All Ze Media. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening here. And you know, when we talk about like collapse, things falling apart, there's very few case studies that are more important for folks to be aware of than what has happened and is continuing to happen in Northeast Syria, in a region of the world known as Rojava or the Autonomous Regions of Northeast Syria.
And I'm here with James Stout. He and I have both reported from the ro Javon project, and we are talking again with Arthur and Debbie Bookchin about what's going on there now, kind of as the struggle continues, so to speak.
That's right, and thank you very much for joining us. Arthurine, Debbie, and you're both here in your capacity as representatives of the Emergency Committee for Rajava.
Right, that's right, and thanks for having us.
Yeah, thanks for coming back.
So I think perhaps we should begin by explaining what ECI is and does. I've been very fortunate to be asked to speak at one of your meetings, so I'm familiar, but I think maybe some of our listeners wouldn't be. So could you begin with explaining what it is what it does.
Yeah, absolutely, so, the Emergency Committee for Rojeva is it's kind of the only standing US based organization focused on solidarity with the Rojeva Revolution. And what we do is we try to build a grassroots solidarity movement with the revolution in North East Syria, with the Curtis Freedom movement more broadly, and we do that in a few different ways. One is like just trying to inform the public right
so kind of public education. Another is advocacy trying to sort of put pressure on the United States government to stop arming people who are trying to kill everybody in Rogevo and to support the people instead. But another thing that we do is try to build kind of movement to movement relationships. None like finding social movements in the United States that we think share a lot of affinity with movement over there, try to put them in touch and try to kind of facilitate dialogue.
Yeah.
No, I mean I think it's important to kind of start, as we often do, with the attempt to get the US government to stop arming folks killing the people there, which in this case refers specifically to the Turkish military. I mean, we're all kind of dealing with in a separate part of the world, how difficult it is to stop the United States government from arming people.
Do that, right, Yeah, it's a great point, Robert. You know, I think sometimes it's hard for people to even comprehend just the massive flow of weapons from the United States to Turkey. I mean, over the years it's been it's just I think in the last fifteen years alone, the US has sold Turkey something like four billion dollars worth of Patriot missiles alone, you know, and then billions or at least millions, and you know, helicopters, the Cobra attack helicopters.
There is just a huge.
Flow of arms from the United States to Turkey. And as Arthur said, you know, one of the things that we really do try and do at ECR is to get people not only aware but also into doing some advocacy on that. And one of the things that we're also trying to prevent right now is the sale of any more F sixteen's to Turkey, which, as I'm sure your listeners know, are used in the bombing of people in Rojeva and also in Turkey and in northern Iraq. So that's a very critical issue in.
Fact, yeah, yeah, and it's a critical issue in part because like what we're seeing is a I would describe it as a pretty concentrated attempt to destroy civil society in Rojeva, right, Like, you're absolutely not just through the use of air strikes, through things like blocking off access to water, but the f sixteens that Turkey purchases from the United States and the continuing armaments to keep those things flying and firing missiles are a huge part of
how they're able to continue degrading the capacity of the self administration to maintain civil society exactly.
I mean, there is really an aim there, aim to completely destabilize the society, to shake confidence and the autonomous administration, to break morale, to engage in psychological terror, and frankly, you know, also to do physical harm. As I'm sure you know and your listeners know. They Turkey very effectively uses drones and other methods to take out leadership, particularly female leadership, women who are leaders of the movement. And you know, there's not a day that goes by really
that doesn't include strikes from Turkey into Rojeva. I mean, I'm just thinking, you know, the Membij military Council just has reported in the last couple of days that the State of Turkey has shelled various villages and membies. You know that Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo are really subjected to continuous embargoes by the Damascus government, but also you know, Turkey intercedes to prevent supplies from getting to these places.
So it's really I think there's something like more than two hundred bombings by Turkey Racky Kurdistan even since just the beginning of the year, So it's really ongoing assault.
No, absolutely, I think you know, for people who are less familiar with it, it's easy to kind of get bogged down in the weeds because all the details they change every day. But I think the broadze strokes are pretty.
Clear and they haven't changed for a long time. I mean, Turkey sees.
This revolution rightly so as a threat to its own power, to its own ideology. You know, the idea that local communities would govern themselves pluralistically through autonomy is a direct threat to the idea of the Turkish state, which is basically a fascist nation state. And they kind of have a twofold strategy. I think you could see it this way, right. So, like for those who don't know, Turkey has already invade
in Northeastiria multiple times. It's invaded Euphrine in twenty eighteen, set Kanye te Labiat in twenty nineteen, and it occupies that territory still to this day. But when it's been unable to seize more territory directly, it kind of has this twofold strategy where the other side of the coin is to just do everything possible to make life unlivable, right, So that's where the assassinations come in.
That's where the sort.
Of information warfare, blocking of water, sort of economic embargo. The basic idea is just to spread fear, to spread uncertainty into every sphere of life, and like you said, Robert, to basically attack civil society itself.
Yeah, I wonder if you could explain. I think our listeners are maybe familiar with the campaign against civil society and civilian targets that we saw in October November of last year, that I saw some of while I was there. But Turkey's recently launched like a spring offensive, right, which doesn't isn't exclusively unlimited to bombing, but also it contains
like I guess combined ons infantry bombing. Can you explain what's happening there and what the sort of I think the plan you've sort of very well summed up already, right, which is to make life unlivable for the Kurdish freedom movement. But can you explain what's been happening in the last few weeks for people who haven't caught up.
So for one, for people to understand the connection in the first place, right, it's important to understand that really, while there are distinct organizations which are autonomous and are place based within the Kurdish movement, right there's they have their own parties and self defense forces in Syria and in Iraq and other parts of Kurdistan.
It's important to see it also.
As kind of one big Kurtish freedom movement in another sense and an important sense, because Turkey sees it in that light. So for the same reasons the Turkey wants to crush the revolution in northeast Syria, the Turkey wants to crush the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party, right, and the gorillas of the PKK are based in northern Iraq, and time and time again they've tried to sort of dislodge the gorilla forces from the mountains.
But it's pretty hard to do.
You know, this is NATO's second largest military and they still after decades, have not been able to crush this like insurgency, and so what we're seeing.
In recent weeks is not necessarily so novel.
I mean, you can, again, you can get into the weeds about the region of Metina and a particular road that they're trying to seize for logistics on their way to the mountain of Ghara. But the truth is they're trying to crush the movement where it is and they're
seizing an opportunity. There's often like a weather window for the fighting in the mountains as well, and so when the snow starts to melt in the spring, you start to see an escalation of the fighting in the mountains, which often winds down in the fall.
Again, but it's yet to be seen how this is going to go.
I mean, y'all have I don't have to tell you right, like you've done some recent episodes on technological developments with the movement, and Turkey's been having a really hard time gains on the ground.
And also I mean, as I think as Megan Bodette noted on this podcast recently, you know, the Turkish leader Erdowan tends to take out any insults he feels he suffered, and particularly elections setbacks has happened in the local elections at the end of March on the Kurdish regions everywhere in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and so we're seeing also crackdowns has happened also for quite some time, but on journalists
again sort of cranking up again. It's funny that on World Press Day, which was May third, Kurdish journalist was arrested, you know, strip search, a woman thrown in jail, and this is you know, another sort of wave of politicians being arrested. Just again on Monday, I think thirteen politicians were sentenced to six years plus in jail in prison.
So this sort of policy that seems to show itself every time Airdawan feels a bit threatened is one that we're seeing right now, in part I think as a result of those election defeats that his party suffered.
Yeah.
Absolutely, and as sinister as it is, whenever they lose in the mountains, they often hit harder in North Eastyria and vice versa. So it's all just a big kind of ugly game that they're playing.
Well, I want to get to some more here, but first we've got to take a quick break. We're going to throw to some ads and then we'll come back and continue this discussion. All right, we're back, and I'm trying to get a sense of how the situation is on the ground right now despite the or considering the challenges of the attacks on infrastructure that have continued to go on, Like, what are we looking at from a daily life point of view in places like Camichelo.
