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Green Tresses and Defiant Trees:
Weaving Together the Braids of the Kurdish Ecological Struggle in the
Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria (Rojava)
Ecology and Revolution
The predominantly Kurdish areas of Syria (Rojava) Turkey (Bakûr), Iran (Rojhelat),
and Iraq (Başȗr) have become sites of distinctive, although frequently overlooked
and still under-researched, ecological struggles.
1
This is perhaps unexpected, given
the competing political demands and the arid and semi-arid environmental conditions
that prevail in much of this oil-rich region. Moreover, the Kurdish ecological
experiments are not a loosely adopted environmentalism limited to “nature”
appreciation or single-issue “green” concerns, but a thoroughgoing political ecology,
grounded in principles of social ecology. With notable parallels, such as the
ecological aspect of Mexico’s Zapatista movement, the Kurdish initiatives are
significant as a thoroughgoing attempt to implement a programme philosophically
inspired by social ecology in the context of a living revolution.
The espousal of ecology as core to the Kurdish revolutionary project has been
particularly conspicuous since 2005, when Abdullah Öcalan, the movement’s
imprisoned figurehead and most prominent theoretical strategist, published the
“Declaration of Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan.”
2
Here, “an ecological model
of society” appeared alongside the “equality of the sexes,” and the determination to
establish a confederation of bodies of radical democracy with delegates accountable
to local assemblies. These elements have come to be regarded as the three
foundational pillars of the Kurdish freedom movement’s new paradigm. Ecological
thinking has, therefore, become an integral and integrated aspect of Kurdishness.
Three strands of influence may explain this embrace of ecological sensibility: respect
1
The chapters in a forthcoming collection seek to address this omission: Stephen E. Hunt (ed.),
Ecological Solidarity and the Kurdish Freedom Movement: Thought, Practice, Challenges, and
Opportunities, Environment and Society series (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, forthcoming 2021).
2
Abdullah Öcalan, 2005. “Declaration of Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan.”
http://www.freemedialibrary.com/index.php/Declaration_of_Democratic_Confederalism_in_Kurdistan
(site discontinued). Accessible via Wayback Machine, March 30, 2021.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160929163726/http://www.freemedialibrary.com/index.php/Declaration
_of_Democratic_Confederalism_in_Kurdistan.
for the natural world in Alevism, the adoption and adaptation of the American social
ecologist Murray Bookchin’s ideas, and an impetus to position the Kurdish
movement within the global justice movement and its increasingly ecologically
concerned orientation when confronted by environmental destruction as an outcome
of neo-colonialism. In what follows, this ecological turn will be explored with
particular reference to Green Tress, a practical initiative to affect ecological
transformation in Rojava, now formally known as the Autonomous Administration of
North and East Syria (AANES).
3
The Revolution in Rojava has deservedly become a cause celebre for the
libertarian Left, despite being largely ignored in the West’s media. Some context is
necessary to place the present-day ecological initiatives. In 2012, Bashar al-Assad’s
Ba’athist regime forces strategically withdrew from Kobanî, Afrîn, and Cizîrê, the
predominantly Kurdish, though multiethnic, cantons of northern Syria, during the
early stages of armed conflict, as mass popular resistance turned to Civil War.
Politically organised groupings linked to the Democratic Union Party (PYD), in
collaboration with popular civil society organisations coordinated as the Movement
for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM), gained control of the area, preventing the
potential advance of jihadist militias into the power vacuum.
Within the Syrian Arab Republic, yet beyond its control, much of the area has
since enjoyed political autonomy, affording opportunity for revolutionary
experimentation. Militias known as the People’s Protection Units the YPG, and
women’s YPJ) formed to defend this liberated zone became well known for
successfully resisting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) during the 2014 Siege
of Kobanî, eventually liberating the city with United States air support. They
subsequently formed the multiethnic Syrian Democratic Forces which reclaimed
ISIS’s territorial base. The military defeat of ISIS brought about the expansion of the
region under AANES control, including majority-Arab areas, notably the district
around Raqqa, one-time capital of the so-called caliphate. Indeed, the liberation of
Raqqa in 2017 was a highpoint in the AANES’s fortunes. The region has since
endured ongoing conflict, particularly precipitated by the Operation Olive Branch
offensive of 2018, when a coalition of Turkish armed forces, Turkish-sponsored
3
In preference to the Kurdish designation “Rojava,” to be inclusive of all ethnicities.
militias and mercenaries invaded Afrîn. In the present day, Turkish armed forces and
their allies continue to conduct hostilities against AANES, which is also subject to a
permanent economic blockade from the Turkish approaches and intermittent
disruption of border crossings due to political tensions with the Kurdish Regional
Government of Iraq and the Ba’athist regime.
