What happened to Rojava?
What happened to Rojava?
I'm aware of the ML cynicism regarding it, but I've had a few friends ask about Rojava and I honestly haven't heard anything about it for a while.
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They're still around and self-governing and stable, they've had to submit to Syrian protection but are still nominally independent. The loss of Afrin, their most developed area was a huge blow.
There are some nationalist and centralist tensions in the government, but still, they're overall based and just trying to hold on and preserve something of what they had under Syrian reunification. They're still kicking goals in terms of education, minority involvement, and social structures, but they're very poor and resources are almost nil.
I don't know many MLs who were opposed to Rojava, aside from a weird Maoist or two and Hakim's insistance that it's primarily a nationalist polity (which seems to be obviously untrue despite the presence of Kurdish nationalists)
The main critique was accepting the poisoned chalice of US help, rather than cutting a deal with Assad. I can't blame them too much, they had a hard, hard choice and a deal with the devil in exchange for true independence might have seemed very attractive.
Rojava is a tragedy, but maybe, like the original Greek tragedies, restoration and justice will follow despair.
The main critique was accepting the poisoned chalice of US help, rather than cutting a deal with Assad. I can’t blame them too much, they had a hard, hard choice and a deal with the devil in exchange for true independence might have seemed very attractive.
Occasionally I read news sites based in Rojava and I feel like one thing that some leftists don't understand is that a lot of the people in that region legitimately hate Assad and the Syrian Government, so accepting the return of the Syrian government would have been a very bitter pill for people to swallow. Not only was the Syrian government discriminatory towards Kurds and treated Northeast Syria as an internal colony, but apparently it was also just incompetent, corrupt, and centralized to such an insane degree that municipalities were incapable of maintaining themselves properly.
The thing is, the US is a known genocidal empire. Don't get me wrong, I understand that it gives context, but it's pretty clear why a lot of people were sketched out by any amount of aligning with US interests.
Like if the US invaded Mexico and the Zapatistas aligned with them in any way, it would be... pretty fucked, no? Not a perfect analogy, but the point remains. Or if the US invaded India and the Naxalites aligned with them at all, the Philippines and the CPP, etc.
I think a lot of people here don't realise how fash Assad and Ba'athist Syria is and has been.
They're explicitly an ethnostate, the full name of the nation is the Syrian Arab Republic, they have a whole load of oppressive laws that apply only to jews (although in 1992 they expelled almost all of the remnants of Syria's jewish population), have published 3 new editions of The Protocols of The Elders of Zion in the last 25 years, gave fleeing Nazis government jobs during the cold war, support almost every Western Neo-Nazi group there is and in 2017 hosted David Duke (the former Grand Wizard of the US KKK) for a state visit, gave him medals and got him to do rallies on national TV. Until 2020 killing a female relative who had "dishonoured" you or your family by "engaging in an illegitimate sexual act" was a seperate, lesser offence than murder under the Syrian penal code (and in 2014 Syria kicked up a fuss about the Rojava just treating it as murder) and to this day in Syria it's legal for 13 year old girls to be married and women have to go through a religious court to get a divorce while for men talaq talaq talaq is legally binding.
Like, yeah they're a lesser threat to the world at large than the US, but it's hard to blame Rojava for choosing to accept the military protection of the US rather than fully throwing themselves on the mercy of Ba'athist Syria.
Like, yeah they’re a lesser threat to the world at large than the US, but it’s hard to blame Rojava for choosing to accept the military protection of the US rather than fully throwing themselves on the mercy of Ba’athist Syria
They are a lesser threat on Syria and even the Kurds specificaly than Assad. You can go as local as you want in the middle east and the US still is the greater Evil. More people died and suffered, die and suffer due to US presence and involvement in Syria than they would have other wise than the entire population of Rojava X5 , for sure more than shitty ass Assad regime did. They didnt just accept military protection , they gave the US free pass to do what they please from maybe the most strategic important erea of Syria and operate and occupy as they like.And they did act as they like from within rojava and that did extend their presence and ability to project power and destabilize the region further. They could never say no to the US so it was never a case of them "gettinga autonomy " from dealing with the US. Their choice was at the expense of tens of millions of Syrians and middle eastern people and in the end of the day at the expense of themselves. A Syria without US presence and involvement and a Kurdish people not in the whim of the US military wouldnt result in Turkey nearly genociding them within Syria's boarders. Its something that would never be allowed to happen if not in a Syria thrown into shambles by western intervention, fractured and weakened and if not the US didnt take what it want from the Kurds and leave them to die. It was the Syrian state that did the obvious thing and pushed jumped in without in the end of the day even destroying Kurdish autonomy or Anexing them. You can go into "well these sneaky!! they would genocide the Kurds as well if they had the chance" but its obvious at this point (and rojava accepted it) and it was obvious at all previous points in the last 10 years that a reduced autonomy allience with Assad would be both the best for the entire erea and people and in the long run would be for the Kurds in general.