Today's Topics:
1. France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #300 - Health: The
ball of corporatism will not slow down the fight ! (fr, it,
pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. cnt-ait: METHODS OF STRUGGLE - ANARCHOSYNDICALISTS TACTICS
(fr) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Czech, AFED: Kawakami rice No. 5 / Raw zine No. 4 -- Review
on split of two Pilsen zines [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Greece, Anarchic-Antiauthoritarian Stage ANTIPNOIA:
CONCENTRATION - WAR against state repression, police brutality
and the Exarchate occupation By APO [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. CNT- Ser Foundation: We are still growing! (ca) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. awsm.nz: Rojava after Rojava (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
The inter-hospital coordination, dominated by doctors and heads of service, would like to prevent the convergence of hospital struggles with
the whole world of work. Unionists and wrestling collectives must counter this reluctance from another age. ---- After several months of
strike in the emergency services and the multiplication of local movements, the big meeting of November 18 was expected in all the hospital
world. A large inter-union, student associations and several collectives called for a day of strike. ---- And it was a real success, with
massive rallies all over France. In Paris, around 15,000 people demonstrated, a record since the Bachelot law in 2007. We noted the
participation of non-medical staff, but also a reinforced presence of the medical profession and medical students, which is exceptional .
Reinforced by this success, the Inter-hospital Collective (CIH) brought together several hundred people for a general assembly that same
evening. This CIH, created in the dynamics of the Inter-emergency Collective (CIU) [1], is very involved by doctors and heads of
departments. He would like to appear as a spokesperson for the entire hospital world ... but the GA demonstrated that it was irrelevant.
Refusal to call for action day of December 5
Too heavy, too moderate. At the GA, some of its members accused " the unions " of " planting the CIH by wanting to take Macron down " .
Tension arose between these supporters of a medical corporatist movement extended to paramedics, and the partisans of a social movement
including all the hospital staff in connection with the rest of the working world. The latter - unionists and collectives - found themselves
in the minority at the GA.
Finally, the CIH refused to call to join the interpro action day of December 5. Big disappointment for all those who hoped that this
exciting November 18 would find its extension in a wider movement.
It is a new illustration of a disastrous corporatism. From college to the establishment medical commissions, when it is not the student
corpos, it is the hierarchical pressures that isolate the doctors from the rest of the working world. However, progressive doctors, attached
to the defense of the public hospital and registered in the social movement, are not rare. But their word is often marginalized, and their
career sometimes hampered. The same is true for certain unions of practitioners. Fortunately, collectives such as the Printemps de la
psychiatrie or the CIU manage to bring together doctors and other hospital staff.
Hopefully, in the coming weeks, all of the employees, students will unite by blowing up the corporate locks. It would also be the role of
general unions to more easily accommodate doctors who so wish.
A clarification will be required on the nature of the CIH: is it a collective among others, or a coordination of establishments in struggle
? If the CIH wants to arise in coordination, it will be necessary to seriously review the terms of mandate ! In the meantime, the unions and
collective wrestlers maintain a common front with the CIH by calling for common dates and joining the interprofessional movement ! Leading
the two is the best way to win !
Solow (UCL Paris northeast)
[1] " In the emergency room: The return of strikers' coordination ? " , Alternative libertaire, July-August 2019.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Sante-Le-boulet-du-corporatisme-ne-freinera-pas-la-lutte
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Message: 2
A text from the French CNT-AIT written in March 2006, covering anarcho-syndicalist tactics and strategy. ---- The following text was written
to help people discover, remind themselves or popularize the various syndicalist methods of struggle because in any battle, one must start
from a few key ideas: ---- Hitting the enemy harder than they can hit you, or better - hitting them so they can't hit back. ---- Analysing
the power balance: ---- -How great are our numbers ---- -How much other workers and the general population will sympathise with or reject
our struggle ---- -What are our financial constraints, ie. financial and material resources available to continue the fight ---- Avoiding
exhaustion: fighting too arduously from the start can be a weakness: the employers are prepared to overcome short term difficulties by
transferring production, resuming production in other places, maintaining stocks, using scabs, financial reserves, etc.
Knowing how to stop a fight, avoiding fighting to the end when the situation is unfavourable. A continued minority occupation of a business
ends up offering the boss discontented people who can he can turn against the strikers. Wages lost become so great that resuming a struggle
becomes difficult. Disillusionment makes mobilisation harder.
Allowing for a return to the struggles or demands.
Analysing the history, strategy, and objectives of the forces in play: Bosses/workers: (moderate or hardline employers, combative or passive
employees) Organisation/struggles (whether the unions are weak or radical, if the fights benefit from autonomous experience etc..)
---The fights are defined by the employment category, territorial extent or by their content.---
Employment category: struggles of unskilled workers, skilled workers, postal workers or nurses, white collar workers, teachers, technicians
etc ... called sectional struggles. If the struggle involves the entire company or institution and deals with claims for all staff, the
struggle is industrial.
Territoriality: if the struggle takes place in one particular location of a business, it is a local fight. Example: Visteon.
A fight at the group level is located in several places but within the same company: Example: the postal strikes.
The struggle may be in a sector or industry: examples: the health sector or education sector. The struggle can take place in all business
lines and sites.
Content: content of the struggle can be material (wages, pensions, working conditions hours, health and safety), political (changing a law,
a critique of anti social policy, gaining new union rights, the formation of worker counter-power within a company...) It can also of course
combine the two aspects: for example the simplification and standardisation over grades and qualifications in a given industry. This
material claim allows the unification of workers in the same industry and thus open the prospect of larger struggles.
