Emilio Caja
“Politics exists when the natural order of domination is interrupted by the institution of a part of those who have no part”[1], teaches us the French philosopher Jacques Rancière. Politics exists when there is dissensus, the dispute about what is given, about a frame within which we see something as given.
Since 2012, newspapers and televisions have transmitted images of disruption and war from the Syrian civil war; and the main protagonists have been the killers of ISIS. The “war on terror” that Western countries have fought has aimed at bringing “infinite justice” against “the axis of evil” of the ISIS[2]. In 2019 it was announced that ISIS was defeated. The announcement was made by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which fought directly against the ISIS and were supported by a US-led international coalition. Just a few months later, the US decided to retreat from the territory, allowing Turkish troops to invade Northern Syria, assaulting the villages and regions of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES), commonly known as the Rojava. Indeed, media reported the refugees crisis, in a similar compulsive way as they have reported detailed stories of millions of Syrian migrants that arrived in Europe since 2012. What media didn’t cover was the struggle of the polyethnic population of Rojava and its international supporters against the ISIS and for freedom.
The political fight of the populations of the Rojava led to the institution of a part of those who have no part in the international landscape: In 2013 they declared the Rojava and autonomous region and enacted a constitution and promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability and tolerance for religious, cultural and political diversity[3]. This unique experiment, which brought together stateless populations, above all the Kurds, into inclusive democratic institutions, has been a revolution in the afflicted territories of the Middle East; and, it has been considered as an inspiration for many social movements – from feminist to the climate justice groups.
The occupation of the Rojava and the end of this “moment of democracy” has one primary cause – the retreat of US troops – and two decisive intervening factors – the will of Turkish dictatorship government to repress any form of dissensus from minorities and the weak reaction of the European Union. The end of Western humanitarian intervention led to the end of a democratic society in Northern Syria. Why haven’t Western countries continued to support the freedom of these people that defeated the ISIS, bringing infinite justice? Indeed, the people living there should represent no danger to liberal democracies.
To answer the question, Rancière would suggest that “war against terror and infinite justice fall within the indistinction of a preventative justice which attacks all that triggers or could trigger terror, everything that threatens the social bond holding the community together. This is a form of justice whose logic is to stop only when terror will have ceased”[4]. So when justice against the terrorists of the ISIS had been achieved, the West went gone; but it forgot about the Rojava. Few days later, the American troops came back to safeguard human rights of the people fleeing the Turkish invasion. They came back against the liberated ISIS soldiers – that were kept in local prisons – and a new chapter of the war against terror began.
In the eyes of a European, the abandonment of support to the Rojava has not been caused by any hostility towards the Kurds. At the same time, it is not a classic case of realism in international relations. It appears rather more as the result of a mode of organization of politics that characterizes modernity. Governments have a constant necessity to reinforce the infinite just objective: the security of a factual community run on consensus, “a community of only one single people in which everyone is supposed to be counted”[5]. Suffering from the collective trauma of terror, Western societies do not have spaces for “the other”: political dissention is flattened and those who are de facto excluded by it have no status in the structuration of the community. Terror and consensus: an international landscape built on the power of nation-states does not have time for an autonomous region, no matter how progressive in its constitution, just as a democracy reduced to “a society’s way of life”[6] has no interest in the excluded. Without their democratic institution, the people of the Rojava are left to be again a part of those who have no part.
[1] Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, University of Minnesota Press, 1998, p. 22.
[2] The three quoted sentences were pronounced between 2001 and 2002 by the former President of the United States George W. Bush.
[3] Carne Ross, ‘The Kurds’ Democratic Experience’, The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2015.
[4] J. Rancière, ‘The Ethical Turn of Aesthetics and Politics’, Critical Horizons, 7:1, 1-20, 2006, p.5.
[5] Ibid., p.6.
[6] J. Rancière, ‘Who is the Subject of the Right of Man?’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 103:2/3, 2004, p.306.
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