In early December an international delegation visited Rojava?s Cezire canton where they
learned about the ongoing revolution, cooperation and tolerance. ---- From December 1 to
9, I had the privilege of visiting Rojava as part of a delegation of academics from
Austria, Germany, Norway, Turkey, the UK, and the US. We assembled in Erbil, Iraq, on
November 29 and spent the next day learning about the petrostate known as the Kurdish
Regional Government (KRG), with its oil politics, patronage politics, feuding parties (KDP
and PUK), and apparent aspirations to emulate Dubai. We soon had enough and on Monday
morning were relieved to drive to the Tigris, where we crossed the border into Syria and
entered Rojava, the majority-Kurdish autonomous region of northern Syria.
The Tigris river channel was narrow, but the society we encountered on the far shore could
not have been more different from the KRG: the spirit of a social and political revolution
was in the air. As we disembarked, we were greeted by the Asayis, or civilian security
forces of the revolution. The Asayis reject the label police, since police serve the state
whereas they serve society.
Over the next nine days, we would explore Rojava?s revolutionary self-government in an
old-fashioned state of total immersion (we had no internet access to distract us). Our
delegation?s two organizers ? Dilar Dirik (a talented PhD student at Cambridge University)
and Devri? ?imen (head of Civaka Azad, the Kurdish Center for Public Information in
Germany) ? took us on an intensive tour of the various revolutionary institutions.
Rojava consists of three geographically non-contiguous cantons; we would see only the
easternmost one, Cezire (or Jazira), due to the ongoing war with the Islamic State, which
rages to the west, especially in Kobani. But everywhere we were welcomed warmly.
Rojava?s Third Way
At the outset, the deputy foreign minister, Amine Ossi, introduced us to the history of
the revolution. The Syrian Ba?ath regime, a system of one-party rule, had long insisted
that all Syrians were Arabs and attempted to ?Arabize? the country?s four million Kurds,
suppressing their identity and stripping those who objected of their citizenship.
After Tunisian and Egyptian opposition groups mounted insurgencies during the Arab Spring
in 2011, rebellious Syrians rose up too, initiating the civil war. In the summer of 2012,
the regime?s authority collapsed in Rojava, where the Kurds had little trouble persuading
its officials to depart nonviolently.
Rojavans (I?ll call them by that name because while they are mostly Kurds, they are also
Arabs, Assyrians, Chechens, and others) then faced a choice of aligning themselves either
with the regime that had persecuted them, or with the mostly Islamic militant opposition
groups.
Rojava?s Kurds being relatively secular, they refused both sides and decided instead to
embark on a Third Way, based on the ideas of Abdullah ?calan, the imprisoned Kurdish
leader who rethought the Kurdish issue, the nature of revolution, and an alternative
modernity to the nation-state and capitalism.
Initially, under his leadership, Kurds had fought for a state, but several decades ago,
again under his leadership, their goal began to change: they now reject the state as a
source of oppression and instead strive for self-government, for popular democracy.
Drawing eclectically from sources in history, philosophy, politics, and anthropology,
?calan proposed ?Democratic Confederalism? as the name for the overarching program of
bottom-up democracy, gender equality, ecology, and a cooperative economy. The
implementation of those principles, in institutions not only of democratic self-government
but also of economics, education, health and gender, is called Democratic Autonomy.
A Women?s Revolution
Under their Third Way, Rojava?s three cantons declared Democratic Autonomy and formally
established it in a ?social contract? (the non-statist term it uses instead of
?constitution?). Under that program, they created a system of popular self-government,
based in neighborhood commune assemblies (comprising several hundred households each),
which anyone may attend, and with power rising from the bottom up through elected deputies
to the city and cantonal levels.
When our delegation visited a Qamishlo neighborhood (Qamishlo being the largest city in
the Cezire canton), we attended a meeting of a local people?s council, where the
electricity and matters relating to women, conflict resolution and families of martyrs
were discussed. Men and women sat and participated together. Elsewhere in Qamishlo, we
witnessed an assembly of women addressing problems particular to their gender.