The fight may also simply be held in solidarity with other struggles.
http://blog.cnt-ait.info/post/2019/12/21/METHODS-OF-STRUGGLE-ANARCHOSYNDICALISTS-TACTICS
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Message: 3
It is necessary to support the wine production, especially when you are so loyal to the reader that you have it with home delivery. But
don't worry, it's not another import service, as is common with food and shopping today. This is just a reflection of a well-functioning
local hc / punk community where friends respect that everyone does not have to have a facebook where there is "everything" today and let you
know through other channels that they are hosting a concert or have released another zine issue. ---- I still found it strange that in
Pilsen people from a de facto one party issue more zines. I have always been a supporter of rather collective actions, as they refine the
practice of cooperation, joint decision-making and responsibility to others. And that is more than necessary. And as if I might have
summoned it by my thoughts, Kawakami rice zinc and Raw zine came out in November. The former is the fifth issue and the second is the
fourth, but according to the editorial, typically called Epitaph, it also looks like the last. In my opinion, however, there is no need to
be sad, the very end of Troy's work in the zinc world will certainly not be, and certainly we will ever read something from him again, even
if on the pages of another zine. And maybe it is just that step to make a hc / punk magazine created in Pilsen by several people who are
already very close to each other. And it doesn't matter who finally cuts and sticks, as well as how many paragraphs they stick twice.
And as we stand over the tomb of Raw Zine , dug three years after the last issue, let's start from it. But before we get to the text, I
would like to point out great full-page collages on the themes of life in capitalism, surveillance, political "representation", social
networks or consumerism. So: a few nutritious memories of 2010; a trip to Ukraine where you often have no idea whether hospitality is not
just a way to frighten you; report from the 13th annual anti-nationalist DIY hc / punk festival in Dresden; the biography of the Barrel
band, which by its existence irradiated us in the years 2007-2013, even with a "band pedigree" a story of how the Nazis met bad at the
Napalm Death Pilsen concert; one page about the activities of the Czechoslovak castration program.
If I have to write more than five words about something, then it is a summary report "Once upon a time: garage". Stories of one garage on
the outskirts of Pilsen, more precisely reports from concerts that took place in 2015-2018, including beneficial events for the Refugee Fund
of the autonomous social center Klinika, the aforementioned Czechoslovak castration program or Fousky, an association caring for abandoned,
abused and ill cats. And believe that not exactly negligible amounts were collected. Often these benefits are preceded by a benefit run, so
even a little bit of sport into the punk. There is a barbecue and other delicacies, sometimes distra, and when it comes to it, you can
listen to the garage among them a lecture. Although I was preparing several times, I was "in the garage" only once. And I have to admit, I
had a very nice feeling that this was punk as it should be, 100% DIY
Let's turn the workbook and look at the remaining two-thirds of the pudding that they put together by Lazy Cuns and Asta. He warned me that
I might not like the introduction, which promotes the position that everyone should rather start riding alone. But when reading the whole
zine it does not sound so clear. The inherent crust misanthropy here is mixed with systemic criticism, an appeal to local activities and the
message that, like having positive attitudes and doing something for them, it is also necessary to enjoy life here and now.
The issue opens an article on punk in Indonesia describing the events in Aceh in 2011, when about 700 punks were arrested and dragged to the
"cleansing camps". Describing how the de facto pro-system Punk Muslim began to come to the floor after the fall of dictator Suhart in 1998,
I incidentally remembered a couple of former acquaintances who had started punk as a commune to eventually become trouble-free for the
system conservatives and ultra-rightists. On the other pages of state terror, we will remain, just move to Russia to follow the fate of
anarchists and anti-fascists, which the Network case seeks to repress the authorities using various types of torture to identify as
dangerous terrorists. Asta very aptly complements her own observations from a short stay in the land of Tsar Vladimir. Here comes a thought
about the protests against Babis, which are found to be rather superficial when they beat most into its pre-revolutionary past. What matters
is the current situation and how it happened. The author's proposal to prevent economic elites from influencing politics is, consequently, a
proposal to abolish capitalism and bourgeois democracy as we know it.
From politics to culture: interviews with the band Kosy Gen from Beroun, with Linda singing in Kibera, with Mary yelling at Lakka,
publishes Mazineriaand organizes zinfesty in Eternii, or with the band Vicious X Reality from Poland. Do not worry, the interviews are not
only about music, but also about attitudes and non-musical activities. Reports follow to maintain order. The first is the European tour of
the bands Disavoir Vivre and Punctuation, where I was pleased to always dedicate space to the description of the places they performed and
the activities that normally take place there. Followed by reports from foreign concerts, which both zine publishers visited together, as
well as a demonstration against fox hunting, which they hit (as the demonstration) in Edinburgh. And to make it seem that nothing is
happening at home, there is a description of a Pilsen protest against the circus with animals. And if you have a few of these, there are a
few readable travel reports. It reads nicely when someone's legs hurt. So:
And at the very end of the review of the recordings and books, where I was pleased to find an assessment of the publication Anarchy Works by
Peter Gelderloos.
Any word at the end? It has already been said at the beginning: Support those who issue zines, concerts and benefit events in your area. Or
even better: get involved according to your abilities and possibilities.
