Statelet of Survivors

Abstract

Abstract In territory liberated from the Islamic State, Syrian Kurds and their Arab and Christian allies have embarked on one of the most radical experiments in self-governance of our time. In defiance of both the Assad regime and Turkish President Erdoğan, they created a statelet to govern their semiautonomous region. Their system of local government does more to empower women and minorities than any other region of Syria. Officials of the statelet claim they are not separatists. In contrast to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which held a referendum on independence from Baghdad, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria maintains their commitment to the unity of Syria. Instead of toppling Bashar al-Assad, they have worked to obtain, and then fiercely defend, their autonomy from Damascus. As the fight against ISIS wore on, and at the behest of the US-led Global Coalition, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) expanded far beyond the Kurdish heartland known as Rojava, gaining control of Arab-majority regions. By the time the ISIS Caliphate was defeated in March 2019, they controlled one-third of Syria and two-thirds of its resources. I trace the genealogy of this social experiment to the Republic of Mount Ararat, where a self-governing entity was proclaimed in 1927 based on solidarity between Kurds and Armenian genocide survivors. Similar to the Republic of Ararat, the Autonomous Administration is founded on the idea of equality between people of different religious and ethnic backgrounds—and on the desire to secure their continued existence, against all odds.