Ten years have passed since the heroic and world-significant battle for Kobanî in northern Syria in 2014–15, where Kurdish-led freedom fighters broke a six-month siege of the city by Islamic State/Daesh and allied Islamic fundamentalist terrorist gangs.
The victory for the People’s Protection Units and Women’s Protection Units in Kobanî turned the tide of the war against IS/Daesh, but about 11,000 Kurdish and allied freedom fighters sacrificed their lives in a 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 freedom fighters.
During this time, 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 (DAANES), popularly known as Rojava (West Kurdistan).
The struggle also sparked a great wave of solidarity across the border with Turkey, where the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) — now organised as the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) — mobilised thousands of people to the border with Kobanî to offer practical solidarity and support during its siege.
The Turkish government responded to their solidarity with brutal repression — relentlessly persecuting the HDP, imprisoning their leaders and depriving elected representatives of their positions at the national and local level.
The HDP/DEM deserves the greatest admiration and respect for resisting and surviving this repression.
The battle for Kobanî also drew attention to the Rojava revolution, the only sustained victory from the wave of popular revolts against dictatorships 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.
During the Syrian Civil War, Kurdish freedom fighters took control of three Kurdish-majority cantons in northeastern Syria from the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in 2012 and established a system of popular administration based on local autonomy, religious and ethnic inclusivity and empowerment of women.
All leadership positions in the DAANES must be held jointly by a woman and man, and women were proactively encouraged to participate in all spheres of life: economic; social; political; and self-defence.
The DAANES is governed by a social contract with the values of an ecological democratic society, co-chairing, communal economy and social justice and the principle of democratic confederalism.
Under attack
The people of northeastern Syria have defended their liberation against attacks from: a hostile Turkish state, which has waged a permanent war on Rojava using airstrikes, killer drones, artillery and mercenary Islamic fundamentalist militias; the Assad regime, until it recently fell; IS/Daesh, which still has operational terror groups and sleeper cells in Syria; and now the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia that took over from Assad.
HTS was formerly the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, and retained an Islamic fundamentalist, Salafi-jihadist ideology even after splitting from al-Qaeda in 2017.
The DAANES and HTS are in negotiations, however, the DAANES insists on retaining autonomy and have put forward their democratic, inclusive and women-empowering model as a practical way forward for a post-Assad-dictatorship Syria.
The DAANES has never sought to divide Syria, with its social contract stipulating that it 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, [the DAANES] formed a strong foundation for true unity, thus becoming the basis for building the Democratic Republic of Syria,” the social contract reads.
“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 on the Australian government to recognise the profoundly democratic example that DAANES has set, not just for Syria, but for all humanity.
Australia should recognise the DAANES, offer material aid — especially as it has played the biggest role in defeating IS — and support its democratic proposals for a new Syria.
Australia should also speak out against Turkey’s ongoing attempts to sabotage negotiations for a peaceful new Syria and its ongoing war on the DAANES.
Tishreen Dam
Turkey’s latest military attacks have focused on the Tishreen (Tişrîn) Dam on the Euphrates River in northern Syria, which provides much of Rojava’s electricity and water supply for agriculture, drinking and industry.
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”. The dam lies upstream of scores of towns, villages and urban centres like Raqqa.
As dams are protected objects under international humanitarian law, Turkey’s attacks on Tishreen Dam represent war crimes.
Hundreds of people from various parts of the DAANES have gathered at the dam to form a human shield against the attacks by Turkey and allied militia groups — many have been killed and several others injured.
A woman, from a group of mothers protecting the dam, told ANF News that “we are here to defend our dam, and no one can take our land from us”.
“The world must know that we will never abandon our land, and we will continue to protect our region,” she said. “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.”
Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) — after collecting evidence at a hearing in Brussels on February 5–6 — found that Turkey’s attacks on the DAANES are 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: the crimes against the Kurds of north and east Syria be recognised, and those responsible be brought to justice; the DAANES be internationally recognised as a representative and democratic self-governing administration; and the international community act to stop Turkey’s attacks on Rojava, in order to avoid a “fully-fledged genocide”.
[Peter Boyle is a co-founder of Rojava Solidarity — Sydney.]