Kawakami rice No. 5 / Raw zine No. 4. 108 tent A4, 130 CZK. Piste na trojka007[a]seznam.cz.
https://www.afed.cz/text/7085/kawakamiho-ryze-c-5-raw-zine-c-4
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Message: 4
¡NO MARKET!: ---- Open Assembly Wednesday 18/12 in view of PORIAS against police brutality ---- THURSDAY 19 DECEMBER 2019, EXCHANGE SQUARE,
6 PM ---- "Blood is spilled and it is not collected. I do not live in fear, nor in hatred. My hatred is class, it comes from the way I
perceive the world. I live by the phrase that girl said, "Don't be afraid, we'll go together." It is redemptive, it contains no promise that
everything will go well, but a commitment that whatever we do will go together. " ---- Yannis Kafkas, December 8, 2019 ---- SOLIDARITY,
DIGNITY AND CIVILIZATION WILL RELIEVE THE STATE REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN AND LONG-TERM POWER POLICY ---- WHEN ROADS ARE INCLUDED WITH COMPETITIVE
PEOPLE, FEAR CHANGES ARMATURE
The massive mobilizations of solidarity in the occupations and the memory and resistance 11 years after the murder of A. Grigoropoulos and
the outbreak of the social uprising, which took place on December 5 and 6, 2019 in Athens and in dozens of cities around the country, were
important milestones of the struggle. the last period against the repressive campaign of the state. Thousands of anarchists and a broader
base of militants have defied state terrorism that is being attempted through constant attacks on the struggle world and its self-organized
structures, evacuations of political and housing squads, violent exile and family repression. their imprisonment in desolate and isolated
concentration camps, the daily regime propaganda of the media,
Against this treaty, the state attempted to enforce terror by attacking the neighborhood of the Exarchates on the night of December 6 by
adopting an occupation tactic, treating the demonstrators and the demonstrators, the inhabitants, and their internal hostages. area as
hostile territory. So as soon as the march reached the monument of A. Grigoropoulos on Mesologgiou Street to commemorate his memory, and
after the police forces first cut most of it so that thousands of protesters could not reach the point, they unleashed a rally. they were on
the streets hitting, torturing, capturing and further systematizing a practice that attempts to humiliate those who fall into their hands,
with the public outrage and deterrence of the sexist bullying and perversion of fascist cops. This tactic had been repeated in Exarchia on
November 17 with the brutal beating and injury of dozens of people simply in the area, as well as on November 7 where the coffee shop in
Exarchia Square was besieged for hours and tortured after his unjust arrest. C., while there are daily cases of verbal assaults and bullying
by MAT cops who have camped in the neighborhood against women, youth and in general anyone who moves on the streets.
It is a central state policy of instilling fear in the population by striking the most vibrant and militant part of society and establishing
an "exemption regime" openly reproduced by fully regulated media regimes to serve as exemplars. Also moving in this direction are the
statements by fascist officials of state officials on the "necessity of state violence" to enforce the "law and order" doctrine and the
official cover of police brutality by the public order minister who gave the green light the continuing killing of security forces against
those who resist state and capitalist barbarism paving the way for a new John, for a new Alexander,
For our part, as an open kinetic process of solidarity in the structures of struggle and social and class resistance, having been on the
road lately with thousands of other fighters we are joining our voices with all the people exasperated in front of police brutality and
appealing to all exploited and oppressed to stand up with dignity to the ideological and repressive attack of the state and the bosses, to
collectively defend the right of the social and -economic struggles to break bulk and combat terrorism of the state on the road, at work,
school, schools, neighborhoods, putting a barrier to the murderous violence.
Let us not boast of the right-handed rattles of power to oppress society, and its left crutches for subjugation, fear, integration and
delegation that can be produced by the police boot. In this society that a few years ago, the uprising of '08 and the great mobilizations of
2010-12, there are new December worries. In the desires of the below for the right, in the small and large resistances that develop daily,
and in the racing experiences that transcend the institutional boundaries of protest and entrapment in the association of systemic political
forces, in the formation, participation and mobilization of social media - fronts of resistance, in the hearts and minds of young fighters,
CONCENTRATION - ROAD
against state repression, police brutality and the Exarchate occupation
THURSDAY 19 DECEMBER 2019, EXCHANGE SQUARE, 6 PM
SOLIDARITY TO ALL THE PRESIDENTS OF DECEMBER 6, 2019 AND ALL THOSE WHO TREATED POLICE BARBARITY
SOLIDARITY IN DESTINATIONS, IN SOCIAL AND CLASSICAL RESISTANCE AND IN THE WORLD OF THE RACE
¡NO MARKET!
Anarchic-Antiauthoritarian Stage "ANTIPNOIA ' , occupation LELAS KARAGIANNI 37 , Capture Property proceedings / Immigration NOTARA 26 ,
Squat for Refugees / Migrants Spirou Trikoupi 17 , TAXIKI tried (Anarchists and Communists Group), Anarchist Student Meeting ARODAMOS ,
R * Vox Busy Social Center , Anti-fascist-Antiauthoritarian Assembly of N. Ionia - Heraklion , Comrades and Comrades
http://apo.squathost.com/
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Message: 5
From the CNT Trade Union Section in SER Foundation we inform you that on December 5, 2019 the CNT Trade Union Section has been legally
constituted in the SER Foundation in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria . ---- The first thing we want to do is congratulate all the workers for
taking this step forward and organizing from CNT for the improvement of their working conditions. Undoubtedly, the legal constitution of the
Trade Union Section in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria with a strong implementation only reinforces the existing one, making it present in all
the services of the SER Foundation. These Trade Union Sections will work together in their union work, from Las Palmas and Madrid, to
achieve their objectives. ---- We take this opportunity to encourage the rest of the workers of the SER Foundation to join CNT, which has
not yet done so, since the greater the membership, the greater the implementation and therefore the collective representativeness of the
staff at the SER Foundation.
