.

[00:01:59] And also a book called Double Bind, The Muslim Right, The Anglo-American Left and Universal Human Rights which was published in the UK by the Centre for Secular Space.

[00:02:10] I'd like to talk with you firstly about The Double Bind which I feel is a vital book in trying to understand and debates the terrorism we're witnessing today.

[00:02:18] Can you just give us a brief overview about the book and tell us about why you wrote it?

[00:02:23] Well, it came out of a particular political situation. I was asked to write it by the Centre for Secular Space as part of trying to explain what the problem was with the British left and the US left in relation to Islamism.

[00:02:39] And the double bind is basically that people feel they have to speak about certain things but they can't speak about them because if they do they will be betraying some other good thing that they want to support.

[00:02:53] So that people who are anti-racist and see some of the anti-immigrant feeling and the anti-Asian feeling, anti-Muslim feeling, anti-immigrant especially, I think it's really about immigration feeling, that is whipped up by right-wing politicians.

[00:03:12] And that's very strong in the cultures of both our countries.

[00:03:15] People who see that want to oppose it.

[00:03:18] And then when they want to talk about Islamism, about al-Qaeda, say, or about ISIS or about the way women are treated in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or something,

[00:03:30] they are told they're being Islamophobic and feeding into the anti-immigration feelings that are being whipped up by the right and that they're essentially aiding the right.

[00:03:41] They don't want to do that.

[00:03:43] They do want to support women in other countries.

[00:03:46] They're told if they support women in other countries, they're acting as a tool of imperialism.

[00:03:52] I myself am called an imperial feminist in some circles.

[00:03:57] And this is partly because the way the issue is framed in the Western left and in also the Muslim rights presents Islam as monolithic.

[00:04:13] And, you know, for instance, the phrase, the Muslim world.

[00:04:19] Nobody 30 years ago except people in the Muslim Brotherhood would have even said the Muslim world.

[00:04:25] What they would have done is they would have talked about Egypt and Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Nigeria or Bangladesh and the differences between these countries.

[00:04:35] And people identified mostly in terms of where they came from.

[00:04:40] I mean, their religion was part of their lives if they were religious.

[00:04:44] And many were not religious, especially the ones who came to immigrate.

[00:04:48] But those who were certainly, you know, would have said they were Muslim.

[00:04:52] But that wouldn't have been the way they presented themselves.

[00:04:55] They would have said, I'm an immigrant from Bangladesh.

[00:05:01] And partly as a way the Muslim right has framed that in terms of everything is an attack on Islam rather than an attack on immigrants, say.

[00:05:13] And people have bought into that analysis, which actually fuels the whole paranoia and the whole anti-immigration feeling.

[00:05:21] Because, in fact, Muslims are vastly different from each other.

[00:05:26] And, you know, the Muslim right is mostly focused on getting rid of all the Muslims that don't agree with it more than anything else.

[00:05:35] Well, yeah, let's talk a bit about who are the Muslim right.

[00:05:37] Tell me a bit about them.

[00:05:38] Every religion that is politicized has a right wing and a left wing and a sort of soft center of some kind or other.

[00:05:49] Christianity, I mean, this was a very easy concept for us to come to because of the Christian right here, which was mobilized as far back as the 70s.

[00:06:00] And was very clearly using religion for political purposes.

[00:06:04] And the Hindu right was doing the same thing.

[00:06:08] So when we saw the Muslims doing it, it was, well, duh, that's what's happening.

[00:06:12] These are right wing politicians who are using religion to mobilize, you know, masses of people to do what they want.

[00:06:19] Big deal.

[00:06:20] But, you know, of course, they hate this description.

[00:06:25] They say, you know, this has nothing to do with politics.

[00:06:27] This is all about religion.

[00:06:29] But in fact, the whole premise that they're operating on is that religion and politics are one thing and that they should be interpenetrated.

[00:06:37] And this is a, you know, right wing fundamentalist approach to politics.

[00:06:43] And it's exactly the same as, you know, the settlers in Israel and the most crazy Bible belt Bible punchers in the south.

[00:06:52] And, you know, the Hindu right in India.

[00:06:55] And a lot of commentators want to kind of present the Muslim right and the Muslim right themselves, like present themselves as kind of as traditional Islam and the traditional approach.

[00:07:02] But that's not correct, is it?

[00:07:04] I don't think it is.

[00:07:05] No.

[00:07:05] I mean, first of all, they throw out most of the tradition.

[00:07:08] They want to go back only to the Koran and the Hadiths and throw out, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years of commentary and interpretation by people all over the world that have tried to figure out, well, how do you actually apply this?

[00:07:24] And, you know, other religions have this kind of commentary too.

[00:07:27] You know, say, what does it mean that you can't, you know, do such and such on Saturday?

[00:07:32] You know, what does that mean you should actually do?

[00:07:34] How does that adapt?

[00:07:35] How do we change?

[00:07:37] I mean, this was written about a world when people rode around in donkeys.

[00:07:41] How do you adapt that to a city where people take the subway?

