A BLUEPRINT FOR THE FUTURE
The way of the natural world is order because all life was created by a God of order. Natural laws were created to guarantee that our world would not come apart, but would function orderly even at the microscopic level of neutrons. When looking at the smallest particles of the organic world, there is order. There is order in our galaxy and order in the organic environment in which we live. Order is simply the physics of all created things, whether material or organic or social.
Now this brings us to mankind. Among the inhabitants of this world, order is the norm. In times of social chaos, we must never forget this. Whenever we witness societies in chaos, social physics is struggling on the stage life to give birth to a new social order. Chaos may prevail for decades, but we must be assured that order will eventually prevail over social chaos. Just ask the historians of Germany or Japan. Decades of chaos resulted in order that has taken both societies past world wars to a new order of society that never wants to return to the decades of social chaos.
We see social chaos in the Middle East. But we would never base our judgments for the future of the Middle East on the social chaos that presently prevails. We will not because we understand that social chaos is not permanent. It is society groaning through the chaos of turmoil in order to give birth to a new order. Eventually, social chaos finds order. In our lifetime, social chaos may not find social order in the Middle East, but order will eventually prevail. We have hope that the present turmoil in the Middle East will eventually find some social order. And thus, we see a glimmer of hope in what is called the movement of the Rojava in the Middle East. Herein is a small movement of people who are bringing together into order all the parties that have historically caused the chaos of the past. We acknowledge this group here for the sake of the West that seems to think that the entire Middle East is about to get out of control. But we must be careful not to stereotype people by what we see on the news media of the West. Please keep in mind that the news media is trying to make a profit by focusing our attention on chaos, not order. There are not to many news reports made of peaceful societies. So for the sake of those who are obsessed with Middle East chaos, we would present a few facts here about what is happening among the Rojava.
The Rojava is a small enclave of primarily Kurdish people of all religious faiths within the borders of Syria, Turkey, and northern Iraq. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the Middle East who do not have their own homeland. They have struggled for decades to have such, but have been denied the right by the Turks, Iraqis and Syrians.
In 1916, when the English and French behind closed doors, drew lines on a map to form the Sykes-Picot agreement to divide the Ottoman Empire, the Kurds were left off the map, and thus, they were not given their own homeland. The English and French simply gave the Middle East to lords who eventually established authoritarian regimes by slaughtering leftist thinking people and intellectuals of the region during the 70s and 80s. As a result, the social dynamics of the Middle East was changed to what became dictatorial regimes who have now suffered the vengeance of the Arab Spring. It was the imperialistic West who propped up the authoritarian regimes for the sake of oil. Every time a citizen of the West fueled up his vehicle in the freedom of his own land, he added fuel to the fire that has now broken out across the Middle East. Therefore, before all of us of the West point fingers at those of the Middle East, we might think on these realities.
During the period before the Arab Spring, those of leftist organizations, trade unions, and student movements were either killed or imprisoned, especially in countries as Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Egypt. Because of this oppression, particularly of those who were Shi’ite Muslims, jihadist movements began to arise in opposition. The opposition was not only against those within the region, but against those imperialists who propped up those to whom they had assigned power over the people and oil as a result of the Sykes-Ricot agreement. It was for this reason that the Rojava (meaning, “west,” the western Kurdish region of Syria) were labeled terrorists by oppressing regimes, including Turkey, Syria and Iraq. They were labeled terrorists because they simply began to fight for their freedom in order that they too might have their own homeland and the right and freedom for self-determination.
The recent conflicts in the Middle East have brought the Rojava a long way in accomplishing their goal of having their own autonomous homeland. In preparation for such, they have written their own constitution. They have also divided themselves into autonomous cantons (states, provinces) in order to guarantee the freedom of everyone within each canton. They have refused to establish their statehood on the basis of any ethnic demands or interests. They have witnessed in the past one hundred years that nationhood that is built on ethnicity or religion will never bring peace among citizens. So in order to establish a society that is not based on a reaction to another oppressive government that is based on either ethnicity or religion, they have refused to become a part of the civil war in Syria, though many dwell within the borders of Syria. In order to guarantee self-determination among the people, they have established autonomous cantons that make decisions according to the assembly of all the people and faiths within the region of each canton.
The Rojava seek gender equality and to empower women at all levels of society. The seek both political and religious freedom. They are anti-authoritarian, anti-imperialist, and seek to respect life and all living creatures. Their constitution is the most democratic of all the constitutions of the Middle East. Because of the recent conflicts that are raging in the Middle East, we thought it necessary here to give a translated quote from the first statements of the Rojava constitution in order to give the free world an idea of a blueprint for civil society that the Rojava are trying to write for the future of themselves as part of the Middle East.
[We] the peoples of the democratic self-administration areas; Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians (Assyrian Chaldeans, Arameans), Turkmen, Armenians, and Chechens, by our free will, announce this to ensure justice, freedom, democracy, and the rights of women and children in accordance with the principles of ecological balance, freedom of religions and beliefs, and equality without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, creed, doctrine or gender, to achieve the political and moral fabric of a democratic society in order to function with mutual understanding and coexistence within diversity and respect for the principle of self-determination and self-defense of the peoples.
The autonomous areas of the democratic self-administration do not recognize the concept of nation state and the state based on the grounds of military power, religion, and centralism.
It is quite interesting that a document as this would arise out of a broken part of the world where a movement as ISIS is seeking to annihilate this society of people while nations as Turkey stand on the sidelines and watch smoke rise from the Kurdish city of Kobane just a couple miles south of the border with Turkey. There are over 7,500 women in the military of Rojava, fighting beside the men. You have probably seen these brave young women on CNN and BBC, standing with their long black hair blowing in the Arabian winds while firing their guns against a barbaric Islamists aggression of society who believe they are implementing the true Islamic state. Some of the ISIS fighters think that if they are killed by a woman, they will go straight to hell. So we can only imagine that these brave young Rojava women soldiers, some of them “Christian,” get up in the morning, clean and load their guns, and then encourage one another as to how many ISIS men they are going to send to hell during the day.
The next time you see on the news the historic battle that is taking place for Kobane, just remember that there are these brave Rojave women in there who are engaged in street battles from house to house, being led by a woman commander, trying to protect this Kurdish city from falling to a modern-day “Nazi” barbarianism. And then think for a moment when you are trying to get your children to some soccer game on time, that some of your Christian sisters just scurried their children to a bomb shelter after the fall of the first mortar attack.
A CNN reporter interviewed one of the these Rojava women soldiers on the frontline only a short distance from the gunfire of ISIS soldiers. She said,
One of my friends was wounded. She said to me before her death, “Let my blood bring freedom to the people.” As ISIS soldiers crowded around her wounded body, she blew herself up and killed many of them.
This is the world as it is in northern Syria.