Rojava & the Commons
Conversation with Carne Ross - Part 2
This is the second part of a conversation with Carne Ross, a former senior British diplomat who resigned from the foreign office due to the UK government’s decision to help the U.S. invade Iraq in 2003. After that, he became interested in Rojava, an anarchist enclave in Northern Syria, and he made a movie about it, The Accidental Anarchist.
See Part 1 here.
Below is a video of our conversation, followed by a summary of the main points covered, as well as the complete transcript.
Summary / Main points covered
Rojava is an anarchist enclave in the north of Syria – twice the size of Wales (40% of the land area of Syria), with 4.6 million people. Rojava also has the largest armed force in Syria.
The Rojavans don’t want independence, but autonomy within a Syrian federation of democratic, self-governing regions – similar to Switzerland’s cantonal system. Their aim is for power to rest primarily with the regions, with the state deriving its authority from them (i.e., state power being delegated upward from the regions, not the other way around).
Talks are happening between Rojava and the new Syrian government in Damascus, led by Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who wants a more centralised state.
The decision-making process in Rojava is good, but not perfect. It is based on several principles, the main one being subsidiarity – that decisions should be made at the level closest to the people.
Another principle is confederation – that decisions can be made covering wider areas, but those decisions must be confirmed at the local level. Representatives can be recalled if they fail to reflect the views of the local groups that elected them.
Another principle is feminism – that women should be in leadership or joint-leadership positions in all contexts, because you cannot have a decent society without women sharing equal power. In fact, many of Rojava’s political ideas have come from within women’s groups.
Another principle is ecology – the non-domination of humans over nature.
These principles come from the ideas of Murray Bookchin, a New York based anarchist, who said that human domination of nature won’t stop until humans stop dominating other humans.
Capitalist power relations are about exclusivity and domination.
Bookchin’s ideas were picked up by the leader of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (the PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, who adapted them to the Kurdish context.
The PKK in Turkey have recently disarmed, and Öcalan has said that the armed struggle is over. Talks may lead to a new settlement for the Kurds in Turkey, which itself may lead to a different approach from Turkey to Rojava.
There’s no PKK in Rojava. But at the moment, Turkey occupies parts of northern Syria, and has carried out attacks on Rojava for years. Recent developments are hopeful for peace. But the situation is fragile, and US policy in the area is unpredictable.
Rojava’s main defence force is the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led but multi-ethnic alliance that also has an all-female component called the YPJ. The SDF received US support in the fight against ISIS (which is still ongoing), and it continues to cooperate with the US and Britain.
The new Syrian government is yet to be tested when it comes to decentralisation of power.
Self-government tends to spring up after catastrophes and disasters, but we don’t need a crisis for that to happen. The idea that Western society is too ‘developed’ or ‘sophisticated’ to operate in this way is an orientalist notion – that these things can happen in the Middle East only because it is more primitive). But that’s not true – you can run any system of governance through collective decision-making.
The West can learn a lot from Rojava – which Matt Broomfield covers in his new book, Hope Without Hope.
There are representative offices of Rojava in London – the Syrian Democratic Council and the Autonomous Administration. You can directly connect with them.
If you want to help Rojava, you can write to your local MP, demanding that the UK should support a decentralised Syria. The Syrian section of the Foreign Office will have to reply, and you will be letting them know that it matters to you. Follow up by talking directly to your MP – recruiting them as a champion for decentralisation is worth a try.
Sign up to Carne’s website or Youtube channel for updates /more on anarchism, Rojava and other international matters.
Transcript
Dave: Okay. So Rojava. It’s an anarchist enclave in the North of Syria, twice the size of Wales, 4,600,000 people, which amazed me.
Carne: Yeah. And 40% of the land area of Syria. And the largest armed force in Syria, by some measure.
Dave: And they don’t want independence, do they? They just want to be one part of a Syrian federation of democratic autonomous areas. What’s the chance of that happening?
Carne: I would say better now this week than it was last week, weirdly. I mean, this is being hashed out literally day to day in Syria, right now, in talks between the autonomous area of the North East, known to the Kurds as Rojava, and the government, the new dispensation in Syria, in Damascus, which is led by Ahmed Al Sharaa, the new Islamist president of Syria, who overthrew Assad, and who has said he wants a kind of centralised state, where Islam is the only source of law. And the people in the North East, and not only the North East, it’s worth saying, want a much more decentralised version of government, arguably a federal version of government, though the word federation is for reasons I don’t understand, apparently fairly toxic in the Syrian circumstance. But basically, the Northeast is proposing, you know, what amounts to a federal system of significant powers for the regions. Like you have in, say, Switzerland or Germany, where all powers belong to the regions except those that they grant to the center. Not the model of all powers to the center except the powers they grant to the regions, which is the model we have in Britain for instance.
