Long-range is a work that narrates the experience of Azad Cudi (nom de guerre) in the fight against the Islamic State (IS – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) as a Kurdish sniper. The book offers a detailed look at the Kurdish resistance and their fight for freedom in the context of a war-torn region.
The tree of freedom is watered with blood, Kurdish saying to which Azad Cudi refers, as if it were a premonition, his future as a sniper in a war, initially fratricidal and ultimately liberating the Kurdish people.
And we say that in principle it was a fratricidal war because, as a young man, Azad Cudi, a native of Sardasht (Iran)He was also a sniper in the Iranian army, until he discovered the subtle hypocrisy of the Iranian people: “we are brothers and you are the oldest in the family,” they said. But it was all a lie: Iran’s religious police shot dissidents, benefiting the Persians and excluding the Kurds in order to divide and rule those who oppressed. Azad, not without taking enormous risks on his clandestine journey, defected and sought asylum in Britain.
In Leeds and later in Stockholm he found a new home and a free life and became interested in the writings of Abdalá Okalá (aka APO), leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistyan), who initially recommended the violence to put an end to centuries of Turkish repression, but after his time in prison and a period of deep reflection on the problems in the Middle East, he changed his philosophy by embracing diversity and advocating the creation of a egalitarian and democratic society based on respect for all races, religions, communities and genders and arguing that “the reason that the Middle East was ravaged by constant wars and crises was due to the absence of an example of a peaceful, stable, free and just society” .
Rojava would be that example.
Rojava is the region to which it belongs For foura square of great strategic importance: a small town of forty thousand inhabitants, where the Kurds first rose up in the Syrian civil war, through numerous victories in that war and in the Rojava conflictgradually establishing and expanding an Autonomous Administration based on the principles of democratic confederalism: gender equality, decentralization, ecological development and tolerance of the diversity of religions, ethnic groups and cultures.
Azad tells us about the historical and cultural importance of Kobane, and how the Kurds were one of the first peoples to abandon their nomadic life around the city, located between the Tigris and the Euphrates, thirteen thousand years ago. The diversity of the population in Kobane was reflected in the peaceful coexistence between Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians and Arabs, Christians, Sunni Muslims, Shiites and Sufis, Sephardic Jews, Arabized Jews and even Zoroastrians.
On the Kurdish resistance, Cudi comments that one of the things that most strikes outsiders is their insistence that men and women are equal in everything, including war. Men and women fight together in separate entities: the YPJ (Yekîneyên Parastina Jin – Women’s Protection Units) for women and the YPG (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel – People’s Protection Units) for men, further creating a justice system. that would prohibit marriage with minors and polygamy and that in all cases there would be Equality between men and women.
Of Islamic State (EI), the author explains that it was an evolution of Al-QaedaBut by the time it invaded northern Syria it was already a mighty army of tens of thousands of volunteers, advancing unstoppably across Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and growing rapidly in other countries.
In summary, Long-range is a book that combines the narrative of the fight against terrorism with the history and culture of the Kurdish people and their vision of an egalitarian and democratic society based on diversity and respect. Kobane’s story becomes a symbol of resistance and hope in a region marked by instability and war. There, some 2,000 men and women detained 12,000 Islamic State fighters between September 2014 and January 2015.
I have often been asked how many we killed. I have always refused to answer. Only a weak man would measure himself in deaths. Only a fool would try to describe all the hate, loss, sacrifice, and love of war with a number. If only to put the matter aside, let me say at the outset that in eight months our snipers decimated them. […]. My task in these pages is to explain how we accumulate these terrible numbers in a way that you can understand us.