How the Left Failed Syria

Everything a Leftist needs to know on the Syrian Revolution

“We love life so much that we are willing to die for it.”

Mazlum Doğan, PKK founder

“It’s complicated” is a phrase thrown around a lot when talking about Syria and whilst it is in some respects (as are all social revolutions and conflicts) what is less commented upon is how simple it also is. A reactionary and despotic ruling class, universally despised. A fascist movement, waiting in the wings to capitalise on alienation. And a revolutionary, communist bloc hoping to forge something beautiful from beneath the horror. Simple. What supposedly makes this decade of revolution and civil war so complicated for some is the international factor. It is the watching imperialist hawks who, drowning in their dirty dealings, violent betrayals and merciless maneuverings become capable of turning black into white, obscuring the good from the bad and the bad from the ugly. This essay will hope to tell the story of Syria and its Revolution, illuminating as we go the common errors in Left analysis on the subject and ultimately what can be done to stop these mistakes being committed in the future.

It is possible that in the coming years - or even months - the Revolution that burst forth from North East Syria in 2011 will come to an end. Much of the blame of this precarious state belongs with the international Left who - at best - completely ignored the struggle in Syria and at worst condemned it and supported the recently deposed regime. I am writing this piece (by far the longest and most time consuming I have ever undertaken) in homage to this ignored Revolution and all its martyrs, who deserve so much more than the shrugging indifference that the world has given them.

The essay below is necessarily extensive and split into two key sections; first a sketch of events in rough chronological order and second a collection of overarching articles of analysis that focus in on different angles of the Syrian struggle, such as on the gains of the Revolution as well as the relationship between Capitalist Realism and the Revolution. Feel free to skip to whatever sections most interest you or simply enjoy the 30,000 word journey in its entirety.

Before I begin, two underlying trueisms must be quickly highlighted. 1) There exists imperialisms and imperial states beyond the United States and its Empire. 2) the revolutionary communist movement does not celebrate the growth of one imperialism or imperial state at the expense of the other. Those who degenerate into campism, who pick their favourite oppressor, who fawn over their most aesthetically pleasing tyrant, are not of us but rather something far lesser.

Note - When I refer to ‘The Revolution’ I refer to the undiluted revolutionary spirit of 2011, that demanded egalitarianism and justice and today now only truly lives on in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria*. Notions of ‘The Revolution’ has nothing to do with the actions of the FSA, SNA and other sectarian imperialist proxies, who, whilst celebrated as ‘rebels’ in mainstream western media, are in fact the epitome of counter revolution.

*The region in which the Revolution holds authority is often referred to by a number of names; Rojava, the DAANES, the AANES, West Kurdistan and this article will often use the terms intrechangably.

The Context behind the Context

The newly deposed Assad regime had its historical roots in Ba’athism, an ideology influential in the 20th century for its synthesis of pan-Arab nationalism and socialism. (It is no surprise that Ba’athism has met the same fate as many other left movements that have attempted to dilute socialism with bourgeois fantasies of the nation state.) In Syria the Ba’th Party took over in 1963 via a military coup and made many progressive reforms, expropriating just under one million hectares of land away from the landed aristocracy and in the favour of the poor peasants, nationalising the banks and the largest corporations and dramatically increasing the tax burden on the richest.¹ Moderate attempts were also made to increase direct worker control, with boards of directors limited to a maximum of seven with a minimum of one worker representative. On top of this, 25% of the annual profits of all corporations were set aside for workers each year.² These positive reforms earned the Baathist regime widespread support amongst the international Left, as well as the regime's opposition to American and Zionist imperialism.

Despite the positive nature of these reforms, it is important here to note the dependency of the Ba’th Party on the military to implement its agenda and thus the top down, centralised way in which the reforms occurred. The party had not swept to power on some popular revolution, not was policy direction dictated by the mood on the streets but instead factional rivalries between state departments and constant political maneuvering for control of the military.

With political, economic and social power still so tightly concentrated in a small clique it was no surprise when, in 1970, a military coup spurred on by the fallout from the Six Day War occurred which brought the progressive reforms to a sudden halt.

In November of 1970 the ‘Corrective Revolution’ occurred, bringing Hafez al-Assad to power on a wave of counter revolutionary defeatism that had seeped into senior military and bureaucratic ranks following Syria’s disappointing defeat against Israel. As Seale states ‘In shorthand, Assad’s nationalist objectives were at odds with [the left faction’s] socialist ones’³ . This marked the first victory of the nationalist cancer over revolutionary, internationalist socialism in Syria and led to the imprisonment and repression of the left faction within the party. Already the seeds of the dead, vacuumous ideology that is Assadism had been planted, and the first steps towards counter revolution had been taken.

It is worth noting that the ‘left’ faction was itself also riddled with flaws; zealotry bordering on fanaticism, obsession with strict hierarchy and the lack of any meaningful relationship with the masses in Syria made it more akin to an obscure Maoist cult than a working party of the proletariat. Still, the ‘correction’ in favour of Assad did little to nothing to remedy these problems instead offering an inversion of the policy of socialism first, nation second, to nation first, socialism second.

‘Class struggle was toned down [and] criticism of other [bourgeois] Arab regimes was muted.’⁴

‘Anxious to throw off the unpopularity the radicals had earned he dropped class warfare and set about broadening the base of his support by wooing the disaffected social classes’⁵

It is also worth noting that, whilst Assadists today claim that the regime is ‘pro-palestine’ it was in fact the victory of Assad in 1970 which marked the first move away from the anti-zionist rejectionist position of the left faction (who had opposed any capitulation to Zionism) and instead a move towards a more conciliatory relationship with the Israeli terror state.

‘[Assad] was not a rejectionist, nor was he opposed in principle to any settlement [with Israel].’⁶

Whilst Assad had preached democracy, decentralisation and the ‘opening up’ of Syria as a way to appease bourgeois elements within society it quickly became clear that whilst the regime would shift rightward economically it would not loosen its grip on the state, with Assad maintaining a permanent national state of emergency until his death in 2000 as a way to centralise authority⁷. Though he had been born out of a revolutionary socialist movement, over the next few decades Assad would slowly lose more and more of his old principles whilst the cult of personality built up around himself and his family continued to expand.

“By the late 1980s and early 1990s…businesspeople started to develop stronger ties with the regime through patronage relations. These emergent state-business relations grew in the 1990s and businesspeople were slowly incorporated into the web of political power, gaining seats in parliament and enjoying increasing access to the political elite.”⁸

“The government is currently split between Ba’thists and neoliberal reformers and subordinated to a merely nominal Ba’thist leader. The old is dying but the new is not yet born; iconic of this are the contradictory messages to which students in Syria’s schools are exposed: on the one hand the party-affiliated Revolutionary Youth Union still organizes them and they still recite the party’s socialist slogans; on the other hand, the president’s wife encourages ‘young entrepreneurs’ to think about setting up their own businesses.”⁹

The Context

This then is the context in which Bashar Al Assad emerges in 2000 as the new face of the rotting Assadist monarchy, promising, as his own father did exactly thirty years prior, the amorphous and ever illusive ‘liberalisation’ that would bring prosperity and wealth flowing into Syria. And, once again, we see the exact same pattern repeated (usurption of power from the top down through the military, successful neoliberal reform and the quiet burying of political liberalisation) only this time on a far, far greater scale. Quickly Assad ‘sought to bring in younger, technocratic, less…ideological, and more liberal ministers’¹⁰ to help unleash a violent neoliberal agenda against the Syrian people. In 2005, the “social market economy” was adopted as a new economic strategy at the Ba’ath Party’s 10th Regional Conference, marking an open capitulation to neoliberalism and global capital.

“The aim was to encourage private accumulation principally through the marketization of the economy while the state withdrew from key areas of social welfare provision, aggravating already existing socio‐economic problems.”¹¹

The result was a disaster. The private sector swallowed up formerly stable sections of the economy, “benefit[ing] the Syrian upper class and foreign investors (particularly from the Gulf Monarchies and Turkey) at the expense of the vast majority of Syrians, who were hit by inflation and the rising cost of living.”¹² In the 20 years between 1990-2010 productive areas of the economy shrank by almost 10%, replaced by rent based profits as landlords capitalised on the new policy direction. By 2004 rents and profits amounted for a stunning 67% of GDP.¹³

“Social security spending was reduced considerably by the cutbacks to the pension system in the 2000s. Health care and education spending did not rise in accordance with population growth. The share of the education and health care sectors as a percentage of GDP expenses was approximately 4 percent and 0.4 percent before 2010. In this context, the regime embarked on the gradual privatization of schools, in particular universities and colleges, and of health care. This process was accompanied by the reduction of the quality and quantity of public health services, which forced Syrians to turn to the private sector in order to enjoy basic services. Subsidies were also removed on key foods items as well as on gas and other energy sources. Price liberalization meant that products essential to everyday life grew increasingly unaffordable for most low-income families.”¹⁴

The mass privatisation of agriculture also took place under Assad during this time, with the damage to the sector accelerated by droughts between 2007-2009. The privatisation process was most devastating in the northeast of the country, and would become a key part of the story that birthed the most successful revolution of the 21st century.

“Neoliberal policies and deepening processes of privatization created new monopolies in the hands of relatives and other figures associated with Bashar al-Assad and the regime, either through familial ties or public and governmental positions or posts in the military and security service. Rami Makhlouf, Bashar al-Assad’s cousin and richest man in Syria, represented the mafia-style process of privatization led by the regime. His vast economic empire included telecommunications, oil and gas, as well as construction, banks, airlines, retail, and more. The role of the new businessmen emerging from the state bourgeoisie and high officialdom grew prominent in Syrian economic life, increasingly taking up positions occupied by the old and traditional bourgeoisie.”¹⁵

Whilst Rami Makhlouf is often referenced in western media as an example of Assadist nepotism and corruption, what is less commented on is Makhlouf’s deep ties to the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (a fascist outfit), and how Makhlouf was frequently referred to as the SSNP’s ‘Invisible President’¹⁶. Since 2005, Makhlouf had expanded his influence on Syria’s fascists and by the end of the decade had become one of its key figures. Makhlouf’s own cousin Hussein Makhlouf, was the dean interior of the party. The contemporary incestuous relationship between the Syrian state, its capitalists and fascism is the grotesque Frankenstein of Assad’s father and his first capitulation to nationalism over socialism with ‘the Makhlouf family [being] instrumental in helping Hafez al-Assad forge his power over the country with their connections to Syria’s urban elite.’¹⁷ As we will see later, the fascists and their militia - Eagles of the Whirlwind - played an important role in supressing the Syrian masses during the revolution and civil war. This is the vile Thatcher-Hitlerite regime which the campist ‘Left’ calls on us to defend.

Whilst Assad underwent his project of neoliberal reform he also cracked down on socialist resistance in his country in an attempt to appeal to neighbouring imperialists. The process had begun under his father in 1998 when the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party) was unceremoniously expelled from Syria after enjoying decades of sanctuary.

“The Syrian regime had long-standing ties with the PKK from the days of Hafez, who also hosted their leader, but when the regime wanted to curry favor with Turkey and the West it turned against the PKK.”¹⁸

Rather than the PKK betraying the regime and siding with Western imperialism (as is the common narrative amongst particularly brainless sections of the internet) it was in fact the regime which turned its back on socialism, embraced neoliberal economics and courted western imperialism by throwing out the PKK.

For years the PKK had worked with the other communist movements in the region to resist the most violent imperialist powers in the region (Israel and Turkey) and expand the revolution. In fact, it had been the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP) who had helped the PKK set up their first ever guerrilla training camp in Lebanon in 1982.¹⁹ However in 1998 Assad capitulated to Turkey and expelled the PKK along with its famous leader Abdullah Ocalan, which would ultimately cause the sequence of events that would lead to Ocalan’s arrest imprisonment in 1999, where he remains to this day. Interestingly, whilst Assadist campists like to claim that the PKK and Ocalan are a tool of Israel and the US, it was in fact Mossad and the CIA who helped hunt down Ocalan after Assad’s capitulation and handed him over to the Turkish state.²⁰²¹

Abdullah Ocalan with PFLP fighters in 1981

“The crumbling of the current regime should be located in this long history of convergence between neoliberalism and authoritarianism.”²²

This is the staged background of the Syrian Revolution, and one that can in many ways be copy and pasted across many nations in the Middle East, which is part of the reason why the tidal wave of revolution spread so fast and so fiercely in 2011. It did not matter whether a regime had picked western or eastern imperialism as its favourite that determined whether it was rocked by revolt, but simply whether it had capitulated to the nightmare of authoritarian neoliberalism, which all had. To thus reduce the mass movements to come as a simple ‘colour revolution’ (as many on the Left have done) is chauvinistic nonsense. The CIA, for all its prowess, cannot make millions fill the streets despite fear of death and torture. Only the hopeless material conditions of marketisation and acute oppression can do such a thing.

During this time the Assad regime were not the only ones in Syria reevaluating their relationship with state socialism. The fall of the USSR and the golden age of neoliberalism posed grave questions for communist parties across the world who felt a pressing need to question establish orthodoxy and reinvent themselves. For most existing socialist states (Laos, China, Vietnam and Cuba to a lesser extent) all that was produced in thinking was a constant pressure in favour of marketisation and privatisation under the guise of ‘market socialism’. In the PKK however, something more productive took place.

Prior to the 2000s the PKK had been a traditional Marxist Leninist guerrilla outfit, waging revolution in the hopes of establishing its own Kurdish nation state. However whilst in prison Ocalan began to see issues with this orthodoxy. Over the last century it had failed to truly liberate the masses from the grips of global capital, and frequently degenerated overtime.

“During this time [in prison], [Ocalan] critically engaged Marxist theory and practice and intensively studied the writings of the libertarian theorist Murray Bookchin and the historians Immanuel Wallerstein and Michel Foucault. He carried out an intensive study of the history of the Middle East, of Neolithic society and ancient Sumer, of Attic democracy and contemporary tribal organization. He studied works on Sumerian mythology, religion, philosophy, archeology, physics, and much more. From all these sources, he developed the models of Democratic Confederalism and Democratic Autonomy that the PKK would adopt as a paradigm shift, and that would become foundational for the revolution in Rojava.²³

Ocalan’s democratic confederalism differs from Orthodox Marxism in several ways. First, it rejects the notion that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Arguing instead that capitalism, statism and nationalism are all products of patriarchy and gender struggles.

“The decline of society [primitive communism], in this analysis, began with the fall of woman.”²⁴

Secondly, rather than the creation of a workers’ nation state, democratic confederalism demands the creation of a system of democratic councils and workers’ organisations, seeing the state as a tool of nationalism, patriarchy and bureaucracy. According to Ocalan the nation state is an invention of a masculine, bourgeois and fundamentally anti-democratic modernity. This is important because many western commentators (and also plenty on the Left) like to reduce Rojava down to another separatist, ethnonationalist project, yet this is directly contradictory to the true goal of the PKK and the wider revolution, which is in fact anti-nationalist and multiethnic.

“In contrast to a centralist and bureaucratic understanding of administration and exercise of power confederalism poses a type of political self­administration where all groups of the society and all cultural identities can express themselves in local meetings, general conventions and councils. This understanding of democracy opens the political space to all strata of the society and allows for the formation of different and diverse political groups. In this way it also advances the political integration of the society as a whole. Politics becomes a part of everyday life.”²⁵

Having reinvented itself upon this basis the PKK created the Koma Ciwakên Kürdistan (Kurdistan Communities Union) throughout Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the diaspora, as a ‘democratic, social and confederal system’ with members and its own judiciary, which ‘tries to gain influence on central and local administration’.²⁶ This has created a system of dual power across the region, with many areas in Turkey in particular where the KCK’s authority exceeds that of the nation state. The KCK would become a model from which the Revolution would come to adapt and learn from in the coming years, as well as causing a violent reaction from the Turkish state, which began to be increasingly threatened by this new authority.

‘[the KCK] is self-determination in a new form, namely, based on the capacities and capabilities of people themselves’²⁷

This then, is the situation on the onset of revolution and civil war. A regime, worn and tired, turning to capital and centralisation to prolong its demise. A resistance, evolved for new times, turning outward to the masses. There is however one last component to the context of the Syrian Revolution and that is the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The initial success of US operations in driving out Al Qaeda and toppling Hussein in Iraq was quickly replaced with the horror of an insurgent islamofascism driven primarily by a failure on the part of the US to support locals in Iraq who had fought back against Al Qaeda* as well as the resentment that arose following abuses and torture conducted by US troops against civilians. Despite years of war in Iraq, by the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution in 2011 islamofascism was spreading, disease-like across the Middle East, silencing the snuffing out demands for social revolution. Though beyond the scope of this article, Schneiders The apocalypse and the end of history : modern jihad and the crisis of liberalism is a great explainer for how neoliberalism helped birth islamofascism in the Middle East.

“ISI survived in Iraq and was able to maintain local support for their operations because of widespread frustration with the failures of the central Iraqi government. By the time the Syrian conflict began, ISI was embroiled in continued battles with the Iraqi army. The conflict provided an opportunity for expansion.”²⁸

*Like all fascist threats, ISIS/Al Qaeda/Taliban can only be defeated by addressing the alienation caused by capital and the material conditions of the working class. The failure of the US, as an colonial, neoliberal entity to achieve this in both Iraq and Afghanistan is obvious today and it is only in Syria, where the Revolution has offered a socialist alternative that ISIS was effectively pushed back. It also notable that for all the reactionary talk of countering islamic fundamentalism by the imperialist powers, it was, just like in WW2, communists and socialists, who were the ones on the ground giving their lives in the fight against fascism and the only ones capable of effective resistance.

The Struggle Begins

This then is where the key players stood, when on the 6th of March, 2011, 15 students were arrested and tortured by the regime for the crime of spray painting the words “the people want the downfall of the regime.”

