Okay, here we go. I research the AANES (Rojava) in graduate school and wrote a 200+ thesis on it when in undergrad. My hot take is that its success thus far is because it has a vanguard party & organization.

Anarchists praise it & ML/Ms denounce it & they’re both wrong.

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While it is true that the Apoist movement seeks to build democracy without a state and are building state-like structures to ‘un-make’ the state. They have a vanguard party: the PKK.
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The KCK (coordinating body) and the PYD (the largest political party) often publicly denies connection to the PKK but that’s largely for political reasons, since the PKK had been labeled a foreign terrorist organization since 1987.
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A quick background: The PKK was founded in 1978 as a ML group; in the early 1980s they trained with the PLO in Lebanon and began their people’s war in 1984. At the time, they were connected to what Paul Chamberlain calls “a sprawling constellation of revolutionary networks.”
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You can trace the PKK development in 4 phases through their 15 congresses: [1] ideological group formation (1973-1977); [2] party building (1978-1979); [3] revolutionary violence (1980-1994); and [4] 2003-present which is their new political line of democratic confederalism.
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What most anarchists ignore is that while the MGRK (or the council system) is rooted in face-to-face democracy; the conditions had to be set for that to take root. Conditions that were rooted in a vanguard party that labored to raise the political consciousness of the masses.
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Since the 1980s, the PKK had been organizing clandestinely in N. Syria where their founder Abdullah Öcalan was captured. He’s been in solitary confinement in Imrali 35-miles from istanbul for the past 19-years.
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Side note: The story is fascinating; seeking asylum brought him to the USSR, Rome, Greece and eventually in route to South Africa where Nelson Mandela granted him political asylum but was captured in Nairobi en route.
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Before the declaration of autonomy in July of 2012 in Kobanî, they were organizing clandestinely since at least 2003 (when the PYD was formed) but really there is continuity here with the PKK.
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For ML/MLMs, there is reason for critique: In 2002, Öcalan took a revisionist line & abandoned Marxist-Leninism. U.S. gaining access to oil fields is no surprise and should be critiqued. From a distance, this looks like the failure of leadership than the masses.
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However, as historical materialists we have to ask: what conditions led to that faustian bargain? Why were they forced in the position to partner with the US; an empire that has consistently betrayed them? Rather than denouncing the AANES as yt anarchist adventurism,
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you should ask: where was/is the support from AES countries?

And as scientific socialists, we should move beyond picture-thinking and look to the results. What can be learned from them—mistakes and successes—as Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao all did in their own time.
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