Conflict across Kurdistan has not only grave human costs due to direct
casualties, the displacement of communities and the allocation of people and
resources to the struggle for survival, but also considerable ecological
consequences. These include collateral damage to the living world by reducing,
contaminating, and severing natural habitats. The weaponisation of ecological
destruction by means such as forest fires, the felling of olive groves, and cuts to
water supplies to further military objectives intensifies such harm. Extraordinarily,
notwithstanding these precarious circumstances, efforts to advance the social
revolution, including its ecological aspirations, have been constant. The
Mesopotamian Ecology Movement (MEM) emerged as the coordinating body for the
Kurdish ecological struggles and supported the wider Kurdish freedom movement’s
developing democratic structures. Ecological decision-making bodies, for example
the Ecology Committee of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey, share
with the rest of the movement the principle of equal gender representation and a
male and female co-chair system. Within the AANES, the Health and Environment
Committee is the organising body for overseeing environmental policies, while there
are wider society campaigns that are implementing ecological transformation.
Projects to Green Northeast Syria
La société toute entière se mobilise, c'est une pour nous une vraie révolution.
4
Several initiatives, both indigenous and internationalist, have been seeking to take
forward the ecological objectives of the Revolution within northeast Syria. Most high-
profile of these is the women’s eco-village known as Jinwar. Relatedly, women’s
cooperatives coordinating through the Women’s Economy Committee have recently
launched the “Gula Buhare” (flower of spring) project. Such projects aim to boost
4
“Tresses Vertes,” document supplied by Gulistan Sido to Stephen E. Hunt (personal e-mail, 18 July
2021).
horticultural output and to seed experimental test cases able to germinate exemplars
for further schemes. Prominent among international interventions is the “Make
Rojava Green Again” (MRGA) campaign. This was started in 2018 as a major project
of the Internationalist Commune and aims to raise awareness of the struggle’s
ecological dimension and to promote practical horticultural and tree-planting projects.
The Associazione Ya Basta Bologna launched “Kobane Roots,” an Italian
international solidarity project to sponsor the development of olive plantations with
supporting irrigation systems to bolster the solidarity economy. Here, however, there
is a focus on the Kesiyên kesk project, variously translated as “Green Tress(es),”
“Green Braids,” or “Green Strands,” an impressive current example of such efforts.
This is a non-governmental, non-profit initiative for tree-planting launched in October
2020. Green Tress shows not only the considerable ecological challenges that
confront the region, but also the determination to address such issues positively with
an effective collective response.
Some key issues are tacit or explicit in the way that the handful of short,
sympathetic reports present and frame these projects visually, through photographs
and film clips, as well as textually. The first thing that is striking is the arid nature of
the land, with the dust-bowl appearance of the image of the Gula Buhare project
5
and a November 2020 report on Green Tress
6
indicating both the difficulty that the
projects face and the necessity for greening the surroundings. Immediately, this
becomes a political problem since Turkish forces have disrupted water supplies to
the region through upstream mega-dams effecting the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers,
and through direct interference in local water infrastructure. The leading role of
women is conspicuous in images from the Gula Buhare project, as the subjects in a
2020 ANF News report on a campaign to plant olive trees in Raqqa
7
(in stark
contrast to recent history where ISIS banished women from the public sphere), and
participation is prominent in collective efforts during Green Tress working days. This
notion of community solidarity is clear in a Medyanews report that speaks of the
5
ANF News, “‘Gula Buhare’ Cultivating Project Launched for Women in Heseke,” ANF News website,
15 June 2021: https://anfenglish.com/women/gula-buhare-cultivating-project-launched-for-women-in-
heseke-52798.
