It Could Happen Here - Rojava with Andrew

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Andrew is joined by James to discuss Rojava and the current situation in Syria. Cool Zone is nominated for 3 Webby Awards! Submit your votes by April 16th or we'll hunt down your family.   Behind the Bastards - https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/features/experimental-innovation  It Could Happen Here - https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/limited-series-specials/news-politics  Migrating to America - https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/limited-series-specials/documentary  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Math and Magic on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. All Zone Media. Woman, life, freedom. Such was the slogan of the women's movement considered key to the project of the democratic, autonomous administration of north and east Syria. also known as Rajavar.

Though originating in the Kurdish liberation struggle, the project quickly became polyethnic. There are Syrians, Arabs, Armenians, Yazidis, and other groups involved in that project. And in fact, the internationally recognized name Rajava has fallen out of use by the project's administration in an effort to de-ethnicize the project. I'm going to keep using Rajava simply because it's quicker to see

than D-A-A-A-N-E-S or Denes or any other combination. But just wanted to put that disclaimer out in the beginning. So in the midst of the Syrian Civil War, the region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 and pursued a somewhat unique political experiment for grassroots governance and social legal reforms that have attracted significant international favor and support. for not recognized internationally as autonomous, except by the Catalan parliament, for obvious reasons,

for the past decade plus, the people in the region have fought fiercely for independence from ISIS patriarchy, Turkish and Kursians, and other Syrian opposition groups. But recent events led to the newly minted Syrian government having seriously jeopardized the autonomy of the project. Welcome to I could happen here. I'm Andrew Sage, also Andrewsum, on YouTube. YouTube and I'm joined once again. It's me, it's James. Yes, and I had to talk to you about this because I know that you have contacts there,

you have experience with that project, with the people involved. And yeah, we're here to discuss the fate of Rajavo. Yeah, I'm always excited to talk about Rajava, and I think it's super important that we talk about it right now. Like, yeah, there's a lot of bad stuff happening currently, but this is really bad. Like in Rojava, we had the opportunity to see people living without gods or masters, people building democracy without the state. We had the opportunity to, and we have the opportunity, right, so Rochava's not gone.

But like anarchism didn't have to be like an ideological construct that only exists in our little punk houses. It existed in an area where millions of people lived. And yes, so we should talk about how we can be in solidarity with them in this very difficult time. Right, right. In fact, as we're on that topic, I think it's useful to have a brief explanation of the history and ideology behind Bejavre project before we talk about what's happened most recently. Yeah. So in brief, the project really began in Turkey, where the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, was banned and some of its supporters moved to Syria and founded the Democratic Union Party

or PYD. Now, this party shared an ideological foundation with the PKK and its founder, Abdullah Uchalan, with the ideology of democratic confederalism, which I'll explain in a second. Rajava came into being following the Arab Spring of 2011, as various factions of Syrians rose up against President Bashar al-Assad. And in such a climate of conflict, ISIS rose to prominence to threaten the region as a whole. So while Assad was dealing with other opposition groups in Damascus, he withdrew forces from North Syria, which left the region vulnerable to ISIS and Turkey.

Kurdish groups in North Syria then formed the Kurdish National Council to secure the area, but after an ideological split, the project of Rajavar would emerge as a polyethnic polity, composed of the cantons of Afrin, Jazeera, and Kobani. The PID operates Rajavar within a political coalition called the Syrian Democratic Council, or SDC. The YPG or People's Defense Units and the YPG or Women's Defense Units, are the paramilitaries forming the bulk of the political assembly's military coalition, which is called the Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF. I know it's a lot of acronyms being thrown at you at once.

Yeah, it's an alphabet too. I think until relatively recently the bulk of the SDF forces were Arab. You have ideological groups that are allied, right, the northern democratic front, a dry-shel-fouir at one point, and then you have these groups which are more tribally based, and those groups had allied to the SDF to fight the Islamic State. Right, yes. Yeah, they always want to push back on it being a majority. It is now, but that's a creation of the last eight weeks.

