MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : NEW PROGNOSIS PAPER BY JOOST JONGERDEN ON KURDISH SELF RULE
Governing Kurdistan: Self-Administration in the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria – Joost Jongerden Rural Sociology, Wageningen University, The NetherlandsCorrespondencejoost.jongerden@wur.nl
On 25 September 2017, voters in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and disputed areas controlled by Kurdish forces were given the opportunity to respond ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the question ‘Do you want the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdistani areas outside the administration of the Region to become an independent state?’ Functioning as an expression of the desire to construct an independent state, the referendum signalled a break with the formal Kurdistan Regional Government position of constructive engagement for greater power and autonomy within a unified Iraq. Meanwhile, on 22 September 2017, the neighbouring population in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria elected co-chairs for the approximately 3,700 ‘communes’, which form the basis of what is claimed to be a non-state governmental system. In this region of the northern Middle East, therefore, divided by the Iraqi-Syria border and under the influence of two distinct Kurdish movements, two quite different and competing government systems have emerged. One is based on the idea of the nation-state, the other on societal self-organization. The main questions addressed in this contribution is how these two systems of governance differ and what the societal implications are of these differences? Data on the political-administrative practices has been collected on basis of field work in both regions in the period 2015–2017. A main conclusion is that the systems differ strongly in terms of political outlook, with profound implications for the nature of citizenship and inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations.
Introduction
In 1991, a de facto independent region of Kurdistan in Iraq came into existence after a forced retreat of Iraqi forces; two decades later, in 2012, a fracturing of the central state in Syria gave rise to a system of local self-government in this Kurdistan region. Thus, in both southern (Iraqi) Kurdistan (Başur) and western (Syrian) Kurdistan (Rojava) the weakness of the central power enabled new entities to emerge. The aims of the Kurdish actors and the nature of the entities that emerged, however, differed greatly. The Kurdistan region in Iraq today can be considered a proto-state or statelet, while the Kurdistan region in Syria is quite different, with a self-identity, political system and further aspirations toward a non-statist, confederated form of locally based self-administration.
This article discusses these two forms of governance, looking at their development and comparing them in relation to the idea of the state. I will argue that the problematic and changing relation to the state-idea shaped the main Kurdish movements in the northern Middle East in several ways. Pursuing a doctrine that civilized societies have a state and that the establishment of a state would bring the ultimate recognition of Kurds in modern society, Kurdish political movements historically shaped their political programmes around the objective of state formation, with self-determination as the right on the basis of which recognition as a people and state-formation was considered legitimate. This could take the form of autonomy, a form of self-government within the larger political unit named the state, but could also take the form of the establishment of a state. While a main ideological difference between Kurdish political parties used to be in terms of the state-form it pursued, the distinguishing character since the 2000s has become between those who maintained the state-idea as ultimate objective and those who rejected it, attempting to articulate a form of non-state government.
The two forms of governance discussed in this article are linked to two currents within the Kurdish movement, currents that have dominated the Kurdish political spectrum over the last decades. The first involves the political parties, which are the backbone of the (Iraqi) Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) proto-state, emerging from the tradition of the KDP (Partîya Demokrat a Kurdistanê). In addition to the KDP itself, this tradition includes the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK, Yekêtiya Niştîmaniya Kurdistan), a break-away party from the KDP established in 1976, and Gorran (Change), a break-away party from the PUK founded in 2009.11 These parties have their sister-parties in other parts of Kurdistan.View all notes While these parties are struggling for power within the autonomous territory (proto-state), they are also constituents of it.
The other current is composed of the political parties that are part of or associated with the movement inspired by Abdullah Öcalan, once the political leader of the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan),22 A decentralisation of the PKK resulted in the establishment in 2002 of the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (Partî Çareserî Dîmukratî Kurdistan, PÇDK) focussing on the struggle in the Kurdistan autonomous region in Iraq, in 2003 of the Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat, PYD), focusing on the struggle in Syria, and, in 2004, of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê, PJAK), oriented to the struggle in Iran.View all notes today the symbolic leader of a swarm33 Swarm as in a swarm of singularities, which flow together towards a shared or common objective; see Negri (2011Negri, A. (2011). Art and multitude. Cambridge: Polity Press. [Google Scholar]: 121).View all notes of parties and organisations. We may refer to this as the Apo-ist movement.44 Apo (Kurdish for uncle) is the nick-name for Abdullah Öcalan.View all notes Within this movement the relationship between nation(al) recognition and state formation is questioned. The recognition of the right to self-government should not take the form of a state, it is argued, but of self-organisation as an empowering mechanism against the state. This is referred to as a ‘non-state’ and sometimes ‘non-statist’ democracy.
It must be noted, that one of the most difficult challenges to discussing non-statist forms of societal organisation is the naturalisation of the state in social and political thought. In the case of the Apoist movement, this sometimes leads to incomprehension and lack of understanding of its political outlook (Jongerden, 2016bJongerden, J. (2016b). Making sense: Research as active engagement. Kurdish Studies, 4, 95–104.[Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Although itself the outcome of socio-historical processes, the common sense view is that social life is somehow ‘naturally’ a life within states (Clastres, 1989Clastres, P. (1989). Society against the state, essays in political anthropology. New York: Zone Books. [Google Scholar]), that these are inevitable, the pre-ordained products of societal development (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2009Beck, U., & Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2009). Global generations and the trap of methodological nationalism for a cosmopolitan turn in the sociology of youth and generation. European Sociological Review, 25, 25–36. doi: 10.1093/esr/jcn032[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Clastres, 1989Clastres, P. (1989). Society against the state, essays in political anthropology. New York: Zone Books. [Google Scholar]). This hegemonic consensus operates like an intellectual constraint and a powerful barrier against understanding ideas and practices from which a new ‘political architecture’ may arise, and may lead to easy dismissal of new practices instead of serious consideration (Nimni, 2013Nimni, E. (2013). The conceptual challenge of non-territorial autonomy. In A. Osipov & D. Smith (Eds.), The challenge of non-territorial autonomy theory and practice. Nationalisms across the globe. Peter Lang: Oxford. [Google Scholar], 6).
Data for this article was collected by fieldwork undertaken by the author in the Syrian (October 2015) and Iraqi (October 2014, October 2015, September 2017) regions of Kurdistan. The stay in the Kurdistan region in Syria (Rojava) was organised by the New World Summit,55 The New World Summit is an artistic and political organization founded in 2012. It is dedicated to providing ‘alternative parliaments’ and ‘imaginative spaces’ for debates on democracy and emancipatory politics. See newworldsummit.org/about/View all notes during which a conference was also held. In the context of this event, visits were undertaken to towns and villages of Derik, Rimelan, Amude and Qamislo, and interviews were made with activists, representatives of political parties and also, informally, people encountered along the way while traveling and staying in the region. Interviews took place with people in the Apoist movement were conducted in October 2014 and 2015. The 2017 research in the KRG-administered territory was conducted in the context of participation in a mission to observe the referendum on independence that was held there on September 25 (Park, Jongerden, Owtram, & Yoshioka, 2017Park, B., Jongerden, J., Owtram, F., & Yoshioka, A. (2017). On the independence referendum in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and disputed territories in 2017. Kurdish Studies, 5, 199–214.[Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]).
