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Title: Revolution in Rojava? Author: Guerre de Classe Date: Nov 23 2015 Language: en Topics: Rojava, PKK, Kurdistan Source: https://libcom.org/news/la-oveja-negra-revolution-rojava-23112015
We publish here a contribution (we have also translated from Spanish to
French, English and Czech) synthesizing a series of critical discussions
on the events in Rojava. This text comes from militants claiming to
adhere to anarchism, based in Rosario, Argentina, and it was originally
published in their bulletin La Oveja Negra [The Black Sheep].
We welcome the effort of these militants in their communist criticism of
the social movement that is taking place in front of our eyes, without
slipping into illusions of fashionable romantic visions too often read
about Rojava and other struggles of our class. Too few critical texts
circulate unfortunately nowadays on the “Rojava revolution” and the
“Kurdish question”, especially in Spanish.
Last small comment: the comrades of La Oveja Negra mistakenly attribute
to us (in footnotes) the paternity of two texts that we have in fact
only translated, presented, published on our blog and spread
internationally. This had to be said…
The territory claimed by ethnic Kurds is situated between Syria, Turkey,
Iran and Iraq. Right in the middle of one the richest areas in the world
as for oil and gas resources. Since a century this region experienced
numerous struggles and initiatives for self-determination carried out by
several Kurdish groups and factions.
The current situation is complicated and what can be described in broad
outline is the coincidence of three factors: the armed conflict
developed by the PKK (Workers’ Party of Kurdistan) in Turkey since 1984,
the invasion of the US-led coalition in Iraq in 2003 (and the subsequent
deepening of ethnic conflict), and the civil war in Syria since 2011.
Let’s remember that different regions of Syria (including what the Kurds
call Rojava) were the ground of impressive proletarian struggles in –and
before- 2011 where various expropriations and clashes of armed
proletarians with the repressive forces (causing in turn mass defections
of soldiers), and a significant degree of proletarian associationism
appeared. This situation had been little by little transformed by the
bourgeoisie into a civil war, channeling many proletarian structures
that had emerged from the struggle into the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and
converting thus the proletarian struggle into a struggle between
bourgeois factions.
It is essential to mention this process, as it is in this context that
various Kurdish groups, with the PKK being numerically the most
significant and the most influential, managed to carry a process of
control of the Syrian Northern territories (Rojava) through, feeding
themselves on many of the proletarian ruptures with FSA when its
bourgeois character became more obvious. In fact, the new cuckoo of the
West, the organization nowadays known as the Islamic State (Sunni
radical jihadism), actually arises from the dismemberment of the FSA
when it begins to lose strength and prestige and when Islamic
fundamentalism comes into greater prominence within it.
It is largely due to the confrontation between the Kurdish forces and
ISIS considered as one of the forces engaged in the region, that the PKK
has taken such importance internationally and has been supported by a
wide global spectrum from Social Democrats to liberals.
Consecutively, throughout this complex process it is impossible to
summarize in a few paragraphs, there are a certain number of
peculiarities causing that many proletarians keep an eye on this region.
For us it is essential to grasp these processes, to defend the
proletarian ruptures in the process of development and to mercilessly
tackle the bourgeois ideological falsifications and channeling.
These reflections are based on this need, motivated mainly by the great
confusion generated by many self-proclaimed revolutionary groups talking
about revolution in Rojava. Let’s see a bit…
It is a Kurdish political party founded in 1978. Ethnic, although
currently its members and allies claim that it moderated. Social
Democratic, although they pretend to pass it for a revolutionary.
Feminist, if by feminism we understand that women and men are equal to
each other for both war and work. Environmentalist, although they do not
hesitate to continue extracting oil.
Originally it was a Marxist-Leninist party with clear formal issues
inherited from Maoism (guerrilla in rural areas, ban on love relations
between its members, military discipline, etc.). In recent years it has
adopted a more libertarian socialist tendency, first allegedly through
the ideological shift in prison of its leader Ă–calan, and then through
the decisions of his 8th Congress in 2002.