Right, okay. I remember reading that the YPG and YPG were form in a good chunk of the SDF. I suppose that was more recent information that I had seen then. Yeah, I think it probably would have been. Or like, you will see that published in broadsheet newspapers and have done for decades, like it's just wrong. But there was this tendency in the, I guess, the Western press, right? And some of this is somewhat orientalist in a way.

Like, they referred to the SDF as the Kurds because Kurds were somehow seen as closer to European people than Arabs. And like it attempted to sort of, I guess, to make it more palatable to an audience. Right, a kind of a racial elevation of some kind. Yeah. And I think the friends. and we can talk about friends versus whatever else later, but would push back on that.

They would tell you that SDF was majority Arab, certainly at the time it fought the Islamic State. And of course, there were Assyrians and Armenians and Yazidis and international volunteers as well. For sure, for sure. So you had the Syrian Democratic Council, or the SDC, led primarily by the PYD, right? Yeah.

They were taken on the task of both fights and the Islamists while engaged in an ideological project to bring democratic confederalism into practice in North Syria. So democratic confederalism is a transitional political movement that tries to move beyond the nation state by refusing to seize state power. Instead of organizing society through the state, they seek to organize society through local assemblies that manage their own affairs while coordinating action through confederation.

Democratic Confederalism emphasizes pluralism over nationalism, secularism over religious government, and restorative justice, gender liberation, ecological sustainability, cooperative and communal economic forms.

Democratic and federalism was seen as a pragmatic way of building collective self-organization within the purview of the existing dominant state model of the world, while gradually undermining its authority. Now, the gender liberation component in particular has received a lot of international attention thanks to the PYD's efforts to put it into practice. They established gender parity quotas in

all administrative, political, and decision-making bodies and leadership roles. They established women's councils, addressed women's issues. They established the Women's Protection Unit, so IPG, which is an all-female army, which is very popular, and they established laws to ban honor killings and child marriage while strengthening the divorce rights of women. So these efforts and others within Rojava have garnered worldwide admiration for the project, and many international volunteers have visited Rajavah to help them fight. And if you're in a lot of online anarchist circles, you've probably heard a lot about Rojava and solidarity with the liberation. But I think it has created a misconception that the solidarity that anarchist feels with Rajavah is equivalent to

one-to-one ideological alignment. Yeah. Right? What they're doing is not anarchism. It's kind of its own thing. It's democratic and federalism. Yeah. And this has been abandoned in solidarity with the people, of course, but it just means, you know,

being clear that we are fighting for a world in which many worlds exist. Yeah. And so are they. And we are just willing to stand with. and observe that project and, you know, wish for the best and hope for the best and see what comes of it. Yeah. There are anarchist formations within the SDF, right?

Techosine anisee, it means anarchist struggle. It's like a more doctrinally anarchist formation. And like the way that they would phrase their like participation is that they are there in solidarity, right? And like you say, we want a world where many worlds can exist. And so they can offer. And like if you go to Rajav, people will ask you. to offer feedback, right?

The Kurdish Werdes-Teckmill report of feedback. They are willing to hear an anarchist critique and engage with it. It doesn't mean that they are anarchists, but it doesn't mean that they are opposed to anarchists either. They're more willing to engage with anarchism than most. Yeah, than almost anywhere else I've been in the world. Maybe aside from Myanmar. But, yeah, they will engage with and have these different.

discussions, and they're on an ideological journey, right? The movement began within what they would call the nation-state paradigm. Yeah, I mean, the PKK was originally Marxist-Latness. And Ojoland thinking has very much been, like, his journey has led the movement on a political philosophy journey, I guess, and there are different interpretations and different movements in different parts of Kurdistan that draw on his political philosophy. But as his thinking while he was detained in Turkey moved towards this democratic confederalist outlook, influenced by reading Murray Buchan, among others, the movement also moved. And I think it was very well placed when the Assadist state withdrew to try and implement this, like you've mentioned, right, self-governance, brotherhood of peoples, all these things.

but it wasn't always there, and it has been willing to change and willing to move its ideology over time. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the thing. We don't want to look at people and projects and judge it based on where we are in our position and our ideological alignment

because none of us necessarily started off as anarchists, right? And while we may wish that, as an anarchist, I would wish that, you know, these projects would move closer to anarchy and would pursue and explore and experiment with that ideal and that idea, everybody's on their own journey. And, you know, at this stage in capitalist global dominance and status global dominance, we have to let whatever experiments exist or explore the different angles. You know, there's not one right way quite yet, or there may never be.

