The 'Rojava Revolution' in Syrian Kurdistan A Model of Development for the Middle East?
by Can Cemgil and Clemens Hoffmann
As the civil war in Syria continues, in the territory of Rojava - in Kurdish, 'the West' -
the northern Syrian Kurdish political movement is attempting to implement 'libertarian
municipalism', based on the thoughts of United States (US) anarchist Murray Bookchin.
Since the withdrawal of Syrian regime forces in 2012, the movement has consolidated
significant territorial gains as a US ally in the anti-Islamic State (IS) struggle, while
simultaneously securing Russian support. Viewed with suspicion by Turkey, Syria and Iraqi
Kurdistan, the geopolitical conditions of Rojava's emergence are its greatest impediment.
This article analyses Rojava's model of rule and socioeconomic development, and its theory
and practice in the context of the civil war, and regional Middle Eastern and wider global
geopolitics. It reflects on Rojava's place and meaning for contemporary geopolitics in the
Middle East, and considers the territory's prospects, discussing its transformative
potential for an otherwise troubled region.
1 Introduction: locating Rojava among many alternatives
The current global financial, regional geopolitical and environmental crises, are all
thought to coincide and express themselves in the most vicious forms in the contemporary
Middle East. Historically, hydrocarbon developmentalism, rentierism, recurrent crises and
conflict have characterised the region. Authoritarian militarist-bureaucratic rule through
clientelist networks, fuelled by oil rents re-invested in arms purchases, has long
characterised the whole region. This entrenched militarist authoritarianism is exacerbated
by the effects of large top-down hydro-civilizational projects (irrigation, dam building),
bloated bureaucracies, and neoliberal policies that have led to new forms of land
appropriation and environmental degradation, all of which have contributed to the region's
problematic 'development' template.
Despite this declared regional specificity of the Middle East, alternative, critical
concepts of development and governance are frequently conceived at the global and
universal levels (e.g. Radcliffe 2015). They start by developing alternative
macro-policies that are subsequently implemented through national centralised governments,
which turn them into local social realities. 'Sustainable development', but also more
radical movements such as 'de-growth' (e.g. D'Alisa et al. 2014) and similar concepts,
while offering to re-think the parameters of global growth and development, do so within
established global macro-political settings where institutionally supported notions,
notably those of the World Bank or International Monetary Fund, are located in - rather
than on top of - a geopolitically fragmented system of nation states indispensable to the
formulation and implementation of policy alternatives.
National, centralised states act as interlocutors of a globally formulated developmental
'consensus', as well as implementing it. Similarly, states are important fields of
struggle, though alternatives are still developed within national confines. Looking at
development in holistic and geographically expansive terms, and changing policies to
reflect where power actually lies in the state, is certainly imperative. But there is also
a more problematic element in this dominant strategy: by changing developmental notions,
strategies and policies in the current universal structures, most alternatives also
emulate and, thereby, reproduce, top-down approaches. Even 'participatory development'
(e.g. Cooke and Kothari 2001) depends on hierarchically organised national-territorial
developmental states and the international organisations they form as the interlocutors.
This article will present and interrogate a yet more radical departure from the
developmental mainstream, relating its abstract formulation to its lived practice in a
peculiar geopolitical setting: that of a local, anti-authoritarian, anti-hierarchical and
communitarian approach, as well as its current social practice in the northern Syrian
Kurdish enclaves, or cantons, of Rojava. Based on the theories of Bookchin, a US thinker
frequently labelled 'eco-anarchist', the Rojava model is a radical departure from the
hierarchical global growth regime. This 'democratic confederalism' or 'libertarian
municipalism', entails elements such as community-based, cooperative production and trade
as social ecology, radical gender equality, and local forms of direct democratic political
rule.
The following study is based on secondary research into the foundations and realities of
Rojava, using personal accounts, reports, academic articles and journalistic sources. It
will first set out the ideological and philosophical foundations of this revolutionary
project in Bookchin's work, before elaborating on the historic and geopolitical conditions
of its emergence. It will then provide an overview of the social structure and lived
reality of this political and socioeconomic project. It will close by arguing that the
very conditions of the project's emergence - the contemporary crisis-ridden geopolitical
conjuncture - are at the same time the greatest threat to it, not so much externally but
due to the potential internal contradictions of a militarised society.
2 From Bookchin to Öcalan: democratic confederalism and the Rojava 'revolution'
This alternative project of development and democracy owes its intellectual sources and
political inspiration to Bookchin. It was Bookchin's social historical theory that
inspired the intellectual and strategic transformation of the Kurdish Liberation Movement
(KLM) after imprisoned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan read his
work. Like Bookchin himself, Öcalan was disillusioned with the orthodox tradition of
Marxist-Leninist party organisation and underwent a series of transformations even before
he was imprisoned (Üstündag 2016).
The PKK reflected these changes in a series of congresses in the 1990s and 2000s, and
changed its orientation and strategies accordingly from a separatist-nationalist movement
to a democratic autonomist and democratic confederalist movement (Günes 2012). Akkaya,
Jongerden and Simsek (2015) described it as a transformation from rebellion to
reconstruction. Surprisingly though, this intellectual and strategic transformation of the
KLM did not materialise in Turkey, its birthplace, but in neighbouring Syria, following
the outbreak of civil war in 2011. The Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian affiliate
and sister organisation of the PKK, seized the opportunity to implement Bookchin's ideas
in Rojava.
