The International Brigades (Spanish: Brigadas Internacionales) were military units set up by the Communist International to assist the Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The organization existed for two years, from 1936 until 1938. It is estimated that during the entire war, between 40,000 and 59,000 members served in the International Brigades, including 15,000 who died in combat. They participated in the battles of Madrid, Jarama, Guadalajara, Brunete, Belchite, Teruel, Aragon and the Ebro.
The International Brigades was strongly supported by the Comintern and represented the Soviet Union's commitment to assisting the Spanish
… Read more Republic (with arms, logistics, military advisers and the NKVD), just as Fascist Italy, Fascist Portugal and Nazi Germany were assisting the opposing Nationalist insurgency. The largest number of volunteers came from France where the French Communist Party had many members, and communist exiles from Italy and Germany. Many Jews were part of the brigades, being particularly numerous among the volunteers coming from the United States, Poland, France, England, and Argentina.
Republican volunteers who were opposed to Stalinism did not join the Brigades but instead enlisted in the separate Popular Front, the POUM (formed from Trotskyist, Bukharinist and other anti-Stalinist groups, which did not separate Spaniards and foreign volunteers -such as George Orwell), or anarcho-syndicalist groups such as the Durruti Column, the IWA and the CNT.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria. It consists of self-governing sub-regions in the areas of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Deir Ez-Zor. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 in the context of the ongoing Rojava conflict and the wider Syrian Civil War, in which its official military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has taken part. The region has implemented a new social justice approach which emphasizes rehabilitation, empowerment and social care over retribution. The death penalty was abolished. Prisons house mostly people charged with terrorist
… Read more activity related to ISIL and other extremist groups, and are a large strain on the region's economy. The autonomous region is ruled by a coalition which bases its policy ambitions to a large extent on democratic libertarian socialist ideology of democratic confederalism and have been described as pursuing a model of economy that blends co-operative and market enterprise, through a system of local councils in minority, cultural and religious representation. The main military force of the region is the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Syrian rebel groups formed in 2015. The SDF is led by the Kurdish majority People's Protection Units (YPG).
The AK-47 is a gas-operated assault rifle that is chambered for the 7.62×39mm cartridge. Developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov, it is the originating firearm of the Kalashnikov family of rifles. After more than seven decades, the AK-47 model and its variants remain the most popular and widely used rifles and the weapon of choice of revolutionaries all around the world. The AK-47 has become a symbol of the revolutionary flag in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Colombia, and Mozambique. Conversely, throughout the developing world, the AK-47 can be positively attributed with revolutionaries against foreign occupation, imperialism, or colonialism.