"the struggle is the only way"
Contact: seccionsindicalfser@comarcalsur.cnt.es
Union section in the Ser Foundation
https://fcs-villaverde.cnt.es/19-cnt-fser-creciendo/
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Message: 6
Turkey's attack on Rojava forced the SDF to choose between its own survival and protecting Kurdish territories, putting the future of the
revolution at risk. ---- used to have this daydream. Back in 2015 I pictured myself in a free Rojava, perhaps as a teacher in a decolonized
critical theory school with colleagues who fought in the Syrian civil war and led the feminist revolution in Rojava. ---- In this dream my
students and I read Abdullah Öcalan together and argued fiercely but comradely over the future of the revolution. Beyond the classroom's
windows, I could see Afrin's mountainous landscapes. ---- In this dream, I would occasionally think back on the friends and lovers, credit
cards companies and well-intentioned racists, and even the meaningless jobs and alienated citizens of the capitalist metropolises that I had
left behind forever.
In this dream I had no regrets.
By 2015 the revolution in Rojava had withstood the test of time and averted catastrophe, despite all odds stacked against it. Many leftists
and revolutionaries across the globe had come to view it as an enduring, Middle East-changing, radically democratic political alternative.
The legendary People's and Women's Protection Units (the YPG and YPJ) had driven the forces of the Islamic State (ISIS) out of Kobanî with
the help of coalition air support.
The staunch and militant feminist-anarchist experiment was forging ahead. Internationalist volunteers were traveling to the region to help
with the ecological projects and join the escalating war against ISIS. Rojava was no utopia but it persisted in a time out of time like few
other places.
After ISIS was forced out of Rojava, the late 2015 transformation of the YPG into the United States-sponsored Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)
heralded the beginning of a new era, one that culminated in removing ISIS from its last bastion in Baghuz in early 2019. By then Turkey and
its jihadi proxies had invaded Afrin; its local YPG forces were not part of the US-SDF agreement and could not defend the area on their own
against NATO's second largest army.
Elsewhere in Rojava, the grassroots work of the ecological and women's movements carried on, but, as witnessed during the defense of Afrin,
the revolution's political and strategic decision-making was increasingly centralized in the SDF and according to the priorities of its
cooperation with the US. Retooled and rebranded to wage war against ISIS, the SDF's rise to dominance coincided with the reproduction of
state institutions inside anti-state Rojava, in order to meet the logistical demands of a historic military campaign that no other force in
the region had the will to carry out.
With Turkey's attack on Rojava in October of 2019 came the risk that the SDF would choose its own institutional survival over the core
mission of defending the revolution's original enclaves along the Syria-Turkey border. The Americans had exploited Turkish phobias as well
as the SDF's strengths and weaknesses as a vanguard political class to force it into this double bind. The dream of a free and autonomous
Rojava was in danger.
THE ROJAVA (COUNTER-)REVOLUTION
The formation of the SDF was in part a response to Turkey's role in sponsoring the rise of ISIS as a proxy to eliminate the Kurdish
populations in northern Iraq and Syria. Until then, the US had sponsored an inefficient and anti-Kurdish Syrian opposition and was in no
rush to change course. After the Russians entered the Syrian civil war in 2016, the Americans could no longer afford to back a losing side.
The SDF's plan was to eliminate ISIS in its entirety in order to nullify Turkish efforts to use the group as an anti-Kurdish proxy in the
region. If Turkey was to attack Rojava from the north and ISIS resurged from the south, the consequences would be catastrophic. ISIS control
over the oil-rich Deir ez-Zor province in eastern Syria also bankrolled the group's armies in Iraq and Syria.
However, the necessities of this offensive required further militarization of society and the economy, and the centralization and
consolidation of strategic decision-making power in military organs connected to the US, i.e. the SDF. This new status raised the security
profile of the YPG, the leftist and majority Kurdish backbone of the SDF, which Turkey deems "terrorists."
Turkey exploited the pretext of alleged "Kurdish domination" in northern Syria and executed a multi-step containment strategy to dissect,
isolate and eliminate Rojava's autonomy.
Turkey's offensive began in 2016 with the expansion of Operation Euphrates Shield into north Syria to separate the cantons of Afrin and
Kobanî. The occupation and ethnic cleansing of the isolated Afrin canton followed in 2018. The September 2019 "safe zone" agreement between
Turkey and the Trump administration envisioned a 30 kilometer-deep, 120 kilometer-wide strip at the Rojava-Turkey border "cleared" of the
YPG and its defense structures. This zone separates the cantons of Kobanî and Jazira.
Weeks later, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan climbed the podium of the United Nations General Assembly and promised to resettle the
three million Syrian refugees currently residing in Turkey in this zone. The SDF responded by ceding a strategic five-kilometer stretch of
the proposed "safe zone" to Turkey as a buffer area, but this compromise only led to a temporary and staged withdrawal of the US military
from northeast Syria. With its defenses dismantled, the YPG was in no position for a sustained resistance across the border, against common
US and Turkish interests in Syria.
The following week the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and its jihadi mercenaries embarked on a campaign of bombing and looting towns and
villages in Rojava, displacing 400,000 people in the process. So far, 350 civilians have been killed and countless more wounded. Shortly
after the fall of the key border towns of Serê Kaniyê (Ras al-Ayn) and Geri Spi (Tell Abyad), SDF commander Mazlum Abdi brokered the
surrender of Rojava to the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Assad's Syrian Arab Army (SAA) moved into areas under attack and together with the SDF they defended the north for a few days until Mike
Pence brokered a "ceasefire" deal in Ankara. The US-Turkey agreement ordered the SDF to retreat 30 kilometers from the border and was
violated from the get-go through Turkish chemical warfare. The SDF retreated from the border per instructions and resumed calls for the US
to stay in Syria. Erdogan then agreed on another permanent ceasefire, this time with Vladimir Putin. Shortly after, the Americans returned
to northern Syria after a hiatus spanning the time between the first Turkish attack and the Russian brokered ceasefire. In facilitating the
piecemeal surrender of Rojava to Assad and Turkey, the US had managed to severely undermine the autonomy of the only leftist administration
in the Middle East in just two weeks.
