AANES

Statelet of Survivors: The Making of a Semi-Autonomous Region in Northeast Syria, a new book-length look at the establishment, evolution, and achievements of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) by academic Dr. Amy Austin Holmes, takes up two important challenges. First, Holmes’ observations based on hundreds of interviews conducted throughout North and […]

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recently released their 2024 Annual Report on May 1st, underscoring that the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), supported by its Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), continues “to highlight religious freedom as a governing principle.” This is in stark contrast to religious freedom conditions in […]

Authorities in the de facto autonomous region of North and East Syria (NES) this week made an announcement many years in the making. For several years now, representatives of the region known by the Kurdish metonym ‘Rojava’ have promised a new, updated version of the ‘Social Contract’ which codifies the principles through which the region […]

What does it mean to repair a destroyed city? Is it merely the construction of buildings or the restoration of collective hope? Leila Mustafa, former co-chair of the Autonomous Administration-affiliated Raqqa Civil Council, passed away from medical complications on November 23rd this year. For six years, Mustafa had worked tirelessly to rebuild from the ashes […]

Wherever Turkey occupies in the AANES region of north and eastern Syria (Rojava), allied jihadists, criminal gangs, and ruthless mercenaries soon follow; and wherever these occupying hoards go, so does indiscriminate and extrajudicial killings, murders, mutilations, lootings, gender based violence, occupation of homes, and destruction of farmlands, orchards, and livestock. In essence, wherever Turkey and […]

Introduction This report aims to shed light on three major socio-political chapters and phases in the city of Ras al-Ayn[2] (hereafter referred to by its Kurdish name of Serê Kaniyê) since the outset of the millennium up to the current day. Much attention has been paid to details of the barbaric acts perpetrated by the […]

As suggested by the title of ‘Self-Determination Struggles: In Pursuit of the Democratic Confederalist Ideal’, the vaunted right to self-determination is worthy of deeper critical scrutiny. Rather than uncritically surveying historical and international struggles for self-determination, in his new collection of essays and papers then Cambridge University’s Thomas Jeffrey Miley scrutinises struggles about and within movements claiming […]

Lack of International Recognition Hampers Reporting Effort In the autonomous Kurdish region of Syria, known as Rojava, a pressing dilemma has been brewing for the past decade. Over 500 Syrian Kurdish journalists, dedicated to reporting the truth amidst the chaos of the Syrian conflict, find themselves grappling with a significant obstacle – the lack of […]

The progressive, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) this week announced its intention to begin trials of the estimated 2000 ‘third-country national’ male ISIS fighters it is currently holding in its detention centres, along with around 8000 Syrian and Iraqi combatants. The mooted trials are commonly represented as ‘unilateral’ – a loaded […]

“We can no longer keep these prisoners without an indictment or trial. These people must be held accountable for their crimes. They remain a danger not only to the region, but to the entire world. These are thousands of the most brutal ISIS fighters. We cannot keep them anymore. It is creating a security problem […]

On Saturday the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES) announced that it will commence trials of the thousands of ISIS militants it has held in detention since 2019. The Kurdish-led administration of northeast Syria (Rojava) had back in 2020 announced a similar trial with International Monitors led by the Swedish government but such […]

Many of us are familiar with the dictum, attributed to Antonio Gramsci, that socialists should be possessed by “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” In its original context, a prison letter written to an anarchist comrade whom he accuses of simplistically claiming petty victories, the militant Italian intellectual goes on to opine how: […]

“Many different alternative movements around the world simply refused to stop imagining that another world is possible: Öcalan and the Kurdish freedom movement belong to this category.” — Havin Guneser Throughout human history there has been a clash between two societal paradigms. The dominant one is heteronomy – a condition in which society does not recognize […]

In the aftermath of the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6, a considerable change has occurred amongst many civilians in Turkish occupied northwest Syria regarding the public perception of the Kurds. Previously, many of these Syrians cynically adhered to the xenophobic discourse and propaganda spread by Ankara in order to continue to […]