[00:07:44] You know, and that's what interpretation is.

[00:07:47] And so they're just saying, no, throw it out.

[00:07:49] Throw it all out.

[00:07:51] And there is no interpretation.

[00:07:53] There's only the original word.

[00:07:55] But of course there's interpretation.

[00:07:56] They have an interpretation.

[00:07:58] And their interpretation is that we should go back to the 6th century and, you know, stone people for adultery unless they can produce, unless the woman, the man doesn't have to, unless they can produce four witnesses saying they were raped.

[00:08:10] You know.

[00:08:12] So it's not that they're going back to tradition.

[00:08:15] They're going back to a very selective interpretation of one strain of Islam.

[00:08:22] And they also disagree with each other.

[00:08:24] You know, you find, I mean, the Shia Muslims who are fundamentalists in Iran will have a difference.

[00:08:32] I mean, they'll be pretty much the same on women as the Sunnis, but on certain other doctrinal matters, they will be different.

[00:08:39] But mostly, you see, they both want to be the head guy.

[00:08:44] They want to be in charge and be the ones who tell everybody else what to do.

[00:08:49] So is it fair to say that the terrorism we're seeing committed in the name of Islam is actually an expression of an intolerant far-right interpretation of Islam, not too dissimilar to like the neo-Nazis and the use of Christianity?

[00:09:00] I think so.

[00:09:02] Yes.

[00:09:02] And I think that's why, I mean, when you look at what Daesh actually says and what they want, there was a very interesting thing called the ISIS papers.

[00:09:18] It was published by The Guardian with a section called Principles in the Administration of the Islamic State and how it should be proceeding and how it should set itself up.

[00:09:33] And basically, it presents a completely paranoid view of history since the Sykes-Picot agreement from the point of view of Sunni Arabs that says everybody else has something.

[00:09:47] We're the only ones who don't have anything.

[00:09:50] And this is because we are the ones who believe in what the Prophet Muhammad really says, so they have to try to keep us down.

[00:09:58] And that's why they're giving land to the Kurds.

[00:10:01] And that's why Iran is powerful.

[00:10:03] And that's why everybody is against us.

[00:10:07] And for that reason, we have to be against everybody.

[00:10:11] This is a quote, we'll take as much as we can and kill anybody who's in the way and enslave their women and all their assets.

[00:10:19] And I mean, when you look, I mean, look at, compare this to what Hitler's view of the world was.

[00:10:27] It's very similar in the sense of victimization.

[00:10:31] Everybody's against us.

[00:10:32] We are the ones who are pure.

[00:10:35] We're the only ones who really are doing what you're supposed to do and who are sticking up for our race and, you know, manipulating this kind of sentiment of grievance and loss and, you know, being losers and having everybody against you to set up a group of people that's going to go out and go around killing everybody.

[00:11:00] And making that very consciously into a force that is meant as a weapon to kill everybody and to take over a certain territory.

[00:11:10] And that's why I think, you know, the idea that they can be contained.

[00:11:16] I mean, they may be containable militarily, but those ideas are not containable.

[00:11:22] Those ideas are, you know, Nazi only in a religious framework.

[00:11:27] And they will not stop.

[00:11:29] They have to really be defeated, both ideologically and, I think, militarily, because they're a danger to peace as long as they are able to mobilize.

[00:11:44] And that's a very difficult question is how do you defeat them in either area?

[00:11:48] Yeah.

[00:11:50] And to me, that's one of the most interesting things about the role women are playing in the region.

[00:11:56] Why is it you think so many on the left sort of foreign situations would end up giving a platform or show solidarity of members of the Muslim rights?

[00:12:04] They wouldn't do it if they were a member of the Ku Klux Klan or a neo-Nazi.

[00:12:08] Is it a case of cultural ignorance or is it something else?

[00:12:11] I think it's a combination of wanting to stick up for who they see as the underdog.

[00:12:20] In the case of prisoners in Guantanamo, for instance, quite justifiably saying that their human rights have been taken from them.

[00:12:28] They've been treated in a way that is beyond the rule of law, all of which is true, and how the rule of law must be restored.

[00:12:35] I completely agree.

[00:12:36] I think their rights should be defended.

[00:12:39] But there's a segue from that to saying, from saying they have human rights and their rights should be defended,

[00:12:49] to seeing them as themselves in some way defenders of human rights,

[00:12:55] when in fact most of the people in Guantanamo are there because they were related in some way to the Taliban,

[00:13:03] unless they were picked up by mistake, which just did happen to some people.

[00:13:08] And Mazen Beg of CAGE is the best example of that.

[00:13:13] And CAGE as an organization is the best example of that, which purports to be a human rights organization.

[00:13:19] It says it's all about defending prisoners of the war on terror

[00:13:22] and that it's in a better position to defend their rights than anybody else is

[00:13:26] because they really understand them because they're fellow Muslims.

[00:13:30] But in fact, given half a chance, they will get up and defend ISIS too or Al-Qaeda or anybody else.

