Rojava resources for revolutionaries

Kobane is nearing two months of resisting attack and massacre against incredible odds, but also with the assistance of western air strikes. What’s going on in this Syrian /Turkish border town, and in northern Syria isn’t just about a fight against a quasi-fascist death cult called the Islamic State, contrary to what most Americans learn from corporate media propaganda. What the Kurds of Kobane and Rojave are defending is equally as important as the international fight against the latest in a growing group of theocratic movements taking the Middle East by storm (and no doubt caused in no small part by the US invasion in 2003).

Below are some useful resources to help understand what the social, economic, and political revolution in northern Syria is all about. Most of these links I’ve already posted to my twitter feed, but thought I’d collect them here for easy reference. Enjoy.

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Stateless Democracy: How the Kurdish Women Movement Liberated Democracy from the State

Here’s a talk from October 2014 given by a Kurdish feminist and student of sociology Dilar Dirik on the radical, feminist political project taking place in Rojave and Kurdistan.

Here are some other writings by Dirik, from the website Kurdish Question, a wonderful resource for all things Kurdistan.

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The new PKK: unleashing a social revolution in Kurdistan

This is a long expose by Rafael Taylor over at ROAR Magazine on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Abdulla Öcalan’s conversion to a form of anarchism influenced to a large degree by the late Murray Bookchin (and of which I briefly wrote about here).

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Syria: On the Syrian Revolution and the Kurdish Issue

Here’s some useful background from a Kurdish/Syrian journalist and anarchist Shiar Nayo from April 2014, well before the worlds attention focused on Kobane. Nayo holds a much more cynical view on the future prospects of democracy and freedom under the PYD. Let’s hope she’s wrong.

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Oil politics and the battle for Kobane

This article by Mika Minio-Paluello at Open Democracy website talks about the relationship to oil and colonialism in this part of the world and why the U.S. didn’t really have much interest in defending Kobane until international pressure was placed on it to do so.

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A Revolution of Life: Interview with Saleh Muslim

This is an interview with Saleh Muslim, the co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has allied closely with the PKK in the free Cantons of northern Syria.

“The reason we are under attack is because of the democratic model we are establishing in our area. Many local forces and governments do not like to see these alternative democratic models being developed in Rojava. They are afraid of our system. We have created, in the middle of the civil war in Syria, three independent cantons in the Rojava region that function by democratic, autonomous rule.”

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Democratic Confederalism: the long and short of it.

A short piece, again from the site Kurdish Question, by Memed Aksoy, on the concept behind the manner in which the Syrian Kurds are organizing themselves.

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Democractic Confederalism

This is a link to a PDF so look out for that, by Abdullah Öcalan, describing Democratic Confederalism. Öcalan is, of course, the head of the PKK. He’s the one you see on all those flags if you Image Google “PKK protest”.

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Anarchist Eyewitness to self-management in Kurdish Syria/West Kurdistan

Here is an account by Zaher Baher, a member of the Kurdistan Anarchists Forum, after he spend a few weeks in Rojave witnessing the democratic experiments going on there.

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Rojava: fantasies and realities.

Here’s a level headed and critical assessment of the PYD, PKK, the myths and realities of the Rojava struggle, by the Turkish anarchist Zafer Onat. Critical yet supportive.

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Bookchin, Öcalan, and the Dialectics of Democracy

A long piece on the back story behind Öcalan’s conversion to Murray Bookchin’s form of anarchism, by Janet Biehl, who was Bookchin’s political collaborator for decades.