Bookchin's theoretical contribution to studies on ecology, development, freedom and
citizenship, among other areas, consists of a diverse, sophisticated, yet at times
incoherent and factually unsubstantiated (White 2008) body of ideas brought together in a
series of volumes.(1) The central thread, however, is clear: disillusioned with vulgar
versions of Marxism and what Bookchin calls 'lifestyle anarchism' (Bookchin 1995), he sets
out to offer a sweeping social and ideological history that specifies 'hierarchy' almost
as the source of all social, political and ecological evils. A concept broader than all
other forms of domination, be they the contemporary state, class domination, or human
domination over nature, hierarchy is also antecedent to these ills of society. Freedom,
then, consists of overcoming these hierarchical relations and establishing relations based
on 'equality of unequals', social complementarity, and access for everyone to an
irreducible minimum of needs that they themselves define (Bookchin 1982).
Abolition of social hierarchy will also result in repairing the 'metabolic rift' (Foster
1999) that Marx declared 'irreparable' under capitalism (Marx 1981: 949). Marx attributed
the separation of human beings from nature to the rise of capitalism, which resulted in
soil exhaustion and the impossibility of bioregionalism (i.e. producing crops locally and
sustainably for decentralised markets) in the context of expanding urban centres,
industrial production and their ever-increasing demands on nature, and argued that this
was an irreparable rift under capitalism. While in agreement, Bookchin saw capitalism only
as one manifestation of domination, that is class domination, among others such as
gerontocracy and patriarchy, and accordingly believed that human domination of nature was
the result of social domination in general and could be done away with only when social
hierarchy was completely abolished.
While Bookchin is unwilling to suggest a determinate way to bring about this large-scale
social and environmental change, he traces historically and proposes theoretically what he
calls the 'legacies of freedom' that we inherited from 'organic societies', which knew no
hierarchy and had an 'ecological sensibility' as well as an intuitive and practical
knowledge of freedom (Bookchin 1982). Distinguishing between ancient Greek participatory
democracy and Roman republicanism (Bookchin 1987: 43), Bookchin argues that the republican
model with its representative system slides into a de-socialised elite rule, and creates
professional rulers who govern, rather than administer (Bookchin 1982: 129) in an
exclusive political space (Cemgil 2016). To socialise the political andto politicise the
social (Üstündag 2016), Bookchin argued for direct democracy starting at the most local
level, building up a confederation of libertarian municipalities that are, just like
members of 'organic societies', interdependent and cooperative. The representative state
in its current form, 'absorbed' administrative social functions and made itself 'as
indispensable as an organising principle for human consociation' (Bookchin 1982: 127),
becoming a major source of domination (Cemgil 2016).
Direct democratic participation entails the social administration of production and need
determination as its corollary. Social administration of production requires a localised,
decentralised economy, scaled down to 'human dimensions' (Bookchin 1982: 344), with
various libertarian municipalities cooperating if they decide to do so. While
decentralisation enhances direct democratic participation it does not necessarily exclude
the possibility of forms of local social hierarchy, and Bookchin is well aware of this. In
any case, democratic processes might generate hierarchies as well. That is why he proposes
a confederation of libertarian municipalities, in the final analysis, in the belief that a
municipality that generated domination would be checked by others, besides internal
democratic checks and balances (Biehl and Bookchin 1998: 108).
A democratised economy and polity also allow for the determination of needs of the
community by the democratic processes of the community. Rather than being expressed in
objective categories, those involved also determine needs. The democratisation and
de-centralisation of social administrative functions that we now call economy, and scaling
it down to human dimensions, would also reduce dependence on hydrocarbons through
de-industrialisation, without dismissing the possibility of interdependent self-sufficiency.
Among Bookchin's primary aims in writing these numerous treatises on domination was the
concern to offer a social ecology that re-constructs human-nature relations. Organic
societies, for Bookchin, did not see nature an externality to be controlled. The emergence
of institutionalised hierarchy and social domination, however, also resulted in the
emergence of the notion of dominating nature. The language of domination of nature became
so strong with the advent of capitalism that even radical critics of capitalism, such as
Marx, fell prey to its ideology at times. The mending of the metabolic rift requires a
full-scale subjective as well as material transformation of relations, though.
Calls for bioregionalism, decentralisation or autarchy will not by themselves resolve the
apocalyptic future that awaits us. Nor will anti-consumerism or de-industrialisation. A
full-scale struggle against domination and hierarchy is needed and an ecological society
can only be built on non-hierarchical relations. A self-sufficient interdependence within
the democratic confederation of libertarian municipalities, usufructory or use-oriented
property relations in municipalities, direct democratic policymaking in all areas of
social life, as well as a subjective and material transformation in human-nature and
human-human relations to erase hierarchy, are preconditions for such transition (Bookchin
1982).
Bookchin insists that if hierarchy and domination are the root causes of all social ills,
then a genuine transformation into an ecological, libertarian society must take aim at all
of their manifestations. Among primordial forms of domination is men's domination over
women, which grew organically, according to Bookchin, but then became institutionalised
into a perennial patriarchal domination. Building on Bookchin's social ecology, Biehl
(1991) concurred that this primordial form of domination must be destroyed along with all
others, and added that women must make use of their full potential by liberating
themselves from the trap of the oikos; that is, their domestic roles. While these
activities have naturally emerged in the form of childbearing and childrearing, women's
domination by men originates from women being exclusively associated with these roles. For
Biehl, rather than seeking an expanded oikos in the polis, women should actively engage in
liberatory politics in the polis (1991: 154), for 'humanity... has greater potentialities
than caring and nurturing' (1991: 26).
