chapotraphouse

They're good and cool and Marxist Communists (though not perfect, their beliefs are not dissimilar to the EZLN, as are their flaws) but were put in a shitty situation where they wanted to protect their full autonomy against Assad and also fight off Turkey. After they held off Turkey (heroically), and a bunch of Feds in the area started realising that they were the only sane people in the area except Assad, the US offered them a poisoned chalice of support. Given the choice of full autonomy under USA or partial under Assad, they took the dumb guy option.

Of course the moment Syria became a lost cause and ISIS was crushed the USA threw them under the bus for mild concessions from Erdogan. Now they've taken a worse deal from Assad and Turkey still threatens them. But at least something of the project survives.

As for their project itself. It's probably the second or third most successful Libertarian Marxist project, after the KPAM and the EZLN. But it had major issues with co-ordination, and Kurdish dominance caused power imbalances despite attempts by the KPG to bring minority groups into power as much as possible. Kurdish nationalists also formed their own parties and fuckery from Iraqi Kurdistan (Which is shockingly corrupt, and has gone from being run by two corrupt families (one right wing and the other essentially the Union leaders from Disco Elysium) to one (the right wing one) worsened matters. The KPG should have kept more tight ideological control over the area but their ideology itself made this difficult.

Nevertheless, critical support to our comrades, and there's a lot of good things to learn from them.