The structure of this article is as follows. First, general backgrounds are presented, reviewing the situations of the two regions through which the opportunities to develop new governance systems emerged due to the collapse of the existing states. This is followed by discussion about the way the two Kurdish movements acted upon this collapse of the state, one searching for recognition through a process of state building, the other trying to work beyond the state. In order to give meaning to this discussion, I will provide backgrounds of the ideas of federalism and of democratic-confederalism and the ways in which these have been enacted in the two regions.
Uprisings and the State
The modern history of the Kurdistan region is marked by unrest and uprising in the context of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and processes of state formation. While states were being carved out from the remnants of collapsing empires in Europe and the Middle East, military organisation among the Kurds and the political aspiration to establish an independent state were relatively weak. Thus, when the Ottoman Empire made way for states through the Treaties of Sevres (1920) and Lausanne (1923), Kurds found themselves divided between Turkey, Syria and Iraq.66 Kurds in Iran, of course, remained outside of this (new) division.View all notes Thereafter, in the context of this new division and the subsequent subjugation of Kurds within the new states, a series of uprisings occurred (Jwaideh, 2006Jwaideh, W. (2006). The Kurdish national movement: Its origins and development. New York: Syracuse University Press. [Google Scholar]; McDowall, 2000McDowall, D. (2000). A modern history of the Kurds. London: I.B. Taurus. [Google Scholar]; Olson, 1989Olson, R. (1989). The emergence of Kurdish nationalism and the sheikh said rebellion, 1880–1925. Austin: University of Texas Press. [Google Scholar]).
In what had become Iraq, a decades long, political struggle resulted in the recognition of Kurdish territorial autonomy in 1970. However, the agreement collapsed in 1974 and the end of the territorial autonomy of the Kurdistan region was followed by war, Arabisation, insurgency and then the horrors of the chemical attacks and mass deportations in 1987 and 1988, which resulted in an effective defeat of the Kurdish armed movement in Iraq (Bruinessen, 1994Bruinessen, M. v. (1994). Genocide in Kurdistan? The suppression of the dersim rebellion in Turkey (1937–38) and the chemical War against the Iraqi Kurds (1988). In G. J. Andreopoulos (Ed.), Conceptual and historical dimensions of genocide (pp. 2–5). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Google Scholar], 16, 21; HRW, 1993 HRW. (1993). Genocide in Iraq: The anfal campaign against the Kurds. New York: Human Rights Watch. [Google Scholar]). Opportunities for the Kurds in Iraq developed again after the 1991, US-led Operation Desert Storm, launched against Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, when the international coalition implemented Operation Provide Comfort to give refugees humanitarian assistance and installed a no-fly zone (NFZ) north of the 36th parallel to protect them (Chorev, 2007Chorev, M. (2007). Iraqi Kurdistan: The internal dynamics and statecraft of a semistate. al Naklah, the Fletcher School Online Journal for Issue Related to Southwest Asia and Islamic Civiliation, Fall, 1–11. [Google Scholar]; Romano, 2006Romano, D. (2006). The Kurdish nationalist movement: Opportunity, mobilization and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). It was this NFZ that effectively brought the Kurdistan autonomous region into being (Gunter, 2008Gunter, M. (2008). The Kurds ascending: The evolving sollution to the Kurdish issue in Iraq and Turkey. New York: Palgrave.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]; McDowall, 2000McDowall, D. (2000). A modern history of the Kurds. London: I.B. Taurus. [Google Scholar]; Romano, 2006Romano, D. (2006). The Kurdish nationalist movement: Opportunity, mobilization and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]; Yoshioka, 2015Yoshioka, A. (2015). The shifting balance of power in Iraqi Kurdistan: The struggle for democracy with uninstitutionalized governance. International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, 9, 21–35. doi: 10.1386/ijcis.9.1.21_1[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]), and a new territorial entity was born, comprising the governorates of Sulaymaniyah, Erbil and Dohuk.77 Parts of Nineva above the NFZ were administratively absorbed by Dohuk, and the northern part of Diyala was absorbed by Sulaymaniyah.View all notes This region came to be referred to as the ‘Kurdistan region in Iraq’ or the ‘Kurdistan autonomous region’.
When the US invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, the boundaries of the Kurdistan region were pushed southwards (Yoshioka, 2015Yoshioka, A. (2015). The shifting balance of power in Iraqi Kurdistan: The struggle for democracy with uninstitutionalized governance. International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, 9, 21–35. doi: 10.1386/ijcis.9.1.21_1[Crossref], , [Google Scholar], 22–23), and, in 2014, when the Iraqi army collapsed in Mosul under attack from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)—now just Islamic State (IS)—the Peshmerga moved further south in agreement with the central government in Baghdad, establishing control over the long-disputed city and oil-rich area of Kirkuk, among other places. Finally, therefore, the Kurdish political parties in Iraq had gained control over the Kurdistan region there. Though the Kurdistan region is formally governed by the state institutions making up the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, the region has since become divided into a north-western part led by the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) under Massoud Barzani and a south-eastern part led by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) under Jalal Talabani.
Some 20 years after the Kurdish political parties in Iraq had gained control over the main part of the Kurdistan region in Iraq, the violent disarray into which the state of Syria fell created opportunities for the Kurdish movement there. In January 2011, following a sequence of protests that swept through North Africa and the Middle East from Tunisia and Egypt eastwards generally referred to as the ‘Arab Spring’, mass protests erupted along with violent actions and reactions in Syria, too. Within three months, by March, 2011, the Syrian protests had developed into an uprising. The regime in Damascus thought it could mitigate and supress the protests by a combination of gesture politics and brutal force, as it had done before, but the international context had changed considerably.
The civil uprising in Syria in 2011 quickly transformed into an active insurgency, with the state as the main trophy. This insurgency was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012 and then by the emergence of Al-Qaida and Islamic State (IS), with various states in the region fuelling an attempted armed overthrow of the regime in Damascus. The result was an increasingly violent cluster of interlinked conflicts in different locations with alignments of armies and militias made up of variously independent and proxy forces in which no single power could prevail (Dam, 2017Dam, N. v. (2017). Destroying a nation, The civil war in Syria. London: I.B. Taurus. [Google Scholar], 183).88 Russia and Iran intervened decisively for the regime, with the US and West focusing on removing IS, including through collaboration with the Kurdish forces.View all notes
Though the Kurdistan region in Syria had its own history of resistance against oppressive Syrian state policies, under Hafez el-Assad and then his son Bashar, including Arabisation and denial of citizenship (Allsopp, 2014Allsopp, H. (2014). The Kurds of Syria. New York: Pallgrave. [Google Scholar]; Knapp, Flach, & Ayboga, 2014Knapp, M., Flach, A., & Ayboga, E. (2014). Revolution in Rojava democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto. [Google Scholar]; Lowe, 2014Lowe, R. (2014). The emergence of western Kurdistan and the future of Syria. In D. Romano & M. Gurses (Eds.), Conflict, democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (pp. 225–246). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [Google Scholar]; Schmidinger, 2014Schmidinger, T. (2014). Krieg und Revolution in Syrisch-Kurdistan. Wien: Mandelbaum Verlag. [Google Scholar]), protests in Syrian Kurdistan broke out relatively late in 2012. With the central state facing an existential threat in the capital, its local authority in this peripheral, though agriculturally important, area was given up. People’s Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, YPG), allied to the PYD, took the city of Kobanê on July 19, followed by Amude and Afrin on July 20, and Derik and Qamislo in the days after. Within two weeks, regime forces had pulled back to the south of Rojava, though maintaining strongholds in Hasakeh and Qamislo (Knapp et al., 2014Knapp, M., Flach, A., & Ayboga, E. (2014). Revolution in Rojava democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto. [Google Scholar]; Knapp & Jongerden, 2016Knapp, M., & Jongerden, J. (2016). Communal democracy: The social contract and confederalism in rojava. Comparative Islamic Studies, 10(1), 87–109. [Google Scholar]). In the years that followed, the YPG forces—and later, too, the 2013-established Women’s Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Jin, YPJ) and the Syrian Defence Forces (SDF), a coalition of forces established around the YPG and developed into a broader, progressive, multi-ethnic and multi-religious alliance—were able to establish a monopoly of violence in the regions under their control and build relatively stable and working administrations.
