Peter Boyle
It was during the heroic and world-significant battle for Kobani (Kobanê) in 2014-2015 that together with the late Paul Rubner and others I set up Rojava Solidarity – Sydney to build solidarity in Australia for the revolutionary experiment in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), popularly known as Rojava (West Kurdistan), and to build solidarity for it.
In the battle for Kobani, Kurdish-led freedom fighters in the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) broke a six-month siege of this city in northern Syria by Islamic State/Daesh (ISIS) and allied Islamic fundamentalist terrorist gangs.
The battle for Kobani turned the tide on the war against ISIS but some 11,000 Kurdish and allied freedom fighters sacrificed their lives for this victory for humanity.
Their heroic struggle inspired a wave of international solidarity, especially among younger people around the world who saw their values, hopes and aspirations for a better world reflected in the values of the Rojava freedom fighters.
This struggle also sparked a great wave of solidarity across the border with Turkey where the the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) – now organised as the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party – mobilised thousands of people to come to the border next to Kobani to offer practical solidarity and support during its siege.
The response to their solidarity was brutal repression from the Turkish state. The HDP was persecuted relentlessly, their leaders jailed, elected representatives deprived of their positions at the national and local level.
The HDP/DEM deserve the greatest admiration and respect for standing up to and surviving this repression.
The battle for Kobani also drew attention to the Rojava revolution, the only sustained victory from the wave of popular revolts against dictatorship in the Middle East in the early 2010s, commonly known as the Arab Spring. All the other revolts were put down by a combination of deception and repression or taken over by Islamic fundamentalist militias.
In 2012, amid the Syrian Civil War, Kurdish freedom fighters took control of three Kurdish-majority cantons in northeast Syria from the Assad dictatorship.
They established a system of popular administration based on local autonomy, religious and ethnic inclusivity and empowerment of women. All leadership positions in the AANES have to be held jointly by a woman and a man, and women were pro-actively encourage to participate in all spheres of life: economy, social, political and self-defence.
AANES is based on a social contract with these values as its foundation:
“The Democratic Autonomous Administration, which was achieved by the will of the people, is based upon an ecological democratic society, co-chairing, communal economy, social justice, and the principle of democratic confederalism.”
The people of NE Syria have had to defend their liberation against attacks from a hostile Turkish state (which has waged a permanent war on Rojava using air strikes, killer drones, artillery attacks and mercenary Islamic fundamentalist militias that it controls), against (until recently) the Assad regime, ISIS, which still has operation terror groups and sleeper cells in Syria, and now the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia that have taken over from Assad.
HTS was formerly the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, and it retains an Islamic fundamentalist, Salafi-jihadist ideology even after it split from al-Qaeda in 2017.
I understand that negotiations are ongoing between AANES and HTS however the AANES insists on retaining their autonomy and put forward their democratic, inclusive and women-empowering model as a practical way forward for a post-Assad dictatorship Syria.
The AANES has never sought to divide Syria.
As the AANES social contract says:
“The Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria is an integral part of Syria. With the democratic system it established, the common values it created, and the political positions it expressed over the past years, it formed a strong foundation for true unity, thus becoming the basis for building the Democratic Republic of Syria. We, the peoples of North and East Syria, with all its communities, have decided, with full freedom and choice, to write this social contract from the system of values and democratic civilizational heritage of the Middle East and humanity as a whole, so that this becomes a guarantee of freedom, peace and unity among Syrians.”
Rojava Solidarity Sydney calls upon the Australian government to recognise the profoundly democratic example that AANES has set not just for Syria but for all humanity.
Australia should recognise the AANES, offer it material aid (especially as it has played the biggest role in defeating ISIS) and support its democratic proposals from a new Syria.
Australia should also speak out against the ongoing attempts by Turkey to sabotage the negotiations for a peaceful new Syria and its ongoing war on the AANES.
Turkey’s latest military attacks have focused on the Tishreen (Tişrîn) Dam on the Euphrates River in northern Syria, upstream from scores of towns and villages as well as urban centres like Raqqa. It provides electricity to much of Rojava and water supply for agriculture, drinking water and industry.
Tishreen Dam is also a strategic point in a new battle for Kobani.
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that if the dam were damaged, “the destruction and humanitarian consequences of such release of flood waters would be devastating and could cause significant damage to the environment.”
Dams are protected objects under International Humanitarian Law (the “rules of war”) so the attacks on Tishreen Dam are war crimes under international law.
Hundreds of civilians from various parts of AANES have gathered at the dam to form a human shield against the attacks. However, many have been killed, and numerous others were injured as a result of the attacks by Turkey and allied militia groups.
“As mothers, we are here to defend our dam, and no one can take our land from us,” one of a group of mothers who have rallied to protect the dam told ANF News.
“The world must know that we will never abandon our land, and we will continue to protect our region. Tishreen Dam is our source of life, and we will defend this life. Even if we have only one drop of blood left, we will fight for our land. We swear that we will never allow the enemy to occupy our lands.”
Australians can inform further themselves of this issue by studying the report of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) on Rojava vs. Turkey, which recently collected evidence at a hearing in Brussels about Turkey’s attacks on the AANES.
The PPT found that: “Turkey’s attacks on Syrian territory, without UN Security Council authorisation, amounts to an international crime of aggression. The pattern of attacks, bombings, shellings, drone attacks and atrocities against civilians, the forced displacements and demographic engineering through replacement of populations, the destruction of power and damage to water supplies, the environmental damage, the destruction of cultural heritage and educational institutions, the use of rape, torture, secret detention – are all contrary to international law, constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes, and are indicative of genocide.”
The PPT also urged that “that the experience of the Kurds of North and East Syria and the crimes against them are properly acknowledged, that those responsible are brought to justice, that AANES is internationally recognised as an authentically representative and democratic self-governing administration, and that the international community immediately ensures the cessation of the attacks by Turkey, direct and indirect, on the Kurdish people of Rojava, in order to avert a fully-fledged genocide.”
Peter Boyle is co-founder of Rojava Solidarity – Sydney and an activist-journalist for Green Left magazine.