“On February 17, 2011, Dar'a experienced the first protests of the Syrian uprising, labelled the “Day of Anger.” By March 15, 2011, a second protest had taken place. A third, after Friday prayers on March 18, gave the protesters increasing momentum in the city and put them in direct confrontation with the security forces who had begun to open fire and use live munitions on protesters.”²⁹

The mass movement calling for political reform, the resignation of Assad and an end to corruption grew only angrier when on May 25th the lifeless body of 13 year old Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb was delivered by Syrian state thugs to his family.

“The child had spent nearly a month in the custody of Syrian security, and when they finally returned his corpse it bore the scars of brutal torture: Lacerations, bruises and burns to his feet, elbows, face and knees, consistent with the use of electric shock devices and of being whipped with cable, both techniques of torture documented by Human Rights Watch as being used in Syrian prisons during the bloody three-month crackdown on protestors. Hamza’s eyes were swollen and black and there were identical bullet wounds where he had apparently been shot through both arms, the bullets tearing a hole in his sides and lodging in his belly. On Hamza’s chest was a deep, dark burn mark. His neck was broken and his penis cut off.”³⁰

Hamza was one of thousands tortured and killed in the early months of the revolution. The regime claimed that Hamza’s injuries were due to ‘natural decomposition’. Syrian state thugs proceeded to harass and threaten Hamza’s grieving parents into blaming Islamic fundamentalists for the crime, when it became clear to them that ‘natural decomposition’ does not cut a penis off, nor break a neck, nor insert bullet wounds in both arms and stomach.³¹ By October over 3,000 people would be killed by the regime including almost 200 children.³² This is the barbarity which Assadists and the more pathetic wing of the ‘Left’ ask us to ‘put up’ with. It is also a completely baseless myth that islamic fundamentalists were behind the outbreak of the Revolution. Whilst islamic groups would grow in strength and numbers throughout the conflict, they had little to no influence on the movement in its early days, which was driven primarily by economic conditions and the violent repression that accompanied it, rather than any opposition to secular governance.³³

Whilst the regime attempted a dual policy of ‘repression and reform’ in the early months this had no impact on the growth of the movement, largely because the reforms were seen as overly cosmetic and outweighed by the dramatic violence the regime continued to unleash on protesters.³⁴ For example, 200 political prisoners from the notorious Saydnaya prison were released and granted clemency³⁵, yet over 12,000 were arrested by July.³⁶ By June Assad had already begun bombing his own cities in an attempt to stem the tide.³⁷

It is worth noting here that, following the disasters in both Libya and Iraq, the western world was initially extremely hesitant to comment on the protests rocking Assad. With domestic opinion now so hostile to politicians statements on foreign affairs (particularly when it came to the Middle East) substantive condemnation of Assad by the West was hard to find in the early months, with most western commentary meekly asking Assad to accept the need for reform and listen to the protesters. Despite the fact that protests had begun in January/February of that year, it took until August for Obama to reluctantly call for Assad to resign³⁸, several months after Assad had already begun bombing his own cities and many months after the revelations of his atrocities had been made public.

Very quickly, a power vacuum emerged in the areas in which Assad’s grip had weakened and local councils were set up to both better coordinate and unify protests, disproving Assadist propaganda that the movement was sectarian and fundamentalist as well. As time went on the councils began to take on a more expansive role in areas where state authority had all but disintegrated, being responsible for basic needs such as education and healthcare. In October the Syrian National Council was formed (supposedly) as a political umbrella for the opposition, including members from the Muslim Brotherhood, the signatories of the ‘Damascus Declaration’ (a 1991 letter calling for greater political rights and freedoms signed by 250 prominent secular, islamist, kurdish and leftist intellectuals, activists and opposition figures), independents, Assyrians and Kurds. From the very start the SNC was plagued by internal divisions as the various factions fought to steer the movement in their respective directions, as well as being hampered by the fact that the SNC remained highly disconnected from events being, as it was, composed mostly of exiles from abroad who were from the ‘old’ opposition, whilst the movement on the ground was largely driven by people wholly new to political activity.³⁹ Early on many from the Left criticised the SNC for being overly reliant on Turkey and for being a liberal front for islamic fundamentalism. On top of this, the SNC grew to become highly supportive of appealing for foreign intervention in a way that seemed to have little care for those actually in Syria, as well as vacillating over militarisation of the movement. To many the SNC seemed to be an out of touch group intent on hijacking a spontaneous and natural revolution. Many of these early criticisms would be later validated by events.

Throughout the summer militarisation of the opposition began to take place as large sections of the defected, coalescing under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The grouping was ideologically nebulous, beyond being made up of those largely horrified by what they had been asked to do as part of Assad’s army. This was to change however as international actors propped up those brigades more ideologically involved with themselves, exacerbating their weight and undermining those groups unfavourable to the imperialists. The chaotic, decentralised nature of the FSA led to constant infighting within the army as different factions competed for resources. Overtime it became those brigades well armed and funded by outside powers (ranging from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to the US, Norway and the UK) that have been able to exercise influence on the region, whilst those brigades merely created ‘apolitically’ to defend locals have lost relevance.⁴⁰ Whilst initially struggling as a largely inexperienced, poorly coordinated force, ‘By mid­ 2012 the FSA was enjoying significant success’⁴¹ and controlled large sections of northern Syria, from which international imperialists were able to funnel weapons and other supplies. Overtime however, the underlying issues within the FSA would worsen, whilst its credibility with ordinary Syrians would diminish in the wake of a number of human rights abuses and scandals.⁴²⁴³⁴⁴

“There were major problems with the FSA's leadership from the beginning, with the founding officers, including the Commander Riad al-Assad, establishing themselves in Turkey and not in Syria. This made control over the local units and brigades as well as communication with field commanders much more difficult, if not impossible. The leadership's location in Turkey meant that they were heavily influenced and controlled by the Turkish government and its intelligence apparatus.”⁴⁵

As Turkey sought to maximise its influence militarily in Syria, it also continued to do so politically. Whilst the SNC had become largely irrelevant by 2012, a new organisation, (yes I know im sorry) the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SOC) was formed, with the idea of being more appealing to the liberal/left revolutionaries, having significantly reduced the influence of islamists as well as allowing more space for the local councils to have their say. On top of this, the FSA immediately gave the SOC its support, which it had not for the SNC⁴⁶.

Now, whilst the Assadist ‘Left’ like to claim the YPG/SDF to be puppets of foreign powers, it is notable that the revolutionary Kurdish movement had ignored both the SNC and SOC as well as remaining heavily suspicious of the FSA, dismissing them all as imperialist proxies. This is despite the fact that the leftist PYD (the Democratic Union Party, the largest Kurdish party) was offered a vice presidential position in the SOC.⁴⁷ In fact, many of the conservative and liberal forces in the Opposition branded the revolutionary Kurdish bloc as a front for the Assad regime, as they remained strongly against both militarisation of the protesters and a military intervention by foreign powers⁴⁸. This was not because of some liberal commitment to pacificism, but rather the belief that militarisation would make it impossible for any group to survive without the patronage of the imperialists as well as risking the deformation of Syria as an autonomous entity.

Despite the renewed attempt to create a unified force under the control of the imperialists, the SOC ended with a similar fate to the SNC, eclipsed by the rise of ISIS and the YPG. Militarily the FSA began to dissolve beneath the weight of its contradictions as sections turned on one another in favour of their patron imperialist nation, so that by 2013 there was estimated to be over 3,000 separate battalions operating across Syria.⁴⁹

Militarisation of the Revolution was in large part a byproduct of the defections of Army generals and the desires of international imperialists, who saw militarisation as a way by which they could control and direct the revolution in their favour. Whilst it may have been preventable had Assad capitulated or lessened on the use of violence against protesters, the regime’s refusal to do either of these things made militarisation inevitable, despite the relatively successful negotiations of the PYD and the Kurdish movements resistance to militarisation. Over the next decade Syria would pay the price of militarisation dearly as hundreds of thousands died whilst the imperialist states continued to jockey for power in the region.

One of the most infamous instances of the ‘civilianisation’ of Syrian Civil War came in 2013 when the regime turned on the inhabitants of its own capital city. On August the 21st families in the suburbs of Damascus woke up to the sound of rocketfire. These rockets however were not the usual type but rather contained the chemical agent sarin. For some helpful context, Sarin was developed by the Nazis during WW2 and suffocates its victims, usually killing them within one to ten minutes. If you do survive an encounter, it can leave permanent brain damage. It was deemed too dangerous by Hitler and never used during the war.⁵⁰ The nerve agent quickly worked its magic; ‘suffocation, constricted, irregular, and infrequent breathing; involuntary muscle spasms; nausea; frothing at the mouth; fluid coming out of noses and eyes; convulsing; dizziness; blurred vision; red and irritated eyes, and pin-point pupils.’⁵¹

“One rocket hit around 5 a.m. We were praying in the mosque near the turbi area 400 meters away [from the strike site]. We heard the strike and went to the site to help the wounded. We thought it was a regular rocket but when we got there someone was screaming “Chemical! Chemical!” The rocket fell in the first floor of a four-story apartment building. Everyone in the building died in their sleep. It didn’t cause a lot of destruction...It made an opening in the wall. After the person was screaming, people covered their faces, with shirts dunked in water. We didn’t smell anything, but people were fainting. I covered my face with a shirt dunked in water and was rescuing people and taking them to the medical center…If anyone entered the building where the rocket fell they would faint.”⁵²

“I went outside the field hospital and started running towards the explosion site. I didn’t reach the explosions site because I saw injured people on the ground and people screaming and running in all directions… I remember I went into one house and saw a man with his wife on the ground. The house was not destroyed. It was not where the rocket fell or had an impact but they were dead on the ground. After around 40 minutes rescuing people, I started feeling my body aching. I was feeling weak and unable to move. Then my eyes started hurting me and headache started. There was no smoke but there was a smell... I told my friend that I have to go to the hospital. He put me in a car and drove away… I remember very well when we left al-Mazraat in my friend’s car, I saw a dog crossing the street. I shouted to my friend to be careful not to hit him but before I finished my sentence the dog by itself collapsed on the ground.”⁵³

By its end, at least 734 men, women and children would be killed by the chemical weapon⁵⁴, though the true number probably lies above 1000. At the time the regime blamed opposition groups, claiming it was setup to justify military intervention in Syria and that it was illogical from the standpoint of the regime. In fact, leader of the PYD (the largest party in Rojava and a front organisation for the PKK) Saleh Muslim at the time voiced scepticism at the claim that the regime was responsible, arguing that the attack was being manipulated by imperialists for their own ends.⁵⁵

“ "The regime in Syria … has chemical weapons, but they wouldn't use them around Damascus, 5km from the [UN] committee which is investigating chemical weapons. Of course they are not so stupid as to do so,"…Muslim suggests that "some other sides who want to blame the Syrian regime, who want to show them as guilty and then see action" are behind the chemical attack, which has led to speculation that Western countries will order a military response…He says that if the UN inspectors found evidence that Assad was not behind the gassing and the rebels were, "everybody would forget it". "Who is the side who would be punished? Are they are going to punish the emir of Qatar or the king of Saudi Arabia, or Mr Erdogan of Turkey?" ”⁵⁶

For this statement of reasonable scepticism and the highlighting of imperialist hypocrisies, the Opposition branded the PYD/Rojava as apologists of the regime. Meanwhile armchair leftist critics, who know little to nothing of the PYD or PKK, continued to smear the Revolution as a mere phantom of US interests. Idiots.

Investigations in the last few years have proved beyond reasonable doubt that the regime was in fact responsible for the attack.⁵⁷⁵⁸ Whilst one of the most horrific, the 2013 attack on Damascus is simply one of many instances in which the Assad regime used chemical weapons against its own people.

What of the Kurds?

“The state is being unmade in Rojava.”⁵⁹

“While it [is] possible to drop bombs on IS, it’s impossible to drop food and medicine into Kobanî. From the perspective of capitalist modernity, a revolutionary alternative in the Middle East would shock the ruling regimes and have unforeseeable consequences in Europe and the rest of the world. Not for nothing are the hegemonic powers, even the Ba’ath and Erdoğan regimes, despite their deep differences, united when it comes to preventing or annihilating the Rojava project.”⁶⁰

In the summer of 2011, as the protesters looked to defend itself from state massacres, the revolutionary Kurdish movement looked to form their own militias and by July had formed their own Self Protection Units in the form of the YXG (predecessor to the now famous YPG). In 2013 the YPJ would also be formed which wholly consists of female volunteers and makes up about a third of the Revolution’s defenders.⁶¹ From the very start the project was intended to overcome sectarian lines and for the founding congress all other minorities at risk of sectarian violence were invited.⁶²

“The only party that supported us was the PYD. We were always criticized for that, but the PYD had worked every day at the grass-roots, and our numbers grew. We built the armed units illicitly. Many people in Kurdistan had weapons hidden away: shotguns, pistols, Kalashnikovs. Within six or seven months we organized the self-defense committees of the YXG clandestinely.”⁶³

“The PYD has actually been highly successful in creating an administrative structure that is exercising autonomy beyond the state. The Rojava (meaning Western Kurdistan) Project has not been fully supported by all of the Kurdish parties but is nevertheless an ambitious project to provide administration to the Kurdish-dominated areas. This has strengthened the PYD and the YPG's strength in those areas even though there has been a lack of consensus among Kurdish parties with regard to the authority and legitimacy of the Rojava administration. The PYD's strength within the Kurdish community, however, has allowed it to pursue the project despite opposition among some groups.”⁶⁴

Unlike the rest of Syria, the Kurdish regions of the country had an experience in political organising and a relatively developed political education as many had already been politicised by the struggle against the Turkish state in which many families had lost people as fighters in the PKK. By the end of July the regime had abandoned much of Northern Syria and in many cities the YPG took control overnight.

“Öcalan’s models of Democratic Confederalism and Democratic Autonomy were widely known, driving forward the radical democratic organizing. The construction of multiethnic councils, courts, security forces, military units, women’s organizations, and economic cooperatives spread all over Rojava in the following months.”⁶⁵

It also important to note that I repeatedly refer to the ‘Kurdish revolutionary movement’ because there are significant elements of the ‘Kurdish movement’ which are both liberal and conservative, who are not revolutionary in the slightest and who express wholly different demands to the PYD and the YPG. Often, bad faith commentators will use statements or positions held by these reactionary Kurdish parties to discredit the wider revolutionary movement, despite the distinction which exists between the reformist and revolutionary blocs. Ultimately, whilst the revolutionary movement in North East Syria has its roots in the Kurdish struggle, the revolutionary movement today is far broader in its social base than simply Kurds and is an emancipatory movement for all, something reinforced by the PYD’s stance in wanting to employ democratic confederalism in as much of Syria (as well as neighbouring countries) as possible. Perhaps for the first time since the Bolsheviks in 1917, revolutionaries in Rojava are able to think beyond the confines of the bourgeois nation-state. The reformist Kurdish nationalist parties, which tend to be more ethnonationalist and supportive of foreign intervention from the likes of Israel and the US, early on ignored the YPG and either backed the SNC/FSA or operated in the Kurdish National Council (KNC) as a bourgeois alternative to the leftist PYD/PKK and its front organisations. In fact, during the summer of 2013, in which the power of ISIS grew significantly, the conservative and nationalist Kurdish parties not only refused to help defend the Revolution, but even launched an aid embargo on Rojava⁶⁶, hoping that the situation would force the PYD to weaken the council system and empower the reactionary parties. This was particularly egregious as, whilst the KNC has far more international backing by the imperialist powers, the PYDs mass support dramatically outnumbers popular support for the KNC in Syria.⁶⁷

“While the PYD is the stronger of the political parties and has taken the administrative and military leadership of the Kurdish regions, their strong ties to the PKK have made the Turkish authorities reluctant to accept their increasing autonomy within Syria. Conversely, the KNC, while not enjoying the same level of domestic support among Syria's Kurds, has stronger ties to both Turkey and the Iraqi Kurdish groups.”⁶⁸

“Regrettably, the [bourgeois Kurdish parties] continues to operate politically against the Rojava self-government regime, lobbying against it and against the PYD…According to a document published by WikiLeaks, the [bourgeois Kurdish parties] leader Abdulhakim Bashar passed on information to the CIA and the Syrian intelligence service at least for the year 2009. And finally, the [bourgeois Kurdish parties] parties openly support the embargo against Rojava.”⁶⁹

In August of 2011 the PYD founded the People’s Councils of West Kurdistan after holding elections throughout Rojava with some 300 people elected to the council. Simultaneously the party founded the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCC) whose primary purpose was to coordinate the Opposition that supported nonviolent protest (for fear that militarisation would turn the revolution into a proxy war) and did not support military intervention (for the same reasons). In essence the NCC was the leftist, anti-interventionist version of the SNC.

“The NCC was harshly criticized by the other opposition groups and was repeatedly accused of being a kind of front organization for the regime. The NCC in turn accused the other opposition alliances of plunging the country into a civil war and being dependent on Turkey or other foreign suppliers of funds. Because of the militarization of the conflict that had indeed taken place since 2012 the from revolution to civil war the NCC lost its importance outside of Rojava, but even so, with hindsight, its criticism of the militarization of the revolution seems to have been vindicated.”⁷⁰

“The proliferation of armed groups and their division into competing networks of violence is a function of the role of the international community and the desire of regional states to assume control and stewardship of the militarized opposition.”⁷¹

This is why it is so incredibly frustrating when western online leftists smear the revolutionaries in Rojava as mere puppets of the US when from the very start they have organised as strongly as possible against imperialism and the involvement of the imperialists. Whilst being accused of being too close to Assad by liberal/conservative members of the Opposition, the Revolution must put up with these ridiculous western Assadists who proclaim that the SDF/YPG are hellbent on destroying Syria so America can steal oil. What will become increasingly evident throughout the rest of this text is that the art of survival in a situation of civil war is dependent on a great degree of pragmatism and the ability to play opponents off against one another. The trick, of course, is to do this without capitulation, something many leftists in the past have failed to do.

