Upper Mesopotamia

“The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons”, or in modern language the crimes of imperialism shall not be washed away by history… as long as capitalism and imperialism exist. There could not be a better example of this than the situation of the Kurdish people (and their neighboring Arabs) in Syria. For thousands of years, the entire region of upper Mesopotamia (see map) was populated by both nomadic and (settled) agricultural peoples, including the Kurds, whose ancestors were probably mainly nomads. Inevitable conflicts arose. These conflicts were exacerbated with the rise of class societies and, ultimately, colonialism and imperialism.

The old Ottoman Empire rulers encouraged some of the Kurdish tribes to settle in upper Mesopotamia, which includes what is now northeast Syria. Then, when the French took over Syria – whose borders were drawn up by the French and the British through the Syker-Picot Accord of 1916 – they did the same. According to Wikipedia, the French developed this resettlement on a large scale. This continued after WW II. In 1962 a special census was conducted in northeast Syria to determine the number of “illegal (Kurdish) immigrants” who had settled in the region and then in 1973 Hafez Assad issued a decree that those living in the region who could not show that they were living there “legally” would lose all citizenship rights and would be replaced by Syrian Arabs. According to Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami (Burning Country), over 400,000 Kurds lost their citizenship rights as a result. Simultaneously, expressions of Kurdish culture and use of the Kurdish language was banned. Overall, thousands of Kurds were driven from their land and were replaced by Syrian Arabs in a process that was not fundamentally different from Israel’s settlement project in the West Bank.

The crackdown on the Kurds was part and parcel of a crackdown on democratic rights in general, but the repression of the Kurdish people was especially harsh and took place in the context of general prejudice against the Kurds. In order to fight back against this repression, Kurds joined the Syrian Communist Party (SCP) “en masse” according to Joseph Daher. However, the SCP really represented the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union, which supported Baathism (the Arab nationalist movement and parties throughout the region, which included the Assad regime). Therefore, the SCP did not fight for Kurdish rights in Syria, which led the Kurds to leave the party. Daher also explains that “At the same time, Assad co-opted certain segments of Kurdish society, particularly the elites in the growing Kurdish opposition in the late 1970s and early 1980s…” This heightened the division between the Kurdish and the Arab masses. The result was that the Kurdish masses saw only one route towards their liberation – Turkey’s PKK. That is how and why the Syrian wing of the PKK formed. (Oaklandsocialist discussed the formation of the PKK in our previous article.) That route was through the Syrian Democratic Union Party or PYD. Some may claim that the PYD is independent of and separate from the PKK but its perspective and program are the same.

The PYD and their armed wing, the YPG.
They made some advances, especially as far as women’s rights. But to what extent are they run democratically?

Syrian Revolution and Arab Spring
The outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011 was the pole around which all politics in Syria revolved. That included the issue of Kurdish rights. In Oaklandsocialist’s article on Syria and the theory of permanent/uninterrupted revolution we described how the armed struggle developed against the Assad dictatorship. The potential for that revolution to expand into an anti-capitalist revolution was there, but for various reasons that did not happen, as that article discusses. In the course of that armed struggle, Assad withdrew his forces from the mainly Kurdish regions of northeast Syria, leaving that region in the hands of the PYD and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Unit, or YPG. In my view, Assad withdrew his forces from that part of Syria out of a combined military and political strategy. Militarily he felt it was too difficult to fight both the main Syrian Arab opposition (led by the Syrian National Council) and the Kurds at once. Politically, Assad had the strategy of splitting the Kurds away from the Syrian Arab majority. Whether for immediate opportunist reasons or because it fit their general overall goal and strategy, or both, the PYD went along with this. They focused on ruling their region. Yassin-Kassab and al Shami wrote that “the PYD cooperated with the regime inside Syria. Rather than demanding rights at home, militant Syrian Kurds, were urged to join the struggle to the north, and in 2005, according to [a witness named] Serdar ‘it was the PYD which stopped our Kurdish revolution It was the PYD that acted as Asad’s shabeeha (secret police) in the Kurdish areas, beating protesters with sticks.’ It is going too far to paint the PYD as a regime agent… [Rather,] in practice it practices a ruthless pragmatism. Working with the regime, saved the Kurdish area from bombardment and allowed them to build an alternative. The PYD suspicion of the Arab opposition, and of Turkey’s influence upon it, is justified so long as the opposition is unable or unwilling to offer guarantees of future Kurdish autonomy.”

The PYD’s approach was more than simply pragmatic opportunism; the opportunism was a concrete expression of the PKK and PYD’s policy of seeking Kurdish liberation in isolation from the overall struggle against exploitation and repression in general and, in the last analysis, from the struggle against capitalism itself. It is true that they made statements against capitalism, etc., but those were almost exclusively rhetorical. They did not take concrete action to link up with the broader movement and with the Arab working class and the class struggle in particular.

