In his report Zaher Baher argues that there is a fundamental difference between what Arab Spring culminated into and What Rojava resulted in. (Link: https://libcom.org/news/experiment-west-kurdistan-syrian-kurdistan-has-p... I recommend everyone to read it.)
See this part especially:
From what I have seen, Syrian Kurdistan has taken a different route (and, in my opinion, the right one) from the “Arab Spring” and the two cannot be compared. There are a couple of major differences between them.
2. In Syrian Kurdistan the people were prepared and knew what they wanted. They believed that the revolution must start from the bottom of society and not from the top. It must be a social, cultural and educational as well as political revolution. It must be against the state, power and authority. It must be people in the communities who have the final decision-making responsibilities. These are the four principles of the Movement of the Democracy Society (Tev-Dam).
My wish here is to futher inquire about Zaher's claim, in other words: Why people knew what they wanted in Syrian Kurdistan but nowhere else? I think this issue should addressed. Why it differed so much from Egypt for example? Zaher gives credit to two groups of people one being "Abdullah Ocallan and his comrades". (I guess he means PYD here). The other being "people in Syrian Kurdistan".
On other occasions in Arab Spring (and also in other parts of Syria):
people were not prepared and knew only that they wanted to get rid of the current government but not the system. Also, the vast majority of the people thought that the only revolution is the revolution from the top. Setting up local groups was not undertaken except by a tiny minority of anarchists and libertarians.
I think this is a real issue. Revolutionaries should better know when and how a society (or a class) will organize itself as a self-ruler (and not a reformist force that just wishes to wipe out the "dirty" authorities) I think finding this out can not be accomplished by purely theoretical and/or historical accounts. It must relate to concrete reality we live in. I think it is obvious that this requires a mass organization and also a history of political organizing, but what more contributes to emergence of this "knowledge" in the minds of the masses? What factors are important? Industrial relations? Agricultural relations? Cities? Villages? Ethnic oppression? State enforced capitalism? A sort of nomadic root? economic well being? Economic deprivation? a culture of solidarity? a culture of individuality? What is its relation to religion?
In this case it seems like the important factors are a well established Stalinist national liberation gang and a bunch of idiot anarchists to fight their cyber war for them.