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Title: The Most Important Thing Author: The Hamilton Institute Date: 2016 Language: en Topics: Syria, Rojava, Syrian Revolution, Kurdistan, Leila al-Shami, Robin Yassin-Kassab, Paul Z. Simons, Syrian civil war, solidarity Source: Retrieved on 24 May 2016 from https://thehamiltoninstitute.noblogs.org/post/2016/05/13/the-most-important-thing-two-speaking-tours-and-the-syrian-revolution/
“The most important thing,” my friend said on our way home, “is to
destroy the state. The Syrian revolution went very far and a big reason
for this is that we were able to completely destroy the state in many
areas. Even if we can’t prevent the counter revolution, destroying the
state makes whatever comes after much weaker.”
My friend was an active participant in the first few years of the Syrian
revolution, and we had just spent the evening at Leila al-Shami and
Robin Yassin-Kassab’s speaking tour for their book Burning Country:
Stories of Syrians in Revolution and War. These two authors, based in
the UK, spoke passionately about the various revolutionary projects that
unfolded in Syria between 2011 and 2013 and that continue struggling to
survive today, under the bombs and indifference of the world. A few days
earlier, we’d also attended a talk by Paul Z Simons describing his
experiences travelling to Rojava, the majority-Kurdish areas in what
used to be northern Syria. Paul compared his motivations for travelling
to Rojava to those of anarchists around the world who travelled to Spain
in the 30s – describing Rojava[1] as the most significant anarchist
revolution since that time, he has been travelling North America trying
to inspire direct support among western radicals.
These two tours both offered anarchist perspectives on Syria and yet
their narratives were surprisingly different – on our walk to the bus
station, we dug into those differences and tried to understand them. In
spite of their scale and commitment, the anarchic practices carried out
by the Syrian revolution (not in Rojava) have been largely ignored by
anarchists in the west, while Rojava has been widely, and often
uncritically, celebrated. In light of rapidly changing events on the
ground, as grassroots groups risk being decisively overshadowed by the
maneuvers of states, it’s important to look more carefully at Rojava and
the Syrian revolution to see where our solidarity should lie. This will
help us support revolutionaries there in the years to come and also make
sure that, in the present, anarchist support isn’t fuelling forces that
divide and undermine revolutionary energy.
My friend’s comments about destroying the state remind me of the
well-known quote by Syrian anarchist Omar Aziz that we heard again at
the event: “We are no less than Paris Commune workers: they resisted for
70 days and we are still going on for a year and a half.” While the
Paris Commune was able to destroy the state in a major city, it quickly
became isolated and the state was able to march back and defeat the
revolutionaries militarily. By the time of Omar’s death in prison in
2013, the Syrian state had been destroyed in dozens of cities and towns
— it was continuing to contract and was obviously not going to be able
to retake major centres of the rebellion any time soon.
At the Burning Country event, Leila briefly told the story of the last
years of Omar’s life, focusing on his work elaborating a revolutionary
practice of local councils and committees that began in Barzeh,
Damascus, and spread throughout the country. Hundreds of these councils
are still active today, following many of the anarchist principles
developed by Omar in spite of the ever more difficult conditions.
Alternatives to state structures, these autonomous forms of self
governance transitioned from organizing protests to organizing
collective self-defense to distributing food, providing electricity, and
dealing with conflict. A comrade of Omar’s who was present in the
audience reminded us that Omar had been living abroad and returned to
Syria to support the revolution and questioned why more people who
escaped Assadist tyranny haven’t also supported the revolution. She also
spoke about her friend Razan Zeitouneh, a human rights lawyer and
prisoner support activist who dedicated herself to forming and
federating local committees that could co-ordinate protests and mutual
aid, who was arrested and likely killed in the Damascus area by rebel
group Jaish al-Islam.
One reason for the lack of international support for the Syrian
revolution might be that it has largely been made invisible. The stories
of Razan and Omar underline an important reason for this invisibility –
many of the anarchists and most passionate activists were killed
(usually by the regime )early on or were forced to flee the country.
