Speaker 1: Welcome to the Women's War, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Jake and I are pretty experienced travelers. We're both well
Speaker 1: used to dangerous places. But something about Kamischlow, the city
Speaker 1: where we spend the night of July, sets us on edge.
Speaker 1: The city itself is, if not exactly clean, not particularly
Speaker 1: dirty either. It is overcrowded, badly so, but orderly enough.
Speaker 1: Given all that, the graffiti on the walls is generally
Speaker 1: friendly and pro social. There are the names of various
Speaker 1: Shihid's martyrs who died fighting for Rojava, brightly colored recycling symbols,
Speaker 1: and cozy cartoon illustrations of women with a K forty
Speaker 1: seven's but alone among the ruins of Rojava. Kamish Loo
Speaker 1: is not entirely under the control of the SDF. The
Speaker 1: Syrian regime and its blood soaked dictator Bashar al Assad
Speaker 1: still run a few square blocks of the city, along
Speaker 1: with its military airport. The result of this is that
Speaker 1: every so often you turn a corner in Komischlow and
Speaker 1: run face to face into a gigantic portrait of Bashar.
Speaker 1: The regime. Bits of town are walled off, protected by
Speaker 1: razor wire and surly looking young male soldiers with kalashnikovs.
Speaker 1: A few days before our arrival, an American tourist was
Speaker 1: kidnapped by regime soldiers. Here. The full story of this
Speaker 1: that comes out later is profoundly dumb. Sam Goodwin, aged thirty,
Speaker 1: was trying to visit every country in the world. The
Speaker 1: Syrian regime, of course, would not approve his visa, so
Speaker 1: he hired our friend Sangar to get him approval to
Speaker 1: cross the Iraqi border into Rojava. Once in Rojava, Sam
Speaker 1: planned to head to Kamichlo so he could step briefly
Speaker 1: into the regime controlled side of town. Sangar told him
Speaker 1: that this was a terrible idea, and also told him
Speaker 1: that if he was going to safely visit Kamischlow, he
Speaker 1: really needed a local Kurdish fixer to show him around
Speaker 1: there too. It was easy to accidentally why end up
Speaker 1: in the wrong part of town and thus get arrested
Speaker 1: by the regime. But Sam decided he knew best. He
Speaker 1: didn't have much money, so he decided he wouldn't have
Speaker 1: a fixer once he reached Rojava. This was safe enough
Speaker 1: until he got to Kamischlow, and he decided to execute
Speaker 1: his cunning plan he checked into the Aja Hotel two A's,
Speaker 1: which is where most foreigners stay, and then he hit
Speaker 1: the ground and scoped out a regime checkpoint. Sam's plan,
Speaker 1: it seems, was to hop across into regime territory and
Speaker 1: then run back over into Rojava very quickly. Only he
Speaker 1: wasn't quite as fast as he needed to be, and
Speaker 1: so when Jake and I checked into the Aja Hotel
Speaker 1: on the night of July, Sam sat in a prison
Speaker 1: cell somewhere nearby in regime controlled Syria. His fate at
Speaker 1: that moment was uncertain, although he's since been freed, and
Speaker 1: it lingered in our minds. Our nerves were not helped
Speaker 1: by the ten minute speech Kobat and our hotel's manager
Speaker 1: gave us on which parts of town were actually safe
Speaker 1: to visit and which parts of town get us arrested
Speaker 1: like Sam. The key, they explained, was just to avoid
Speaker 1: wandering too close to the regime parts of town. Large
Speaker 1: chunks of the city, they assured us, were totally safe.
Speaker 1: It was just that foreigners had a nasty tendency to
Speaker 1: funk up in the unfamiliar environs. Now, neither Jake nor
Speaker 1: I wanted to spend a lot of time out on
Speaker 1: the street. Given all the reasons, I just laid out.
Speaker 1: But we were hungry, and so we ventured out for
Speaker 1: schwarma and for some beer from me. We were about
Speaker 1: ten feet from the door of our hotel when a
Speaker 1: technical a flatbed truck with a giant gun melted in
Speaker 1: the bed, farted into view. When a cloud of exhausted
Speaker 1: wheels to stop just a few feet ahead of us,
Speaker 1: smack in the middle of an intersection, two WYPG men
Speaker 1: hopped out from the bed of the truck, a K
Speaker 1: forty seven's in hand. They took up positions on either
Speaker 1: side of the street and began searching vehicles and questioning people.
