Revolution in Rojava

Ercan Ayboga, Anja Flach, Michael Knapp

Description

A new kind of society is being built in Syria, but it's not one you would expect. Surrounded by deadly bands of ISIS and hostile Turkish forces, the people living in Syria's Rojava cantons are carving out one of the most radically progressive societies on the planet today. Western visitors have been astounded by the success of their project, a communally organised democracy which considers women's equality indispensable and rejects reactionary nationalist ideology whilst being fiercely anti-capitalist.



The people of Rojava call their new system democratic confederalism. An implementation of the recent ideology of the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, it boasts gender quotas of 40 percent, bottom-up democratic structures, deep-reaching ecological policies and a militancy which is keeping ISIS from the gates.



Revolution in Rojava is the first full-length study of this ongoing social and political transformation in Syrian Kurdistan. It is the first authentic insight into the complex dimensions of the revolution. Its authors use their own experiences of working and fighting in the region to construct a picture of hope for Middle-Eastern politics and society, and reveal an extraordinary story of a battle against the odds.





List of Figures

Translator’s Note    

Foreword by David Graeber

Introduction

Prologue: On the Road to Til Koçer

1. Background

2. Rojava’s Diverse Cultures

3. Democratic Confederalism

4. The Liberation

5. A Womens' Revolution

6. Democratic Autonomy in Rojava

7. Civil Society Associations

8. Defense: The Theory of the Rose

9. The New Justice System

10. The Democratization of Education

11. Health Care

12. The Social Economy

13. Ecological Challenges

14. Neighbors

15. Prospects

Afterword: The Philosophy of Democratic Autonomy by Asya Abdullah

Glossary

About the Authors

Index

Sujets

• Women's Studies
• Political Ideologies
• Social Science
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Erdogan
• ISIS
• Partido de los Trabajadores de Kurdistán
• Alepo
• Kurdistán
• Kurdistan Democratic Party
• Amuda
• Afrin
• Syria
• Radical Democracy Party (Chile)
• Derik
• Kurds in Syria
• Isis (disambiguation)
• Kurdish
• Ba'ath Party
• Aleppo
• Kurdistan Workers' Party
• Middle East
• Kurdish people
• Anarchism
• Erdo?an
• Image and Scanner Interface Specification
• Parti des travailleurs du Kurdistan
• Abdullah Öcalan
• ISO 15511
• Democracy
• IS
• Recep Tayyip Erdo?an
• SDF
• Kurdistan
• Alep