What most informed the KLM's view on women and their liberation, however, were Öcalan's
writings. Öcalan set the liberation of women as the precondition of the liberation of
society in general and the liberation of Kurds in particular. Drawing on Bookchin's
social-historical accountof patriarchal domination and hierarchy, Öcalan suggests that
women have the capacity and will not only to participate in and revolutionise the
democratic process, but also to create their own institutions to empower themselves. For
this purpose, he proposed the notion of Jineolojî, the science of woman and life, which
aimed to provide an alternative view of social reality from the perspective of self
definition and actualisationof woman in social life (Öcalan 2013).
Öcalan first familiarised himself with the work of Bookchin when he was serving a life
sentence on the prison island of Imrali in Turkey. Bookchin's work so fascinated Öcalan
that by 2005 he was steering the strategic orientation of the KLM towards democratic
confederalism (Jongerden and Akkaya 2013). Building on Bookchin's work, Öcalan saw
capitalism, the nation state and patriarchy as the root causes of all social and
ecological problems under conditions of capitalist modernity. A social revolution, for
Öcalan, must do away with these three elements of capitalist modernity and replace them
with democratic modernity.
Along with ethical and philosophical motivations, and his personal disillusionment with
Marxist and nationalist positions, one could reasonably claim that Öcalan's adoption and
adaption of Bookchin's perspective in the case of the KLM was partly due to long-term
strategic considerations that in great part stem from the Kurds' social and geographical
reality. Having been territorially dispersed among four states -Turkey, Iraq, Syria and
Iran - the Kurds have been fighting these states in a bid to gain independence or autonomy
in a federal system. If as nation states these four countries have been responsible for
all the Kurds' suffering, reasoned Öcalan, why would the Kurds want to establish yet
another source of domination? Democratic confederalism was the solution not only to the
problems of Turkey's Kurds, but also a larger blueprint for a democratic Middle East, a
region rife with conflict, suffering, oppression and poverty (Öcalan 2011).
3 History and conditions of possibility of the Rojava revolution
In the case of Syria, post-colonial statist development started with the Ba'athist regime
and its socialist experiment during the 1950s, intermittently removing the old class of
notables from power (Hourani 1981; Khoury 2003). With the opening, or infitah, of the
1970s, the elite composition changed and started to include the 'old bourgeoisie' again,
without, however, fundamentally altering the conditions of a rentier economy, including
all of its socio-political contradictions (Perthes 1991). None of these transformations
created the potential for change or the conditions for Kurdish emancipation (Perthes
1995). It was not until the breakdown of the Syrian regime in 2011, first politically and
then geopolitically, that such conditions arose. These have now established a considerable
remit of action for the armed Kurdish movement in the north of the country.
Historically, the Syrian Kurds were hostile to the Ba'thist regime, having repeatedly
experienced 'Arabisation' (Arab Belt policy) and marginalisation, which maintained the
region's underdeveloped agricultural status. Agricultural production was kept artificially
low yielding. It concentrated on producing staple food crops, especially wheat and beans,
underutilising a fertile area that had been deliberately developed as a 'bread basket',
using landless Kurds as cheap labour (Flach et al. 2015: 244). In the river valleys,
especially along the Euphrates, the regime's hydro-civilisational mission included
higher-yielding cultivation, settling Sunni Arabs where economic opportunities were higher.
The valleys are now mostly dominated by IS, providing it with food security and taxes.
Although all land has been subject to large-scale reform and nationalisation since the
Ba'athist socialist coup in 1963, the rural population in general and Kurdish landless
workers in particular have benefited very little from any of the developmental ambitions
of the rent-seeking Syrian state (Perthes 1994). However, rich Kurdish landlords, similar
to their counterparts in Turkey, were co-opted, becoming urbanised regime loyalists in the
process.
Neoliberal reforms opened Syrian markets to cheap imports, which undercut local production
and led to job losses and depressed wages. The overuse and degradation of land and water
resources also caused rural poverty. The resulting rural-urban migration led to a swelling
of Kurdish neighbourhoods in the larger cities. In Aleppo, in particular, rural migrants
started working in low-skilled and poorly paid jobs in catering or construction, while
property prices soared due to the inflow of capital. In reaction to the 2011 uprisings
that followed these drastically deteriorated social conditions, Assad initially planned to
implement political reforms, but could not in the face of the old Ba'athist militarist
regime, which clearly preferred violence, fuelling the armed rebellion in return. After
the structurally invested brutality of the regime escalated the conflict, the preceding
neoliberal reforms, having generated the revolutionary potential in the first place, were
frequently overlooked in favour of oversimplified conflict analysis through the prism of
'social media' (Howard and Hussain 2013) or 'climate conflict' (Werrel and Femia 2013).
Unsurprisingly, the Syrian Kurds were part of the uprising at an early stage, having
already suffered large-scale killings during the so-called 'Qamishli Revolts' (Gambill
2004; Noi 2012: 18) in 2004. In an attempt to limit the number of fronts it was engaged
on, the regime successfully appeased the Kurds by granting them unprecedented citizenship
rights. More importantly, having identified rebel groups that had formed around army
defectors, the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA), as the main enemy, the Syrian Arab Army
(SAA) in 2012 withdrew from the Kurdish majority areas in the north.
This tactical retreat was based on the idea that a poorly equipped Kurdish force would be
easily defeated and was thought to be tolerable as an interim placeholder, especially if
kept in check by opposing groups, notably IS. Exploiting its own geopolitical momentum, IS
went on to brutally occupy vast tracts of Kurdish majority areas in the north, reaching
the limits of its expansion in Kobanê during October 2015. Over time, however, the
fortunes of war changed, not only in favour of IS, but also the Kurdish People's
Protection Units (YPG) and associated Women's Protection Units (YPJ). All warring
insurgents were left with an array of weapons, some of them heavy. The Kurds even started
to get air support from the US-led anti-IS coalition, whereas the SAA became
overstretched, which motivated not only Iranian military support but also a last-minute
Russian intervention in 2015 and, increasingly, direct Turkish military action against
Syrian Kurdish forces and their allies in February 2016, using long-range artillery.
What appeared as a negotiated retreat by the regime also left the Syrian Kurds and their
relations with other opposition forces in dire straits, exacerbating a long-standing
distrust between the Kurdish and 'Arab', or Sunni population due to Ba'athist 'divide and
rule' policies. The YPG's acceptance of a de facto ceasefire offer from the regime
contributed to allegations that it has collaborated with the regime (Atassi 2014).
Although Rojava is not a regime priority for the moment, it shows little willingness to
accept de facto autonomy as an unintended consequence of a tactical retreat indefinitely,
as frequent skirmishes between the YPG and the remaining regime forces around the SAA
bases in al-Hasake and Qamishli make clear, as well as the barrel-bombing of YPG-held
areas in Aleppo.
Similarly, relations with the rest of the opposition are multifaceted. Cooperation with
the self-declared FSA units from the so-called 'Euphrates Volcano' (Burkan al-Firat)
coalition proved effective in and around Kobanê, whereas there is open hostility and
military confrontation between the YPG and a variety of FSA-labelled forces north of
Aleppo. It was in the context of the liberation of Kobanê from IS between October 2014 and
January 2015, that the US-led anti-IS coalition developed strong military cooperation with
the YPG and associated forces, whereby the YPG called in US airstrikes on military targets
it identified on the ground. Having consolidated this successful cooperation over 2015, it
led to an unprecedented campaign to recapture northern Syrian territory from IS. The most
recent iteration was the US-sponsored formation of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces
(SDF) in October 2015, which went on to occupy Tishrin Dam in December 2015, with the
active involvement of US special forces. The SDF is a multi-ethnic force under YPG
leadership, which continues to repulse IS in areas where Kurds are not the majority
population, to secure local support and to counter claims of Kurdish ethno-nationalist
territorial expansionism (e.g. Amnesty International 2015a, 2015b).
Naturally, the geopolitical position of a new and in many ways revolutionary social
formation in the complex environment of the Syrian civil war is difficult to summarise
concisely. It ranges from open battle with IS, enmity towards Turkey, and ambiguous
relations with the FSA and the regime, to a tactical alliance with the US and, more
recently, Russia. After Turkey shot down a Russian military jet over an alleged airspace
violation in October 2015, reports of Russian diplomatic and military support for Syrian
Kurdish forces emerged (Idiz 2016).
The origins of the uprising itself have conditioned the more intricate regional
geopolitics. From the start of the uprising in Der'aa in 2011, the Syrian opposition, with
a strong support base among the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, cultivated relations with Saudi
Arabia and Turkey. Turkey, in particular, identified the Brotherhood as an ideal vehicle
for its regional ambitions. The Alawite majority Syrian state class invited military
support from its historic allies, Iran, Hezbollah and, to a lesser extent, Iraq.
The wider regional confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which is frequently
couched in sectarian terms, also came to bear on the civil war. These rivalries are also
embedded in global geopolitical relations, with Russia and China opposing regime change,
whereas the West, and the US in particular, have clearly formulated Assad's departure as a
policy goal, by force if need be. This also informs their support for those forces in the
region and on the ground in Syria that share common goals.
A second defining regional element is Turkey and the northern Iraqi Kurdish Regional
Government (KRG)'s opposition to Rojava and its political and territorial-military
consolidation. As opposed to the process of Kurdish quasi-state-building in northern Iraq
(Natalie 2010), Rojava had vastly different socio-political conditions attached to its
emergence. They also follow different political visions, reflecting deeper divisions in
the Kurdish movement.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) dominate
KRG-controlled northern Iraq, competing for trans-regional Kurdish leadership with the PKK
(Natalie 2015: 148), which reflects not only geographical, but also political divisions
between the revolutionary Marxist-anarchist ideology of the PKK,(2) following the
political agenda of Öcalan and Bookchin, working towards sociopolitical transformation
and the hierarchical-tribal developmental ambitions of the KRG.
Although some of these deeper, historical and political differences have been temporarily
put aside during the joint struggle against IS (Gruber 2015), there are other core reasons
for the different developmental trajectories. First, after the 1991 Iraq invasion a long
process of Kurdish empowerment started with the help of no-fly zones and Western aid,
culminating in creation of the KRG. Unlike Rojava, this did not happen in isolation and
therefore bears the marks of more conventional pro-Western state-building (Soderberg and
Phillips 2015), having been subjected to a much stronger involvement of the international
community and its conventional vision of development, starting with the international
humanitarian relief operations in the wake of the 1991 US-led invasion and the
establishment of the no-fly zone.
This hierarchical, hydrocarbon- and, eventually, construction-dominated path under tribal
authoritarian rule is at odds with the Rojava model, and has led to Rojava's isolation,
while confirming Bookchin's assumptions about the socially corrosive effect of the oil
economy in the KRG's case. There is also a 'Turkish embrace' of the KRG leadership and
Turkey's insistence on a form of development in line with its anti-PKK geostrategic and
commercial interests, which centre on exporting Turkish construction business.