You know, as one on the topic of disclaimers, I suppose, I think it is important. address that, you know, the SDF is not all sunshine and roses. You know, there have been allegations of war crimes, including the recruitment of children, and the allegations are forced, targeted displacement. Now, not all of these allegations have been conclusively verified, and there are a lot of actors that have been involved in Syria over the years that are pushing narratives and counter narratives that have to be scrutinized on a case-by-case basis. Some of the war crime allegations, for example, have been made by Turkey. which is pretty suspect considering their track record of both hostility towards

Rojava and the Kurdish autonomy and also their practice of war crimes on a semi-regular basis themselves, you know? Yeah. But still, hypocrisy has said, I think it is important to not turn a blind eye to these kinds of problems and allegations when they are made. Yeah, I totally agree. Like, if people are being compelled to do things through violence, that is what the state is, right? And that is what we want to stop.

And so if that is happening, then we should condemn it, right? Be that, whether they're being compelled to fight or compelled to leave their homes. Like, that is a thing that we are opposed to inherently, right? And it doesn't matter who's doing it as the action itself is something that we are opposed to. And, yeah, we should, again, like, we should look at this, like, not through, like, rose to. I know I talk a lot about this, but I translated a piece from French a couple of years ago. from an anarchist who had fought in Spain. And it was called refuting the legend.

And the main thesis of the piece was that we should engage with the Spanish Civil War as it was not as we wished it to be. And that way we could learn from it and get better as opposed to just creating a hagiography and like a, you know, like saints' lives. Exactly. Same applies here. I think, yeah, because the anarchists' experiments have been,

you know, few and far between, unfortunately. The major experiments that is, the massive ones, the ones that make historical, headlines. And I think there is a temptation to, as you're saying, construct a hagiography to glorify and venerate these attempts. I think it's very important for us to treat them with scrutiny, you know, to hold them up to certain standards and to evaluate their missteps and to highlight their missteps, even more than we highlight their successes, because that's the only way we're going to succeed in the future is if we're willing to address and engage

those mystiques. Yeah, absolutely. I think on that point, look, the way that I see what's happening Rojava is not in a monolithic way. There are tendencies and organizations within the revolution, right? There are some who are probably operating in a paradigm that is not that far from the like ethno-nationalist or kind of nationalist Marxist paradigm. There are some that are operating closer to an anarchist paradigm. There are some who are somewhere in between those two things, right? And there are some who would just want the Islamic state or the new Syrian state or the Assadist state to go away and leave them alone. And that's why they picked up arms and that's what they're fighting for. And like, again, right, we shouldn't, we should be suspicious

of a movement which is entirely homogenous. We should be concerned. And I have concerns about the way some dissenting voices have been treated in the AANES in the past year. We should raise those concerns. But like it would be inaccurate to view this movement as a monolith. Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing. It's important to raise concerns. It's sad that this phrase has been bastardized because it's a useful freeze, right?

That is, you know, critical support. Yeah. Or critical solidarity. It's been taken by certain Internet Act. to, you know, to propagate apologia for atrocities and erasure of state violence. But it is a useful way of, I think, Freeman the way we should engage these projects.

That solidarity doesn't imply that you keep you out shut, that you don't seek to learn, that you don't respectfully criticize. That is, I think, the best way to engage these projects. not to, you know, close your eyes and just follow. Absolutely. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them.