Joseph Daher explains another aspect of this concession to Assad: Some “Kurdish political parties also collaborated with the Syrian regime. Among these were Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which had been in Syria since 1972. In 1979, Masoud Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) also operated in Syria and collaborated with Assad’s regime. Both were focused on using their base in Syria to organize Kurds in Iraq.

“The Kurdish parties that accepted this bargain rejected struggles waged by Kurdish organizations in Syria against Damascus, which they considered a diversion from what they considered the ‘real struggle’ for the ‘real’ Kurdistan in Iraq and Turkey.” In other words, those parties were willing to sacrifice the Kurds in Syria for those i n Iraq and Turkey. And for what, since Assad ultimately betrayed those parties too, just as the U.S. has done?

On its side the Arab Syrian revolution also bears some responsibility. Daher writes “Kurds criticized Arabs for tacitly using or supporting anti-Kurdish rhetoric from the beginning of the uprising. Arabs in turn accused Kurds of being “separatists” for seeking their national rights; some went so far as to accuse Kurds of betraying the Syrian revolution….

“Tensions further escalated after the SNC published its “National Charter: The Kurdish Question in Syria” in April 2012. The document removed passages recognizing a Kurdish nation in Syria that had been included in the final declaration of the Friends of Syria meeting in Tunisia a few months earlier….

“Further conflicts between SNC and KNC, appears caused by both sides – willingness of PYD [Democratic Union Party] to compromise with Assad and failure to link Kurdish liberation with national liberation and SNC willingness to ignore Kurdish oppression and see any calls for autonomy as ‘separatism’”.

American anarchist Murray Bookchin coined the term “democratic federalism” and developed the theory behind it. Ocalan of the PKK adopted the idea and passed it on to the PYD. To what extent is it really democratic, though, and to what extent does it just obscure and shield those who wield the real power?

The PYD instituted a regime of “democratic federalism” as advocated by Öcalan and the PKK. This meant seim-autonomous elected committees in each zone. Withing these zones the PYD did achieve an important accomplishment: Major steps were made against oppression of women. Even critics of the PYD admit that. Yassin-Kassab and al Shami wrote in 2016: “on the Kurdish national level, the experiment so far has been an undoubted success. Kurds established their own police and courts; Kurdish became the language of instruction in schools. It is to be hoped that the gap between the progressive and more retrograde aspects of the PYD program will be narrowed in the future.” The  “gap” they were referring to was that “in Rojava, revolutionary energies are channeled, controlled, and sometimes repressed by an authoritarian party.”

Any organizing effort must always entail some central force to organize and coordinate it. The only question is whether that force will be democratically elected and openly recognized, with its powers and limitations clearly defined. In other words, whether it is operating out in the open. From all reports, there was such a force in the area: That force was the the Democratic Union Party – the PYD – itself. They ruled in the name of the “Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria” – or AANES. Daher writes: “In sum, the AANES project combined two contradictory elements: 1) top-down political and social institutions controlled by the PYD; and 2) significant achievements, notably increasing women’s participation at all levels as well as the inclusion, albeit symbolic of religious and ethnic minorities in AANES institutions and decision making.”

Some anarchists might claim that the problem was the very existence of a political party, in this case the PYD. But if the PYD had not existed and ruled somewhat behind the scenes, some other force would have stepped into the breech and ruled in an even more hidden manner, whether it called itself a “party” or not.

A central problem with the entire PYD approach was that regardless of what it wished, it could not escape the influence of one imperialist force or another. In this case, those imperialist forces were the US and also Russia to a lesser extent. Both directed the entire PYD military forces – which was the “People’s Defense Units”, or YPG – against ISIS. Russia was less influential on the PYD and for a shorter time; it was the US that mandated that approach. But this approach did not really conflict with the PYD’s overall strategy or goals anyway. What it did do was lead the PYD and its armed force, the YPG, into increased conflict with and repression of the Arab population under its control. Michael Karadjis summarizes what happened: “The US intervention, which began in September 2014 as the US airforce bombed ISIS to halt its genocidal advance towards Kurdish Kobani, was aimed at destroying ISIS in Syria; the YPG (later SDF) has been called the

Raqqa, Syria, after the Trump administration got done bombing it.

“ground troops” of the US ‘war on terror,’ but this is not really accurate, because obviously the YPG had its own reasons for wanting to destroy ISIS. This began a decade-long US-YPG (later US-SDF) military alliance which eventually succeeded in expelling ISIS from its ‘capital’ in Raqqa – with the US airforce completely destroying Raqqa in the process – and then destroying most of the rest of the ‘Caliphate’ by 2019.”

