In Rojava, power is decentralized to the point
where neighbors make most decisions that affect
them in a body called a "commune".
This is nothing like a "commune" in the US;
it is essentially a neighborhood assembly
made of 100-150 families or so, and instead
of politicians deciding what norms should
govern their community, they all do through
directly democratic structures.
Each person living within the commune can
represent themselves directly within the commune
assembly.
The commune is used on a principle that most
of us know intrinsically: nobody knows what
you and your neighbors need better than you
and your neighbors yourselves.
Communes are linked together through elected
and removable spokespersons (again one woman
and one man) to form a neighborhood council,
and neighborhoods are linked to form city
councils, and so on and so forth.
This is a bottom-up or horizontal system of
organizing society; the larger the area of
administration a council has, the less power
it has.
For example, in the largest city in Jazira
Canton, Qamishlo, there is a neighborhood
called Korniş.
In Korniş, there are 58 communes.
Of these communes, three are Assyrian and
Armenian, three Arabic and 52 Arabic and Kurdish
mixed.
These 58 communes form the Korniş neighborhood
assembly, but the heart of power remains in
the individual communes themselves.
Women and young people also can and do organize
their own communes separately.
The commune is made up of committees which
residents can sign up for.
To name a few: women's committee, youth committee,
healthcare committee, economic committee,
safety committee (neighborhood defense groups),
and peace committee (transformative justice
as first line of defense).
Let’s go through the committees one by one.
DEFENSE COMMITTEE, or SAFETY COMMITTEE
In Rojava, the people living there are multi-ethnic,
multi-religious, and wary of state power and
male domination.
So, they make it their goal to decentralize
knowledge, power, and responsibility as much
as possible so that no one can dominate anyone
else.
In 2015, communes all over Rojava started
forming the HPC (Self-defense forces) and
the HPC-Jin (an autonomous women's self-defense
force) to replace the regular police (Asayîsh).
The HPC is a city-wide defense force made
up of 2 directly elected members from each
commune
These two elected security members are accountable
to the mandates of the directly democratic
assemblies in the communes and can only act
as instructed by the people who actually live
in the communes.
They are trained in self-defense, feminism,
weapons, tactics, and ideology.
The ideology being "democratic confederalism"
(stateless democracy) that is driving the
revolution in Rojava.
They can be immediately recalled by the direct
democratic assembly of the residents if they
violate their mandate or act against what
they were told in any way.
Beyond this, as in the militias of the YPG
and YPJ, as in the communes themselves, and
as nearly every institution in Rojava, HPC
members undergo what is called Tekmil, a public
meeting of community members where they are
encouraged to criticize their own failures,
those of each other, and let others criticize
them.
These meetings do not carry authority or force,
but are just public suggestions that keep
people from getting too full of themselves
or from latching onto too much power.
The HPC members rotate, and take turns training
everyone in the commune in self-defense, with
the goal of eventually every member of the
commune serving in the role at some point,
so that power is decentralized and there is
no need for an official police force.
As most decisions that affect a commune are
made by the residents themselves, they deal
with much less crime in the first place (why
break rules you yourself made, argued, and
voted on?).
So, how does this structure differ from a
police force?
Well, there are several key ways.
1) every single member comes from the community
and is directly elected by the community
2) they only enforce decisions that every
community member gets a say on and only act
as instructed by the community
3) they can be immediately stripped of power
if they violate the mandate of the community
4) They rotate and their power is eventually
dispersed to everyone so that safety becomes
not the responsibility of a special professional
body, but of the whole of the community.