And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

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It has, for a long time, been caught in a web of conflicting and conversion interests. In addition to fighting ISIS and other jihadist groups, Rejava managed to receive backing from the U.S. out of a coincidence of interests and tactical necessity, as I would put it, which is confused in some circumstances. to the idea that Rojava is a U.S. designed puppet through and through. Right. So after the SDF liberated Rakhir, they began taking more heat from Turkey, which saw the YPG as inseparable from the PKK and thus a threat. Remember, the YPG is the defensive army, the protective services, rather,

and the PKK is the Kurdish party in Turkey. So they launched several military operations to prevent the Kurdish regions from linking up and having territorial continuity within Syria. At the same time, Rojava faced economic blockades, restricted movement, and strained relations with their fellow Kurdish political groups in Iraq that were aligned with Turkey and aligned with the PYD's political rivals, which had lost influence since the establishment of Rojava. Then you also had the occasional alignments with Russia as a strategic leverage against Turkey

and similar coincidences of interest with the governments of Iraq and Iran. and even cooperation between Rojava and Assad's government. It's interesting to me that the U.S. alignment is what receives the most attention when it seems to me the Rojava had quite a roster of affiliations of convenience. Not to say that those partnerships or affiliations necessarily benefit to them in the long run, but it's important to place those affiliations in context. Rojava has been seen and treated as a chess piece, essentially, by both global and regional powers as they attempt to put out a voice of their own and eke out their own

autonomy. So just before the 2019 Turkish invasion, the US abandoned Rojava entirely, withdrawing its troops and suddenly leading to the tragic fall of several settlements to Turkey and Turkish alliance groups. However, that moved to withdraw also raise the international profile of the Rojava struggle. as people on both sides of the political spectrum were pointing out this American decision to abandon its allies in the Middle East. So before we get to the fall of Assad, is there anything critical that you say I missed? I think a pretty good summary.

I've literally written a book about this, so there's always things I want to say. I was there during a time when Turkey was bombing, right? In addition to going to report on them, I just saw places as I was going about my day-to-day life that had been bombed the night before, right? I think there's this misapprehension that America is, and by America, I'm using that incorrectly. The United States is allied with the PYD.

That's not the case. The SDF was the U.S. partner force specifically in what's called Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the operation against the Islamic State, right? While I was there, the US shot down a Turkish drone because it flew too close to their bases. They also didn't shoot down the dozens of other Turkish drones that killed little children while I was there,

right? And I don't think anyone would reasonably expect them to, because the US was not there in solidarity with the revolution. It was there fighting alongside them in this one specific thing. And while that doesn't take away the fact that it is disgraceful to abandon these people who gave 10,000 plus of their children alongside the United States, right? That is shameful. It is also what we should expect from the United States. Yeah. People that use the word hoval, which means friend, right, as opposed to like the way

a Marxist movement might use comrade. The friends there understood the terms of their agreement with the US. Doesn't mean that they were not disappointed. It doesn't mean that they would not ask for assistance when they're just. children are dying, of course they would. But those are the terms on which the US was allied with them. And certainly the US did not ideologically influence them. Perhaps the opposite is the case. There are certainly some people in the US military who went over there and came back seeing the world differently. Turkey actually called the US government because some of the US soldiers

were wearing Abdullah al-Al Shulun patches at one point and raised complaints about it. But yeah, I think it's important to understand the terms of the arrangement between them. Otherwise, I think that's a pretty good pracy of the way things were. Do you have anything about Schengal? No, I don't. I'll do my potted. People can read my book if they'd like to hear more about its operation. I've sent one to you, Andrew. Hopefully it's making its way across the ocean. Awesome. So, Schengal, the sacred mountain of the Azidis, right? The Azidis are a group of people, an ethnic, religious group, whose religion is probably closest to Zoroastrianism. They have like a peacock angel. The Islamic State targeted the Azidis because it considered them to be

apostates and it subjected them to genocidal violence, right? This is the Uzi genocide. The states of the world largely abandoned the Azadi people. They tried to defend their communities, but they were overwhelmed by the Islamic State and they gradually fell back to Shengal, which is their mountain, and they went to the top of their mountain to make their last stand, I guess, right? Like, That was their place where they had always gone back to. And there were some US special forces on the mountain, and from what I understand, also some British special forces. But it was the friends from Kurdistan who decided to go,

it should be noted that they're like fighting the Islamic State at home at this time, right? Their own villages, their own towns are being subjected to the same violence. They went onto the mountain and they built humanitarian corridor to, to extract the ASEDI people, right, with their bodies, with their blood. And if they had done nothing else since 2012, that would be reason enough for us to stand in solidarity with them, right? Like in that moment when the world letting the Azeidis die, right, when Obama and the United Kingdom and everything else was letting these people be subjected to genocide, it wasn't a military superpower who went to their assistance, it wasn't the French or the British. or anyone else who was willing to risk. Again, there were small numbers of special forces,