6
Hosheng Hassan, ““Green Tresses” Campaign to Counter Desertification in Syria’s Qamishli,” North
Press Agency website, 16 November 2020: https://npasyria.com/en/49897/.
7
ANF News, “100,000 olive trees planted in Raqqa,” ANF News website, 7 February 2021:
https://anfenglish.com/ecology/100-000-olive-trees-planted-in-raqqa-41436; ANF News, “‘Gula
Buhare.’”
“mobilization campaign”
8
connoting a civil front in the struggle for social survival. The
ANF News feature on tree-planting in Raqqa directly references the proximity of war
in place and time, reminding readers that many of the project’s sites were formerly
dominated by the “ISIS terror regime,” during which years the city’s parks and green
spaces had been used for mass graves. This ANF account is pleased to report that
the Civil Council of the People's Municipality has successfully worked with the
Environment Committee and the Parking Management Committee to plant 100, 000
olive trees during its campaign, a considerable physical and symbolic achievement.
9
Green Tress
Her braid, each hair a history
10
The home-grown Green Tress is notable for its ambition and the dynamism of its
aspirations. The project’s key objective is to use the Afrîn and University of Rojava
Nurseries, both in Qamishli, and three other nurseries, to nurture and produce
saplings, and ultimately to plant out four million trees to green the city and reforest
the landscape across northeast Syria. The project’s coordinators take an approach
that illustrates attempts to integrate and embed social-ecological principles of
democratic confederalism in everyday practice. Women’s participation on an equal
footing to men, considerations of democratic inclusion, as well as close links to the
solidarity economy and educational institutions are notable features of Green Tress
and complementary projects. Spokesperson Ziwar Sheikho affirms that Green Tress
volunteers are undertaking “self-management in protecting the environment, which is
one of the three pillars of the administration itself.”
11
Similar to the symbolism evident in the tree-planting project in Raqqa,
considerations of memorialisation and representation are apparent too in the choice
of name and logo for Qamishli’s Green Tress. These hold a profound and multi-
8
Hassan, ““Green Tresses” Campaign”; Hogir Abdo, ““Green Braids” a Campaign to Plant Four
Million Trees in Syria’s Northeast,” North Press Agency website, 23 February 2021:
https://npasyria.com/en/55005/; Medyanews, “Rojava University Students Join the Popular ‘Green
Braids’ Rojava Tree-planting Mobilization Campaign,” Medyanews website, 24 February 2021:
https://medyanews.net/rojava-university-students-join-the-popular-green-braids-rojava-tree-planting-
mobilization-campaign/.
9
ANF News, “100,000 olive trees planted in Raqqa.”
10
Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper of Sinjar, trans. from the Arabic by Dunya Mikhail and Max Weiss
(London: Serpent’s Tail, 2018), 107.
11
Pergin Hassan, “Despite the Horrors of War… Self-administration of Northern and Eastern Syria
Launches a Huge Afforestation Project,” Xeber24.org website, 4 March 2021:
https://xeber24.org/en/archives/331476.
layered mulch of meaning, invoking collective cultural memory spanning pre-history
to recent atrocities. The reference to tresses or braids was explicitly chosen as a
signifier in remembrance of the Yazidi women, who traditionally wear their hair in
braids, that ISIS terrorists killed and sexually enslaved and to respect the ongoing
struggles of the Yazidi people.
12
In Loez’s report on the initiative, the braids are
powerfully symbolic of resistance since Yazidi’s women whose husbands or fiancés
were killed by ISIS cut off their braids and left them on their partners’ graves before
taking up arms against their murderers.
13
This tribute was extended to all women in a
report in which, Sheikho comments, “The name of the [campaign] was inspired by
women’s sacrifices and roles in northeast Syria, including her role in ruling and
protecting the area.”
14
Green Tress literature makes further connection with women’s
contribution to food production dating back to ancient Mesopotamia.
15
Again, this
aligns ecological work with women’s liberation and jineolojî (the science of women),
another foundational pillar of the Kurdish freedom movement’s paradigm. Finally, the
outgrowth of braids into olive trees combined in the initiative’s logo is resonant with
painful memories of the olive groves destroyed as an act of war during the 2018
invasion of Afrîn.
