A Road Unforeseen Page 6
All these associations were shaped by the ideas of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK since its inception, who had been imprisoned on the Turkish island of Imrali since 1999. Turkey and the CIA thought that removing Ocalan from circulation would kill the PKK but instead of dying, the party evolved into the much more mass-based and diffuse organizational network described above.
Though his critics say Ocalan did not rethink PKK strategy until after he was captured, the organizational evolution of the PKK actually began well before his arrest, and went together with a change in political line from a classic guerrilla war strategy to an emphasis on negotiations. Along with that change came a revolution in the role of women in the party.
The PKK’s ideological transformation was a function not only of the collapse of the Soviet bloc and “really-existing socialism” but a reflection of the ways the organization’s base was expanding. The PKK was started by students and ex-students and had a cadre of women from its beginning, but the guerrilla war in the eighties brought an influx of rural Kurds whose villages had been attacked by Turkey. Struggling to deal with the feudal and nationalistic ideas of these new recruits, the women’s cadre realized they needed their own organizations.
These autonomous women’s organizations came into existence in the nineties with Ocalan’s backing. His prestige shielded them from attacks by men who wanted to hold on to their traditional privileges, and in return, as law professor Necla Acik said, the women “supported him most during the turbulent years following his arrest and the declaration of his new political, and at that time, controversial line.”62
Kept in almost total isolation after he was captured, Ocalan did a lot of reading. He was particularly influenced by anarchist theorist Murray Bookchin, world systems theorists Immanuel Wallerstein and Fernand Braudel, and theorist of nationalism Benedict Anderson. He wrote several volumes of prison essays, selections of which have been translated, with some released as downloadable pamphlets.63
Publicly disowning his previous beliefs in democratic centralism and armed struggle, he wrote in 2008 that a top-down, centralist party structure was in contradiction to “principles of democracy, freedom and equality.” He also distanced himself from the old militaristic PKK culture in which “war was understood as the continuation of politics by different means and romanticized as a strategic instrument.”64
He sharply criticized nationalism and the goal of a Kurdish state, arguing that nation-states were intrinsically hierarchical and ethnically based, and that the goal instead should be to develop democratic economies and local methods of self-governance—anti-capitalist, anti-statist, and environmentally sound.
Ocalan distinguished between what he called a democratic nation and a nation-state, by which he meant, for the latter, the European or Kemalist model of a nation with a culture so homogeneous that it experienced difference as an existential threat, rather than one where citizenship could be combined with cultural diversity. “A nation-state requires the homogeneity of citizens with a single language and single ethnicity. . . . Adherence to this belief is not patriotism; rather, it is chauvinistic nationalism and religionism. The nation-state disapproves of social differences, insisting on their sameness, as fascist ideology did. By contrast, a democratic nation is multilingual, multireligious, multiethnic, and multicultural, encompassing groups and individuals with different interests. . . . It rejects the equation between state and nation, viewing each as different formations.”65
The idea was that the state should have a democratic constitution, become decentralized, and concentrate on its relations with other states while letting the people themselves run society at the local level. “Civil society, democratized, will aim to become neither a state nor an extension of it. . . . Democracy does not need to eliminate the state; nor should the state dissolve democracy for its benefit. The extreme intertwinement of the two within the Western system transforms democracy into a showcase institution.”66
Ocalan called this political philosophy democratic confederalism. While it has much in common with anarchism, participatory democracy, and libertarian socialism, no other major left-wing movement, with the possible exception of the Zapatistas in Mexico and the Gandhian movement in India, had put women’s liberation so squarely at the center of its revolutionary project. In fact, despite slogans like the Chinese “Women hold up half the sky,” Marxist revolutions have—at best—seen women as support troops for the working class, not as a submerged and dominated majority whose liberation is fundamental to everyone else’s.
Similarly, in national liberation movements, women are often encouraged to be politically active and even to serve as soldiers during the struggle, but, once the battle is won, patriarchal norms tend to be reasserted in the name of religion or indigenous tradition. Ocalan’s views in his book, Liberating Life: Woman’s Revolution, were a startling departure from this tendency: “The solutions for all social problems in the Middle East should have woman’s position as focus. . . . The role the working class have once played, must now be taken over by the sisterhood of women.”
Such statements may seem surprising coming from a former Marxist-Leninist guerrilla, let alone one in the Middle East. But the Arab Spring uprisings demonstrated that the days of the old Middle Eastern regimes were over and people were searching for alternatives. In the battle of Sinjar Mountain, Kurdish women guerrillas enacted a new model of feminist authority. Rojava is a further demonstration that the region could become a laboratory for fresh ways of thinking and alternative modes of political and economic development.
But more than one kind of social revolution has emerged from the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Daesh has offered an opposing model: a violent totalitarian and theocratic state, based on Sunni exclusivity. The Kurds themselves have developed two alternative paradigms: the oil-based conservative semi-state of the Iraqi Kurds, and the non-statist democratic autonomy of Rojava. Like twins separated at birth, they are related and yet totally different.
Yazidi volunteer fighter, Sinjar Mountain.