One of the early examples of this pragmatism came in the form of the Hewler Agreement which was signed in July and brought together the liberal, conservative and revolutionary factions of the Kurdish movement in a form of power sharing. Whilst the PYD had momentum on its side and was growing in influence, the rapid rise of ISIS out of the Syrian countryside made an alliance necessary, as the growth of the islamic fundamentalists was far outpacing the ability of the PYD to singlehandedly respond and threatened to eliminate everything the PYD had created.

It was in Kobane that the YPG took its first city, overnight overwhelming regime troops and declaring the zone liberated with relative ease.

“When the people awoke the next morning…and saw our flags flying over the roofs instead of the regime’s, they were stunned. Even months later many were still worried that the regime would return.” People had so internalized their fear of the regime, she recalled, that the actions of July 19 were initially incomprehensible to them.”⁷²

It did not take long for the Revolution to spread across much of Northern Syria.

“As the action unfolded,” Heval Amer told us, “the people had no more fear—everyone joined in, many with only wooden clubs in their hands.” “In Dêrîk we tried to hold the people back,” Hanife Hisên told us, “but they pushed out ahead of us. We set up control points. The people said, ‘Give us the weapons,’ and we distributed them. “There were many military outposts in Dêrîk, especially in the Kurdish neighborhoods,” she continued. “We went to the state security forces and surrounded them and told them to go. They got their things and left.” Reported the Vice team, “Several Arab guards at the municipal court were detained and disarmed, and posters of Assad were ripped from the walls… Hundreds of inhabitants, stepping into the gaudily furnished rooms, stood astonished with tears of joy.”⁷³

From Afrin in the west to Qamishli in the East, ‘the pattern continued. The people surrounded the military bases and gave the scant regime troops the option to withdraw. The popular self-organization prevented anyone from committing acts of vengeful destruction.’⁷⁴ Unlike much of the rest of Syria, which had already begun slipping into a bloodbath as the FSA and regime tore the country to shreds, the YPG operated on a strictly defensive strategy, only fighting when forced into confrontation and ensuring that most of the cities under the Revolution’s control remained relatively untouched. Unfortunately this peace was not to last as soon ISIS would come calling.

“Heval Amer told us that after the liberation, many of the Kurds who had emigrated to other parts of Syria for work—Damascus, Raqqa, and Hama— returned to Rojava. “Everyone was accepted back into the movement, even those who worked as agents,” he told us.”⁷⁵

It was in November of 2012 that the YPG faced its first real military test, under attack by both the FSA and islamic fundamentalists at the town of Serê Kaniye.⁷⁶ This would mark the beginning of a years long battle for survival between the Revolution and ISIS, which continues to this day. Despite a number of early victories in 2013 by the YPG ISIS had continued to grow with a number of military success against the FSA. By the beginning of 2014 Kobane, the heart of the Revolution, had been entirely surrounded by fascists, who promptly cut off all water and power supplies, leaving 300,000 civilians to die of dehydration in the darkness in an attempt to take the city. The Revolution’s ‘Battle of Stalingrad’ had begun.

For the city’s inhabitants leaving quickly became extremely dangerous, with 186 students being kidnapped by ISIS in May as they attempted to leave Kobane for examinations in Aleppo.⁷⁷

“Mustafa Hassan had only been in captivity for a few hours and was already planning his escape. After four days, he found his moment. While some of his fellow schoolboys distracted the religious teacher with questions, Hassan and a friend scaled a ladder on to the roof on the pretext of fetching water and raising a flag. From there, they hopped on to the wall of the school, jumped down to the street and kept walking. Local people helped them get out of town. Soon they were back in this Kurdish-dominated town in northern Syria. They were the lucky ones. They left behind scores of classmates, Kurds from northern Syria, who remain captive – kidnapped by the extremists of Isis. Escape is not to be taken lightly: one Isis fighter warned them that anyone caught trying to leave would be beheaded. "They asked us whether we wanted to join jihadis or not, to join Isis," Mustafa recalls. "No one did. If the students were loud or chaotic, they were beaten with an electrical cable. Ten boys were beaten every day. But most of us were well-behaved, to not get beaten. Some of the boys were crying, some turned yellow with fear. They showed us a documentary film from Iraq: of people being slaughtered."⁷⁸

On 2nd of July the fascists moved from a state of siege to an all out offensive⁷⁹ and by October the situation had become critical; several villages on the outskirts of Kobane had been captured by the fascists with mass executions of inhabitants and the YPG, for the first time, introducing emergency conscription (though only for those between the ages of 18-30) as it scrambled to defend the city. By mid October ISIS had entered Kobane and over the coming months would capture almost the entire city. With their control reduced down to a final two street blocks the YPG/YPJ famously made their final stand and, with the help of the FSA, the Peshmerga (troops of Iraqi Kurdistan) and the US began to turn the tide against ISIS.

This moment raises a few questions. First, why did the FSA come to the Revolution’s aid if it had previously aided the fundamentalists and itself attacked the Revolution? This answer is simple - as a proxy of the Turkish state, the FSA faced extreme pressure in 2014 to counter ISIS because of the attacks spreading across western countries. Very quickly ISIS became universally despised by both imperialist states and revolutionary forces as it massacred westeners abroad as well as spreading terror in Syria. This led to a temporary convergence in interests for all organisations in Syria, much akin to the united front between the capitalist powers and the USSR during WW2. This brings us to the next point of contention - assistance from the US. As the Revolution stood on the brink of extinction, the US helped to save it. This makes many leftists, who have become used to robotically opposing whatever the US does abroad (generally a good rule), uncomfortable even though it shouldn’t. The US did something good in Syria by supporting the Revolution, not out of the goodness of its heart, but because the islamofascism of ISIS threatened the stability of the imperial core, similar to the manner in which the Nazis had threatened Western imperialism. Just as the USSR accepting US aid to save itself from Nazism did not make the USSR a puppet of the US, so too can the same be said for the Revolution. As I will explain later, this temporary support from the imperialists would soon evaporate as interests shifted elsewhere.

On the 26th of January ISIS was finally driven from Kobane and over the next few months ISIS collapsed across the canton as the PKK, YPG and YPJ pushed them out, though not without suffering heavy losses. Whilst the imperialist states were happy to provide air cover in the assault it was Syrian and Kurdish people, as well as other volunteers from across the globe, who actually gave their lives on the ground fighting against the fascist threat (again, akin to how it was communist blood that was primarily spilled fighting the Nazis, even if the imperialists helped provide substantial aid). When defeat for ISIS had become inevitable the group transitioned to simply killing as many civilians as possible, killing 145 civilians in a single suicidal assault.⁸⁰

“The attack on the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani…marked the biggest single massacre of civilians by IS in Syria since it killed hundreds of members of the Sunni Sheitaat tribe last year…The YPG spokesman said at least 145 had died in the assault launched by a group of Islamic State fighters estimated to number in the dozens. "The Daesh attack was a suicide mission. Its aim wasn't to take the city but to create terror," spokesman Redur Xelil said…The assault included at least three suicide car bombs. The dead included the elderly, women and children. The Islamic State fighters were reported to have entered the town disguised as members of the YPG and Syrian rebel groups.”⁸¹

“Kobanê meant a new phase for the Kurdistan freedom movement. Kurds from Halabja, Amed, and Mako came and died there. The resistance embodied the spirit of the PKK, the ideology of Abdullah Öcalan. There, people around the world first saw the PKK’s practice and reality. In Kobanê, everyone saw who the real terrorists are.”⁸²

In contrast to what Assadist commentators may claim, the YPG/YPJ are able to operate with more independence from the imperialist powers than any other relevant organisation active in Syria. This is because, unlike the regime or FSA, the YPG/YPJ, in being the most effective fighting force against islamic fundamentalism, is able to benefit the imperialist states without capitulating to them and sacrificing its autonomy. Whilst the FSA exchanged their autonomy from Turkey for patronage, and whilst the Assad regime had also exchanged its own autonomy from Russia and Iran for patronage, Rojava has been able to exchange something far more valuable to the US - dead ISIS fighters. Of course, it is true that as the threat of ISIS has waned so too has the US’ appreciation of this commodity, yet the time in which US support was at its peak (from 2014-2019) built up personal relationships and fraternisation between US soldiers and revolutionaries, leading to built up loyalties between US soldiers and the Revolution. It was for this reason that when Trump attempted to abandon the Revolution as an offering to the Turkish state, many in the Pentagon actually resisted. What happens next as Trump returns, the new government forms and Turkish aggression against the Revolution escalates will be discussed later.

It is also worth noting that the unique standards which the Revolution is held in terms of cooperation with the US are at best subconsciously hypocritical and at worst blatantly bad faith. In 2014 the US was not only working with the YPG, but also Iran and its so called Axis of Resistance; ‘Underscoring how messy and complex the situation had become by the fall of 2014, the United States was on the same side as Iran and its Shiite allies and proxies in Iraq in combatting the Islamic State after it captured Mosul.’⁸³ In fact, the Assad regime itself had provided support for the US’ War on Terror despite opposing the Iraq War, providing intelligence to the CIA on Al Qaeda operations in the region. In one notable case Assad’s intelligence helped to thwart an Al Qaeda attempted attack on the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.⁸⁴ Why then is the Revolution held to a unique standard, in which any cooperation with the US to counter islamofascism is seen as a fatal capitulation?

Some of the brighter Assadist apologists might quickly point out that is not the Revolution’s military cooperation with the US which is the true capitulation, but rather the trading of material resources (most notably oil) in exchange for arms that constitutes a red line crossed. Yet this ignores the fact that the Revolution does not only sell its oil to the US but in fact had an agreement with both Assad’s regime and Iran to also them continued access to oil in the northeast.⁸⁵ Once again, it must be stressed that the Revolution has engaged in pragmatic relations with all forces in Syria (with the single exception of ISIS) and thus gets simultaneously branded as a tool of Assad within Syria and a tool of US imperialism outside the country.

“Now Kurdish women—like Meysa Abdo, the commander of the Kobanî front, and Asya Abdullah, the PYD co-chief—are lauded for behaving with determination and self-confidence. Even the bourgeois newspaper Die Welt observed that “the Kurds, men and women equally, have become an earnest secular actor in the Middle East, and as a result, enormous progress in civil society has become possible.” Women’s magazines like Elle and Marie Claire run multi-page reports on the YPJ, while a well-known Australian TV network broadcasts a documentary called Female State; chain stores like H&M and the fashion magazine Madame display models in clothing adapted from the uniforms of armed fighters in the PKK and the YPJ. A 40- year-long conflict has all at once become conspicuous on the world stage and even appears to be chic.”⁸⁶

“Through the power of discourse and propaganda, the Kurdish women’s movement was made digestible for liberal, global mainstreams. For activists in the Kurdish women’s movement, this continues a decades-old attempt to sway the Öcalan-affiliated Kurds away from revolution, towards alliance with American interests in the region.”⁸⁷

After the success at Kobane an incredible event occurred. The western liberal media, which for decades had ignored the plight of the Kurds, which had, since the late 90s and early 00s, condemned the PKK as an evil communist terrorist organisation, suddenly fell in love with the Revolution as it fought against ISIS. Whilst much of the celebration downplayed the Revolution’s socialist credentials and isolated its focus to feminist, racial and ecological gains, the attention had a spill over impact on the international socialist movement which for the first time truly began paying attention to the Revolution in North East Syria, seeing it as an antifascist, communist movement. Thus in June 2015 the International Freedom Battalion (IFB) was founded, inspired by the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. The IFB consists of a number of different groups from across the spectrum of the revolutionary Left, with Marxist Leninist, Maoist and anarchist brigades as well as those based on country of origin. For a time, there also existed the Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army Brigade,⁸⁸ though whether or not the group is still active is relatively unclear.

Members of the Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army Brigade

It is estimated that there are around 800 internationalist fighters in Rojava, though this number excludes most of the internationalists from Turkey and Iraq, who likely make up the majority of internationalist fighters in the region⁸⁹. The IFB played a significant role ‘in the Manbij offensive in 2016, the Raqqa battle in 2017, and also in Afrin in 2018’. ⁹⁰ Broadly speaking, the IFB can be split into Western and Turkish leftist groups, with the main Western brigades being the Bob Crow Brigade (British), the Henri Krasucki Brigade (French) and the The International Revolutionary People’s Guerrilla Forces, an international anarchist and antifascist brigade.

“During their founding declaration, Duran Kalkan, a member of the PKK Executive Committee, said that “the union will defeat the fascists and nationalists”. In the same statement, Kalkan also described the “Turkish state as a nationalist and imperialist evil state that necessitate a union of the opposition to defeat.”⁹¹

The RMT is Britain’s most well known railway union, famous amongst British workers for its militancy and leftist politics. In 2022 the RMT led the largest wave of national strike action seen in the UK since the Winter of Discontent.

The significance of Turkish brigades is notably greater than that of their Western counterparts. The most significant groupings are The Peoples’ United Revolutionary Movement (HBDH) which brings together fighters from Maoist and Marxist Leninist backgrounds, and the United Freedom Forces (BOG) which consists of anarchists and revolutionary socialists. Whilst fighting in Syria the HBDH recognises the Revolution as an internationalist struggle and regularly conducts attacks on the Turkish military within Turkey. One of its most successful operations came in the summer of 2016 when the HBDH killed 11 Turkish riot police officers⁹² as part of a reprisal for the Turkish state’s repressive slaughter of Kurdish communities between 2015-2016, which had resulted in 12,000 casualties by the end of 2016⁹³.

Another contributing group is the The Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist–Leninist (TKP/ML) which has been one of the longest serving internationalist units, aiding in the Battle of Kobane and even earlier during skirmishes in 2013.⁹⁴

“In February 2015, the MLKP issued a statement calling upon its supporters and all revolutionary youths around the world to join the Battle of Rojava in the YPG ranks. The group does not only engage in the Kurds living in Turkey, but have also welcomed foreigners among its ranks, such as the German national Ivana Hoffman, who was reported to have been killed in Tel Tamir on March 7, 2015. The MLKP generally entertain good relations with European leftist organizations: for instance, the Spanish Communist Reconstruction (RC) regularly sends volunteers to fight in the ranks of the organisation.”⁹⁵

Ivana Hoffman, matyr of the Revolution

It is impossible to speak of the IFB without speaking of Ivana and her sacrifice. Ivana was just 19 years old (the same age as your writer) when in 2015 she was killed by ISIS fascists in Tel Tamir, defending those who could not defend themselves. I often get DMs from people who tell me that I am ‘brave’ and ‘inspiring’ doing what I do at such a young age, but the truth is that what I do is neither particularly brave or inspiring. What Ivana did took real bravery, and would be more of an inspiration to leftists around the world if more people would bother to take the time to learn of her sacrifice. It is in her memory, and all the other tens of thousands of revolutionaries who have given their lives, that I am writing this monstrosity of an article, so that in my own small way I can honour their sacrifice and disspell the disgusting smears which Assadists and other western campists use to tarnish the Revolution of our lifetimes.

“The young woman is thought to have travelled to Turkey to fight against Isis around six months ago. Identifying herself in a YouTube video backed with a red MLKP flag, Hoffmann says she was born in Germany on 1 September, 1995, and first found out about the party in 2011. Looking directly into the camera, she says that she travelled to the autonomous region of Rojava in 2014 to “defend the revolution” and to “hold high the party’s flag”. In another YouTube video purportedly showing Hoffmann later, with her face covered with a scarf and holding a rifle in what appears to be the Turkish-Syrian border region, the young woman says in German she has been there for a week. She adds that she is with the unit “to fight for humanity” and “to fight for freedom”.⁹⁶

The Imperialists Come to the Rescue…Of Assad? (Prt. 1: Iran and its Proxies)

“Syrians are being slaughtered on the altar of international agendas,” said Manaf as he launched into a sort of monologue. “The regime is a third-tier player,” he continued. “Bashar is just a figurehead. He handed everything over to the Iranians, who are now negotiating directly with the Russians and others.”⁹⁷

Without thinking, many leftists often compare Syria with Libya and Iraq, and treat it in a similar fashion. Yet unlike Libya or Iraq, where regimes were overthrown through foreign intervention in Syria it has been the opposite - the regime has been enforced, propped up and stabilised by foreign intervention. Were it not for the interventions of Russian imperialism in Syria, Assad would have been gone a long time ago. Contrary to what Assadists claim, the Assad regime was a puppet of imperialism and fell like a stack of cards the second its patrons stopped propping it up.

After several years of fighting the regime was at a historic low and had been pushed back against the wall by both the rebels and ISIS. However, two factors would allow Assad to cling on for another decade - the intervention of Hezbollah troops in defence of the regime and the military support of the Russian state. ‘Initially, at the outset of the conflict, Hizbollah's leadership was committed to not intervening in the Syrian conflict despite its strong relationship with the Syrian regime.’⁹⁸ This was largely because, as with Hamas’ support for the Syrian Revolution, the mass movement in Syria was seen as a justified popular revolt against a despotic regime. In addition Hezbollah, which is a Shia organisation, did not want to appear to be acting across sectarian ethnic lines. However this position of neutrality began to change for Hezbollah as its supply lines with Iran became threatened by the destabilisation of the conflict. This intervention, which began to play a significant role in the conflict in late 2013, stemmed the losses of defections with which Assad’s army regularly suffered and provided Assad with a large number of experienced, ideologically driven fighters.

