The Crisis of Sovereignty and the Kurdish Quest for Democratic Autonomy in Syria A Theoretical Outline.
This paper is submitted to Geopolitics for publication in the special issue on Rojava.
Abbas Vali
2016

The Arab Spring signified the ascent of the people, the awakening of the popular masses and their emergence as a political force, rejecting the ruling regimes and laying claim to power. From Tunisia to Syria popular demand for change was expressed in terms of a quest for democratic rule representing the will of the people. The demand that sovereignty had to be restored to the people echoed in the streets, becoming the focal point of the popular protest movements. The fall of Bin Ali, Mubarak and Ghadafi had already given considerable legitimacy and confidence to popular uprisings in these countries before the popular protest movement surfaced in Syria, much to the displeasure of Bashar Al-Assad, who had already warned the Syrians against the coming of the virus . But in Syria the popular protest movement against the Ba'th regime stalled without being consolidated, spread without being organized and fragmented before being grounded. The vehemence of the state response and the indiscriminate use of violence fragmented an already disunited opposition, undermining its cohesion and direction, before regional powers and their internal proxy forces intervened in the unfolding national crisis, trying to influence the course of events and define their outcome in an increasingly volatile political field. The regionalization of the crisis, the civil war and the subsequent ethnic (Arab-Kurd) and religious (Alavi-Sunni-Christian) sectarianism forced the uprising off its course, boosting the fortunes of the Ba'thist regime, which was given a new lease of life by the shift in the US policy in August 2013. The strategic disengagement which has since been actively pursued by the US and the EU has exacerbated the power struggle in the sectarian political field, marginalizing secular forces and widening the gap between them and the growing Jihadi Islamist forces. The secular forces, divided internally on ethnic, religious and political grounds and caught up in a vicious cross fire between the Ba'th and Islamists, proved unable to form a united front to reclaim the lost ground. Their fortunes were dealt a further and more serious blow as the bulk of the Syrian military and security forces remained loyal to the regime, and large-scale break ups and desertion did not materialize. The resulting power vacuum provided a fertile ground for the development of the Jihadi forces, including ISIL.. [1]