[00:13:42] They don't really make any distinction between people who have committed crimes against civilians,

[00:13:48] people who want to set up a quasi-fascist state of some kind,

[00:13:53] and people who are poor shepherds who got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[00:13:59] And this is why we founded the Center for Secular Space, among other things,

[00:14:05] because we felt that the left was just not on target about this stuff

[00:14:10] and not listening and not paying attention to who these people really were.

[00:14:13] And CAGE is another good example of that because CAGE is still the darling of the left,

[00:14:17] despite, you know, everything that has happened, all the exposures, you know,

[00:14:24] despite Asim Karishi having been caught on film saying people should go on jihad,

[00:14:30] you know, despite their saying...

[00:14:33] Well, he described Jihad John as a beautiful young man.

[00:14:35] A beautiful young man.

[00:14:37] And blamed his radicalism.

[00:14:38] Right, and he used to bring donuts.

[00:14:41] Yeah, that's it, that's it.

[00:14:42] And they blamed his radicalism on MI5,

[00:14:45] and it's interesting that they chose to blame it on MI5,

[00:14:48] because it kind of shows, at least to me, there's an agenda afoot with CAGE,

[00:14:54] sort of trying to present the intelligence services in a bad light.

[00:14:57] I don't know what your sort of thoughts on that might be, but...

[00:14:59] I think that they're actually playing a double game

[00:15:02] and trying to both trash the intelligence services

[00:15:07] and show how if the intelligence services were really smart,

[00:15:10] they would be relying on CAGE,

[00:15:12] because CAGE could do the job better and tell them,

[00:15:14] you know, this is a whole complicated thing, and I, you know...

[00:15:18] But it's just really interesting the way that whole story about Jihadi John developed.

[00:15:25] But I would say that looking at CAGE

[00:15:29] and seeing who on the left is involved in them

[00:15:32] shows you the problem in some ways,

[00:15:34] and it brings us also to what happened to the left after 1989.

[00:15:39] Yes, let's talk about 1989,

[00:15:40] because in your new book you kind of placed that as a very key date in history for many reasons,

[00:15:46] and it might explain some of the problems that we're facing today.

[00:15:49] Well, I grew up, you know, during the Cold War,

[00:15:54] and during the Cold War, I grew up in the US, you know,

[00:15:58] so there were good guys and bad guys,

[00:16:00] and the good guys I was taught were people who supported freedom of speech,

[00:16:06] freedom of assembly, the rights of women,

[00:16:11] and not so much the rights of women, actually.

[00:16:14] I think that came later, but they were basically for democracy,

[00:16:19] which was the same as free markets,

[00:16:22] whereas the bad guys were...

[00:16:25] And we were for human rights.

[00:16:26] The bad guys were against human rights.

[00:16:28] What the bad guys said they were for were, you know,

[00:16:32] guaranteed income, jobs, health care, housing, and so on.

[00:16:39] And both had part, actually, of the human rights analysis,

[00:16:43] but the world was split in two,

[00:16:44] and you had to be on one side or the other,

[00:16:47] and they really hated it when somebody tried to be in the middle, like India.

[00:16:51] And in 1989, that whole analysis just fell apart,

[00:16:56] because it became clear that the people who were in the Soviet bloc

[00:16:59] and a lot of the other communist countries really didn't like it.

[00:17:03] You know, they voted with their feet as fast as they could

[00:17:06] to get some of the consumer products that were the pride of the West,

[00:17:10] and also, you know, some of the democratic rights

[00:17:12] that were the pride of the rest.

[00:17:14] And meanwhile, people in the West still had no housing rights,

[00:17:17] no union rights, and no health insurance, blah, blah, especially here.

[00:17:22] But the analysis that it, you know, here, the right,

[00:17:27] Reagan and the Republicans, but also some other, you know,

[00:17:32] foreign policy types said this was the triumph of capitalism.

[00:17:36] When, in fact, I don't think, you know, those countries,

[00:17:41] the Soviet bloc fell apart because capitalism was so strong.

[00:17:44] It fell apart because it was a complete mess.

[00:17:46] And because they got involved in Afghanistan way over their head,

[00:17:50] and certainly the arms race caused them to spend so much money

[00:17:53] on military stuff that they didn't have any money, you know,

[00:17:58] for the simplest things that people needed, like food.

[00:18:02] And also they were completely authoritarian and corrupt,

[00:18:06] and indeed still are.

[00:18:08] But so was the West.

[00:18:11] And we just, you know, so my response when all that happened,

[00:18:15] and I was never a big fan of the Soviet Union anyway,

[00:18:19] my response was, well, you know, the people there are saying

[00:18:23] communism doesn't work.

[00:18:25] We already know capitalism doesn't work from our experiences here,

[00:18:29] so what do we do back to the drawing board?

[00:18:32] But other people were very attached to that bifurcated notion of the world

[00:18:39] and unable to or unwilling to rethink a lot of that.