Not only the relation to the regime, but also the question of the state became an important and dividing issue between the Apoist movement and other parties, both the pro-KRG parties and the Arab opposition.
Importantly, the PYD and the political umbrella organisation of the Syrian Democratic Council (Konseya Demokratîk a Sûriyê, SDC) did not aim at conquering the state to take over from the Assad regime nor at constructing a new state. Differently from other opposition groupings, it did not focus on (Syrian) regime change. For the PYD, the principle issue was not a replacement of (Bashar) Assad, but a change of the very political system through which dictatorships and dynasties emerge. The PYD advocated a radical change to the political formation underlying the repression in Syria and the Middle East as a whole, one that involved the construction of more genuinely democratic institutions for a societal empowerment.99 E.g. Salih Muslum: ‘We want a fundamental change to the oppressive system. There are some who hold up the slogan: the fall of the regime. Our problems are not of powers. The ruling powers in Damascus come and go’ (Allsopp, 2014Allsopp, H. (2014). The Kurds of Syria. New York: Pallgrave. [Google Scholar]: 209).View all notes Contrary to the statist political outlook of the Kurdish parties in Başur the political outlook of the PYD was centred on a strengthening of society vis-á-vis the state through a form of active citizenship and self-government—a non-state, or better, non-statist democracy—which stood square to Assad’s and the opposition’s objective of centralised state rule (Allsopp, 2014Allsopp, H. (2014). The Kurds of Syria. New York: Pallgrave. [Google Scholar]; Knapp et al., 2014Knapp, M., Flach, A., & Ayboga, E. (2014). Revolution in Rojava democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto. [Google Scholar]; Lowe, 2014Lowe, R. (2014). The emergence of western Kurdistan and the future of Syria. In D. Romano & M. Gurses (Eds.), Conflict, democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (pp. 225–246). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [Google Scholar]; Maur & Staal, 2015Maur, R. in der, & Staal, J. (Eds.). (2015). Stateless democracy. Utrecht: BAK. [Google Scholar]; Schmidinger, 2014Schmidinger, T. (2014). Krieg und Revolution in Syrisch-Kurdistan. Wien: Mandelbaum Verlag. [Google Scholar]).
The PYD/SDC orientation towards systemic change rather than to regime change through a conquering of the state informed its distrust of the Syrian National Council (SNC), a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated entity sponsored by Turkey that called for regime change but was considerably less vocal on systemic change. The PYD/SNC also rejected the Kurdish National Council (KNC), an umbrella organisation established in 2011 under the political guidance KRG President Massoud Barzani, which was collaborating with the Syrian opposition. The tensions between the KNC/SNC, on the one hand, and the PYD/SDC, on the other, expressed a fundamental division between the two different approaches to the state. While the PYD/SDC aimed to develop a ordering based on the idea of autonomous assemblies, the KNC aimed at autonomy for the Kurds within a Syria in which the Ba’ath regime would be replaced, something we may refer to as the KRG model.
This conflict between the PYD and the pro-KRG Kurdish parties coincided with a crisis within the Kurdish party political system that had developed over the previous decade or more. The popularity of the main Kurdish political parties in Syria had been falling since the 1990s, due, among other things, to factionalism and the domination of personality issues, along with the inability of the parties to gain concessions from the state (Allsopp, 2014Allsopp, H. (2014). The Kurds of Syria. New York: Pallgrave. [Google Scholar], 176–177). While support for these parties diminished, however, the levels of Kurdish national consciousness and youth activism increased. It was from out of this contradiction—a crisis in traditional party politics set against a raised political awareness—that the PYD was able to make its political alternative of autonomous assemblies, horizontally connected and bottom-up constructed, attractive for youth activists, who had become suspicious of bureaucratic and centralised structures. The PYD/SDC political outlook, often not understood by classical party organisations, resonated strongly with the emerging activism.
Thus, two very different political imaginaries for governance came to the fore in the Kurdistan regions in Iraq and Syria, each with a different approach towards the idea of the state. With the Iraqi Kurdistan achievement of de-facto independence in 1991 and an overthrow of the centralist and nationalist Ba’ath regime in 2003, the future for a federally based state construction of Başur looked bright. In Syrian Kurdistan, meanwhile, the PYD initiated a process of self-administration, developing a network of interconnected and self-administrated villages, neighbourhoods, cities and regions in and even reaching out beyond Rojava. The two models, of Başur and Rojava, are referred to here as federalist (autonomy) and democratic confederalist (democratic autonomy).
The Question of the State: Political Outlooks
Though fostering a dream of independent statehood, the Kurdish leadership’s struggle for autonomy in Iraq has a long history, going back to the failed autonomy agreement between the KDP and the Iraqi regime in 1970 (Stansfield, 2017Stansfield, G. (2017). The Kurdish experience in post-saddam Iraq. London: Hurst. [Google Scholar], 358–360). Since 1991, when the Kurdistan region gained a de facto near independence from the central government, the dominant political parties, the KDP and PUK, have continued to favour a federal approach to the question of self-administration.
The driving force of a federal system is a politics of recognition. When ‘difference and diversity are able to breathe and to express themselves as a legitimate driving force in the federation’ writes Burgess (2017Burgess, M. (2017). Federalism and Federation: Putting the record straight? (50 Shades of Federalism.