Rojava found itself in this situation because the US foreign policy strategy of both Trump and Obama before him was to craft a careful
counterrevolution in Rojava. Arming and transforming the SDF into an "anti-ISIS" instrument was central to this atrocious strategy. The
alliance with the SDF enabled the US to become a powerbroker in Syria, with less than 1,000 American "boots on the ground." Once the
Americans set up bases anywhere in the world, as they did in 21 different locations in Rojava, not a single army in the world can muster up
the audacity to force them out. The specter of an empowered SDF also served as an American stick to contain and steer Turkey's pivot to
Russia. The SDF's growing power alarmed the Turkish army's top brass increasingly and prioritized militancy over diplomacy in Rojava.
This vicious cycle ultimately forced the SDF into a decisive war with Turkey. The Americans' last options were always going to be between
sponsoring Rojava's reintegration into Syria at the expense of US interests (a nonstarter) and guaranteeing Rojava's independence from Syria
(a nonstarter for Turkey). This was a contradiction that the US cultivated and harvested because Turkey could better serve American
interests in the region after it sidelined the SDF, because the Americans were never going to withdraw from Syria and never planned to lose
key ground in Syria to the Russians either.
Indeed, during the week of the Turkish invasion Washington think tanks murmured quietly about the inevitability of the SDF's retreat to a
region south of Rojava - the Arab-majority area known as the middle Euphrates river valley. Things did not go as planned, but once the US
foreign policy machine had fully reacted to the SDF-Assad pact, a so-called reverse course strategy was drawn up (as plan B) to push the
revolutionary SDF to reconstitute itself as a Kurdish-led, Arab-majority proxy in the middle Euphrates river valley. While initially
refusing this role, the SDF eventually decided that a US presence in the middle Euphrates river valley would counterbalance Russia and
Assad's newfound foothold in Kurdish Rojava.
With its defense forces exiled from Rojava and resettled for now in predominantly Arab eastern Syria, the fate of the revolution in Rojava
after the SDF's de facto banishment from Rojava hangs in the brute balance of imperialist interests.
THE DOMINO EFFECT
As I write, demographic engineering of the Turkish-occupied "safe zone" is well underway. The regime forces and Russian military police
patrol the enclaves of Kobanî and Qamishli on either side of the zone. Per Trump's tweets, the Americans are "securing the oil" as a
smokescreen for securing the Syria-Iraq border and obstructing Russia's land access to Iraq and the Gulf region. Iran, Iraq and Lebanon are
shaking with protests and the Iran hawks are hedging their bets in Syria, which is Iran's land bridge to Lebanon and Israel. Maintaining
this land bridge also enables Iran to mobilize its interlinked regional proxies for different aims, such as the coup against the 2017
independence referendum in Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
Withholding oil revenues from Damascus through supervising Trump's so-called petroleum venture serves as the SDF's double-edged sword for
securing its own and Rojava's future. Because Assad needs oil to reconstruct Syria after the civil war, he will be tactful with rolling back
freedoms in the Kurdish areas that are now under his control again. And if he does not play along, the SDF might clone the US-sponsored
autonomy of the KRG, this time in Syria's middle Euphrates river valley.
On the downside, the SDF is more reliant on the Americans than ever. The US and France are pushing the SDF to improve relations with the
neoliberal Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in charge of the KRG. The idea is to re-functionalize economic and logistical supply lines
through Iraq, in exchange for giving the Kurdish National Council (ENKS), the KDP's Syrian sibling, a role in the administration of areas
surrendered to Assad. The KDP and ENKS are on good terms with both the US and Turkey and will work to roll back the radical aspects of the
revolution in Rojava to appease all concerned parties.
The loss of Rojava was also bad news for the Kurdistan Workers Party's (PKK) headquarters in the Qandil Mountains in northeast Iraq, because
it meant a restriction of their access to escape routes and recruiting grounds in Kurdish Syria. The Turkish army has been gearing up to
finish off the PKK's old guard and liquidate its check on Erdogan's hostility toward the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the political wing
of the Kurdish resistance movement in Turkey. Without the PKK's armed specter, the HDP's minoritarian parliamentary politics will not last
long in Turkey's militarized, pan-Turkist, and increasingly religious democracy. Choosing between survival and irrelevance, Qandil ditched
its earlier position against the Syrian Kurds ceding their lands to the occupiers and even toned-down its understandable hostility toward
its old right wing nemesis, the KDP.
All in all, it appears that the leftist Kurdish resistance movement is cornered by imperialism, at least for the time being. The SDF will
retain its numbers by working with the US and postpones a definitive settlement with Assad. Maintaining American presence in the middle
Euphrates river valley prolongs the deadlock in north Syria and enables the SDF to retain the control of Syria's border with Iraq, in order
to force the possibility of ending the war with Turkey on the SDF's terms. The PKK may leverage the borrowed time and wiggle room to
encourage a peace process in Turkey.
If the SDF times the Americans' eventual exit from Syria with shifting its allegiance to the Russians, it might be able to extend its
lifeline as a proxy force in central Syria and keep both Assad and the ENKS from meddling too much in Rojava. Signs of recent rapprochement
with the Russians are encouraging, but making such a transition is difficult for reasons that follow later in this analysis.