However, the most formidable geopolitical obstacle is probably Turkey itself at its own
current contradictory geopolitical conjuncture (Hoffmann and Cemgil 2016). Apart from a
general opposition to any Kurdish bid for autonomy or outright independence in any of the
neighbouring states, Turkey's own Kurdish peace process, which the ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP) initiated in 2013, broke down in the wake of a series of bomb
attacks on Kurdish party offices and rallies during the 2015 Turkish general election
campaign. In particular, a suicide bomb attack on pro-Kurdish youth in the border town of
Suruç on 20 July 2015, which killed 33 activists, led to the murder of two police
officers, allegedly at the hands of a PKK youth organisation. These events initiated a
renewed military campaign against the PKK in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq,
including intense urban clashes and the large-scale loss of civilian life.
In light of these Turkish domestic developments, initially favourable contacts between the
Turkish government and the PYD quickly turned into hostile relations, in line with
Turkey's domestic confrontation. After officially declaring both PYD and YPG 'terrorist
organizations' in 2015, Turkey launched a military campaign in February 2016 in response
to YPG's territorial advances in northern Aleppo province. In part because of domestic
Syrian-Kurdish politics, the KRG has closed ranks with its long-standing ally, maintaining
a de facto embargo over Rojava. Given that all regional US allies also oppose the
territory, it has somewhat curtailed open US military support for YPG and SDF forces.
4 Rojava's reality: a socialised polity and economy
Rojava comprises three cantons as administrative units: Cizîrê in the east, Afrîn in the
west and Kobanê in the middle. While Rojava takes theoretical and political inspiration
from Bookchin's work, this is not a case of a 'to the letter application' of a theory, for
much is determined by the reality on the ground. During the initial phases of the Rojava
revolution, first the FSA then IS controlled the territories between Cizîrê and Kobanê,
and Kobanê and Afrîn. This territorial non-contiguity partly explains the separate
organisation of these cantons.(3)
In line with the theories of, Bookchin and Öcalan, the Rojava Autonomous Administration
(RAA) went through a barrage of institution-building to implement democratic
self-administration and confederalism, a form of stateless democracy (Kolokotronis 2014),
without directly confronting nation states militarily. This involved the establishment of
the Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM), an umbrella organisation composed of
constituent groups in Rojava. However, the PYD is the prime mover and the socio-political
force behind the movement. Despite wartime conditions, the PYD sought to establish direct
democratic institutional mechanisms, especially at a local level, from neighbourhoods and
streets to the larger bodies in the cantons.
This attempt to socialise governance and politicise social life generated working
committees at local level that directly participated in decision making (Küçük and
Özselçuk 2016). These institutions are crucially based on a co-chair system, with one male
and one female filling all posts from the local to the confederation level. To ensure that
no professional political and military elites emerge, key positions are rotated unless
this poses an immediate risk. Furthermore, from neighbourhood to canton level, all-female
parallel institutions are established so that the deep-seated patriarchal patterns do not
disempower women, even in gender-equal settings, and women look for solutions to their own
problems and needs themselves.
Besides gender-egalitarianism, the RAA pays utmost attention to representing ethnic and
religious groups institutionally in the Rojava Constitution - called the Social Contract
of the Rojava Cantons - and in assemblies and committees, as well as canton governments.
The opening sentence of the Preamble of the Constitution reads: 'We, the people of the
Democratic Autonomous Regions of Afrîn, Cizîrê and Kobanê, a confederation of Kurds,
Arabs, Syriacs, Arameans, Turkmen, Armenians and Chechens, freely and solemnly declare and
establish this Charter.'(4) Notwithstanding this recognition of the multi-ethnic
composition of Rojava's population, interethnic relations remain tense. Decades of
hostility and mistrust among these different communities are not easily overcome,
especially considering the Ba'athist regime's forced displacement of Kurds alongside other
discriminatory practices that favoured Arabs.
The continuing transfer of social-administrative functions from the state to the society
has ensured the spread and reach of the democratic process. The judicial system is a case
in point. Inspired by Bookchin's abovementioned notion that justice is only a bad
replacement for freedom, the Rojavans created justice and peace committees to act on
behalf of neighbourhood assemblies - that is, the commune - to deliver 'social justice'
(Ross 2015). That the neighbourhood assemblies and peace committees act in a capacity
similar to courts of peace or first instance testifies to the expansion of the principles
of direct democracy to what one would usually consider technical matters.
Cases that these committees cannot resolve are referred to people's houses or women's
houses, whose function is to address the needs of the local population in areas ranging
from economic coordination to domestic violence. The high overall rate of case resolution
by committees, houses and assemblies indicates the penetration of this practice among the
population. More serious criminal offences, such as murder, on the other hand, are
referred to more institutionalised courts.(5) Despite these institutional advances over
the Ba'athist Mukhabarat (security intelligence)-led justice system, the RAA has faced
criticism for prolonged detentions and unfair trials (AI 2015a, 2015b).
Another state function that has been transferred to society is defence and security, both
internal and external. Responsible for external defence, the YPJ and YPG act as a people's
self-defence force rather than specialised military units detached from society. Their
members were initially recruited from the local population on a voluntary basis, and they
received basic training from more experienced armed members. In response to the more
forceful IS threat since 2014, the YPJ and YPG have become increasingly institutionalised,
and even introduced conscription.
Asayîs, or Internal Security, is responsible for internal policing and is also composed of
voluntary elements who report directly to neighbourhood assemblies. External and internal
security organs are not only staffed by the people themselves, but also report to their
democratic bodies unmediated by a representative state, which serves to 'unmake' the
state(Üstündag 2016) that, according to Bookchin, detaches these security institutions
from their social functions and from society.