“Hizbollah's participation in the Syrian conflict has been the decisive battlefield factor allowing the regime to regain control of territory and key transportation routes. There is no doubt that the regime's forces would not have been able to regain territory and make military advances against rebel groups without Hizbollah's participation in the conflict.”⁹⁹

Whilst Assadists like to romanticise this intervention as some sort of twisted ‘anti-imperialist’ solidarity, in fact the intervention was wholly self-interested and motivated by the simple desire to secure its own money and weapons supplies, exposing the armed group as driven not by solidarity with the oppressed, but rather political self interest. It is also worth noting that whilst liberal and conservative Kurdish factions are rightly opposed by the Left for wanting to ally with Israel against Turkey and its proxies, it is interesting that when Hezbollah used the same self interested logic and allied with Assad against the oppressed in Syria barely a word of opposition was said by the Western Left. Statements by senior Hezbollah officials that ‘Syrians oppressed themselves with this war’¹⁰⁰ sounds awfully similar to statements made by the bourgeois sections of the Kurdish movement when commenting on the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. It should be the job of the international socialist movement to strengthen the revolutionary bonds of solidarity that exist within the Palestinian and Kurdish liberation struggles, rather than picking one oppressed people over the other. The support/silence of the Western Left for Hezbollah in Syria was also came despite widespread opposition to the intervention by the masses themselves in the Arab World:

“Over the border, Syrians who once admired Hezbollah have turned on them. Among them is Ahmed (not his real name), now 32. He lived under a siege imposed by Hezbollah and Syrian regime troops in the mountain town of Madaya for nearly two years. “Before the war, I was completely with them,” Ahmed told me from Turkey, where he fled after the siege was lifted in April 2017. “I thought: they are fighting against oppression and injustice, but they are not.”¹⁰¹

“Many Palestinians stopped supporting Hezbollah,” said Omar Shaban, the Gaza-based director of the Pal-Think for Strategic Studies think tank: “It’s not about Shia or Sunni—it’s that Hezbollah was helping a regime that many Palestinians don’t like.” Marwa Fatafta said that Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria made many people question who the group was really representing: “[The Syrian war] was a true test to understand whether that solidarity with the Palestinians—is it a genuine act, is it a genuine solidarity with a just social and political cause?” she asked rhetorically. “Or was it some sort of rhetoric that helps advance certain actors’ political agenda, and serves their own propaganda, and to legitimise them further in the eyes of their people and in the eyes of others, such as Palestinians?”¹⁰²

“Bassam Saleh mourned his twenty-seven-year-old son Raed, a Hezbollah fighter presumed dead in the Aleppo countryside in February 2015 though his body was never found. “My son and many other resistance fighters had noble intentions, but they were exploited for a specific agenda,” he said. “Today Hezbollah is defending Iran’s agenda, it’s very clear—it serves Iran and benefits from Iran.” By then Hezbollah was sending teenagers in its youth movement, the Mahdi Scouts, to fight for Bashar. One of them who had worked in Raed’s car repair shop was also killed in 2015 in the Damascus suburbs.”¹⁰³

I know that this section will be particularly controversial to some, who today see Hezbollah primarily through the lens of their resistance to the Israeli genocide, thus any notion that the organisation could itself be ‘imperialist’ as a bastardisation of the term. Yet that has ultimately been there function in Syria, killing and maiming Syrians for the sake of Iran’s material resources and capital. This is not to say that Hezbollah is an imperialist organisation, but rather an anti-imperialist one used as a weapon of war by imperialist states within the context of Syria. Ironically, this is what many on the Western Left would have you believe the PKK/PYD/YPG are, despite the fact that the PKK/PYD/YPG, unlike Hezbollah, does recognise the importance of internationalist solidarity and maintains an anti-zionist stance, despite the fact that pro-palestine organisations like Hezbollah offer little to no solidarity in return.

What is being stated here does not negate the revolutionary and progressive role the organisation plays in combatting the Israeli terror state but rather highlights how the organisation betrayed notions of internationalist solidarity by propping up a despot in a foreign country. Within Lebanon itself senior Hezbollah officials have become intwined with the country’s ruling class and are often responsible for widespread corruption¹⁰⁴¹⁰⁵. The failings and drawbacks of Hezbollah both domestically and in Syria reflect its nature as a moralist and bourgeois party that does not understand or respect socialist concepts of internationalist solidarity with the oppressed. This of course not to say that we should not support Hezbollah in its resistance to Israel, but that we should also acknowledge its limitations as a force of liberation.

The increased reliance of Assad on foreign intervention to survive in this period also led to the gradual usurption of authority away from Damascus and to Tehran and Moscow, with Assad reduced to being a mouthpeice for Russian and Iranian interests.

“As the conflict has dragged on, Hizbollah and Iranian leaders have taken on greater roles on the battlefield and while they may coordinate with Syrian commanders, tactical and strategic decisions are increasingly out of the hands of Syrians.”¹⁰⁶

Hezbollah has also been responsible for a number of human rights abuses in Syria, using the war to raise funds for their organisation through mass lotting and extortion.¹⁰⁷ In 2015 Hezbollah laid siege to the town of Madaya, cutting of the town from all humanitarian aid (again drawing parallels with Israel’s own use of siege tactics on civilian populations in 2024). An estimated 65 people starved to death in the town because of the blockade, including dozens of children.¹⁰⁸

“PHR and SAMS accused the Syrian government of removing items from humanitarian convoys to Madaya, including kits for treating malnourished children that were part of a February convoy. “Subsequently, at least two children starved to death: an eight-year-old boy and a six-month-old girl,” the groups said. “Children are dying of starvation an hour from warehouses filled with food aid in Damascus,” said Baker.”¹⁰⁹

The Imperialists Come to the Rescue…Of Assad? (Prt. 2: Russia)

Whilst the interventions by Hezbollah stemmed the tide of rebel advances by the latter half of 2015 the regime lacked significant control over the country. And so ‘on September 30, 2015, Putin gathered members of his government at his countryside house outside Moscow to announce that he had received an official request from Bashar to intervene militarily in Syria to fight terrorism’.¹¹⁰ Had it been the other way around, and it had been Obama announcing he would be invading Syria to crush a popular uprising and prop up a puppet regime, what would the reaction of the Western Left had been? It is frequently pointed out by the Left that US military bases in Syria are an appalling violation of Syria’s national sovereignty and a gross act of imperialism, yet it is almost never mentioned that Russia itself also has military bases in the country, which it has used for the last decade as a headquarters for the slaughtering of rebel groups and Syrian civilians alike.

Whilst the Russian intervention is often framed as against ISIS rather than the Syrian masses, in fact the initial wave of deadly strikes across the country did not target islamic fundamentalist groups but rather rebels threatening the regime.¹¹¹ The intervention by Russia escalated the already intolerable levels of violence being waged on Syria’s population, leading to a spike in the use of banned weapons like cluster bombs, as well as school, hospital¹¹² and infrastructure¹¹³ bombing. Already by December of 2015 the barbaric Russian state had already used cluster bombs at least 20 times,¹¹⁴ with many of the cluster bomb attacks being used on refugee camps, killing civilian men women and children in particularly graphic and painful ways.

“There were many killed. I saw 10 to 15 killed, one of them was a child. I saw a woman who was veiled crying next to a child in a white shroud. He was her only child. He was killed when a cluster bomb exploded. She was on her way to pick him up at the school, while a cluster bomb fell and he died. I was so moved by this, she was saying her goodbyes to him.”

“They fell in three different neighbourhoods where people were just going about their business buying falafel and walking about. There were no fighters or even headquarters or military targets in the area the bombs fell. People are now starting to comb their homes and gardens and backyards to look for the cluster munitions because there are so many all over the town.”

“We were all sleeping. Suddenly, everything was on fire. We thought we were all going to die. I do not know how we survived. The bombing did not stop for 20 minutes. We were so scared we did not get out of the tent. When it stopped, I went out. People were wounded, and some were dead. My brother’s wife was injured in her hand. My cousin was wounded. Yesterday another person died after having been in intensive care for one week.”¹¹⁵

It is a great shame to me that when Russian imperialism butchered people in Syria - as Israeli imperialism today butchers Palestinians in Gaza - the Left did not speak up and instead did nothing, confused as it is by the cancer of campism. This is not the Cold War. We live in an era of competing capitalist and imperialist states which, vying for power and resources, engage in barbarism and bloodlust against the international working class.

“It was not only Bashar and his supporters who were enamored of Putin; the monarchs and autocrats of the Middle East, including traditional US allies and some of those who until recently had been calling for Bashar’s ouster, trekked to Moscow one by one in the summer and fall of 2015 to meet the new sheriff in town. From the start they had never liked the idea of the Arab masses rising up to demand freedom, and Putin was someone who truly understood them.”¹¹⁶

The West helped facilitate Russia’s violence by restricting opposition to the purely symbolic doing little to nothing to stop the slaughter.¹¹⁷ In fact there was a great degree of cooperation between the competing imperialist blocs during this time; ‘[Putin] launched his bombing campaign as he met with Obama at the United Nations in New York, his generals coordinated with their American counterparts to make sure that Russian jets did not bump into American ones over Syrian skies, and his foreign minister Lavrov huddled with Kerry to work on convening talks between Bashar’s regime and the opposition in Geneva; Russians spoke of the Kerry–Lavrov “bromance… As Syrians were slaughtered in ever greater numbers after the Russian intervention or began to flee the country in droves, Kerry spoke of a negotiated political settlement with the regime.” As the political consequences of revolution and war in Syria became clear (particularly in terms of the refugee ‘crisis’ and islamic terror attacks in the Imperial Core) the ruling class across the West lost its appetite for people power and began soft pressure towards capitulation. Very quickly western imperialists began to see ISIS as the main enemy in Syria, not Assad. Thus, rather than Assad being some anti-imperialist martyr as often claimed by his supporters, he was in fact a meek puppet of these imperialist states, forced out the second he fell out of their favour.

“September 2015 was a huge turning point—we knew we were sold out to the Russians by the Americans,”¹¹⁸

“Those that join our program are forbidden from fighting the regime,” a US general told one Syrian rebel commander.”¹¹⁹

Between late April through to November, the Al Quds Hospital in Eastern Aleppo came under repeated attack by Russian and regime forces. Again and again civilians, patients and medical professionals were massacred. In one instance the bombing managed to kill the city’s last pediatrician, along with 54 other civilians.¹²⁰ The bombing was part of systematic effort by Russia to wipe out medical services in Aleppo as a way of eliminating any way of surviving in the city and force it into regime hands. Between October and November of that year alone there were at least ten separate attacks on hospitals in the city¹²¹ with Al-Bayan Hospital being attacked three times in the timespan of less than a week. Attacks became so bad that, with Al Quds eventually left as the last hospital standing, medical staff and NGOs on the ground put out announcements claiming that all hospitals were out of service as a way to confuse Russian and regime forces and protect the hospital. This was unsuccessful and Al Quds was struck repeatedly anyway, wiping out all medical services in Aleppo.

As regime troops entered the city atrocities became up close and personal, with the UN reporting the executions of 82 civilians at point blank range¹²². By the 22nd of December the government had declared victory over the city, and the British Stalinist newspaper the Morning Star - ‘the only daily communist paper in the English speaking world’ - declared the city ‘liberated’.

“Let us be clear. Assad and Vladimir Putin are responsible for heinous crimes. Social media abounds with their apologists, those who think they are so radical, the arch-critics of western imperialism, but who are actually both hypocrites and a moral disgrace…When the US pummels countries with bombs, such apologists would never dream of denying civilian casualties. When Russia and its allies are responsible, they echo the language of the most ardent neocon: that the dead in Aleppo are not civilians but terrorists; that civilian deaths are either inventions or entirely the responsibility of rebel militia; that civilians are all rejoicing at their “liberation”.¹²³

5-year-old boy Omran Daqneesh sits in an ambulance after being pulled out of a building hit by an airstrike in Aleppo, 2016

“Hospitals in opposition-controlled areas around Aleppo became a primary target for the Russian and Syrian government forces.”¹²⁴

It is estimated that Russian forces are responsible for the killing of some 7,000 Syrian civilians, including just under 2,000 children.¹²⁵ This slaughter was conducted amongst other things in the name of capital; ‘Syria has around $4 billion in unpaid military contracts with Russian military companies. Russian companies have…extensive investments throughout the economy, especially in oil and gas exploration. Russian manufacturing companies have also been active in Syria, with many contracts signed in the late 2000s and in the early stages of the uprising for the creation of joint Syrian-Russian projects or for the Russian provision of goods.’¹²⁶ For the arms industry Libya made a compelling case for defending the regime at all costs; ‘$2 billion in contracts…agreed upon by the Gaddafi regime were invalidated after the new government took over’.¹²⁷

The interventions of the imperialists (both western and eastern) thus helped to stabilise Assad during this time as focus, both international and domestic, shifted to crushing ISIS. During this time the regime, with the support of Russia, was able to take back vast amounts of territory, including the rebel city of Aleppo. By the period’s end (around halfway through 2019) the regime was stabilised, ISIS had been defeated and the rebels had been pushed back. The end of 2018 perhaps marked one of the high points of the Revolution, having finally defeated its sworn enemy in islamic fundamentalism, the area which the Revolution controlled had grown significantly, taking territory away from ISIS as it won battle after battle.

SSNP fighters prepare for battle

Fascism and its Affair with Assad

“If things go well, SSNP will slowly rise to become the majority party in Syria. If it doesn’t go well, the SSNP will end up getting banned. The SSNP is seeing an increase, everyday new members join.”¹²⁸

“There are no longer any major differences between [the SSNP] and the Baathists. The war and the course of events have played a major role in bridging our views.”¹²⁹

The SSNP have for decades been favoured by the regime, as I mentioned earlier, due to the connections between Syrian capitalists, the regime and Syrian fascism. Before the collapse of the regime the party was as the second most powerful party in Syria and in the 2020 elections received over 1.5M votes and a number of seats¹³⁰ despite plenty of rigging by the Baathists. The organisation is favoured by Russia, who are attracted to the ‘party’s nationalism and secular nature, as well as its Orthodox constituency’.¹³¹

“High ranking SSNP officials have met with Russian diplomats, including the Deputy Foreign Minister and Special Presidential Representative for the Middle East and North Africa, Mikhail Bogdanov.”¹³²

It is important to note that in important ways, the SSNP is ‘progressive’ compared to many European fascist outfits; it offers a pretence of gender equality; ‘nationalist work was not reserved for men and that work will never be nationalist until women participate and become active members’¹³³ as well as supporting a non-sectarian, secular Syria. Yet still it maintains the notion of a ‘Natural, Greater Syria’, an irredentist hallmark of fascism. The organisation is rabidly anti-semitic¹³⁴, and was founded on an anti-communist, anti-baathist (when baathism stood for something more revolutionary than what it has degenerated into today) basis that cannot be detached from expansionist nationalism. As the baathist regime moved away from revolutionary socialism and towards bourgeois nationalism the SSNP became less hostile to the regime. The SSNP is also notorious for its use of suicide bombers. Many in the party see the PKK/YPG as their mortal enemies for, in their view, dividing the country and allowing US ‘occupation’ to take place. (Funnily enough they did not see Russian interventions on behalf of Assad as ‘occupation’). The party’s militia was crucial in helping the regime stabilise as the SSNP, similiar to Hezbollah, provided Assad with fighters who were both ideologically committed and militarily experienced. SSNP fighters played a notable role in the attack on Aleppo as well as on assaults in Idlib.

The SSNP are not the only Nazis who have come to the defence of Assad - as the regime increasingly weaponised its secular status as a ‘protector’ of Syria’s Chrsitians, many European fascists began to ally with the regime, seeing it as a bulwark against Islam as well as the regime’s destabilisation as a primary cause of non-white, non-Christian immigration into the continent. This led to the creation of the European Solidarity Front for Syria, a neo-nazi group with ‘figures from Belgium, Greece, Italy, Poland, and Serbia, among others, that held pro-Bashar rallies throughout Europe.’¹³⁵ The group is representative of a broader trend across the West, namely fascist organisations being supportive of Assad. From ‘Italy’s far-right Forza Nuova, Greece’s neo-fascist Golden Dawn, the UK’s British National Party (BNP) and Poland’s ultranationalist National Rebirth’¹³⁶ the regime experienced some of its strongest support internationally from some of the most vile organisations in the Western world. This is also part of the reason why Trump would soon abandon the Revolution, offering it up on a plate to the Turkish state.

Turkey Wages War on Hope

“Nothing in this world is certain except death, taxes, and America betraying the Kurds.”¹³⁷

“Not only German tanks were used. Most of the arms used by the Turkish Army come from their NATO allies. But they also had the support of Russia. We, the Kurds were good enough to fight against ISIS, but now the international community has completely neglected us. Moreover, some of the European states even helped Turkey to attack us. They helped to destroy a peaceful part of Syria that was ruled by a secular and democratic self-administration. They completely ignored it when hundred thousands of new refugees were sent to exile and they still keep silent about attempts to ethnically cleanse the whole region.”¹³⁸

“We don’t want the Kurds we’re utilizing to ever get too powerful. If that happened, the other Kurds — i.e., the ones living just across the border in whichever of these countries are currently our allies — might get ideas about freedom and independence.”¹³⁹

Whilst many families around the world were continuing with Christmas festivities on the 26th December 2024, Dr Bekir Atacan, a leading academic at Istanbul Aiden University, had landed himself a spot on BBC News Arabic. After a busy few weeks for Turkey in Syria the professor had been brought on to defend the government’s escalating war on the DAANES. And defend it he did. “Dear Sir, terrorism, terrorism cannot be stopped through dialogue.” He grumbled. “I will not apologise for killing terrorists and they must be punished and killed… Today, tomorrow and everyday after that!” The presenter tried and failed to interrupt. “Those are murderers… There is no solution but killing and to spit on them. Put them under the ground!”¹⁴⁰

The incident is instantly reminiscent of the behaviour of Zionists in western media, and representative of the broader similarities between the mainstream Turkish attitude towards Kurds and Israeli attitudes towards Palestinians. However whilst Israeli fascism is today relatively familiar - particularly for those on the Left - Turkey’s racism and brutality has gone largely ignored by much of the Western world. The repression of Kurdish cultural identity began soon after the founding of the modern Turkish nation-state with a series of uprisings between 1925-1938 violently put down by a vastly stronger Turkish military. Between 1937-38 alone an estimated 10,000-40,000 Kurds were massacred by Turkey.¹⁴¹

“In Turkey ... after the great Kurdish nationalist revolts ... a systematic policy aiming at detribalization and assimilation of the Kurds was adopted. . . . Everything that recalled a separate Kurdish identity was to be abolished: language, clothing, names.”¹⁴²

“The army used poison gas to kill people who hid in caves. Many others were burned alive, whether in houses or by spraying individuals with fuel. Even if people surrendered, they were annihilated. In order “not to fall into the hands of the Turks,” girls and women jumped into abysses, as many Armenians had in 1915. The suspicion of having lodged “bandits” or, according to witness accounts of soldiers, military units’ desire for vengeance sufficed as justification to kill whole villages. Soldiers confirm that they were ordered to kill women and children.”¹⁴³

This violent relationship continued for the next hundred years, with the Kurdish language continuing to be illegal in all schools up until 2012¹⁴⁴, Kurds continuing to be viewed as ‘pseudo-citizens’ within Turkey¹⁴⁵ and ever increasing rates of violence and hate crimes against the ethnic group¹⁴⁶ .Thus it is no surprise that when war broke out in neighbouring Syria (which also hosts a notable Kurdish minority) Turkey quickly sought to limit their authority and autonomy within the movement, initially with the FSA as its proxy force and later through the manipulation of islamic fundamentalism. Despite its best efforts however, the Turkish state had little opportunity to significantly limit the flourishing of the resistance movement between 2011-2016 primarily due to the fact that ISIS had got there first, as well as the fact that US determination to counter ISIS was at its peak at this time. However, with the collapse of ISIS in the latter half of the 2010s and the victory of the Revolution, as well as a wave of mass uprisings in Kurdish regions of Turkey in 2016, by the end of 2017 the Turkish state was ready to advance on the Revolution.

