A tribute to Omar Aziz

Posted: February 17, 2025

 

 

“We are not fewer than the workers of the Paris Commune. They endured for 70 days, while we are still here, a year and a half now.”

With these words, anarchist intellectual and activist Omar Aziz inspired his comrades during the height of the Syrian revolution. On February 16, 2013, he was murdered by the Assad regime in Andra Prison, in the northeastern suburbs of Damascus, a facility designated for political prisoners.

Known in revolutionary circles as Abu Kamel, Omar Aziz was born in the Al-Amara neighborhood of Damascus on February 18, 1949. He graduated from the University of Grenoble in France with a degree in economics. Before returning to Syria, he lived with his family in Saudi Arabia, working in the information technology sector. Everything changed with the eruption of the Syrian uprising against the Assad family’s four-decade dictatorship in March 2011. Despite being 62 years old, Aziz returned to Syria to fully dedicate himself to the revolutionary movement and contribute to its maturation.

Aziz sought to redefine the role of revolutionaries. Though he passionately participated in all gatherings and peaceful demonstrations—traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood and city to city to meet activists, engage in dialogue, and spread the ideals of self-organisation, horizontality, and mutual aid—he believed protests alone were insufficient. He saw that the regime had developed mechanisms to absorb the momentum of mobilisations. Aziz envisioned the creation of social self-institutions as the only viable path to political victory for the revolution. His strategy aimed for the movement to reclaim land and state functions, accelerating society’s appropriation of public space and time.

These ideas were articulated in Abu Kamel’s first manuscript, published in 2011 during the eighth month of the uprising. He observed two overlapping spectrums of social time: the “time of power”—the time of daily life dictated by the state and the social relationships it produced—and the “time of revolution,” defined by collective creativity and solidarity. The failure to synchronize daily life with revolutionary time led him to foresee two risks: either the people would tire and gradually abandon the struggle, or the conflict would escalate into full militarisation, which, as he wrote, would result in “the revolution becoming hostage to the rifle.” [1]

The Syrian anarchist’s political proposal was the establishment of “Local Councils.” Through these councils, more sectors of life could become involved in the revolution and synchronise their steps with it. Based on the principles of self-organisation, solidarity, and mutual aid, he viewed local councils as institutions through which people “from all cultures and social divisions,” as he put it, could collaborate to meet their needs. The primary responsibilities of the councils included:

a) securing housing for displaced revolutionaries and gathering necessary supplies,

b) forming a support network for prisoners and their families,

c) creating a revolutionary fund,

d) seizing land and property from the state by all means,

e) establishing a group responsible for researching and publicising regime violations,

f) organising healthcare structures,

g) social self-defense and coordination with the Free Army militias,

h) collective consultation and problem-solving for citizens based on horizontal principles.

He believed that building autonomous, self-governed communities, regionally and nationally connected through a network of cooperation and mutual aid, was the path to social revolution and a definitive break from relations of domination. He had long advocated for the destruction of state structures and did not merely fight for the overthrow of the dictator. [2]

Aziz, along with his comrades, founded four local councils, the first of which was in the working-class neighborhood of Barzeh. In doing so, he played a crucial role in the subsequent development of the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), known in Arabic as tansiqiyyat, which were later established across all liberated areas. By March 2016, it was estimated that there were 395 such councils in cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods, half of which were concentrated in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. [3]

As we learn from Leila Al-Shami, co-author of the book Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, one of the most militant local councils, of which Aziz was a key founder, was in Zabadani, a strategically significant agricultural area surrounded by mountainous terrain near the country’s border with Lebanon, in southwestern Syria, 50 kilometers from the capital. The people of the town, with Sunnis and Christians side by side, had taken part in the revolutionary fervor early on, with notable mass participation from women, who defied harsh repression and regularly took to the streets. In mid-2011, the Zabadani Women’s Revolutionary Collective was formed, playing a leading role in organising the first general strike, which aimed to exert economic pressure on the regime. [4]

Zabadani was liberated by Free Army militias in January 2012. After the city was fortified with makeshift barricades, efforts shifted to rebuilding its institutions and structures. A local council was established to fill the power vacuum left by the regime’s withdrawal, based on principles of self-organisation. Citizens gathered at a central location to elect the council’s 28 members and choose a president. According to Al Shami, this was Syria’s first democratic experience in decades. The council created several committees to oversee daily life sectors, such as healthcare, education, conflict resolution among citizens, and negotiations with the regime.

Aziz did not live to see the outcome of this effort. Zabadani was besieged and heavily bombed by Hezbollah. Meanwhile, extremist Islamist brigades, which had gained influence over time, took control of the council in 2014. The regime eventually regained control of the city in April 2017, with residents forced to abandon their homes. Daraya offers a similar example. After its liberation, the Syrian activist established a local council there that even organised a secret underground library with 15,000 titles salvaged from abandoned and destroyed homes. Daraya later endured siege, food embargoes, chemical attacks, napalm, and the infamous “barrel bombs” used by Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Although the council movement persisted for years after its founder’s death, the councils lost their original identity as the revolution evolved. The dominance of extremists and the alignment of forces like Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah with the regime fundamentally changed the landscape. The local councils could no longer speak for the revolution or represent anything on a national level. Eventually, the councils were integrated into the Ministry of Local Governance of the interim government. [5]

However, this integration does not diminish the theoretical depth and practical legacy left by comrade Abu Kamel. It is essential to study his work, trace the significant events that took place in revolutionary Syria, and assess what worked and what did not with the local council model. To do this, we must prioritise the voices of local people and communities rather than simply defending one state or coalition in the name of anti-imperialism.

Aziz’s most significant observation for the anti-authoritarian movement was that revolution means reclaiming space and time from the enemy—territorialising new spaces and establishing new values and meanings. Without these, we are talking about half a revolution. As Saint-Just warned, “Whoever makes half a revolution digs their own grave.” Social revolution is not just the moment when palaces fall into revolutionary hands; it is the ongoing, methodical occupation of power vacuums through self-organisation and self-management, which shapes new forms of life. The Zapatista autonomy and the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) are examples of this.

The democratic, feminist, and ecological revolution of Rojava erupted alongside the broader Syrian revolution. Having deeply studied, experimented with, and implemented a social organisation model based on democratic confederalism, the peoples of Northeast Syria—Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, and others—were ready to declare autonomy when the opportunity arose. The fighters of the YPG/YPJ, at great cost, liberated territory from Daesh (ISIS/ISIL). Through direct democracy, they created a modern anti-authoritarian system that permeates all aspects of social life—justice, military organisation, and water management—across a vast territory, opposing the nation-state model and patriarchy.

The local councils and Rojava offer tangible examples of alternatives for coexistence, tolerance, and just living in a region with many ethnic and religious communities. They demonstrate that social revolution and stateless life organisation can happen even amid the most brutal wars of recent years. These self-organisation guerrilla movements not only reflect anti-authoritarian ideas but also enrich them with new content and expand their application.

 

Retrieved and machine translated from this source: https://www.babylonia.gr/2025/02/15/foros-timis-ston-omar-aziz/

 

References:

[1] Omar Aziz, A Discussion Paper on Local Councils (2011)

[2] Budour Hassan, Radical Lives: Omar Aziz (2015)

[3] Agnes Favier, Local Governance Dynamics in Opposition-Controlled Areas in Syria (2016)

[4] Leila Al Shami, The Legacy of Omar Aziz: Building Autonomous, Self-Governing Communes in Syria (2017)

[5] Walid Daou, The Experience of Local Councils in the Syrian Revolution (2018)

 

 

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