Retrieved from http://50shadesoffederalism.com/case-studies/spain-federal-country/) [Google Scholar]), a federal state ‘works’. Thus, a federal system is ‘meant to provide institutional solutions that allow the different segments of diverse societies to realise their aspirations for self-determination while simultaneously preserving the overall social and territorial integrity of existing states’ (Wolff, 2009Wolff, S. (2009). Complex power-sharing and the centrality of territorial self-governance in contemporary conflict settlements. Ethnopolitics, 8, 27–45. doi: 10.1080/17449050902738853[Taylor & Francis Online], , [Google Scholar], 28). Although the driving force in the Iraqi federal arrangement is a politics of recognition, institutionalised in the form of at least two levels of government that have constitutionally defined powers (Anderson & Stansfield, 2005Anderson, L., & Stansfield, G. (2005). The implications of elections for federalism in Iraq: Toward a five-region model . Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 35, 359–382. doi: 10.1093/publius/pji024[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar], 3) and in which each authority has at least one domain in which it is autonomous (Danilovich & Owtram, 2017Danilovich, A., & Owtram, F. (2017). Federalism as a means to managa conflicts and associated risks. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 14), there is considerable disagreement about the institutional setting. Two competing approaches of federal engineering have emerged (Gold, 2011Gold, V. (2011, April 12–17). Power-sharing or power-dividing? walking out of the Maze. Paper prepared for presentation at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, St. Gallen, Switzerland [Google Scholar]). The first is referred to as mono-national (or territorial, administrative or majoritarian), and the second is referred to as multi-national (or ethnic or pluralist) (Gunter, 2008Gunter, M. (2008). The Kurds ascending: The evolving sollution to the Kurdish issue in Iraq and Turkey. New York: Palgrave.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar], 21).
The mono-national approach advocates the drawing of boundary lines of the federal entities in such a way that no ethnic, religious or cultural group forms a majority (Anderson & Stansfield, 2005Anderson, L., & Stansfield, G. (2005). The implications of elections for federalism in Iraq: Toward a five-region model . Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 35, 359–382. doi: 10.1093/publius/pji024[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar], 4). If federal regions are made under such an arrangement, this is thought to dilute the strength of any ethnic, religious or cultural group and thus to encourage inter-group cooperation. Initially, the US was said to have favoured a mono-national federal state, drawing boundaries in such a way that the Kurds, Sunnis and Shi’as would be divided across different federal regions in order to stimulate inter-communal collaboration. A major critique of this approach, however, was that it would necessitate the construction of absurdly shaped units running north to south (Gunter, 2008Gunter, M. (2008). The Kurds ascending: The evolving sollution to the Kurdish issue in Iraq and Turkey. New York: Palgrave.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar], 22–23).
The multi-national model does not favour the separation of state and nation, but seeks the development of federal entities at the level of groups, accommodating desires to self-government (Gunter, 2008Gunter, M. (2008). The Kurds ascending: The evolving sollution to the Kurdish issue in Iraq and Turkey. New York: Palgrave.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar], 22–23). Arguments have been made (Anderson & Stansfield, 2005Anderson, L., & Stansfield, G. (2005). The implications of elections for federalism in Iraq: Toward a five-region model . Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 35, 359–382. doi: 10.1093/publius/pji024[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]) in favour of a five-region multi-national model for Iraq, comprising Basra, Kufa (the Shi’a holy region), Greater Baghdad, Mosul and Kurdistan, regions that have more or less equal populations and would, supposedly, accommodate Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shi’a Arabs in the formation of federal entities within Iraq. However, the principle of congruency is based on the widespread assumption that a nation is to be considered a ‘[human] collectivity existing within a clearly demarcated territory’, even though the idea that human collectivities are spatially organised in separate entities is extremely questionable (Giddens, 1985Giddens, A. (1985). The nation-state and violence. Cambridge: Polity.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). People do not live as packaged bundles of people waiting for a state to be drawn around them (Taylor, 1985Taylor, P. J. (1985). Political geography, world economy, nation-state, and locality. London: Longman. [Google Scholar]). In fact, as Öcalan (2010Öcalan, A. (2010). Demokratik Uygarlık Manifestosu: ortaduğu’da uygarlik krizi ve demokratik uygarlık çözümü. Neuss: Mezopotamya Yayınları. [Google Scholar], 195) notes, every state aspiring to become a nation-state faces the problem of becoming a centre of assimilation and homogenisation, putting peoples and borders under surveillance.
While state formation and federal autonomy were top of the agenda in Iraqi Kurdistan, the political thought of the PYD, inspired by the post-1999 work of Abdullah Öcalan, problematised the concept of the state. Öcalan (Öcalan, 2013Öcalan, A. (2013). Liberating life: Woman’s revolution. Cologne: International Initiative Edition & Mesopotamian Publishers. [Google Scholar], 2015Öcalan, A. (2015). Manifesto for a demcoratic civilization: The age of masked gods and disguised kings. Porsgrunn: New Compass. [Google Scholar]) had argued that social inequalities and cultural injustices are directly related to the process of state formation, which has its historical background in the idea of the ‘strong man’ and the emergence of gender hierarchy. In Liberating Life, Öcalan (2013Öcalan, A. (2013). Liberating life: Woman’s revolution. Cologne: International Initiative Edition & Mesopotamian Publishers. [Google Scholar], 55) argued that the struggle for justice ‘entails creating political formations aiming to achieve a society that is democratic, gender equal, eco-friendly and where state is not the pivotal element’ (emphasis added). Referred to by Nietzsche as ‘the coldest of cold monsters’ (Merrifield, 2006Merrifield, A. (2006). Henri lefebvre: A critical introduction. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 157), the state is critiqued by Öcalan (Öcalan, 2010Öcalan, A. (2010). Demokratik Uygarlık Manifestosu: ortaduğu’da uygarlik krizi ve demokratik uygarlık çözümü. Neuss: Mezopotamya Yayınları. [Google Scholar], 193) as an institution that stands not for democracy, freedom and human rights but rather their denial.
Briefly, Öcalan’s critique of the modern state combines two analytical threads. The first is a state-critique that problematises the administrative state, the creation of a bureaucracy as a dominant class, in which the main contradiction becomes that between the people and this dominant class. The alternative of a system of local self-administration is suggested to address this contradiction. The second is a state critique, which problematises the nation-state form as having ultimate objective of homogenising the population through assimilation into a dominant identity and thus erasing diversity and difference. The idea of autonomy as the right of cultural, ethnic, gender and religious groups to organise themselves and give expression to their interests and identity aims to address this.
Thus, rejecting the administrative state and the nation-state, Öcalan (2014Öcalan, A. (2014) War and Peace in Kurdistan, Perspectives for a political solution of the Kurdish question. Cologne: Transmedia Publishing. [Google Scholar], 32) proposed a new model:
The people are to be directly involved in the decision finding process of the society. This projects relies on the self-government of local communities and is organized in the form of open councils, town councils, local parliaments and larger congresses. Citizens are the agents of this kind of self-government instead of state-based institutions. The principle of federative self-government has no limitations. It can even be continued across borders in order to create multinational democratic structures. Democratic confederalism prefers flat hierarchies where decision finding and decision-making processes take place within local communities … It provides a framework within which minorities, religious communities, cultural groups, gender-specific groups and other societal groups can organize themselves autonomously.
Following the libertarian socialist thinker Murray Bookchin (1991Bookchin, M. (1991, October). Libertarian municipalism: An overview. Green Perspectives. Retrieved from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/gp/perspectives24.html [Google Scholar]), Öcalan uses the term ‘democratic autonomy’ to refer to the decision-making capacities and responsibilities of people themselves, a politics fundamentally based on an engaged involvement, a primarily participatory rather than representative democracy (Akkaya & Jongerden, 2013Akkaya, A. H., & Jongerden, J. (2013). Confederalism and autonomy in Turkey: The kurdistan workers’ party and the reinvention of democracy. In Cengiz Gunes & Welat Zeydanlioglu (Eds.), The kurdish question in Turkey: New perspectives on violence, representation and reconciliation. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Jongerden & Akkaya, 2013Jongerden, J., & Akkaya, A. H. (2013).