Rojava, on the other hand, had a different experience of the regime’s
violence, which contributed to increased visibility.
In his talk, Paul shared many personal stories of his travels through
the liberated territories of Rojava, mostly in the Kobane area. These
stories are compelling and inspiring, they demonstrate a clear
commitment to building international understanding between
anti-authoritarian rebels and deepening practices of solidarity.
However, when it came to the broader context of struggle in the Syrian
territory, he seemed not to understand that there could possibly be
revolutionaries outside of Rojava. I don’t raise this to criticise him
personally – I think his work in building international solidarity with
Rojava is very valuable. However, he is far from alone in this attitude
and I want to understand how someone so evidently committed to engaging
with revolutionary currents in Syria could ignore the struggles being
waged in the rest of the country.
When several people in the audience questionned the recent attacks by
the SDF[2] against territory controlled by other rebel groups north of
Aleppo, Paul largely repeated the propaganda of the SDF, the Assad
regime, and the Russian military (all of whom collaborated in these
attacks): everyone there is al-Qaeda or ISIS, there is no one worth
listening to. Paul insisted that these attacks were necessary to link
the Efrin Canton to Kobane Canton (two provinces of Rojava) and assumed
that only Assad supporters would have a problem with this.
Those following the (admittedly complex and confusing) politics of the
Syrian civil war mostly agree that the space between the two Rojavan
cantons is controlled in one area by ISIS and in another by a coalition
of rebel groups, prominently including many branches of the Free Syrian
Army that still support the liberatory goals of the revolution. They
have held on here even while being defeated by counter-revolutionary
attacks (by ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the Assad regime) elsewhere in
the country because of the proximity to the Turkish border and their
control of important crossing points. Although the SDF and the YPG[3]
claim they are only fighting al-Qaeda there, this is a transparent
lie.[4]
Robin and Leila, while voicing a lot of support for Rojava and
describing its democratic confederalism as a model for the rest of the
Syrian terrirory, consider the goal of militarily linking the cantons to
be disastrous. They said that the PYD’s recent declaration of
‘federalism’ for Rojava seems like laying the groundwork for a state,
which would of course need contiguous territory, and that it runs
counter to democratic confederalism. A model of councils would spread by
encouraging and supporting the formation of councils other regions, not
by conquering those regions. This is especially true north of Aleppo
around Azaz, where local revolutionary councils have been active for
years. Leila and Robin described the PYD’s recent declaration of
‘federalism’ in northern Syria to be essentially a coup against the
grassroots revolutionaries in Rojava, who were never consulted.
They worry that the PYD has given up on democratic confederalism,
because the recent Russian bombing so dramatically changed the balance
of power against revolutionaries. Paul, however, claimed that the PYD,
the single political party active on the level of the cantons (local
affairs are run by the councils), is dissapearing. Perhaps this would be
the famous “withering away” of the state and party following a
successful revolution? But the claim still seems bizarre – to my friend
and I, as well as to those we talked with at the Burning Country event,
the PYD seems to have never been stronger and more present. It’s true
that it continues to support local councils and continues to pass
responsabilities to popular committees, but with its sole control of
militias, ability to negotiate with other states, and, as we’ll see,
control over police, it still plays a dominent role in shaping the
future of the Rojava project.
However, Paul did also tell stories that showed the tension that exists
between the PYD-led initiatives and the bottom-up commune-level
initiatives. He contrasted the Assayish, a police force responsible to
the PYD at the level of the canton, to the HPC, a grassroots armed group
tied to specific neighbourhoods and towns that aims to secure areas
behind the front. Paul sees the HPC as essential to the Rojavan strategy
of preventing counter-revolution, which is very interesting considering
how rarely anarchists talk seriously about what it would take to prevent
counter-revolutions inside liberated territory. The more the HPC can
take power away from the Assayish, the more the councils win out over
the party. This was a big example Paul pointed to for the reduced
importance of the PYD in daily life in Rojava – supporting the HPC and
pushing the PYD to follow through with dissolving its police force is an
important role international supporters can play to support the Rojava
revolution long-term.