Although militarisation may not usually be considered an emancipatory act, this unmaking
breaks the monopoly of a de-socialised state over means of legitimate violence, creating
the conditions of a re-socialised and democratised defences. This ensures that security
forces are not placed over and above the members of the society as bearers of authority;
rather, the compassionate and close relations between YPJ and YPG troops and the larger
population demonstrates the socialised nature of security (Üstündag 2016).
Socialisation of defence, however, has not been a smooth process. Amnesty International
(AI) strongly criticised the YPJ and YPG for razing the houses of people they suspected of
having helped IS and forcibly displacing them (AI 2015a), and the Asayîs for arbitrary
detentions (AI 2015b). The RAA countered that IS was operating in its territory, and
although it acknowledged wrongdoing by Kurdish forces, these were isolated and had to be
placed in the context of war against IS (AI 2015a).
The YPJ, as an all-female army, has also served to emancipate women in an otherwise
extremely conservative society where patriarchy is still a strong undercurrent in social
life, despite the huge steps the KLM has taken in Turkey and Syria. As paradoxical as this
may sound, and despite contrasting experiences in the US military and elsewhere (D'Amico
1996), crucial differences exist between the YPJ and the other instances of women taking
part in war-making. First, the most obvious reason is that by joining the YPJ (or PKK in
Turkey), women free themselves from patriarchal bonds and get control over their own
lives. The alternative for most would be to get married at a relatively early age and
suffer patriarchal domination for the rest of their lives.
Since the 1990s, when the KLM in Turkey saw the emergence of a strong Kurdish Women's
Movement that challenged and even transformed the KLM from within, Kurdish women
increasingly came to play important roles in public life, especially through the legal and
illegal organisations in the KLM, such as the pro-Kurdish, left-wing People's Democratic
Party (HDP) in Turkey, the PKK, and the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK), as well
as affiliated non-governmental organisations in Turkey.
Now this can be seen in Syria, as well, through ideological and political education.
Second, unlike the cases of the Israeli, US, Canadian or French militaries, where women
serve alongside men, in the case of the YPJ they are organised as a separate force with
female commanders. Where patriarchy is still a strong force in society, even the presence
of men in the same organisation with women may hinder the uncovering of the full potential
of women. Third, and in a more direct policing capacity, the YPJ fights directly for
women's rights; in the words of commander Nesrîn Abdalla:
Until now, armies were created exclusively by men with patriarchal thinking, so they had
only two tasks: to defend and win power. But we are an army of women... We do this not
just to protect ourselves, but also to change the way of thinking in the army, not only to
gain power, but to change society, to develop it... we had to organize ourselves properly
in order to deal with the feudal thinking (Sputnik 2016).
Along with the state, the market is seen as a major source of hierarchical social
domination (Cemgil 2016). Concurrent with the transfer of state functions to democratic
self-administration bodies, socially reproductive functions are also transferred to
society to ensure democratic control over the economy. This 'social economy', in turn, is
further democratised through decentralisation and cooperative production, avoiding
Soviet-style centralisation and state planning. As with the emergence of the overall
political project, geopolitical conditions determine the nature of socioeconomic
transformation.
Although the KRG-imposed embargo, political and economic isolation are major constraints
for the political economy of Rojava, which lead to shortages of goods - especially of
medicines - and increase prices, they can also be seen as an opportunity, facilitating the
transfer towards local, sustainable production. The decentralised assembly structures are
geared to react to the conditions of the embargo and relative isolation, maintaining food
security, public services and other basic needs using local, municipal governance
structures, generating what can be called 'economic communalism' through cooperatives. The
assemblies' economy commissions deal with all issues relating to production, and exist
alongside commissions for women, politics, defence, occupation, education at all levels of
the democratic self-administration (Biehl 2015; Ayboga 2014b). Nonetheless, the
necessities of a war economy have compromised the development of this social economy.
Although 'development' has partially been adopted as a discourse, overarching 'goals' such
as subsistence, autonomy, locality and sustainability remain core pillars of Rojava's
social economy, with cooperatives at the centre of this localised, 'subsistence-plus-x'
production, (Biehl 2015). Not entirely anti-market, price caps are nevertheless imposed as
an important tool to avoid food speculation and maintain subsistence (Yegin 2015). The
declared aim of this democratic economy is to keep surpluses within local communities,
maintaining the long-term ecological sustainability of production and democratised access
to resources over short-term exhaustion of resources for investor profit.
For the time being, the socialisation of land has been circumvented to avoid any form of
hierarchical enforcement as a practice. Despite this, there is a general ideological
tendency towards the socialisation of land, not least due to historically low Kurdish land
ownership in the region. Land, water and energy are seen as public goods, which
assembly-led municipalities manage and control (Flach et al. 2015: 258). Historical
circumstances have prevented a strong social contradiction, because the expropriation and
transformation of Syrian state land, which accounts for around 80 per cent of arable land
in Rojava, allows for plenty of scope for transformation towards cooperative structures
after the regime's departure made this land available. This not only follows ideology, but
also the need for crop transformation and diversification away from the large,
quasi-colonial, Ba'athist monoculture and monocrop production.
Parallel structures continue to coexist, nonetheless, with private companies, cooperatives
and assemblies all cooperating in the production process. Just as the national state and
local autonomy are meant to co-exist peacefully, so too are capitalist and cooperative
production: 'Private capital/property is not forbidden but it is put to work for the
communes/cooperatives' (Yilmaz 2014), complementing one another. Private landowners and
refinery owners charge commercial rates and the assemblies have no ambition to expropriate
those holdings, trying to integrate them into the current war economy instead. A question
remains over potential post-war collectivisation, however. Hence, the model is not
'anti-private property', but puts private property to communal use, bringing together
democratic self rule in democratic assemblies with company owners and members of the
relevant commissions (Biehl 2015).
