While I don't have a lot of free time available (that is not owned and controlled by my employer) in which to write the kind of polished post this topic warrants, I believe an under-reported situation with the Kurds and the attacks upon them by ISIS deserves some attention, to make people aware of the character of new social developments within the Kurdish community. I will let the story tell itself through several recent articles:
In today's Guardian a new essay by David Graeber asks why the international media is ignoring a development in Rojova, the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria, where Kurds have been trying out what Graeber calls a "remarkable democratic experiment" which has elements similar to the Spanish Revolution during the civil war in Spain (1936 to 1939).
In Spain, during the Spanish Civil War, the urban and agrarian populations in Catalonia and neighboring regions implemented a form of socialism based on direct democracy, free association, worker self-managed workplaces, equality and horizontal worker relationships, with all social and political organization extending from the circumference to the center, or from the bottom upward, rather than from central authority or from the top-down. This experiment in libertarian socialism lasted almost three years, involving 3 to 8 million people, until the fascist forces prevailed and took over the country. The world stood by, even in some cases assisted the fascists, while an emerging new socialist society based on freedom and bottom-up organization was violently crushed.
In his essay, Why is the world ignoring the revolutionary Kurds in Syria?, Graeber, whose own father fought in the International Brigades in defense of the Spanish Republic, explains the significance of this threat, and why it is personal to him:
Spanish revolutionaries hoped to create a vision of a free society that the entire world might follow. Instead, world powers declared a policy of “non-intervention” and maintained a rigorous blockade on the republic, even after Hitler and Mussolini, ostensible signatories, began pouring in troops and weapons to reinforce the fascist side. The result was years of civil war that ended with the suppression of the revolution and some of a bloody century’s bloodiest massacres.
I never thought I would, in my own lifetime, see the same thing happen again. Obviously, no historical event ever really happens twice. There are a thousand differences between what happened in Spain in 1936 and what is happening in Rojava, the three largely Kurdish provinces of northern Syria, today. But some of the similarities are so striking, and so distressing, that I feel it’s incumbent on me, as someone who grew up in a family whose politics were in many ways defined by the Spanish revolution, to say: we cannot let it end the same way again.
Graeber gave a hint of his upcoming article in his comment recently on Daily Kos:
actually in Rojava it's a lot like Spain(4+ / 0-)
in Spain a fascist coup was defeated, in parts of the country like Barcelona, by a left-wing uprising that created radical social experiments in worker self-management, local direct democracy, and women's empowerment, often anarchist or else Marxist in inspiration. In Rajava (the predominantly Kurdish-speaking areas of Syria) the rise of a fascist Islamic group (IS) was met by the consolidation of a leftist revolutionary government, which is also doing such experiments, involving both anarchist and Marxist elements.
yes, they are close to the PKK, but the PKK has transformed radically from the old-fashioned Marxist guerrillas they used to be (with Ocalan, interestingly, leading the way, even from prison.) For one thing they were inspired by the Zapatistas in Mexico to give up any military operations other than defensive. They now claim they don't even want a state, but instead aim to create self-governing local governments based on Murray Bookchin's principles of "libertarian municipalism" that would confederate across international borders. There's a big ecological and feminist component in all this. Hence the womens' militias. (Even feminist spirituality: Ocalan is convinced the Kurds are the descendants of the neolithic goddess-worshipping pre-Semitic peoples of the Middle East, and reportedly the womens' militias fight under a banner with a star that represents the goddess Ishtar.)
in Rojava they are trying to put some of these ideas into practice: directly democratic assemblies with women's and youth caucuses, for instance, and municipalities where official posts have to be divided between Kurds, Arabs, and Assyrian Christians (with at least one of the three being a woman), etc. They say they want this to become a democratic model for the region, more democratic than the Western model.
it's hard to imagine how you could possibly have a more positive development in the Middle East. In fact it's kind of amazing that there's been no coverage of this - even if it didn't also involved units of women guerrillas rescuing the Yazidis from IS.
by david graeber on Thu Oct 02, 2014 at 03:42:48 AM PDT
He elaborates further in the Guardian:
The autonomous region of Rojava, as it exists today, is one of few bright spots – albeit a very bright one – to emerge from the tragedy of the Syrian revolution. Having driven out agents of the Assad regime in 2011, and despite the hostility of almost all of its neighbours, Rojava has not only maintained its independence, but is a remarkable democratic experiment. Popular assemblies have been created as the ultimate decision-making bodies, councils selected with careful ethnic balance (in each municipality, for instance, the top three officers have to include one Kurd, one Arab and one Assyrian or Armenian Christian, and at least one of the three has to be a woman), there are women’s and youth councils, and, in a remarkable echo of the armed Mujeres Libres (Free Women) of Spain, a feminist army, the “YJA Star” militia (the “Union of Free Women”, the star here referring to the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar), that has carried out a large proportion of the combat operations against the forces of Islamic State.
Rafael Taylor, writing in ROARMAG, gave a detailed overview of the origins of the the Kurdish movement in August, 2014 in his artcile, The new PKK: unleashing a social revolution in Kurdistan:
[This is a short excerpt. The longer article is an enjoyable, fascinating read]
At the turn of the century, as the lifelong US radical Murray Bookchin gave up on trying to revitalize the contemporary anarchist movement under his philosophy of social ecology, PKK founder and leader Abdullah Öcalan was arrested in Kenya by Turkish authorities and sentenced to death for treason. In the years that followed, the elderly anarchist gained an unlikely devotee in the hardened militant, whose paramilitary organization — the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — is widely listed as a terrorist organization for waging a violent war of national liberation against Turkey.
