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Rojava: Is the Revolution Over?

  • 2 days ago
  • 12 min read

Understanding the January Offensive Against Northeast Syria



In Northeast Syria, it is a way of inhabiting the world that they sought to annihilate

January 2026 was marked by attacks of unprecedented intensity against what has become known worldwide as “the Rojava Revolution.” This predominantly Kurdish region in northeastern Syria had seen a revolution emerge in 2012 based on women’s liberation, environmentalism, and the coexistence of peoples within a system of direct democracy. This experiment in Democratic Confederalism1 had expanded to certain Arab regions and had taken the name Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).


For many, Rojava represents a glimmer of hope in the darkness of a collapsing capitalist system. Rojava and Chiapas are living proof that another world is possible, that there are ways to live and build society outside the patriarchal, statist, and capitalist system. The Rojava revolution has also been called the women’s revolution, because it is there that one of the most radical experiments in women’s struggle and emancipation has emerged. And it is against all of this that the forces of capitalist modernity have coordinated the largest offensive against the AANES ever waged. More than a military offensive, it is above all an attack on a way of inhabiting the world -communal and opposed to forms of patriarchal domination- where life is intimately connected to the land. By seeking to destroy one of the greatest revolutionary experiments of the 21st century, imperialist forces sought to send a message: “Those who reject the capitalist way of life will be annihilated.”


In one month, hundreds of civilians have been massacred, hundreds of thousands more have been displaced yet again, and numerous war crimes have been committed, particularly against women.2 In Aleppo, hundreds of kidnappings, acts of torture, and instances of looting have been documented. These attacks of rare intensity were carried out by HTS,3 some of which made no secret of their affiliation with ISIS (Daesh). Turkey’s involvement in this offensive has also been confirmed, notably through multiple kamikaze drone strikes in Aleppo, Heseké and Qamishlo. At the same time, numerous prisons under SDF4 control where Daesh members were being held were attacked and recaptured by HTS with the complicit silence of the international coalition against Daesh. This led to mass escapes and releases.


At the same time, the resistance shown in the face of these attacks has been remarkable. From the very first attacks on Aleppo on January 6, the population mobilized en masse. In every neighborhood people organized themselves. Those who could took up arms and stood guard. Others prepared food for the fighters. From Bakur, Bashur, and Rojhilat,5 hundreds of young Kurds mobilized, forcing their way through border checkpoints to join the resistance in Rojava. Solidarity initiatives were launched around the world. From Colombia to Papua, from Germany to Kenya, mobilizations took place everywhere. A large “caravan of the peoples”6 brought together over a hundred young people from Europe who, overnight, set out together on the road to join Rojava. When a video was released showing a jihadist mercenary displaying the severed braid of a YPJ fighter as a war trophy, women from around the world gathered and braided their hair as if to declare to the Kurdish women fighters: “We are united, our struggle is shared; with every attack against you, the women’s revolution will grow.”


Since January 29, a ceasefire agreement has been signed between the AANES and the Syrian transitional government.7 This agreement came at a heavy price. The autonomous administration was forced to cede numerous territories that have since fallen back under the control of the Syrian army. This agreement, while far from ideal, was nevertheless a useful compromise that avoided a widespread massacre, as the violent attacks on Aleppo in early January had foreshadowed. Thanks to pressure from the Kurdish people and internationalist support from around the world, several victories were secured within this agreement, such as the promise of the return of hundreds of thousands of displaced people and Turkey’s withdrawal from the occupied areas in the Aleppo region. While the institutions of the Autonomous Administration are set to be officially integrated into the Syrian state, the brigades of the SDF will be integrated as units, meaning they retain their previous structure and autonomous of command. Under this agreement, the challenge now is to ensure that the struggle is not weakened, so that the balance of power allows for the preservation and further consolidation of the revolution’s gains.


A Plan by the International Powers

Those are the facts. However, it is impossible to understand the attacks against the revolutionary experiment in northern and eastern Syria without taking a step back. It is by observing the plans of the imperialist powers as a whole that we better understand that the attacks carried out against peoples all over the world—from Kurdistan to Palestine and from Abya Yala to Ukraine—are merely the result of the same policies. Thus, we must first go back 100 years, to when the imperialist powers—and in particular France and England—divided up the Middle East after the first World War . Where a mosaic of peoples and beliefs had coexisted with relative autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, the Western powers drew borders that plunged the Middle East into a chaos that has persisted ever since. Nation-states gradually developed as they had been conceived and built in Europe a century earlier, based on the centralizing principle of “one nation, one language, one flag”.


In particular, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which dismantled the Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence divided among the European powers, split Kurdistan among four states: Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. Since then, depending on the country, being Kurdish has meant risking annihilation or being forced into cultural assimilation. It has been necessary to fight to assert, across borders, a transnational Kurdish identity seeking to build unity.


In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the Gulf War, capitalism entered a new phase of intense crisis. The imperialist powers embarked on a global process aimed at recreating new balances of power. Thus began a new global conflict that the Kurdistan Liberation Movement calls the Third World War. This war, which breaks from the logic of the two distinct blocs of previous wars, is characterized by alliances that are constantly shifting according to circumstances and interests. The goal is no longer the total annihilation of the adversary but a struggle to become the new hegemonic power.


In this conflict, where the old balances of power have been upended, the Middle East finds itself at the center of the clashes. The West’s strategy to maintain its dominance over the region has changed. With the financialization of capitalism, the nation-state model based on a national market economy, as it was originally conceived, no longer meets their needs. This is why Western powers, led by the United States and Israel, are working to reshape the region according to their new interests.


Thus, two opposing forces are currently at play in the Middle East. On one side, Western powers seek to disrupt the current balance of power in order to secure control over the region’s resources and trade routes. Opposing them, conservative states such as Iran and Turkey seek to maintain the status quo of traditional nation-states; that is, they wish to protect their regional influence while refusing to integrate into the new capitalist world order. They seek to protect their geopolitical autonomy through their own imperialist projects for the region. This is particularly the case with Turkey’s project for a Neo-Ottoman empire and Iran’s Shiite Crescent and Axis of Resistance.


The escalation of the genocide against the Palestinian people beginning on October 7, 2023, marked a new phase in the war in the Middle East. This set in motion a sequence of events that continues to this day, with Western forces aiming to destroy the Iranian-dominated Shiite crescent. To achieve their objectives, no ethical barrier or international law stands in the way of their bloodthirsty strategy. From there began the attacks against Iran-linked forces such as Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the current offensive in Syria. But in the invasion of North-East Syria, the stakes are different. Neither playing into the hands of Western American-Israeli imperialism nor those of a so-called “axis of resistance” led by Iran and its militias in neighboring countries, the “Democratic Confederalism” of northeastern Syria proposes a third way, one that serves not the interests of states but those of the people. Peoples who are organizing themselves by transcending the boundaries of nationalism and challenging the roots of patriarchal domination.


It is only by understanding the context of the Third World War in the Middle East that we can better analyze recent developments in Syria. On December 8, 2024, the Ba’ath regime collapsed. After 50 years of dictatorship, massacres, and mass imprisonment, the people finally breathed a sigh of relief. Hope was blossoming as statues of Al-Assad fell. But a year later, it was the statue of the Arab fighter Rojbîn Ereb, erected in Tabqa after the fall of Daesh, that was destroyed by militias of the HTS8 transitional government. This was followed by numerous massacres committed against Druze and Alawite communities since the Syrian transitional government led by Al-Sharaa came to power. Indeed, they did not wait long to reveal their true intentions: to regain control of Syria based on a deeply patriarchal, intolerant, and anti-democratic ideology.


Yet this time, the West’s stance toward them has shifted significantly. HTS, a group spun off from Al-Qaeda, was quickly removed from the list of terrorist organizations after seizing power, even though it had been considered as such by the international community for years. But why the reversal? It is because HTS ultimately proved to be a strategic partner in carrying out their offensive against the Shiite crescent, whereas the SDF has always refused to serve as mercenaries for the United States.


On the 5th and 6th of January, talks took place in Paris between Hamas and Israel under the auspices of the United States. HTS, in line with Turkey’s plans, turned a blind eye to the Israeli occupation of southwestern Syria, while Israel and the U.S.-led international coalition assured them that they would not intervene in the event of an invasion of the AANES. It was, therefore, a major coordinated international plan to put an end to the revolutionary experiment in northern and eastern Syria. Without the January 29 ceasefire agreement, brought about by the population’s determination to resist, the Kurdish people would likely have faced genocide.


In addition to their genocidal nature, the attacks were specifically aimed at undermining relations between Kurds and Arabs, in line with the classic “divide and conquer” strategy. For the United States, Israel, and their allies, the less united the peoples are, the more easily it is to control the region as they see fit. Turkish intelligence (MIT) played a particularly significant role in the defection of Arab tribes from the SDF at the start of the clashes.9 The SDF’s swift decision to withdraw from Arab regions was therefore also motivated by a desire to thwart the plan to create a major conflict between Kurdish and Arab populations. Even today, and particularly in the media, the imperialist powers’ desire to divide the peoples is clearly evident. It is against this that the “Democratic Nation” project—that is, the coexistence of peoples—experimented within the AANES, despite all the difficulties encountered in practice, represents a major axis of the struggle for the autonomy of all peoples. From this perspective, an international struggle that recognizes the connections between the struggles of peoples and transcends the nationalist traps set by capitalist modernity is vital.


The Role of Abdullah Öcalan10

Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the Kurdistan Liberation Movement, played a key role in establishing the ceasefire. For 27 years, he has been imprisoned by Turkey on the prison island of Imrali following an international conspiracy orchestrated by 25 states, particularly the American and Israeli intelligence services. For several months now, Abdullah Öcalan has been warning of the risk of seeing 50 Gazas emerge in the Middle East if a resolution to the Kurdish question is not found. It was therefore at his suggestion that a meeting was organized in Rojava between Turkey, the AANES, HTS, American and French diplomats, and a delegation representing him. This meeting established the framework for the January 29 agreement, in which the red lines of the Kurdish liberation movement were safeguarded in the areas of local self-government, the peoples’ right to self-defense, and the right to language and education.


More broadly, this agreement is part of a broader peace process initiated by Abdullah Öcalan on February 27, 2025. After 40 years of armed struggle, and in response to Öcalan’s call, the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) officially disbanded and ended its strategy of armed struggle. Without denying the importance the PKK played in securing recognition for the Kurdish people or the sacrifice of thousands of martyrs, Öcalan demonstrated the need to rethink the strategy of the Kurdistan Liberation Movement within the paradigm of democratic modernity.


A new process then began: the process for “peace and democratic society.” This strategy has two aspects. On the one hand, society must organize itself on the basis of women’s liberation and the coexistence of peoples and religions, while remaining capable of ensuring its self-defense. On the other hand, a process of “democratic integration” must take place within the states of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. This “integration,” far from resembling the forms of cultural and political assimilation that the Kurdish people have experienced until now, must enable them to obtain legal, even constitutional, guarantees allowing them to develop a “democratic society.”


Thus, in Turkey, a commission has been established to decide on the creation of a new legal framework aimed at resolving the Kurdish question. In Syria, throughout 2025, the AANES made numerous efforts to create conditions conducive to “democratic integration.” Unsurprisingly, Turkey and other international powers have consistently sought to sabotage the negotiations. But as we have seen in Rojava, popular resistance yields results admittedly insufficient this time, but results that will grow as the peoples unite to forge a third way against capitalism.


And this is one of the crucial points of the process initiated by Abdullah Öcalan: its success does not depend solely on states; the construction of a “democratic society” begins, above all, from the bottom up. In the face of a system that divides peoples and fragments societies, the goal is to build an organized society capable of defending itself both morally and physically. It involves establishing communes everywhere, building and strengthening popular education initiatives, enabling different cultures to coexist and express themselves, and restoring women to a central place in society. For this reason as well, Abdullah Öcalan emphasizes the need for peoples to unite and organize. Thus, in his perspectives addressed to the PKK’s dissolution congress, he proposed the founding of a new socialist international : one that would not be an international of states but of peoples, the Communal International.11


What Abdullah Öcalan proposes is a fundamental rethinking of the idea of revolution. Drawing lessons from the past, particularly from the “real socialism” of the USSR, he proposes a new way of conceiving of socialism. History is not merely the history of class struggle, even though that plays an important role; rather, it is first and foremost a dialectic between the state and the commune. The state, which has its origins in the domination of man over nature and of man over woman, is therefore directly opposed to the life of societies. The stronger the state, the more social existence is threatened. But conversely, the more a society is capable of self-organization, the more the role of the state becomes superfluous. And that is why rethinking socialism in the 21st century means going back to the origins of domination; it means recognizing that throughout history, two lines have always existed in parallel, and that it is the line of true democracy outside the logic of the nation-state that we must nurture.


Perhaps there will be pessimists who believe that recent developments in Rojava prove that models such as democratic confederalism are utopian, that they cannot survive in the face of the capitalist system. Perhaps they imagine the end of the world more easily than the end of the statist and capitalist system. Yet if we look at the situation today, it is above all the latter that is in crisis. To accept that there is no alternative to cruelty and war is already to give up, to surrender before having resisted. Rojava is not an earthly paradise where all forms of domination have been abolished; it is the story of peoples who have united and attempted to organize themselves together. It is a process fraught with pain and resistance, with mistakes and self-criticism. To build a free life upon thousands of years of state-based and patriarchal civilization, one must struggle, sometimes fall, always get back up, and keep moving forward. The communal experiment of Rojava is not dead; it is certainly in danger, but it can grow as the determination and resistance of the people grow. In its 14 years of existence, the women’s revolution has sown seeds all around the world, and in the face of this capitalism on its last legs, the answer can only be this: let’s build 1,000 Rojavas!


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1“Democratic confederalism is a social, non-state paradigm […] Democratic confederalism is based on popular participation, and it is the communities involved that control the decision-making process. The highest levels exist solely to ensure the coordination and implementation of the will of the communities that send their delegates to the general assemblies. To save time, they serve as both spokespersons and executive bodies. However, basic decision-making power is vested in the people’s institutions.” Abdullah Öcalan



3 Hayat Tahrir al-Sham: an Islamist political group leading the Syrian transitional government following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2024.


4 Syrian Democratic Forces: a military coalition comprising various Kurdish, Arab, and Assyrian popular self-defense forces, including notably the YPG and the YPJ


5 In Kurdish: North, South, and East, referring to the parts of Kurdistan located within the territories of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.








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