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The Most Important Thing: Two speaking tours and the Syrian Revolution: https://thehamiltoninstitute.noblogs.org/post/2016/05/13/the-most-important-thing-two-speaking-tours-and-the-syrian-revolution/ ... My friend was an active participant in the first few years of the Syrian revolution, and we had just spent the evening at Leila al-Shami and Robin Yassin-Kassab’s speaking tour for their book Burning Country: Stories of Syrians in Revolution and War. These two authors, based in the UK, spoke passionately about the various revolutionary projects that unfolded in Syria between 2011 and 2013 and that continue struggling to survive today, under the bombs and indifference of the world. A few days earlier, we’d also attended a talk by Paul Z Simons describing his experiences travelling to Rojava, the majority-Kurdish areas in what used to be northern Syria. Paul compared his motivations for travelling to Rojava to those of anarchists around the world who travelled to Spain in the 30s – describing Rojava1 as the most significant anarchist revolution since that time, he has been travelling North America trying to inspire direct support among western radicals. These two tours both offered anarchist perspectives on Syria and yet their narratives were surprisingly different – on our walk to the bus station, we dug into those differences and tried to understand them. In spite of their scale and commitment, the anarchic practices carried out by the Syrian revolution (not in Rojava) have been largely ignored by anarchists in the west, while Rojava has been widely, and often uncritically, celebrated. In light of rapidly changing events on the ground, as grassroots groups risk being decisively overshadowed by the maneuvers of states, it’s important to look more carefully at Rojava and the Syrian revolution to see where our solidarity should lie. This will help us support revolutionaries there in the years to come and also make sure that, in the present, anarchist support isn’t fuelling forces that divide and undermine revolutionary energy. My friend’s comments about destroying the state remind me of the well-known quote by Syrian anarchist Omar Aziz that we heard again at the event: “We are no less than Paris Commune workers: they resisted for 70 days and we are still going on for a year and a half.” While the Paris Commune was able to destroy the state in a major city, it quickly became isolated and the state was able to march back and defeat the revolutionaries militarily. By the time of Omar’s death in prison in 2013, the Syrian state had been destroyed in dozens of cities and towns — it was continuing to contract and was obviously not going to be able to retake major centres of the rebellion any time soon. At the Burning Country event, Leila briefly told the story of the last years of Omar’s life, focusing on his work elaborating a revolutionary practice of local councils and committees that began in Barzeh, Damascus, and spread throughout the country. Hundreds of these councils are still active today, following many of the anarchist principles developed by Omar in spite of the ever more difficult conditions. Alternatives to state structures, these autonomous forms of self governance transitioned from organizing protests to organizing collective self-defense to distributing food, providing electricity, and dealing with conflict. A comrad of Omar’s who was present in the audience reminded us that Omar had been living abroad and returned to Syria to support the revolution and questioned why more people who escaped Assadist tyranny haven’t also supported the revolution. She also spoke about her friend Razan Zeitouneh, a human rights lawyer and prisoner support activist who dedicated herself to forming and federating local committees that could co-ordinate protests and mutual aid, who was arrested and likely killed in the Damascus area by rebel group Jaish al-Islam. One reason for the lack of international support for the Syrian revolution might be that it has largely been made invisible. The stories of Razan and Omar underline an important reason for this invisibility – many of the anarchists and most passionate activists were killed (usually by the regime )early on or were forced to flee the country. Rojava, on the other hand, had a different experience of the regime’s violence, which contributed to increased visibility. In his talk, Paul shared many personal stories of his travels through the liberated territories of Rojava, mostly in the Kobane area. These stories are compelling and inspiring, they demonstrate a clear commitment to building international understanding between anti-authoritarian rebels and deepening practices of solidarity. However, when it came to the broader context of struggle in the Syrian territory, he seemed not to understand that there could possibly be revolutionaries outside of Rojava. I don’t raise this to criticise him personally – I think his work in building international solidarity with Rojava is very valuable. However, he is far from alone in this attitude and I want to understand how someone so evidently committed to engaging with revolutionary currents in Syria could ignore the struggles being waged in the rest of the country. When several people in the audience questionned the recent attacks by the SDF2 against territory controlled by other rebel groups north of Aleppo, Paul largely repeated the propaganda of the SDF, the Assad regime, and the Russian military (all of whom collaborated in these attacks): everyone there is al-Qaeda or ISIS, there is no one worth listening to. Paul insisted that these attacks were necessary to link the Efrin Canton to Kobane Canton (two provinces of Rojava) and assumed that only Assad supporters would have a problem with this. Those following the (admittedly complex and confusing) politics of the Syrian civil war mostly agree that the space between the two Rojavan cantons is controlled in one area by ISIS and in another by a coalition of rebel groups, prominently including many branches of the Free Syrian Army that still support the liberatory goals of the revolution. They have held on here even while being defeated by counter-revolutionary attacks (by ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the Assad regime) elsewhere in the country because of the proximity to the Turkish border and their control of important crossing points. Although the SDF and the YPG3 claim they are only fighting al-Qaeda there, this is a transparent lie.4 Robin and Leila, while voicing a lot of support for Rojava and describing its democratic confederalism as a model for the rest of the Syrian terrirory, consider the goal of militarily linking the cantons to be disastrous. They said that the PYD’s recent declaration of ‘federalism’ for Rojava seems like laying the groundwork for a state, which would of course need contiguous territory, and that it runs counter to democratic confederalism. A model of councils would spread by encouraging and supporting the formation of councils other regions, not by conquering those regions. This is especially true north of Aleppo around Azaz, where local revolutionary councils have been active for years. Leila and Robin described the PYD’s recent declaration of ‘federalism’ in northern Syria to be essentially a coup against the grassroots revolutionaries in Rojava, who were never consulted. Full (lots more fascinating reading): https://thehamiltoninstitute.noblogs.org/post/2016/05/13/the-most-important-thing-two-speaking-tours-and-the-syrian-revolution _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