Many large landowners were co-opted into the social and war economy, rather than
confronted. Conversely, their production is not export- and world market-oriented but
meets local demand in line with the requirements of the assemblies. This, then, also
constitutes a major difference compared to the Turkish-Kurdish regions, where Kurdish
feudal lords were co-opted into a regime of 'pacification through export-oriented
industrial agriculture' in southeastern Turkey, which was not ecological, and did not
provide secure employment or, from a 2016 perspective, peace. In Rojava, 30 per cent of
agricultural profits from cooperatives go to the assemblies for the maintenance of public
goods, while 70 per cent remain with the producing cooperatives, frequently made up of the
families of fallen fighters (Flach et al. 2015: 258). Individual families can only get
access to land in exceptional cases, avoiding the formation of landed vested interests.
While advantageous in terms of social transformation, specific challenges emerged from
being a peripheral, primary commodity producer, with little to no processing capacities,
located in non-Kurdish majority areas not under the control of Rojava, further west in the
country. Wheat could not be turned into flour, crude into diesel and so on. Some of these
issues have been addressed; for example, by building mills (Flach et al. 2015). Currently,
however, around 70 per cent of production goes into the war effort, making long-term
planning and the transition to a peaceful society difficult. Neither crops nor ownership
transformation are complete, despite the transformation having begun with the emergence of
Rojava in 2012; for example, by supplying seeds to newly formed cooperatives. In this
sense, the model gets closest to what Bookchin hoped any future ecological society would
have: a use-based or quasi-usufructory property regime.
Ideologically, as well as practically, the imperative for all production is Rojava's food
security, or better yet, food sovereignty. This requires, first and foremost, rapid
diversification and, at a later stage, crop rotation mechanisms as part of ecological
agriculture. Under the Ba'athist regime production was purposively kept low value and
dependent on industrial means, leaving most surplus value-adding processing to areas with
stronger loyalties to the regime in the south and west.
Agricultural production is regionally specific throughout the cantons, which presents
challenges to complete self-sufficiency. Whereas Cizîrê was historically forced to
specialise in food staples, Kobanê und Afrîn cultivated mostly olives and fruit. The
latter two have indeed achieved high levels of self-sufficiency, but in the fertile Cizîrê
region, artificially developed as a Syrian bread basket, parts of the former state lands
have been turned over to vegetable production for the local market. Food production beyond
subsistence levels, such as animal husbandry, is still underdeveloped and dependence on
imports persists, which allows importers to monopolise the market (Sulaiman 2015).
Other non-agricultural elements include craft (important for reconstruction), commerce and
manufacturing, organised in associations similar to guilds. This, typically, includes soap
and olive oil production, construction, textiles, shoes, marble quarrying, and
hospitality. Manufacturing remains decentralised, maintaining rural and semi-urban
livelihoods, as well as their non-industrial character. Unlike localised subsistence
agriculture, these sectors are most likely to develop an interest in ending their
isolation, because imports and exports are high risk and require payment of large bribes
to enemy forces.
Although much of Bookchin's work is dedicated to questions of urbanity and ecology,
property development has not taken on a central role in Rojava's economy so far, though
rebuilding, especially in Kobanê, has been considerable. The sector has started to evolve
in response to the demand for living space in the relatively peaceful Kurdish areas, and
increasing migration by non-Kurdish urban middle classes, especially from Aleppo into
Afrîn (Yilmaz 2014). The resulting price hikes were offset by a construction boom,
partially a consequence of lifting regime constraints on building height. An increase of
two storeys can now be done at relatively low cost and cooperatively. However, a lack of
available finance restricts construction.
Given that all borders of Rojava are in effect sealed, the de facto embargo also
encompasses access to financial markets and institutions. This also means, however, that
foreign direct investment cannot disrupt local organic and social ecological development.
Aid and donations from outside, partly from international solidarity networks,(6) but also
from wealthy Kurdish landowners in Turkey, still reach Rojava. Low-level finance is
nevertheless needed and village banks have developed, but finance capital and interest
charges are strictly banned, leaving Rojava as a primitive cash economy.
Despite the focus on local subsistence-level production, energy resources remain a
central, if potentially controversial resource in Rojava. Originally, the Syrian Kurdish
areas around Cizîrê accounted for 50-60 per cent of petroleum production; however, as with
wheat production, refineries in other parts of the country carried out processing. Like
water, Rojava considers all oil to be a public good. Cooperatives have been founded for
local diesel production, which is important for heating, transport, electricity
production, and not least military purposes.
It suffers, however, from the primitive methods used to refine the crude, which in turn
reduces the life spans of engines and generators. The demand for spare parts is difficult
to meet in an isolated economy. Although the Syrian Kurds have taken the greater portion
of oil wells from IS in eastern Rojava, the inability to refine oil in large quantities,
let alone to market it internationally, has led to environmental problems with oil spills
(Russia Today 2016). In the meantime, discussions on the future of oil exploitation
continue inside and outside of Rojava's self-governing structures. The discussion around
potential oil exports and revenue distribution, remains abstract as long as the realities
of the embargo persist. Developing a hydro-carbon economy would also be in direct
contradiction with Bookchin's social ecological thinking.
