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Wladimir van Wilgenburg
The birth of Rojava
The Kurds in Syria significantly benefited from the Syrian civil war after Assad pulled
most of its troops out of the Syrian Kurdish areas on July 19, 2012, with the exception
of Qamishli. The main Kurdish militia, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), formally
announced its existence in July 2012; although it had operated in secrecy since 2011
(Lund, 2013) in the form of armed Kurdish committees of the political branch of the
PKK in Syria, the Democratic Union Party (PYD). The group has clashed with the Syrian
government and also with Islamist rebel groups over control of northern Syria, which the
Kurds refer to as Rojava, or western Kurdistan. But their main conflict was and is with
Islamic State.
The group is closely linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that has mainly
fought against the Turkish state since 1984, and follows the ideology of confederalism of
the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, which was adopted by the PKK in 2005
(Jongerden and Akkaya, 2012: 5). The PKK’s main aim since 2005 has been to set up local
administrations in Syria, Turkey, and Iraq. The civil war in Syria gave the PKK its first
chance to implement Ocalan’s theoretical frameworks in practice. Moreover, the PKK
leader Ocalan also adopted feminism as one of its main principles, which explains the high
number of Kurdish female fighters operating in the name of the female counterpart of the
YPG, the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). In November 2013, the PYD moved forward
with the creation of three canton administrations in three non-contiguous areas in Afrin,
Jazira, and Kobane (Rojhelat, November 12) with the ultimate aim of connecting these
areas in the future.
However, both Turkey and the neighbouring Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq
did not welcome the announcement of autonomy by the PYD in Syria. While Turkey
feared the presence of a PKK-linked enclave on its borders, Masoud Barzani, the president
of KRG, and leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), wanted the PYD to share
its power with Barzani’s Syrian Kurdish ally, the Kurdish National Council (KNC), an
umbrella organization established in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan in October 2011. From 2011
to 2014, the KNC signed several agreements with the PYD to share power, which were not
implemented. As a result, the Kurdish administrations in Syria continued to be dominated
by the PYD, while KNC politicians mainly operated from neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan,
and joined the Turkey-backed Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition in
August 2013 (Al Monitor, August 2013).
As a result, tensions remained between the KNC and the PYD in Syria, and the YPG
did not allow Syrian Kurdish fighters controlled by the KDP to enter Syria, fearing this
would lead to territorial divisions between the KNC and PYD in Syria. As a result, it was
mostly the YPG that fought Islamic State in Syria, and not KDP’s forces. Furthermore,
both sides attacked each other in the media, with the KDP accusing the YPG of working
with the Syrian government of Assad, while the PYD accused the KDP of working with
Turkey to undermine the Rojava revolution (Van Wilgenburg, May 2013). This led the
PYD security forces to arrest many supporters of the KDP in Syria, while the KDP closed
the borders – controlled together with the Syrian Kurdish areas – to PYD use and trade.