I read this for Stroud Radical Reading Group, having not really engaged with Rojava before - except via the occasional Facebook post, and the bit in the film 'The Accidental Anarchist'. There's a long and sometimes confusing sprint through Kurdish history; I knew the early bits but not the later parts, particularly since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War. It's hard following all the groups and organisations that are referred to, and the dominant groups in Rojava seem down on all other Kurdish movements. It's also the case that the book (inevitably) is out of date, in that the enclaves it writes about are now for the most part occupied either by the Turkish or the Syrian Army. There's a lot about the wider politics of the region, but curiously there's no reference at all to Israel - as it it's somehow nothing to do with Syria. And yet the suggestion that the YPG are supported by Israel is often made, so it seems like the sort of allegation that ought to be addressed rather than ignored.
There's lots that isn't in the book. I don't really understand how the Rojava not-statelet works, and I certainly don't understand what economic model it follows in the absence of a state. There are co-ops, but are there wages, prices, profits? Are these set by the market or something else?
Some bits are too turgid to read, and some too confusing. I find it hard to believe that a Marxist-Leninist inflected nationalist armed struggle turned itself into an eco-anarchist inflected feminist movement, and I'd like to know a lot more about how that happened and what it felt like. I can't believe it was all due to a revelation in prison of Ocalan.
Still, it's utterly amazing what they are even trying to do - to build a libertarian, feminist society in the midst of monstrous hierarchical and patriarchal regimes and movements. Even the fact that they aspire to this is magnificent, and they deserve all the help that they can get...and the book is worthwhile for bringing that out.
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