"[T]he recent victories against ISIS in Syria are due in large part due to the efforts of YPG and YPJ, the Kurdish militias that make up most of the SDF The SDF is the preferred name used by US/Western media to reduce association with the PKK(Kurdish Workers Party), of which YPG/YPJ are military arms.

The PKK is the main political force behind Rojava or the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, a group of self governing cantons in Syria. These are the first significant truly democratic and secular developments in the region in a long time. It is also a bold experiment towards tolerance(Rojava is comprised of Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Syrian Turkmen and Yazidis as equal members) and gender equality,

The movement has strong anarchistic tendencies, and the PKKs leader Abdullah Öcalan(currently imprisoned in Turkey) is heavily influenced by American anarchist Murray Bookchin(though he later preferred not to use the term).

There is no central government, and it is a union of self governing cantons. The cantons are collectively managed through Athenian style direct democracy, with strong participation of all ethnic groups and women. The YPJ is the purely female counterpart to the YPG.

If Rojava succeeds, it could be an outcome exponentially better than the Ba'athist/Islamic Nationalist status quo. Even if ends up failing, it is a symbol of hope to me, hope that we as a species can radically rethink social relations, like the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, or Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War."