It is recognised that wider social participation is essential if Green Tress is to
succeed. Spokesperson Mahmoud Jaqmaqi’s hopes for the project are tempered by
realism about the task’s magnitude, acknowledging that “If these events do not turn
into a societal culture, our efforts will definitely remain incomplete.”
16
Green Tress is
a voluntary initiative, compatible with, but outside of, the AANES’s formal framework,
represented structurally by the municipalities or cooperatives. Nevertheless, the
growth of substantial numbers of trees would positively transform the area’s spatial
geography, making a valuable contribution to social wellbeing and the solidarity
economy. Diverse species are being tended, including fruit-bearing plants and trees
such as grapevines, olives, mulberries, figs, peaches, and pomegranates, as well as
evergreen forest trees. Coordinators expressed surprise at the enthusiastic response
12
Medyanews, “Rojava University Students…”
13
Loez, “Green Braids for Rojava,” Kedistan website, 12 June 2021:
http://www.kedistan.net/2021/06/12/green-braids-for-rojava/.
14
Hassan, ““Green Tresses” Campaign.”
15
“Tresses Vertes,” Sido to Hunt.
16
Abdo, ““Green Braids.”
and support from civil society for Green Tress.
17
This is despite Ziwar Shewo’s
concern that tree-planting might be “something people don’t care about at the
moment.”
18
The initiative unites social and ecological aspirations in a way that
complement’s the AANES’s objectives, but it has no organisational links, and is able
to implement an ambitious project that would be beyond the Autonomous
Administration’s capacity in current circumstances. Gulistan Sido, co-founder of
Green Tress, reveals that there are positive and cooperative meetings with
administration delegates to identify suitable spaces for planting, and that the
administration offers moral encouragement for the project, yet Green Tress remains
fully independent.
19
The initiative’s social reach extends to support from schools and
the “Federation of the war wounded” as well as to higher education.
20
It is significant that Green Tress has close connections with the University of
Rojava. There are practical benefits and cultural advantages to partly situating the
project on the campus, since a nursery is accommodated there, and saplings can be
planted on the grounds. We are told that the pool of volunteers includes “students,
workers, writers and intellectuals” and that scientific committee members are also on
hand to advise and monitor the cultivation.
21
Education, incorporating an emphasis
upon critical reflection and creative thinking, is at the heart of the developments in
northeast Syria. In this respect, the University of Rojava’s statement of “values and
perspective” includes principles that exactly mirror those of the Kurdish movement,
namely “ecological life, democratic society, women’s freedom.” Indeed, the
University of Rojava considers itself to be a direct “outcome of the Rojava
Revolution.”
22
A characteristic aspect of Kurdish liberatory practice is the
revolutionary concept of tekmîl embedded in educational and social processes,
understood as the progressive self-realisation towards social-realisation through
constructive and respectful criticism. This should not be confused with individualistic
notions of self-help and positive thinking, but is intimately connected to the social,
political, and ecological priorities of the wider movement. Alongside such pedagogic
approaches, the exchange of ideas through outreach is at the heart of Rojavan
17
“Tresses Vertes,” Sido to Hunt.
18
Loez, ‘Green Braids for Rojava.”
19
Gulistan Sido, in interview by Stephen E. Hunt (30 July 2021).
20
Loez, ‘Green Braids for Rojava.”
21
Medyanews, “Rojava University Students…”
22
University of Rojava, “About us:” https://www.rojavauni.com/en/about-us/ [accessed 27 June 2021].
academies. Green Tress, for example, also participates in conferences to raise the
project’s profile, as well as to network and coordinate environmental work within
northeast Syria and across borders. Sido reports that a memorable recent Green
Tress intervention was a presentation at a conference that formed part of an
“international Guérilla University,” convened with French philosopher Jacques
Rancière.
23
Connections to the University of Rojava enhance opportunities for members
of Green Tress to communicate with an international audience. Gulistan Sido
explains that “We want to mobilize as an association that will be part of the global
ecological movement.” [“Nous voulons se mobiliser en tant qu'une association qui
fera partie du mouvement écologique mondiale.”]