Speaker 1: They did not seem overly aggressive or frightened, but they
Speaker 1: did seem very serious, and the mood on the street
Speaker 1: turned icy and weird in a way that's hard to
Speaker 1: describe to people who haven't watched roving pat rolls of
Speaker 1: armed men search for suicide bombers. That is what the
Speaker 1: hPG we're looking for. That afternoon, Kamischla was large, and
Speaker 1: it's chaotic enough. That isis sleeper cells have had an
Speaker 1: easier time operating there than in most parts of Rajava.
Speaker 1: There had been suicide bombings earlier in the year. Jake
Speaker 1: and I gave the whole scene a wide berth as
Speaker 1: we walked past and on to our destination, a little
Speaker 1: hole in the wall Shwarma Joint. We ate, and then
Speaker 1: we set out to find a beer store. We were
Speaker 1: maybe half a block into that mission when a young
Speaker 1: man on a motorcycle burned right past the air SATs
Speaker 1: checkpoint and up to Jake and I. We both tensed up.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say I've been close to a suicide bomb detonating,
Speaker 1: but I have been closer than I wanted to be.
Speaker 1: Jake and I never talked about this, but I kind
Speaker 1: of gathered from his reaction that he'd had a similar experience,
Speaker 1: and so we were both rather jumpy at this. But
Speaker 1: the kid just topped off his bike and breeze passed
Speaker 1: us into a shop. We relaxed, but we also decided
Speaker 1: it was probably a good idea at a high tail
Speaker 1: it back to our hotel rooms. We did not go
Speaker 1: back out into Kamichelo alone again. We made it through
Speaker 1: the night, though, and we awoke the next morning to
Speaker 1: an even tenser mood. The commander of Sincom United States
Speaker 1: Central Command had just flown into Rojava's capital, Kobani to
Speaker 1: meet with the leadership of the SDF. Rojava's military security
Speaker 1: was correspondingly tightened. Kabat and Alan picked Jake and I
Speaker 1: up that morning, and as soon as we got out
Speaker 1: on the road the additional a Sayish patrols were very obvious.
Speaker 1: That's not the only reason things felt tense, though. The
Speaker 1: reason that the head of Sentcom had flown to Rojava
Speaker 1: was to discuss the so called Turkish buffer Zone. President
Speaker 1: Erdowin wanted the United States to force the SDF to
Speaker 1: withdraw from all of the areas immediately around a Turkey's border,
Speaker 1: but a lot of northeast Syria is bordered by Turkey,
Speaker 1: including most of the defensive fortifications and tunnels that would
Speaker 1: give Rojava a hope of defending itself against NATO's second
Speaker 1: largest military. As we ate breakfast, the news dropped that
Speaker 1: an individual in Rojava had fired a small rocket into Turkey.
Speaker 1: No one was hurt and the STF arrest at the culprit,
Speaker 1: but it did not seem to bode well for future peace.
Speaker 1: Moments later, scanning my phone, I came across another piece
Speaker 1: of breaking news. Iran had just announced its arrest of
Speaker 1: seventeen people it called CIA Operatives. I began to feel
Speaker 1: as if Jake and I might be standing on the
Speaker 1: edge of some yawning, terrible chasm, and so I elected
Speaker 1: to set down my phone. This proved to be a
Speaker 1: wise decision. My mood improved immensely as we got out
Speaker 1: of Commissil and on the road to our next destination.
Speaker 1: Today we were headed to a woman's cooperative farm out
Speaker 1: in the countryside near a town called Trebespie. The farmer
Speaker 1: is one of several co ops training up a new
Speaker 1: generation of female farmers. As a law tour across the landscape,
Speaker 1: he began to play as one of his favorite songs,
Speaker 1: Destane Kobani that means long Live Rojava, We are ready
Speaker 1: to die for you. The attacks of the enemy are
Speaker 1: in vain. Revolutionary men and women are defending the homeland
Speaker 1: without fear of barbaric dogs. You get the idea. It's
Speaker 1: pretty standard militant stuff, but there's a pretty sweet breakdown
Speaker 1: at the halfway point. Jake and I like it, and
Speaker 1: it gets us to thinking about our favorite Irish rebel songs.