but it was regular folks from Kurdistan with Kalashnikovs who went to save them. And I think at this time when, like, Western analysts who perhaps either don't have a proper grasp of what's happening in Syria or do and are just willing to lie about it are condemning the A&ES as some kind of Kurdish ethnic nationalist project,

we can point to this. And we shouldn't forget the sacrifice that those people made. at that time. Yeah, that's an important event that I didn't come across my research, but thank you for sharing. Yeah, of course. So I suppose we are now approaching the critical moment in Rajahua's recent history. Assad's government collapsed at the end of 2024, and the Hayat Terir al-Sham, or HDS,

and Islamist militia with roots in al-Qaeda, stepped into the valley. and rapidly took control of large parts of the country. Then HDS leader Ahmed al-Shara was recast on the international stage as Syria's new president, welcomed by regional and Western powers, received in diplomatic capitals, and rewarded with the lifting of many sanctions. Turkey emerged as his strongest backer, as they were pretty cold with Assad, and they aggressively lobbied on behalf of the HDS government, reframing it as a stable, and not long after the fall of Assad, in fact, Abdullah Uchland himself called for the PKK to disarm. The SDF, which is only loosely affiliated with the PKK though, said, well, you know,

not us, we will continue to fight. Yeah. So Western governments, particularly the United States and its allies, appeared willing to accept this transformation of the HTS. The calculators that a fragmented and internally weak authority could be more easily stared to serve their long term geopolitical interests. So the HDS Syrian government had a little press tour, but within Syria, they moved pretty predictably, engaging in violent repression, displacement, and massacre of the al-Aloid, the Druze and the Kurdish communities in Syria. And for the Kurdish-initiated project of Rojava, the rise of the HDS government would mark the beginning of an end, greater isolation and a renewed pressure from within and outside of Syria's borders. After consolidating,

in power, the HDS government pushed into the Kurdish regions and encircled Kobani, the historic border city that once symbolized resistance to ISIS. So, for days, coordinated attacks targeted Rojava itself, threatening not only the survival of Kurdish sub-government, but the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, as food, water, and electricity were deliberately cut off and the city placed under siege. The violence had been especially devastating in Aleppo.

From early January, the Kurdish districts of Shik, Makhud and Ashrafia became the focus of sustained assault by Turkish-backed militias and units aligned with the Syrian transitional government. They would tell you that Sheikh Maksud was a diverse district. And I'd probably use to describe it as Kurdish as well, but they will point out that Izidi people and a lot of the indigenous Christian peoples of the region who lived in Aleppo tended to live in Sheikh Matsud as well. Right, right. Okay, thanks for that context.

Yeah, of course. So civilian infrastructure was systematically hit at homes, schools, mosques, and public buildings being shelled, while abductions, torture, and executions were reported near medical facilities. The bombing of Zalid Fakhir Hospital devastated the local healthcare system. And with mountain casualties and entire neighborhoods emptied, local councils in the SDF agreed to a ceasefire and withdrawal on the 11th of January, 2026 to allow evacuations. More than 300,000 people fled. Many seeking refuge in areas still controlled by the Autonomous Administration, but fighting expanded eastward.

Jihadist forces began targeting Raqa, Derezao, Hasaka, and critical infrastructure like the Tishrandam. Prisons holding thousands of jihadist detainees were located in these areas, and amid the chaos, Islamist fighters escaped, ISIS symbols reappeared, and memorials to Kurdish fighters were destroyed. the example which I think is particularly revelatory. It was consistently cast once again by like think tankers who either know that they're talking, speaking things that aren't true. I was going to say something else there. Or they just don't know and they're being paid to pretend they know. But the one in Tabka that was destroyed, it was a statue of a YPJ fighter, but she was an Arab. It was betrayed as like local people celebrating their liberation from the SDF. But it was a whole group of men destroyed. It was a whole group of men destroyed. a statue of a woman, a woman from that community who had fought to liberate that community from the Islamic State, right? And I think that like when that context is deliberately excluded, that tells us an awful lot. Yeah, that's an extremely critical point, I think. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders,

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I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.

