The greatest, the barbarian enemy is the jihadists. But we, women, are fighting on two fronts. One is here, the other is against the conservatism and the sexism of the traditional Kurdish society that does not recognize the equality of the sexes”, she says. In that sense, as Gray puts it, “it is better to detach democracy from ideas of national self-determination and think of it as a means whereby disparate communities can reach common decisions. In a growing number of contexts, democracy and the nation-state are no longer coterminous”. The differences between the Kurds of Iraq, the Kurds of Syria and the Kurds of Turkey are deep. Not to mention the Kurds in Iran. These four Kurdish entities have lived under very different regimes and Kurdish societies in the four countries have had separate histories and trajectories. For example, the dominant socialist/radical ideology inspiring Kurdish politics in Turkey and Syria is very different to the dominant neo-liberal/traditional ideology of the Kurds in Iraq. Getting organized in line with autonomy and not independence, is a form of realism and of acceptance of complicated pan-Kurdish dimensions and the regional and international challenges. On March 15 th 2011, peaceful protests against the authoritarian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and the government’s brutal reaction, were the catalyst for Syria’s Civil War. In the course of the war, the country disintegrated into areas controlled either by Assad’s government, different opposition groups – mainly the Free Syrian Army (FSA) – or jihadists. During the turmoil of the civil war, on the night of July 18 th 2012, armed Syrian Kurds took control of the roads leading into and out of the city of Kobane, in northern Syria. “The Kurdish forces rejected a request by the Free Syrian Army and told them that they [the Kurds] can control their own areas,” Hussein Kochar, a PYD official said at that time. 3 Concurrently, civilians in the city besieged and captured all state institutions in the city. Finally, a crowd gathered in front of the city’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA) military base. A popular delegation to the armed force demanded that they hand over their weapons but guaranteed safe passage. Faced with a hopeless situation, the soldiers agreed. Later, some of the soldiers returned to their families across the country, while another group stayed on to prevent the city from falling into the hands of the FSA. Unbeknownst to most attendees, they had been witnesses to the birth of the Rojava Revolution.

This step forward is the biggest challenge of the people of Rojava. The fight for survival is waged in the front lines but the ultimate fight for democracy is behind the front lines. Starting from square one and without any substantial help from outside, people in Rojava are making a ground- breaking effort to work their way through and towards democracy. Harriet Allsopp, Wladimir Wilgenburg (2019): The Kurds of Northern Syria: Governance, Diversity and Conflicts, London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 90f. [ ↩] Concurrently, communes and councils did not exist in all cities or districts. In particular, there was initially no council structure in districts inhabited mainly by Arabs, Christians and other non-Kurdish groups, as well as in some Kurdish districts that leaned towards the Kurdish nationalist bloc, the Kurdish National Council. The situation was similar in rural areas. This official renunciation of the nation state is one of the most important and deeply revolutionary dimensions of the Rojava experiment. Democratic confederalism’ is therefore both a political line and a radical but also pragmatic alternative to nationalist solutions. It is a dynamic process of dissolving the state through the self-organization of diverse ethnocultural communities that self-organize in popular councils and communes, systematically replacing the hierarchical and patriarchal authority relations of existing states with horizontal, gender-egalitarian relations of participatory self-government. ‘Democratic confederalism’ is an effort to build a democratic society beyond the state. TEV-DEM

A long psalm emerges from women with bowed heads, covered with small lace handkerchiefs. Men with tired faces. Children smiling. I am in the Sunday service in the church of Mar Kiriakis, in a Syriac neighborhood in Qamishli. In another Christian neighborhood in Qamishli, in front of his church, Peter speaks calmly, but his eyes are full of emotion. His son fights in the YPG units: his daughter is in a committee of the Syriacs.

I always carry them with me, even when I sleep: they have become a part of my body. We are all ready to die, to be martyrs for our country and the people who live here”, says Heza. I am together with Abdulselam and his face lights up while he is talking. "A few years ago it was even forbidden to dream that we could one day try to live democratically. Today we can not only dream about it but we build our democracy stone by stone. You will see this for yourself when we reach Amuda”. Smaller protests continued, and on 7 March 2011, thirteen political prisoners went on hunger strike, and momentum began to grow against the Assad government. Three days later dozens of Syrian Kurds went on hunger strike in solidarity. [23] On 12 March, major protests took place in Qamishli and Al-Hasakah to both protest the Assad government and commemorate Kurdish Martyrs Day. [24] Women in particular have achieved a great deal through the commune and council system in NES. They played and still play an important role in the organization of the commune and have a very important function in the reconciliation committees, in particular. Their status and the social roles they play have transformed through the active participation of women in public life. In addition, violence against women is – for the most part – no longer tolerated, and the communes and committees actively support women and men in cases of (domestic or family) violence to solve these problems. In particular, reconciliation committees provide support in such cases. In addition, there are new legal foundations. For example, women can now only file inheritance lawsuits and claim their inheritance rights, which were previously denied to them (especially under conservative community, tribal and religious systems) in favor of the man. Gabriel is one of the cantors of the church. A mild man with a voice like a whisper. His wife and two daughters are beside him.

Self-determination and armed struggle

Judy started studying English literature at Aleppo but because of the war against Assad she was forced to leave the university and return to Qamishli. The government system of Rojava is the best for us Christians. Not just for Christians, for all peoples of Rojava, Kurds, Arabs, Chechens. It is a model for all of Syria. We want to stay in Syria, all of us here. We do not want independence, we belong to Syria. But a democratic Syria that respects human rights and differences. The Rojava model could be a model for the entire Middle East, which is emptying itself today of its last Christians ». How did these events come about? Pervin Yusif, currently the Co-Chair of Qamishlo, spoke to RIC about her experience. Before her current position, she was active in the women’s organization Kongreya Star. She remembers the time before the revolution: