A-Infos (en) Kurdistan, Kobane, Alt. Media, âNo. This is a Genuine Revolutionâ By David Graeber and Pinar ÃÄÃnÃ

(Submitter note: "Even 21 years after the Chiapas (Mexico) uprising, lot of good people do 
not understand the development of anti-authoritarian anti capitalist mood in the less 
developed countries". I.S.) ---- Professor of Anthropology at the London School of 
Economics, activist, anarchist David Graeber had written an article for the Guardian in 
October, in the first weeks of the ISIS attacks to Kobane (North Syria), and asked why the 
world was ignoring the revolutionary Syrian Kurds. ---- Mentioning his father who 
volunteered to fight in the International Brigades in defence of the Spanish Republic in 
1937, he asked: âIf there is a parallel today to Francoâs superficially devout, murderous 
Falangists, who would it be but ISIS? If there is a parallel to the Mujeres Libres of 
Spain, who could it be but the courageous women defending the barricades in Kobane? Is the 
world -and this time most scandalously of all, the international left- really going to be 
complicit in letting history repeat itself?â

According to Graeber, the autonomous region of Rojava declared with a âsocial contractâ in 
2011 as three anti-state, anti-capitalist cantons, was also a remarkable democratic 
experiment of this era.

In early December, with a group of eight people, students, activists, academics from 
different parts of Europe and the US, he spent ten days in Cizire -one of the three 
cantons of Rojava. He had the chance to observe the practice of âdemocratic autonomyâ on 
the spot, and to ask dozens of questions.

Now he tells his impressions of this trip with bigger questions and answers why this 
âexperimentâ of the Syrian Kurds is ignored by the whole world.

In your article for the Guardian you had asked why the whole world was ignoring the 
âdemocratic experimentâ of the Syrian Kurds. After experiencing it for ten days, do you 
have a new question or maybe an answer to this?

Well, if anyone had any doubt in their minds about whether this was really a revolution, 
or just some kind of window-dressing, Iâd say the visit put that permanently to rest. 
There are still people talking like that: This is just a PKK (The Kurdistan Workersâ 
Party) front, theyâre really a Stalinist authoritarian organization thatâs just pretending 
to have adopted radical democracy. No. Theyâre totally for real. This is a genuine 
revolution. But in a way thatâs exactly the problem. The major powers have commitmented 
themselves to an ideology that say real revolutions can no longer happen. Meanwhile, many 
on the left, even the radical left, seem to have tacitly adopted a politics which assumes 
the same, even though they still make superficially revolutionary noises. They take a kind 
of puritanical âanti-imperialistâ framework that assumes the significant players are 
governments and capitalists and thatâs the only game worth talking about. The game where 
you wage war, create mythical villains, seize oil and other resources, set up patronage 
networks; thatâs the only game in town. The people in Rojava are saying: We donât want to 
play that game. We want to create a new game. A lot of people find that confusing and 
disturbing so they choose to believe it isnât really happening, or such people are deluded 
or dishonest or naive.

Since October we see a rising solidarity from different political movements from all over 
the world. There has been a huge and some quite enthusiastic coverage of Kobane resistance 
by the mainstream medias of the world. Political stance regarding Rojava has changed in 
the West to some degree. These are all significant signs but still do you think democratic 
autonomy and whatâs been experimented in the cantons of Rojava are discussed enough? How 
much does the general perception of âSome brave people fighting against the evil of this 
era, ISISâ dominate this approval and the fascination?
I find it remarkable how so many people in West see these armed feminist cadres, for 
example, and donât even think on the ideas that must lie behind them. They just figured it 
happened somehow. âI guess itâs a Kurdish tradition.â To some degree itâs orientalism of 
course, or to put simple racism. It never occurs to them that people in Kurdistan might be 
reading Judith Butler too. At best they think âOh, theyâre trying to come up to Western 
standards of democracy and womenâs rights. I wonder if itâs for real or just for foreign 
consumption.â It just doesnât seem to occur to them they might be taking these things way 
further than âWestern standardsâ ever have; that they might genuinely believe in the 
principles that Western states only profess.

You mentioned the approach of the left towards Rojava. How is it received in the 
international anarchist communities?

The reaction in the international anarchist communities has been decidedly mixed. I find 
it somewhat difficult to understand. Thereâs a very substantial group of anarchists 
-usually the more sectarian elements- who insist that the PKK is still a âStalinistâ 
authoritarian nationalist group which has adopted Bookchin and other left libertarian 
ideas to court the anti-authoritarian left in Europe and America. Itâs always struck me 
that this is one of the silliest and most narcissistic ideas Iâve ever heard. Even if the 
premise were correct, and a Marxist-Leninist group decided to fake an ideology to win 
foreign support, why on earth would they choose anarchist ideas developed by Murray 
Bookchin? That would be the stupidest gambit ever. Obviously theyâd pretend to be 
Islamists or Liberals, those are the guys who get the guns and material support. Anyway I 
think a lot of people on the international left, and the anarchist left included, 
basically donât really want to win. They canât imagine a revolution would really happen 
and secretly they donât even want it, since it would mean sharing their cool club with 
ordinary people; they wouldnât be special any more. So in that way itâs rather useful in 
culling the real revolutionaries from the poseurs. But the real revolutionaries have been 
solid.

What was the most impressing thing you witnessed in Rojava in terms of this democratic 
autonomy practice?

There were so many impresive things. I donât think Iâve ever heard of anywhere else in the 
world where thereâs been a dual power situation where the same political forces created 
both sides. Thereâs the âdemocratic self-administration,â which has all the form and 
trappings of a state -Parliament, Ministries, and so on- but it was created to be 
carefully separated from the means of coercive power. Then you have the TEV-DEM (The 
Democratic Society Movement), driven bottom up directly democratic institutions. 
Ultimately -and this is key- the security forces are answerable to the bottom-up 
structures and not to the top-down ones. One of the first places we visited was a police 
academy (AsayiÅ). Everyone had to take courses in non-violent conflict resolution and 
feminist theory before they were allowed to touch a gun. The co-directors explained to us 
their ultimate aim was to give everyone in the country six weeks of police training, so 
that ultimately, they could eliminate police.

What would you say to various criticisms regarding Rojava? For example: âThey wouldnât 
have done this in peace. It is because of the state of warââ

Well, I think most movements, faced with dire war conditions, would not nonetheless 
immediately abolish capital punishment, dissolve the secret police and democratize the 
army. Military units for instance elect their officers.

And there is another criticism, which is quite popular in pro-government circles here in 
Turkey: âThe model the Kurds -in the line of PKK and PYD (The Kurdish Democratic Union 
Party)- are trying to promote is not actually embraced by all the peoples living there. 
That multi-â structure is only on the surface as symbolsââ

Well, the President of Cizire canton is an Arab, head of a major local tribe in fact. I 
suppose you could argue he was just a figurehead. In a sense the entire government is. But 
even if you look at the bottom-up structures, itâs certainly not just the Kurds who are 
participating. I was told the only real problem is with some of the âArab beltâ 
settlements, people who were brought in by the Baathists in the â50s and â60s from other 
parts of Syria as part of an intentional policy of marginalizing and assimilating Kurds. 
Some of those communities they said are pretty unfriendly to the revolution. But Arabs 
whose families had been there for generations, or the Assyrians, Khirgizians, Armenians, 
Chechens, and so on, are quite enthusiastic. The Assyrians we talked to said, after a long 
difficult relation with the regime, they felt they finally were being allowed free 
religious and cultural autonomy. Probably the most intractible problem might be womenâs 
liberation. The PYD and TEV-DEM see it as absolutely central to their idea of revolution, 
but they also have the problem of dealing larger alliances with Arab communities who feel 
this violates basic religious principles. For instance, while the Syriac-speakers have 
their own womenâs union, the Arabs donât, and Arab girls interested in organizing around 
gender issues or even taking feminist seminars have to hitch on with the Assyrians or even 
the Kurds.

It doesnât have to be trapped in that âpuritanical âanti-imperialistâ frameworkâ you 
mentioned before, but what would you say to the comment that the West/ imperialism will 
one day ask Syrian Kurds to pay for their support. What does the West think exactly about 
this anti-state, anti-capitalist model? Is it just an experiment that can be ignored 
during the state of war while the Kurds voluntarily accept to fight an enemy that is by 
the way actually created by the West?

Oh it is absolutely true that the US and European powers will do what they can to subvert 
the revolution. That goes without saying. The people I talked to were all well aware of 
it. But they didnât make a strong differentiation between the leadership of regional 
powers like Turkey or Iran or Saudi Arabia, and Euro-American powers like, say, France or 
the US. They assumed they were all capitalist and statist and thus anti-revolutionary, who 
might at best be convinced to put up with them but were not ultimately on their side. Then 
thereâs the even more complicated question of the structure of whatâs called âthe 
international community,â the global system of institutions like the UN or IMF, 
corporations, NGOs, human rights organisations for that matter, which all presume a 
statist organisation, a government that can pass laws and has a monopoly of coercive 
enforcement over those laws. Thereâs only one airport in Cizire and itâs still under 
Syrian government control. They could take it over easily, any time, they say. One reason 
they donât is because: How would a non-state run an airport anyway? Everything you do in 
an airport is subject to international regulations which presume a state.

Do you have an answer to why ISIS is so obsessed with Kobane?

Well, they canât be seen to lose. Their entire recruiting strategy is based on the idea 
that they are an unstoppable juggernaut, and their continual victory is proof that they 
represent the will of God. To be defeated by a bunch of feminists would be the ultimate 
humiliation. As long as theyâre still fighting in Kobane, they can claim that media claims 
are lies and they are really advancing. Who can prove otherwise? If they pull out they 
will have admitted defeat.

Well, do you have an answer to what Tayyip Erdogan and his party is trying to do in Syria 
and the Middle East generally?

I can only guess. It seems he has shifted from an anti-Kurdish, anti-Assad policy to an 
almost purely anti-Kurdish strategy. Again and again he has been willing to ally with 
pseudo-religious fascists to attack any PKK-inspired experiments in radical democracy. 
Clearly, like Daesh (ISIS) themselves, he sees what they are doing as an ideological 
threat, perhaps the only real viable ideological alternative to right-wing Islamism on the 
horizon, and he will do anything to stamp it out.

On the one hand there is Iraqi Kurdistan standing on quite a different ideological ground 
in terms of capitalism and the notion of independence. On the other hand, there is this 
alternative example of Rojava. And there are the Kurds of Turkey who try to sustain a 
peace process with the governmentâ How do you personally see the future of Kurdistans in 
short and long terms?

Who can say? At the moment things look surprisingly good for he revolutionary forces. The 
KDG even gave up the giant ditch they were building across the Rojava border after the PKK 
intervened to effectively save Erbil and other cities from IS back in August. One KNK 
person told me it had a major effect on popular consciousness there; that one month had 
done 20 years worth of consciousness raising. Young people were particularly struck by the 
way their own Peshmerga fled the field but PKK women soldiers didnât. But itâs hard to 
imagine how the KRG territory however will be revolutionized any time soon. Neither would 
the international powers allow it.

Although democratic autonomy doesnât seem to be clearly on the table of negotiation in 
Turkey, The Kurdish Political Movement has been working on it, especially on the social 
level. They try to find solutions in legal and economic terms for possible models. When we 
compare letâs say the class structure and the level of capitalism in West Kurdistan 
(Rojava) and North Kurdistan (Turkey), what would you think about the differences of these 
two struggles for an anti-capitalist society -or for a minimised capitalism as they describe?