In his years in solitary confinement, running the PKK behind bars as his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, Öcalan adopted a form of libertarian socialism so obscure that few anarchists have even heard of it: Bookchin’slibertarian municipalism. Öcalan further modified, rarefied and rebranded Bookchin’s vision as “democratic confederalism,” with the consequence that the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (Koma Civakên Kurdistan or KCK), the PKK’s territorial experiment in a free and directly democratic society, has largely been kept a secret from the vast majority of anarchists, let alone the general public.
Although Öcalan’s conversion was the turning point, a broader renaissance of libertarian leftist and independent literature was sweeping through the mountains and passing hands between the rank-and-file after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. “[They] analysed books and articles by philosophers, feminists, (neo-)anarchists, libertarian communists, communalists, and social ecologists. That is how writers like Murray Bookchin [and others] came into their focus,” Kurdish activist Ercan Ayboga tells us.
Ercan Ayboga, in his own words from an interview, on
Kurdish Communalism
In 1999, when the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured and the guerrilla forces were withdrawn to Iraqi Kurdistan, the freedom movement underwent a process of comprehensive strategic change. It did not give up the idea of socialism, but it rejected the existing Marxist-Leninist structure as too hierarchical and not democratic enough. Political and civil struggle replaced armed struggle as the movement’s center. Starting in 2000, it promoted civil disobedience and resistance (the Intifada in Palestine was also an inspiration).
Further, the movement gave up the aim of establishing a Kurdish-dominant state, because of the existing difficult political conditions in the Middle East and the world; instead, it advanced a long-term solution for the Kurdish question within the four states Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria: democratic confederalism. It now considers it more important to have a democratic, social and tolerant society than to have one’s own state. For Turkey, it has proposed the foundation of a second or democratic republic.
During this process of strategic change, the freedom movement activists read and discussed a new literature that supported and could make contributions to it. It analyzed books and articles by philosophers, feminists, (neo-)anarchists, libertarian communists, communalists, and social ecologists. That is how writers like Murray Bookchin, Michel Foucault, and Immanuel Wallerstein came into their focus.
The Kurdish freedom movement developed the idea of “democratic confederalism” (the Kurdish version of communalism) not only from the ideas of communalist intellectuals but also from movements like the Zapatistas; from Kurdish society’s own village-influenced history; from the long, thirty-five-year experience of political and armed struggle; from the intense controversies within Turkish democratic-socialist-revolutionary movements; and from the movement’s continuous development of transparent structures for the broad population.
A book-length exploration of the social movement is available by Janet Biehl, wife of Murray Bookchin, who developed libertarian municipalism.
Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan
By Janet Biehl
In order to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question, the Kurdish Freedom Movement in Turkey has developed an alternative social model: Democratic Autonomy.
In the fall of 2011, a group of TATORTactivists journeyed into the Kurdish regions of Turkey to learn how the theory of Democratic Autonomy was being put into practice. They discovered a remarkable experiment in face-to-face democracy—all the more notable for being carried out in wartime.
Since 2005, under the most difficult of conditions, the movement in North Kurdistan has created structures for a democratic, ecological and gender-liberated society. At its core is a system of councils in villages, cities, and neighborhoods. These structures do not yet offer a way of life that is fully independent of the nation-state and the market economy, but they nonetheless reveal a potent civil counter-power.
The interviews and documentation in this book provide thought provoking glimpses into the practical implementation of a new left vision. The radical democratic awakening of the Kurds may serve as an inspiration for social change in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Kurds and others within the leftist end of the political spectrum are rushing to come to the aid of Kovani
Kurds from all over the country have rushed to the 20-mile-long border the Syrian Kurdish province of Kobani shares with Turkey. Many arrive in buses, some in private cars. Often they are stopped at a police checkpoint, and according to activists in Suruç, many are prevented from reaching the border town altogether.
A short article widely republished on several blogs, including
libcom.org reports that leftist activists from Istanbul are crossing over into Syria to help the Kurds:
Anarchists join fight against ISIS to defend Kurdish Autonomous Areas.
Taken from a report by the French Anarchist weekly paper Alternative Revolutionaire this short article gives a taste of developments on the ground in the fight against ISIS
On Friday 26th September Alternative Libetaire reported that "Istanbul anarchists along other leftists and feminists, have managed to cross over into Syria and the northern town of Kobane which is currently threatened by ISIS.”
“For several days at the Syrian-Turkish border, the city of Kobanê is besieged by forces of the Islamic State (Daesh). Kobanê is a strategic turning point. If the city falls, the whole of Syrian Kurdistan is threatened, and with it a political and social model, that of "democratic autonomy" and "democratic confederalism" built since July 2012.
More than 100,000 inhabitants and residents have become refugees on Turkish territory.
The city is defended by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), militias linked to the PKK, and in which alongside the majority of Kurdish fighters, are also Arabs, Turks, Muslims, Yazidis, Christians or atheists, united against the fanatics of Daesh/ISIS.
Thousands of young people, socialists, trade unionists, revolutionaries, feminists, libertarians have poured in from all over Turkey to Kobanê. They go there to support the refugees and defend the city.
The Turkish army tries to disperse them, yet is accused of being much more permissive with the jihadists who are also trying to cross the border to join Daesh/ISIS
Despite the blockades of the Turkish army, hundreds of activists and militants have managed to cross the border. Among them, the comrades of the Revolutionary Anarchist Action Group, who made the trip to Istanbul to join the defence of Kobanê.
3:43 PM PT: Well, hell's bells. David posted his article here on dkos:
http://www.dailykos.com/...