The tension between the PYD and the grassroots reveals however a broader
difference between Rojava and the Syrian revolution. My friend says he
nearly laughed out loud when Paul claimed that Rojava didn’t take over
the airport or post office in Qamishli because those are statist
institutions and revoltionaries there didn’t want to take on the
trappings of states. My friend explains that it was never a question of
the YPG capturing those regime positions or not, because none of the
territory in the north-east was captured from the regime – it was a
negotiated withdrawal by Assad’s forces to allow the regime to fight
more effectively in other parts of the country. Yes, there have been
occasional clashes between Rojavan armed groups, especially the YPG and
Assayish, and the regime (the post office in question was in fact
recently captured following some skirmishes), but the huge majority of
their territory was not taken by force.
Revolution could perhaps be defined as attempts to attack the state, to
act on the national level, either to destroy the state or capture it. If
we accept this definition, there are many inspiring movements in the
world that frame their struggles as something other than revolutionary.
Indigenous sovreignty movements in North and South America generally are
not seeking to overthrow colonial governments, but are rather seeking
autonomy and justice on their traditional territories and to develop a
new balance of power with those states. Notably, this includes the
Zapatistas. Rojava would fit into this tendency of
territorially-oriented struggle that is not trying to produce a new
state (and so isn’t a traditional national liberation movement) or to
capture the old (as the groups referred to as Houthis have in Yemen, for
a recent example of a revolt based in a specific community aimed at the
level of the state).
My friend continues though and points out that Assad’s withdrawal means
that Rojava didn’t destroy the state in its territory. There are regime
checkpoints, border crossings, offices, military bases and even
intelligence agencies still based in Rojava with some level of consent
from the PYD. Yes, there are workers in many parts rebel-occupied Syria
who are still receiving their salaries from the regime, even if their
offices have been destroyed and they haven’t worked in years[5]. The
destruction of the state in revolutionary areas of Aleppo, Latakia,
Homs, Damascus (Ghouta), Idlib, and Dara’a has been nearly total – even
when fascistic armed groups are in control, they depend on the popular
assemblies and councils (of generally “democratic” politics[6]) who have
stepped in to meet people’s needs that had been provided by the state.
Although the fight against the Syrian state has been horrific, it forced
the revolution to go very far – in Rojava though, the Syrian state has
continued to operate in a larval state, ready to regrow at any time, and
the PYD stepped in to provide other state-like services, using a similar
infrastructure[7].
This recalls the experience of the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt. When
the protestors began seriously dismantling the state, burning nearly
every police station and ruling party office in the country, the
military intervened to protect the protests, push out the government,
and organize a transition. The military acted to preserve the state and,
after a brief interlude with the Muslim Brotherhood (who literally
assumed the levers of state power after participating in the
revolution), is more or less openly in control of all its institutions
that continue to act much as they did under the previous dictatorship.
Following the withdrawal of Assad’s forces, the PYD even assumed the
role of restricting protest, targetting other Kurdish political
formations (the probable assassination of Mashall Tammo is a prominent
example) and attacking demonstrations in support of the Syrian
revolution: this pattern started in 2012 and the YPG fired on
demonstrators flying the revolutionary flag as recently as April 2016.
Echoing the official PYD line, Paul claimed that these were responses to
armed provocateurs from the FSA, affiliated with Salafist groups. This
is again eerily similar to Assad’s narrative for firing on similar
demonstrations in areas he controls – they are all terrorists, armed
gangs trying to destabilize our brave socialist nation…
(Again, Paul’s tour and his Rojava dispatches are very useful and
important, especially when he stays close to his own experience and
described the practices and discussions he saw and participated in.
However, repeating this kind of propaganda contributes to driving a
wedge between revolutionaries and to strengthening authoritarian
elements in the conflict – please hear this as comradely criticism in
line with our shared desire to develop better practices of anarchist
solidarity.)
