29.01.2026

High hopes turn to ashes

Hailed by some on the left as a unique experiment in egalitarian, decentralised, ecologically sustainable self‑administration, Rojava has ended in bitter disappointment. Yassamine Mather investigates

Giddy dreams for a libertarian socialist Rojava, inspired by the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan and Murray Bookchin, have ended in the bitter ashes of disappointment. Wider military, diplomatic and political shifts and developments simply squeezed the Kurdish statelet out of existence.

Abandoned by the US, they and their allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces were simply outnumbered and outgunned. Hailed by some on the left as a unique experiment in egalitarian, decentralised, ecologically sustainable self-administration, a late-2025 offensive by the Syrian transitional government - led by interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa (a former al-Qaeda commander) - captured the strategic hubs of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor.

By January 2026, the SDF had been pushed back to the province of Hasakah, weakened by years of Turkish pressure and the steady drawing back of US troops, air cover and intelligence support. On January 18, the SDF signed a definitive 14-point “integration agreement” with Damascus, mediated by US envoy Tom Barrack. The agreement mandated the full handover of security and administrative authority to the Syrian state and the individual integration of SDF fighters into the national army. In effect, this brought the Rojava project to an end as an independent political entity.

On paper, the Syrian government has pledged to recognise the Kurdish language and cultural rights, but, in practice, political autonomy has been eliminated. A limited form of local administration survives only in isolated areas, such as Kobani. A fragile ceasefire is currently in place, but the situation remains volatile. There is widespread concern about the stability of detention camps holding Isis prisoners and the risk of a new insurgency, as the SDF is absorbed into a central military structure that many Kurds continue to view - with good reason - with deep suspicion.

The collapse of Rojava was not simply the result of military defeat: it was the outcome of external power politics and internal contradictions. US support for the SDF was always described as “temporary and tactical”. By late 2025, Washington had shifted its priorities towards backing a unified Syrian state under Ahmad al-Sharaa, partly to reduce tensions with Turkey. The US withdrew what it described as its “security umbrella” for the Kurds, arguing that the fight against Isis no longer required Kurdish autonomy. Damascus combined military muscle with negotiations, using a classic ‘carrot and stick’ strategy to reassert central authority.

Turkey’s sustained military campaigns - including in Afrin, Manbij and ‘Operation Peace Spring’ - treated the US-backed SDF as an existential threat, not least because the People’s Defence Units (YPG) constitute its organisational core. Suffice to say, the YPG is historically closely allied to the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) founded by Abdullah Öcalan. Changing global, regional and national realities have seen the PKK abandon its prolonged armed struggle and dissolve itself.

Despite claims of “stateless democracy”, the project struggled with a Stalinist political inheritance and a powerful cult of personality centred on Abdullah Öcalan. Rojava faced severe limits, what with embargoes, military threats and isolation. While women’s empowerment was a central claim, critics say that much of the visible progress was tied to militarisation and participation in armed units. There were worker cooperatives and communal management. However, what little revenue that Rojava could obtain came from the (primitive) oil industry and agriculture. Living standards remained pitifully low.

Shift to right

The first phase of the PKK’s armed struggle against the Turkish state began in the late 1970s and continued until 1998. During this period, Syria’s rivalry with Turkey led then president Hafez al-Assad to provide the PKK with support, including training camps in Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley. The PKK, under Abdullah Öcalan, operated from Syria until 1998, when Assad signed the Adana agreement (‘Memorandum of Understanding’) with Turkey and expelled the PKK.

Öcalan was captured in Kenya in February 1999 by Turkish intelligence, reportedly with CIA assistance, and remains imprisoned in Turkey. Here he developed his new ideological framework by drawing upon the likes of Murray Bookchin, the US eco-anarchist and advocate of libertarian municipalism. Öcalan redefined the PKK as post-Soviet, ecological, libertarian, feminist, etc, etc. He also said the PKK should settle for autonomy within Turkey. Not full-scale Kurdish independence.

This line of thought spread among Syrian Kurds in the early 2000s and culminated in the establishment of Rojava in 2012 under the leadership of the Democratic Union Party (PYD).

Bookchin’s ideas are certainly found in Rojava’s Charter of the Social Contract. However, journalists such as Andrea Glioti argue that this document was largely symbolic and was rarely followed in practice. Instead, governance was organised around ethno-religious representation - Arabs, Kurds and Christians - rather than class or popular democracy. Tribal leaders retained significant power. In 2014, Sheikh Humaydi Daham al-Jarba, an Assad supporter, was appointed governor of Jazirah canton. By 2016, his son commanded the al-Sanadid Forces within the SDF.

The social contract explicitly recognised private property, reinforcing landownership and tribal authority. Despite rhetoric about control from below, key decisions were consistently unanimous and aligned with Öcalan’s pronouncements - a pattern that contradicted claims of decentralisation. Andrea Glioti, who studied life in Rojava, described everyday life as dominated by economic hardship rather than political participation.

