ANSD : The foreigners who live like Kurds in Syria

SUN 24 - 11 - 2024

Date: Jan 24, 2019
Source: The Daily Star

The foreigners who live like Kurds in Syria

_{Deeba Shadnia| The Daily Star}
BEIRUT: In the rural lands of Northern Syria lies a commune made up of predominantly North American and Western European members who have travelled to the region to try emulate the Kurdish way of life and to contribute to what they see as the Kurdish struggle. Rojava, an area of Northern Syria - commonly referred to by Kurds as “Western Kurdistan” or “Kurdish Syria” - is also home to the Internationalist Commune.

The Kurds inhabit areas of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq and have spearheaded many nationalist movements throughout history in the pursuit of self-determination and greater rights as a minority population.

Backed by the United States, the Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), have played a significant role in the Syrian civil war, particularly in the fight against Daesh (ISIS).

A recent report by The Middle East Institute for Research and Strategic Studies stated that the Kurds currently control roughly 27 percent of Syria, specifically in the northeastern region of the country.

This area is governed by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the political wing of the YPG.

Around the time the Internationalist Commune was founded in early 2017, Kurdish opposition forces were in a strong position in the battle against Daesh militants.

The commune was founded by around half a dozen members who came from France, Germany, Spain, the U.K. and Chile and shared a common ideology: oppressed groups and minorities across the globe should unite and fight their battles together.

The commune came to be founded through a sense of pragmatism as well as ideological motivations, as the founders realized that there were many new foreign arrivals in Rojava.

They sought to create a space which would aid the cultural, political and social assimilation of foreign arrivals into Kurdish society.

The handful of foreigners who founded the commune had similar experiences in how they reached Rojava. Most commonly, their involvement in leftist political activism in their native countries enabled them to make links with the Kurdish community, and some of the early members travelled to Rojava through the Kurdistan region in Iraq.

Organization in the commune is based on self-sufficiency and self-organization, much like the native communes around Rojava. The commune encourages all members to contribute to the maintenance and decision-making in the collective as a way to build group responsibility and a sense of community.

Lessons on the Kurdish movement play a central role in the commune’s daily activities and with a specific focus on the ideas of Abdullah Ocolan - a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) - are heavily integrated in its teachings

Members also want to export the ideas behind the commune back to their home countries, as a means of raising awareness about the plight of the Kurds.

Tolhildan Cudi, a 31-year-old German man who goes by his Kurdish name, said that during his youth he was very politically active, especially within leftist politics, and it was through his activism that he first began to learn about the Kurdish movement.

“I was struck by how the Kurdish communities here organize themselves in a directly democratic way, where the people are autonomous in a grassroots manner,” he told The Daily Star.

When he first arrived in Rojova two years ago, the Internationalist Commune did not exist.

With no civil structures in place for foreigners in the area, the new arrivals were motivated to build their own commune in order to gradually assimilate into Kurdish life but without disrupting the lives of the locals. The commune is considered as a first-step for many new arrivals who were unfamiliar with the culture and society in Rojava.

Cudi said the founders began by looking for locations for the commune, and that after an arduous process they decided to start building in the countryside of Rojava.

The construction was carried out by the first commune members - including Cudi - along with the help of some local Kurds.

They lived in tents even during the winter until the construction was complete, which he said took roughly nine months.

“We all wake up together at the same time, all the meals we eat are cooked together, and we all spend time discussing possible projects and campaigns to embark on for the commune and the wider community,” said Lara Gomez, a 25-year-old Catalonian who has been in northern Syria for seven months.

“Make Rojava Green Again,” is one such project, which Gomez said aims at promoting sustainability and environmental protection, not just within the commune but also more widely in Rojava.

She said the Internationalist Commune is received positively by surrounding native Kurdish and Arab communities.

“Yesterday we were in a village next to the commune, with some local families. They were giving us food items such as milk to be able to make yoghurt, a few times during the week we will take them bread,” she said.

Gomez also said that local communities were pleased that foreigners are traveling to their lands in order to learn about their culture and language

Matt Broomfield - a 24-year-old Briton who spent three months at the commune before moving to another part of north east Syria - said the classes on Kurdish culture and language encouraged foreigners to understand the roots of the Kurdish movement as wholly as possible “as opposed to Westerners coming here and doing things in our own way” he said.

Broomfield said members also learn new skills from the Kurdish community. In terms of construction, those they learnt the local method of mud bricks as opposed to cement.

The question of security, however, still remains largely unclear for the collective. Residing in a heavily contested area of Northern Syria, the commune faces conflict at its front door. Members have designated the responsibility of security to Kurdish armed groups, whether that be the YPG or local Kurdish combatants.

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