Whilst Turkey’s invasion of Afrin (codenamed Operation Olive Branch) began in 2018 the process accelerated in 2019 when Turkey got the green light from the US. On October 6th 2019 President Trump called Ankara to state that all US troops would be withdrawn from SDF* controlled territories and three days later the Turkish state, armed to the teeth with European tanks and NATO bombs, gleefully launched its genocidal war on the Revolution, displacing some 200,000 civilians from their homes¹⁴⁷ in the name of ‘anti-terrorism’. As well as using its own troops Turkey would weaponise many of the FSA’s militias, which are today known as the Syrian National Army (SNA), as well as (ironic for a so called anti-terror campaign) repeated coordination with ISIS and other islamic fundamentalists¹⁴⁸¹⁴⁹, a practise which is all the more common today.

*The SDF or Syrian Democratic Forces were created in 2015 to officially incorporate non-Kurdish militias into the defence of the Revolution as well as to allow the US to greater support the fight against ISIS without having to directly supply the YPG/YPJ/PKK, which it refused to do so as part of its appeasement to Turkey. Whilst the YPG/YPJ continue to operate they now do so alongside the SDF.

“The most gruesome and explicit of the videos shows Turkish-allied Syrian fighters pumping bursts of automatic fire into the body of a bound man lying on the side of a desert road as a gunman shouts to his comrades to take his phone and film him doing the shooting. Another trembling, handcuffed man crouches on the opposite side of the road as the shooting erupts. “Kill them,” one man is heard shouting.”¹⁵⁰

As the world - which only a few years ago had celebrated and honoured the brave anti-fascist women of Rojava - looked on in cold indifference, Turkey began an orgy of human rights abuses as it attempted to destroy the Revolution, forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes and quickly replacing the towns with its own ethnonationalist settlers¹⁵¹¹⁵² (again, sound familiar?), employing mass rape against women suspected of having relations with the PYD¹⁵³, the bombing of schools¹⁵⁴, the use of torture¹⁵⁵ and looting. To this day Turkey now occupies two large buffer zones in former Rojava, from which it uses to attack YPG/YPJ and PKK positions. Extremists who seek to destroy the Revolution also use the Turkish occupied territories as sanctuaries from which to launch their attacks. For example in 2021 a Turkish fascist named Onur Gencer launched an armed attack on the Izmir headquarters of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP)¹⁵⁶ , a socialist Kurdish parliamentary party in Turkey closely tied to the PKK, and attempted to massacre those inside. It was later revealed that he had been training for the attack in Turkish occupied Syria¹⁵⁷. Meanwhile the revolutionary women’s organisations and feminist gains of the Revolution were repressed in the occupied territories, sending women back into the shadows of public life.

“Hevrîn Xelef, a women’s activist and leader of the Syrian Future Party was brutally assassinated by the Turkish-backed Islamist group Ahrar al-Sharqiya a few days into the invasion. Similar to Barîn Kobanê in Afrîn, the dead body of YPJ fighter Amara Renas was abused and filmed by the Turkish proxy forces. Jinwar Women’s Village had to be temporarily evacuated. Like a phallus, the Turkish flag was erected in the occupied territories by mercenaries, who systematically destroyed the women’s movement’s institutions and symbols. Wherever the flag appeared, women disappeared from public view.”¹⁵⁸

“Our neighbours who were Arab told us to leave. They said, ‘When they come, they will kill you,’” says Daoud. “There were two Christian families in our village who left for the same reason.” These fears were bolstered by public threats made by the fighters. In one clip, previously reported by The Independent, militia fighters threaten to kill “pigs” and “infidels” as they parade a Kurdish captive. Many similar videos have been shared online.”¹⁵⁹

Following these atrocities, it is worth stating that five members of the UNSC—France, Germany, Belgium, United Kingdom, and Poland—drafted the only UNSC statement condemning Turkey’s invasion. The USA and Russia vetoed it.¹⁶⁰ This period is one in which the interests of the competing imperialist states converged against the Revolution. Russia coordinated the invasion with Turkey¹⁶¹ as a way to save Assad by redirecting the attention of the Revolution’s soldiers. The US abandoned the Revolution as soon as ISIS had been defeated to appease its geopolitical ally, with US fighter jets used by Turkey to massacre civilians in the DAANES¹⁶². Even the EU, which perhaps offered the ‘strongest’ condemnation of the invasion found itself profiting from the ethnic cleansing, as President Erdogan’s plans for the forced resettlement of Syrian refugees in the occupied territories was a key part of the EU-Turkey refugee deal, in which the EU would give the country billions in exchange for taking in more refugees. Erdogan frequently weaponises the lives of refugees to blackmail the EU (whose liberal elites often balk at the atrocities and fundamentalist terrorism which Turkey indulges in), threatening to allow refugees free passage into the Eurozone.¹⁶³ For ruling classes all over the world, there was much to benefit from selling out the Revolution.

Many on the Left have used this to argue that the Revolution was ‘naive’ for accepting the support of the imperialists and that it effectively got what it deserved. Yet this analysis once again confuses the position of the bourgeois Kurdish parties in the KNC with the revolutionary positions of the PYD and PKK. The PYD/PKK have always been aware of the superficial nature of the US relationship and have manipulated it as best as possible to their advantage without capitulation or glorification of the US Empire. Even at the height of its ‘support’ against ISIS, the US refused any political alliance with the Revolution, refusing to recognise the autonomy of the DAANES or the requirement of the Revolution having a seat at the table during peace negotiations, despite the fact that the Revolution holds sway over a third of Syria’s territory. Whilst it is true that the bourgeois KNC grovels at the feet of the US and Israel for support it is not the KNC which governs in the DAANES or that holds popular authority with the masses. That privilege belongs exclusively to the PYD, YPG and PKK.

PYD supporters hold a protest outside a U.S.-led international coalition base near the Turkish border in Syria.

Recent developments - even before the fall of Assad - have only exacerbated Turkey’s ability to conduct its assault with impunity. The onset of the Ukraine-Russia War greatly boosted Turkey’s importance as a geopolitical ally to the US as well as its ability to blackmail other nation states as a member of NATO. Both Finland and Sweden, in joining NATO, sold out PKK supporters and activists in their countries, promising to hand over revolutionaries to Turkey after Erdogan demanded up to 130 ‘terrorists’ in exchange for NATO membership¹⁶⁴. Already in Sweden the country’s Kurdish minority now faces repression with Kurdish refugees monitored by secret police and bank accounts of pro Revolution charities closed, most notably the Kurdish Red Crescent charity which was forced to cease operations after it had its bank account closed¹⁶⁵.

“They are step by step closing institutions in the Kurdish diaspora of Sweden.’ This is 100% related to … Turkish conversation with Sweden.”¹⁶⁶

In the UK attacks on the Kurdish community have accelerated with police conducting annual raids on the Kurdish Community Centre in London, claiming members to be supporters of the PKK¹⁶⁷. It is telling that it is only in the Imperial Core (and, importantly, Israel) that the PKK and its supporters face such vicious repression. This, according to the campist Left, is what they call an imperialist puppet.

Meanwhile in Syria the assassination of journalists¹⁶⁸, drug trafficking¹⁶⁹ and femicide¹⁷⁰ continues to take place in the occupied territories. PKK and YPG fighters are subject to torture at the hands of the SNA.¹⁷¹ Turkey repeatedly cuts off water and electricity to millions of civilians across the DAANES¹⁷²¹⁷³, exacerbating the dire humanitarian crisis in the region. In October 2019 SNA fighters filmed themselves mutilating and kicking the bodies of fallen female YPJ fighters. “The bodies of the PKK and PYD pigs are underneath our feet,” a fascist claims in the video, smiling at the camera. “This is one of your prostitutes you sent us”¹⁷⁴.

Whilst positions had somewhat stabilised in the last few years, the fall of Assad at the hands of Turkish proxies offers Turkey a new opportunity to eliminate the remaining free territories of the DAANES, crushing the YPG, YPJ and PKK. Even before Assad had fallen the SNA had already begun launching attacks on SDF territory, taking the formerly free city of Manbij, though the SDF is currently waging a fierce counter offensive to take back the city. For weeks Turkey has been massing its troops on the border, preparing for a direct invasion.¹⁷⁵ It is likely that President Erdogan will wait until Trump takes office in the belief that his administration will be more permissive of the horrors Erdogan is itching to release on Rojava. This is the crisis the PKK and YPG now faces, ignored by the international Left. If we do not rally behind the Revolution and force the international community into action, it is possible that Turkey will extinguish everything that has been fought for in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North East Syria. The gains for women, ethnic minorities and the oppressed classes (which I will talk about more below) will be erased and replaced with a dead, fundamentalist ethnonationalism. Already Christmas trees have been set alight by fascists in the rebel regions, as minorities fear for their lives. Not only must the Revolution survive the coming assault by Turkey, but it must expand to encompass the whole of Syria and the oppressed territories within Turkey itself, liberating the masses from the chains of capitalist modernity. This will not occur unless the international Left finally embraces the Revolution of our lifetime, which, built upon the sacrifices of millions of martyrs faces extinction.

“Without gender equality, no demand for freedom and equality can be meaningful.”

Abdullah Ocalan

The Gains of the Revolution

In the liberated territories of the DAANES an ecological, feminist and revolutionary socialism lives, without the presence of a state. The Revolution is a trophy of 21st century socialism and a maturing of anti-capitalism beyond the dead statism that dominated in the 20th century. For many conservative ‘leftists’, whose character is a toxic concoction of reactionary nostalgia, love for centralised authority and blind campism the DAANES stands for everything they oppose; it has dared to mature scientific socialism and rejected the notion that socialism is a stale theology, never to be developed. It has posited the state as a creation of patriarchal modernity and intertwined with the capitalist system, depriving the conservative leftists of a brutal regime to romanticise. And it has challenged the blind campism which many post 1991 leftists have degenerated into by fighting imperialisms and fascisms beyond those aligned with the US. For many today this is a concept too complicated too comprehend. Here it is expanded on in more detail the nature of the DAANES and how it functions as a modern socialist experiment.

Feminist Gains

“We learned everything in action, we didn’t even know how to walk properly at first! Shooting the first bullet, walking the first mile, planning the first operation; women gathered their first own life experiences in the guerrilla. In those years, what drove university women and village women alike to the mountain were two things, a commitment to liberating the Kurdish people and liberating ourselves as women. Women united these two causes not by opposing them but by struggling in an incredibly intertwined manner.” ¹⁷⁶

“At the time, cadres and civilians involved in the mobilization, while emphasizing their Kurdish and revolutionary identity, often interpreted and narrated the battle not as a war against any religion or community, but in terms of a gendered struggle for democratic civilization against statist civilization, a 5,000-year-old feud, now playing out in a twenty-first century military clash between a women’s liberationist front that defends the oppressed and ‘rapist fascists’ who want to wipe out everything that is ‘other’… ‘Defending humanity’, as many defined their resistance at the time, was not an abstract idea, but a concrete socialist duty.”¹⁷⁷

“PKK ideology holds that the liberation of society is impossible without the liberation of women, so the movement offered them a valued place and an education…In Rojava at that time, it was mainly the women who supported the movement.”¹⁷⁸

Perhaps one of the most well known achievements of the Revolution has been the expansion of women’s autonomy within society on the basis of jineology, the feminist ideology that characterises the region. From the very beginning, the Revolution was led by women, both because the regime was less suspicious of women being involved in political activity and also because of the manner in which democratic confederalism spoke to women in the region.

“Once the revolution began, women arrived from other parts of Kurdistan to support it, including many who had spent decades fighting with YJA Star [women’s branch of the PKK]. They brought their fighting and organizing skills, as well as their theoretical and practical experience with Democratic Autonomy. Öcalan “described the organizing model in detail, and we were very familiar with the books,” said Amara, a women’s movement activist in Dêrîk. “Now we just had to implement it.”¹⁷⁹

Sakine Cansız, co-founder of the PKK

In 2014 the AANES passed the ‘Women’s Law’, criminalising the common practises of sexism, female genital mutilation (FGM), patriarchal polygamy, honour killings, the bride price system (‘because its aim is to make women into commodities’¹⁸⁰) and child/nonconsensual marriage, establishing the co-chair principle (every position of authority must be shared between one woman and one man), the right to equal gender pay and employment, right to divorce, equal right of both genders to inheritance and the establishing the legal responsibility of the AANES in creating creches for breastfeeding and pregnant women.¹⁸¹

“The form of feminism which has become part of the establishment within Rojava – as described by jineology – is substantively different to the “neoliberal” feminism that has most successfully infiltrated political, economic, and cultural institutions within Western contexts.”¹⁸²

“Jineology “regards itself as both a continuation of the feminist struggle and as an alternative to a branch of feminism which has not broken with capitalism.”¹⁸³

In all public institutions a 40% quota exists for female representation, ensuring equal say at all levels of administration. Women’s committees oversee workplace disputes involving women in every public institution, providing women with a broad and influential support network. Unlike many organisations supposedly made to represent workers in the former USSR (or contemporary China) these committees possess significant influence over administration with the power of veto over policies involving women.¹⁸⁴ At a communal level, all women’s houses exist to provide women with a local community that is able to provide support and advice ‘to manage issues of domestic violence, marriage law, and family disputes involving women’¹⁸⁵ . Since 2014 69 of these houses have been founded across the DAANES¹⁸⁶. Worker owned women’s cooperatives have been ‘opened to create work opportunities for women, including restaurants, food cooperatives, poultries, textile workshops, and bakeries’¹⁸⁷.

“On a sun-scorched day in May, three distraught women arrive in quick succession at a Mala Jin centre in the north-eastern city of Qamishli. The first woman, who wears a heavy green abaya, tells staff that her husband has barely come home since she’s given birth. The second woman arrives with her husband in tow, demanding a divorce; her long ponytail and hands shake as she describes how he’d once beaten her until she had to get an abortion. The third woman shuffles in pale-faced and in a loose dress, with rags wrapped around her hands. Her skin is raw pink and black from burns that cover much of her face and body. The woman describes to staff how her husband has beaten her for years and threatened to kill a member of her family if she left him. After he poured paraffin on her one day, she says, she fled his house; he then hired men to kill her brother. After her brother’s murder, she set herself on fire. “I got tired,” she says. The Mala Jin staff, all women, tut in disapproval as she speaks. They carefully write down the details of her account, tell her they need to take photographs, and explain they plan to send the documents to the court to help secure his arrest. The woman nods then lies down on a couch in exhaustion.”¹⁸⁸

“There are many women, who have great ideas and are keen on participating in public work, but they are afraid of their husbands. Sometimes, the families fear for the women as well. At least, we let women know, house by house, that the women’s assembly has their back. Women in Manbij [as of the time of writing Manbij has been recaptured by Turkish back islamic fundamentalists] should know that the assembly will stand for them from now on. They look at Rojava and see that organized women’s struggle is indeed possible … and they invite us again! ‘Come back’, they say. People clearly have a lot to share.”¹⁸⁹

Women naturally have the right to abortion in the DAANES and, as healthcare is both free and a universal human right, are given necessary support by support groups in terms of broader reproductive and sexual healthcare. Following the Revolution’s victory against Islamofascism, women’s committees coordinated with solidarity organisations across Europeans to send abortion pills to Rojava, allowing women who had been raped under ISIS the ability to be free from pregnancy¹⁹⁰. Whilst legal access to healthcare is important the AANES has also placed significant effort into tackling the social stigma attached to seeking abortions as this has historically been the biggest obstacle to safe healthcare in Syria.

Lastly, women famously also play a significant role in the security of the Revolution, both in the all female YPJ and the all female YJA-Star. It is estimated that the YPJ, which is made entirely of volunteers, currently stands at around 5,000 fighters¹⁹¹, equal to its height fighting against ISIS in 2014 and despite the martyrdom of hundreds of fighters. Many have criticised the ‘Hollywoodisation’ and hyper-sexualisation of female fighters in Rojava¹⁹²¹⁹³, who are often perceived in the West through an apolitical and Orientalist male gaze. The rise in number of (very questionable) western films produced on the role of female fighters in the Revolution is just one testament to this, representing once again the ability of capitalism to co-opt and absorb even the most radical attempts to deconstruct it. This was taken a step further when in early 2021, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that she and her daughter will work on a TV series about female Kurdish fighters¹⁹⁴.

