Speaker 1: Welcome to the Women's War, a production of I Heart Radiom.
Speaker 1: The weird thing about war is how damned normal most
Speaker 1: of it feels. One of my strongest memories of the
Speaker 1: battle from Mosel isn't the time an Isis snipering early
Speaker 1: put around through my head, or the time that an
Speaker 1: Isis mortar team dropped a pair of a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty millimeter shells on the other side of a wall
Speaker 1: from me. It's a night I spent with my photographer,
Speaker 1: my fixers, and an old bombed out mosque with a
Speaker 1: bunch of a racky civil defense guys. While I sat
Speaker 1: and drank tea. They ripped out the wiring from an
Speaker 1: old refrigerator and used it to connect an old CRT
Speaker 1: television to a generator. They succeeded, and we spent the
Speaker 1: night drowning out the sounds of gunfire and death with
Speaker 1: a blurry subtitled transmission of the film Clear and Present Danger. Today,
Speaker 1: we are driving to Rocca, the former capital of the
Speaker 1: Islamic State, to embed with one of Rojava's military units.
Speaker 1: This will not be an exciting war story, full of
Speaker 1: blood and guts and daring dew, but it is still
Speaker 1: a war story, because every story that comes out of
Speaker 1: Syria today is in some way a war story. Let's
Speaker 1: talk some more about Rocca. More than three quarters of
Speaker 1: the city was leveled during the battle to liberate it,
Speaker 1: and as is usually the case with violent liberations, very
Speaker 1: little was left behind aside from shattered buildings and shattered lives.
Speaker 1: The stf have been criticized for the level of destruction
Speaker 1: they wrought upon the city, but the bulk of the
Speaker 1: actual damage was done by air and artillery strikes conducted
Speaker 1: by American guns and American planes. It was an ugly fight,
Speaker 1: as sieges of cities always are. In the modern era,
Speaker 1: military planners have developed a new term, feral cities, for
Speaker 1: what happens when an urban area within a state passes
Speaker 1: out of the control of that state. The United States
Speaker 1: military has spent years developing special small unit tactics for
Speaker 1: fighting these sorts of wars, but when it came to
Speaker 1: Moslin Rocca, they let local forces do most of the
Speaker 1: dying and supported them instead by blowing up whole city blocks.
Speaker 1: I caught several chunks of the battle from Mosele myself,
Speaker 1: and I have failed ever since to adequately describe the
Speaker 1: brutality I witnessed, and from everything I've read and heard,
Speaker 1: Rocca was just as bad. There are very valid arguments
Speaker 1: that more of the city was destroyed and more of
Speaker 1: its people killed than was necessary. Some of the blame
Speaker 1: for this surely falls upon the SDF, who, after losing
Speaker 1: more than eleven thousand of their comrades in battle, took
Speaker 1: every opportunity they could to avoid fighting door to door.
Speaker 1: A good deal of the blame, though, must also fall
Speaker 1: upon the Trump administration. The man who campaigned on bombing
Speaker 1: the ship out of ICE's delivered on that promise. At
Speaker 1: least civilian casualties as a result of US air strikes
Speaker 1: increased massively after Donald Trump took office. By two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: annual civilian deaths caused by American action in Afghanistan alone
Speaker 1: had tripled. Rocca's destruction also amped up significantly under Trump,
Speaker 1: just as his administration laxed reporting requirements for the Department
Speaker 1: of Defense and effectively made it much easier for them
Speaker 1: to avoid telling anyone about deadly air strikes. In April
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, Amnesty International released a report titled Rhetoric
Speaker 1: Versus Reality, How the most precise air campaign and history
Speaker 1: left Rocca the most destroyed city in modern times. By
Speaker 1: some counts, up to eighty percent of Rocca was leveled.
Speaker 1: As Jake and I shower and dress and pound Mahmud
Speaker 1: instant coffee, the worst instant coffee on God's green earth.
Speaker 1: I think about what it means to be the most
Speaker 1: destroyed city in modern times. When I visited Mosel, there
Speaker 1: were places where buildings and the people in them had
Speaker 1: been pounded into a substance finer than sand. I literally
Speaker 1: cannot picture a more destroyed city. I will admit to
Speaker 1: feeling some nerves ahead of this trip too. Our goals
Speaker 1: that day were twofold to interview the co presidents in
Speaker 1: charge of defending Rocca and to go on patrol with
Speaker 1: a squadron of SDF fighters in search of ISIS sleeper cells.
Speaker 1: The former capital of the Islamic State is still filled
Speaker 1: with its soldiers dashies as some call them. They'd carried
Speaker 1: out several attacks in the days before our arrival, and
Speaker 1: it was made very clear to us that Rocca is
Speaker 1: one of those places in the world where just about
Speaker 1: anything could happen. During our visit, we meet Kabat a
Speaker 1: bit after dawn, and after pounding down another terrible coffee
Speaker 1: and smoking a cigarette that actually tastes good by comparison,
Speaker 1: we pile into the van and roll off down the road.
Speaker 1: On the way, we see a line of gas trucks,
Speaker 1: dozens long, waiting for their chance to cross into the
Speaker 1: regime controlled chunks of Syria. These trucks are part of
Speaker 1: the devil's bargain that Rojaba has struck to ensure its survival.
Speaker 1: The fuel gives them critical leverage against the Assad regime.
Speaker 1: If the government gets pushy, they can throttle the flow
Speaker 1: of oil and stop serious tanks in their tracks. We
Speaker 1: stopped for breakfasts and tell Tamar, a small mixed Assyrian,
Speaker 1: Kurdish and Arab village. Kabbat takes us to a little
Speaker 1: roadside stand and orders eight or nine oblong flatbread pizza
Speaker 1: styled dishes. They're delicious. All of the food here is delicious.
Speaker 1: This is what is this uh ratter mind. We get
Speaker 1: to talking a bit of shop about our experiences with
Speaker 1: war zone journalism, and we soon move on to the
Speaker 1: subject of cigarettes, which are almost an item of religious
Speaker 1: significance to soldiers at the front. If you embed in
Speaker 1: an Iraqi military unit. You will be offered many, many cigarettes,
Speaker 1: and you'd be kind of a dick if you turned
Speaker 1: one down. It's just the way Howbat informs us that
Speaker 1: in this regard, things in Rojava are not wildly different
Speaker 1: from things in Iraq. One thing this place never run
Speaker 1: short of is cigarettes. No. I'm I stand all the
Speaker 1: front lines, and everyone's smoking, everyone never sometimes not smoking.
Speaker 1: But I remember one journalist he quit smoking for a
Speaker 1: few years, and he came to here and he wanted
Speaker 1: to interview one of these Swedish eyes. Did they he
Speaker 1: arrived band they stopped at all the interviews at camping.
Speaker 1: In the evening, I found him on the stairs. The
Speaker 1: conversation moves on and Jake talks about a friend of
Speaker 1: his who was stabbed to death during a robbery gone
Speaker 1: bad back in his hometown. There's a lot of talk
Speaker 1: about what leads to such utterly pointless crimes and how
Speaker 1: they can be more unsettling than the targeted violence from
Speaker 1: groups like ISIS. Kabat tells us that she's glad her
Speaker 1: brother died fighting for something at least as opposed to
Speaker 1: falling in some random cruel tragedy. She tells us she
Speaker 1: thinks stuff like that is less common here, perhaps because
Speaker 1: death from other things is so much more common. It's
Speaker 1: a sort of conversation I've had before. I was in Dublin, Ireland,
Speaker 1: at a hostel on the day after the two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve Sandy Hook shooting. I went up drinking and talking
Speaker 1: about the massacre with a Venezuelan friend. Now he'd actually
Speaker 1: seen people murdered for their property with his own eyes,
Speaker 1: shot to death by masked men on motorcycles in the
Speaker 1: streets of Caracas. Even so, he was horrified by the
Speaker 1: idea of a school shooting like Sandy Hook. People kill
Speaker 1: each other here, he told me. But no one does that.
Speaker 1: No one does that. After a couple hours on the road,
Speaker 1: we arrive at the STF Media office. It's a dusty,
Speaker 1: gray white compound of several buildings that looks like it
Speaker 1: used to be a private business. Today it's where the
Speaker 1: sundry militias of Rojava interface with journalists. We will come
Speaker 1: to know this place very well. There's a gate to
Speaker 1: the compound and a WYPG man guards it. I notice
Speaker 1: his A K forty seven as we pass by. He's
Speaker 1: customized it beautifully with a colorful rap for the magazine
Speaker 1: that turns it into a copy of the WIPG. Patch.
Speaker 1: On his shoulder there is a single bullet mounted to
Speaker 1: the top of the barrel, stored on a little pop
Speaker 1: out container. Hobat explains that this setup is common among
Speaker 1: the soldiers of the WYPG. The last bullet is to
Speaker 1: use on themselves rather than be captured by Isis. We
Speaker 1: enter the office and sit down for the requisite Kurdish
Speaker 1: ta with a man who very much wants to be
Speaker 1: our new friend. Mr. English. That's not his real name,
Speaker 1: but it is what he seriously called himself and what
Speaker 1: everyone else in the office sort of I rollingly called um.
Speaker 1: Mr English is an SDF Media liaison and an English
Speaker 1: literature major. He has powerful dad joke energy, and he
Speaker 1: is supremely excited for a chance to put his English
Speaker 1: speaking skills to use. Are you go? Yeah, you are, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you are here, you are American? Here you go? And
Speaker 1: Americans say, um, So, if if a brick goes into
Speaker 1: the shop, I say, yeah, please, can I have that?
Speaker 1: Americans say can I get that? We sit and sip
Speaker 1: coffee and answer just a whole bunch of questions about
Speaker 1: our language from our very excited new friend. While we
Speaker 1: do that, Kabat talks to sdf officers and works out
Speaker 1: the final arrangements for a trip to Rocca. She works,
Speaker 1: and Jake and I listened to Mr English talk about
Speaker 1: his daughter. He shows us many pictures and Bragg's that
Speaker 1: she just graduated college in Aleppo with an engineering degree.
Speaker 1: Like many in Rojaba, she found herself in the awkward
Speaker 1: position of living in the Autonomous Region of Syria, which
Speaker 1: rejects government contr role, but going to school in regime territory.
Speaker 1: The whole conversation occurs in what is essentially a waiting
Speaker 1: room with walls bedecked in pictures of the SDFS martyrs.
Speaker 1: Directly above my chair is a plastic box with a
Speaker 1: camera in it. Underneath the martyr's photo. Mr English explains
Speaker 1: to me that this is the camera that man was
Speaker 1: carrying when he was shot dead. Working for the SDFS
Speaker 1: Media division at the front lines, it's a fun thing
Speaker 1: to see right before you go to inim bed as
Speaker 1: a member of the media with a military unit looking
Speaker 1: for isis guys. We receive approval to drive into Rocca,
Speaker 1: all right, so it's uh am Wednesday, j and we're
Speaker 1: on our way into Rocca. Rocca looks a lot like
Speaker 1: Moslded when last I visited. The destruction is extensive, but
Speaker 1: it is markedly less scary than we had been led
Speaker 1: to exp act, at least so far. A decent amount
Speaker 1: of repair work is clearly underway. Already we passed lively
Speaker 1: streets filled with people in shop stalls, and then a
Speaker 1: block or two later we'll hit streets that have been
Speaker 1: absolutely leveled by high explosives. They're like islands of life
Speaker 1: in a sea of death, or like anti tumors of
Speaker 1: some sort of weird reverse cancer, slowly taking back the ruins.
Speaker 1: As Alan's van whirls over cracked and broken streets, we
Speaker 1: in the van share a lively conversation about suicide. I
Speaker 1: noticed when we uh the guy guy who was on
Speaker 1: guard duty had the bullet mounted on the top of
Speaker 1: his a K forty seven. This reminds Jacob, a Kurdish
Speaker 1: fighter he used to know have All kim All who
Speaker 1: found himself cut off after a firefight surrounded by isis
Speaker 1: lovely guard. You won't look down in a house grenade. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Yeah, it's great. I'm one of the
Speaker 1: other send me the picture. I was like, why, why
Speaker 1: do you do this? I don't want to see this.
Speaker 1: We stopped by the side of the street and Kabat's friend, Ahmed,
Speaker 1: jumps into the car with us. He's a lifelong Rocca
Speaker 1: resident who now works for the SDF. Ahmed lived here
Speaker 1: back when Isis was in charge, and interestingly enough, he
Speaker 1: found them okay. At first, crime went down at least,
Speaker 1: he tells us with a shrug, but over time things
Speaker 1: grew markedly more brutal. In the years since Rocca fell
Speaker 1: Or was liberated, Ahmed started working with the SDF. He
Speaker 1: tells us he's happier with them and that he likes
Speaker 1: seeing Arabs and curds eating together. I asked him if
Speaker 1: it took him getting used to going from dash control
Speaker 1: to working with a woman like Kabat. In response, he
Speaker 1: swings his arm around Kabat's shoulder and fixes me with
Speaker 1: an easy grin. He says, Kabbat is my best friend.
Speaker 1: Of course, Kabat brings on that a lot of work
Speaker 1: and he makes a nice side business helping to set
Speaker 1: up and arrange inbeds and interviews with the SDF. I
Speaker 1: don't know the man but he strikes me as the
Speaker 1: sort of very friendly, very charming fellow who will find
Speaker 1: a way to make a decent life for himself under
Speaker 1: any system. We stop outside a large complex of buildings
Speaker 1: based around what looks like it used to be a
Speaker 1: very large office park, has been appropriated by the Syrian
Speaker 1: Democratic Forces as part of the Nerve Center for their
Speaker 1: soldiers defending Roca. Armed men and women of the YPG
Speaker 1: and J form a buzzing hive of activity outside a
Speaker 1: regular procession of technicals. Toyota trucks with machine guns mounted
Speaker 1: in the beds passed through on their way to conduct patrols.
Speaker 1: Jakobot and I will be heading out with one of
Speaker 1: those patrols soon, but before that can happen, we've got
Speaker 1: to have a meeting with the two code presidents of
Speaker 1: the Rocket says. I've had a lot of meetings like
Speaker 1: this when I was in Iraq. We'd be trying to
Speaker 1: secure an embed up at the front, and first we'd
Speaker 1: have to hang out with a room full of Iraqi
Speaker 1: generals and colonels to put in some FaceTime and get
Speaker 1: their permission to go forward. This generally meant an hour
Speaker 1: or two of watching Ammirati television and drinking Shi coffee.
Speaker 1: We'd have long winding conversations that would end with one
Speaker 1: of the generals telling us we could go up to
Speaker 1: the front. Now my experience with the rocket Defense Counsel
Speaker 1: would prove very different. We are led into see the
Speaker 1: co presidents of Racca Za sayish of all Czechick and
Speaker 1: have al Kabat. I realized that's confusing. Unlike our Kabat,
Speaker 1: this one is a man in his miss fifties. Of
Speaker 1: all Cechick is a woman of about the same age.
Speaker 1: This is my first time seeing a woman in one
Speaker 1: of these general level sit downs before embedding with a unit.
Speaker 1: At first, she pays us little attention while her male
Speaker 1: colleague answers questions. Of all, Cichick is busy juggling multiple
Speaker 1: cell phones and a regular stream of subordinates, starting in
Speaker 1: and out with questions and answers. She wears urban pattern
Speaker 1: camo fatigue pants, sneakers, and a dark gray Safari shirt.
Speaker 1: She has a square, serious face and hard eyes. Jake
Speaker 1: and I exchange some polite q and a's with their colleague,
Speaker 1: but Cichick is the person we really want to talk with,
Speaker 1: and after twenty minutes or so we succeed in getting
Speaker 1: her attention enough for a serious interview. I start by
Speaker 1: asking her how Rocca, the city that spent years under
Speaker 1: the thumb of hardline and seriously misogynistic Islamic militants, adapted
Speaker 1: to having hundreds of armed women patrolling its streets. Of course,
Speaker 1: as hard, things were difficult until the people here started
Speaker 1: to believe in us. There were many times when people
Speaker 1: refused to recognize our authority. They would say, these are women.
