......The PYD did not liberate Kurdish areas of Syria: it moved in where the regime receded; most often, it took over the latter’s governance structures and simply relabelled them, rather than generating its own unique model as it claims. Fringe Arab, Syriac and Assyrian leaders are participating, even if they do not adhere to its ideology, as a way to ensure security and access to services for their communities.
Rojava is thus more shell than rising sun, an instrument that enables the regime to control Kurdish areas. Established in isolation from the society it means to govern, it is overburdened by an ideological foundation with which most Syrian Kurds and non-Kurds scarcely identify. Its political architecture enjoys only narrow buy-in beyond the PYD affiliates and co-opted personalities, and international recognition is not on the horizon. More than three years after the Syrian uprising erupted, the movement’s popular legitimacy still seems largely a function of the threat that gave rise to it....
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