A Kurdish Experiment in Decentralized Governance

SYRIA’S KURDS HAVE managed to defeat ISIS, manage multiethnic coexistence, and possibly hold off an invasion by a NATO army, all without a state of their own—not because of starry-eyed idealism but because of the practical advantages of a consensus-based, bottom-up society. In The Kurds of Northern Syria, Harriet Allsopp, one of the foremost experts on Kurdish political movements, and Wladimir van Wilgenburg, a journalist at the front lines of the fight, try to understand how the Kurdish revolutionary project has played out on the ground. Their book mixes interviews, sociological surveys, and reporting to draw a detailed picture of Syrian Kurdish life before and during the current civil war.

World War, the Kurds found themselves under the thumb of four nationalist states, each of which saw Kurdish identity as a threat to its ethnic unity. But the group’s story