Its new doctrine called democratic confederalism is closely linked to
the concept of libertarian municipalism outlined by the American Murray
Bookchin and it criticizes the traditional concept of the Nation-State,
calling for a federal, ecological and feminist society. In this text we
will enlarge upon the terrible limitations of some aspects of this great
and confused ideological revolt.
Before that we want to point out that the main reasons for this shift
are twofold. First, it is the international strategy of the PKK to be no
longer considered as a terrorist organization by NATO, what is a
complement to its tactic of creating parallel organizations like the PYD
(Democratic Union Party of Syria). This tactic has taken over in the
party’s history in order to develop its policy in regional parliaments
of the four countries.
Moreover, it was no longer profitable to be a Marxist-Leninist when the
world imperialist polarization changed significantly since the 70s.
Without the Soviet Union backing them and supplying them with weapons,
they probably needed to begin to change their strategy.
For those who fight for social revolution it is not new to be considered
as terrorists by the State, which is a way to open the route to
repression, but it is clear that for the PKK such a NATO action is an
obstacle to finally settle a State, to participate in the world trade of
crude oil and to be member of the United Nations.
“The PKK/PYD were reluctant to join the anti-Assad uprising in 2012 and
are now equally hesitant to overthrow private property. Instead, having
allied with Assad’s murderous dictatorship in the past, they are now
allying with the US and its murderous bombing campaign. This campaign
may have saved Kobane but it has also probably encouraged even more
Arabs to distrust the Kurds and to join ISIS. And this is now pushing
the region even further into an inter-imperialist bloodbath.” We must
say it openly; the PKK is a counterrevolutionary force since its
beginning and it is currently responsible for channeling the most
advanced expressions that remain in the region of the North of Syria. It
is also an important reason for their strategic change. In addition to
criticizing their actions in their zones of influence, we should also
point out how this kind of counterrevolutionary process is used
throughout the world.
“State is not merely a structure of government, police, army and
administrative apparatus, State, as the communist movement grasps it, is
a social relation, materialization of capitalist world order, no matter
whether its legitimacy is based on parliament or community assemblies.
If therefore PKK and its PYD’s henchmen claim that they do not seek to
create a State, it is just because in reality they already – due to
their role, practical and ideological, they play in Rojava – represent
the State. This is what some of PKK’s partisans call quite rightly “a
State without a State”, i.e. a State that doesn’t necessarily
territorialize as a Nation-State, but which ultimately really
constitutes a State in the sense that capitalist social relations,
private property, are not fundamentally challenged.
(…) No surprises for guessing who has the real clout. The PYD have got a
virtual monopoly of weapons. They are the state. And in each country
(Iraq, Iran and Syria) the local Kurdish bourgeoisie has set up its own
national entity in the same vein. These might not be recognised by
international imperialism but they are states in all but name. In some
ways they impinge more on people’s lives than the state in the UK. For
example, if you are over 18 you are subject to conscription. And as for
the supposed internationalism of the PYD, its leader Salih Muslim has
threatened to expel all Arabs from “Kurdish” territory in Syria despite
the fact that most of them were born there.”
Although there are definitely more pro-State Kurdish expressions, as the
government of Iraq headed by Talabani and the Iraqi Kurdistan regional
government led by Barzani (both confronting each other and also PKK),
this does not mean that the PKK isn’t so as well.
The PKK has apparently broken with the classical conception of the
seizure of State power, peculiar to Marxism-Leninism, and introduced
certain “criticisms” of the State in its new doctrine of democratic
confederalism. These criticisms propose a formal change where the new
State called by them “confederation” would assume more and more tasks of
social organization with grassroots democracy, raising in turn the
search for the most peaceful coexistence possible with the existing
States, making use of self-defense if necessary.
This tale of direct democracy, local resistance in front of the existing
States, self-determination of the peoples, administration of a
“Stateless” territory is actually nothing new.
It is all these fantasies that had seduced many sectors of anarchism
(including some in our region), which provided their support in various
ways, as far as calling for taking part in the Kurdish militias as did
David Graeber, the Occupy movement referent.
