The Black Rose/Rosa Negra International Relations Committee (IRC) republishes the following statements from our International Anarchist Coordination (IAC) sibling organization Tekoşîna Anarşîst (Anarchist Struggle).
NOTE: This post was originally published on December 3rd. You are now viewing an updated version which includes a more recent statement from Tekoşîna Anarşîst, published on December 7th.
Background
On November 27th the loose coalition of forces that has been engaged in a years-long military conflict with the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, broke out of a containment zone in the country’s North Western Idlib province. In a matter of days they were able to drive out government forces and claim control over Aleppo, the country’s most populous city.
While made up of a variety of discrete factions, the group responsible for leading the lightning advance is Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni militant organization and successor to Jabhat al-Nusra, the former al-Qaeda franchise in Syria.
HTS has so far avoided direct confrontations with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), colloquially referred to as Rojava. However, the Syrian National Army (SNA), an umbrella for dozens of anti-Assad militia groups, is backed by Turkey which seeks the elimination of AANES.
The SNA has issued a declaration that it intends to expel AANES from the northern central city of Manbij. In response to these developments, AANES has called for a general mobilization of the constituent militias in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), including Tekoşîna Anarşîst.
Though this brief background is insufficient to fully grasp the rapidly developing situation, we present it here in order to better contextualize the statement from Tekoşîna Anarşîst reproduced below.
[UPDATE 12/7/24]
After less than a month of fighting, it is all but confirmed that HTS and other anti-Assad factions in Syria have breached the capital of Damascus, causing the total collapse of the Syrian state.
Our sibling organization, Tekoşîna Anarşîst, has issued a new statement addressing these developments. We include the most recent statement below, followed by their statement issued on December 3rd.
We Carry a New World in Our Heart
Tekoşîna Anarşîst – December 7, 2024
The Regime Has Fallen, the War Continues
The revolutionary dreams of millions of Syrians that flooded the streets in 2011 has finally become reality: the regime has fallen. After decades of Assad’s dynasty, today we woke up in a Syria without functional central government. The Syrian State has collapsed.
We, as anarchist and as revolutionaries, can’t do anything else than to celebrate one tyrant less. Cheers for that! But after more than 7 years of living in the revolution, we learned an unpopular lesson: victory is just a first step to the social transformation we need. Because every victory is simply a step to the next fight.
Luckily, the Kurdish Liberation Movement has decades of experience in their pockets, and they are more than happy to share it with us. And not just that, they also have 12 years of hands-on lessons leading a revolutionary society in north-east Syria, with women liberation, social ecology and confederation of local governments as their compass to build libertarian socialism. Not without shortcomings, not without mistakes, but it is already more than many other libertarian revolutions ever achieved.
At the same time, the military successes of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) against the regime, as well as their authoritarian islamist governance in Idlib, opened an opportunity for their leader to influence the headlines of world news agencies. The information society of the 21st century forgets as fast as they scroll down their screen, so we may have to refresh your memory. Today, who remembers the liberation of Manbij from the claws of ISIS? Who talks about the jihadists who kidnapped and trafficked yazidi women from Sengal all over the salafist world? And who remembers the women who declared SDF’s victory over Raqqa, once the capital of the caliphate?
For those who forgot, we remind you that YPJ is still fighting, leading the front of the women’s revolution in Rojava. A front that is once again under attack by proxy forces of the Turkish State, rallied under the ironic name of Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkish-controlled coalition of criminal gangs. Today they threaten the multicultural city of Manbij, a great example of pluralism and local governance integrated in the system of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (DAANES).
Rojava’s revolution is not only reaching for kurds but for arabs, as well as armenians, assyrians, syriacs, turkmens, circassians, and many other ethnic groups present here. The arab forces of the Deir Ezzor Military Council were cheered on by local population when entering the city of Deir Ezzor, taking over the security vacuum that the fleeing regime soldiers left behind. The confederal system of North East Syria is a tested blue print that can serve as a foundation for a revolutionary Syria. Omar Aziz, a prominent anarchist from Damascus, worked for a confederal alliance of local councils, proposing them as a backbone of the Syrian revolution. He was arrested and died in the prisons of the Assad regime in february 2013. We have not forgotten him, and we treasure his words and experience as anarchist and as a revolutionary here, in Syria.
All revolutionary Syrians in exile, arabs, kurds and many others, bear the responsibility to make sure that their revolution succeeds. Also anarchists, communists, feminists, ecologists and other internationalist revolutionaries must feel responsible to defend it. We have a beautiful opportunity to set an example for revolutionary movements all around the world, from Kurdistan to Myanmar, from Chiapas to Palestine. Nation-States are the cornerstone of capitalist modernity, and only a worldwide confederation of popular revolutionary movements can challenge it. The alternative is a descent to authoritarianism, imperialist occupation and fundamentalist hate. We won’t let that happen.