The PKK’s Stalinist origins remained visible. Öcalan’s portraits were everywhere, accompanied by slogans such as “There is no life without a leader”. Criticism of Öcalan was unacceptable. Even in schools, his image was justified as philosophical rather than political - though no other philosophers were permitted similar visibility, according to Michiel Leezenberg.¹

Women’s liberation was central to Rojava’s self-image and much celebrated by international supporters - there is no denying the prominence of women in armed units. However, this mirrors earlier experiences in Iranian Kurdistan, where women’s equality existed largely within military structures, but this rarely translated into improved conditions for civilian women. As in earlier Kurdish movements, progress among cadres did not dismantle patriarchal relations in rural life, where domestic violence and women’s treatment as property remained common. The Mala Jin (‘Women’s Houses’) often struggled to overcome deep-seated tribal laws in the rural Arab regions (like Deir ez-Zor) that the SDF controlled until recently.

US backing

What about US backing for this experiment in libertarian socialism? Pure calculation, of course. YPG/SDF served US regional interests in the same way that backing the Soviet Union during World War II served US global interests. Describing the US withdrawal of military and logistic support for YPG/SDF as a ‘betrayal’ is naive in the extreme. There has been a long history of imperial powers adopting and dumping local actors. Britain and France did it post-World War I and the US has done it in no uncertain terms.

The rival Kurdish leaderships repeatedly sought backing from imperialist and regional powers. Each time, ordinary Kurds paid the price. The YPG was no exception. From 2014 onwards, it actively courted Washington, accepting air support, weapons and diplomatic backing. By 2015-16, PYD leaders were visiting Washington, US special forces were operating in Kurdish areas and the PYD had joined a coalition with Saudi-backed forces. Warnings that this would turn the movement into a US proxy were dismissed. Events since have amply confirmed those warnings.

When US priorities shifted, the SDF turned to Damascus - now under a new leadership - reinforcing the very forces it once claimed to oppose. For decades, various Kurdish parties and movements have followed the logic of supporting ‘the enemy of my enemy’. This strategy has repeatedly ended in disaster. From Iran to Iraq to Syria, the big players have exploited Kurdish divisions, arming them when useful and abandoning them when convenient. I have said this on a number of occasions: one of the issues that played a role in the collapse and corruption of the Iranian left - not the most important factor, but an important one - was its prolonged sojourn in Kurdistan.

At the time, Iranian Kurdish organisations such as the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Komala Party were already justifying connections with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. This followed a long-standing pattern, going back almost a century, in which Kurds in one country - Iran or Iraq - sought funding or logistical support from the rulers of the neighbouring state.

In Kurdistan, under conditions of extreme hardship and in an unequal war against the Islamic Republic, it was very difficult to see beyond immediate needs. Comrades were not only being killed by the enemy’s bullets, but also by the cold. Equipment had to arrive from the outside. Clothing had to arrive from the outside. Peshmerga fighters were losing their eyesight because of snow blindness - protective glasses were desperately needed. Supplies had to come through, somehow.

The justification for allowing goods to pass through Iraq - later sometimes revealed to be funded directly by Saddam’s regime - was that defeating the Islamic Republic justified the means. Another argument was that this was being done openly, with the knowledge and approval of Iraqi Kurdish organisations, who themselves were facing similar repression and had the same hostile relationship with Tehran.

Disaster

This line of reasoning paved the way for disaster. I will not go into the details here. But I want to stress that this was not an abstract or theoretical issue. It had concrete political consequences.

I raised this argument during a debate on the BBC Persian Pargar programme with Kamran Matin of Sussex University, who is strongly supportive of Kurdish organisations. His response was that the Iranian left had been weakened precisely because it undermined Kurdish nationalism; and that large Kurdish organisations, because they supposedly had a mass base, would not be corrupted by receiving support from foreign powers.

That argument simply does not stand up to serious historical examination. We later saw the same organisations justify their reliance on Saddam Hussein, and then, once in exile in Europe, justify taking funding from the European Union, from rightwing Dutch parties and from openly reactionary organisations.

One Kurdish organisation, the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan (Mohtadi faction) has been a strong supporter of Donald Trump’s policies in the Middle East since 2016. Its leader, Abdullah Mohtadi, has supported US ‘maximum pressure’ policies since the first Trump administration, arguing that regime change in Tehran is the only path to achieve Kurdish rights. Each step is defended as necessary, tactical and harmless; but, in reality, each step deepens the political bankruptcy.

This trajectory did not strengthen the left - Kurdish or otherwise: it hollowed it out. First of all the ‘mass base’ of many of these organisations has constantly been reduced. However, even when they had a base, that did not immunise organisations against corruption and dependence. What we are witnessing today is not new. Large Kurdish organisations have been compromised repeatedly - first through their relationships with neighbouring states, and later through alignments with imperialist powers. The pattern is evident, and the consequences appalling.

The lesson of Rojava is quite clear: there are no shortcuts to defeating reactionary forces in the region or building a genuinely independent anti-imperialist movement. The trajectory of the SDF - from alliance with the YPG, to alliance with the US, to integration into the Hay’at Tahrir al‑Sham Syrian state - illustrates this painfully well.

1. See ‘The ambiguities of democratic autonomy: the Kurdish movement in Turkey and Rojava’: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14683857.2016.1246529.↩︎