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 octobre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783719884
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Revolution in Rojava
Revolution in Rojava
Democratic Autonomy and Women’s Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan
Michael Knapp, Anja Flach, and Ercan Ayboğa
Foreword by David Graeber Afterword by Asya Abdullah Translated by Janet Biehl
First published 2016 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Michael Knapp, Anja Flach and Ercan Ayboğa 2016
The right of Michael Knapp, Anja Flach and Ercan Ayboğa to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3664 0 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3659 6 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7837 1987 7 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1989 1 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1988 4 EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
List of Figures
Translator’s Note
Foreword by David Graeber
Introduction
Prologue: On the Road to Til Koçer
1. Background
1.1 Geography of Rojava
1.2 Historical Overview
2. Rojava’s Diverse Cultures
2.1 Kurds
2.2 Arabs
2.3 Armenians and Syriacs
2.4 Smaller Population Groups
3. Democratic Confederalism
3.1 The PKK and Its Paradigm Shift
3.2 Democratic Confederalism
3.3 Council Democracy
3.4 Democratic Concepts
4. The Liberation
4.1 Organizing Begins
4.2 The Arab Spring in Syria
4.3 Illegal Councils
4.4 The Hewlêr Agreement
4.5 The Revolution Begins in Kobanî
4.6 The Liberation of Dêrîk and Afrîn
4.7 After the Liberation
5. A Women’s Revolution
5.1 Rojava Women
5.2 Women in the Revolution
5.3 Kongreya Star
5.4 Women in the Three Cantons
5.5 Dual Leadership and the 40 Percent Quota
5.6 Women’s Organizations
5.7 Gender Equality Is Also a Men’s Issue
5.8 Radical Islam Versus Women’s Emancipation
5.9 Outlook
6. Democratic Autonomy in Rojava
6.1 The Democratic Union Party (PYD)
6.2 The People’s Council of West Kurdistan (MGRK)
6.3 The MGRK System
6.4 The Commune of Aleppo
6.5 The Supreme Kurdish Council (SKC)
6.6 The Municipal Administrations
6.7 The Social Contract
6.8 The Democratic-Autonomous Administrations (DAAs)
6.9 The Federal System in Rojava/Northern Syria (FRNS)
6.10 The MGRK and the DAAs
7. Civil Society Associations
7.1 Union of Civil Society Associations
7.2 Culture and Art
7.3 The Revolutionary Youth Movement
7.4 Association of Families of Martyrs
7.5 Human Rights Commission
7.6 Civil Society Organizing
8. Defense: The Theory of the Rose
8.1 People’s Protection Units (YPG)
8.2 Women’s Protection Units (YPJ)
8.3 Legitimate Self-defense
8.4 The Liberation of Serêkaniyê
8.5 The Liberation of Til Koçer
8.6 Training and Induction
8.7 Equipment, Units, and Tactics
8.8 Serêkaniyê Today
8.9 The Liberation of Girê Spî and Şengal
8.10 The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)
8.11 The Significance of the YPG and YPJ
9. The New Justice System
9.1 Structure
9.2 Peace Committees
9.3 Procedures
9.4 Justice Platforms
9.4 Asayîş
10. The Democratization of Education
10.1 Before and After the Revolution
10.2 Reconstruction and Pedagogy
10.3 The Academy for Kurdish Language, History, and Literature (AZDW)
10.4 Academies
10.4 Outlook
11. Health Care
11.1 Before and After the Liberation
11.2 Health Assemblies
11.3 Challenges
11.2 Health Assemblies and the DAAs
12. The Social Economy
12.1 Under Ba’ath Colonization
12.2 Effects of the Liberation
12.3 The Embargo
12.4 The Social Economy
12.5 Cooperatives
12.6 Control of Production
12.7 Expanding the Cooperatives
12.8 The Challenges Ahead
13. Ecological Challenges
13.1 The Destruction of Biodiversity
13.2 Water Crisis
13.3 Waste Disposal
13.4 Air Pollution
13.5 Petroleum Production
13.6 Outlook
14. Neighbors
14.1 The Islamization of the Syrian Opposition
14.2 Islamic State (IS)
14.3 The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG)
14.4 Turkey Under the AKP
14.5 Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan
14.6 Turkmen Militias
14.7 The SDF and the Jihadists
15. Prospects
15.1 Rojava and Hegemonic Powers
15.2 Solutions Within Syria
15.3 International Solidarity
15.4 Communalism or Barbarism
Afterword: The Philosophy of Democratic Autonomy Asya Abdullah
Glossary
About the Authors
Index
List of Figures
P.1 A house bombed to rubble in Tirbespî
1.1 Rojava’s three cantons: Afrîn, Kobanî, and Cizîrê
2.1 Members of an Arab unit at Til Koçer
2.2 A Syriac priest blesses MFS fighters, Christmas 2014 in Dêrîk
5.1 A Kongreya Star Assembly, Dêrîk
5.2 Dual leadership: The co-mayors of Serêkaniyê
5.3 Conference of Young Revolutionary Women, May 2014, in Rimelan
5.4 A women’s demonstration in Qamişlo
6.1 A meeting of a neighborhood people’s council in Dêrîk
