Western governments are cheering a deal between Syria’s government and its Kurdish minority. It could spell the end of a remarkable experiment in democracy.
The death of a democratic dream?
Syrian government forces this week moved into cities in the northeast of the country as part of a deal that followed a swift rout of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in January. The agreement will see SDF forces integrated gradually into those of the Damascus government led by former jihadist Ahmad al-Sharaa, who has agreed to grant some cultural rights to the Kurdish minority.
Governing bodies in the region are to be merged with state institutions, but the terms of this powersharing arrangement remain vague. So it is not clear how much will survive of the experiment in grassroots democracy pioneered in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, known as Rojava.
When the regime of Bashar al-Assad withdrew from Kurdish-majority areas at the start of Syria’s civil war in 2012, Kurdish forces took control. Then, as Islamic State (also known as Isis) fighters swept through the country, Kurdish forces led the resistance against them, with the support of the United States and its allies.
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The SDF eventually controlled almost a third of Syria’s territory, including areas where Kurds were in a minority but local Arab communities welcomed their protection against Isis. Rojava became a self-proclaimed autonomous region with a system of grassroots democracy that prioritised equality between men and women and the direct participation of communities in decision-making.
It was based on democratic confederalism, a concept developed by Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) who has been in a Turkish prison since 1999. Öcalan, who once championed statehood for the Kurds of Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, later conceived democratic confederalism as a model of what he called “non-state political administration or stateless democracy”.
Democracy was devolved to the lowest practical level and men and women were equally represented on decision-making bodies, which had two co-chairs, one from each gender. The system prioritised environmental sustainability and tried to develop communal and co-operative economic projects.
Despite the conditions of civil war, Rojava’s democratic model endured but it didn’t flourish everywhere. In Arab-majority parts of the territory, governance was often outsourced to tribal leaders whose allegiance had shifted over the years according to their interests.
When Syrian government forces started to target the region, many of the Arab tribal leaders threw in their lot with Damascus, reducing the SDF and Rojava essentially to their Kurdish core. Al-Sharaa’s efforts at state consolidation had already seen his forces move in on the Alawite and Druze minorities, although he backed off from the Druze after Israel intervened on their behalf.
If the SDF thought that the US would protect them, they were put right by Washington’s special envoy Tom Barrack who declared last month that they had served their purpose and were no longer useful.
“The original purpose of the SDF as the primary anti-Isis force on the ground has largely expired,” he said.
Washington has concluded that a strong, unitary Syrian state can fight the threat from Isis without the SDF, paving the way for a withdrawal of US forces. Turkey, which is the new Syrian government’s most important regional security partner, has long wanted to see the Kurdish autonomous structures dismantled.
Öcalan encouraged the SDF to accept integration with Damascus on the basis of a memorandum signed by both sides last March but the two sides failed to agree on how to implement it. The SDF accepted the latest deal after it became clear that they could not resist the advance of Syrian government forces.
Damascus now faces less pressure than last year to concede much in terms of autonomous governance to the Kurds, putting in question the future of the democratic model pursued in Rojava.
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