Kurdistan is a land of around 40 million people that was divided between Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey after the First World War. Historically, the Kurds have suffered massacres and genocide at the hands of successive regimes, especially in Iraq and Turkey. The Arab Spring reached Syria at the beginning of 2011 and, after a short time, spread to the Syrian Kurdistan regions. In Syrian Kurdistan the people were prepared and knew what they wanted. They believed that the revolution must start from the bottom of society and not from the top. It must be a social, cultural and educational as well as political revolution. It must be against the state, power and authority. It must be people in the communities who have the final decision-making responsibilities.
It was very clear that ordinary people in Syria started the uprising due to existing suppression, oppression, lack of freedom and social justice, corruption, discrimination, lack of human rights, and no rights for ethnic minorities like Kurdish, Turkmen and others. Life for the majority of people was terrible; low incomes, the cost of living continuously rising, homelessness, and unemployment all served as inspiration for the “Arab Spring”. It was also quite clear in the beginning of the people’s uprising in Syria, that, if it was to benefit the Syrian people, then the expected ending of Assad’s regime would not take that long when people united with great support both inside and outside the country. However, after a while, the terrorist groups got involved and changed the direction of the people’s uprising as we all have seen and still see this through the media. This happened because Assad was clever in implementing policies which affected the direction of the people’s uprising and making his regime stronger. The protests, demonstrations and uprising on the ground have been diverted by neighbouring rulers into a proxy war between Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey with the support of the US and Western countries on one side and Assad’s regime, Iran and Hezbollah on the other. The Iraqi government want, Assad to stay in power because of the close relationship between Shias and Alawites and also because Iran is Iraq’s closest ally. Obviously each country has a big impact as some of them are supporting Assad’s regime and others support the Syrian opposition.
The Kurdish movement in Rojava decided to go a third way: it would side neither with the regime nor with the opposition. It would defend itself, but it would not wage war. Starting on June 19, 2012, the cities of Kobanê, Afrîn, Dêrik, and many other places were one by one freed from regime control.
Today, ISIS with tanks and heavy artillery are fighting the revolutionary People’s Protection Units (YPG) militias in Kobane, while, the Turkish army stands aside but preventing reinforcements or ammunition from reaching the defenders and US planes make occasional, symbolic, pinprick air strikes.
What is it that the ISIS Islamist extremists intent upon building an Islamic State caliphate fear?
In the Guardian, David Graeber writes:
“The autonomous region of Rojava, as it exists today, is one of few bright spots – albeit a very bright one – to emerge from the tragedy of the Syrian revolution. Having driven out agents of the Assad regime in 2011, and despite the hostility of almost all of its neighbours, Rojava has not only maintained its independence, but is a remarkable democratic experiment. Popular assemblies have been created as the ultimate decision-making bodies, councils selected with careful ethnic balance (in each municipality, for instance, the top three officers have to include one Kurd, one Arab and one Assyrian or Armenian Christian, and at least one of the three has to be a woman), there are women’s and youth councils...”
Decision making in the communes requires that quotas be met—that is, in order to make a decision, here and in all councils in Rojava, at least 40 percent of those who participate in the discussions must be women. Syria is home to Sunni and Shiite Arabs, Sunni Kurds, Assyrian Christians, Chaldeans, Yezidi Kurds, Armenians, Aramaeans, Chechens, Turkmens, and many other cultural, religious or ethnic groups. All these social groups should achieve representation through the council system with its corresponding quotas. The commune, as the mala gel (people’s house), lends support in all questions; it is simultaneously an institution of support and a kind of court. Central to its processes is the ideal of agreement and compensation; for general offenses, the causes of an infraction are investigated and overcome, and the victim is protected. For patriarchal violence and all attacks that affect women, the mala jinan (women’s house) is in charge; it is attached to the women’s council, a parallel structure to the commune’s mixed-gender council. As much as possible, the councils prefer to vote by consensus. The communes send their representatives to their respective district councils and city councils, and the structure continues into the general council of Rojava. Some wish to organize in classical parties rather than in councils. This problem has been solved in Rojava through a dual structure. On one hand a parliament is chosen, to which free elections under international supervision are to take place as soon as possible. This parliament forms a parallel structure to the councils; it forms a transitional government, in which all political and social groups are represented, while the council system forms a kind of parallel parliament.
In Heseke, there are 16 district councils here. On each council there are 15 to 30 people. About 50 houses form a commune. The communes are numerous—in each district there are about 10-30 communes with 15-30 persons each. The Mifte district in Heseke has 29 communes, while the neighboring district has 11 communes. Each district forms about 20 communes per 1,000 people. The 16 district councils are formed form the communes. One hundred and one people sit on Heseke’s city council. In addition the PYD has five representatives, as do five other parties. Families of the Fallen have five, Yekitiya Star has five, the Revolutionary Youth have five, and the Liberals have five. The district councils normally meet every two months. Twenty-one people are elected as the coordination. The leadership meetings take place once a month and as needed in special cases. Always at least 40 percent of the representatives are women and at least 40 percent are men. Decisions are made according to consensus principle. Care is taken that one person doesn’t dominate the proceedings. The co-chairs are elected. Members of the commune nominate them and then elect them. The commune is a place of self-organization and concerns itself with social problems in the districts, support of poorer members of the commune, and the just distribution of fuel, bread, and foodstuffs.
The concept of money is internally redundant according to some writers. The economic needs of the inhabitants system are internally supplied through a communal management of resources. Although money is utilised in economic dealings with external systems, internally the concept of money is inconceivable. No person or community feels the need to build a surplus of goods or resources. Surpluses are constantly redistributed, therefore, viably consumed. Reminiscent of pre-hierarchical and pre-exploitative societies, the local economic system adopts a culture of gifting, rather than a culture of exchange. The communal organisation of agriculture ensures a self-sufficient production and consumption of resources, therefore, deeming surplus, exchange value and the commodification of goods irrelevant.
The Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK)-led Kurdistan Freedom Movement is no longer demanding a Kurdish nation-state that will only re-produce exploitation, hierarchical structures and gender inequalities; rather, it is demanding for an alternative system of societal organisation in which the Kurdish question is solved in parallel to the question of exploitation, gender emancipation and human liberation. Instead, Graeber describes it as:
“ no longer anything remotely like the old, top-down Leninist party it once was... [but now] inspired in part by the vision of social ecologist and anarchist Murray Bookchin, it has adopted the vision of “libertarian municipalism”, calling for Kurds to create free, self-governing communities, based on principles of direct democracy, that would then come together across national borders – that it is hoped would over time become increasingly meaningless. In this way, they proposed, the Kurdish struggle could become a model for a wordwide movement towards genuine democracy, co-operative economy, and the gradual dissolution of the bureaucratic nation-state.”
Zaher Baher of Haringey Solidarity Group and Kurdistan Anarchists Forum who spent two weeks in Syrian Kurdistan, looking at the experiences of self-government in the region explains:
“What happened in West Kurdistan was not Ocallan’s [the jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan] idea, as many people want to tell us. In fact this idea is very old and Ocallan developed these thoughts in prison, familiarizing himself with them through reading hundreds and hundreds of books, non-stop thinking and analyzing the experiences of nationalist movements, communist movements and their governments in the region and the world and why all of them failed and could not deliver what they claimed. The basis of all this is that he is convinced that the state, whatever its name and form, is a state and cannot disappear when replaced by another state. For this, Abdulla Ocallan deserves credit.”
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