Democratic confederalism as a kurdish spring: The PKK and the quest for radical democracy. In Mohammed Ahmet & Michael Gunter (Eds.), The kurdish spring: Geopolitical changes and the kurds. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers. [Google Scholar]). The principle of ‘democratic confederalism’ refers to the inter-connective context in which self-government should take place, comprising a multi-layered network of local assemblies as a principle of social organisation aimed at ‘democratizing the interdependence without surrendering the principle of local control’ (Bookchin, 1991Bookchin, M. (1991, October). Libertarian municipalism: An overview. Green Perspectives. Retrieved from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/gp/perspectives24.html [Google Scholar] ). Thus, a bottom-up process of extension starting with the establishment of ‘direct-democratic popular assemblies at the municipal, town, and neighbourhood levels’ becomes, through the emergent confederated form, an alternative to the state; this is ‘a politics that seeks to recreate a vital local political or civic sphere’.1010 dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/bio1.htmlView all notes Over larger regions, these assemblies would confederate and, as they gain strength, challenge the centralised nation-state. Bookchin argued for a municipalisation (rather than a Marxian nationalisation) of the economy, as a way of opposing the present corporate capitalist system of ownership and management (Simkin, 2014Simkin, J. (2014). Murray Bookchin. Spartacus International. Retrieved from http://spartacus-educational.com/USAbookchin.htm [Google Scholar]).
It was through his imbibition of these ideas that Öcalan came to question whether independence really ought to be conceptualised and practiced in the form of state construction. Thus, following a critique and self-critique on the character of national liberation struggles and ‘real existing socialism’ during the 1990s, Öcalan developed a new political philosophy for the Middle East (Jongerden, 2016aJongerden, J. (2016a). Colonialisim, self-determination and independence: The new PKK paradigm. In M. Gunter (Ed.), Kurdish iusses: Essays in honor of robert W. Olson (pp. 106–121). Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers. [Google Scholar]). Thereafter, the Kurdish movement organisations inspired by his thought—including not only the PKK (in Turkey) and PYD (in Syria), but also others, like TECAK (in Iraq) and KODAR (in Iran)—started to develop an ideological architecture on the basis of the idea of self-government as a non-statist society and thence to address issues of socioeconomic and sociocultural injustice, meaning inequality and exclusion (Jongerden, 2017Jongerden, J. (2017). Gender equality and radical democracy: Contractions and conflicts in relation to the ‘new paradigm’ within the Kurdistan workers’ party (PKK). Anatoli, 8, 233–256. doi: 10.4000/anatoli.618[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]).
Politics Toward a State
On 25 September 2017, voters in the federal entity of Iraqi Kurdistan were given the opportunity to vote Yes or No to the question ‘Do you want the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdistani areas outside the administration of the Region to become an independent state?’ In line with the idea of state construction and maintenance as the primary objective of political action, the referendum signalled a symbolic break by the Kurdish political establishment from the formal position of constructive engagement for a Kurdistan region within a federal Iraq. Indeed, on the day before the referendum, regional president Masoud Barzani disqualified the current federal state of affairs, referring to it as a failed partnership and to Iraq as a sectarian state. No longer was any meaningful negotiation with Baghdad considered possible regarding the position of Kurdistan within a federal Iraq (Park et al., 2017Park, B., Jongerden, J., Owtram, F., & Yoshioka, A. (2017). On the independence referendum in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and disputed territories in 2017. Kurdish Studies, 5, 199–214.[Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar], 199, 201). This represented a firm step toward the presumed ultimate goal, the establishment of an independent and internationally recognised state. The KDP enthusiastically pushed for referendum while the PUK and Gorran concerned with the KDP’s hegemony expressed lukewarm support/rejection of it.
The referendum was followed by arrest warrants for the referendum organisers and authorisation of the use of force. The Iraqi Armed Forces (IAF) and the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF, Hashed al-Shaabi), an umbrella organisation of mainly Shi’a militias, moved into Kirkuk on October 16, and quickly took control of the disputed territories and most of the oil fields there. The KDP and PUK were shown to be hopelessly divided, retreating from territory they had controlled since 2014. Importantly, the central government aimed at regaining control over border-posts, and to enforce this announced an international flight ban on the region’s airports starting September 29, which was only lifted on 13 March 2018 after federal authority of the Erbil and Sulaymaniyah airports was officially restored. What the Kurds lacked was a unified leadership and military command to execute a well-thought out political and military strategy (Anczewski, 2017Anczewski, A. (2017, November). Kurdistan lost: Kurdish sovereignty takes heavy blow. Foreign Brief. Retrieved from https://www.foreignbrief.com/middle-east/kurdistan-kurdish-sovereignty-heavy-blow/ [Google Scholar]).
The failure to act like a state had caused defeat.
Reviewing the period 1991–2017, therefore, we witness a double process of failed state construction, of a failure in the Kurdistan autonomous region, that is, as well as in Iraq as a whole. The failure of the latter became manifest with the lack of political progress or even any consensus about how to move forward, particularly given the centralising tendencies in Baghdad. Indeed, Iraq came to resemble a federacy in which the central state was linked to one grouping—broadly, the interests of Shi’a political leaders. In the Kurdistan autonomous region, meanwhile, the referendum served to highlight the weakness of Kurdish government institutions. The KRG proved to be defunct, and what remained were clientelistic party-person militia networks unable to act in concert. Their mutual antagonism, never resolved, created the conditions in which Baghdad could act. This resulted in its easy (re)taking of control of the disputed territories and a forcing of its authority upon the region, further antagonising relations between the two. This double process of failed state construction will be discussed as a failure to act in concert, both at the level of the federal state and the level of the self-governing state entity within the federation.
The future of Iraq and federalism had appeared promising for Kurds in 2005. Although many were suspicious of the reincorporation and had voted already for independence in an informal referendum organised in parallel to parliamentary elections in 2005 (Ahmed, 2013Ahmed, M. M. A. (2013). Kurdish spring, Iraqi Kurdistan. In M. M. A. Ahmed & M. Gunter (Eds.), The Kurdish spring: Geopolitical changes and the Kurds (pp. 93–132). Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers. [Google Scholar], 112, 131), the main Kurdish leaders and their parties, the KDP and PUK, had decided to remain in a federal Iraq. They were pressured by the US to remain in Iraq and act as a stabilizing force between the Shi’a majority and Sunni minority, yet the Kurdish leaders had anyway already expressed a commitment to a post-Saddam federal Iraq. It was as early as 1992 that the KDP, PUK and the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organisation of Iraqi groups opposed to Saddam’s regime, agreed on the principle of a federal state (Yildiz, 2004Yildiz, K. (2004). The Kurds in Iraq: The past, present and future. London: Pluto Press. [Google Scholar], 116).