We recall the words of an audience member at Leila and Robin’s talk who
said that the story of the Syrian revolution is always told from the
middle – the dominant narrative starts from around 2013, the civil war
and the rise of Salafist groups like ISIS and al-Nusra, and completely
ignores the two years of revolutionary struggle by Syrians against the
regime before that. This partially explains why many western radicals
have been far more likely to support Rojava than the Syrian revolution.
Rojava was able to spend those two years building a clear, coherent
political project without any serious threats. Rojava’s crucial military
struggle was against ISIS in 2014, with significant international
support. This after ISIS had already crushed all the non-Rojava rebel
groups in eastern Syria, capturing areas with strong revolutionary
presences like Deir el-Zor and Raqqa and leading to the rapid collapse
of the FSA throughout the country.
Rojava was also building from an established ideology, similar to the
PKK’s, and had access to militias, the YPG and YPJ, that had existed
(mostly in Turkey) for ten years before. During those same two years,
revolutionaries elsewhere in Syria were literally fighting for survival,
beseiged, outgunned, and largely abandonned by the world. Areas under
rebel control were never able to meaningfully unify (rather, the
tendency has been towards divisions over time) or to articulate a clear
ideology or political project. Most of the international left either
listened to the ideology of Assad or to the ideology of Rojava but were
unable to see or understand the practices of the Syrian revolution.
It’s unfortunate that ideology has been so much more important than
practice in determining who has received international support in Syria.
This focus on ideology has meant that chillingly few anarchists or
anti-authoritarians have objected as PYD and SDF spokespeople claim that
there are no Syrian revolutionaries, that the protests they attack in
Rojava are just provocations by Islamists or that there is nothing but
al-Qaeda and ISIS in the Azaz corridor. By repeating this kind of
divisive propaganda, supporters contribute to rifts between
revolutionaries, reduce international support overall, and do nothing to
actually help people on the ground. All it does is serve the short-term
interests of the militias and political parties in Rojava, and it is
increasingly unsure whether these groups will still be friendly to
revolutionaries in years to come. It’s no different than repeating the
kinds of lazy anti-kurdish insults thrown around at demonstrations in
Idlib or Aleppo – they’re all PKK terrorists, they are anti-arab, and so
on.
Why should anarchists make their support contingent on seeing explicitly
anarchist ideology? Even looking briefly at the history of the Syrian
revolution, it’s clear there is no shortage of anarchic practice present
everywhere in the country. Another friend who attended the event said
that her desire as an anarchist is to make the identity of anarchist
irrelevant – that we talk about anarchy now to name a thing that doesn’t
exist, but that in situations where those ideas take on a life of their
own and far exceed our milieus, there’s no purpose in clinging to that
label. Throughout Syria, as the state retracted or was driven back,
people autonomously organized themselves for defense, distribution and
production of food, providing electricity and water, dealing with
conflict, and creating ideas for how to live after the war, with the
tendency being towards decentralization and autonomy. This in a state
that was for over fifty years controlled by a dictatorship that
prevented all forms of political association or speech. The absence of
well-formed ideology makes these practices invisible to us.
As well, ideology can prevent us from seeing what is actually happening,
as with the inconsistent positions of the PYD, SDF, and YPG around
statehood and federalism and their break of solidarity with the Syrian
revolution. This problem is far larger than Syria, with anarchists
waiting for something explicitly anarchist to emerge before supporting
it. I’m sure we can all think of other movements anarchists have
hesitated or refused to engage in, in spite of their anarchic
characteristics, because they didn’t seem anarchist enough…
During his talk at the Burning Country event, Robin described the dense
ideology people bring to the Syrian conflict as “a lack of desire to
know or to challenge misconceptions. It’s the belief that we already
know, that there is no need to ask Syrians.” He insisted that the real
conflict in Syria is not imperialist/anti-imperialist, Sunni/Shia, or
Arab/Kurd, but rather decentralization versus authoritarianism[8]. This
struggle between centralized and popular control is playing out in every
city and town in the country: in Rojava, in regime held areas, and in
areas controlled by rebel militias.