“Years into the war in Syria, a photograph of YPJ fighter Asia Ramazan Antar (Viyan Qamişlo) in her uniform with a rifle on her shoulder widely circulated, with titles referring to her as the ‘Kurdish Angelina Jolie.”¹⁹⁵

Despite attempts by western capital to reduce the gravity of female fighters in the YPJ and YJA-Star the groups remain politically radicalising and inspiring for a new generation of women growing under the Revolution; only this week civilian women (and men) filled the streets of Qamishli in a show of support for the YPJ, with plenty of young children among them. For them, the YPJ and YJA-Star are as natural and necessary as life itself.

“After fighters of the…Women’s Defense Units (YPJ), who watch over the border, welcomed us with tough handshakes, we were brought to the women’s academy, where women who take part in assemblies, committees, government, local communes, and academies receive revolutionary education on women’s and people’s freedom.”¹⁹⁶

Democratising Society

“The great social measure of the commune is its own working existence”

Karl Marx

“The game of electing some to rule is nothing other than that slaves’ coming together from time to time to confirm the rule of the same masters.”

Abdullah Ocalan

When the Revolution swept to power in 2011 it wasted no time in establishing a system of worker’s councils, in line with democratic confederalist and Marxist thinking. Already by August 2011 around half of Syria’s Kurdish population were organised within the council system¹⁹⁷, along with the many Kurds in Turkey who had for years been organising under the KCK. Under the organisation of TEV-DEM (Movement for a Democratic Society), a left wing umbrella organisation founded to administer the council system, and conduct the ‘socialisation of politics’; ‘the patient and continual process of decomposing state power and its bureaucratic centralization by way of instituting diverse and discontinuous organizations of self-governance from the bottom up, thus, redistributing sovereignty to local formations’.¹⁹⁸ In practise this meant liberal, parliamentary democracy turned on its head - democracy started on the streets, at the level of the commune, with locals then sending delegates to the ‘House of the People’ a confederal council at a neighbourhood level, then to the city level and finally to a canton level¹⁹⁹.

“Communes choose their names at their first assembly. In Rojava, it has become a tradition to name the commune after its first şehid (martyr), the first person they lost in the battle of the revolution.”²⁰⁰

Nobody is forced into joining a commune but everybody has the right to the services of the commune²⁰¹. At the end of 2015, the number of communes in Cizîre canton exceeded 1,600²⁰² and estimates suggested there were 4,000 active communes across Rojava in 2018²⁰³, with the average commune size ranging from 20-50 households²⁰⁴. Parties do not operate at the lower levels of the council system which is intended to operate organically and without the interference of partisan interests.

“By the spring of 2012, hundreds of thousands of people were flocking to the neighbourhood meetings, eager to participate, in numbers far greater than the venues could accommodate. The revolution unleashed enormous social energy that had been repressed for decades. Clearly, the neighbourhood unit was just too large. So to allow all residents to represent and organize themselves, the MGRK created a new level in the cities’ council structure: the commune, at the level of the residential street. Mamoste Abdulselam, of TEV-DEM in Hesekê, told us that “there was a gap between the councils and the people—that’s why we developed the commune system.”²⁰⁵

“Initially communes were established only in the Kurdish neighbourhoods, but now we’re setting them up in the Arab neighbourhoods as well. Anyone can go to a commune assembly—you don’t have to be a member of TEV-DEM or the PYD. It’s an open meeting, where people in the neighbourhood talk about their problems, and everyone comes, Arabs, Kurds, Syrians, everyone.”²⁰⁶

“Every commune has to be seen as a political and moral unit of society. Radical democracy is seen as the opposite of the statist system, in which the parliament is implementing rules on society. The system of the communes means a system in which the executive comes from below; it is formed by the city quarters and villages, where councils are set up to give every individual the opportunity to participate in the mechanisms of decision-making.”²⁰⁷

At a city level parties are first present, though the PYD enjoys no special privileges over the other parties; “One hundred and one people sit on Hesekê’s district council,” Abdulselam told us. “The PYD has five representatives, as do five other parties. Families of the martyrs have five, Yekîtiya Star has five, the Revolutionary Youth have five, and the Liberals have five.”²⁰⁸

Abolishing the Police, Democratising the Militia, Ensuring a People’s Justice

"Revenge is for the weak"

An anonymous lawyer overseeing ISIS trials in the AANES

“The Red Army was built to be the defence of the working class, but it turned into a militaristic vehicle for power. It failed to be society’s self-defence, it became an agent of state interest, resembling the armies of the systems it claimed to dismantle. The guerrilla’s notion of self-defence is independent. It relies on an understanding of struggle, not power. To create its own protection is society’s most natural right, but how can we liberate self-defence from the state’s monopoly? How can we build self-governing communities? How to free the idea of protection from the violence of power?”²⁰⁹

The DAANES has accomplished many remarkable feats over the last ten years but perhaps one of the most astonishing has been the abolition of the state and the liquidation of the police, in the midst of a Civil War. Self defence and security in Rojava composes of two main elements; neutralising threats from external actors, and conflict resolution between internal actors. Whilst the YPG/YPJ/SDF primarily deal with external actors, their internal counterparts, the Asayiş, primarily handle issues between civilians; ‘While the YPG and YPJ are increasingly internationalizing themselves, the aim of the asayiş is to deeply localize itself’²¹⁰ . However the Asayis do often help the YPG/YPJ when cantons come under attack from external elements. Though often compared with Western police forces (or even police forces under Marxist Leninist regimes), the Asayis differs in a number of vital ways. One of these ways is its positionality; whilst the Asayis are an important component of internal security, the system of security in Rojava revolves primarily around a variety of people’s committees and organisations within the commune system, with the Asayis holding a secondary role. For example, the peace commissions, which are elected at every level of the council system, are the main actor in conflict resolution throughout the AANES. Only in the most exceptional circumstances necessitating force (domestic violence, drug trafficking, fascist terrorism) are the Asayis involved. This contrasts with the strictly centralised Western notion of security as primarily being subject of the state’s police, prisons and the courts.

“As the YPG, YPJ, and the defense section of the PKK take an increasingly international and humanitarian role in protecting the oppressed from colonial, capitalist, and destructive military attacks, these local units will become responsible for internal problems such as violence against women, tribal conflict, or drug abuse.”²¹¹

“As one instructor from the Asayîş academy in Rimelan emphasized, “We see ourselves as the security forces for the defense of the society, not of the state.”²¹²

“One of the ways in which the Asayiş of Rojava tries to get rid of being perceived as part of the state is also through spatial enactments: dogs, flowers, and plants are welcome; half of the academy residents are women; students and teachers cook and serve at the same time. These make Rimelan more accessible to people and dissociate it from the state.”²¹³

Another point of distinction is the emphasis on liquidation. Whilst state apparatuses in state socialist societies talk abstractly of the liquidation of the state and its police the AANES sees it as an immediate and pressing goal; ‘Their main complaint is about the heavy and highly visible guns they carried. Their hope is to replace them with small guns and eventually dispense with guns all together. In a not so distant future, they expect that defense will be fully democratized and the local assemblies will take over their function.’²¹⁴ This is desire for self-liquidation via interaction between the masses and the administration is further reflected in the mass nature of the force - the aim is to involve as many as possible in the self-defence of the region so as to best decentralise authority and prevent the establishment of social, cultural and political barriers between the people and the security forces.

As with all other people’s institutions in Rojava, the co-leadership model exists, helping to combat the establishment of the patriarchal culture that dominates many security services across the West²¹⁵²¹⁶ . In addition a large part of the Asayis is educational, with mandatory courses on women’s history and feminist struggle²¹⁷ . The forces also have their own female units - Asayîşa Jin - specialising in violence against women and responding to situations of femicide²¹⁸. This helps provide women with a space in which they feel safe to report instances of patriarchal (and particularly sexual) violence without fear of mockery or intimidation by male officers. The Asayîşa Jin operate closely with the women’s councils and provide the women’s communes with authority and protection in dealing with patriarchal violence. The success of their work can be seen in the fall in the number of honour killings committed against women²¹⁹

Another crucial element in enacting a people’s defence of the Revolution is through democratisation. The YPG/YPJ, rather than being beholden to a centralised state, as is the case in the capitalist world, are instead accountable to a local commune, where defence commissions work with the militias to ensure adequate self security.

“The defense commission, Çinar Sali explained to us, is the smallest unit of the security system. In every commune, three people are elected for the defense commission. “They talk to the young people and get them ready,” said Silvan Afrîn, “and organize the defense of the district. We have a lot of situations in which the general population, not only the YPG and YPJ, have to fight.”²²⁰

Similarly the Asayis are directly accountable to the council system and also operates as an internally democratic structure. Democracy also comes with strict limits on the use of violence and detention. For example despite being at war the Asayis cannot hold anyone for longer than 24 hours without a court order²²¹ . In comparison in most states across the US (which is not in a situation of civil war) state thugs can hold people without charge for up to 72 hours, a limit which itself is regularly violated; Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu was detained at Guantanamo Bay for 17 years without charge²²².

“The head of the Asayîş in Qamişlo, Heval Ahmed, described himself to us as a Communist, explaining that the force’s command structure is democratic, which means that each level chooses its commanders. Once a month, there is a big meeting where new commanders can be nominated and elected. Each unit consists of 30–45 people and is subdivided into smaller units, which elect their leaders as well.”²²³

The justice system is itself distinct from the traditional model under capitalist modernity, upending the notion everywhere across the capitalist world that the justice system must orientate itself around notions of retribution and retaliatory violence. It composes of three parts: the peace commissions, the people’s courts and the justice platforms. For the peace commissions and people’s courts members are elected whilst in the justice platforms decisions are made democratically by all those choosing to participate. The peace commissions are proactive, preventative and seek to deescalate conflicts whilst the people’s courts and justice platforms are reactive and aim to decide if rehabilitative measures are necessary. When peace commissions cannot not resolve a case they can request the formation of a justice platform which acts as a mass body (normally consisting of up to 300 members of the community) within the justice system and a bulwark against the bureaucratization and alienation that often takes place between the people and the penal system.

Whilst critics might describe this system, which places reconciliation and rehabilitation above retribution and arbitrary punishment, as utopian and idealistic it has proven itself to be highly robust, having already handled over 7,000 cases involving former ISIS fighters.²²⁴

“Amina tells NPR that if ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were ever found and tried here, he would be eligible for [a maximum penalty of 20 years], in the hope he would be rehabilitated.”²²⁵

“In the new justice system, an arrested person is viewed not as a criminal to be convicted but as someone to be rehabilitated. The objective is not only to determine whether the person has committed the crime but to understand the reason behind it. Numerous people are involved in the discussion, not just a small, elite group. The approach is unlike anything in either capitalist and parliamentary systems or in Real Socialist states.”²²⁶

Peace commissions have expanded their influence in the years since the Revolution, moving beyond the solely Kurdish regions and across to Arab majority areas. Alongside the economic transformation within society this has led to a dramatic fall in crime, particularly theft²²⁷.

“Prisons have been reconceived as educational institutions, and once the means are available, they are to be transformed into rehabilitation centers. The justice commissions are especially concerned with prison conditions: as one member explained to us, “We’ve already deprived the prisoners of their freedom; we don’t want to punish them further with onerous prison conditions.”²²⁸

Whilst statist regimes have used the death penalty to execute political opponents and silence dissent (an estimated 15,000 people were given death sentences by the Assad regime between 2011-2023²²⁹ ) the practise is illegal in the AANES and fascist ISIS prisoners are treated with humanity. Human rights organisations are given unlimited access to prisons across the AANES²³⁰ and, whilst the bourgeois Kurdish parties often claim political repression when members are arrested on charges of corruption or otherwise, there is no credible evidence to suggest this is the case²³¹.

“To ensure that an arrest does not in itself constitute punishment, the Asayîş strive to maintain the best possible prison conditions. We observed this ourselves when we visited the alleged terrorist Bashar Abdulmecid Mussa while he was in prison in Tirbespî. We asked him about the conditions of his arrest and detention. He told us the Asayîş were treating him very well. He allowed us to inspect his body, so we could see that he had not been harmed physically. He was in contact with his family. His relatively relaxed demeanor excluded, for us, the possibility of force or mistreatment.”²³²

Socialising the Economy

“We should have no capitalist system here—that system fails to respect the environment and perpetuates class contradictions and ultimately serves only capital … We in Rojava must follow a different model.”

Dr. Kurdaxi

“We intend to establish our self-sufficient economy within the democratic autonomy model, and we believe that the democratic, communitarian, women liberationist, ecological, egalitarian, and solidary paradigm based on self-sufficiency will be the solution for a social economy. The goal of this paradigm…is, basically, to socialize the economy.”²³³

Rojava operates on a socialist economic basis, even if it rarely uses the term to describe itself. This is largely because of the weaponisation of socialism by the Assadist regime and the terms association with authoritarian welfarism, rather than a democratic and revolutionary project. This rejection of statist socialism can seen in the common use of the term communitarian over communist and of socialisation over nationalisation. In effect however, they amount to the same thing - the material sources of production in society placed under democratic ownership of the masses. In the form of co-operatives, communes and assemblies production has been socialised in Rojava, whilst private property and capital accumulation have been repressed.

“In Rojava, buildings, land and infrastructure that were formerly the property of the Syrian state were given to the control of the city councils in 2012. The councils implemented what is referred to as ownership by use, which grants individuals usage rights to the buildings, land and infrastructure, but not the right to sell and buy on the market or convert them private enterprises. This usage ownership or stewardship is intended to prevent speculation and the concentration of the wealth in the hands of a few.”²³⁴

“Forty-two square miles (110 square kilometers) of formerly state-owned land [Between Qamişlo and Tirbespî] that was socialized after the revolution are now in the hands of five cooperatives employing about 75 women in all. The cooperatives were established by Yekîtiya Star and are connected to the women’s council. We visited one which produces lentils. It employs five women, who have invested in the coop, work the land, and now have disposable income.”²³⁵

Whilst the communes, assemblies and co-operatives dominate the economy, a minority private sector continues to operate and is limited to small capitalists, with the final aim being the gradual transition of the sector into the communal system. This is ensured as the private sector remains beholden to the will of the people’s councils which democratically control production.

“All individuals must have a voice and influence over the processes of production, distribution and consumption. In the neighbourhood, village, municipal, provincial, cantonal and regional assemblies—or those organized specifically by women and youth—each person, as a member of society, is part of the decision-making processes in which production is democratically planned.”²³⁶

This economic form which seeks to limit monopolisation above all else, is often referred to as the ‘social economy’ in the AANES which can be defined as ‘a self-sufficient, autonomous economy that is at the service of the people, where social resources are public in nature, and the people decide how best to use them. In other words: social wealth is under the collective management and control of the people.’²³⁷ After the collapse of the state in Northern Syria land formerly controlled by the regime was handed over to the communes who distributed it to those most in need; roughly 80% of the land is now in the hands of the communes and agriculture co-operatives²³⁸.

“The bulk of the land,” Hemo continues, “is going to the cooperatives—the exceptions are small areas, from one to four hectares, that individual families can also obtain. No new large landholdings are to emerge.”²³⁹

The AANES sees forced socialisation as too akin to the practises of the Assad regime and as such has largely left the preexisting large landholdings, which make up 20% of the land, untouched, waiting for a consensual assimilation overtime. This is in my view a mistake but perhaps an understandable one.

“The Autonomous Administration has no plans to change existing inequalities in land tenure through any apparatus based on power because it did not adopt or establish rule through power.”²⁴⁰

Any liquidation of preexisting capitalists in the AANES has been consensual and achieved through negotiation, primarily through appealing to the patriotism of Kurdish capital, leading to capitalists taking on investments which in a normal context they would not take on. This is however a flawed approach for many reasons, namely its reliance on reactionary identitarian sentiments meaning that non-Kurdish capital has no motivation to assimilate, as well as the idealistic assumption that in the long term Kurdish capital will accept its own liquidation; ‘After coming to this realization, following years of accumulated experience, the Agricultural Committee is trying to ensure the unity of peasants and tillers of the land, combining the social power of the smallholders and the landless in order to oppose large landowners. It is naive to believe that someone who owns thousands of hectares of land and has the potential to accumulate a certain amount of wealth every year will have the same willingness to communalize as a subsistence farmer working on that same landowner’s land. Acting on such an assumption would be based entirely on ideology and dogmatism .’²⁴¹

The co-operative system also seeks to socialise the ‘invisible’ labour of women in the domestic sphere, recognising the value and importance of domestic labour that has been historically undertaken by women; “We want that all ‘invisible’ work be socialized, beginning with housework,” the economist Azize Aslan has said. “Why should women use washing machines at home? Why shouldn’t there be a laundry for the village or the district? Why should there be no kindergarten or common kitchens? … These are some of the ways the patriarchal, gendered separation of ‘men’s and women’s work’ can be discarded.”²⁴²

Basic necessities have not only been socialised but also decommodified; “How can one sell water? Energy too is the property of the people of Kurdistan and can’t be sold. Of course society must find ways to prevent waste, but water and energy are essential and are not to be sold. … Even the oil belongs to all the people of Kurdistan.”²⁴³ The hope is that - and if - the war eventually comes to a close the development of the productive forces within Rojava can accelerate and the co-operative system can continue to mature, allowing for increased decommodification and a more aggressive front against capital.

Many other gains have been made by the Revolution in other fields such as anti-racism; ‘In the commune assembly I attended in Tirbespîye, I observed that there were Arabs (who in Cezîre are usually Muslims), Assyrians (who are usually Christians) and Kurds... This is a phenomenon that occurs almost everywhere in Rojava. The Co-president of the autonomous government of Cezîre Region emphasized that even if there is only one Armenian in a village, the will of this Armenian should be present in the commune assembly; otherwise, the assembly cannot be established.’²⁴⁴ and ecology; ‘Tree planting in Rojava is a collective effort that usually incites great participation and enthusiasm. Under Ba’ath rule, planting trees, even in private gardens, was forbidden. Now, with each new tree planted in northern Syria, the people develop a stronger bond with the land and nature.’²⁴⁵ . However for the sake of space I will leave it up to the reader to expand on these gains if it interests them (‘Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan’ would be my recommendation).