Well, you know, one of the things that I think is important to emphasize is just how strong a lot of the civil structures really are even in the face of these attacks by Turkey. And I'm sure Arthur will have something to say about that, and also about maybe some of the sort of the military side of this. But you know, the extraordinary thing about Rojeva is just
how deeply engaged they are on the civil level. In our group at the Emergency Committee for Rozeva, we're in contact with a lot of people in civil society and I'm always amazed at how many sort of requests we get for you know, exchanges of information and scholars, and they're building the university there to do more and more technical things, you know, whether computers or agricultural sciences or you know, just a vast variety of graduate program they
want to do right now in social ecology that I've been working with them on. And so, even though there's this effort by Turkey to kind of terrorize the civilian population, and I'm sure you know, people can imagine what it must feel like to have drones flying constantly overhead and wondering if you get into a car whether it might you might you know, be the subject of a drone attack. Nonetheless, there is still this extraordinary sort of hopefulness and also
energy towards building the society. And for example, but one of the things that they recently did, and it took a long time, but they rewrote their Social Contract, which is what we would think of as a constitution, to empower women even more, you know, to empower various ethnic minorities more, and to make it a document that is truly inclusive in terms of how it was written and how it will be implemented, and so on the ground, I think, even though they are suffering in a lot
of ways, and they are because you know, Rojeve is also a region that is subject to terrible environmental dislocations because of global warming. There's still a huge sort of excitement I think about the fact that they are self governing and the fact that they are empowering women and those kinds of activities, especially on the part of the women's movement. Congress star just continue to you know, they've
built an alternative justice system. They are increasingly turning their sort of economy as much as is feasible, and it's a slow process, but into it more of a cooperative economy. So all of those things are very much underway there. And education is a huge part of that.
No, I mean, that's that's also true, it really is.
But just to speak to kind of the other side of that, you know, Robert asked, sort of what is life like, say, in a place like Commushula right now? You know, I think in some ways it's a lot like it was when when I was in a place called Zirgon, which is another frontline city where at the same time Debbie's describing people, life goes on. People trying to build up civil society, They're trying to organize the
communes and the cooperatives. At the same time, there's a tremendous fear and uncertainty, fear in an immediate sense around these drone strikes. I mean, you guys have been there too, write like I've been home, I think eleven months now, and I still every time I hear a small airplane, my body, just even if my brain knows that it's just a plane, like, my body's convinced it's a Turkish drone.
And imagine, you know you live your whole life in a place like that, or you've spent the last ten years, So a lot of people are living in this constant state of fear an uncertainty.
Even on a practical level.
You know, say you're a farmer and you're going to plant your seats this year, do you know that you're even going to have your land in a month or six months? You know, people are taking Turkey's threat of an invasion seriously. It hasn't happened again since twenty nineteen, but I can tell you I talk to people there almost every day, and they're taking it extremely seriously. So there's kind of this idea of impending invasion sort of hangs like a cloud over daily life in so many ways.
And on top of all of that, of course, since I left Northeast Syria, there was this major wave of attacks against civilian infrastructure right around the time you were there last, James, you know, and you can probably speak to it more, but I mean we're talking about power stations and oil wells and hospitals and schools and food storage facilities. So they're still really reeling from these infrastructure attacks.
Cutting off electricity to a million people at a time and water supplies.
Which is about a third of the population of the region.
Yeah, I mean, you know, war crimes. There's another word for it, that's what they're called.
Yeah, it's a very jarring experience at East in my time there, which is much briefer, and then the amount of time both of you have spent there to go out in the daytime and talk to people and see this incredible optimism for like we are building a different worlds and like it's there and you can see it and we're moving towards it. It's not like, you know, we're building a different world when we have encampments on campus too, But this is a tangible societal product.
Yeah, Well, and that it speaks to that's why the attacks Turkey is carrying out take the form they're taking, right, because the priority, the primary strength of the self administration is not in its arms. It's in its ability to provide a functional civil society that people are motivated to take part in, which is why their primary weapon is to try to destroy the ability of people to live.