In 2005, the KDP, PUK and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI),1111 Renamed the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) in 2007.View all notes which had considerable support among the Shi’a in the south, co-drafted the new constitution. Articles 117, 141 of the new constitution formally instituted the Kurdistan region and effectively recognised the Kurdistan parliament and the legislation enacted there (Ahmed, 2013Ahmed, M. M. A. (2013). Kurdish spring, Iraqi Kurdistan. In M. M. A. Ahmed & M. Gunter (Eds.), The Kurdish spring: Geopolitical changes and the Kurds (pp. 93–132). Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers. [Google Scholar]; Danilovich, 2014Danilovich, A. (2014). Iraqi federalism and the Kurd: Learning to live together. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Kane, Hiltermann, & Alkadiri, 2012Kane, S., Hiltermann, J. R., & Alkadiri, R. (2012, March/April). Iraq’s federalism quandary. The National Interest, 118, 20–30. [Google Scholar]; Katzman, 2010Katzman, K. (2010). The Kurds in post-saddam Iraq. Washington, DC: CRS Report for Congress. [Google Scholar]; Stansfield, 2005Stansfield, G. (2005). Governing Kurdistan: The strengths of division. In B. O’Leary, J. McGarry, & K. Salih (Eds.), The future of kurdistan in Iraq (pp. 195–218). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Google Scholar], 2017Stansfield, G. (2017). The Kurdish experience in post-saddam Iraq. London: Hurst. [Google Scholar]; Stansfield & Anderson, 2009Stansfield, G., & Anderson, L. (2009). Kurds in Iraq: The struggle between Baghdad and Erbil. Middle East Policy, 16, 134–145. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4967.2009.00386.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Yoshioka, 2015Yoshioka, A. (2015). The shifting balance of power in Iraqi Kurdistan: The struggle for democracy with uninstitutionalized governance. International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, 9, 21–35. doi: 10.1386/ijcis.9.1.21_1[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). Other regions, with the exception of the Baghdad region, were given the right to form a federal region in the future (Wolff, 2009Wolff, S. (2009). Complex power-sharing and the centrality of territorial self-governance in contemporary conflict settlements. Ethnopolitics, 8, 27–45. doi: 10.1080/17449050902738853[Taylor & Francis Online], , [Google Scholar], 30). The constitution was approved in a referendum on 15 October 2005. While the population in the majority Shi’a and Kurdish welcomed it, the new constitution was met with fierce opposition from Sunnis, whose leaders had not actively participated in the drafting.
Two main processes undermined the states under construction, both the federal state and the Kurdistan Region, leading to their failures.
First, the Iraqi state became sectarian and centralist. Even as the 2005 constitution was drafted, it became clear that an undercurrent in the Shi’a political leadership favoured simple majoritarian rule in a centralised unitary state (Gunter, 2008Gunter, M. (2008). The Kurds ascending: The evolving sollution to the Kurdish issue in Iraq and Turkey. New York: Palgrave.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar], 20), and in the years that followed, anti-federalism among the Shi’a leadership increased. A matter of grave concern for the Kurds was the refusal of the Iraqi central government to implement Article 140, which required it to ‘perform a census and conclude through referenda in Kirkuk and other disputed territories the will of their citizens’. The referendum in areas considered by the Kurds as part of Kurdistan should have been concluded before 31 December 2007. While the Kurds saw the failure to implement the referendum as a violation of the constitution, Iraqi leaders considered it expired (Park et al., 2017Park, B., Jongerden, J., Owtram, F., & Yoshioka, A. (2017). On the independence referendum in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and disputed territories in 2017. Kurdish Studies, 5, 199–214.[Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar], 201). This signalled a major break between the parties drafting the constitution.
Second, although the KDP and PUK had acted in concert at the time of the drafting of the 2005 constitution, they were hopelessly divided by the time of the referendum in 2017. The PUK was prone to divisions and splits, aggravated by the absence and illness of its leader, Jalal Talabani, who died in October 2017. This had already resulted in the establishment of the PUK breakaway party Gorran (Change) in 2009, disrupting a 15-year-old power-sharing agreement between the KDP and PUK that had dominated Kurdish politics. Gorran campaigned for a strengthening of the governmental institutions, the integration of party and personal militia into a Peshmerga army, accountable to the Ministry of Defence, and against corruption. It was precisely this failure to create political coherence through government institutions that was exposed in the preparation for the referendum and its aftermath. Ironically, while the KDP and PUK had been acting in concert on the construction of a federal Iraq since 2005, therefore, they had failed to build a strong autonomous entity within that Iraq. Indeed, unable to formulate a consistent and cohesive political and military strategy, they had developed the federal region through competitive clientelistic networks (Aziz, 2017Aziz, S. (2017). The economic system(s) of the Kurdistan regional government, Iraq. In G. Gürbey, S. Hofmann, & F. I. Seyder (Eds.), Between state and Non-state: Politics and society in Kurdistan-Iraq and palestine (pp. 103–122). New York: Palgrave.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]).1212 The construction and maintenance of these clientelistic networks was highly dependent on the availability of resources (Wilgenburg & Fumerton, 2015Wilgenburg, W. v., & Fumerton, M. (2015). Kurdistan’s political armies: The challenge of unifying the peshmerga forces. Beirut: Carnegie Middle East Center. [Google Scholar]: 5), and the asymmetric access to resources needed to sustain these networks heightened the competition between the two main parties. The KDP controlled Ibrahim Khalil border post with Turkey, which produced much higher revenues than those gained by the PUK controlling the border with Iran (Chorev, 2007Chorev, M. (2007). Iraqi Kurdistan: The internal dynamics and statecraft of a semistate. al Naklah, the Fletcher School Online Journal for Issue Related to Southwest Asia and Islamic Civiliation, Fall, 1–11. [Google Scholar]: 4), and there has been an ongoing competition between KDP and PUK over who controls the oil-rich territories in the region. The international community allegedly strengthened this reality of competing party networks, by dealing with politicians from the region as party leaders and not with them as KRG government officials (Yoshioka, 2015Yoshioka, A. (2015). The shifting balance of power in Iraqi Kurdistan: The struggle for democracy with uninstitutionalized governance. International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, 9, 21–35. doi: 10.1386/ijcis.9.1.21_1[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 33). Then, with the rise of IS in 2014, investments and revenues slumped, while oil prices dropped, causing serious money-flow problems for the maintenance of the power structures that had evolved.View all notes
Politics Beyond the State
On 22 September 2017, three days before the independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan, elections were organised for the commune co-chairs in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. A total of some 728,450 votes were cast, representing around 70% of all eligible voters. In the Cezîre region (Qamişlo and Hesekê cantons), people elected co-chairs for 2,669 communes from over 12,000 candidates, while in the Fırat region (Kobane and Grê Spî cantons) people elected co-chairs for 843 communes from over 3,100 candidates, and for the Afrin region (Afrin and Şehba cantons), people elected co-chairs for 435 communes from over 1550 candidates.1313 At tr.hawarnews.comView all notes The elections were boycotted by the pro-Barzani parties in the KNC, claiming they had been deliberately arranged to draw attention away from the independence referendum in Iraqi-Kurdistan.1414 ‘The insistence of the Democratic Union (PYD) to hold its one-sided elections at this particular time is a blatant challenge to the will of our Kurdish people in Syria’s Kurdistan and a clear attempt to deflect attention from the referendum’ asserted the KNC. http://theregion.org/m/news/11613-barzani-affiliated-kurdish-national-council-have-called-for-boycott-on-elections-in-northern-syriaView all notes
Irrespective of intentions, however, what is important was that in the same month, an attempt to establish an independent state was made in one part of Kurdistan, while in the other part, an attempt was made to strengthen self-administration through the local elections of co-chairs, the core of what claimed to be a non-statist form of government.