Capitalist Realism - the Smothering of the Revolution

“Whenever the capitalist system is unable to deny something that challenges it, it aims to empty its meaning by portraying it in a different manner. So, when Kurdish women appear as revolutionaries, instead of understanding or appreciating us for what we are, they reduce us to meaningless aesthetic and rhetorical devices. It is an attempt to re-attribute to us the same forms that we struggle to rid ourselves from.”²⁴⁶

Whilst writing this a question kept coming bugging me. Since 2011 the Revolution has grown and grown, surviving challenge after challenge yet still it is relatively ignored by the International Left. Very few socialists in the western world have ever heard of Rojava and familiarity with the YPG/PKK/DAANES is almost non-existent. The Revolution emerged shouting and clamouring for justice and the Left, which so easily raises the flags of other liberatory causes, suddenly became deaf.

At first I thought much of this was to do with the scourge of campism that continues to afflict much of the Left; it is certainly part of the reason. But that itself does not explain it. A part of it is perhaps racism and eurocentrism - the barriers in terms of visibility make solidarity harder than if the Revolution had taken place in France or Spain. Yet this is also not particularly satisfactory - the Left has strong links with the Palestinian resistance. Ultimately the answer must go far deeper.

In Fisher’s now famous work ‘Capitalist Realism’ he explains how capital is able to maintain hegemony through the co-option of all alternatives, transforming them into part of the capitalist system. This has been done to labour unions and social movements, as well as anti-capitalist cultural moments (arguably it is currently being waged against Luigi Mangione). In the 21st century capitalism is able to dominate in an authoritarian manner without totalitarian methods through the mental entrapment that makes it ‘easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism’. The hegemony of Capitalist Realism in the Western mind was however unexpectedly challenged in 2011 by the Revolution, which provided a true alternative to the system.

Capital’s smothering of the Revolution composes of two parts. Its first defence is one of co-option - to assimilate the Revolution and make it another component of the global capitalist system. It has done this in many ways, primarily by reducing the struggle to a purely ethnic conflict between the secular and the religious; Kurdish feminists joining the war on terror and islamic fundamentalism. Western media often refers to the Revolution as ‘the Kurds’ or the ‘US backed Kurdish forces’ ignoring the fact that the AANES is a multiethnic autonomous region fighting not just against Assad and patriarchy, but also capitalism and the nation state. As mentioned previously, YPJ and PKK uniforms became fashion trends whilst orientalist liberal films were churned out for western audiences revolving around ‘attractive’ women bravely fighting bearded jihadists. These were not PKK revolutionary communists who had been waging war a NATO for decades but instead ‘the Kurds’ who, being armed and funded by the US military, were a part of the system, not against it. For many, many people this initial defence was enough, so much so that many in the western Left not only believed this sanitised unreality, but began to actively attack the Revolution as a result.

For a minority - often those exposed to alternative reports on the Revolution - this smokescreen did not work. They had heard of the Revolution as utopia, as ecological, as decentralised and post-capitalist. For these people capital relies on the decades of hegemony that capitalist realism has enjoyed. ‘It seems too good to be true’ they find themselves saying. Subconsciously, without thinking, they withdraw emotionally from the Revolution, deciding that there must be some flaw, some way in which it is just another failed attempt to go beyond, that it is not ‘real socialism’. For some, capitalist realism has become so pervasive that people can no longer believe their eyes. The fact that the Revolution rarely speaks in the language of the old, statist socialism (because of the trauma of Baathism) only accentuates this; the Revolution is unlike the ‘pure’ revolutions of the 1910s it is a phantom.

The combination of these two methods has so far severely limited international solidarity with the Revolution and succeeded in isolating it from its allies. It is my hope that in its own small way this article will help combat this smokescreen, and that the Revolution can shatter the authority of capitalist realism once and for all.

To Conclude: Revolutionary Fatigue and the Looming Danger

This article does not intend to present the Revolution as a static, finished utopian model from which there are no flaws or errors. As I have already mentioned, the Revolution, whenever socially viable, must move against the remaining capitalists and fully socialise production. On top of this I find myself frequently opposed to the gender essentialist nature of the hegemonic logic within the AANES, particularly within the PKK, where sexuality is seen as a personal rather than political subject (Ocalan himself in the past has referred to homosexuality as a byproduct of capitalist modernity, though this view is far from hegemonic). Yet despite these limitations the Revolution remains by far the most emancipatory and successful socialist project in the 21st century and deserves out unwavering support and solidarity.

There is a very real possibility that, faced with a Turkey friendly regime in Damascus and an SNA emboldened by Trump, the Revolution will be squeezed to an extent which has not been felt since the hay days of ISIS. It may even be snuffed out. As the threats loom larger the bourgeois elements within Rojava, though currently subdued, will grow in confidence and begin to challenge the revolutionary leadership. The KNC will demand a capitulation to Israel and to beg at the foot of the US Empire for protection against Turkey. All revolutions experience periods of counter revolution and it is possible that, after over a decade of war, a fatigue will set in amongst the masses, luring them towards capitulation and compromise.

The reality is that the only way in which this can be prevented is through the solidarity of the International Left that can help provide the Revolution with the self confidence necessary to persevere. That is why it is more important than ever that the Left rallies against Turkey’s renewed aggression and condemns the complicity of the western world. After decades of neglect and ambivalence it is time for the Left to finally give the Revolution the support it is owed.

I would also like to say congratulations if you actually made it this far! Pieces like this take an incredibly long time to research, write and edit and any support you would like to show is much appreciated. I do have a Patreon though I rarely promote it as to be fair most of my content on Instagram is made up of low effort memes and tweets stolen from X. However if you would like to help me mentally justify writing more 30,000 pieces on here (when I have lots of plenty of assignments that need starting) here’s the link:

https://patreon.com/FightForaFuture?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

Thank you for all your support!

1. Keilany, Z., 1973. Socialism and economic change in Syria [Online]. Middle Eastern Studies, 9(1), pp.61–72. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/00263207308700228.

2. Ibid., pp.61-72

3. Seale, P. and Mcconville, M., 1988. Asad of Syria : the struggle for the Middle East. Berkeley: University Of California Press, p.140.

4. Ibid., 152-153

5. Ibid., 169

6. Ibid., 155

7. Lazdans, A., Dace, E. and Gusca, J., 2016. Development of the Experimental Scheme for Methanation Process [Online]. Energy Procedia, 95, pp.540–545. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2016.09.082

8. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., p.47

9. Hinnebusch, R., 2011. The Ba’th Party in Post-Ba’thist Syria: President, Party and the Struggle for ‘Reform’ [Online]. Middle East Critique, 20(2), pp.109–125. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2011.572408

10. Ibid., 115

11. Daher, J., 2018. Syria: The Social Origins of the Uprising - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung [Online]. www.rosalux.de. Available from: https://www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/39149/syria-the-social-origins-of-the-uprising.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., p.55

15. Daher, J., 2018. Syria: The Social Origins of the Uprising - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung [Online]. www.rosalux.de. Available from: https://www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/39149/syria-the-social-origins-of-the-uprising.

16. Solomon, C., 2021. In search of Greater Syria : the history and politics of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. London: I.B. Tauris., pp.155

17. Ibid., pp.156

18. Dagher, S., 2020. ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY : how one family’s lust for power destroyed syria. S.L.: Back Bay Books Little Brn., pp.399

19. Doctor Paul White, 2015. The PKK. Bloomsbury Publishing., pp.36

20. Weiner, T., 1999. U.S. Helped Turkey Find and Capture Kurd Rebel [Online]. The New York Times, 20 February. Available from: https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/20/world/us-helped-turkey-find-and-capture-kurd-rebel.html.

21. Staff, G., 1999. Global plot that lured Kurds’ hero into trap [Online]. the Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/feb/21/kurds1.

22. Dahi, O.S. and Munif, Y., 2012. Revolts in Syria: Tracking the Convergence Between Authoritarianism and Neoliberalism [Online]. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 47(4), pp.323–332. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909611431682.

23. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, p.65.

24. Ibid., p.67

25. Ocalan, A., Biehl, J., Dirik, D. and Nawratek, K., 2015. TOWARDS STATELESS DEMOCRACY IDEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ROJAVA AUTONOMY AND THE KURDISH MOVEMENT IN TURKEY CCBYSA FreeLab 2015 [Online]. Available from: [Accessed 16 December 2024].

26. Doctor Paul White, 2015. The PKK. Bloomsbury Publishing., pp.111

27. Joost Jongerden , J., 2012. Rethinking Politics and Democracy in the Middle East . European Parliament, Brussels.

28. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., pp.110

29. Ibid., pp.66

30. Flamand, H.M. and A., 2011. Tortured and killed: Hamza al-Khateeb, age 13 [Online]. www.aljazeera.com. Available from: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2011/5/31/tortured-and-killed-hamza-al-khateeb-age-13.

31. Ibid.

32. UN News, 2011. UN human rights chief urges immediate action on Syria as death toll passes 3,000 [Online]. Available from: https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/10/391512-un-human-rights-chief-urges-immediate-action-syria-death-toll-passes-3000 [Accessed 16 December 2024].

33. Leenders, R. and Heydemann, S., 2012. Popular Mobilization in Syria: Opportunity and Threat, and the Social Networks of the Early Risers [Online]. Mediterranean Politics, 17(2), pp.139–159. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2012.694041 [Accessed 14 January 2021].

34. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., pp.68

35. Ibid., pp.68

36. BBC News, 2011. Syrian forces kill two protesters in eastern crackdown [Online]. 14 July. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14156200.

37. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., pp.69

38. Phillips, C., 2013. The Civil War in Syria: The Variety of Opposition to the Syrian Regime. IEMed: Mediterranean yearbook, (2013), pp.24–29.

39. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press.,pp.88

40. Ibid.,pp.95

41. Phillips, C., 2013. The Civil War in Syria: The Variety of Opposition to the Syrian Regime. IEMed: Mediterranean yearbook, (2013), pp.24–29.

42. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press.,pp.102

43. Amnesty International, 2012. Syria: FSA killings probe findings ‘must go to UN inquiry’ [Online]. Available from: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2012/08/syria-fsa-killings-probe-findings-must-go-to-un-inquiry/ [Accessed 20 December 2024].

44. Avenue, H.R.W. | 350 F., York, 34th F. | N. and t 1.212.290.4700, N. 10118-3299 U. |, 2018. Syria: Turkey-Backed Groups Seizing Property [Online]. Human Rights Watch. Available from: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/14/syria-turkey-backed-groups-seizing-property.

45. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., pp.95

46. Phillips, C., 2013. The Civil War in Syria: The Variety of Opposition to the Syrian Regime. IEMed: Mediterranean yearbook, (2013), pp.24–29.

47. Ibid.

48. Schmidinger, T., 2018. Rojava : revolution, war and the future of Syria’s Kurds. London: Plutopress., pp.88

49. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press.,pp.99

50. Georg, F., 2003. Hitler’s Miracle Weapons: the Secret History of the Rockets and Flying Crafts of the Third Reich., pp.49

51. Human Rights Watch, 2013. Attacks on Ghouta | Analysis of Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria [Online]. Human Rights Watch. Available from: https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/09/10/attacks-ghouta/analysis-alleged-use-chemical-weapons-syria.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Alexandra Hudson, 2013. Assad is not to blame for Syria chemical attacks, says Kurdish party leader [Online]. The Mail & Guardian. Available from: https://mg.co.za/article/2013-08-26-kurdish-pyd-leader-assad-is-not-to-blame/ [Accessed 22 December 2024].

56. Ibid.

57. Human Rights Watch, 2013. Attacks on Ghouta | Analysis of Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria [Online]. Human Rights Watch. Available from: https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/09/10/attacks-ghouta/analysis-alleged-use-chemical-weapons-syria.

58. Civil Rights Defenders, 2021. EASTERN AND WESTERN GHOUTA SARIN ATTACK [Online]. Available from: [Accessed 22 December 2024].

59. Üstündağ, N., 2016. Self-Defense as a Revolutionary Practice in Rojava, or How to Unmake the State [Online]. South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(1), pp.197–210. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3425024.

60. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, p.281

61. Schmidinger, T., 2018. Rojava : revolution, war and the future of Syria’s Kurds. London: Plutopress., pp.92

62. Michael Knapp (Historian, Flach, A. and Ercan Ayboga, 2016. Revolution in Rojava. Pluto Press (UK)., pp77

63. Ibid.

64. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., pp.107

65. Michael Knapp (Historian, Flach, A. and Ercan Ayboga, 2016. Revolution in Rojava. Pluto Press (UK)., pp78

66. Ibid., pp.128

67. Gunes , C. and Lowe, R., 2015. The Impact of the Syrian War on Kurdish Politics Across the Middle East [Online]. Archive.org. Available from: https://web.archive.org/web/20171009213005/https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/field/field_document/20150723SyriaKurdsGunesLowe.pdf [Accessed 19 December 2024].

68. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., pp.106

69. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.139

70. Schmidinger, T., 2018. Rojava : revolution, war and the future of Syria’s Kurds. London: Plutopress., pp.88

71. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., pp.121

72. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.81

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid. p.82

75. Ibid. pp.84

76. Schmidinger, T., 2018. Rojava : revolution, war and the future of Syria’s Kurds. London: Plutopress., pp.101-102

77. Ibid., pp103

78. Harkin, J., 2014. Up to 186 Kurdish students kidnapped by Isis in northern Syria [Online]. the Guardian. The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/26/186-kurdish-students-kidnapped-isis-syria [Accessed 20 December 2024].

79. Schmidinger, T., 2018. Rojava : revolution, war and the future of Syria’s Kurds. London: Plutopress., pp.104

80. Westall, S. and Perry, T., 2015. Islamic State kills at least 145 civilians in Syria’s Kobani [Online]. Reuters, 26 June. Available from: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/islamic-state-kills-at-least-145-civilians-in-syrias-kobani-idUSKBN0P60UY/.

81. Ibid.

82. Dilar Dirik, 2021. The Kurdish women’s movement : history, theory, practice. London: Pluto Press., pp.282

83. Dagher, S., 2020. ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY : how one family’s lust for power destroyed syria. S.L.: Back Bay Books Little Brn., pp399

84. Cobain, I., 2013. CIA rendition: more than a quarter of countries ‘offered covert support’ [Online]. the Guardian. The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/05/cia-rendition-countries-covert-support.

85. Dagher, S., 2020. ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY : how one family’s lust for power destroyed syria. S.L.: Back Bay Books Little Brn., pp.399

86. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, p.86

87. Dilar Dirik, 2021. The Kurdish women’s movement : history, theory, practice. London: Pluto Press., pp.310

88. Hatahet, S., Emin, M., Bedir, C. and Rashid, M., 2019. THE PHENOMENON OF YPG TRANSNATIONAL FIGHTERS IN SYRIA ALSHARQ FORUM PAPER SERIES [Online]. Available from: [Accessed 21 December 2024].

89. Ibid., pp.10

90. Ibid., pp. 28

91. Ibid., pp.29

92. ANF News, 2024. HBDH: 11 riot police killed in Trabzon [Online]. Available from: https://anfenglish.com/news/hbdh-11-riot-police-killed-in-trabzon-15702 [Accessed 22 December 2024].

93. Nordic Monitor, 2020. Over 12,000 killed or wounded during Turkey’s security operations in Kurdish areas in 2015-2016 - Nordic Monitor [Online]. Available from: https://nordicmonitor.com/2020/04/more-than-twelve-thousand-people-were-killed-or-wounded-during-turkeys-security-operations-in-2015-2016/ [Accessed 22 December 2024].

94. Hatahet, S., Emin, M., Bedir, C. and Rashid, M., 2019. THE PHENOMENON OF YPG TRANSNATIONAL FIGHTERS IN SYRIA ALSHARQ FORUM PAPER SERIES [Online]. Available from: [Accessed 21 December 2024].

95. Ibid.

96. The Guardian, 2015. First female western fighter dies fighting Islamic State [Online]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/09/first-female-western-fighter-ivana-hoffmann-dies-fighting-islamic-state.

97. Dagher, S., 2020. ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY : how one family’s lust for power destroyed syria. S.L.: Back Bay Books Little Brn., pp.395

98. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., pp.117

99. Ibid., pp.116

100. Porter, L., 2024. How the Arab world turned against Hezbollah [Online]. Prospectmagazine.co.uk. Available from: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/40656/how-the-arab-world-turned-against-hezbollah [Accessed 23 December 2024].

101. Ibid.

102. Ibid.

103. Dagher, S., 2020. ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY : how one family’s lust for power destroyed syria. S.L.: Back Bay Books Little Brn. pp.410

104. Lob, E., 2014. Is Hezbollah Confronting a Crisis of Popular Legitimacy? [Online]. Available from: [Accessed 24 December 2024].

105. Barroso Cortés, F.S. and Kéchichian, J.A., 2020. The Practice of Corruption in Lebanon [Online]. Middle East Policy, 27(4), pp.119–135. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/mepo.12530.

106. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., pp.118

107. Ibid., pp.119

108. Guardian staff reporter, 2016. Dozens have starved to death in besieged Madaya, say NGOs [Online]. the Guardian. The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/12/dozens-starved-death-besieged-madaya-say-ngos [Accessed 23 December 2024].

109. Ibid.

110. Dagher, S., 2020. ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY : how one family’s lust for power destroyed syria. S.L.: Back Bay Books Little Brn. pp.411

111. Ibid., pp.411

112. Amnesty International, 2016. Syrian and Russian forces targeting hospitals as a strategy of war [Online]. Available from: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2016/03/syrian-and-russian-forces-targeting-hospitals-as-a-strategy-of-war/.