CHAPTER 2
Separated at Birth
AT THE END OF WORLD WAR I, Kurds in Turkey and Iraq were at roughly the same stage of social and economic development. A small class of rich absentee landlords and middle class Kurds had moved into cities, especially in Iraq, but most Kurds were still peasants who grew subsistence crops: wheat, barley, and lentils; tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, melons. Their cash crops were tobacco in Iraq and cotton, which had recently been introduced, in Turkey.
In the mountains, the majority of peasants owned their own land but made a poor living from it because of harsh conditions and a low level of technology. As late as 1976, they were still using wooden plows and iron plowshares drawn by oxen or the occasional mule, and reaping with sickles and scythes. In the plains, most were sharecroppers who paid their landlords a percentage of their yield ranging from 10 to 80 percent, though some were agricultural laborers who earned a small wage. In both places, they were ruled over by the shaikhs and aghas.
The year 1976 was a time of revolutions all over the world, so when Dutch anthropology student Martin van Bruinessen went to Iraq to do fieldwork, he assumed that the Kurdish movement there would be as class-conscious and anti-imperialist as the national liberation movements of China, Cuba, Mozambique, and Vietnam. To his surprise, “The Kurdish leadership seemed to wish for more imperialist interference in the region rather than less; Mela Mistefa Barzani [Mullah Mustafa Barzani, the father of the leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government] repeatedly expressed his warm feelings for the United States, whom he wanted to join as the fifty-first state and to whom he wanted to give control of the oil in Kurdistan (in exchange for aid).”1
Van Bruinessen concluded that Kurdish leaders sought Western intervention because “the first Kurdish nationalists were from the ranks of the traditional authorities, shaikhs and aghas.” This tribal authority structure led to perpetual rivalries between leaders, which made Kurdish unity difficult.2
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br /> But tribalism did not sustain itself naturally; it was re-inscribed upon Iraqi Kurdish society repeatedly, first by the British colonialists and later by Baghdad. “Divide and rule” was a major tactic of British colonialists, perfected in Africa and India, where they governed by playing one unruly tribal chief or local prince off against the next. Since many in the southern part of Iraqi Kurdistan now lived in cities and were largely detribalized, the British had to reinvent and impose a tribal system on them. One of their administrators described the process: “Every man who could be labeled a tribesman was placed under a tribal leader. The idea was to divide South Kurdistan into tribal areas under tribal leaders. Petty village headmen were unearthed and discovered as leaders of long dead tribes.”3
One problem with such tribalism is that it encourages war. According to van Bruinessen: “In periods of peace the function of the tribal chief does not amount to much, and the unity of his tribe exists in name only. Often therefore, ambitious chieftains actively seek conflicts, in order to re-affirm their leadership and the unity of their tribe and to enlarge the scope of both. It is no exaggeration to say that quarrelling and mediating in other people’s quarrels are the most important activities by which one can establish, consolidate and extend one’s authority—if we exclude seeking help from outside.” For, along with military prowess, a leader’s charisma is shown by his ability to get help from powerful neighbors.4
With tribalism come blood feuds, family against family, tribe against tribe.5 Since North Kurdistan’s most important and prestigious tribe was the Barzanis, the British needed to ally with them—but that meant tribes who hated the Barzanis would oppose the British. And even tribes that supported the British would not put all their eggs in one basket; a powerful clan would place a family member in every political party. According to van Bruinessen, “When the monarchy was overthrown and the communist party emerged from illegality some of those families suddenly appeared to have someone there too, which was very useful during the campaigns against landlords. They could direct peasant anger against landowning families other than their own.”6
The Kurdish nationalist movements in both Iraq and Turkey developed in this kind of society, but soon diverged politically. One reason was a variation in the speed of urbanization and class formation, but the biggest difference was government policy. In Iraq, successive governments alternated between offering the carrot or the stick, holding out the hope of autonomy, then dashing it, making war on the Kurds, then pulling back. In the context of the Cold War, in which Iran and Turkey were lined up with the West and Iraq and Syria with Moscow, Iraqi Kurds had considerable room to maneuver between placating Baghdad, soliciting help from its regional rivals, and taking up arms. There was no such room for maneuver in Turkey, where government policy towards the Kurds was no carrot and all stick. To survive at all, they had to become revolutionaries.
Iraq: The Carrot and the Stick 1946–1975
The political advantages and disadvantages of tribalism are illustrated by the life of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, father of Mousad Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Regional Government. (To avoid confusion, I will call the father Mullah Mustafa and the son Barzani.)
In 1945, after a failed rebellion against the monarchy, Mullah Mustafa, with his brother and about a thousand followers, fled across the border to Iran. There, with other Kurdish Leftists and the help of the Soviet Union, they set up the first attempt at a Kurdish nation, the Republic of Mahabad. It lasted a year before it was shut down by Tehran and the Barzanis had to flee again, fighting their way through the mountains to get to the Soviet Union—a dramatic journey that reinvented Mullah Mustafa as the sort of legendary charismatic military hero required by tribal politics.7
This was the middle of the Cold War, when most national liberation movements were financed at least in part by the Soviet Union, and the Iraqi Left was busy trying to figure out if Kurds were an oppressed people who needed their own liberation struggle or a national minority who belonged in the Iraqi Communist Party. In 1946 Mullah Mustafa proposed a third solution: the creation of a new broad-based nationalist party to be called the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), which would incorporate both Kurdish communists and the aghas and shaikhs.8
The KDP was founded later that year, and Mullah Mustafa, still in the USSR, became its president in exile. Its politics were fuzzy at first, but by its Third Congress in 1956 it had come under the leadership of left-wing urban intellectuals, including Jalal Talabani, a member of the powerful Talabani tribe. They wanted land reform.
Mechanization was changing the agricultural economy in Iraqi Kurdistan. As the big landlords got access to tractors and harvesters, their need for labor decreased. As a result, many landless peasants could no longer earn a living and were migrating to the cities. At its Third Congress, the KDP adopted a left-wing program calling not only for land reform, but also for the recognition of peasants’ and workers’ rights and the formation of labor unions.
Two years later, the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in a military coup led by Brigadier Abdal Karim Qasim, who pledged to form a democratic republic. He invited Mullah Mustafa to return home, named him official head of the KDP, and gave him a house in Baghdad, a car, and a monthly stipend. Working with the Iraqi Communist Party, Mullah Mustafa helped Qasim put down a 1959 revolt by Baathists who wanted pan-Arab unity and rejected class politics.
After that, like any good tribal leader, Mullah Mustafa went back home to the north, where he began to settle old scores and consolidate his hold on Kurdish politics. He may have been the titular head of the KDP, but his base was among the tribes, not in the cities in the southern part of Iraqi Kurdistan, like the left-wing intellectuals who had pushed for land reform.9
Qasim didn’t want Mullah Mustafa to become too powerful so he began to criticize him publically, made it clear that he did not support Kurdish autonomy, and armed the northern tribes that were enemies of the Barzanis. So Mullah Mustafa attacked these tribes.
The old ruling class of Iraqi Kurdistan did not like all this turmoil. They had not welcomed the end of the monarchy and were appalled by the idea of land reform. Now they revolted, staging a tax strike. Mullah Mustafa, despite his Leftist credentials, formed an alliance with the rebel aghas and landlords, and when Qasim hit them with indiscriminate airstrikes, most of the tribes in the north joined the revolt—unemployment was high and there were plenty of landless peasants willing to fight for money to feed their families.
Left-wing members of the KDP had been appalled by the revolt against land reform, but there was disagreement within the party on how to respond. The question became moot in September 1961, when Qasim declared the KDP illegal. This brought everyone in the party into the rebellion and the KDP began to build its own army, known as the peshmerga, meaning “those who face death.” (From the beginning the Kurdish peshmerga were party militias, taking their orders from party leaders, not from any government.)
Baghdad’s response was to build its own Kurdish fighting force, made up of tribes hostile to the Barzanis, unemployed peasants who needed the money, and villagers who joined under government pressure or coercion. Kurds willing to work for Baghdad were called jash (children of donkeys, in other words, idiots) by everyone else. They were to become a major element in the politics of Iraqi Kurdistan.10
By creating the jash in the sixties, says van Bruinessen, the Iraq government again re-imposed and reinvented tribalism; it “provided the occasion for very considerable government subsidies to tribes (or rather, to tribal chieftains) and gave these tribes a new relevance as forms of social and political organisation. . . . These militia regiments were treated as collectivities; all arms, money, and commands were communicated through the chieftain. This had the effect of reinforcing the chieftains’ control over their tribes, strengthening the hierarchical and centripetal rather than the egalitarian, segmentary aspects of tribal organisation.” Even so, as urbanization continued, the number of Iraqi Kurds whose primary identification was trib
al steadily shrank; in 1960, it was probably sixty percent but by the late 1980s only twenty.11
In February 1963, two years after Qasim made the KDP illegal, he was overthrown by a combination of the military and the Baath party, which made vague promises to the KDP about Kurdish autonomy in order to keep them quiet. The promises proved illusory, possibly because Mullah Mustafa had a way of upping the ante. When the new government sent a delegation to see him, he demanded not only Kurdish autonomy but also an independent standing army and two-thirds of all the income from Iraq’s oil industry, which was located in territory he claimed as part of Kurdistan, notably Kirkuk. In the end, his demands didn’t matter because there was another coup by a different faction of the Baath party nine months later.
Under the leadership of Abd el-Salam Arif, the new military government signed a peace agreement with Mullah Mustafa, but this agreement left out any mention of Kurdish self-government or autonomy. When Talabani and other KDP left-wingers objected, the KDP split; historian David McDowall describes the conflict as a “contest between the religious and the secular, the primordial and the nationalist, tradition versus atheistic Marxism.”12 The Left wing of the KDP didn’t stand a chance. Not only was Mullah Mustafa the poster boy for Kurdish nationalism, he was backed by the aghas and shaikhs, with their conservative agendas. Before long, Talabani and his allies had to flee the country for Iran.