This summary of part of the military campaign comes from Karadjis’s very valuable “Essay on maps”. While I think Karadjis goes too far in excusing the present al-Sharaa regime (as I will discuss below),

From Michael Karadjis’s “Essay on Maps”

Karadjis shows one vital point: That in the war against the ISIS fascists, in which SDF forces were the main but not the only ground troops, SDF expanded its rule far beyond the Kurdish majority areas. And even the Kurdish majority areas were intermixed with Arabs, Assyrians and others. Karadjis labels the goal of the PYD as being irredentist, which is to say an attempt to restore a territory formerly belonging to some people or group. Disregarding the fact that there never was an actual independent Kurdish nation (except for a very short time between the two world wars), history moves on and different peoples move around, settle in different areas. No national minority is ever the exclusive population of any region, even where it is in the majority. By seeking to gain exclusive control over the Rojava area, the PYD tended to impose Kurdish domination over all the other people in the Rojava region. That was due to their nationalist approach. To repeat: Karadjis’s use of a series of demographic maps is invaluable in showing how this played out

Ha’yat Tarir Al Shaam
They built themselves around Arab Sunni nationalism. To what extent can they escape their origins?

HTS/al Sharaa to power
On December 8, 2024, the hated Assad regime was overthrown and Ha’yat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) came to power, headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa. HTS is an Islamicist party with a terrorist background. But now al-Sharaa was confronted with a new task: How to rebuild Syria? Al-Sharaa’s strategy was and remains to seek foreign investment to rebuild the country. That is only possible if the government provides stability and some assurance of profitable investment. A country that is racked by ethnic and religious strife and violence does not provide that stability. So al-Sharaa had to tamp down that strife. His problem is that his party (HTS) was built around Sunni Arab Islamicism. That party cannot just shed its basis like a chameleon changes its colors. Thousands of its members gave their all for Sunni Arab Islamicism and they are not willing to so simply abandon it. So al-Sharaa had to balance between the basis of HTS and his overall goals. And in any case, as we will see, his overall goals necessarily involved division and repression.

There are three main ethnic minorities in Syria: The Alawites whose main body is located Latakia province in the northwest coast of Syria, although like all ethnic minorities (or majorities too for that matter), Alawites live in many other regions of Syria including in its capital, Damascus. The second group is

Top two photos: Calls for “jihad” against Alawites. Bottom: Alawite men forced to crawl and bark like a dog. al Sharaa must tamp down this sectarian violence if he is to succeed in getting foreign investment. But can he?

the Druze, located mainly in and around al-Suweida in southwest Syria, and the third group is Kurds. Many Syrian Arabs held longstanding resentment against the Alawites, partly due to historical prejudice and partly due to the fact that the hated Assad is an Alawite and he based his rule in part on support from a portion of that group. There were also tensions between the Druze and the Bedouin due to historic conflicts over land use as well as the fact that many Islamicists consider the former to be heretics. In 2025, these ethnic tensions boiled over into widespread violence and atrocities. Oaklandsocialist discussed these events in this article “The new Syrian government – is this what so many sacrificed so much for?” The events covered in this article show that while al-Sharaa may have tried to tamp down the degree of violence, he and his forces bear responsibility for some of the atrocities committed against the Druze and the Alawites.

This is directly connected to the situation of the Kurds, who are in a somewhat different situation from that of the Druze or the Alawites. That’s because the Kurds are a larger group, and because of their previous situation when Assad was still in power. The Kurds also were and remain well armed and well organized. Any attempt to commit widespread atrocities against them would have immediately sent Syria back into civil war, and the Kurdish groups outside of but bordering on Syria would probably have intervened as well. The al-Sharaa government recognized that it absolutely must make concessions to the Kurds and their party – the PYD – if it is to attract foreign investment. In his article already cited, Karadjis summarizes the concessions the government made.

Seeking foreign investment
Some argue that al-Sharaa has no choice but to seek to rebuild Syria through seeking foreign investment. The question is where must this strategy lead?

However, there is another side to the story. In this article on “Critical development” Joseph Daher argues that in the first place what investment Syria has secured is mainly “investment in short term profit seeking [such as tourism and real estate development], to the detriment of the productive sectors of the economy,” such as manufacturing, industry, and agriculture. Daher points out that “more than half of Syrians remain displaced, either internally or abroad. Over 90% of Syrians are living below the poverty line, and 16.5 million people—three in four—required humanitarian aid in 2025, according to the UN.” This cannot be alleviated without raising the wages of Syrian workers but doing so will discourage foreign investment. In other words, the economic (capitalist) model upon which al-Sharaa bases his strategy is caught in the infamous “race to the bottom” from which there is no escape. What defenders of the al-Sharaa strategy cannot answer is “where does this race end?”