24
Consequently, an outreach
event of May 2021 demonstrates that the group’s efforts are not limited to local
concerns but share an international and planetary perspective. A press statement by
Green Tress volunteers made a direct appeal to signatories of the Paris Agreement
25
to exert diplomatic pressure upon the Turkish state to enable greater downstream
waterflow, currently substantially held-back by mega-dam infrastructure. The
campaigners charge that Turkey’s riparian policy “heralds a humanitarian and
environmental disaster,” with profound consequences that include water shortages,
exacerbating the effects of climate change, depleted soil fertility, reduced biological
diversity and the spread of epidemics.
26
A public letter from Sido to Brigitte Macron
also confirms an international approach through efforts to appeal to French
influencers to persuade the Turkish government to moderate its catastrophic water
policies.
27
Green Tress, therefore, confronts severe ecological threats and
challenges, both in northeast Syria, and across the Middle East.
Ecological struggles
23
Gulistan Sido, in interview by Stephen E. Hunt (30 July 2021).
24
Gulistan Sido, in interview by Stephen E. Hunt (30 July 2021).
25
Only six states have failed to ratify the 2016 Paris Agreement, currently the most prominent
international agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Three
of them – Turkey, Iran, and Iraq – are states in control of majority Kurdish areas.
26
Hogir Abdo, “Initiative in Syria’s Qamishli Calls Paris Agreement to Pressure Turkey,” North Press
Agency website, 2 May 2021: https://npasyria.com/en/58696/.
27
Gulistan Sido, “From Rojava, an Open Letter to Brigitte Macron,” (letter of 2 May 2021, trans. by
Renée Lucie Bourges), Kedistan website, 13 July 2021: http://www.kedistan.net/2021/07/13/rojava-
open-letter-to-brigitte-macron/.
While water shortages and desertification have been a historic challenge in the
region, they are not the unfortunate outcome of solely natural conditions. As the
complaints of Green Tress show, Kurdish critics allege that the Turkish state has
weaponised water in two ways as a form of geopolitical and ecological warfare. The
construction of dams has long been contested. The origins of organised Kurdish
ecological resistance, and the largest mobilisations, may be traced to mass
opposition to dams.
28
Leading campaigns have been those resisting dams on the
Munzer River and against the GAP Project, which includes the Ilisu Dam that
inundated the ancient city of Hasankeyf in 2021, despite a protest campaign that
lasted for more than two decades. Alongside this dissent, the dams affecting the
Euphrates and Tigris River basins, in particular, have been the cause of
longstanding cross-border riparian disputes, with the Green Tress campaigners, for
example, claiming that the downstream impact of gigantic Turkish dams such as the
Ataturk Dam contravene historic international agreements made with Syria.
29
Furthermore, Kurdish sources, human rights organisations, and aid agencies have
made allegations that Turkey and its armed affiliates have deliberately and
repeatedly cut water supplies as a form of unconventional warfare to put pressure
upon the AANES, affecting the quantity and quality of water available during the
coronavirus epidemic that began in 2020.
30
Not only does this withholding of water
have immediate humanitarian costs, but grave ecological impacts such as
aridification, making it more difficult for vegetation to thrive and causing soil erosion
and depletion, thereby negatively effecting in turn food production and biodiversity,
and exacerbating climate change. Desertification has consequences for the
immediate populations of northeast Syria, but also the wider Middle East and,
ultimately, the world community.
The colonial legacy of the Ba’athist regime has presented another challenge
for the agriculture in northeast Syria since the 2012 Revolution. Knapp, Flach and
28
Laurent Dissard, “From Shining Icons of Progress to Contested Infrastructures: ‘Damming’ the
Munzur Valley in Eastern Turkey,” 281–316 in Contested Spaces in Contemporary Turkey:
Environmental, Urban and Secular Politics, ed. Fatma Müge Göçek (London: I.B. Tauris 2019); Ahmet
Kerim Gültekin, “Kurdish Alevism: Creating New Ways of Practicing the Religion,” Working Paper
Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities 18. Leipzig:
Leipzig University, 2019, 18.