Gender is of special importance to this project in human emancipation. We quickly realized
that the Rojava Revolution is fundamentally a women?s revolution. This part of the world
is traditionally home to extreme patriarchal oppression: to be born female is to be at
risk for violent abuse, childhood marriage, honor killings, polygamy, and more.
But today the women of Rojava have shaken off that tradition and participate fully in
public life: at every level of politics and society. Institutional leadership consists not
of one position but two, one male and one female official ? for the sake of gender
equality and also to keep power from concentrating into one person?s hands.
Representatives of Yekitiya Star, the umbrella organization for women?s groups, explained
that women are essential to democracy ? they even defined the antagonist of women?s
freedom, strikingly, not as patriarchy but as the nation-state and capitalist modernity.
The women?s revolution aims to free everyone. Women are to this revolution what the
proletariat was to Marxist-Leninist revolutions of the past century. It has profoundly
transformed not only women?s status but every aspect of society.
Even the traditionally male-dominated strands of society, like the military, have been
profoundly transformed. The people?s protection units (YPG) have been joined by the YPJ ?
or women?s protection units ? whose images by now have become world famous. Together, the
YPG and the YPJ are defending society against the jihadist forces of ISIS and Al-Nusra
with Kalashnikovs and, perhaps equally formidably, a fierce intellectual and emotional
commitment not only to their community?s survival but to its political ideas and
aspirations too.
When we visited a meeting of the YPJ, we were told that the fighters? education consists
not only of training in practical matters like weapons but also in Democratic Autonomy.
?We are fighting for our ideas,? they emphasized at every turn. Two of the women who met
with us had been injured in battle. One sat with an IV bag, another with a metal crutch ?
both were wincing in pain but had the fortitude and self-discipline to participate in our
session.
Cooperation and Education
Rojavans fight for the survival of their community but above all, as the YPJ told us, for
their ideas. They even put the successful implementation of democracy above ethnicity.
Their social agreement affirms the inclusion of ethnic minorities (Arabs, Chechens,
Assyrians) and religions (Muslims, Christians, Yezidis), and Democratic Autonomy in
practice seems to bend over backwards to include minorities, without imposing it on others
against their will, leaving the door open to all.
When our delegation asked a group of Assyrians to tell us their challenges with Democratic
Autonomy, they said they had none. In nine days we could not possibly have scoured Rojava
for all problems, and our interlocutors candidly admitted that Rojava is hardly above
criticism, but as far as I could see, Rojava at the very least aspires to model tolerance
and pluralism in a part of the world that has seen far too much fanaticism and repression
? and to whatever extent it succeeds, it deserves commendation.
Rojava?s economic model ?is the same as its political model,? an economics adviser in
Derik told us: to create a ?community economy,? building cooperatives in all sectors and
educating the people in the idea. The adviser expressed satisfaction that even though 70
percent of Rojava?s resources must go to the war effort, the economy still manages to meet
everyone?s basic needs.
They strive for self-sufficiency, because they must: the crucial fact is that Rojava
exists under an embargo. It can neither export to nor import from its immediate neighbor
to the north, Turkey, which would like to see the whole Kurdish project disappear.
Even the KRG, under control of their ethnic kin but economically beholden to Turkey,
observes the embargo, although more cross-border KRG-Rojava trade is occurring now in the
wake of political developments. But the country still lacks resources. That does not
dampen their spirit: ?If there is only bread, then we all have a share,? the adviser told us.
We visited an economics academy and economic cooperatives: a sewing cooperative in Derik,
making uniforms for the defense forces; a cooperative greenhouse, growing cucumbers and
tomatoes; a dairy cooperative in Rimelan, where a new shed was under construction.
The Kurdish areas are the most fertile parts of Syria, home to its abundant wheat supply,
but the Ba?ath regime had deliberately refrained from industrializing the area, a source
of raw materials. Hence wheat was cultivated but could not be milled into flour. We
visited a mill, newly constructed since the revolution, improvised from local materials.