It’s amazing to see once again that many of those who claim to be
partisans of the destruction of the State and who focus their critique
and analysis on that, fall again into the trap. Many of the critiques
against the State that they consider to be the central problem of
capitalist society don’t grasp its nature and end up defending it under
a new shape.
We must insist on the need to grasp and criticize the society in the
most complete way possible. When we talk about social revolution we talk
of abolishing the whole of the capitalist social relation: State,
private property, wage labor, commodity production, value…
We became too much accustomed to the fact that when one talks about
revolution he talks about the form rather than the content. In this
sense, it is easy to compare pictures of Kurdish militias’ armed women
with those of militiawomen of Spain 36 as well as talking about fascism
of the Islamic State and advocating once again conciliation with the
bourgeoisie against the greater evil, as it happened with the
republicans against Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
Once again we find ourselves back in front of historical parallels based
on misunderstandings of both periods and not on a critical and
anti-capitalist balance sheet of the struggles of our class.
“The subversive nature of a movement or organization cannot be measured
by the number of armed women — nor its feminist character either. Since
the 1960s, across all continents, most guerrillas have included or
include numerous female combatants — for example in Colombia. This is
even truer amongst Maoist-inspired guerrillas (Nepal, Peru, Philippines,
etc.) using the strategy of “People’s War”: male/female equality should
contribute to the tearing down of traditional structures, feudal or
tribal (always patriarchal). It is in the Maoist origins of the PKK-PYD
that one finds the source of what specialists call “martial feminism”.”
“The feminist revolution has also been modest. Men still predominate
both in the streets and workplaces. And, as the PKK website shows, the
organisation’s feminist theory derives more from the thoughts of its
patriarch, Abdullah Ocalan, than from any independent feminist movement.
Furthermore, any empowerment of women derived from joining – or from
being forcibly conscripted into – the militia is unlikely to last. As in
previous revolutionary wars, it will inevitably be contradicted by the
disempowerment of obeying orders, combined with the brutalisation and
trauma of war.”
Those who will read this publication with a pernicious attitude will
accuse us to be purists, to not want to make our hands dirty, to remain
on the sidelines. But one thing is to grasp the present contradictions
in a given social process and to struggle for overcoming these
contradictions in a revolutionary way, and another quite different thing
is to defend these contradictions as if their mere existence implies the
beginning of a social revolution.
We have no doubt about the historical existence of proletarian struggles
in the region that the Kurds call Kurdistan. It is our task and that of
all internationalists to try to penetrate the Social Democratic
ideological cover and to draw conclusions from the current period. It’s
not a question to avoid to support the Kurds but to recognize the Kurds
are an ethnic group like any other, with social classes and cultural and
everyday constraints of all kinds. It’s not a question to support
generally and uncritically any expression, under the victimizing idea of
a people without a nation. Fuck the nations!
Revolutionaries are internationalists; we don’t turn a blind eye to this
or that region or fight for distinct things in different regions. We
don’t endorse national liberation here, communist revolution there and
democratic confederalism somewhere else. Fuck self-determination!
We have to get rid of the leftist logic, the logic that is always based
on the analysis of the inter-bourgeois conflicts in a region, and then
takes its favorite power side. We always have to start from the genuine
expressions of the struggle of our class to find a way to show
solidarity and contribute to its propagation and spreading.
We don’t side with anybody in this conflict if we rely on the story that
one wants to sell us. Our only possible side is to always claim the
invariant mottos, to not give up, and to not to be blind: Social
revolution; worldwide and total!
<em>Source in Spanish:
http://boletinlaovejanegra.blogspot.com/2015/09/revolucion-en-rojava.html
&
http://www.mediafire.com/view/xmfz62d4viheb59/laovejanegra31rosario.pdf
English Translation : TĹ™ĂdnĂ válka # Class War # Guerre de Classe</em>
<em>La Oveja Negra [The Black Sheep]
BoletĂn de la Biblioteca y Archivo HistĂłrico-Social «Alberto Ghiraldo»
Año 4 * Número 31 * Septiembre 2015</em>