29
Abdo, “Initiative in Syria’s Qamishli…”
30
Human Rights Watch, “Turkey/Syria: Weaponizing Water in Global Pandemic?: COVID-19
Protections Rely on Adequate Supply,” Human Rights Watch website, 31 March 2020:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/31/turkey/syria-weaponizing-water-global-pandemic.
Ayboĝa report that regime policies dictated that each area within the Kurdish-
majority cantons would cultivate a specific agricultural commodity for processing
elsewhere. It was even illegal to plant trees without permission, due to the imposition
of monocultures that were maintained by inputs of fossil-fuel fertilizers and pesticides
which in the longer term affected soil fertility.
31
The AANES has since prioritised the
diversification and expansion of agricultural production to better ensure food
sovereignty. Initiatives such as Jinwar, Green Tress, and “Gula Buhare” complement
efforts to establish a solidarity economy, that is a regenerative economy that gives
precedence to social needs distinct from capitalist imperatives to maximise profits
through consumerism and export-driven economic growth.
Climate change is a dominant ecological challenge. This global threat
confronts the Middle East with particular intensity, representing an immediate and
increasing peril, since it is anticipated that the present trend of diminishing
precipitation will continue, while rising average temperatures will follow an upward
trajectory.
32
Supporters of the Revolution acknowledge the current dependence of
the war-time economy on the exploitation of oil reserves to support energy needs
and to generate revenues. The heavy use of unrefined diesel is a source of chronic
air pollution in all parts of Kurdistan. Again, the former colonial relationship between
the central Ba’athist regime and the Kurdish cantons has worsened this situation,
since the historic lack of refineries makes the pollution from petrol and diesel
combustion particularly toxic in present-day Rojava.
In this context, mass tree-planting is seen as means to offset and address
some of the impacts of climate change. The benefits of increased tree cover are
many since they can contribute towards the absorption of carbon dioxide, lessen
pollution by conditioning the air and moderating temperatures, as well as being
sources of food and building material. Care in the selection of species that will
survive heat and desiccation while helping biodiversity is, therefore, essential. Forest
restoration on a significant scale can also reduce water runoff and enrich the local
31
Michael Knapp, Anna Flach and Ercan Ayboĝa, Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and
Women’s Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan, trans. by Janet Biehl (London: Pluto Press, 2016), 192-93.
32
Bucchignani, Edoardo, Paola Mercogliano, Hans-Jürgen Panitz, and Myriam Montesarchio. 2018.
“Climate Change Projections for the Middle East–North Africa Domain with COSMO-CLM at Different
Spatial Resolutions.” Advances in Climate Change Research 9, no. 1 (March 2018): 66-80.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accre.2018.01.004.
habitat for wild species. Once more historical circumstances explain the depleted
biodiversity and ecological integrity of northeast Syria, which has suffered almost
total deforestation, attributed to causes such as the supply of timber to construct the
construct the Baghdad-Berlin Railway and the demands of intensive agriculture.
33
Green Tress spokesperson Ziwar Shewo claims that, today, only 1.5% of Rojava is
covered in green spaces.
34
As a corrective to such loss, tree-planting is a priority
objective that Green Tress shares, for example, with the Committee for Nature
Conservation which has created nature reserves at Hayaka and Mizgefta Nû that
have been promoted internationally by Make Rojava Green Again.
35
Green Tress
aim to increase the cover from trees and other vegetation to 10%.
36
Social Ecology in the Kurdish paradigm
It has been seen that, within the region where the AANES is currently adopting
principles of democratic confederalism, as elsewhere in Kurdistan, it is impossible to
disentangle ecological progress from current geopolitical factors and issues of social
justice. Indeed, the Kurds and other minority ethnic groups have been subject to a
multifaceted system of domination. First, regional nations – Turkey, Syria, Iraq and
Iran – have repressed cultural and linguistic diversity harshly in their endeavour to
impose a unitary state on populations deemed to be dissident. Second, Kurdish
activists are aware that this internal colonialism has occurred within the historic
framework of domination as part of what Havin Guneser terms “an imperial project.”