Yeah, and that's what it.
Feels like, like you know my experience with a brief you know, we lost electricity every night. People are not willing or people are less willing to go out and drive long distances after dark. There is very clearly damage to the infrastructure. You know, I was in a couple of different places. One of them was having issues getting
getting water pumped. There are massive funerals right for people who have been killed, and you get to see this what is like it's a beautiful spectacle in a sense, but also like, you know, you can't spend a week in Roger were a Nazi a little baby say goodbye to their dad or just a dead baby, and that's
that's terrible, you know. And like the one thing that I noticed, which I think people might not have picked up on, just sort of consuming media the presence of people hop about martyrs as they call them, right shaheeds. It's so it's everywhere, Like from the first place I step foot across the river, you know, there were these portraits, these yellow and green portraits on around about since cities
and people's homes. Like the scale of the sacrifice both to build this project and to defeat ISIS, I think is very hot. I mean in the United States has been more for most of our lives, but it has nowhere near the same impact on our data the lives it has had there.
Yeah, that's so true.
There's not a family really in Rogeval. When you spend some time there and you meet with different people, there's not a single family that hasn't lost somebody. I mean, it's thirteen thousand people in the fight against ISIS alone and now, and not to mention, for example, the two hundred thousand people who were displaced when Turkey is you know, jihadi malicious invaded Afrin, the westernmost region. So it's it's absolutely effect of everyday life.
Yeah, every time I spend a lot of time volunteering at the border, as people listening know, and every time we meet Kurdish people often they're from Northern Kurdistan, which is in Turkey under in control of the Turkish State. I guess even like the volunteers who are not super briefed out jaba, who are just people who want to help.
Like everyone knows what it means when people when you talk to people and they have the little green picture of the little little yellow picture on them, Yeah, which is it's a profound part of the lived experience of being part of the Kurdish freedom movement or just existing as a Kurdish person in that area. And that's it's it's really hard to grasp the scale of that.
No, it's so true.
I mean, it just makes me think that it's kind of related to this larger sort of spirit of sacrifice that's part of what the movement calls, like a revolutionary personality. You know, in a lot of ways, the families of you know what, they call them martyrs, they also see it as their sacrifice, it's their contribution to the movement. And it's it's easy for I think Westerners to kind of, I don't know, dismiss it or get really uncomfortable with it.
We're not familiar with that on a cultural level as much but I think it's it's a mistake to see
it that way. I think there's something incredibly profound about it that has to do with the way that people really identify their whole lives, the meaning of their lives with the revolution, with the movement, that that is what, that is the purpose of their life, that's the purpose of the life of their their families, and come what may, that's something that you know, movements here can't really relate to in the same way.
Yet, I think, yeah, and I kind of want to talk a little bit more about that. We're gonna We're gonna throw one last time to adds and then we'll come back and kind of flesh out this discussion, and we're back talking about like what it means to be part of a revolution as opposed to someone who has revolutionary sympathies, which it's easy to be, and we have a lot of those in the United States. I'm going to guess most of the people listening to this show
have least some of those, right. Whether or not you think there's any realistic chance of seeing that during your own life, it's a very different thing from being from living it, which people do you know about three million of them in Rojava every day, and the sacrifice is
a part of it. The kind of continual conflict is another part of it, because you know, it's worth emphasizing we're about a decade into the project right now, right if we consider that being from you know, the start of the self administration in varying fashions, and that's not like it's not a perfectly even process, right because it occurred as part of this series of broader conflicts. But what you've seen is both the retreat of the government
that had formerly controlled the area. You've seen a successful war prosecuted against isis you've seen when you could look at as one conflict or kind of a series of conflicts with both these Turkish backed militias and the Turkish
military itself. And then this also this continuing conflict both with the environment, you know, just because that that is really that that's a force at work here, the Cold War, that kind of that's not even really a perfect way of describing the situation with the the Assad regime and with you know, their their backers and their Russian government, but it's a it's it's a complex, interwoven series of conflict.