One way or another, the revolutionary phase in Rojava has come to an end because the SDF opted to retain its military institutions, as
opposed to mounting a decisive resistance against the Turkish-led invasion. Four years into the era of Rojava's war against ISIS I mourn the
loss of Kurdish land and yet another displacement of the Kurds. I mourn the revolutionaries I admired and civilian lives lost to the daily
violence of Turkey's settler-colonial scheme. I mourn a daydream that no longer comforts me. Abandoning Kurdish land and people is not in
the spirit of a Kurdish resistance movement and the SDF has confronted its revolutionary base with a fait accompli.
However, it is in such moments that there is a choice to be made between abandoning a dream and fealty to an event of Rojava's magnitude.
With two imperialist forces as watchdogs and with the likes of Assad and ENKS as rivals, I see a resilient and civilian praxis of dual power
as the radical way forward for saving the utopian remnants of the revolution in Rojava. The SDF is instrumental to safeguarding these
remnants in this context - if it evolves to become more than the revolution's military command.
In order to envision this radical future we must take a detour through the Rojava revolution's origins in the early years of the PKK and the
thought of Abdullah Öcalan or "Apo," as he is affectionately known by his followers, the movement's intellectual uncle and strategic mastermind.
PLAYING THE GRAMSCIAN GAME
The Kurdish resistance movement is marked by the contradiction that, as Gramsci put it in The Prison Notebooks - The Modern Prince,
"whatever one does one is always playing somebody's game." In view of this inevitability Gramsci advises: "The important thing is to seek in
every way to play one's own game with success." The YPG and SDF's forebears in the PKK turned Gramsci's motto into political artistry, in
order to lay the foundations of their political hegemony in the four corners of Kurdistan.
For example, women were part in the founding of, and fighting for the PKK. But in addition to empowering women, the recruit of women into to
the PKK's ranks was to recognize patriarchy as an obstacle to the political success of the organization. The Turkish military armed and
co-opted conservative Kurdish tribes in its war against the PKK, and since guerrilla war against Kurdish tribalism could not be avoided, the
feminists in the PKK deployed women's emancipation as a tool of destroying Kurdish tribalism, which had traditionally placed women at the
bottom of the tribal hierarchy. Kurdish patriarchy prevented political recruitment and the military hegemony necessary for the emergence of
a new society in which women would take part equally. Ethical and effective organization fused in this savvy strategy.
Fast-forward to 2015, when the women of the PKK and YPJ liberated the Yezidis enslaved by ISIS in Iraq's Shingal. The battle itself, the
grief of the guerrillas upon arriving in Shingal, and the Yezidi women's joy after liberation is the stuff of legends. But by expelling ISIS
from Shingal, the YPG regained control of highways in Iraq that served as major supply routes to ISIS strongholds in Syria. And with this
control also came the ability to circumvent the Turkish commercial embargo on Rojava, which Turkey exerted through commercial highways
controlled by its unholy ally, the KDP. In other words, at one stroke the YPG-PKK tandem liberated the Yezidis from ISIS and Rojava's
economy from its Turkish yoke. This ingenious strategy provides, in theorizing a revolutionary Kurdish realpolitik, a blueprint that is
equally moral and strategic.
The danger in this Gramscian game is that one might become too prone to playing another's game. The 2015 formation of the SDF was
characterized by a systematic and celebrated inclusion of Arab, Armenian and Syriac forces, among others, alongside the mainly Kurdish YPG.
In June 2019, local SDF military councils were set up all over northeast Syria to decentralize its defense forces, in what appeared to be a
second revolution in Rojava. Like all other PKK-YPG stratagems there was, behind the SDF's genuine ethical pluralism, a clever and long-term
political move.
Months later, once the Syrian army and Russian military police were deployed in Rojava after the Turkey-Russia ceasefire, it was apparent
that Putin and Assad were exercising uncharacteristic patience with continued SDF presence in these areas. They acted with restraint because
of the SDF's military councils. No matter the regime forces' expansion throughout northeast Syria under the terms of the SDF-Assad deal, the
regime forces were stretched too thinly to really threaten the SDF's military councils, as they add up to about 100,000 men and women
distributed in independent local units in a region the size of Denmark. The SDF leveraged this imbalance of forces to ward off Assad
hostility toward the revolutions' politicians and civilians, especially in the abandoned Kurdish regions.
All the same, the SDF's pluralist realpolitik did not stop the US or Turkey from taking advantage. The US "reverse course" strategy forced
the YPG to choose between staying in charge of the SDF or being replaced piecemeal with the localized Arab military councils.
Manned by Sunni tribes in former ISIS strongholds such as Deir ez-Zor, these councils prefer American patronage to Assad's return. Indeed,
Arab forces make up 60 percent of all SDF forces and not all of them share the YPG's cherished leftist beliefs. Ultimately the YPG was
forced to choose the survival of the SDF as an institution in eastern Syria, over defending the revolution back in Rojava.
This is the same YPG/YPJ that a decade before the onset of the Syrian and Rojava revolutions carried out the underground work to educate the
urban and rural Syrian Kurds on the tenets of Öcalan's democratic confederalism and democratic autonomy. Such has been the cunning of
history and US foreign policy.
Öcalan's ideological frameworks of democratic confederalism and democratic autonomy prescribed the means to civilizing war amid a civil war.
The idea behind this hybrid framework was to skillfully play the Gramscian game - by overturning the gameboard.
The framework was the product of Öcalan's reflections on his mistakes in over four decades of resisting Turkish colonialism and militarism.
