The “Social Contract” continues: "The autonomous regions of democratic administration do not recognize the concept of the nation state and the state based on military force, religion and centralism.” The Kobane campaign elevated the importance of the YPG/YPJ. To solidify the anti-ISIS coalition and attract a broader alliance, in October 2015, at the behest of its US ally, the YPG/YPJ and its allies established the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a multi-ethnic coalition of militias. This alliance became the main ground force in the fight against ISIS. During the August summit in Istanbul, which led to the creation of the Syrian National Council, only two of the parties in the National Movement of Kurdish Parties in Syria, the Kurdish Union Party and the Kurdish Freedom Party, attended the summit. [28]

Around almost every grave a family is gathered. Mothers, fathers who try to seem proud, children, cousins, friends. After this historical overview and a brief introduction to the basic political structures that shape life in NES, the second part of this report will look at the present state of society in NES through the lens of healthcare, the legal system, and the political economy. Together with this part, the whole report ‘Rojava Revolution – a Decade on’, will be available soon. An excellent introduction to Bookchin’s thought: Murray Bookchin, The Next Revolution, 2015, Verso, UK/USA

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In August, a coalition of opposition groups formed the Syrian National Council in hopes of creating a democratic, pluralistic alternative to the Assad government. But internal fighting and disagreement over politics and inclusion plagued the group from its beginnings. In the fall of 2011 the popular uprising escalated to an armed conflict. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) began to coalesce and armed insurrection spread, largely across central and southern Syria. [26] Kurdish parties negotiate [ edit ] We patrol from seven in the evening until seven in the morning. The whole neighborhood. Two shifts. Ours is the first, now at midnight we will change with the second shift». The man I speak with has a wide smile now. His name is Maurice. He is a Christian and the man with the impressive shotgun.

Nevertheless, after the suppression of statist leftist-socialist movements in the Middle East during the 70’s and 80’s by authoritarian regimes and after the current obstacles neo-liberal political Islamism has placed between the region and democracy, the experiment in Rojava comes to show that there might be a third way. A hybrid political system based on the principles of social and democratic communalism is in stark contrast to the classic nation-state which can no longer manage democratically ethnic and religious diversity in the region. If the idea that this system could be a solution to various comparable situations in the Middle East seems too far fetched, experience having shown that models are rarely successfully “exported”, nevertheless the importance of the Rojava experiment seems undeniable. A journey to Rojava’s Cizre Canton I returned from my visit to Rojava with persistent questions hammering my mind: Is this huge effort made by Kurds and all the other groups in Syrian Kurdistan a mirage? Could this attempt to effectively integrate the different ethnic groups and religions in one participative democratic system that respects people and the environment ever succeed in reality? Or was I witness to a collective naivety, the illusion of a just and polymorphic society that can only be doomed to fail? This official renunciation of the nation state is one of the most important and deeply revolutionary dimensions of the Rojava experiment.

Slavoj Žižek (2021): Slavoj Žižek Teaches at Kobane University. bianet.org/english/world/242693-slavoj-zizek-teaches-at-kobane-university. [ ↩] The social contract is the expression of the AANES’ vision of decentralized power through democratic administration. However, this process does not seek to replace one power with another. Rather, it seeks to democratize political consciousness, people’s attitudes and, consequently, all of society – but this takes time. Finally, Pervin Yusif draws attention to the importance of the change of consciousness within society: