“Self-Administration”: A Judicial Approach to Understanding the Model and Experience

Executive Summary
With the decline of central state authority in favor of the rise of sub-state entities, including those with nationalist and religious overtones, various models of local governance have emerged in Syria. These models have been influenced by the changing military landscape, leading to the demise of some models and the decline of others, while others have experienced relative stability and caution.
The “Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria” has presented itself as a model competing with other administrative models imposed by the military reality. Despite the passage of seven years since the actual declaration of the Autonomous Administration with its various authorities and institutions, the level and nature of governance in this administrative model remains problematic and subject to numerous questions.
The study begins its investigation of this administrative model from the perspective of the judiciary, given the many important indicators reflected in the study of the judiciary, not limited to the level of courts and their legal activity, but extending to the political, administrative, security, economic, and social levels. The study defined its sample as judicial institutions and adopted a descriptive-analytical approach, including case studies. It relied on several data sources, primarily in-depth interviews with numerous active judges and lawyers, as well as a number of administrators in judicial institutions and other employees of executive authority institutions. It also interviewed a number of human rights organizations operating in the region, as well as separate interviews necessitated by the specific nature of each region.
The study raised a set of questions about the structure of the judiciary, the structure of its institutions, their mandates, and their working mechanisms, as well as the legal references upon which they are based. It also addressed the nature of the academic and demographic distribution of judges in charge of this body, its level of effectiveness and independence, its relationship with other authorities in the administration, particularly the security and military apparatuses, and the nature of the existing military judiciary. It also addressed the relationship between the judiciary and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the region. Among the variables under investigation, the study addressed the nature of judicial and legal handling of the “terrorism” file, specifically former ISIS detainees, especially with the establishment by the Autonomous Administration of exceptional courts for “terrorism” (the People’s Defense Court). In this context, several levels of handling of this file were identified outside the scope of the courts and the law.
The study comprises seven chapters examining the nature of the judicial system, with its various institutions and levels. The first chapter begins with the philosophy of its establishment and the theories upon which the Autonomous Administration relied and adopted in its administrative model, including the judicial system. Five chapters are divided into in-depth case studies of five areas declared by the Autonomous Administration as “regions” within its authority: (Hasakah, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, Manbij, and Ayn al-Arab/Kobani).
The seventh chapter is devoted to the study’s findings and conclusions, which are divided into two levels: the first: the level of the judicial system, with its two components, its authority, its effectiveness, and its efficiency, in contrast to its independence and impartiality. The results at the second level represented a comprehensive analysis of the case study data and the extraction of conclusions from them at the level of the administrative model as a whole, including the form of decentralization followed, the level of civil-military relations, the impact of the elimination of terrorism on civil peace and community security, versus the mechanisms for managing the “terrorism” file and its repercussions, and the nature of the relationship between the Democratic Union Party and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and its impact on the region.