Another National Myth

A lightning operation: in 12 days, HTS forces under the command of Al-Sharaa, Syria’s new president, forced the SDF to renounce their autonomy and sign a draconian agreement. Founded in 2011 and dominated numerically and politically by the YPG (People’s Protection Units), the SDF was the main Kurdish militia and armed wing of the autonomous administration of the fertile Rojava region. After fighting began in early January, a ceasefire was reached on the 18th, radically redefining the balance of power in northeastern Syria.

For the Kurds, it is more of a surrender than a compromise, providing for the de facto dissolution of the SDF, their integration as individuals into the Syrian army, and the return to the state of most of the territories they had controlled since 2011, occupied by the Syrian army: Aleppo, Raqqa, and Deir Ezzor, on the border with the Rojava region.

The fall of Rojava marks the end of Kurdish autonomy in an oil-rich region over which various ethnic factions are trying to impose their control. Like any territorial dispute within the anti-historical regime of capital, the war remains a clash between factions for control of energy sources and their sale. Furthermore, the region, being the most fertile in all of Syria, is fundamental for the production of cereals and cotton.

Its economy – contrary to the beliefs of left-wing simpletons and those faithful to the religion of resistance, who idolize popular democracies and socialisms scattered here and there around the world – is characterized by capitalist relations. The industries, managed by the state according to commercial and wage criteria, have developed mainly thanks to oil and gas revenues, which the SDF itself traded with the old Assad regime that fell only a year ago. This is estimated to be several hundred million dollars a year, a deal that, in early 2025, Kurdish capitalists began to entertain with the new government in Damascus.

What a socialist revolution in Rojava! The foolish Western national-communists need only see a few state-owned industries and cooperatives within capitalism to immediately see red!

The struggle for control of these lands is not for the “defense of socialism and revolution”, but only a dispute between capitalists for control of markets and resources in a historical phase in which national liberation struggles no longer have any reason to exist. Even for the Kurds, as demonstrated in previous articles (see issue 434, “Self-liquidation of the PKK sanctions anti-historical national liberation struggles”), conflicts for the recognition or defense of autonomous nation states are past their prime, so much so that they are sucked into broader disputes between the great imperialisms over the division of entire continents and control of markets.

It is no coincidence that both the Palestinian and Kurdish bourgeoisies have submitted to the same capitalist powers that oppress them as nationalities, to the extent that we are witnessing several short circuits: Qatar and Turkey, which finance Hamas in Gaza, are allies of the US, which manipulates Israel. The Kurds, historical enemies of Turkey, relied on protection from the US rather than on the mobilization of their own lower classes, as well as from Israel.

Furthermore, Kurdish nationalists themselves have often expressed their intention to act as oppressors and have put this into practice: the leader of the Democratic Unity Party (PYD) has spoken openly about expelling Arabs from Kurdish-majority regions, and his government has opened fire on demonstrators in the Kurdish city of Amuda and tortured dissidents. Armenians and Assyrians have openly denounced the indoctrination into the cult of Öcalan in the education system of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

In this tangle of interests and alliances, where one man’s friend is another man’s enemy and today’s ally is tomorrow’s sacrifice, there is no longer any prospect of progress for workers in the various areas other than the transition from one oppressor to another. The Kurdish and Palestinian proletarians must regain their class autonomy and organize themselves to fight independently of their bourgeoisie, not for an impossible national liberation but for the communist revolution.

The liberation of nations with their state affirmations has already taken place. Capitalism now promises only reactionary wars. The only real and authentic struggle for the liberation of Palestinian, Kurdish, Jewish, Arab, and workers around the world lies in the overthrow of capitalism, which is the cause of all the upheavals we are witnessing today. This historic task can only be achieved if workers manage to unite and organize themselves under the leadership of genuine class unions for increasingly widespread economic strikes in defense of their living conditions, and only through the leadership of their genuine revolutionary party, for the slow, tortuous but indispensable establishment of the true communism of tomorrow.