As the PKK's leader, Öcalan's politics in the decades prior to the experiment in Rojava were aimed at reinvigorating the recognition of the
Kurdish identity in the Middle East and establishing a Kurdish nation-state by decolonizing Turkey's Kurdish areas. But Öcalan realized that
as a postcolonial movement in a postcolonial region, the Kurdish resistance movement could not wage a war for international recognition
against recently postcolonial states such as Syria and Iraq.
In the first place, since Kurdistan is divided into four parts, a resistance movement in one colonized part of Kurdistan is treated as
regional war against four state enemies. The size and number of these wars and enemies often surpass the strategic capacities of Kurdish
resistance movements. This strategic deficit is exacerbated because Kurdish resistance movements find no allies outside Kurdistan. The
Kurds' state enemies wield a monopoly over the production of the postcolonial discourse within their territories, which they use to mobilize
genuine anti-imperialist sentiments in the region as testament to their territorial sovereignty. This is a discourse that attracts the
international and postcolonial left and produces a political recognition of postcolonial state sovereignty as an end in itself. However,
this recognition often comes at the expense of misrecognizing genuine minoritarian movements within these postcolonial states as
"imperialist" vehicles for destabilizing national and postcolonial independence.
Against this distorted backdrop, a radical change in the Middle Eastern politics of assigning meaning to land was a matter of strategic
necessity. Öcalan's late theories reinvest the melancholy of stateless movements for sovereignty in a desire for egalitarian redistribution
of power, where power and legitimacy come not through recognition by the international state system but through living in common and away
from the state and its territorial logic.
Rojava's implementation of Öcalan's theories translated into practical advantages in the Syrian civil war. Working within the stateless
framework of democratic autonomy, the Syrian Kurds were not ideologically and strategically mandated to seek independence from the Syrian
Arab Republic as Kurds, saving themselves from Bashar Assad's butcheries throughout the civil war. The Syrian Kurds' democratic
confederalist approach to sharing power made them attractive to the region's other minorities, and the powersharing inoculated these
minorities against the overtures of the region's other sectarian actors in Iran, Iraq and Turkey. If the contradictions of sectarian war
could not be avoided, Rojava deployed those contradictions against sectarianism.
However, Öcalan's frameworks were designed for a gradual transformation of life and politics in Syria and the Middle East over many decades
- and the Americans were aware of this limitation. Their push for the SDF's aggressive southward expansion forced the surrounding states
actors to rally around common interests threatened by the US-SDF alliance, and the mounting regional hostility only increased Rojava's
reliance on the US for protection. As Mazlum Kobanî professed in 2017, "the main reason that our relations with Turkey broke down...is the
strategic relationship that developed between us and the United States. This aggravated Turkey's phobias, its fears."
The increasing role of the US in Rojava also heightened the hostility of the surrounding nation-states' leftist blocks and strengthened the
perception of the revolution in Rojava as a "Kurdish-led," "American-sponsored" project to "divide the Middle East," stunting the
revolution's regional appeal and influence.
The SDF's own class dynamics as a military vanguard facilitated this vicious dynamic between reliance and isolation. The SDF suffered from a
crisis of legitimacy in northeast Syria after the rapid southward expansion into the conservative and tribal middle Euphrates river valley.
The Arab militias that formed the majority of the SDF were mostly tribal and their allegiance to the SDF was geared around tactical
alliances made possible by continued American presence in Rojava.
Meanwhile in Rojava, the YPG and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), never enjoyed political hegemony. Despite their
growing popularity and hegemony, many Syrian Kurds remained conservative and trusting of the ENKS. As for the important members of the
Syriac and Armenian communities, they constitute the traditional bourgeoisie of the Rojava region and their interests were subject to the
maintenance of their class interests. Managing the escalating threats of ISIS and Turkey allowed the SDF to manufacture hegemony in this new
climate.
The territorial logic of these wars, and the logistical necessities imposed on Rojava's politics by territoriality, undermined the
capacities of democratic confederalism and democratic autonomy for countering the centralizing tendencies of the state. Centralization of
the revolution in its military command facilitated the US priorities in the region and rolled back on Rojava's program of civilizing war.
Culturally, the radical imaginary of a revolution that had set itself the task of ending war in the Middle East by changing men was reduced,
through the dictates of the US-led strategy, to that of a security instrument that saw ISIS as nemesis and dialectical other.
It is only understandable that the traumas and sacrifices of battles against ISIS and the Turkish army and its proxies have congealed, in
Rojava's popular imaginary, into a collective drive to prevent such catastrophes in the future. ISIS was and is no specter or excuse for war
but a real enemy of all Middle Eastern people and women. But this is also an anxiety that reinforced the mandate of the SDF to protect the
region by all means necessary, as well as the US coalitions' narrative to "defeat terror." From behind the scenes, despite appearing to
support Rojava's war of position in Syria, the Americans had in fact been wielding a corrosive war of maneuver.
ROJAVA AFTER ROJAVA
The alternative to US-sponsored autonomy was a return to life under Assad, in whom the lineage of apartheid against Syria's Kurds
culminates. Rojava's dream scenario was a peace agreement between the PKK and Turkey mediated by Öcalan, to ease Turkish pressure from
across the border. The nightmare scenario was the Turkish occupation of Rojava. Between these scenarios, the second was as impossible as the
other two were dreadful. Knowing this, the US, Turkey, Russia, Assad and Iran all took part in the same atrocious approach: forcing Rojava
into difficult situations where its civil and military leadership was forced to prioritize and centralize power to defend Rojava.
