This book, edited and published by radical collective Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, is about the Rojava Revolution - the profoundly improbable and surprisingly successful living experiment in direct democratic egalitarian governance taking place in the 'Rojava' cantons of Syrian-but-now-semi-autonomous Kurdistan.*
Anyway, I'm hoping to do my MA dissertation about this, as it's a remarkable hotspot of revolutionary struggle - perhaps embodied best in the fact that their voluntary female militias have constituted for several years now some of the key frontline fighters against Daesh (the so-called Islamic State) - so this post's shortness is indicative of the fact that I will be reading a lot more about Rojava, where Kurdistan's radical alternative to solving its own historic problems opens questions of possibility for many other global problems, where autonomous community-level democracy, female empowerment, economic equality, religious and ethnic tolerance, and sustainability all converge in a sociopolitical project that defies conventional wisdom and expectations with aplomb. It's fascinating. I'll talk more in-depth about the topic, and offer some more reflective and critical thoughts on it, as I continue to read about it, which won't be long at all.**
This little book is a pretty good introduction to what's happening at Rojava: compiled from interviews, articles, frontline accounts and documents, letters, emails, and such, it's imbued with a strength of hope and revolutionary spirit that makes reading the mixture of horrific trial and slow bit-by-bit victory that have characterised the birth of Rojava (crushed between Syrian civil war, Daesh, and a still-relatively-hostile-to-the-Kurds international community) a thoroughly encouraging one; one gets the sense that Uncle Apo would be proud indeed. It includes the formal constitution of the three Rojava cantons, and a short timeline of the history of the Kurdish struggle, for context. Anyone interested in revolutionary struggles around the world should already be well-up-to-speed with the Kurdish problem, and this is their latest chapter - and this book gives a good picture of what it's about.
Bijî Kurdistan! Bijî Rojava!
** Unless my dissertation idea gets rejected - in which case, any disappointment from curiousity I may have piqued in you is, let me assure you, less than my disappointment at having to think of something as fascinating as this to spend all summer reading and writing about.