37
The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) determined much of the Middle East’s current
political geography and quartered Kurdistan. The United States and Russia, in
particular, continue to broker power, through direct and proxy military interventions,
while economic influence is exerted in the era of neoliberalism. Finally, local
landowners continue to retain substantial sway in many Kurdish-majority areas,
adding a further dimension to the complex prevailing patterns of subordination and
exploitation of people and the living world. In such circumstances, the philosophy of
33
Knapp, Flach and Ayboĝa, Revolution in Rojava, 212.
34
Loez, ‘Green Braids for Rojava.”
35
Internationalist Commune of Rojava, Make Rojava Green Again (London: Dog Section Press,
2018), 74-75.
36
Gulistan Sido, in interview by Stephen E. Hunt (30 July 2021).
37
Havin Guneser, The Art of Freedom: A Brief History of the Kurdish Freedom Movement (Oakland,
CA.: PM Press, 2021), 6-7.
social ecology, with its foundational objection to patriarchy and all forms of hierarchy
and domination, provides a holistic and deep critique of colonialism and extractivism
that can be convincingly applied to the problems that confront the Kurdish freedom
movement. Moreover, social ecology’s commitment to direct democracy and
communalism also potentially presents a pathway to a less alienated, more
sustainable alternative to capitalist modernity. The initial encounter between the
ideas of Murray Bookchin and Abdullah Öcalan
38
has subsequently sparked a
dialectic relationship between Kurdish and social-ecologist activists leading to
creative exchanges.
Faced with the demands of social defence, the ecological aspect of the
Revolution in Rojava has received less attention than women’s liberation and radical
democracy the other pillars of democratic confederalism within the Kurdish
movement. Consequently, to date it has made less progress. Nevertheless, the
pillars of democratic confederalism are mutually supporting and fully consonant,
united by priorities to resist colonialism and to develop solidarity that prioritises social
needs through sustainable food production and ecological industry. This is grounded
in the view that social wellbeing and economic security cannot be maintained without
ecological sustainability, and that ecological sustainability can only be achieved
through post-capitalist arrangements that do not rely upon infinite economic growth
and exploitation. Initiatives such as Green Tress seek to implement practical
measures to transform the environment which if successfully implemented would
have substantial ecological and social benefits. This holistic approach signals
collective endeavours that aim to positively reclaim the region’s physical geography,
and thereby enhance its social geography.
It is significant that the Kurdish freedom movement is attempting to develop a
paradigm beyond capitalism and the state in keeping with the ideas of social
ecology. Inspired also by Ferdinand Braudel’s notion of the longue dureé, the
Kurdish revolutionaries are aware too that today’s Kurdish majority areas, are closely
co-extensive with the region of Mesopotamia. Now, ironically, the starting point of
experiments to advance a more socially just, democratic, and ecologically
38
Akbar Shahid Ahmed, “America’s Best Allies Against ISIS Are Inspired by a Bronx-born Libertarian
Socialist.” Huffington Post, 18 December 2015: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/syrian-kurds-
murray-bookchin_n_5655e7e2e4b079b28189e3df?ri18n=true.
sustainable paradigm of democratic modernity that is post-state and post-capitalist,
Mesopotamia was the site of the proto-state’s emergence in the last six thousand
years (relatively recent in human history
39
). Through multiple grassroots endeavours,
coordinated by federated decision-making bodies, the Kurdish freedom movement is
seeking to bring about systemic transformation and a way forward that combines a
theoretically reconstructive politics with practical measures such as radically
decentralized assemblies, cooperatives, and initiatives to regreen localities
traumatised by poverty, oppression and multiple forms of violence. In northeast
Syria, therefore, concern for the living world is not only taking place within the
context of a revolutionary situation but, in the form of social ecology, is also a
powerful revolutionary expression.
Stephen E. Hunt
Published in French as “Tresses vertes et arbres rebelles: la lutte ecologique kurde
dans l'administration autonome de nord-est de la Syrie,” in eds. Michael Löwy and
Daniel Tanuro, Luttes ecologiques et sociales dans le monde: Allier le vert et le
rouge (Paris: Editions Textual, 2021).
39
James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2017), 2-3.