6.2 A meeting of the people’s council of Qamişlo district
6.3 The MGRK council system
6.4 The martyrs of the Qamişlo city hall
6.5 A TEV-DEM meeting in Kobanî in 2015
7.1 Memorial day for martyrs
8.1 A YPJ and YPG muster
8.2 YPG and YPJ fighters at Serêkaniyê
8.3 A Syriac YPJ fighter at Serêkaniyê
8.4 Hevala Melsa, of the YPJ, at Serêkaniyê
8.5 The ruined village of Keşte, near Til Xelef, May 2014. The inhabitants are returning only twenty days after the YPG/YPJ liberated the village
8.6 A mobile YPJ unit at Til Koçer
8.7 A student at the Şehîd Şîlan Women’s Military Academy
8.8 An Arab YPJ fighter undergoing officer training at the Sehîd Jînda Academy
9.1 Guards at a courthouse in Dêrîk
9.2 Asayîsa Jin, women’s security force, at a checkpoint in Tirbespî
10.1 Kurdish-language instruction in Serêkaniyê
11.1 Inside a hospital in Dêrîk
11.2 A team from Heyva Sor (Kurdish Red Crescent) coping with shortages
12.1 Oil, wheat, and animal husbandry in Cizîrê
12.2 A sewing cooperative in Rimelan
13.1 Urban gardening at the economics ministry in Dêrîk
14.1 Celebration of YPG/YPJ fighters in Kobanî in October 2015
14.2 Syriacs join a demonstration against the ditch dug by the KPD to reinforce the embargo
14.3 Discovery in a former IS training camp: the inscription says “Saudi Arabia and Turkey Hand in Hand.”
14.4 The war front as of July 31, 2016
15.1 Civilians and YPG/YPJ fighters in a pickup after a demonstration
Translator’s Note
Revolution in Rojava , the first full book to appear on the democratic, gender-equal, cooperative revolution under way in northern Syria, was originally published in German in March 2015 by VSA Verlag. This English version began as a direct translation, but over the course of 16 months, it has been extensively revised and updated, so that in many respects it is a new book. I would like to thank Pluto Press for editorial support and for bringing the book to the wide audience it deserves; Sherko Geylani, for early help with translation; and New Compass Press for solidarity.
Janet Biehl
Foreword
David Graeber
Even many ostensible revolutionaries nowadays seem to have secretly abandoned the idea that a revolution is actually possible.
Here I am using “revolution” in its classical sense, let’s say: the overthrow of an existing structure of power and the ruling class it supports by a popular uprising of some sort, and its replacement by new forms of bottom-up popular organization. For most of the twentieth century this was not the case: even those revolutionaries who hated the Bolsheviks, for example, supported the revolution itself, even popular uprisings that came to be led by ethno-nationalists were not simply condemned if they were seen to be genuinely popular. There was an obvious reason for this. For most of that time, revolutionaries felt that, whatever temporary complications, history was flowing inevitably in the direction of greater equality and freedom. Those rising up to shake off some form of tyranny, however temporarily confused or distracted, were clearly the agents of that greater movement of liberation.
It’s understandable that it’s hard to maintain that kind of blind optimism anymore. It often led to extraordinarily destructive naiveté. But neither is it particularly helpful to replace naiveté with cynicism, and it must be admitted that in many quarters, this is what has happened. A very large portion of those who at least think of themselves as the revolutionary left now seem to have adopted a politics which leads to the instant and near automatic condemnation of pretty much any even moderately successful revolutionary movement that actually takes place on planet earth. Certainly this is what has happened in the case of Rojava. While a large number of people have been utterly astounded, and deeply moved, to see a popular movement dedicated to direct democracy, cooperative economics, and a deep commitment to ecology emerge in that part of the world they’d long been informed was the very most authoritarian and benighted, let alone to witness thousands of armed feminists literally defeating the forces of patriarchy on the battlefield, many either refused to believe any of this was actually happening, or tried to come up with any reason they could for why there must be something deeply insidious lying behind it. One expects this kind of reaction from the mainstream media, or US and European politicians. After lecturing the world for generations about how the peoples of the Middle East were desperately backwards, and how their traditional and supposedly uncompromising hostility towards liberal values like formal democracy and women’s rights justified both the support of extreme right-wing regimes like Saudi Arabia (“w