Once large parts of Rojava had come under the control of the YPG in 2012, local (neighbourhood) assemblies were developed to provide some form of government and the provisioning of services, such as the distribution of food and fuel to the organisation of education and self-defence. The establishment of councils, it should be noted, was not solely a ‘Rojava-affair’. In fact, hundreds of councils sprang up all around Syria during 2011 and 2012 in the context of the uprising, councils referred to as ‘the essence of the Syrian revolution’.1515 At heaworldview.comView all notes Interlinked in a variety of ways—e.g. through WhatsApp groups with like-minded councils and organisations—these councils were the creative product of local needs, an immediate response to the collapse of central government structures in the wartime context, and the governance vacuum resulting from the sudden absence of state administrators through forced departure and/or local rejection of their office.1616 The regime policy was generally to continue paying the salaries of local officials, signalling the regime’s non-acceptance of the new arrangements and intention to reassert (control of) the state at some point in the future.View all notes In other words, the councils took over state functions. The local councils in the ethnically diverse city of Manbij, for example, were described as a ‘compelling example of successful grassroots governance during the two-year period between the Syrian regime’s withdrawal from the city in 2012 and the Islamic State’s takeover in 2014’ (Munif, 2017Munif, Y. (2017). Participatory Democracy and Micropolitics in Manbij: An unthinkable revlution. The Century Foundation. Retrieved from https://tcf.org/content/report/participatory-democracy-micropolitics-manbij/ [Google Scholar]).1717 IS was expelled by the SDF in 2016.View all notes Importantly, the councils emerging were not a function of the central state but rather the way in which opposition was articulated and people administrated themselves.
The councils that had emerged throughout Syria in the springtime of the protests were different from those that emerged in Rojava, however, primarily in terms of political organisation. The councils in Rojava were not just a local working practice, but also interrelated in a larger network that provided cohesion and direction. Together with the establishment of the first councils in the Kurdistan region, the PYD initiated the establishment of the Movement for a Democratic Society (Tevgera Civaka Demokratîk, TEV-DEM), a platform of political parties, professional and societal organisations, and council representatives for deliberation and coordination (Knapp et al., 2014Knapp, M., Flach, A., & Ayboga, E. (2014). Revolution in Rojava democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto. [Google Scholar]). TEV-DEM firmly framed itself as promoting pluralism, based on the ‘rights of all ethnic and religious groups to manage themselves according to their own free will’.1818 http://en.hawarnews.com/tev-dem-announces-project-for-a-democratic-syria/View all notes It argued that such pluralism was not possible within Syria as a unilateral and centralized state.
Promoted by TEV-DEM, councils for decision-making and administration have been established at the level of streets and villages, neighbourhoods and district, cities, regional and the level of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS), all with a 40% gender quota. The smallest unit in this confederation is the commune, which may consist up to a few to 400 households, equal to a residential street or streets or a village. The commune meets monthly or bi-monthly and all residents are entitled to participate. Often, a women’s council, in which the women of the residential area are entitled to participate, function in parallel to the commune council, discussing issues the women consider important and which they can bring to the agenda of the commune meeting.
It was also determined that each commune has an executive, composed of the co-chairs (a man and a woman) and additional members. The communes meet weekly and ideally have committees for peace, self-defence, economics, politics, civil society, free society and ideology. Not all committees have been established, but the peace and self-defence committees are common. A neighbourhood council is composed of several villages or a city-quarter, and its members are the executives of the communes. These neighbourhood councils have an executive and further committees (Knapp et al., 2014Knapp, M., Flach, A., & Ayboga, E. (2014). Revolution in Rojava democratic autonomy and women’s liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto. [Google Scholar], 87). This is repeated at the level of the city council, cantons and regions (Cezîre, Euphrates and Afrin) and the DFNS. The development of an alternative system of local self-administration was to address the contradiction between (the) people and state, while the idea of autonomy as the right of diverse (cultural, ethnic, gender, religious, etc.) groups to organise themselves and give expression to their interests and identity responded to the problem of the state.
Discussion and Conclusion
Historically, the national liberation movements that emerged in the 1960s and 70s framed their struggle in terms of an anti-colonialism that had the establishment of an independent state as its goal. This was also the case for the various liberation movements that emerged during the twentieth century in Kurdistan. Over time, however, a profound development and political shift occurred within the broader Kurdish context. While the political parties that developed from the KDP tradition continued to understand the realisation of self-determination in terms of state construction, a movement born from the PKK tradition and inspired by the ideas of its jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan, started to perceive the state not as a goal but as a hindrance on the road to freedom. ‘Drawing and dying for borders’, argued Salih Muslum, Chair of the PYD in Rojava, ‘is a European illness from the 19th and 20th centuries’.1919 Salih Muslum, speaking at the Flemish Parliament in Brussels, 18 September, 2014.View all notes Thus it was that a (proto-)state-structured KRG emerged in Iraqi Kurdistan, while in Syrian Kurdistan, the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS), including Rojava but extending into non-Kurdish majority territory, was founded on the basis of a non-statist form of societal organisation referred to by the twin terms ‘democratic autonomy’ and ‘democratic-confederalism’.
In this article, I have discussed the two systems of government developed and still developing in Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan. The government system developing in Iraqi Kurdistan has been discussed in the context of federalism, defined as an institutional solution that allows different entities to realise their aspirations for self-determination through the establishment of a state. In a federal state power is divided between the central government and (one or more) regional government(s). With both levels having constitutionally separate competences, the state-entity within a federation is not subordinated to the federal government. The system developed in Syrian Kurdistan, meanwhile, has been discussed in the context of democratic-confederalism, a political idea that problematises state-society relations, and mainly aims at the development of self-governing capacities. This is referred to as non-statist as is tries to move beyond the concept of the central administrative state and the nation-state, two key features of the modern state system. While the driving force of both federalism and democratic-confederalism is the reconciliation of a politics of difference with a politics of recognition in such a way that different social groups are able to express themselves in some form of self-administration, this takes rather different forms.
The government system developed in Iraqi Kurdistan, mainly under the tutelage of the KDP and PUK, has been oriented towards (proto-)state construction. These two parties initiated a process of state-building starting with the 1992 elections and the establishment of the KRG. Following the US-led occupation of Iraq in 2003 and later the collapse of the Iraqi army facing the Islamic State in 2014, the greater part of the areas considered to be part of Iraqi Kurdistan came under the control of the two parties, which effectively extended their territorial control. Though the Kurdish population voted overwhelmingly for independence in a so-called informal referendum in 2005, the KDP and PUK became active participants in the drafting of the 2005 Iraqi constitution, which recognised the Kurdistan region as a federal entity, granting it strong powers.