He also made a distinction between culture and politics that parallels
the disctinction between the people and statist formations: “When the
grassroots do politics, it’s culture”, meaning a set of practices and
ways of living that make centralized authority unnecessary.
Revolutionary “politics” can thus be distinguished from revolutionary
“culture”. The central cultural practice of the Syrian revolution, he
explained, is to question everything: the regime, the elite opposition
in exile, the free army, islamist militias, the PYD, gender roles,
tribal structures, democracy, everything. Unfortunately, this practice
of critical questioning has not been taken up by anarchists and
anti-authoritarians around the world when they set out to engage with
the conflicts in Syria.
At the event, Leila and Robin echoed the argument made in Burning
Country for critical solidarity, with Rojava and with all groups
involved. They urged us to not confuse the actions of armed groups or
political bodies with the struggles of grassroots revolutionaries, be
they in Rojava, Damascus, Homs, or wherever. They said that a crucial
role for international supporters right now is to participate in
conversations across sectarian lines[9], to resist the polarization
playing out on the ground that is pushing Syria towards terrible
solutions like partition. Robin said, “the solution to this is not more
states, it’s weaker states with more local autonomy”. Critical
solidarity is why Leila and Robin can strongly support democratic
confederalism, offer solidarity to grassroots revolutionary in Rojava
and throughout the Syrian territory, while still opposing the Azaz
offensive by the SDF.
The preoccupation of anarchists with ideology and their uncritical
support of Rojava has its parallel in the broader left’s support for the
Assad regime. The emphasis on dialogue includes confronting regime
supporters, talking with them and pointing out the weakness in their
narratives[10]. One reason why so many leftists have supported the Assad
regime is an excessive focus on international politics, on the maneuvers
of states, on ideology. Like the uprising in Ukraine and the NATO
intervention in Libya, the Syrian revolution has refreshed the binary,
anti-imperialist worldview, where the United States and its allies are
trying to control the world, opposed by heroic anti-imperialist
socialist states. There’s a lot to be said about why this position is
horrible: after 10 years of neo-liberal reforms, it wasn’t a socialist
country; the tens of thousands of political dissidents dead under
torture; the shabby oedipal logic that the role of the dissident is to
oppose the actions of their own country no matter what; the racist
belief that Arabs and other Middle Eastern peoples are ignorant
children, unable to see their own conditions and to take action without
some foreign power lurking behind the scenes… One could go on.
Leila and Robin’s project with Burning Country is to tell the story of
the Syrian revolution from the beginning, on the level of actual people.
One way to support the Syrian revolution is to fight against memory loss
and silence: to learn and tell the story of a revolution that has gone
further than any in recent history, that is rich in new theories and
practices useful to people in revolt around the world. We can intervene
within our circles and within anarchist spaces as well as within the
wider left to encourage critical solidarity with revolutionaries
throughout the Syrian territory. We can prepare ourselves to offer
practical, material support to the struggle against authority in Syria
in the years to come.
Some resources:
— Documentary film made by Spanish anarchists, Ecos del Desgarro / Echos
of Rupture, tells the story of the Syrian revolution from the beginning.