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I like that. It is an actual Polish saying. Yeah. It is an actual poem. Better version of Play Stupid Games, win stupid prizes. Yes. Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift, who said that for the first time.

I actually, I thought it was. I got that wrong. Listen to the Nick, Dick, and Paul show on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So as the Syrian forces pushed through the east, some non-Kudish villages in the region vected from Rojava to the new Syrian government. Yeah, mostly in Lake Derisor, right, which is an area where you have this long-standing, they're referred to as tribal communities.

I guess that's a fine phrase, but sometimes the word tribal, I think, is used in a derogatory way in the West. So I want to be clear that's not what I intend to mean here, just that they have a different form of political organizing. Right, of course. And like there had not been among those communities buy-in, I guess, to the AANES project. There was to the SDF as a military force,

but not so much to the project. And it was those communities. that switch their allegiances, right? This happened even in Aleppo. And we can look at various economic and political and social reasons for that. And maybe at some point we should, but I don't think like now is the time. You know, we're concerned with ongoing struggle there. But yeah, especially in Derrezoor, what really saw the SDF frontline crumble

was the people who were in the SDF suddenly became allied with the SDG, Syrian transitional government, Syrian government. Right, right. And so with these defections and with this onslaught of violence, Alshara delivered an ultimatum to the Kurds and to the other groups involved in the Ottoman administration from Syria. This is to dissolve the SDF and submit to incorporation under his command or face annihilation. So in response, the SDF commander Masloum Abdi appealed outwell,

calling on the support of anyone who aren't be willing to assist. And this is something that particularly made headlines. The anyone included Israel, which had previously intervened in Syria for the claimed justification of aiding the Jerusalem. I think the way that question was posed to the SDF commander was definitely leading like they were fission for a headline, for sure, from what I saw of that exchange.

But in the context of the Palestinian genocide and the world's awareness of their genocide, I think that even with that desperation for survival in mind, that statement was, I think, a misstep. Yeah, we constantly see, like, this allegation that the SDF specifically is like some kind of Zionist force or funded by Israel, that's been around for decades, right? I will say a couple of things.

First of all, like in the early Kurdish freedom movement, Kurds died for Palestine, right, with their Democratic Front for the liberation of Palestine and Beaufort Castle. If the Israelis were genuinely allies of the Kurds, no one would dare touch them. We have seen what Israel is prepared to do to Muslim countries. They don't need much excuse. They would do the same in Syria. Furthermore, Israel has continued to invade Syria and has held Syrian territory for decades. and has continued to take more of it under al-Shara and Al-Shaara has not done anything about it. So, like, I find the idea that he's, like, eliminating Zionism, very frustrating when, like, the IDF is literally inside his country, invading it.

And the Kurdish freedom movement as a whole has been pretty forthright about the genocide. So on October 7th, 2023, I was in Kurdistan. And we watched what happened first in Israel. and then in Palestine, right? And they were pretty forthright about that no one should be killing civilians. And as the genocide in Gaza began, they were forthright about calling it a genocide. And I think they didn't have to. No one was particularly asking them in 2023, right?

And they did. And they made statements about it. And like, I think seeing them somehow ideologically inclined to, towards Israel when it largely wasn't Israel who was fighting the Islamic State, right? It was largely them in the US. I think it's just people understanding the politics of the Middle East in terms of Marvel movies. There can only be two sides. And I'm sure at the time when they were facing genocide themselves,

they would have welcomed any support. But that doesn't mean that they support the murder of civilians in Gaza. They have been extremely clear about that for an extremely long time. Absolutely. I don't think that should be called into the question just because of the statement of one commando. Yeah. So after much fighting, the SDF signed agreements relinquishing control of Iraqa,