[00:18:43] So what a lot of those people on the left was,

[00:18:46] they kept that notion that the world was divided into goodies and baddies,

[00:18:50] and they had always been on the side of the Soviet people

[00:18:53] and, you know, all the other revolutionary countries

[00:18:56] and the anti-colonial struggles,

[00:18:58] which were supported by the Soviet Union partly as a way of getting at the U.S.

[00:19:03] You know, so they had rival teams in different countries.

[00:19:08] So these people on the left, say, in the Stop the War movement and so on,

[00:19:12] just kept that analysis that the U.S. was responsible for everything bad in the world

[00:19:17] and, you know, that the U.S. had to be opposed no matter what it did.

[00:19:23] And it got into, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

[00:19:27] So if the U.S. was against al-Qaeda, well, I mean, they wouldn't exactly say they were in favor of al-Qaeda,

[00:19:35] but they would say they were in favor of the Iraqi resistance,

[00:19:38] some of whom were in al-Qaeda and whose main targets were Shia.

[00:19:44] You know, so, you know, the Iraqi, everywhere you went at one point,

[00:19:48] you heard support the Iraqi resistance.

[00:19:50] And, you know, the Iraqi resistance ranged from patriotic people

[00:19:55] who wanted to resist American occupation to mafias and thugs and jihadis who wanted to kill Shia.

[00:20:03] And it got, you know, so, and, you know, the woman thing comes into it because,

[00:20:10] for instance, the Stop the War movement is infamous for having allowed segregated seating in some of its meetings.

[00:20:18] I mean, the anti-war movement where they separate the women and the men, come on.

[00:20:23] I mean, you wouldn't even think that was possible.

[00:20:25] This is supposed to be the left.

[00:20:27] We're supposed to stand for equal rights for women.

[00:20:29] Well, that was what the Islamists who they were working with wanted.

[00:20:34] And Labour have been accused of, in the UK, have been accused of doing that in certain boroughs.

[00:20:39] Really?

[00:20:39] Political meetings as well, yeah.

[00:20:41] And it's also a problem in certain universities now.

[00:20:44] Yeah.

[00:20:44] I mean, the Islamists are much stronger in terms of having a strong public face in England than they are here.

[00:20:53] Here, we're still so McCarthyist that people are afraid to do anything a lot of the time.

[00:21:01] But that doesn't mean they aren't saying it or thinking it.

[00:21:05] In your book, you list five wrong ideas about the Muslim right.

[00:21:08] Could you just talk us through them?

[00:21:09] The first idea comes from what I was just saying, which is the idea that the Muslim right is anti-imperialist because it is anti-US.

[00:21:17] First of all, it's not anti-US.

[00:21:19] I mean, sometimes it's anti-US and sometimes it isn't.

[00:21:24] The Saudi Arabian Muslim right is not anti-US.

[00:21:28] The Taliban came out of a struggle in which the US helped to build the Mujahideen because they wanted them to fight the Russians.

[00:21:39] So, I mean, it's complicated.

[00:21:41] It's much more complicated than a simple pro or anti-US thing.

[00:21:46] Secondly, how can you call anybody who wants to set up an empire of their own anti-imperialist?

[00:21:54] I mean, the idea of a caliphate is the idea of a Muslim right empire in which everyone will either convert to this particular brand of Sunni Islam or else be a second-class citizen or else be killed.

[00:22:10] And it's supposed to apply to Muslim lands, whatever they may be, which some interpret as being the Ottoman Empire and some interpret as any place where there are a lot of Muslims, even if they're not in the majority.

[00:22:25] So, I mean, what does this mean about India, for instance?

[00:22:29] And so this is not an anti-imperialist philosophy.

[00:22:33] It is not a left-wing philosophy in any way at all.

[00:22:38] It's an antique empire that they have in mind, an authoritarian sort of religious theocracy with probably some elements of a monarchy in it.

[00:22:51] And it's as backwards as you could possibly get.

[00:22:54] The second wrong idea is that because these people are seen as, you know, fighting for their liberation, that the defense of Muslim lands, so-called, is comparable to national liberation struggles of the 60s, 70s.

[00:23:12] Well, it's not.

[00:23:13] They're fighting for completely different things.

[00:23:16] People who were fighting for national liberation were fighting to throw off the military, political, and economic rule of England, the U.S., France, wherever.

[00:23:29] And so that they could determine their own destiny as countries.

[00:23:35] They weren't saying some people in this.

[00:23:37] Well, there were elements of ethnic nationalism in some of these struggles, but they weren't the main thing.

[00:23:42] I mean, they were mostly about throwing out the oppressor, and many of them were socialists.

[00:23:48] They were completely different in ideology from the Islamist movements of today.

[00:23:54] And it's obvious that the goal of a pan-Islamic state ruled by a version of Sharia law is opposed to human rights in ways that those other revolutions were not.

[00:24:10] And the third wrong idea is that anybody who criticizes the Muslim right and its ideas is Islamophobic.

