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<div><big><big><big>The autonomous region of Rojava, as it exists
today, is one of few bright spots – albeit a very bright
one – to emerge from the tragedy of the Syrian revolution.
Having driven out agents of the Assad regime in 2011, and
despite the hostility of almost all of its neighbours,
Rojava has not only maintained its independence, but is a
remarkable democratic experiment. Popular assemblies have
been created as the ultimate decision-making bodies,
councils selected with careful ethnic balance (in each
municipality, for instance, the top three officers have to
include one Kurd, one Arab and one Assyrian or Armenian
Christian, and at least one of the three has to be a
woman), there are women’s and youth councils, and, in a
remarkable echo of the armed Mujeres Libres (Free Women)
of Spain, a feminist army, the “YJA Star” militia (the
“Union of Free Women”, the star here referring to the
ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar), that has carried out
a large proportion of the combat operations against the
forces of Islamic State.<br>
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<big><big><big> </big></big></big>
<div><big><big><big>How can something like this happen and still
be almost entirely ignored by the international community,
even, largely, by the International left? Mainly, it
seems, because the Rojavan revolutionary party, the PYD,
works in alliance with Turkey’s Kurdish Worker’s Party
(PKK), a Marxist guerilla movement that has since the
1970s been engaged in a long war against the Turkish
state. Nato, the US and EU officially classify them as a
“terrorist” organisation.<br>
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<div><big><big><big>But, in fact, the PKK itself is no longer
anything remotely like the old, top-down Leninist party it
once was. Its own internal evolution, and the intellectual
conversion of its own founder, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
target="_blank"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_%C3%96calan"
title="">Abdullah Ocalan</a>, held in a Turkish island
prison since 1999, have led it to entirely change its aims
and tactics.</big></big></big></div>
<big><big><big> </big></big></big>
<div><big><big><big>The PKK has declared that it no longer even
seeks to create a Kurdish state. Instead, inspired in part
by the vision of social ecologist and anarchist Murray
Bookchin, it has adopted the vision of “libertarian
municipalism”, calling for Kurds to create free,
self-governing communities, based on principles of direct
democracy, that would then come together across national
borders – that it is hoped would over time become
increasingly meaningless. In this way, they proposed, the
Kurdish struggle could become a model for a wordwide
movement towards genuine democracy, co-operative economy,
and the gradual dissolution of the bureaucratic
nation-state.<br>
<br>
</big></big></big></div>
<big><big><big> </big></big></big>
<div><big><big><big>Since 2005 the PKK, inspired by the strategy
of the <a moz-do-not-send="true" target="_blank"
href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/01/02/mexicos-zapatista-rebel-movement-marks-20-years/4284461/"
title="">Zapatista rebels in Chiapas</a>, declared a
unilateral ceasefire with the Turkish state and began
concentrating their efforts in developing democratic
structures in the territories they already controlled.
Some have questioned how serious all this really is.
Clearly, authoritarian elements remain. But what has
happened in Rojava, where the Syrian revolution gave
Kurdish radicals the chance to carry out such experiments
in a large, contiguous territory, suggests this is
anything but window dressing. Councils, assemblies and
popular militias have been formed, regime property has
been turned over to worker-managed co-operatives – and all
despite continual attacks by the extreme rightwing forces
of Isis. The results meet any definition of a social
revolution. In the Middle East, at least, these efforts
have been noticed: particularly after PKK and Rojava
forces intervened to successfully fight their way through
Isis territory in Iraq to rescue thousands of Yezidi
refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar after the local peshmerga
fled the field. These actions were widely celebrated in
the region, but remarkably received almost no notice in
the European or North American press.<br>
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<div><big><big><big>Now, Isis has returned, with scores of US-made
tanks and heavy artillery taken from Iraqi forces, to take
revenge against many of those same revolutionary militias
in Kobane, declaring their intention to massacre and
enslave – yes, literally enslave – the entire civilian
population. Meanwhile, the Turkish army stands at the
border preventing reinforcements or ammunition from
reaching the defenders, and US planes buzz overhead making
occasional, symbolic, pinprick strikes – apparently, just
to be able to say that it did not do nothing as a group it
claims to be at war with crushes defenders of one of the
world’s great democratic experiments.</big></big></big></div>
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