113. Human Rights Watch, 2020. ‘Targeting Life in Idlib’ [Online]. Human Rights Watch. Available from: https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/10/15/targeting-life-idlib/syrian-and-russian-strikes-civilian-infrastructure.

114. Human Rights Watch, 2015. Russia/Syria: Extensive Recent Use of Cluster Munitions [Online]. Available from: https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/12/20/russia/syria-extensive-recent-use-cluster-munitions.

115. Ibid.

116. Dagher, S., 2020. ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY : how one family’s lust for power destroyed syria. S.L.: Back Bay Books Little Brn. pp.412

117. Ibid., 412

118. Ibid., 412

119. Ibid., 413

120. PHR, 2022. Case Study - PHR [Online]. Available from: https://phr.org/issues/health-under-attack/attacks-in-syria/al-quds-hospital-the-last-hospital-standing-in-aleppo/ [Accessed 25 December 2024].

121. Ibid.

122. BBC News, 2016. Aleppo battle: UN says civilians shot on the spot [Online]. 13 December. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-38301629.

123. Jones, O., 2016. Don’t blame MPs: British bombs wouldn’t have saved Aleppo [Online]. the Guardian. The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/14/mps-aleppo-british-bombs-aleppo-syria-2013 [Accessed 26 December 2024].

124. Amnesty International, 2016. Syrian and Russian forces targeting hospitals as a strategy of war [Online]. Available from: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2016/03/syrian-and-russian-forces-targeting-hospitals-as-a-strategy-of-war/.

125. Syrian Network for Human Rights, 2019. Russian Forces Killed 6,686 Civilians, including 1,928 Children, Since the Start of Their Military Intervention in Syria [Online]. Available from: https://snhr.org/blog/2019/09/30/54271/.

126. Abboud, S., 2018. Syria. Cambridge, Uk ; Malden, Mass.: Polity Press., pp.131

127. Ibid., pp.131

128. Solomon, C., 2021. In search of Greater Syria : the history and politics of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. London: I.B. Tauris., pp.141

129. Ibid., pp.162

130. Ibid., pp.160

131. Ibid., pp.164

132. Nick, Grinstead and clingendael-institute, 2023. The role of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in the civil war [Online]. Clingendael. Available from: https://www.clingendael.org/publication/role-syrian-social-nationalist-party-civil-war [Accessed 26 December 2024].

133. Solomon, C., 2021. In search of Greater Syria : the history and politics of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. London: I.B. Tauris., pp.146

134. Ibid., pp.40

135. Dagher, S., 2020. ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY : how one family’s lust for power destroyed syria. S.L.: Back Bay Books Little Brn. pp.435

136. Strickland, P., 2018. Unravelling Western fascists’ affair with Assad [Online]. www.aljazeera.com. Available from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/2/14/why-do-italian-fascists-adore-syrias-bashar-al-assad.

137. https://www.facebook.com/tinyrevolution, 2019. The U.S. Is Now Betraying the Kurds for the Eighth Time [Online]. The Intercept. Available from: https://theintercept.com/2019/10/07/kurds-syria-turkey-trump-betrayal/.

138. Schmidinger, T., 2018. Rojava : revolution, war and the future of Syria’s Kurds. London: Plutopress., pp.254

139. https://www.facebook.com/tinyrevolution, 2019. The U.S. Is Now Betraying the Kurds for the Eighth Time [Online]. The Intercept. Available from: https://theintercept.com/2019/10/07/kurds-syria-turkey-trump-betrayal/.

140. Franceschi, K., 2024. x.com [Online]. X (formerly Twitter). BBC News Arabic. Available from: https://x.com/karimfranceschi/status/1872092043226259886 [Accessed 27 December 2024].

141. Kieser, H.-L., 2011. Dersim Massacre, 1937-1938. Sciences Po.

142. Gunter, M., 2019. The Kurds In Turkey. Routledge., pp.12

143. Ibid.

144. BBC News, 2012. Kurdish can be taught in Turkey’s schools, Erdogan says [Online]. 12 June. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18410596.

145. Yegen, M., 2009. ‘ProspectiveTurks’ or ‘PseudoCitizens:’ Kurds in Turkey [Online]. Middle East Journal, 63(4), pp.597–615. JSTOR. Available from: https://doi.org/10.2307/20622956.

146. Alemdaroğlu, A. and Göçek, F.M., 2023. Kurds in Dark Times: New Perspectives on Violence and Resistance in Turkey [Online]. cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu. Available from: https://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/publication/kurds-dark-times-new-perspectives-violence-and-resistance-turkey.

147. Schmidinger, T., 2020. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria: Between A Rock and A Hard Place. Transnational Press London., pp.187

148. U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2022. Treasury Designates Facilitation Network Supporting ISIS Members in Syria [Online]. Available from: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0772? [Accessed 27 December 2024].

149. Youtube, 2024. Rojava: Syria’s Unknown War [Online]. Vice News. Available from:

[Accessed 27 December 2024].

150. Sly, L., 2019. Turkish-led forces film themselves executing a Kurdish captive in Syria [Online]. Washington Post, 13 October. Available from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkish-led-forces-film-themselves-executing-a-kurdish-captive-in-syria/2019/10/13/22e11198-ed9c-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html.

151. Hall, R., 2019. Inside the ethnic cleansing of Turkey’s Syrian ‘safe zone’ [Online]. www.independent.co.uk. Available from: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkey-syria-safe-zone-ethnic-cleansing-death-toll-sna-a9225896.html.

152. Cockburn, P., 2018. Yazidis who suffered under Isis face forced conversion to Islam amid fresh persecution in Afrin [Online]. The Independent, 19 April. Available from: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-yazidis-isis-islam-conversion-afrin-persecution-kurdish-a8310696.html.

153. News, A., 2020. Abuses against Kurdish women in Afrin under Turkish Parliament radar [Online]. Arab News. Arabnews. Available from: https://www.arabnews.com/node/1785076/middle-east [Accessed 27 December 2024].

154. Amnesty International, 2019. Damning evidence of war crimes by Turkish forces and allies in Syria [Online]. Available from: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2019/10/syria-damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-and-other-violations-by-turkish-forces-and-their-allies/.

155. Zayadin, H., 2024. ‘Everything is by the Power of the Weapon’ [Online]. Human Rights Watch. Available from: https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/02/29/everything-power-weapon/abuses-and-impunity-turkish-occupied-northern-syria.

156. Dilar Dirik, 2021. The Kurdish women’s movement : history, theory, practice. London: Pluto Press., pp304

157. Ibid.

158. Ibid., pp302

159. Hall, R., 2019. Inside the ethnic cleansing of Turkey’s Syrian ‘safe zone’ [Online]. www.independent.co.uk. Available from: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkey-syria-safe-zone-ethnic-cleansing-death-toll-sna-a9225896.html.

160. Schmidinger, T., 2020. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria: Between A Rock and A Hard Place. Transnational Press London., pp.189

161. Schmidinger, T., 2018. Rojava : revolution, war and the future of Syria’s Kurds. London: Plutopress., pp.257

162. Iddon, P., 2023. Syrian Kurdish Opposition To Turkish F-16 Sale Isn’t First Time Kurds Worried About American Fighter Exports [Online]. Forbes. Available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/pauliddon/2023/12/30/syrian-kurdish-opposition-to-turkish-f-16-sale-isnt-first-time-kurds-worried-about-american-fighter-exports/ [Accessed 28 December 2024].

163. The Economist, 2020. Turkey threatens to let asylum-seekers flood into Europe [Online]. Available from: https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/03/05/turkey-threatens-to-let-asylum-seekers-flood-into-europe.

164. Reuters, 2023. Sweden, Finland must send up to 130 ‘terrorists’ to Turkey for NATO bid, Erdogan says [Online]. Reuters, 17 January. Available from: https://www.reuters.com/world/sweden-finland-must-send-up-130-terrorists-turkey-nato-bid-2023-01-16/.

165. Bryant, M., 2024. ‘Now we are not safe’: Sweden’s Kurds fear Nato deal has sold them out [Online]. The Guardian, 7 February. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/07/now-we-are-not-safe-swedens-kurds-fear-nato-deal-has-sold-them-out.

166. Ibid.

167. Vock, I., 2024. PKK: Six charged with membership of banned Kurdish group [Online]. BBC News, 10 December. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gwppzgg56o.

168. Monde, L., 2024. Two Turkish journalists killed in north Syria by ‘Turkish drone’ [Online]. Le Monde.fr. Le Monde. Available from: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/12/20/two-turkish-journalists-killed-in-north-syria-by-turkish-drone_6736292_4.html [Accessed 28 December 2024].

169. MEHJAZY, M., 2021. The Syrian Economy at War: Captagon, Hashish, and the Syrian Narco-State - COAR Global [Online]. COAR Global. Available from: https://www.coar-global.org/2021/04/27/the-syrian-economy-at-war-captagon-hashish-and-the-syrian-narco-state/#_ftnref26 [Accessed 28 December 2024].

170. Nebehay, S., 2020. U.N. war crimes experts urge Turkey to rein in rebels in Syria [Online]. Reuters, 15 September. Available from: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/un-war-crimes-experts-urge-turkey-to-rein-in-rebels-in-syria-idUSKBN2662PA/.

171. rudaw.net, 2016. Syrian rebels captured by YPG confess to torturing Kurdish fighters [Online]. Available from: https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/010920164 [Accessed 28 December 2024].

172. Human Rights Watch, 2023. Northeast Syria: Turkish Strikes Disrupt Water, Electricity | Human Rights Watch [Online]. Available from: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/26/northeast-syria-turkish-strikes-disrupt-water-electricity.

173. Giles, C., 2024. Turkish strikes in Syria cut water to one million people [Online]. BBC News, 19 November. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c79zj7rz3l4o.

174. Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 2019. Video Shows ‘al-Majd Devision’ Elements Mutilating a Body of a YPJ Fighter in the Countryside of Ain al-Arab [Online]. Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Available from: https://www.syriahr.com/en/144854/ [Accessed 28 December 2024].

175. Seligman, L. and Ward, A., 2024. Exclusive | U.S. Fears Military Buildup by Turkey Signals Preparations for Incursion Into Syria [Online]. WSJ. The Wall Street Journal. Available from: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-fears-military-buildup-by-turkey-signals-preparations-for-incursion-into-syria-1c2e88e9.

176. Dilar Dirik, 2021. The Kurdish women’s movement : history, theory, practice. London: Pluto Press.

177. Ibid., pp.285

178. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.88

179. Ibid., pp.89

180. The Autonomous Administration of Jazeera Canton of Rojava President of the Women's Committee 2014 Basic Principles and General Principles for Women.

181. Ibid.

182. Shahvisi, A., 2018. Beyond Orientalism: Exploring the Distinctive Feminism of Democratic Confederalism in Rojava [Online]. Geopolitics, 26(4), pp.1–25. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2018.1554564.

183. Ibid.

184. Wartmann, J., 2023. Negotiating What It Means to Be ‘free’: Gender Equality and Governance in North and East Syria [Online]. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 26(4), pp.1–22. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2023.2269154.

185. Ibid.

186. Flock, E., 2021. ‘Now I’ve a purpose’: why more Kurdish women are choosing to fight [Online]. the Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/19/came-to-fight-stayed-for-the-freedom-why-more-kurdish-women-are-taking-up-arms.

187. Dilar Dirik, 2021. The Kurdish women’s movement : history, theory, practice. London: Pluto Press., pp.294

188. Flock, E., 2021. ‘Now I’ve a purpose’: why more Kurdish women are choosing to fight [Online]. the Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/19/came-to-fight-stayed-for-the-freedom-why-more-kurdish-women-are-taking-up-arms.

189. Dilar Dirik, 2021. The Kurdish women’s movement : history, theory, practice. London: Pluto Press., pp.295

190. O’Riordan, T., 2017. Bob Crow in Rojava [Online]. Jacobin.com. Available from: https://jacobin.com/2017/02/rojava-ypg-bob-crowe-volunteers-left-politics [Accessed 29 December 2024].

191. Flock, E., 2021. ‘Now I’ve a purpose’: why more Kurdish women are choosing to fight [Online]. the Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/19/came-to-fight-stayed-for-the-freedom-why-more-kurdish-women-are-taking-up-arms.

192. Dilar Dirik, 2021. The Kurdish women’s movement : history, theory, practice. London: Pluto Press.

193. Shahvisi, A., 2018. Beyond Orientalism: Exploring the Distinctive Feminism of Democratic Confederalism in Rojava [Online]. Geopolitics, 26(4), pp.1–25. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2018.1554564.

194. Dilar Dirik, 2021. The Kurdish women’s movement : history, theory, practice. London: Pluto Press., pp.307

195. Ibid., pp.308

196. Üstündağ, N., 2016. Self-Defense as a Revolutionary Practice in Rojava, or How to Unmake the State [Online]. South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(1), pp.197–210. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3425024.

197. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.109

198. Küçük, B. and Özselçuk, C., 2016. The Rojava Experience: Possibilities and Challenges of Building a Democratic Life [Online]. South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(1), pp.184–196. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3425013.

199. Barkhoda, D., 2016. The Experiment of the Rojava System in Grassroots Participatory Democracy: Its Theoretical Foundation, Structure, and Strategies . Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science, 4(11), pp.80–88. Quest Journals.

200. Aslam, A., 2023. Anticapitalist Economy in Rojava. Daraja Press., pp.111

201. Jongerden, J. and Knapp, M., 2016. Communal Democracy: The Social Contract and Confederalism in Rojava [Online]. Comparative Islamic Studies, 10(1), pp.87–109. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.29642.

202. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.111

203. Anonymous Contributor, 2018. The Communes of Rojava: a Model in Societal Self Direction [Online]. It’s Going Down. Available from: https://itsgoingdown.org/the-communes-of-rojava-a-model-in-societal-self-direction/ [Accessed 29 December 2024].

204. Jongerden, J. and Knapp, M., 2016. Communal Democracy: The Social Contract and Confederalism in Rojava [Online]. Comparative Islamic Studies, 10(1), pp.87–109. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.29642.

205. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.110

206. Ibid., pp.112

207. Jongerden, J. and Knapp, M., 2016. Communal Democracy: The Social Contract and Confederalism in Rojava [Online]. Comparative Islamic Studies, 10(1), pp.87–109. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.29642.

208. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.114

209. Dilar Dirik, 2021. The Kurdish women’s movement : history, theory, practice. London: Pluto Press., pp.135

210. Üstündağ, N., 2016. Self-Defense as a Revolutionary Practice in Rojava, or How to Unmake the State [Online]. South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(1), pp.197–210. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3425024.

211. Ibid.

212. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.195

213. Üstündağ, N., 2016. Self-Defense as a Revolutionary Practice in Rojava, or How to Unmake the State [Online]. South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(1), pp.197–210. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3425024.

214. Üstündağ, N., 2016. Self-Defense as a Revolutionary Practice in Rojava, or How to Unmake the State [Online]. South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(1), pp.197–210. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3425024.

215. Hiruko, A., 2024. 10 female cops speak out about sexism, harassment within the Seattle Police Department [Online]. www.kuow.org. Available from: https://www.kuow.org/stories/10-female-cops-speak-out-about-sexism-harassment-within-the-seattle-police-department.

216. Dodd, V., 2023. Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic [Online]. The Guardian, 21 March. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/21/metropolitan-police-institutionally-racist-misogynistic-homophobic-louise-casey-report.

217. Üstündağ, N., 2016. Self-Defense as a Revolutionary Practice in Rojava, or How to Unmake the State [Online]. South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(1), pp.197–210. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3425024.

218. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.197

219. Ibid., pp.193

220. Ibid., pp.118

221. Ibid., pp.196

222. Rosenberg, C., 2024. U.S. Releases Kenyan Prisoner Held for Nearly 18 Years without Charges [Online]. Nytimes.com. The New York Times. Available from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/us/politics/guantanamo-prisoner-released-kenya.html [Accessed 30 December 2024].

223. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.197

224. Arraf, J., 2019. ‘Revenge Is For The Weak’: Kurdish Courts In Northeastern Syria Take On ISIS Cases [Online]. Npr.org. Available from: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/29/727511632/revenge-is-for-the-weak-kurdish-courts-in-northeastern-syria-take-on-isis-cases [Accessed 10 June 2019].

225. Ibid.

226. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press., pp.192

227. Ibid., pp.193

228. Ibid., pp.193

229. Mohammad, 2023. An Instrument of Death and Disappearance: How the Syrian Regime Uses Military Field Courts against Activists and Dissidents | Syrian Network for Human Rights [Online]. Snhr.org. Available from: https://snhr.org/blog/2023/09/12/an-instrument-of-death-and-disappearance-how-the-syrian-regime-uses-military-field-courts-against-activists-and-dissidents/ [Accessed 30 December 2024].

230. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.196

231. Ibid., pp.196

232. Ibid., pp.196

233. Aslam, A., 2023. Anticapitalist Economy in Rojava. Daraja Press., pp.125

234. Jongerden, J. and Knapp, M., 2016. Communal Democracy: The Social Contract and Confederalism in Rojava [Online]. Comparative Islamic Studies, 10(1), pp.87–109. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.29642.

235. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.227

236. Aslam, A., 2023. Anticapitalist Economy in Rojava. Daraja Press., pp.128

237. Ibid., pp.127

238. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.224

239. Ibid., pp.224

240. Aslam, A., 2023. Anticapitalist Economy in Rojava. Daraja Press., pp.142

241. Ibid., pp.144

242. Knapp, M., Flach, A., Ercan Ayboga, Graeber, D., Abdullah, A. and Biehl, J., 2016. Revolution in Rojava : democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press, pp.232

243. Ibid., pp.232

244. Aslam, A., 2023. Anticapitalist Economy in Rojava. Daraja Press., pp.110

245. Ibid., pp.152

246. Dilar Dirik, 2021. The Kurdish women’s movement : history, theory, practice. London: Pluto Press., pp.310