It now provides flour for the bread consumed in Cezire, whose residents get three loaves a
day.
Similarly, Cezire was Syria?s major source of petroleum, with several thousand oil rigs,
mostly in the Rimelan area. But the Ba?ath regime ensured that Rojava had no refineries,
forcing the oil to be transported to refineries elsewhere in Syria. But since the
revolution, Rojavans have improvised two new oil refineries, which are used mainly to
provide diesel for the generators that power the canton. The local oil industry, if such
it can be called, produces only enough for local needs, nothing more.
A DIY Revolution
The level of improvisation was striking throughout the canton. The more we traveled
through Rojava, the more I marveled at the do-it-yourself nature of the revolution, its
reliance on local ingenuity and the scarce materials at hand. But it was not until we
visited the various academies ? the women?s academy in Rimelan and the Mesopotamian
Academy in Qamishlo ? that I realized that it is integral to the system as a whole.
The education system in Rojava is non-traditional, rejecting ideas of hierarchy, power and
hegemony. Instead of following a teacher-student hierarchy, students teach each other and
learn from each other?s experience. Students learn what is useful, in practical matters;
they ?search for meaning,? as we were told, in intellectual matters. They do not memorize;
they learn to think for themselves and make decisions, to become the subjects of their own
lives. They learn to be empowered and to participate in Democratic Autonomy.
Images of Abdullah ?calan are everywhere, which to Western eyes might suggest something
Orwellian: indoctrination, knee-jerk belief. But to interpret those images that way would
be to miss the situation entirely. ?No one will give you your rights,? someone quoted
?calan to us, ?you will have to struggle to obtain them.?
And to carry out that struggle, Rojavans know they must educate both themselves and
society. ?calan taught them Democratic Confederalism as a set of principles. Their role
has been to figure out how to implement it, in Democratic Autonomy, and thereby to empower
themselves.
The Kurds have historically had few friends. They were ignored by the Treaty of Lausanne
that divided up the Middle East after World War I. For most of the past century, they
suffered as minorities in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Their language and culture have
been suppressed, their identities denied, their human rights overruled.
They are on the wrong side of NATO, where Turkey is permitted to call the shots on Kurdish
matters. They have long been outsiders. That experience has been brutal, involving
torture, exile and war. But it has also given them strength and independence of mind.
?calan taught them how to reset the terms of their existence in a way that gave them
dignity and self-respect.
This do-it-yourself revolution by an educated populace is embargoed by their neighbors and
gets along by the skin of its teeth. It is nonetheless an endeavor that pushes the human
prospect forward. In the wake of the twentieth century, many people have come to the worst
conclusions about human nature, but in the twenty-first, Rojavans are setting a new
standard for what human beings are capable of. In a world fast losing hope, they shine as
a beacon.
Anyone with a bit of faith in humanity should wish the Rojavans well with their revolution
and do what they can to help it succeed. They should demand that their governments stop
allowing Turkey to define a rejectionist international policy toward the Kurds and toward
Democratic Autonomy. They should demand an end to the embargo against Rojava.
The members of the delegation in which I participated (even though I am not an academic)
did their work well. Sympathetic to the revolution, they nonetheless asked challenging
questions, about Rojava?s economic outlook, about the handling of ethnicity and
nationalism, and more. The Rojavans we met, accustomed to grappling with hard questions,
responded thoughtfully and even welcomed critique. Readers interested in learning more
about the Rojava Revolution may look forward to forthcoming writings by the other
delegation members: Welat (Oktay) Ay, Rebecca Coles, Antonia Davidovic, Eirik Eiglad,
David Graeber, Thomas Jeffrey Miley, Johanna Riha, Nazan ?st?ndag, and Christian Zimmer.
As for me, I have much more to say than this short article allows and plan to write a
further work, one that incorporates drawings I made during the trip.
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» (en) Impressions of Rojava: a report from the revolution By Janet Biehl On December 16, 2014