Speaker 1: How can they pretend to administer our city? How can
Speaker 1: these women be in charge of us? Some people would
Speaker 1: even lecture us and say it is morally wrong for
Speaker 1: women to wear that sort of clothing. Women should not
Speaker 1: be in the security forces at all, have all. Chichik
Speaker 1: explains that her process of building personal trust in the
Speaker 1: community has been slow and mainly focused around repeated, firm
Speaker 1: but polite conversations with leaders in the community. We made
Speaker 1: them understand after so many conversations, they accepted that I
Speaker 1: was determined and there was a place for me in
Speaker 1: this community. It's not as difficult now. I'm sure determination
Speaker 1: was a factor, but I'm equally sure that the sheer
Speaker 1: number of guns have all Chicheck and her comrades could
Speaker 1: bring to bear had an impact on them being taken seriously.
Speaker 1: She more or less confirmed this when I asked her
Speaker 1: for her take on how this new system had come together.
Speaker 1: We seized it. I asked what she saw as the
Speaker 1: importance of having both men and women out on the
Speaker 1: street protecting their community. Women have an important role in this.
Speaker 1: Why because if you don't have any women in the
Speaker 1: security forces, then the women in that society will not
Speaker 1: be able to communicate with the men on an equal level.
Speaker 1: We got to talking a little more about her background
Speaker 1: and what her life had been like before the revolution.
Speaker 1: She told us that as a young woman living under
Speaker 1: a SODS dictatorship, she'd thought about doing this kind of
Speaker 1: work for years before she ever got the opportunity. Whenever
Speaker 1: I would pass through a regime checkpoint, I would daydream
Speaker 1: about what it would be like to take over from them.
Speaker 1: I thought, after all the violence we've experienced at their hands,
Speaker 1: we would have to be more democratic if we were
Speaker 1: in their position. And so Once Isis was defeated, the
Speaker 1: SDFS goal was not just to occupy the city, but
Speaker 1: to actually give the young women here who'd spent years
Speaker 1: living under isis a chance to take control of their
Speaker 1: own lives after the beginning. After we secured the city,
Speaker 1: we immediately started recruiting women for the SASH. Seventy women joined.
Speaker 1: The women took their place everywhere, the checkpoints office, media office,
Speaker 1: commissary in the bureau, the administration, the patrols, and communications
Speaker 1: in every place. Jake and I brought up that in
Speaker 1: our own countries women had only very recently been allowed
Speaker 1: to apply for frontline combat roles. I told her that
Speaker 1: this was controversial among many men in my country who
Speaker 1: thought women weren't as capable of doing these kinds of jobs.
Speaker 1: That is the system preventing women from empowering themselves. When
Speaker 1: women are empowered, man's power deserts him. At this point
Speaker 1: in the conversation, have all Habbat spoke up as a man,
Speaker 1: if there's a woman on your side, your work becomes easier.
Speaker 1: He brought up American style democracy and questioned whether or
Speaker 1: not men and women are really equal in my country.
Speaker 1: In the United States, how many women do you have
Speaker 1: in government and so they don't get to make decisions?
Speaker 1: Trump says, I withdraw, and he withdraws. There's a woman
Speaker 1: next to him, but she is just for decoration. In
Speaker 1: the American Congress, likewise, there are women, but they cannot
Speaker 1: take any decision. It's men who are in charge. He
Speaker 1: points out that gender balance is one of the key
Speaker 1: advantages of the co presidency system, which he says frustrates
Speaker 1: the u US forces that they work with on a
Speaker 1: regular basis. The Americans ask us what is this code
Speaker 1: chair system? They didn't like it because having two points
Speaker 1: of contact made things more complex than our military prefers.
Speaker 1: But as have all, Kabat pointed out, if the chair
Speaker 1: were alone, it would probably be only one man, and
Speaker 1: that's not right. You suppress half of society. A young
Speaker 1: soldier comes to the door and signals that our ride
Speaker 1: is just about ready. I have time for one more question,
Speaker 1: and so I asked haval Cichek, how many people in
Speaker 1: Rocket today she thinks, really support the new system and
Speaker 1: the gains for women's rights, and how many wish things
Speaker 1: would go back to the way they were under Isis
Speaker 1: or the Assad regime. The men in public, they say
Speaker 1: they want women to be empowered, but inside, in terms
Speaker 1: of the essence the mentality, they don't change. The masculine
Speaker 1: mentality cannot be changed. She fixes her partner with a
Speaker 1: strange look that I can't quite read. I don't know
Speaker 1: either of them well enough to tell if this is
Speaker 1: a joke between the two of them, or if she's
Speaker 1: suddenly signaling something about hal Kabat. I thank them both
Speaker 1: for their time, and then we head now the stairs
Speaker 1: to meet them. Men and women that will be going
Speaker 1: on patrol with we're getting on the truck. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I can we meet them down at the base vehicle pool.
Speaker 1: It's a happening location filled with a couple of dozen
Speaker 1: very busy men and women. The unit will be going
Speaker 1: on patrol with is twelve strong, ten men and two women.
Speaker 1: They're busy loading their two RpK medium machine guns into
Speaker 1: the beds of the two Toyota Highluxes that will be
Speaker 1: writing into hopefully not battle. I should stop here to
Speaker 1: say a little something about the high Lux. We don't
Speaker 1: have them in the United States. Our equivalent would be
Speaker 1: the Tacoma. And on the surface, that's all. The high
Speaker 1: Lux is yet another regional Toyota pick up. But if
Speaker 1: you travel the sundry war zones of planet Earth, the
Speaker 1: single most common vehicle you see won't be a Humby
Speaker 1: or some other military jeep. It won't be a tank
Speaker 1: or an armored personnel carrier. It'll be the noble high
Speaker 1: Lux bearing men and women on their way to war,
Speaker 1: or acting as a mobile gun platform for some armed
Speaker 1: force on a budget. Over the years, I've seen high
Speaker 1: lux is mounted with anti vehicular cannons, grenade launchers, heavy
Speaker 1: machine guns, and one time a recoilist rifle the size
Speaker 1: of a motorcycle the SDF high Lux as we hop
Speaker 1: onto our humble By comparison, the machine guns in the
Speaker 1: back don't even have a permanent mount. They rest on
Speaker 1: the top of the cabin, perched on a stack of rugs.
Speaker 1: The largest man in each vehicle holds the gun in
Speaker 1: place on our drive into downtown. I don't speak Arabic,
Speaker 1: the language used by all the soldiers in this unit,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't really judge what they were saying, but
Speaker 1: it was easy to pick up on the general vibe
Speaker 1: of the unit. Most of them were from seventeen to
Speaker 1: nineteen years old, with the two women in the unit
Speaker 1: being seventeen and eighteen. The oldest person was a man
Speaker 1: in his early twenties with very cool sunglasses. Before we
Speaker 1: loaded up. Both the young women seemed to mostly stick
Speaker 1: with each other, but when the go time hit, they
Speaker 1: both hopped into separate vehicles. The less populated districts we
Speaker 1: drive through on our way to downtown Rocca have been
Speaker 1: just utterly leveled piles of rubble that are themselves the
Speaker 1: size of large buildings loom over us. It reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot of mosle. A man with a rifle could
Speaker 1: lurk behind any of the broken windows or bombed outdoor
Speaker 1: frames we pass, but none do today, as our drivers
Speaker 1: do the vehicle equivalent of elbow their way through traffic.
Speaker 1: Jake and I talk with the soldiers about what it's
Speaker 1: like to patrol through the streets of your own shattered home.
Speaker 1: It's so grateful for us because it's apart from our
Speaker 1: body can. For example, he's saying that seeing his hometown
Speaker 1: like this hurts him as much as it would hurt
Speaker 1: him if he'd lost his arm. Seeing the ruined skyline
Speaker 1: of Rocca is like looking at his own severed limb
Speaker 1: in the dirt. As we near our destination, Jake turns
Speaker 1: to the young woman in the truck with us. She's
Speaker 1: just seventeen, and she looks like she should still be
Speaker 1: in high school. I know I had friends back in
Speaker 1: the US who joined the Marine Corps at age seventeen,
Speaker 1: but it's still strange to see someone so young in
Speaker 1: a uniform holding a gun. Jake asks her a question.
Speaker 1: So we're in a city right now where women were
Speaker 1: enslaved and they were killed. They had no rights, so
Speaker 1: they couldn't even whoop the streets, you know, without covering
Speaker 1: the whole faces. Now you're here and you'll keep in
Speaker 1: the city's safe as a female with the we was
Speaker 1: like completely banded to be out of the home round cover.
Speaker 1: But low I am participating more effectively. It slight a
Speaker 1: free She's saying that under ice is she was banned
Speaker 1: from even going outside if she was unescorted by a man.
Speaker 1: Now she's free to participate in society, and she's decided
Speaker 1: to do that by picking up a gun and protecting
Speaker 1: her community. We had a traffic circle in the middle
Speaker 1: of town, and both trucks pulled sideways, blocking off sections
Speaker 1: of traffic and bringing the stop and go action of
Speaker 1: midday rocket to a stop. The young soldiers were with
Speaker 1: pile out of their trucks quickly and set up a
Speaker 1: pair of air SAT's checkpoints, drivers are briefly questioned and
Speaker 1: forced to show documents. In a few instances, cars are
Speaker 1: searched inside and out for contraband weaponry. I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time looking at the faces of the people
Speaker 1: in the traffic and the people being searched. Rocket is
Speaker 1: not a normal part of Rojava, and the streets feel
Speaker 1: profoundly different. For one thing, there are an awful lot
Speaker 1: of angry people here. Equal numbers of men and women
Speaker 1: on the streets seemed to both fall into this group,
Speaker 1: but they express it differently. The angry women tend to
Speaker 1: wear full nikabs with only their eyes visible, and they
Speaker 1: turn away from us as soon as we see them.
Speaker 1: The angry men are different. They tend to be much older.
Speaker 1: Most are in their late forties or fifties. They have
Speaker 1: hard faces, very long beards, and you can see in
Speaker 1: their eyes that they were much happier back when the
Speaker 1: previous folks were in charge. I particularly enjoy seeing the
Speaker 1: young women in our unit take licenses and give orders
Speaker 1: to these men as they go about their business. I
Speaker 1: can see little girls on the street watching curiously, taking
Speaker 1: all this in. Whatever else is going on here, however,
Speaker 1: permanent the other achievements of the revolution proved to be.
Speaker 1: This is undeniably real. The memories in these young girls
Speaker 1: heads may prove to be the most radical accomplishment of
Speaker 1: the Rojhavin project. The patrol passes without violence, and after
Speaker 1: a couple hours, we returned to the base. When we
Speaker 1: get back there, we see several smaller groups of soldiers
Speaker 1: preparing to head out. Our truck stops and we all
Speaker 1: get off and say oh goodbyes. As Kobat thanks our hosts,
Speaker 1: I find my attention drawn a few feet to the right,
Speaker 1: where the driver of another high lucks chats with one
Speaker 1: of his comrades, a short woman wearing a headscarf. She's
Speaker 1: pointing to different locations on the map, and he's nodding
Speaker 1: in agreement with her. It's a small moment that's noteworthy
Speaker 1: for how normal it is here now, just two years
Speaker 1: after the Islamic State was kicked out. We say our goodbyes,
Speaker 1: pile into a lawns fan, and then we're off to
Speaker 1: the city of Kobani for the night. As we barrel
Speaker 1: down the highway, Jake Kobat and I talked about our
Speaker 1: interview with the two Asaish leaders. We met this morning.
Speaker 1: When we'd asked the woman of Alchichek about her early life,
Speaker 1: she'd given very few details, just saying that she lived
Speaker 1: at home with her family before the revolution. That may
Speaker 1: have been true, but Jake suspected she was from the mountains.
Speaker 1: This is common local slang for she was in the
Speaker 1: p k K. A number of influential figures in Rajavan
Speaker 1: politics and in the military got their start in the
Speaker 1: p KK or Curdistan Workers Party. The p k K
Speaker 1: is the originally Marxist guerrilla group that helped to found
Speaker 1: this place. Membership in the p k K is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing people talk about furtively, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of false rumors as a result of this.
Speaker 1: The old fighters from the p KK tend to be quiet,
Speaker 1: stone faced, and hard. Kabat tells us that people used
Speaker 1: to spread rumors that she was from the mountains because
Speaker 1: she never wears any makeup. We enter Kobani in the
Speaker 1: late afternoon, just a little before sunset. Kabat takes us
Speaker 1: to see the city's enormous cemetery, which is several times
Speaker 1: the size of the one in Komischlow. Kobani was the
Speaker 1: site of some of the bloodiest fighting against Isis, and
Speaker 1: the scale of death that occurred here is obvious in
Speaker 1: the rows and rows of colorful graves. We watched the
Speaker 1: sunset there. The orange light of the fading sun mixes
Speaker 1: well with the reds, greens, and yellows of these revolutionary graves.
Speaker 1: As I walked through the rows of dead, I find
Speaker 1: myself drawn to the dates of their birth and of
Speaker 1: their death. I do the math in my head with
Speaker 1: every shahida pass. A terrible number sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen
Speaker 1: years old, a few or even younger. In the dark
Speaker 1: days when Isis laid siege to this town, an awful
Speaker 1: lot of kids were forced to take up arms to
Speaker 1: defend their homeland. Thinking back to the seventeen year old
Speaker 1: fighter we met in Rocca, I realized that many still are.
Speaker 1: Kobani is a city permanently shaped by the battle that
Speaker 1: ran through its streets from September of two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: to January of two thousand fifteen. It's been called the
Speaker 1: Kurdish Stalingrad. By the end of the fighting, more than
Speaker 1: seventy percent of the city lay in ruins. Almost all
Speaker 1: of it has been rebuilt in the half decades since,
Speaker 1: but a single destroyed neighborhood remains. The local communes in
Speaker 1: the city decided to leave it as a memorial and
Speaker 1: an open air museum. Kabat takes us there next, just
Speaker 1: as darkness hits. You can see everything just as it
Speaker 1: was rebel piled up into fighting positions, cars blown into
Speaker 1: the sides of buildings, ruined tanks, pulverized masonry. It's not
Speaker 1: lost on me that from several of the old fighting
Speaker 1: positions you can see across the border into Turkey. Kobani
Speaker 1: has been called the city that stopped Isis, and the
Speaker 1: town's spirit of resistance is more than a little infectious.
Speaker 1: Kabat takes us next to the very center of town
Speaker 1: to show us the victory monument the people of Rajava
Speaker 1: chose to make to celebrate their struggle. It sits at
Speaker 1: a roundabout in the center of town. In the middle
Speaker 1: is a tall white statue of a winged woman raising
Speaker 1: her arm in defiance as she beckons an unseen enemy
Speaker 1: forward in the universal gesture of come at me, motherfucker.
Speaker 1: At the winged woman's feet are two very Realisis tanks,
Speaker 1: both blown apart in heavy combat. It's she's saying that
Speaker 1: it's not like the other statue she's seen in her country,
Speaker 1: most of which celebrate a single powerful man, generally Bashar
Speaker 1: al Assad or his father. It's also not like any
Speaker 1: of the bright posters of Ajalon that we've seen in
Speaker 1: most of the government buildings, and rose Java wasn't the flipping.
Speaker 1: At the time all this happened late July two, nineteen,
Speaker 1: the long term survival lords for a Java were pretty low,
Speaker 1: and they haven't exactly gotten higher in the months since.
Speaker 1: There's only so much that revolutionary pluck and a defiant
Speaker 1: spirit can do against hell fire missiles, F twenty two
Speaker 1: bombers and all the heavy artillery that a major nation
Speaker 1: state like Turkey can bring to bear. Even so, as
Speaker 1: the months have passed and brought more stories of violence, disease,
Speaker 1: and the inexorable march of authoritarian governments worldwide, I still
Speaker 1: find myself inspired when I think back to that statue
Speaker 1: of a winged woman beckoning death forward and promising to
Speaker 1: at least give it the fight. Oh billet chaw bill
Speaker 1: schau chau chau chau partijan game, don't be mory. The
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