However, a politics of difference had not met a politics of recognition. The central authority in Baghdad, now dominated by the majoritarian strength of the Shi’a political parties, did not live up to the Kurdish expectations, failing to implement many of the provisions in the constitution, including the agreement to hold a referendum in the disputed territories. The central government in Baghdad also practised an anti-federal policy to other regions aspiring a federal status, which turned a federal Iraq into asymmetric federalism and meant that only the Kurdistan autonomous region had a constitutionally guaranteed governmental system, other regions being ruled under the central government. Thus, the central government violated the constitution. With souring relations between Baghdad and Erbil, the Kurdistan autonomous region became an aberration from Baghdad’s perspective, while the collaboration between the federal entity and the central state became considered a failed partnership from the perspective of Erbil.
This notion of a failed partnership gave cause to the push for an independence referendum, held in September 2017. This referendum symbolised the failure of the development of a federal Iraq. Yet the referendum highlighted not only the failure of the 2005 constitution and the construction of a federal Iraq, but also that of the Kurdish leadership to develop a state within the federation. In practice, clientelistic networks around families and individuals exercise strict control, not the parliament and government, and they do so without a common political agenda and coordination. Instead of bringing the parties together in their quest for statehood, the referendum exposed these clientelistic networks that determined KRG politics along with the fiefdoms associated with these networks. We may conclude, therefore, that the attempt to institutionalise a state administration in the Kurdistan autonomous region failed, along with the construction of a federal Iraq on the basis of a politics of recognition.
This is not to say that the federal development in Iraq and the Kurdistan autonomous region is doomed to fail in the future, of course, but rather to highlight the problematic nature of this course of state-building as compared to the very different government system developed in Syrian Kurdistan, under the tutelage of the PYD and the SDC, oriented towards societal empowerment. Interestingly, this comes with a relative marginalisation of traditional political parties, whose role in the organisation of government becomes quite limited. The objective of the new governmental system is to strengthen local self-governing capacities though the development of a council system. This council system is not only territorially organised, through the network of councils at the level of communes, neighbourhoods, cities, regions and the DFNS, but also at the level of cultural, ethnic, gender and religious groups. We could, therefore, make a tripartite distinction between territorial autonomy (referring to the decision-making powers on a geographical level, namely street and village/neighbourhood up to regional and confederal levels), cultural autonomy (referring to the right of people with different religious, ethnic or cultural backgrounds to organize themselves and determine their own affairs) and categorical autonomy (referring to the right of women and youngsters or other societal groups to organize themselves, deliberate and decide about their agendas and priorities for political actions). This results in a multi-layered network of councils, with TEV-DEM as an important institutional nexus.
The government system aims to counter homogenising or assimilative tendencies along the axis of democratic-autonomy and the emergence of a bureaucratic class along the axis of democratic-confederalism.
The models developed around the two different political ideas pursued by different political currents in Kurdistan, one with roots in the KDP and the other born from the PKK, have to be considered as two process of becoming in the problematic and quite different contexts in which they have each emerged. They should not be looked upon in terms of a determined, linear unfolding, and it is hard to predict the future of either, particularly since this is dependent in part at least on external factors. Though the KRG (Başur) model follows a relatively well-trod route and the DNFS (Rojava) is attempting something very different, both are forging a path into the unknown.
Notes
1 These parties have their sister-parties in other parts of Kurdistan.
2 A decentralisation of the PKK resulted in the establishment in 2002 of the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (Partî Çareserî Dîmukratî Kurdistan, PÇDK) focussing on the struggle in the Kurdistan autonomous region in Iraq, in 2003 of the Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat, PYD), focusing on the struggle in Syria, and, in 2004, of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê, PJAK), oriented to the struggle in Iran.
3 Swarm as in a swarm of singularities, which flow together towards a shared or common objective; see Negri (2011Negri, A. (2011). Art and multitude. Cambridge: Polity Press. [Google Scholar]: 121).
4 Apo (Kurdish for uncle) is the nick-name for Abdullah Öcalan.
5 The New World Summit is an artistic and political organization founded in 2012. It is dedicated to providing ‘alternative parliaments’ and ‘imaginative spaces’ for debates on democracy and emancipatory politics. See newworldsummit.org/about/
6 Kurds in Iran, of course, remained outside of this (new) division.
7 Parts of Nineva above the NFZ were administratively absorbed by Dohuk, and the northern part of Diyala was absorbed by Sulaymaniyah.
8 Russia and Iran intervened decisively for the regime, with the US and West focusing on removing IS, including through collaboration with the Kurdish forces.
9 E.g. Salih Muslum: ‘We want a fundamental change to the oppressive system. There are some who hold up the slogan: the fall of the regime. Our problems are not of powers. The ruling powers in Damascus come and go’ (Allsopp, 2014Allsopp, H. (2014). The Kurds of Syria. New York: Pallgrave. [Google Scholar]: 209).
10 dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/bio1.html
11 Renamed the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) in 2007.
12 The construction and maintenance of these clientelistic networks was highly dependent on the availability of resources (Wilgenburg & Fumerton, 2015Wilgenburg, W. v., & Fumerton, M. (2015). Kurdistan’s political armies: The challenge of unifying the peshmerga forces. Beirut: Carnegie Middle East Center. [Google Scholar]: 5), and the asymmetric access to resources needed to sustain these networks heightened the competition between the two main parties. The KDP controlled Ibrahim Khalil border post with Turkey, which produced much higher revenues than those gained by the PUK controlling the border with Iran (Chorev, 2007Chorev, M. (2007). Iraqi Kurdistan: The internal dynamics and statecraft of a semistate. al Naklah, the Fletcher School Online Journal for Issue Related to Southwest Asia and Islamic Civiliation, Fall, 1–11. [Google Scholar]: 4), and there has been an ongoing competition between KDP and PUK over who controls the oil-rich territories in the region. The international community allegedly strengthened this reality of competing party networks, by dealing with politicians from the region as party leaders and not with them as KRG government officials (Yoshioka, 2015Yoshioka, A. (2015). The shifting balance of power in Iraqi Kurdistan: The struggle for democracy with uninstitutionalized governance. International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, 9, 21–35. doi: 10.1386/ijcis.9.1.21_1[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 33). Then, with the rise of IS in 2014, investments and revenues slumped, while oil prices dropped, causing serious money-flow problems for the maintenance of the power structures that had evolved.
13 At tr.hawarnews.com
14 ‘The insistence of the Democratic Union (PYD) to hold its one-sided elections at this particular time is a blatant challenge to the will of our Kurdish people in Syria’s Kurdistan and a clear attempt to deflect attention from the referendum’ asserted the KNC. http://theregion.org/m/news/11613-barzani-affiliated-kurdish-national-council-have-called-for-boycott-on-elections-in-northern-syria
15 At heaworldview.com
16 The regime policy was generally to continue paying the salaries of local officials, signalling the regime’s non-acceptance of the new arrangements and intention to reassert (control of) the state at some point in the future.
17 IS was expelled by the SDF in 2016.
18 http://en.hawarnews.com/tev-dem-announces-project-for-a-democratic-syria/
19 Salih Muslum, speaking at the Flemish Parliament in Brussels, 18 September, 2014.
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