But but kind of the result is just a life of conflict for the people who are are part of this revolution as sort of a just a fact of daily life. And I think that is really hard to grasp.
Mmm.
I think that's true.
And I think there's there's part of it, like you say, that has to do with this the sort of objective situation, with the conditions that people are living in, this perpetual conflict that you're talking about, And at the same time, I think there's also an aspect that's more like, I don't know, like.
Subjective, you could call it.
It has to do with the kind of movement that they've really actively been building for themselves and the kind of spirit that their movement has taken on that they've cultivated themselves, sort of painstaking me for years. I mean, I think one of the things that I know, Debbie and I really want to get to in our conversations with the speaking tour that we're working on, which is coming up later later this month on the West Coast, is we really, well, we want people to be.
Inspired by this revolution.
We really don't want people to just see it as this very like other thing on the other side of the world, you know, even those who are really supportive, especially as you know anarchistory, say, fellow travelers, we have a tendency to kind of maybe oversimplify or romanticize what's happening over there and think, oh, well, you know, if the state could just collapse here, I'm sure everybody would just sort of like melt into an anarchist utopia of statelessness.
And that would be a mistake too.
I think the truth is that what Rojava shows you is a real revolution is incredibly messy, and they only were able to kind of face the threats and the opportunities that crisis brought to them in Syria because of the kind of movement they had built for themselves, and they had these practical tools to kind of help local communities govern themselves in that sort of chaos in the
power vacuum that arose. And you know, in a moment like this the world over, especially here in the United States, you know, we're the crises that we're facing, the crisis that we're looking down the barrel of. I think there's been no more kind of relevant or urgent time to think about how those lessons actually could apply here and what it means for us, what kind of movement do we need to build to be ready for that moment.
Yeah, you know, I really agree, And Robert, I'm glad you mentioned, you know, the fact that the revolution is over ten years old, because I think, you know, and to follow up sort of just on what Arthur was saying that sort of sometimes the crises that we face environmentally logical, global warming and not to mention democracy itself, you know, can seem almost paralyzing, or that we're constantly
in a state of reaction. But one of the things that the revolution in Rojev teaches us is that, first of all, that moments of crisis can also be moments of great transformation, but really only if we're prepared for them. And that's why, you know, whenever I talk about the Rojeva project, I feel it's important to remind people that it didn't just spring miraculously out of nowhere in the
moment of the Syrian Civil War. The folks on the ground there had really been preparing for years, I mean decades, even for the opportunity that opened up for them during
the Syrian Civil War. And in various ways, of course, they were educating themselves on radical history and particular understanding you know, the failures of classical Marxism, Leninism, you know, which had been embraced previously by the PKK, and and putting also into practice clandestinely the kinds of grassroots democratic social structures that we see operating on the ground there today.
So I think that that's one of the lessons that we hear in the US can absorb that, you know, that we need to be able to exploit the crisis of legitimacy that's growing here today, thinking about what kind of alternatives we want to build and showing people that those alternatives exists, you know those yeah, that, and you know that's includes engaging in a kind of prefigurative politics that that really focuses on things like dual power, you know,
cooperative economic project but also local assembly democratic politics. So that's one of the things that I'm also really excited about talking about talking about as Arthur and I make our way from Seattle down to San Francisco and Oakland during the course of these six presentations and chats and talks and discussions that we're really excited about having beginning next weekend.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's let's let's provide people with a little bit of information on how you know they might be able to attend and take part in that. So what what should folks look up and look into if they if they're interested in where are you guys going to be?
Absolutely? Yeah, thanks.
I think the best thing people can do is go to defend dot org. That's the website for the Emergency Committee for Rojeva, our group. But right there at the front page, you're going to see a poster for our tour that you can click on. It'll take you to links for all the different stops that we're going to do. We're going to be making our way all the way from Bellingham, Washington, which is up near the border of.
Canada, down to the Bay Area, and you know, we really wish we could make more cities.
There are a couple events that are our comrades and colleagues are organizing on the East Coast around the same timeframe, so be sure to look up the calendar on our website.
