Statelet of Survivors: The Making of a Semi-Autonomous Region in Northeast Syria, by Amy Austin Holmes, Oxford University Press, 272 pages, $99
The outlook for the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, a region also known as Rojava, does not look good. Over the last couple of years, every time I’ve spoken with an aid worker or researcher returning from the place they have told me bleak stories. Turkish drone strikes have decimated even the mid-level local leadership. Petty corruption is seeping into the ranks of the survivors. In August 2023, the notoriously corrupt militia commander Rashid Abu Khawla launched a mutiny that was put down with artillery and U.S. air support.
Rojava had been a hopeful experiment for many anti-authoritarians. The Kurdish-led rebels of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had managed not only to evict forces from Syria’s Arab nationalist government, but also to defeat various theocratic rebel factions. The SDF eventually became the U.S. military’s favored partner against the Islamic State, taking over about a third of Syria and installing a decentralized left-libertarian experiment.
The revolution seems to be more fragile than expected. “Governance? They’re meh at it,” one aid worker told me. “Insurgency? They’re really good at that.”
Statelet of Survivors, a…
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