[00:24:19] And because there is real prejudice against immigrants, and it is extended by demagogues like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage into attacking Muslims as such,

[00:24:33] it's important to unpack the idea of Islamophobia and look at what we're really talking about.

[00:24:39] And I think we're talking about two different things.

[00:24:42] When you and I talk about it, we're saying discrimination and prejudice and whipping up ethnic animosity is Islamophobia when it's done against Muslims.

[00:24:55] This is, I mean, it's wrong.

[00:24:56] I don't think it's the best way to describe it.

[00:24:59] I think the best way to describe it is nativism, actually, you know, or racism.

[00:25:05] Because, in fact, it's not mostly about religion.

[00:25:08] It's mostly about these people look different from us.

[00:25:10] They speak a different language.

[00:25:12] They come from a different country.

[00:25:13] Let them go back where they come from.

[00:25:15] I mean, Donald Trump is just as horrible about Mexicans as he is about Muslims.

[00:25:20] And I'm not even sure he knows the difference.

[00:25:24] Possibly not.

[00:25:26] He likes immigrants, but only if they're white and he can marry them.

[00:25:32] But so that's one kind of anti-Muslim, let's call it, prejudice.

[00:25:38] And another, but the word Islamophobia is also used by the Muslim right to mean anything that criticizes Islam.

[00:25:46] So even people who are themselves Muslim and come from a Muslim background who say they don't like the way women are treated under the adultery provisions of sharia law and don't think they should be stoned are called Islamophobic.

[00:26:02] That's ridiculous.

[00:26:03] I mean, you know, you can't have any, you know, why should anything be shielded from criticism?

[00:26:14] Just because it's a religion.

[00:26:17] I mean, I think people should be free to criticize religion as they are to criticize any other set of ideas.

[00:26:23] And that that's basic to a modern society is the ability to do that.

[00:26:31] And that we absolutely have to defend freedom of expression, even if it offends people.

[00:26:37] And the whole idea that offense is such a big deal is quite new.

[00:26:44] I mean, first of all, I'm a feminist.

[00:26:46] I'm a woman.

[00:26:47] Every time I go outside, something offends me.

[00:26:50] If I was going to exist in a constant state of fury, it would be the easiest thing in the world to do.

[00:26:58] I mean, it's partly a choice to get offended by everything.

[00:27:02] And it's a political stance, which some feminists do have, but I'm not one of them, because I just don't want to live in a state of rage.

[00:27:10] And as someone once said, if you're looking for offense, it's the easiest thing in the world to find.

[00:27:17] But, you know, I think that people have to just deal with the fact that if you're going to live in a pluralistic society,

[00:27:25] people are going to say things that annoy you sometimes.

[00:27:28] And the way to answer them is to trash them right back and argue with them and say they're wrong,

[00:27:34] instead of trying to make laws against them saying stupid things.

[00:27:37] You can't make laws against stupidity.

[00:27:40] The fourth wrong idea is that terrorism is justified as part of the struggle.

[00:27:46] And this is an idea that's been strong on the left as well as the right.

[00:27:50] But I don't agree with it.

[00:27:52] I think that terrorism is almost always a losing strategy because it hits civilians and it alienates the people that you most want to have on your side.

[00:28:01] And it, you know, sets up a situation where if your side does win, everybody's still going to be afraid of you.

[00:28:09] And you're going to be the ones with guns and they're going to be the ones without guns.

[00:28:12] And this is not the kind of society that I would want to live in.

[00:28:16] And, you know, then there's just an extent.

[00:28:18] The fifth idea is really the same as some of the others, but it's particular to feminism,

[00:28:22] which is that any feminist who criticizes the way women who are treated within Islam is an ally of imperialism.

[00:28:29] And this is said about, you know, and I mean, the thing that's the most ridiculous is this is said about all kinds of women living in Muslim majority countries.

[00:28:40] So, you know, women in Pakistan who criticize certain cultural practices or the use of religion in Pakistan are called native informants for people like me.

[00:28:51] I mean, it's just gross.

[00:28:53] So, Meredith, how can we debate Islamist terrorism without feeding into far-open narratives of our society?

[00:29:01] This is getting us back to where we just were about native informants.

[00:29:05] I mean, in all of the countries and situations where there is a Muslim right, and particularly the ones at war,

[00:29:13] there are left-wing people, trade unionists, feminists, community organizations, even nationalist groups who are trying to fight them.

[00:29:23] And it seems to me critical that those are the voices we should be supporting and finding and going and looking for

[00:29:31] instead of saying things like, oh, the Syrian, there is no Syrian opposition.

[00:29:35] There's only the Muslim right and the Assad government.

[00:29:39] We have to choose.

[00:29:40] I don't think that's the case.

[00:29:42] I think that the Syrian opposition is very fragmented.

[00:29:47] I mean, the democratic opposition, because there's been no way for them to meet or get together,

[00:29:51] and they've been excluded from all the big power negotiations.

[00:29:55] But that doesn't mean they don't exist.