The words are a bit confusing, because they do mean different things to different people. But basically that’s what we’re talking about, is maximum power for the regions within a unitary state. And you’re quite right, the Northeast does not want a separate state, it is not arguing for that. Mainly, I have to say, because they know that if they did, they would be immediately invaded by Turkey, which does not want a Kurdish dominated state on its southern border. Turkey is a big big factor in all of this. And there is other stuff going on between Turkey and the Kurds, in particular the PKK, which is relevant to the future of Syria, interestingly, but we probably don’t have time to go into that.
Dave: Where can we find reliable, up to date information and news about what’s happening in Rojava?
Carne: Yeah. Well, there are various news sites that I use. Twitter is also quite useful. You know, there’s lots of Twitter streams of people who talk about it. One of the great things about the internet is now, I know every morning that there’s been an ISIS attack in some little town, or there’s a dispute over water somewhere else. Perhaps I could send you a list, Dave, of the sites I use.
Dave: That would be great.
Carne: But some of them are Syrian sites, you know, some of them are Middle East sites, some of them are Kurdish sites. And now a lot of them are in English, if not all of them. And even if they’re not, you can now translate them with the touch of a button.
Dave: I’ll remind you of that, and I’ll put the links to the sites in the description. So the world needs wise leadership to deal with what’s coming. Capitalism and liberal democracy clearly don’t provide that, and you’ve seen the process closely in Rojava.
Are the decisions that they come up with, are they wise? Is it a good decision making process?
Carne: By and large, yes. It’s not perfect, is my answer to that. Nothing created by humans is perfect, but the principles of it are deeply embedded in it. And that the principle is that the decision should be made at the level closest to the people. What in other contexts is called subsidiarity, which is an awful word.
That’s one principle. The other principle is that of confederation, which is decisions at scale can be made by the communal level appointing representatives to take decisions for a broader area, but those decisions must be confirmed at the local level. And that representatives can be recalled if they don’t represent the views of the communes. And another couple of crucial principles in Rojava is that of feminism. That women should be in leadership positions in all contexts.
Joint leaders, if not the leader. In all contexts. That the end of patriarchy is a collective aim. You know, and that’s manifested in all kinds of ways in society in Syria, through various inherited patriarchal practices, which they make a deliberate attempt to change. And that’s a long term project.
And a third principle, is it third or fourth I’ve said? Ecology. Of the non domination of humans over nature. And this goes to the core of the philosophies, where the philosophy that kind of holds in Rojava comes from, which is the ideas of a guy called Murray Bookchin, who was a New York kind of anarchist. Who said that man’s domination of nature will not end until man stops dominating other man. The humans stop dominating each other. And when you think about it, that’s very true.
Because the commons arguably is a restoration of the human relationship with nature, of a much more equal kind of mutuality. And private ownership is much more a mental model of exploitation rather than preservation. And capitalism is, of course, about domination, of “I’ve got this property, which means you don’t”. “I have more than you”. And intrinsic in that is of course a power relationship.
And therefore, Bookchin was entirely right to argue that the domination of nature will not end until domination between humans ends. And his ideas were picked up by the leader of the Kurdish workers party, the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, and he kind of iterated them for the Kurdish context. They are different in some regards, but they’re basically very similar ideas.
Dave: Could something like Rojava happen and work in the West? Or does it require a crisis and a war and a power vacuum after a conflict?
Carne: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, self government does tend to spring up after catastrophe and disaster. And we’ve seen it, you know, in New York City after Hurricane Sandy, I saw it for myself. In New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. You can see it in Britain, you know, during COVID for instance, that there a lot of mutual aid communities coming together to help one another.
Does it require disaster for that to happen? No. Obviously it doesn’t. Obviously, it can happen more spontaneously. And this idea that Western society is too sophisticated, too complicated to run in this way is basically an orientalist notion, that, you know, the Middle East is more primitive, their society is more basic, and it’s basically bollocks.