The discussion on how to implement the 'social economy' and its 'social ecological'
foundations is in full swing. It has partly been realised in the form of cooperatives
built on old state land, diversified production in Rojava, socialised oil profits and, in
turn, increasing levels of autonomy in line with the ideological foundations outlined
above and in reaction to the geopolitical realities of the KRG-imposed embargo. Much of
the social economy remains characterised by the necessities of the war effort though. For
example, military commanders, rather than assemblies, take some decisions to meet
short-term needs of units engaged in fighting. Not only does this consume ecological
resources, but the situation also allows 'old' structures to survive and may jeopardise
the project of social transformation.
5 Conclusion and outlook for Rojava
The constraints Rojava must contend with range from the embargo and open Turkish
aggression to the internal contradictions of potential hydrocarbon development. The
geopolitical conditions of Rojava's emergence are the defining contradiction this
conclusion focuses on. The territory's role in the anti-IS coalition and, subsequently,
the fallout from the confrontation between Russia and Turkey worked in the northern Syrian
Kurds' favour. However, this success itself, Rojava's more prominent geopolitical role,
and the continuation of a strong militarist element in its social experiment, which arose
out of necessity and ambition, could constitute a severe limitation to the territory's
success.
First, internally, even if a peace and accommodation of Syrian Kurdish autonomy were
reached, demobilising and transforming a society that has gained not only its freedom from
domination through military means, but which has also transformed itself under the
catalytic conditions of hierarchical militarism itself, will be major tasks. A central
contradiction in the project is that the main target of this attempted social
transformation, hierarchy, is also deeply wedded to the condition of its emergence through
a necessary militarisation under conditions of armed struggle. This is a general problem,
but also one that affects other core aims of the project, namely women's emancipation and
social ecology, which are wedded to the militarised processes of state formation.
Whereas women's emancipation hinges on their participation in the armed struggle as a
viable alternative to the continuation of patriarchy, the relationship between radical
democracy and ecology, well developed in Bookchin's theory, may be compromised by some of
the more conventional dynamics of state formation and development. In particular, the
promise of oil wealth beyond local consumption, generating cash flows through exports,
remains a potential breaking point, socially as well as ecologically. Reports of current
oil spills to maintain infrastructure are worrying signs in this regard. Even less radical
steps, such as organic farming, in the form of crop rotation and sustainable seed
policies, are compromised, in this case by the practice of domestic (petro)chemical
fertiliser production in the name of self-sufficiency, or food sovereignty at times of war.
If Rojava's assemblies are serious and wish to avoid not only the environmentally but also
socially destructive effects of hydrocarbon exploitation, use and rent-extraction, they
will have to leave considerable wealth in the ground to avoid the very hierarchies they
aim to destroy. During the current armed conflict, however, a hydrocarbon-based war
economy and mass food production are imperative. Those necessities of a society fighting
an existential threat coincide, if not clash, with the delicate task of generating a new
social project. In sum, the main condition that would allow Rojava to emerge (i.e. the
geopolitical conjuncture), is also potentially its most severe limitation, not so much
externally or territorially, but in terms of the process of its own social genesis.
Despite these potential breaking points, it is notable that this transformation is
happening in a region where there is little hope. Conventional diplomacy or even military
interventionism appear to be incapable of overcoming a structural crisis in the Middle
East and its inter-state, post-First World War order. The conflict lines have become more
than complex, leaving observers puzzled and policymakers contending with impossible
choices. The socio-political experiment of the Syrian Kurds and its practical implications
have mapped out the potential for transformation, if only in abstract terms. The social
reality of being elevated from landless agricultural workers to a military force that the
US and Russia support at the same time is nevertheless specific and historically
conditioned. In other words, the fertile ground forBookchin and Öcalan's ideas, namely the
absence of vested interests and historically grown power structures in the Kurdish
regions, is the result of years of deliberate under-development by various Ba'athist regimes.
These social conditions cannot be expected to exist in the same form elsewhere. Partly for
this reason, we are sceptical about the 'model' character of the Rojava revolution and the
potential for direct emulation elsewhere, although some of the progressive thinking on
democratic self-governance, ethnic inclusiveness, feminism and social ecology could
provide positive contributions to the discussions about the future of Syria and the Middle
East at large. Given the continued tendencies towards ethnic homogenisation and
hierarchical authoritarianism elsewhere in Syria and the wider region, the survival of
Rojava nevertheless provides therefore a glimmer of hope for victims of the political
breakdown of the modern Middle East.
Notes
1 In particular, see Bookchin (1982, 1986, 1987).
2 The PKK is one of many regional Kurdish parties committed to the radical democratic
objective of establishing democratic confederalism in Kurdistan. It is organised under the
Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK), an umbrella organisation that brings together the
PKK in Turkey, PYD in Syria, Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iran, and Kurdistan
Democratic Solution Party (PCDK) in Iraq, as well as numerous civil-society organisations.
3 It must be noted that when Tall Abyad (Girê Spî in Kurdish) was liberated from IS and
became an administrative unit of Kobanê, Cizîrê and Kobanê cantons became territorially
contiguous, though Afrîn remains isolated to the west of Kobanê, with IS- and Jabhat
al-Nusrah-controlled territories lying between. The SDF has been conducting operations
from Afrîn in a push to remove Al-Nusrah elements in-between.
4 For a full English translation of the Constitution of the RAA see Çiviroglu (2014).
5 A comprehensive description of the Rojavan justice system can be found in Ercan Ayboga
(2014a).
6 Given the highly effective embargo regime, conventional donor communities do not provide
aid. Private anarchist, left-wing, but also liberal-humanitarian organisations provide
financial and sometimes also direct physical help with the reconstruction effort. For
example, see Plan Cwww.weareplanc.org/blog/rojava-solidarity-clusteropening-statement/.
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