[00:29:57] And in the same way, the Kurds are a strong, strong voice for all the things that people in the left used to hold dear,

[00:30:07] like pluralism, like democratic rights, like economic solidarity, cooperation, secularism,

[00:30:17] by which I mean not anti-religion, but the attitude that the state or whatever kind of government you have is not dominated by religion,

[00:30:27] and feminism and equal rights for women.

[00:30:31] And, you know, it really boggles my mind that the left in so many countries has been so sort of ignorant about the struggle of the Kurds,

[00:30:45] you know, and not seeing what they're doing.

[00:30:47] And that's really only just starting to change.

[00:30:49] It hasn't changed here.

[00:30:50] People here, when you talk about the Kurds, think they all live in Iraq.

[00:30:54] They don't even know the difference.

[00:30:56] Well, let's have a chat about your new book, because we talk about the Kurds.

[00:31:00] Your new book is called A Road Unforeseen, Women Fight the Islamic State.

[00:31:04] Now, can you just give us a brief overview of this book and tell us about how you came to write this?

[00:31:09] I started writing this in the summer of, or I started working on this.

[00:31:14] I didn't actually start writing.

[00:31:15] The summer of 2014, when ISIS invaded the Kurdish part of Iraq and also Syria,

[00:31:29] and the Battle of Sinjar Mountain took place two years ago in August.

[00:31:39] And this is when ISIS attacked the Yazidis and brought flatbed trucks to take its women as slaves

[00:31:46] and sell them in the slave market in Raqqa and killed all the men.

[00:31:52] And those who were able to escape, escaped to the mountain with nothing,

[00:31:59] often without even shoes or food or clothes, just whatever they had on their backs.

[00:32:03] And they were marooned in the mountains above Sinjar.

[00:32:07] It was cold, and they had no food or shelter.

[00:32:10] And the West didn't do anything.

[00:32:12] And the Iraqi Kurds, particularly Barzani's...

[00:32:18] Iraqi Kurdistan is dominated by two parties, Barzani's KDP and Taliban's PUK.

[00:32:26] And the KDP is the part that dominates the north where this was happening.

[00:32:30] And they had promised to defend the Yazidis.

[00:32:33] But when the time came, they just vanished.

[00:32:36] They were nowhere to be seen.

[00:32:37] And there was no one defending the Yazidis except a few of their own people who didn't have proper arms.

[00:32:43] And a few of the Iraqi Peshmerga who didn't go with their regiments and stayed behind because they really...

[00:32:50] Because they were good people.

[00:32:54] And one of the things my book goes into is what actually was going on, but I won't reveal that now.

[00:33:01] Meanwhile, these people were marooned on the mountain, thousands of people, many children and old.

[00:33:08] And the U.S. didn't do anything.

[00:33:11] It dithered.

[00:33:12] Well, what should we do?

[00:33:13] Should we drop food?

[00:33:14] Should we not drop food?

[00:33:15] And meanwhile, the Kurdish guerrillas in Syria who had been fighting ISIS in Kobani and other areas,

[00:33:28] and the PKK guerrillas in Turkey, both of which groups have very strong presence of women

[00:33:38] and have separate women's militias as well as women commanding mixed groups and women integrated into mixed groups.

[00:33:47] They have both.

[00:33:48] They were the only ones who rose to the challenge.

[00:33:51] They cut a path through, went around about, got through to the mountains,

[00:33:57] cut a path through so they could get them out into Syria fighting ISIS all the way,

[00:34:01] and got thousands of people to safety.

[00:34:05] When all the U.S. could do is drop some food packages from the air.

[00:34:09] And I thought that was just amazing.

[00:34:11] And all of a sudden after that, and especially during the Battle of Kobani,

[00:34:15] when people from the international press finally got access to these women,

[00:34:19] all of a sudden you started seeing pictures of women guerrillas all over the place.

[00:34:22] And I thought, who are these people?

[00:34:25] I really wanted to know more about them.

[00:34:26] And I started to research them.

[00:34:28] And I learned about Rojava and how they had basically declared an independent little autonomous area.

[00:34:36] There were three different ones that were unconnected at that point in 2012.

[00:34:41] And we're trying to set up socialist, feminist, bottoms-up democratic states

[00:34:47] at the same time they were fighting ISIS.

[00:34:49] And I thought, wow, you know, this is a really important story for women, for the left,

[00:34:56] for anybody who wants to fight fundamentalism.

[00:34:58] This is the way to do it.

[00:35:00] These are the only people who have really mobilized effectively against ISIS

[00:35:05] and have been able to defeat them.

[00:35:07] And this was especially true after the Battle of Kobani when they held them out for months.

[00:35:11] I mean, you know, their whole city was destroyed.

[00:35:15] But they held them off until the U.S. finally, finally, finally, after months of waiting,

[00:35:23] started giving them some help from the air.

[00:35:26] And anybody who says the U.S. won that battle is really, you know, overstating the role of the U.S.

[00:35:31] The U.S. came in at the end.

[00:35:33] And the air support did help.