This imperialist strategy aggravated the disjunction between "Bookchinizing" life inside Rojava and the Marxist-realist approach of the SDF
to what might be called Rojava's foreign policy. The revolutionary work at the grassroots in Rojava continues unimpeded, but it is
increasingly excluded from the SDF's decision-making processes.
Disconnecting the grassroots from decision-making processes led to the popular perception that working with the Americans was necessary to
extract constitutional concessions from Assad, when in reality the Americans only discouraged the SDF from entering the peace process. Along
with Iran, Turkey and Russia, the Americans also excluded Rojava from the UN-sponsored talks regarding Syria's constitution.
Assad's difficulties in conquering opposition-held villages in the Idlib province were a clear sign that he might refrain from testing the
military might of the 100,000 strong SDF. Had the SDF negotiated with the regime from a position of strength well before the Turkish
assault, the prospect of retaining an autonomous local militia to protect the political administration in Rojava would have been a strong
possibility.
Critically, the current dynamics of the stalemate between Assad and SDF are not irreversible. Cracks might emerge in the SDF's hegemony in
the middle Euphrates river valley if the Middle East's biggest tribes that are based there resume calls for reconciliation with Assad. And
if the Russians become less tolerant of the SDF's alliance with the US, they might choose to weaken the SDF by using Kobanî as leverage in a
future deal with Turkey, and by replacing local councils aligned with the YPG and SDF in the border areas.
If they manage to fully control the city of Ayn Issa, where the headquarters of the SDF's political wing the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC)
are located, the Russians might also try to encourage an equally weary SDC to split. In any event, the international left's loyalty should
remain with those who stay behind to defend the revolution's remnants in order to organize for its next phase; to create "a democratic
system for all Syrian peoples and spreading this model to all of Syria," in the words of the SDC's Fawza Youssef. Bonding with Syria's
sidelined Sunni opposition remains the most challenging and strategic, but rewarding task for the revolutionaries in Rojava.
Turkey will push to extend its stay and the territory under its control in northern Syria for as long the US-SDF partnership continues, in
order to force the SDF to further rely on the US and so to prevent the development of an understanding between the regime and the SDF. But
while the US troops will stay in the Deir ez-Zor and al-Tanf bases in eastern Syria for the foreseeable future to keep Russia and Assad in
check - securing oil or no oil - the Americans will remain hawkish in northern Syria and across the border with Iraq, for as long as the
Islamic Republic remains defiant. It is likely that a reconciliation between Iran and the US-led neoliberal world order is on the horizon,
rather than further isolation and sanctions.
The removal of fuel subsidies - which sparked the last round of Iran protests - is likely part of a larger program of surgical austerity
politics in Iran that prepares the country's rentier state economy for the deregulated "free market." The SDF's window of opportunity to
find an alternative to American patronage, and to prepare the self-administration and civil society in Rojava for Assad's return, is between
now and such a transition in Iran. The situation in Syria is too unpredictable to speculate beyond this point.
Iran's impending transition to neoliberal legitimacy - marking the end of an era of rogue states - and the tightening of the international
state system's chokehold on the Kurdish resistance movement's different manifestations should serve as a wakeup call and reality check for
the SDC/SDF tandem. They must evolve culturally and strategically to navigate the new climate in Syria; it is time for another revolution in
Rojava.
For example, the recent drop in expressions of international solidarity with Rojava, which previously won Rojava its media war against the
Turkish occupation, is a reminder that Rojava inspires global solidarity insofar as it retains the alternative discourse and third-way
politics inspired by Öcalan's politics. The drop in solidarity was partly due to the SDF/SDC's parroting of the neoliberal discourse of
establishment politicians in capitalist metropolises. If the SDF/SDC has no choice but to engage such politicians in dialogue, Rojava's
leaders should respond from the mantle of revolutionary polemicists.
The drop in expressions of international solidarity was also related to the opacity of SDF/SDC's decision-making process, not only vis-à-vis
the grassroots in Rojava but also towards external allies who might reconsider their support for a revolutionary vanguard that makes little
effort to communicate its true aims and intentions.
To address this deficit, the top down hierarchy between strategic and tactical decision making in Rojava should be reversed: the grassroots
should decide on long-term decisions and leaders on the temporal tactics pertaining to collective decisions on strategy. The idea is to
educate the next generation of grassroots revolutionaries on the art and science of strategy and, to that extent, open up and democratize
the space and possibilities of effective international solidarity to everyone. These are no easy tasks to accomplish in an enclave occupied
by Turkey and controlled by no lesser evils than Iran, Russia, Assad and the United States. But the most commendable aspect of the Rojava
project was always the utopian will to push the boundaries of the politically possible.
I conclude my reflections at this critical juncture in the life of the leftist resistance movement in Rojava and wider Kurdistan, which, as
its mantra goes, never stops resisting. But I also believe it is time for the Kurdish resistance movement to shed its resistant stance and
impose its own will and necessities on the Middle Eastern disarray.
Such a proactive approach does not require an offensive war of position in the name of survival or war on terror. It entails returning to
the groundbreaking capacities of Öcalan's dual-power framework of democratic confederalism and democratic autonomy, by way of theorizing and
redeveloping these capacities for sustained, effective, and democratic self-defense against capitalist and imperialist counterrevolution.
In Öcalan and the PKK's games of organization, war and morality, and in the lessons of Rojava's bittersweet legacy, we find the
counter-counterrevolutionary blueprints for a Kurdish and leftist realpolitik.
NOTE
Fouâd Oveisy is a PhD candidate in critical theory and comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine. He researches the
intersections between realpolitik, political theory, and post-revolutionary strategy and literature, with a particular focus on the Kurdish
Question. He edits The Rojava Strategy website.
https://awsm.nz/?p=4228
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