dares Azor, and remaining territory west of the Euphrates, retaining only Hasaka and Kobane after withdrawing from the Tishran dam. But even after conceding so much, government forces violated ceasefire terms, so the SDF declare general mobilization across the Kurdish regions of Syria and, neighboring state as a last desperate attempt to rally resistance. By the end of January, the autonomous administration had lost roughly 80% of the territory it once governed. The SDF was forced to retreat almost entirely into Hasaka government. And on the 30th of January, the SDF formally announced a ceasefire with the Syrian government and accepted a framework for

folding both their military structures and civilian administration into the Syrian state. Syrian authorities set timelines on this agreement. Within a month, they would retake control of border crossings, oil and gas infrastructure like Grimilani and Al-Suwaiti, detention camps holding ISIS members and their families, and strategic sites such as Kamishli International Airport. Interior Ministry units were scheduled to deploy to Hasaka and Kamishli almost immediately, and Syrian security forces would oversee the absorption of the Kurdish internal security apparatus, the Aeshaish into the state's policing structures. Militarily, the SDF estates to be absorbed under the Syrian Ministry of Defense,

but on an individual vetted basis. Up to now, the fate of the female fighters and non-Syrian fighters within the SDF is unknown. And on the civilian side of things, the institutions created by the Rajav administration are to be absorbed as well. Kurdish officials have thus far secured the governorship of Hasaka and limited command rolls within the military. In exchange for their surrender, the Kurds gained some recognitions on people. The government claims to affirm national civil and educational rights,

promised the return of displaced populations, and issued decrees recognizing Kurdish as a national language taught in schools, declared the Kurdish celebration of Noruza of public accordi, and reversed decades-old citizenship policies that stripped tens of thousands of Kurds of their citizenship. thus far most of these promises are on people as I said. Yeah, I think they'd see it as like a rebranding, not a surrender as an agreement. Like from what I understand, the Epigate still see themselves as the EPG, the YPG still see themselves as the YPG, the YPJ very much still see themselves as the women's

defense force. And so, like, as you say, like, all of this is a paper agreement currently. and we will see how, I mean, there are now Syrian Ministry of Interior Forces in Hesoka and in Camislo, but like some of that has come to bus, but what this means, talking to my friends there, like, we will continue to see exactly like what extent they still have autonomy and to what extent they are integrated into a state which has, in some instances, banned women from wearing makeup, for instance. Yeah. Yeah. So the U.S. and France co-signed this agreement and pledged oversee its implementation. And the president of the Kurdistan regional government in Iraq has also welcomed this agreement. But it still remains to be seen what happens next. Yeah. I did see 100 people who are non-Syrian Kurds. I would imagine they would mostly be Turkish. So from northern Kurdistan had withdrawn from Syria.

and Gondkandil, which is kind of the stronghold of the various other parts of the Kurdish freedom movement. And so that's in southern Kurdistan or Iraq. It's nearly a border with Iran. But I saw that a number of them had withdrawn post-disagreement. That was probably on the 10th of February or somewhere around there. So, yeah, sadly, this is an outcome of the imperialist world order that empires and regional actors will crush any threats to their power, or will attempt to crush such threats.

And as long as such power remains concentrated in these states and militaries and ruling classes, whether they are secular or nationalist or Islamist or anything else, none of us can be free. Yeah. We could sit around on our armchairs and speculate for what moves or Java could have done differently, whether it be a failure to advance further, whether it be insufficient integration of an and by of other groups into the project, whether it be the alliances or agreements or affiliations that they engaged in. We can also sit around and look at all the limitations they face. Some they manage to overcome and others not so much. But the blame does not lie in their failures to play

this game of geopolitical chess as ruthlessly as other powers in the region. I think the blame lies in this game of geopolitical chess, in this ability of imperial powers to treat the people of the region as a whole as tools to be used and discarded. In the end, I continue to hold to the position that only a shared uprising from below, one that refuses compromise, one that cuts across nationalist lines, has the potential to create a new world. And that fight must happen both within Syria and beyond, around the entire earth. The fight is not over in Rajavai. I find it hard to believe that a people engaged in such a project would let go of that instinct and that drive toward greater and greater freedom.

It remains to be seeing what happens with them, but it also remains to be seeing what happens with us. What we decide to do to push our old 21st want to be forward. And that's all from me for today. All power to all the people. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website.

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