[00:35:35] But they had, you know, they had held off this siege and these horrible people,

[00:35:40] even after losing most of the city for months.

[00:35:43] Anyway, I was just blown away.

[00:35:45] So I wanted to learn more about it.

[00:35:46] And the more I learned, the more I wanted to tell other people about it.

[00:35:49] So I wrote this book.

[00:35:50] And what the book is really saying is there are three different systems that are at war

[00:35:58] in this particular little area.

[00:35:59] It's like all the energies of everything we need to know are being concentrated in this little area.

[00:36:04] And one is ISIS or Daesh.

[00:36:07] One is this new kind of thing called democratic autonomy that grew out of the PKK in Turkey

[00:36:15] and is now basically the people who believe in these ideas are in charge in the Rojava area,

[00:36:25] the Kurdish area in Syria.

[00:36:29] And then the third is this bizarre sort of amalgam of tribal feudalism, patriarchal rule,

[00:36:40] and modern petrostate that you have in Iraq, which is notoriously corrupt,

[00:36:47] yet, you know, has some of the U.S. at least on paper adherence to democracy,

[00:36:54] although they keep putting off the election.

[00:36:57] And Barzani has already overstayed his last term by years, and there's no election in sight.

[00:37:04] And, you know, there are many undemocratic and feudal ways that things proceed there.

[00:37:09] But it's still better than a lot of the rest of the Middle East in terms of people's ability to function openly

[00:37:16] and the rights of women, which are adhered to on paper, if not in practice.

[00:37:24] So I'm saying these are the three alternatives that much of the world is facing,

[00:37:29] this kind of amalgam of feudalism and capitalism and militarism that's Iraq,

[00:37:35] this democratic autonomy, and then this horrible, violent theocracy, which is, you know,

[00:37:43] the Muslim right, to get back to the Muslim right.

[00:37:45] Daesh may be its most violent form, but the ideas that Daesh has are not really all that different

[00:37:55] from those of Saudi Arabia or those of the ruling party in Turkey, the AKP,

[00:38:01] which is also fighting the Kurds.

[00:38:04] And, yeah, Turkey is a NATO ally and is in a very, playing a very kind of complicated game, it appears,

[00:38:14] especially against the Kurds.

[00:38:15] And there's a whole lot of things going on with Turkey.

[00:38:18] Do you want to tell us a little bit more about Turkey and their relationship and the Kurds?

[00:38:21] During the Battle of Kobani, it became clear that Turkey was saying it wanted to be the U.S. ally

[00:38:31] in terms of fighting Daesh, but was actually aiding Daesh in certain ways.

[00:38:36] It was aiding them by cutting off all military supplies to the Kurds and all medical supplies

[00:38:42] and all food and putting them under siege and by pressuring its allies in Iraq because its ally,

[00:38:48] I mean, just getting back to Iraqi Kurdistan for a second,

[00:38:53] it's completely dependent economically on Turkey.

[00:38:57] The major investors there are all Turkish and, you know, it depended on.

[00:39:02] And they can't or they haven't really, you know, acted in solidarity with the Kurds in Syria or Turkey very much

[00:39:11] because, you know, the Turkish government is pressuring them in the other direction.

[00:39:15] And there are also rivalries for leadership.

[00:39:17] But anyway, so Turkey put Kobani under siege at the point when it was being attacked by Daesh

[00:39:24] and made things much, much worse and has done so ever since.

[00:39:29] And it was also covertly, I mean, I don't know if you can say this,

[00:39:33] I mean, I can't say that Erdogan knew exactly everything that was going on,

[00:39:39] but I will say that his daughter was in charge of a particular little secret operation

[00:39:47] to get Daesh fighters' medical treatment in private clinics in Turkey.

[00:39:53] That was exposed by one of the nurses and has been exposed more since.

[00:39:56] And there was certainly a lot of collaboration in certain border situations

[00:40:02] between the Turkish military police and secret services and Daesh fighters

[00:40:09] who were able to go in and out of Turkey and openly recruit in certain towns of Turkey

[00:40:13] so that in interviews you would hear, like one guy told Michael Weiss in an interview,

[00:40:20] yeah, there's one mosque that's the Al-Qaeda mosque

[00:40:23] and there's one mosque that's the Daesh mosque

[00:40:25] and we're operating perfectly normally there.

[00:40:29] So Turkey was not a reliable ally in terms of any kind of NATO mission or U.S. alliance.

[00:40:36] And it also has this historic, horrible, I think genocidal almost, pretty close,

[00:40:48] approach to its minorities, you know, which first was used on the Armenians,

[00:40:54] definitely genocidal, and has been used since the 40s on the Kurds.

[00:40:59] And anybody who fails to integrate and become a regular good, you know, Sunni, Muslim,

[00:41:09] Turkish-speaking citizen should be basically killed or driven off their land,

[00:41:17] driven out of their houses.

[00:41:18] And there's a civil war going on there now in Turkey because they have,

[00:41:24] I mean, it's a whole long story going back to the last election.

