Towards an eco-socialism in Rojava?

Since 2016 is conducted in Rojava, Kurdish region located in northwestern Syria, an “exceptional democratic experiment” mixing both social and ecological revolution, in the midst of civil war.

The project of an autonomous Rojava is not that recent. The Kurds, who today constitute the largest stateless people (nearly 35 million people), have been fighting for their independence since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, just over a century ago.

Neither Arabs, nor Turks, nor yet Persians, the Kurds are the mythical descendants of the Medes, an empire that flourished in the 7th century BC. They speak Indo-European languages, and are mostly Sunni Muslims, although they peacefully coexist with a multitude of other religions, such as the Yezidis, Alevis, and Christians.

Although the formation of a Kurdish state seems very unlikely at the moment, the population being spread over four countries (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey), a real process of autonomization is underway. In Iraq first, where the fall of Sadam Hussein in 2003 was followed by a referendum recognizing the independence of the Kurds, and now in Syria, because of the role they played in the armed conflict.

Thus, the triumphant victory of the YPD (Kurdish Democratic Union Party) forces over the Islamic State engendered not only the attention of the international community, but also the establishment of a real democratic project in Rojava, with the proclamation of a Social Contract in 2014. This new constitution was very largely inspired by the work of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, founder of the PKK, imprisoned since 1999 on the Turkish island İmralı. From epistolary exchanges with the American philosopher Murray Bookchin, Öcalan theorizes democratic confederalism, a new political system mixing direct and participatory democracy within a self-managed society and articulated around three major pillars: anti-nationalism, feminism and ecology.

For Bookchin as for Öcalan, the environmental crisis represents the greatest challenge of our time, and cannot be overcome without first reversing the social relations of power and domination.
Indeed, human societies, which have become extremely complex and hierarchical in the course of history, have at the same time lost the close link that bound them to nature.

There are several explanatory factors for this evolution. First, the rise of the state power has caused the loss of traditional local knowledge related to nature through the centralization of agriculture, the expropriation of land, or colonialism and the various destructions it has caused in the southern countries, just to mention a few. Then, the advent of science as a method of explaining the world, associated with the rise of capitalism as a new world belief, has only reinforced the loss of the link that united Humans to the environment.

The interest of a social ecology, beyond protecting nature and the damage we inflict on it, would therefore be to “recreate the balance between people and nature”. It encourages the conception of the human as a form of life that “by its creative power, can contribute greatly to the improvement of the natural world as a whole”. This means going beyond science and technology as the only solution and believing in ourselves.

“A policy that promises to save us from the current crisis can only lead to a correct social system if it is ecological”.
Abdullah Ocalan

While this project may seem utopian to many, this is not the case for the Kurds of Rojava, who have been working on the democratic and ecological transition of the country since the revolution. Thus, in early 2018, the Committee for Ecology of the Cizirê Canton and the Internationalist Commune of Rojava launched an appeal to support ecological work in northern Syria and create a network of exchanges between all individuals, collectives and movements invested in similar struggles around the world. This is how the international campaign Make Rojava Green Again was founded and divided into three parts:

• Education: At all levels of society, through concrete experiences in the natural environment, in order to put an end to the alienation of humans from nature. Thus, at the internationalist academy, volunteers are trained in radical democracy, women’s liberation, and Kurdish language and culture. It is also possible to attend lectures and seminars on the ecological society of tomorrow and how to achieve it. In parallel, the academy also sets up partnerships with local education structures, to allow children to be trained in environmental preservation, and to put this learning into practice by creating gardens and vegetable gardens or by excursions in the natural environment.
• Practical work: Getting one’s hands dirty is essential to ending the destructive practices of capitalist modernity. Internationalists are therefore all encouraged to develop a deep connection with the nature and society around them, through nursery and reforestation projects in particular. The academy has established a non-profit tree cooperative with the goal of reforesting riverbanks and planting more than 100,000 trees in the recently created Hayaka Nature Reserve. Finally, there are many projects related to waste and water management, including the promotion of composting, recycling, separation and reuse of wastewater, etc.
• Call for international solidarity: In order to gain recognition and support, the campaign aims to connect local communal entities that act in northern Syria with the rest of the international community, through networks of experts, researchers, organizations and large institutions.

While this democratic balance seems to have achieved some success, it remains very fragile. Rojava is indeed under the total embargo of its neighbors, which limits the capacity of innovation and adaptation of the local populations. In addition, it has had to deal with numerous ecological damages during the war, the long-term consequences of which are still unknown. For example, the international coalition’s use of depleted uranium canisters has caused serious health problems, as their residues contaminate the environment for a very long time. The Islamic State, on the other hand, lit giant braziers, fueled by oil, plastics and various waste products, in order to conceal itself during air raids. The el-Assad dynasty, in addition to having always imposed a policy of deforestation and monoculture (mainly wheat fields and olive groves), has largely encouraged the spreading of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers whose toxic effects were concealed. Finally, the construction of Turkish dams upstream of the Euphrates has deprived the region of most of its water resources. In Rojava, ecology is therefore a space of struggle.

Finally, it is necessary to recall the constant geopolitical threat to the region. In an article in the newspaper Reporterre, it is expressed as follows:
“Turkey and its Islamist mercenaries, every day, bomb the towns and villages in northern Rojava, prepare a fourth invasion after those that led to the occupation of the Azaz-Bad-Jarablous triangle in 2016, the canton of Afrin in 2018 and the Girê Spî-Serêkaniyê strip in 2019. If nothing moves on the side of civil society, if the international political authorities look the other way, especially if the States guaranteeing the 2019 ceasefire — Russia and the United States — betray Kurds and Arabs once again, it will be the end of this political experiment, rich in lessons for democrats as well as for revolutionaries, of “this strange unity that is only said of the multiple”, which Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari never imagined would be realized in the heart of this Middle East so little libertarian.”