{"id":8032,"date":"2015-02-16T11:50:35","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T16:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=8032"},"modified":"2016-07-12T16:08:20","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T21:08:20","slug":"the-ecology-of-syriankurdish-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/02\/16\/the-ecology-of-syriankurdish-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"The ecology of Syrian\/Kurdish freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eco-theorists may recognize the title of this post as a variation on the title of Murray Bookchin’s audacious and\u00a0deeply\u00a0influential (for many, including myself) 1982 book The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy<\/em><\/a> (pdf here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

What’s little known to anyone following recent news about the war in Syria is that an 18,300 sq. km. region in the northwest of the country — the western Kurdish Rojava cantons, which include the ISIS-contested city of Kobane — has been\u00a0the site of a social experiment grounded\u00a0in eco-anarchist Bookchin’s ideas of revolutionary “social ecology” and “libertarian municipalism,” which\u00a0Kurdish leader\u00a0Abdullah \u00d6calan<\/a>\u00a0has rebranded “democratic confederalism<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

As Irish anarchist Andrew Flood describes it<\/a>, the Rojavan revolutionaries aim for nothing less than<\/p>\n

“the development of ‘democratic, ecological, gender liberated society’ in the shell of the existing society through co-operation between a political party taking power in elections (the BDP) and a parallel system of neighboorhood councils which would be really making the decisions. \u00a0All this as part of an overall body called the\u00a0Democratic Society Congress bringing together political parties, councils and civil society.”<\/p>\n

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