[00:41:27] The Kurds finally managed to organize a party together with elements of the left,

[00:41:35] the new left especially, the feminists and gays and some trade unionists who,

[00:41:43] and that party's the HDP, and they won enough votes in the last parliamentary election

[00:41:51] to be seated in parliament as a regular party.

[00:41:54] They had over, I think it was 13%.

[00:41:56] And instead of dealing with it and forming a coalition government as he was required to

[00:42:05] by the constitution, Erdogan has decided to move ahead and become an authoritarian military ruler

[00:42:11] and has made war on the Kurds ever since, in some cases with help from ISIS.

[00:42:18] Whether or not this help was deliberately arranged, I cannot know.

[00:42:21] But, you know, somebody blew up a big demonstration in Istanbul.

[00:42:27] It was all the allies of the Kurds.

[00:42:29] And he used that as an excuse to make it impossible to vote in certain Kurdish areas.

[00:42:37] And basically the run-up election, which he called instead of forming a coalition government,

[00:42:43] was so violent and so many people were displaced from their homes that they couldn't vote,

[00:42:50] that the Kurd, they still kept 10%, but they lost a lot of votes.

[00:42:56] And people are terrified.

[00:42:58] And meanwhile, you know, he's,

[00:43:00] the Turkish government is pursuing a scorched earth policy

[00:43:04] in a whole southeast area of Turkey,

[00:43:07] which is very similar to what, you know, the U.S. did in Vietnam.

[00:43:10] It's basically you level a village, depopulate it,

[00:43:15] drive the people abroad or into the cities and just take it over.

[00:43:19] And then there's no more base for the guerrillas.

[00:43:21] And this is all in the theory that they're fighting the PKK,

[00:43:24] but in fact it isn't the PKK.

[00:43:26] The PKK are mostly fighting in Syria.

[00:43:29] It's kids.

[00:43:34] What do you think the future holds for women who fought against ISIS?

[00:43:37] Is this a turning point in the Kurdish community

[00:43:40] and possibly for women in the Middle East?

[00:43:42] It could be.

[00:43:43] It could be indeed for women in the Middle East.

[00:43:46] I mean, certainly, I mean,

[00:43:48] the kind of situation that they've set up in Rojava is

[00:43:50] they're not only integrated into the military

[00:43:53] and having their own militias,

[00:43:54] but they are 40% or more of every civil society organization,

[00:44:00] every administrative group,

[00:44:03] every quasi-governmental operation.

[00:44:07] Every group has to have two co-chairs,

[00:44:11] one male and one female.

[00:44:12] So they're changing the way things operate

[00:44:17] from the top and the bottom at the same time

[00:44:19] by giving all these women political experience.

[00:44:23] And it's not going to happen instantly.

[00:44:25] This is a very, very traditional rural society

[00:44:29] where women, until a few years ago,

[00:44:32] often didn't go out of the house.

[00:44:34] If they worked at all, it was in agriculture

[00:44:36] or it's just stuff they could do at home.

[00:44:38] I mean, they're very traditional.

[00:44:40] There's honor killings.

[00:44:41] There's FGM.

[00:44:42] There's all this.

[00:44:43] FGM's mostly in Iraq.

[00:44:44] But there's all the usual kind of stuff

[00:44:47] that you find in a very heavily rural, tribal, patriarchal situation.

[00:44:53] So they have to change a lot,

[00:44:55] and they're doing it very quickly.

[00:44:57] But the fact that they have really made a separation

[00:45:01] between religion and the state,

[00:45:03] that they have made public commitments

[00:45:06] to feminism being part of their ideology

[00:45:08] and to the need not only for equal rights for women

[00:45:12] in the Western sense,

[00:45:13] but for the leadership of women

[00:45:15] because women have different or better ideas in many cases,

[00:45:20] it's very remarkable.

[00:45:22] It would be remarkable anywhere.

[00:45:24] It's particularly remarkable for a situation of war,

[00:45:27] and it's especially interesting

[00:45:29] because it's in the Middle East.

[00:45:31] And if they can succeed in setting up

[00:45:33] an independent autonomous region

[00:45:37] that really lasts,

[00:45:40] they'll become a magnet for every dissident in the Middle East.

[00:45:43] I mean, because people will be able to function there

[00:45:46] where they can't at home,

[00:45:47] and it would be wonderful.

[00:45:49] Thank you so much for speaking to me today.

[00:45:52] Where can listeners find out more about you?

[00:45:54] I have a website,

[00:45:56] which is my name,

[00:45:58] meredithtax.org.

[00:46:01] All sections of a lot of my essays

[00:46:03] that I've written over the years are up there.

[00:46:05] Links to bio, my books are up there.

[00:46:07] And there will be a whole separate page

[00:46:10] where I wrote unforeseen about this book

[00:46:14] and the continuing struggle

[00:46:16] as it develops in the region.

[00:46:18] So I think that's where I would go first

[00:46:21] is meredithtax.org.

[00:46:53] Thanks for listening.

[00:46:55] This is Secrets and Spies.