You know, you can run any entity, any system of governance through collective decision making. There’s all kinds of different methods that permit that to happen smoothly and efficiently.
Dave: Is bollocks the official diplomatic term for it?
Carne: It’s a diplomatic term that I’ve innovated recently, Dave. I’m trying to introduce it into the discourse.
Dave: Could we learn from them? And could we make connections maybe between Rojava and the commons movement in the West?
Carne: Yes. Yes to those questions. There’s a lot to learn.
Dave: I guess “how” is the next question.
Carne: Well, there’s a very good book that’s just been published about that very question by a guy called Matt Broomfield. I’ve got it up on my shelf here. Oh, what’s it called? Hope Without Hope, which is a slightly odd title. I’ve argued with Matt about that title.
But it’s basically how the left can generate hope in a situation that seems hopeless. Where, you know, an alternative vision seems to be completely absent. And how you work in that circumstance, and he argues that Rojava demonstrates precisely that. And it’s a very interesting book for that reason. And it also contains, you know, ideas about how to run things.
But there are a couple of other books. There’s various compendiums of book essays about Rojava, which talk about the different ways it does things. So that’s how you can learn.
Dave: I’ll ask you for those books as well. Yeah. And I’ll put those in the description, as well as the various websites that you talked about.
Carne: Yeah. Sure. The other thing is, can you connect with them? Yes, you can. There are ways to do that.
There’s representative offices of Rojava here in London, the Syrian Democratic Council and the Autonomous Administration. They have representatives in London, and I work with them every week, if not every day. So you can connect through them. They’d be very happy to.
Dave: That’s really interesting. I’ll ask you for details.
Carne: Yeah. Sure. It’s email addresses, basically. You can also connect with, you know, different elements of the Rojava revolution, like the women’s movement, the congress star, the very important pan-Kurdish women’s movement that’s really been, in many ways, the ideological driver of this because many of these ideas came from women in the PKK. It’s not just, you know, the brilliance of one male leader who has this kind of weird iconic status in the Kurdish movement.
But it’s actually also from female cadres of the PKK where a lot of this philosophy was generated. And those movements are still around. Not PKK, I hasten to add, because, you know, that’s a military movement that’s designated as terrorist by our government. And certainly by the Turkish government, but civil movements of women’s rights, but actually much more than women’s rights. Because in that society, the notion of women’s rights has been expanded to be all-embracing, that unless women have equality and power, you cannot have a decent society.
That you cannot have a peaceful, fair, just society. And you know, there are women in Rojava who’ve sacrificed their lives, continue to sacrifice their lives for that ideal.
Dave: The PKK have recently disarmed, haven’t they?
Carne: Well, in Syria, there is no PKK. In Syria there’s the Syrian Democratic Forces, which has an all female component called the YPJ. Which is like a female militia. That’s who I was talking about. The PKK has announced that it is disarming, let’s put it like that. It has held a ceremonial destruction of weapons where, you know, they burned about 30 antique AK47s. There is a negotiation going on with Turkey, with Ankara right now about a new settlement with the Kurdish population of Turkey, which, you know, follows the disarmament of the PKK.
And Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK, has said the armed struggle is over. This is not a way to deliver liberation. Which is an incredibly important announcement. And arguably will open a new chapter in Kurdish relations inside Turkey. But if there is, you know, a new peaceful agreement between Ankara and Turkey’s Kurds, that will affect the way Turkey regards Syria.
And the Northeast, which is predominantly Kurdish, where Ankara has argued that the armed forces of that area are basically the PKK, they’re the same thing. And therefore terrorists, and therefore, you know, not something they can tolerate. So as a result, Turkey occupies a chunk of North East Syria, nobody talks about this. A significant chunk of North East Syria and North West Syria is occupied by Turkey. And also Turkey has mounted military attacks on the North East for years now. They’ve recently stopped, and let’s hope that that continues.
Dave: Grounds for optimism?
Carne: Yeah, I mean, it hangs by a thread. You know, Sharaa himself seems to be a decent guy, but his real commitment to decentralisation has yet to be tested. And there are many minority communities who don’t trust the new government at all, and where they say that government forces have been involved in massacres. For instance, the Jews and the Alawites, the Jews in the South, the Alawites in the West. So the government really is not yet tested in its commitment to a comprehensively inclusive government of Syria.