But people can go to defend dot org to hear more.
But the basic idea, like Debbie said, is we want to talk to people not only about what's going on in Rogevo. Why we think it matters how they can stand in solidarity. But we want to talk about what we're going to do in our own communities to take those lessons and to apply them to our own context.
We want to help connect people who are doing you know, real community organizing in local movements, and to try to kind of inspire and strengthen what's already going on, rather than just to see this as being strictly about Roseevolk, because I mean, y'all probably were told the same thing when when you're over there and you ask people what can we do to support, one of the things they'll tell you is you've got to organize the revolution at home.
And that's on us. You know, it's easier said than done, right, and we're not saying we have.
All the answers, but what we do want to do is to invite local grassroots activists especially to come join the discussion and let's talk together about what it would mean to apply these basic principles, not to copy and paste them, but to apply these basic principles and lessons, principles of direct democracy, local autonomy, you know, cooperation, feminism. We haven't even talked about how central, you know, gender liberation is.
To the Kurdish freedom movement. How do we apply these things in our own communities.
Yeah, And one of the things, by the way, if people are interested in getting some more detail and a real inside look at what is going on in Rojaeven detail is that Arthur has two pieces in the magazine Strange Matters, which is also online, which are just terrific and they're part of a series that he's going to be doing, i think monthly over the next few months. And so that's some great background as well.
Aw shucks, Yeah, it's fantastic, Stev.
Yeah, well, thank you.
Yeah, check that out obviously, folks, if you haven't. We've also got a podcast series, The Women's War, that covers the earlier history of the Rajavan Revolution up to about twenty nineteen, late twenty nineteen, which will cover quite a bit of the of the impact that kind of this sort of feminist lens has had on what's happening over there and how it's actually persisted, you know, under the conditions that are really kind of almost impossibly challenging when
you when you look at what these people are up again, which is part of again, I guess ultimately why as we've repeatedly come back to I think this is so important for people in the West to study as things get worse for a lot of folks here and as we attempt to arrest and take charge of the situation in our own lives. You know, we have all these questions about how do we stop our government from arming not just Turkey, but all of these regimes around the
world that are doing such terrible things. How do we stop, how do we arrest you know, these problems that are continuing to affect you know, really ultimately billions of people around the world. It's taking charge of our own lives, and the same way that these people have. It's kind of making that slogan of the Rejavian Revolution, you know,
resistance is life. Actually embracing that in a way that matters, And when you focus on sort of the challenges to like the sheer amount of work that has to be done here, the very primitive state of any kind of meaningful resistance, the relatively primitive state of organizing on the left, compared to, for example, the organizing that the right does in tandem with paramilitaries in the state, it can seem like an impossible challenge, but ten years on, the people
in Northeast Syria are still are still fighting, you know, and I think you have to. I think paying attention to that makes it clear that it is actually possible to win.
So true.
Well, I guess that's kind of it for us today. Is there anything else we want to plug? I just wanted to go out on a better note.
Yeah, I'm writing a piece for Kurdish Piece Institute. I'm manifesting this on the podcast, so I've actually write it about me and Ma Kurtis stan S solidarity.
Which I think is cool, so great topic.
Yes, yeah, I don't think we have a lot of time, but I think that one thing that I've learned from the friends in roche is that, like, even when you are going through difficulties, you can still stand in solidarity with other people. And God knows, we're all going through difficulties in economic and political and state violence terms in this country, and I think that like one thing I really took from that was that it's never too hard
for you to be in solidarity. And I hope that folks who are in this country will appreciate that and be in solidarity with people in Rocheba as well.
Absolutely well, Debbie Arthur, Thank you both so much for being here with us, and thank you for continuing to do the work that you do to keep this topic alive in people's hearts and minds.
Thank you all so much.
Yeah, always happy.
Yeah, keep up the great work yourselves.
All right, everybody, that's the episode. We will be back tomorrow, unless this comes out on a Friday, in which case we might not be back tomorrow, but we'll be back, you know, Monday. You understand how this works at this point, right.
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