Category Archives: PKK

How Democratic Confederalism has been practised by Kurds in Syria

Tatort Kurdistan reports: Even before the rebellions in Syria began, the Kurds of Rojava [Syrian Kurdistan] had already created the first councils and committees and thereby began to institute a radical democratic organization of most of the region’s population. Starting on June 19, 2012, the cities of Kobanê, Afrîn, Dêrik, and many other places were one by one freed from regime control; the strength of the reorganization then revealed itself. Military bases were reconfigured, and the vastly outnumbered regime troops were offered the option of withdrawal. Only in Dêrik did the situation lead to a struggle, with a few casualties. But even here, as people in Dêrik told us, the new self-organization prevented violent attacks and acts of destruction and revenge.

Self-Defense and the “Third Way”

As we considered this phase and the politics of the Kurdish movement in Rojava, we also observed the implementation of another paradigm of Democratic Confederalism: self-defense and the primacy of nonviolent solutions. The Kurdish movement and especially the PYD were organized before the Syrian revolution began resisting the Assad regime. At that time they saw it as a matter of democratic transformation; a militarization of the conflict was to be avoided. But with the outbreak of war, Islamization, and the heteronomy of the Syrian revolt, the Kurdish movement in Rojava decided to go a third way: it would side neither with the regime nor with the opposition. It would defend itself, but it would not wage war. The movement has remained this politics up to the present [July 2014]. Thus in Qamişlo, in the quarters that were inhabited by regime supporters, regime military units were still tolerated. The same was true for the airport. The goal was and is always to reach a political, democratic solution for all of Syria.

The Commune as the Center of Society

“The creation of an operational level where all kinds of social and political groups, religious communities, or intellectual tendencies can express themselves directly in all local decision-making processes can also be called participative democracy.” — Abdullah Öcalan, Democratic Confederalism (London, 2011), p. 26.

Democratic Confederalism has as its goal the autonomy of society: in other words, instead of the state governing society, a politicized society manages itself. As against capitalist modernity, it proposes democratic modernity. In Rojava, to make this system possible, the center of the social system became the commune. The commune, the self-management of the streets, would emerge as the hub of the society.

Decision making in the communes requires that quotas be met—that is, in order to make a decision, here and in all councils in Rojava, at least 40 percent of those who participate in the discussions must be women. In the communes, current issues of administration, energy, and food supply, as well as social problems like patriarchal violence, family conflicts, and much else, are discussed and if possible resolved. The communes have commissions that address all social questions, everything from the organization of defense to justice to infrastructure to youth to the economy and the construction of individual cooperatives—such as bakeries, clothing production, and agricultural projects. The ecology commissions concern themselves with urban sanitation as well as specifically ecological problems. At the forefront is the imperative to strengthen the social position of women: committees for women’s economy help women develop economic independence.

The commune, as the mala gel (people’s house), lends support in all questions; it is simultaneously an institution of support and a kind of court. Central to its processes is the ideal of agreement and compensation; for general offenses, the causes of an infraction are investigated and overcome, and the victim is protected. For patriarchal violence and all attacks that affect women, the mala jinan (women’s house) is in charge; it is attached to the women’s council, a parallel structure to the commune’s mixed-gender council. [Continue reading…]

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The Kurdish vision of Democratic Confederalism

In the preface to Democratic Confederalism, published in English in 2011, the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, writes: For more than thirty years the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has been struggling for the legitimate rights of the Kurdish people. Our struggle, our fight for liberation turned the Kurdish question into an international issue which affected the entire Middle East and brought a solution of the Kurdish question within reach.

When the PKK was formed in the 1970s the international ideological and political climate was characterized by the bipolar world of the Cold War and the conflict between the socialist and the capitalist camps. The PKK was inspired at that time by the rise of decolonialization movements all over the world. In this context we tried to find our own way in agreement with the particular situation in our homeland. The PKK never regarded the Kurdish question as a mere problem of ethnicity or nationhood.

Rather, we believed, it was the project of liberating the society and democratizing it. These aims increasingly determined our actions since the 1990s.

We also recognized a causal link between the Kurdish question and the global domination of the modern capitalist system. Without questioning and challenging this link a solution would not be possible. Otherwise we would only become involved in new dependencies.

So far, with a view to issues of ethnicity and nationhood like the Kurdish question, which have their roots deep in history and at the foundations of society, there seemed to be only one viable solution: the creation of a nation-state, which was the paradigm of the capitalist modernity at that time.

We did not believe, however, that any ready-made political blueprints would be able to sustainably improve the situation of the people in the Middle East. Had it not been nationalism and nation-states which had created so many problems in the Middle East?

Let us therefore take a closer look at the historical background of this paradigm and see whether we can map a solution that avoids the trap of nationalism and fits the situation of the Middle East better. [Continue reading…]

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The revolutionary thinking behind the fight in Kobane

Adam Curtis writes: In the battle for Kobane on the Syrian border everyone talks about the enemy – IS – and the frightening ideas that drive them. No-one talks about the Kurdish defenders and what inspires them.

But the moment you look into what the Kurds are fighting for – what you discover is absolutely fascinating. They have a vision of creating a completely new kind of society that is based on the ideas of a forgotten American revolutionary thinker.

He wanted to create a future world in which there would be no hierarchies, no systems that exercise power and control individuals. And the Kurds in Kobane are trying to build a model of that world.

It means that the battle we are watching night after night is not just between good and evil. It is also a struggle of an optimistic vision of the future against a dark conservative idea drawn from the past.

It is a struggle that may also have great relevance to us in the west. Because the revolutionary ideas that have inspired the Kurds also shine a powerful light on the system of power in Britain today. They argue that we in the west are controlled by a new kind of hierarchical power that we don’t fully see or understand.

There are two men at the heart of this story.

One is the American revolutionary thinker. He is called Murray Bookchin. Here is a picture of Bookchin looking revolutionary.

The other man is called Abdullah Ocalan. He is the leader of the Kurdish revolutionary group in Turkey – the PKK

Here he is in 1999 after he had been captured by Turkish security forces and was on his way to a jail on a tiny island in the Sea of Marmara where he would be the only prisoner.

In his solitude he would start to read the theories of Murray Bookchin and decide they were the template for a future world.

Both men began as hardline marxists.

Murray Bookchin was born in New York in 1921. In the 1930s he joined the American Communist Party. But after the second world war he began to question the whole theory that underpinned revolutionary marxism.

What changed everything for him was the experience of working in a factory. Bookchin had gone to work for General Motors – and he realized as he watched his fellow workers that Marx, Lenin and all the other theorists were wrong about the working class.

The Marxist theory said that once working men and women came together in factories the scales would fall from their eyes – and they would see clearly how they were being oppressed. They would also see how they could bond together to become a powerful force that would overthrow the capitalists.

Bookchin saw that the very opposite was happening. This was because the factory was organised as a hierarchy – a system of organisation and control that the workers lived with and experienced every second of the day. As they did so, that hierarchical system became firmly embedded in their minds – and made them more passive and more accepting of their oppression.

But Bookchin didn’t do what most disillusioned American Marxists in the 1950s did – either run away to academia, or become a cynical neo-conservative. Instead he remained an optimist and decided to completely rework revolutionary theory. [Continue reading…]

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How a Turkish leftist gave his life to save Kurdish Kobane

Al Jazeera: Suphi Nejat Agirnasli lived a scholar’s life on an island in the Sea of Marmara, a short ferry ride from the center of Istanbul. He was translating a multivolume encyclopedia of psychology from German into Turkish. He often worked in the living room, in sweatpants, looking out at the water.

“He told me that he didn’t want to grow up. He didn’t want to go to the adult world,” said his close friend Omer, a student who asked to be identified by only his first name.

But in August, Agirnasli cleaned out his room and vanished, leaving no indication of his destination. Two weeks ago, the news came that the 30-year-old died after joining Kurdish forces defending the besieged Syrian town of Kobane from Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Images from that brief final chapter of his life contrast with earlier photographs of the scholar hunched over his papers. In a portrait taken during his weeks with the Kurdish militia, Agirnasli stands straight, looking directly into the camera, a smile on his unshaven face. He is dressed in fatigues. In a video posted online, he states his name, birthdate and parents’ names. He holds a gun. Explosions can be heard in the background.

In the widening crisis emanating from Syria, Agirnasli’s profile stands out among the hundreds of men and women from Turkey — most of them ethnic Kurds — fighting in Kobane and the other parts of Syria.

Most of the estimated 15,000 volunteer foreign fighters who have been flooding into that theater of war are joining ISIL and other armed groups. But Agirnasli was fighting against them, making him one of the few non-Kurds, perhaps a few dozen men and women, who have taken up arms against ISIL.

“I think it will remain a small phenomenon in terms of fighters who are going across, but you’re seeing the fault lines played out inside Turkey coming from the Syrian conflict,” said Aaron Stein, a Geneva-based associate fellow with the defense think tank Royal United Services Institute. “It’s the militant left who are going to fight for the communist revolution and see the PYD as on the front lines against Islamism.” The PYD, or Democratic Union Party, is a Syrian Kurdish political party whose armed wing has been leading the battle against ISIL in Kobane. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey’s president steps up criticism of U.S. airdrops to aid Kuridish fighters in Syria

The Washington Post reports: Turkey’s president sharpened criticism of U.S. airdrops to aid Syrian Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State, but promised on Thursday that Kurdish reinforcements would soon arrive in the embattled border town of Kobane.

The dual messages from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reflect the complicated political calculations for Turkey as part of the U.S.-led coalition seeking to cripple the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Turkey is wary of the Syrian Kurds defending Kobane — just miles from the Turkish border — because of their ties to a Kurdish faction in Turkey that has waged a three-decade insurgency for greater rights. The U.S. airdrops of weapons and ammunition to Kobane is seen by Turkey as indirectly empowering the Turkish Kurdish rebels.

But NATO-member Turkey also is nervous that Kobane could fall to the Islamic State, which would gain another foothold along the Turkish border and possibly expand attacks on Turkish forces and targets. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. cooperated secretly with Syrian Kurds in battle against ISIS

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. has conferred newfound legitimacy on the Syrian Kurdish militia fighting in Kobani, which is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in neighboring Turkey. The U.S. and Turkey both list the PKK as a terrorist group.

Washington’s decision to send in supplies by air to fighters loyal to the Democratic Union Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PYD, followed a U.S. assessment that the Syrian Kurdish defenders would run out of ammunition in as little as three days.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders told American officials they were considering sending reinforcements from their region to Kobani. To reach the town, they would have to pass through other parts of Syria. U.S. defense officials looked at the route and told the Kurds it would be a suicide mission.

The U.S. asked the Turkish government to let Iraqi Kurdish fighters cross through Turkish territory to reinforce Kobani. U.S. officials said Turkey agreed in principal and that Massoud Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, proposed sending a specially trained force of Syrian Kurdish refugees.

But events on the ground forced Washington’s hand. U.S. contacts in Kobani sent out an urgent SOS.

“We needed weaponry and fast,” said Idris Nassan, the deputy foreign minister of the Kobani regional government.

To tide the Kurds over until Turkey opens a land corridor, U.S. Gen. Lloyd Austin, who runs the air campaign against Islamic State, decided on a delicate plan: dropping supplies using C-130 cargo planes.

The U.S. didn’t think Islamic State fighters had sophisticated antiaircraft weapons, but the Pentagon decided out of caution to fly under cover of darkness.

Gen. Austin presented the proposal to the White House on Friday. President Barack Obama approved it immediately, U.S. officials said.

Until recently, the White House wouldn’t even acknowledge U.S. contacts with the PYD because of its close ties to the PKK and the diplomatic sensitivities over that in Turkey. [Continue reading…]

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Iraqi Kurds approve deploying forces to Syria’s Kobane

AFP reports: Iraqi Kurdish regional lawmakers Wednesday approved the deployment of security forces to the Syrian town of Kobane to help Kurds battling the Islamic State jihadist group, the parliament speaker said.

Massud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, had sent a letter asking its legislature to give him the approval needed for the deployment.

“The Kurdistan parliament decided to send forces to Kobane with the aim of supporting the fighters there and protecting Kobane,” Yusef Mohammed Sadeq said, according to footage of the session.

It was not immediately clear whether there would be any coordination between the Kurdish region and the federal government in Baghdad on intervening in Syria’s bloody and protracted civil war.

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ISIS in desperate struggle to capture Kobane

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ISIS seizes two Yazidi villages as it advances on Mount Sinjar

The Washington Post reports: Islamic State militants advanced on Mount Sinjar on Monday, seizing two villages and blocking roads as besieged fighters from the minority Yazidi sect pleaded for U.S.-led airstrikes to save them.

Yazidi volunteers who have been protecting the area for more than two months said they retreated from the villages north of the mountain after the extremists attacked in the early hours of Monday under the cover of bad weather. The Yazidis pulled back to a shrine in the foothills of the mountain but said the militants were closing in — their armored vehicles visible just a few miles away as night fell.

“We have so little ammunition, and they are advancing,” said Khalid Qassim Shesho, a 44-year-old fighter trapped in the Sharfadin shrine. “I can see five Humvees without using binoculars. We need planes!”

The extremist gains around Mount Sinjar strike an embarrassing blow to the international campaign against the Islamic State. In August, President Obama authorized targeted airstrikes in Iraq to address the plight of thousands of Yazidis trapped on Sinjar in the face of an initial militant onslaught. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. airdrops with weapons and ammunition raise morale inside Kobane

The New York Times reports: Kurdish officials had repeatedly complained that without new supplies of ammunition and weapons, the airstrikes would not be sufficient to drive away the militants. On Monday, a commander in Kobani, Abu Hasan, said that “spirits and morale were high,” after the airdrops, which United States officials said included 27 palettes from Iraqi Kurdish authorities and contained medical supplies, ammunition and weapons.

The containers fell to the west of Kobani at about 4 a.m. local time, he said, adding that one palette that fell astray was destroyed to prevent it from falling into militant hands.

Polat Can, a spokesman for the Kurdish fighters in Syria, said that shipment included antitank weapons. He said that the Kurdish forces were expecting more airdrops in the coming days.

There was less visible fighting in the city during the day. In the afternoon, fires started appearing to the east of the city, an area still partially controlled by ISIS fighters, and residents fretted that the militants were torching homes.

Mr. Cavusoglu did not say how or when the pesh merga fighters would cross into Kobani. Late Monday, Hemin Hawrami, an Iraqi Kurdish official, wrote on Twitter that the fighters had been ordered to deploy in the next 48 hours.

A senior Pentagon official said on Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity, that “it will be a significant change to be able to have a free flow of fighters going into Kobani.”

A Kurdish defense official in Kobani, Ismet Sheikh Hassan said he had not been given any information about when the pesh merga would arrive. He welcomed the influx, while asserting that the Kurdish fighters already in the city — members of the People’s Protection Forces, the Y.P.G. — were not desperate for more fighters.

“We are short on ammunition and weapons,” he said “not on human power.” [Continue reading…]

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In reversal, Turkey to open passage to Kobane for Iraqi Kurdish fighters

The Wall Street Journal reports: Turkey said Monday it would allow Iraqi Kurdish fighters to cross its territory to reinforce the embattled Syrian city of Kobani, reversing its long-standing opposition to such aid hours after U.S. airdrops of weapons and ammunition to the city’s Syrian Kurdish defenders.

Speaking in a news conference in the Turkish capital Ankara, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu didn’t offer details how Turkish authorities would enable the transfer Kurdish Peshmerga fighters across Turkey or whether Syrian Kurdish authorities would accept additional forces.

“We are aiding the transfer of Peshmerga forces to Kobani for support. Consultations on this matter are ongoing,” Mr. Cavusoglu said. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. airdrops weapons and supplies to besieged Syrian Kurds in Kobane

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. dropped weapons, ammunition and medical supplies to Syrian Kurds fighting Islamic State extremists in the embattled city of Kobani, U.S. officials said Sunday.

Three U.S. C-130 cargo planes began dropping the weapons and supplies, provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq, on Sunday, the officials said. Over several hours, the U.S. dropped 27 bundles of small arms, ammunition and supplies.

The mission marks a deeper U.S. involvement in the conflict and comes over the objections of U.S. ally Turkey, which strongly opposes arming the Syrian Kurds.

The U.S. has conducted some 135 airstrikes in the area of Kobani, itself a main focus of the Islamic State militant offensive. U.S. military officials said they have killed hundreds of fighters and damaged scores of combat equipment. [Continue reading…]

Reuters adds: The main Syrian Kurdish armed group defending the Syrian border town on Kobani against Islamic State attackers said on Monday arms air-dropped by the United States would not be enough for it to win the battle, and asked for more support.

Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the Kurdish YPG group, said the weapons dropped overnight would have a “positive impact” on the battle and the morale of fighters who have been out-gunned by Islamic State. But he added: “Certainly it will not be enough to decide the battle.”

“We do not think the battle of Kobani will end that quickly. The forces of (Islamic State) are still heavily present and determined to occupy Kobani. In addition, there is resolve (from the YPG) to repel this attack,” he told Reuters in an interview conducted via Skype.

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The impact of airstrikes on the battle for Kobane

The Telegraph reports: The first signs that things could change came when planes appeared in the sky, circling for hours, but not attacking. The first strikes came on October 7 when US-made vehicles driven by Isil fighters to resupply the city were hit outside the town.

Scorched metal skeletons were all that remained of the jihadist’s prized Humvees.

“We had a walkie-talkie tuned on the Isil radio system, that we had taken from a jihadist that we killed,” said Mr Kharaba.

“When the first air strikes hit, we heard them on the radio screaming in panic.

“They were shouting ’Allah Akbhar’ (God is great) and listing the leaders who were killed: Abu Anas, Abu Hamza and many others.” Within a week, the air strikes had escalated from a few every day, to several every hour and by Tuesday the US and allies launched 21 air strikes on Isil positions in and around Kobane.

They bombed Tel Shair, a hill at the edge of Kobani, from which Isil had boastfully erected its black flag, and which it had used as a position to shell the town from.

Kurdish forces stormed the hill after the air strikes and cleaned it of their enemy.

“After we took the hill, I knew that Isil was on the back foot,” said Mr Kharaba.

“I knew it would be hard for them to keep Kobane.” The next day the strikes were hitting inside Kobane itself and the tide began to turn.

Pilots overhead grew in confidence and began to strike positions in the centre of Kobane, hitting Isil on their front lines.

Mr Kharaba described to the Telegraph being just metres from the air strike’s targets, and knowing he was safe: “They are incredibly accurate. If the Americans wanted to put a rocket in someone’s eye, even from hundreds of meters in the air, they could.”

The Syrian rebels and their Kurdish allies claimed they worked closely with the US planners to help set up the coordinates for the laser guided bombs.

Idris Nassan, 40, a senior spokesman for the Kurdish fighters told the Telegraph: “There is close co-ordination. We have a member of YPG who works directly with the Americans.”

Officially, the US government has shied away from directly admitting coordinating its attacks through the YPG, whose affiliate, the PKK, is on America’s terrorist list.

But John Allen, the US special envoy in charge of building the international coalition against Islamic State, admitted that Washington was open to receiving information on targets from all sources.

“Obviously, information comes in from all different sources associated with providing local information or potentially targeting information.

“And we’ll take it all when it comes in. It’s ultimately evaluated for its value,” Allen told reporters in Washington.

One fighter who asked not to be named recalled a battle on the eastern front of Kobane where his men were about to be forced into a retreat: “We called a Kurdish commander for help. He told us to move back a few meters. Then, minutes after, an air strike hit the men we had been fighting.”

The results have been increasingly effective. [Continue reading…]

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Fiercest fighting in days hits Kobane

Reuters reports: The fiercest fighting in days shook the Syrian border town of Kobani overnight as Islamic State fighters attacked Kurdish defenders with mortars and car bombs, sources in the town and a monitoring group said on Sunday.

Islamic State, which controls much of Syria and Iraq, fired 44 mortars at Kurdish parts of the town on Saturday and some of the shells fell inside nearby Turkey, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It said four more mortars were fired on Sunday. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian Kurds say U.S. discussing arms supplies in direct talks

Rudaw reports: US officials have been holding direct talks with leaders of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) about arming its fighters in the war against the Islamic State (ISIS).

PYD spokesman Nawaf Xelil told the Arabic Asharq Al-Awsat daily that arms supplies for the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the group’s military wing, were discussed at a meeting in Paris a week ago. He said that talks between the two sides continued in Duhok on Thursday.

“The subject of arming Syrian Kurds was discussed” the newspaper quoted Xelil as saying.

He added that at the Duhok meeting, a US delegation and PYD leaders had discussed Western and Arab support for the YPG.

“They spoke about sending military support to the Kurds in Kobane,” Xelil told Asharq Al-Awsat. He said the PYD and the US had started their talks two years ago but that Washington had kept the issue under the radar “in order not to upset Turkey.”

US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki confirmed Thursday that US officials had met with the PYD, but did not say where or what was discussed. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his country would not agree to any U.S. arms transfers to Kurdish fighters battling Islamic militants in Syria.

Turkey views the Kurdish fighters as an extension of the PKK, which has waged a 30-year insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terrorist group.

The state-run Anadolu news agency on Sunday quoted Erdogan as saying the fighters are “equal to the PKK” and that Turkey “would not say ‘yes’ to such a thing.”

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U.S. officials in contact with Syrian Kurds ‘for more than two years’ says PYD spokesman

Asharq Al-Awsat reports: Representatives from the main Syrian wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have been in contact with US officials “for more than two years,” an official spokesperson told Asharq Al-Awsat, adding that the talks had been kept secret by Washington to “avoid angering Turkey,” where the PKK is currently banned.

Despite the fact the PKK is also designated as a terrorist organization by the US and EU, Nawaf Khalil, the spokesperson for the PKK affiliate, the Kurdish–Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD), said this coordination had also included face-to-face meetings, some of which had involved former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford.

The most recent of such meetings, he said, took place on October 12 in Paris between PYD leader Salih Muslim Muhammad and US State Department Special Envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein to “discuss implementing military coordination between the People’s Protection Units [YPG, the armed wing of the PYD] and the joint Arab–international coalition against terrorism,” as well as supplying Kurdish fighters engaged in fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the Syrian border town of Kobani with weapons.

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The meaning of Kobane

Henri J Barkey writes: The Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani has been under a relentless siege by the Islamic State (IS) for the past few weeks. Surprisingly its defenders have endured, defying the long odds. Whether it falls or survives, Kobani is likely to become for Syrian and Turkish Kurds what Halabja became for Iraqi Kurds in 1988: a defining moment of nationhood and identity.

Halabja helped propel and shape the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq, now called the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). In 1988, in the midst of the genocidal Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on the sleepy Iraqi Kurdish town near the Iranian border, killing some 5,000, mostly civilians. Unnoticed at the time, Halabja became for much of the world a symbol of the larger campaign of mass extermination against the Kurds, as well as a quintessential example of a crime against humanity.

For the Kurds, it marked yet another time the world stood by and watched silently; theirs was an inconvenient predicament, a sacrifice at the altar of grander strategic purposes. Saddam Hussein enjoyed the support of the West precisely because he was locked in a duel with Iran, then a larger threat.

Fast forward to today: Until the U.S. Air Force began a systematic bombing campaign against IS positions around Kobani, the city had been left largely to fend for itself. Skittish and worried about Turkey’s reaction to support for Syrian Kurds, the Obama Administration initially hesitated but then committed itself to bombing the besieging IS forces after they had penetrated the city’s outer defenses.

Kobani will have two different effects on the region. First and foremost, it will be an important marker in the construction and consolidation of Kurdish nationhood. The exploits of Kobani’s defenders are quickly joining the lore of Kurdish fighting prowess. After all, the Iraqi Kurdish forces, not to mention the Iraqi army, folded in the face of a determined IS onslaught only a couple of months ago. The longer the city resists, the greater will be the reputational impact (although it is already assuming mythic proportions).

There is another, rather unique aspect of the resistance that is adding to its mythic character: the role of women in the fight. The juxtaposition of an Islamic State, which enslaves women or covers them from head to toe, with the Syrian Kurds’ Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has large numbers of women fighting and dying alongside men, is particularly striking. Social and other media outlets have brimmed with stories of the heroism and sacrifice of these women. The fighting in Kobani, and especially the emergence of women fighters, has now entered the Kurdish lore and imagination. [Continue reading…]

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