Daher’s analysis is confirmed by this article in Syriauntold.com “HTS strategy to consolidate its power in Syria”. They write: “Moreover, HTS political and economic orientation, rooted in neoliberal dynamics and accompanied by harsh austerity measures, makes it harder to establish the foundations for a viable and inclusive reconstruction process. For instance, the government recent contracts regarding electricity sector privileges forms of full privatization through the Build-Own-Operate (BOO) model. In this model, a private company undertakes the construction and operation of a project, maintaining ownership of the asset indefinitely.” That article also explains the international political ramifications regarding the al-Sharaa government’s failure to condemn US and Israeli imperialism and other issues.

Daher explains the corollary to this race to the bottom: use divide-and-conquer methods to ensure that the working class does not unite and fight for its own interests. While al-Sharaa has made concessions to the Kurds, he still pursues this divide-and-conquer strategy overall. Regarding the Alawites, Daher writes: “to consolidate its power over society, HTS is using sectarianism as a tool of domination and control over the population. While the sectarian violence unleashed in March [2025] against Alawite civilians was initially provoked by remnants of the Assad regime who organized coordinated attacks against members of the security services and civilians, the counterreaction encompassed all Alawites… HTS and Syrian officials have repeatedly misrepresented the Alawite community as a tool of the former regime against the Syrian people.” Al Sharaa promised to investigate the atrocities against the Alawites and to punish those responsible, but to this date little or nothing has been done. It is similar with the atrocities committed by al Sharaa forces against the Druze. It is true that similar atrocities have not been committed against the Kurds at this point, but repression is sure to come because al-Sharaa has no choice but to follow ethno-nationalism and the divide and conquer strategy in order to control the working class and the poor in general.

Further, according to Daha, al Sharaa struck deals with remnants – the criminals – of the Assad regime.

Inherent in this strategy is consolidating his rule into fewer hands. Daher again: “In these circumstances, official channels of state institutions are often ignored, and real power is exercised by a small informal network of individuals working with prominent autonomy and secrecy…. the brother of Syria’s self-proclaimed President, Hazem al-Shara’a, has increasingly emerged as an important figure in economic affairs and in the management of business elites.” In other words, we are seeing a tendency towards nepotism, which will inevitably lead to self-dealing and corruption, especially in the absence of democratic controls. This in and of itself will tend to inhibit foreign direct investment.

PYD under al Sharaa
As for the PYD iself, Daher concludes: “In sum, the AANES [Autonomous Adminstration of North East Syria – the formal name of the PYD controlled government] project combined two contradictory elements: 1) top-down political and social institutions controlled by the PYD; and 2) significant achievements, notably increasing women’s participation at all levels as well as the inclusion, albeit symbolic of religious and ethnic minorities in AANES institutions and decision making.”

Some will ask, “well, what would you have al-Sharaa do instead?” That is the wrong question. The question should be: “How did the movement get into this bind in the first place, what was the alternative and what is to be done now?” The answer goes directly to the question which we originally set out to discuss: The strategy of the PYD in Syria (and in fact the strategy of the different Kurdish parties throughout Kurdistan). The fact is that overall their strategy is not so different from that of HTS and al-Sharaa, and that is why it’s so critical to examine the bind in which the Syrian masses find themselves. In our article on Syria and the permanent revolution, we showed that the revolution against the Assad dictatorship was not just against authoritarianism, it was also for economic gains. We also showed that there was the potential of the Syrian working class – small as it may be – to play the central role in the revolution against Assad. We also showed the potential for the Syrian working class to link up with that class around the region, including in Turkey and Iran. The Kurdish workers could have played the key role in building this cross border unity in action, but the pro-capitalist nationalism of the Kurdish parties opposed this direction.

It may seem simpler, easier to take a different road, to avoid direct attacks by every capitalist force in the region and in fact on the planet. However, as the current bind in which the Syrian people – the Kurds included – find themselves, and as all of history shows, that apparently easier road is really a cul-de-sac, a dead end. And once in power based upon that strategy there is no going back.

In a sense, one could say that the PYD is the traditional mass organization of the Kurdish people of Syria. That makes taking a critical look at the PYD’s policies important but also very difficult. 

Note: This is the second in a series on the struggle of the Kurdish people. The first part is on that struggle in Turkey. Coming soon: the Kurdish struggle in Iraq, to be followed by an article on the Kurds in Iran and finally an article making some general theoretical points. We welcome comments, including criticisms. Subscribe to Oaklandsocialist for free to be sure to get these articles.

The PYD and their armed wing, the YPG.
They made some advances, especially as far as women’s rights. But to what extent are they run democratically?