I think the Kurdish struggle is quite explicitly anti-capitalist in both countries. Itâs 
their starting point. Theyâre managed to come up with a kind of formula: One canât get rid 
of capitalism without eliminating the state, one canât get rid of the state without 
getting rid of patriarchy. However, the Rojavans have it quite easy in class terms because 
the real bourgeoisie, such as it was in a mostly very agricultural region, took off with 
the collapse of the Baath regime. They will have a long-term problem if they donât work on 
the educational system to ensure a developmentalist technocrat stratum doesnât eventually 
try to take power, but in the meantime, itâs understandable they are focusing more 
immediately on gender issues. In Turkey, well, I donât know nearly as much, but I do have 
the sense things are much more complicated.

During the days that the peoples of the world canât breathe for obvious reasons, did your 
trip to Rojava inspired you about the future? What do you think is the âmedicineâ for the 
people to breathe?

It was remarkable. Iâve spent my life thinking about how we might be able to do things 
like this in some remote time in the future and most people think Iâm crazy to imagine it 
will ever be. These people are doing it now. If they prove that it can be done, that a 
genuinely egalitarian and democratic society is possible, it will completely transform 
peopleâs sense of human possibility. Myself, I feel ten years younger just having spent 10 
days there.

With which scene are you going to remember your trip to Cizire?

There were so many striking images, so many ideas. I really liked the disparity between 
the way people looked, often, and the things they said. You meet some guy, a doctor, he 
looks like a slightly scary Syrian military type in a leather jacket and sterm austere 
expression. Then you talk to him and he explains: âWell, we feel the best approach to 
public health is preventative, most disease is made possible by stress. We feel if we 
reduce stress, levels of heart disease, diabetes, even cancer will decline. So our 
ultimate plan is to reorganize the cities to be 70% green spaceââ There are all these mad, 
brilliant schemes. But then you go to the next doctor and they explain how because of the 
Turkish embargo, they canât even get basic medicine or equipment, all the dialysis 
patients they couldnât smuggle out have diedâ That disjuncture between their ambitions and 
their incredibly straightened circumstances. Andâ The woman who was effectively our guide 
was a deputy foreign minister named Amina. At one point, we apologize we werenât able to 
bring better gifts and help to the Rojavans, who were suffering so under the embargo. And 
she said: âIn the end, that isnât very important. We have the one thing no one can ever 
give you. We have our freedom. You donât. We only wish there was some way we could give 
that to you.â

You are sometimes criticized for being too optimistic and enthusiastic about whatâs 
happening in Rojava. Are you? Or do they miss something?

I am by temperament an optimist, I seek out situations which bear some promise. I donât 
think thereâs any guarantee this one will work out in the end, that it wonât be crushed, 
but it certainly wonât if everyone decides in advance that no revolution is possible and 
refuse to give active support, or even, devote their efforts to attacking it or increasing 
its isolation, which many do. If thereâs something Iâm aware of, that others arenât, 
perhaps itâs the fact that history isnât over. Capitalists have made a mighty effort these 
past 30 or 40 years to convince people that current economic arrangements â not even 
capitalism, but the peculiar, financialized, semi-feudal form of capitalism we happen to 
have today- is the only possible economic system. Theyâve put for more effort into that 
than they have into actually creating a viable global capitalist system. As a result the 
system is breaking down all around us at just the moment everyone has lost the ability to 
imagine anything else. Well, I think itâs pretty obvious that in 50 years, capitalism in 
any form weâd recognise, and probably in any form at all, will be gone. Something else 
will have replaced it. That something might not be better. It might be even worse. It 
seems to me for that very reason itâs our responsibility, as intellectuals, or just as 
thoughtful human beings, to try to at least think about what something better might look 
like. And if there are people actually trying to create that better thing, itâs our 
responsibility to help them out.

(This interview has been published by the daily Evrensel in Turkish.)
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