Mobilise for the Confederal Revolution in Syria!
Written by Davide Grasso
We must mobilise for the confederal revolution in Syria. This is a crucial moment. After conquering the areas controlled by the confederal revolution in the governorate of Aleppo, last night government forces launched a general offensive against the Democratic Administration of the North-East from the west (Tabqa) and the east (Deir el Zor). The Democratic Administration has called for a general armed mobilisation throughout the north-east. At the same time, a huge propaganda machine against the Administration and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is underway on social media and news sites close to the Turkish and Qatari governments, such as Al-Jazeera and Middle East Eye.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have retreated several kilometres on all fronts to attempt resistance from more rearward positions. Tabqa has fallen into the hands of the government, whose supporters have torn down the statue of the YPJ fighter in the city. Fighting continues in Raqqa. The SDF has also abandoned some important oil and gas fields in the east, which have been occupied by militias linked to local ‘ashira (clans), and then by the government.
The bridges over the Euphrates in Raqqa have been blown up to slow down the advance, and the young people and women of the confederal movement are preparing to resist. At the same time, there are persistent rumours and images suggesting coordinated sedition in Raqqa, but also around Hasakah, by a series of tribal clan structures within the administration.
I interviewed the leaders of some of these often very powerful groups a few weeks ago. They systematically expressed hostility towards the SDF for two reasons, which explain what is happening:
(1) Economic reasons: these are landowners and commercial networks worth hundreds of millions of dollars. These entities control agricultural workers in the countryside of Raqqa, Hasakah and Deir el-Zor, derive income from cotton and wheat cultivation, and have been trading these and other products on the domestic and foreign markets for centuries. Local family structures are many things, but first and foremost they constitute the bourgoisie of the countryside and urban centres, which has always played a political role in those areas – under all regimes – for class reasons. They have often supported different causes at different times because they are essentially focused on their own profits, which come from the exploitation of workers, young people and women in their territories.
(2) The gender issue: during my interviews, these people harshly criticised, to put it mildly, confederal institutions such as Kongra Star, Zenobia or the Women’s Council, i.e. organised civil women’s movements, and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), the SDF’s female army. Some argued that the only culture that protects women is the more conservative tribal culture, because it confines them to the home and does not put them in danger. Others claimed that their tribal structures had the de facto power to undermine the rules introduced by the Administration to extend women’s rights inside and outside the family unit. Each of them would continue to marry three or four wives, they said, because Zenobia would not have the power to prevent them. And when, on one occasion, a younger man in the family intervened to say that, in reality, all women can report harassment or abuse to Zenobia’s militants (who also have a judicial role) under the Administration, he was silenced with the phrase: ‘No, thank God that’s not the case here, because we are here to prevent it.’
In recent years, many empty words have been spent arguing that the Administration was supported by the Kurds and opposed by the Arabs. This is not true: both the Kurdish and Arab communities have these material, class and gender – and political – contradictions, and there are Kurds and Arabs in the confederal movement, and representing the Administration; and thus in the forces that oppose it inside and outside the Administration. At the heart of the matter is the protection of gender and class privileges and, of course, the internal colonialism of the ruling classes in Damascus, who, from the French protectorate to Al-Shaara, conceive of the north-east (Al-Shaara made this clear in a recent interview) as a colonial reserve of agricultural products and fossil resources to feed international markets and the rest of the country.
What we are witnessing in Syria is the show of force by those who intend to defend the hierarchies justified by the worst political and cultural traditions against those who have questioned them in recent years. It is a war between those who want to sell Syria to Trump and those who constituted the only truly political opposition – based on an analysis of the world and its relations – against the Syrian Baathist system, and who now constitute the only organised and mass political opposition to forces whose hallmark is incitement to sectarian and misogynistic hatred to enforce once more capitalist violence in the economy.
In the face of this clash, the desire for social and gender transformation is entirely on the same side of the front. If we believe that today’s world must abandon supremacism forms of patriarchy and colonial logic, all our friendship and support must go to the Syrian Democratic Forces and the North-East Administration. This is not about defending Kurds, Arabs or any specific language or religion. It is about choosing which side to be on in relation to the kind of global society we want to fight for, since there have long been no unrelated national scenarios, or ones that can be understood through the logic of borders and frontiers imposed by nation states.
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