https://tahriricn.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/syria-film-ecos-del-desgarro/
— Leila’s blog: https://leilashami.wordpress.com/
— Robin’s blog: https://qunfuz.com/
— Paul’s Rojava dispatches start here:
http://modernslavery.calpress.org/?p=875
— More essays about solidarity with the Syrian revolution at The
Hamilton Institute:
https://thehamiltoninstitute.noblogs.org/post/category/around-the-world/
— Local Co-ordinating Committees in Syria Facebook page (mostly in
Arabic, some translations):
https://www.facebook.com/LCCSy?_fb_noscript=1
— Yalla Souria, Live updates on the struggle from a revolutionary
perspective: https://yallasouriya.wordpress.com/
— A new blog started in December focussing on the ‘democratic’
revolution in Syria. Some posts support militarism and western
intervention, but it’s also got some great content:
https://isqatannizam.wordpress.com/
— The sub-reddit Syrian Civil War provides detailed analysis of the
military dimension of the conflict. It takes a bit of work to get caught
up enough on the details to follow, but once you’re there, it’s a good
resource, though it’s very militaristic which is generally the opposite
of revolutionary: http://reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar ; this user posts
daily summaries of events from a generally pro-rebel perspective:
https://www.reddit.com/user/HeresWatReallyHappnd
— Posts by Budhour Hassan, an anarchist based in Jerusalem, on the
Syrian Revolution:
https://budourhassan.wordpress.com/tag/syrian-revolution/
— Michael Karadjis writes some very thorough essays debunking propaganda
about the Syrian Revolution: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/
— Syria Solidarity Collective Toronto:
https://www.facebook.com/SSCToronto
[1] For this text, I’m using phrases like “Rojava” and “Rojava project”
rather than referring to “Kurds” or “Kurdish struggle” because of what I
see as genuine attempts throughout Rojava to go beyond ethnic lines.
That these attempts are sometimes undercut by belligerent actions by
particular armed groups doesn’t undermine the broadly inclusive work.
[2] The SDF, or Syrian Democratic Forces, is a coalitional military
project attached to Rojava. The largest group by far is the YPG, the
People’s Defense Forces, which formed as the armed wing of the PYD, the
largest (read, only) political party in Rojava). The SDF’s mandate is to
incorporate armed groups not part of the YPG and often not Kurdish into
the military struggle for Rojava, part of the goal of making Rojava more
than just a Kurdish project.
[3] The armed branch of the PYD party that is guiding the Rojava project
[4] Rather than get into a lot of detail here, I’ll refer those
interested in proof of this claim to Michael Karadjis’ thorough article:
The Kurdish PYD’s alliance with Russia against Free Aleppo: Evidence and
analysis of a disaster
https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/the-kurdish-pyds-alliance-with-russia-against-free-aleppo-evidence-and-analysis-of-a-disaster/
[5] This may seem odd but it’s a strategy of the regime’s to avoid
economic collapse, probably a larger threat than military defeat, and to
maintain some level of authority – to avoid the destruction of the
state, in short. Most oddly, this has included oil refinery workers in
ISIS territory who then sell oil to the regime.
[6] Democratic is a vague term claimed by almost every party in the
conflict that isn’t fighting for a salafist islamic state. There are
over a hundred and fifty revolutionary councils operating throughout
Syria. Most vote in temporary members who then either vote on issues or
operate on consensus, though some are more similar to tribal structures
and some have been taken over by authoritarian armed groups. Most all
have some practice of assemblies, usually informal.
[7] Though as mentionned above, there have been steady steps over
especially the last year to hand responsibilities to local councils.
[8] Leila and Robin emphasized that there are many revolutionaries who
are devoutly Muslim and could be described as Islamist, in that they
want Islam to guide political life, but who do not seek to impose it on
anyone else – they evoked demonstrations against Ahrar ash-Sham and
Jabhat al-Nusra when they have tried to impose religious garb or Islamic
laws on people who do not accept them. The writings of Samer Yazbek, a
revolutionary and an Alawi woman who does not wear religious garb as she
travels through revolutionary areas, are very insightful on this. There
is also a thread on Anarchist News compiling protests against the regime
and against Jabhat al-Nusra in the Idlib area:
http://anarchistnews.org/content/demonstrations-against-state-and-against-fascists-idlib-province-syria
[9] They were primarily talking about the Syrian diaspora community
here, though the general idea probably holds for anyone trying to
understand and engage with this conflict.
[10] Robin entertainingly singled out Democracy Now as a “pro-fascist
outlet” doing the opposite of of encouraging critical dialogue through
their repeated interviews with “racist fool” and pro-Assad conspiracy
theorist Seymour Hirsch