It’s saying some of the right things, but it is very fragile. You know, Erdoğan, the leader of Turkey, could wake up tomorrow and say, screw this, I’m just gonna occupy the Northeast, because otherwise Israel might come in. Israel is also dabbling in Syria. It occupies a significant chunk of Southern Syria, it continues to mount airstrikes across Syria, it mounts military patrols into the suburbs of Damascus. Nobody talks about this in the West, it’s actually all there in the Syrian press, but nobody talks about this.
So it’s complicated, it’s a really complicated situation, and US policy is of course really important and highly unpredictable at the same time, which is not good.
Dave: And they did have US support, didn’t they? Do they still have it?
Carne: Yeah, there’s still US military forces deployed in the Northeast, special forces who are involved in the fight against ISIS, which continues. ISIS continues to mount attacks in the Northeast and elsewhere in Syria. So that battle is continuing, and the armed forces of the North East, the Syrian Democratic Forces, work with the Americans and indeed the Brits, who are also involved, and the French in that campaign, which is a very long campaign against ISIS. American policy on Syria, however, is kind of less than clear. It seems to shift around.
The American envoy to Syria is a property baron from New York City, who’s a friend of Trump, who seems to have some rather strange views about the Middle East, including that there’s no Arabic word for submit. And he accused a group of Arab journalists of behaving like animals. So, you know, that’s what we have to deal with as the preeminent power. But Russia’s also reasserting its influence. Turkey is incredibly important.
The Gulf States are pouring money in to support the current government. It’s super complicated.
Dave: And just finally, what can someone in the West do to help Rojava?
Carne: Well, you can write to your MP saying, you support Northeast Syria, and that means the UK should support a decentralised Syria. And that will eventually get to the Syria section of the Foreign Office who will have to answer that letter. And by sending that letter, you will tell them that it matters to you. You know, and if you have an MP locally, which everybody does, go and see them, and say, I wrote you this letter. What can you do about it?
Can you go and talk to the Foreign Affairs committee about it? Can you go and, you know, can you send a text to Yvette Cooper about it if she’s a pal of yours? You know, because they all WhatsApp each other all the time now. And the traditional forms of sending bits of paper to your MP which are then sent to the Foreign Office seems to me less and less meaningful. But go and talk to your MP and demand that they stand up for this.
You know, that they’re not neglected. The Brits are a player in Syria. They’re not as important as the Americans, but they’re not unimportant. Weirdly, the Brits have a very close relationship with al-Sharaa, because Jonathan Powell, who’s the national security adviser now, who’s involved in a controversy today because of China.
His organisation used to advise al-Sharaa when it was just a militia group. The Al Nusra Front, it was called. An Islamist militia group that spun off from Al Qaeda, and then became the HTS. And all the way through that period, it was being advised by Jonathan Powell’s organisation. So that organisation and Jonathan Powell continued to have the ear of al-Sharaa, which is important. And the Brits are, you know, they’re not, as I said, the first importance in the future of Syria, but they’re not unimportant either.
They have very great influence in Turkey, they have influence with the Americans. So shifting British policy to, you know, a more thoughtful policy of decentralisation or arguably federation would be good. And recruiting your MP as a champion of that, you know, is worth a try.
Dave: Is there a support fund, a place to send donations?
Carne: Probably. It’s not really my stuff, I don’t really do that. But Matt Broomfield would know. Okay. There’s various, you know, there’s a kind of network of us who are associated with Rojava in different ways, including Debbie Bookchin, who’s a dear friend of mine, who’s the daughter of Murray Bookchin, who originated all of these ideas.
Dave: Brilliant. Carne, that was one of the most interesting conversations for a long time. I’ve taken so much of your time now. It was fantastic talking with you, and let’s keep in touch.
Carne: Totally my pleasure, Dave. Really great to talk to you. Made me think a lot about things I need to think more about. Can I encourage anybody who sees this to sign up to my YouTube channel, or my TikTok channel, or my website, which is diplomaticanarchist.com? And there you will get updates and videos and stuff that I do, including about Rojava, but also about anarchism, and other international matters.
Dave: Alright. Okay. So you can find some stuff about Rojava on there.
Carne: Yeah. And also Gaza, Trump, neo fascism, a lot about anarchism, and quite a lot about Rojava.
Dave: Great. Okay. Fantastic talking with you, Carne.
Carne: Totally my pleasure, Dave. Thanks for having me.