{"id":2859,"date":"2019-12-08T16:41:19","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T16:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/?page_id=2859"},"modified":"2019-12-08T16:41:20","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T16:41:20","slug":"rojava-the-end-of-the-kurdish-dream","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/rojava-the-end-of-the-kurdish-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Rojava: The End of the Kurdish Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The fall of Rojava<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid\n the horror of the Syrian civil war it had seemed that there was one \nshining beacon of hope. In the north of Syria Kurdish militants, \ninspired by the political thought of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah \nOcalan, filled the vacuum when the Assadist forces abandoned most of the\n Kurdish regions, and were combatting and defeating the seemingly \nunstoppable Islamic State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nThe\n nature of the new regime being created under the protection of the \nYPG\/PYG was greatly attractive to leftists and anarchists. Ocalan in \nprison had been influenced by the writing of Murray Bookchin and other \nanarchist-inspired writers and this had shifted the PKK and its allied \nKurdish parties away from a rigid and military Stalinism towards a \npolity which stressed mutualism and participatory democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nThe\n vision of this communitarian experiment becoming flesh in the villages \nand towns of Syrian Kurdistan in the teeth of Islamist obscurantism and \nTurkish militarist assault galvanised solidarity. Recruits came from all\n over the world to embattled \u2018Rojava\u2019 (the Kurdish word for \u2018west\u2019 as \nthe western part of the wider region, spanning several countries, \ninhabited by Kurds). One volunteer unit renamed themselves the Bob Crow \nBrigade after the British rail union leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nAt\n the time voices urging a certain caution tended to be drowned out or \nwere silenced by the sheer enormity and barbarity of the opposition that\n the Kurdish forces faced. For socialists, as long as the capitalist \nworld system exists, there can be no \u2018islands of socialism\u2019. No matter \nwhat the wishes or intentions or, no matter how sincere the participants\n are, eventually the logic and demands of the capitalist state system \nwill prevail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nRojava,\n trapped within a spider web of competing Great Powers and local powers,\n either faced extinction or acceded to this logic and took its own place\n as a junior partner to one or other of the great military powers. \nBecoming the armed fist of the US effort against ISIS must have seemed a\n sure bet; arms, advisors and money poured in, at a time when the \ndemocratic Syrian opposition was being starved of support and the rebel \ncities were being pounded into rubble by Assad and his Russian allies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n abandonment of Rojava to Turkey by Trump\u2019s Twitter diplomacy led to an \nalmost ritualised \u2018changing of the guard\u2019, as Russian troops took over \non patrol where US special forces had been just days before. But this \nmasked a more brutal exchange as Kurdish forces abandoned Syrian \nvillages to Assadist forces and the brutal Mukhabarat secret police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nWith\n America\u2019s betrayal and Turkey threatening its very existence, it is \nunsurprising that the nascent state of Rojava would be drawn to the \nsiren call of Putin\u2019s Russia. The alliance with Assad may shock a few of\n their Western cheerleaders, but nationalism, however it justifies \nitself ideologically, will always be first and foremost a movement for \nthe establishment and defence of a nation within a capitalist world \nsystem; Rojava\u2019s principles would always take a second place to this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

D.W.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Socialist Standard<\/a><\/em> December 2019 article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fall of Rojava Amid the horror of the Syrian civil war it had seemed that there was one shining beacon of hope. In the north of Syria Kurdish militants, inspired by the political thought of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, filled the vacuum when the Assadist forces abandoned most of the Kurdish regions, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2859","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2860,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2859\/revisions\/2860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}