Towards a New Syrian Revolution!
As anarchists, we must also give answers to the question of nation-State. While calling for the end of states and borders, we need to push forward not just our criticisms, but also our proposals and solutions. We have to do this not only in theory, but in practice, organizing with local communities and social movements to build popular power.
Authoritarian forces, like HTS or Erdogan’s turkey, will always use force to impose their control in times of instability. The only way to counter it is popular organization, a strong ethical and political civil society, building people’s self-defense and a revolutionary culture. With international solidarity, to challenge the nationalism and chauvinism that divides us, and that deceivingly serves to legitimize the nation-state system of capitalist modernity. With local governance and confederal models, to challenge the centralized systems and borders of nation-states, that only breed oppression and violence on diversity. With women and queer organizing at the front, to challenge the patriarchal oppression from where all authoritarian models stem.
Since the arab spring of 2011 we have seen many revolutionary attempts in the middle east, but non of them succeed in achieving a libratory solution, sinking again and again in new tyrannical forms of oppression. What do we do after the fall of a tyrant to prevent another one from replacing him? There is a small window of opportunity when a regime collapses. A brief revolutionary time, where the people can take the power back in their hands, preventing a new centralized authority from imposing itself. We have to be ready to seize those opportunities when they come.
Let’s make sure that the Syrian revolution, as well as the kurdish liberation movement that has been spearheading a democratic resistance in the region, become an example for many more revolutions to come! Let’s fight together to build the new world we carry in our hearts!
We Are Not Afraid of Ruins!
Tekoşîna Anarşîst – December 3, 2024
More than five years ago the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) brought the caliphate of ISIS to an end. Now, with the new offensive of Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), we risk a rebirth of their atrocities. HTS has united many jihadist groups with ex-fighters of the caliphate in their ranks. Recently they started a big offensive, breaking through the seige of Idlib and making the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) collapse. Aleppo has been the first big city they captured, seizing big amounts of advanced weapons left behind by regime soldiers.
SDF reacted fast, sending reinforcements to protect the kurdish neigborhood of Sheh Maqsoud in Aleppo as well as the refugee camps of the Sheba region. But the proxy force of the Turkish army, the Syrian National Army (SNA), started a new offensive coordinated with HTS, invading that same region of Sheba. The refugees displaced by the Turkish invasion of Afrin in 2018 are, once again, forced to leave their homes at a point of a gun. More than 100,000 people are now looking for shelter in improvised tents on the shores of the Euphrates river, still threatened by further advances of jihadist groups.
These new developments aggravate the instability of middle east, and should be observed together with other conflicts ongoing on the region. The Israeli occupation of Gaza, together with their attacks against Hezbollah, weakened Iran’s position in Syria, limiting their ability to support the SAA. Russian troops, also weakened after almost three years of war in Ukraine, abandoned several ground positions and are brutally bombing Idlib and Aleppo from the sky.
The US tries to keep outside of the conflict, knowing that Trump may push to withdraw their troops from Syrian soil. Turkish soldiers are not openly involved for now, but Turkish state is pulling the strings of SNA to continue their genocidal policies against kurdish people. Assad is trying to rally some international support from other Arab countries, and Iran already started to send reinforcements for a combined counter-offensive with the SAA. In between this chaos, the Rojava Revolution and the Kurdish Liberation Movement resist as the main hope for revolutionaries in the Middle East.
The largest realignment of forces in Syria in the past five years is under way, and it may have implications we can not yet forsee. It is a complex situation, and we see how many journalist are stuggling to grasp it. Many western media have been encouraged by the march of HTS, even calling them a revolutionary opposition, “rebels” against the dictatorship of Assad. We also wish for the fall of the regime, but HTS and their “salvation government” is not a liberatory solution. Their aim is to replace the Assad dynasty with Sharia law and an Islamic State, little different from what the Taliban are doing in Afghanistan or what the Islamic Republic of Iran have done since 1979. This is not a future we can accept, and many Syrians won’t accept it either.
We, as anarchists and as internationalists in Rojava, will play our role in these challenging times. We will fight alongside the SDF to defend and spread the revolutionary project, building a stateless society where the principles of democratic confederalism, pluralism and women’s revolution prevail. We call for all anarchist and other revolutionary forces, now more than ever, to defend Rojava!
We know that war brings suffering and destruction, but it can also open opportunities of free life for those who are ready. We saw what the victory over ISIS made possible here, and we are ready to continue fighting for a better future. Because we are not afraid of ruins!
The original version of this statement can be found here. You can follow Tekoşîna Anarşîst on Twitter at @TA_Anarsist.