Speaker 1: A lot of Jake's family came from Ireland, so he
Speaker 1: grew up listening to the stuff. I don't have any
Speaker 1: Irish blood at all, but for whatever reason, I fell
Speaker 1: in love with old ira A anthems when I was
Speaker 1: in high school. We decided to play one of them
Speaker 1: for Kabbat, and there's no question among us as to
Speaker 1: which song it should be. Come out and fight me
Speaker 1: like a major, like Calabey from The Green Lovely Day,
Speaker 1: This is come out Ye Black and Tans, a classic
Speaker 1: tune about a drunk Irish partisan taunting members of a
Speaker 1: British military unit. The notoriously violent Black and Hands. The
Speaker 1: defiance of the song appears to Kabbat. She asks us
Speaker 1: if we've heard Sia Madonni's cover of Bella Chow Jake has,
Speaker 1: but I haven't, and she plays it fish Son the
Speaker 1: Stars Chocho. In response, Jake and I put on another
Speaker 1: one of our favorite i RA songs, Home Soldiers, go
Speaker 1: on home, have you done looking homes? Or rad under
Speaker 1: jeers and will fight you for ray. Kabat likes that
Speaker 1: one a lot. She spent most of her life with
Speaker 1: foreign soldiers occupying her homeland or threatening to occupy it
Speaker 1: Syrians from regime controlled territory Russians, Americans, Turks. Kabat identifies
Speaker 1: deeply with the sentimentic spressed in this song, and she
Speaker 1: laughs a lot during it. We have to stop by
Speaker 1: the nearby Asaish or Military police office to get more
Speaker 1: paper stamped and inspected. We drive into a walled complex
Speaker 1: of buildings with a large friendly poster of Apo up
Speaker 1: de Lagelon, the founder of Rojaba, wearing his Cosby sweater
Speaker 1: and smiling. It's displayed prominently out front. The process takes
Speaker 1: a little while, and while we wait, how About starts
Speaker 1: a conversation with one of the cops in the office
Speaker 1: with us. She asks him a variant of the same
Speaker 1: question I've had her asking a number of the men.
Speaker 1: The gist of the question is do you find working
Speaker 1: with women to be weird? Did you used to feel
Speaker 1: differently about their place in society? Is this strange at
Speaker 1: all for you? And this guy insists that it's never
Speaker 1: been an issue for him. Then he shoots back a
Speaker 1: question to Jake. Are women allowed to serve in frontline
Speaker 1: combat units in the British military? Jake tells him yes,
Speaker 1: but only recently, because for a long time people thought
Speaker 1: women could not do those jobs. I tell him the
Speaker 1: things are more or less the same over in the
Speaker 1: United States. The asaish man regards this as ridiculous. He
Speaker 1: tells us our daughters they defeated isis So there is
Speaker 1: the proof. We get our permission to move on, and
Speaker 1: before long we're rolling up the dirt road leading to
Speaker 1: the women's cooperative Farming Commune. It's a sizeable endeavor, more
Speaker 1: than two dozen acres under cultivation and a complex of
Speaker 1: a dozen greenhouses, each the size of two eighteen wheelers
Speaker 1: park next to each other. Alan stops the van and
Speaker 1: we get out and meet a middle aged man outside
Speaker 1: a pair of trailers that seemed to function as an
Speaker 1: office space. He introduces himself as haveal ken War and
Speaker 1: explains that he's an agricultural engineer and that he acts
Speaker 1: as an adviser to the young women who live in
Speaker 1: work here. He takes us into the trailers and he
Speaker 1: leads us to a small classroom with YPG and J
Speaker 1: flags in one corner and a desk with a computer
Speaker 1: and an a K forty seven lint against it. Two
Speaker 1: young women sit in a low slung couch at the
Speaker 1: other end of the room. They could have walked out
Speaker 1: of downtown Los Angeles. Both war jenes, sneakers and colorful
Speaker 1: t shirts. Ahim has dark glasses, a head scarf, and
Speaker 1: presents with an overwhelming air of shyness. Her partner, Salam
Speaker 1: is her polar opposite, with a penetrating gaze and a wide,
Speaker 1: toothy and thoroughly winsome smile. Both young women are the
Speaker 1: elected representatives of the commune, chosen by their fellows to
Speaker 1: represent the group at local council meetings and in the
Speaker 1: instances when foreign journalists rolled through town. They both looked
Speaker 1: very young to be taking on leadership roles and an
Speaker 1: endeavor as large as this farm. When we arrived, there
Speaker 1: were enough crops on the ground to fill a couple
Speaker 1: of large trucks. My first question for a human Salam
Speaker 1: as if before the revolution they had ever thought they
Speaker 1: might end up leading a project like this. Kabbat asks
Speaker 1: them for me that tutting noise was Salam saying no
Speaker 1: in a way that translated very clearly to everyone in
Speaker 1: the room, even if it didn't quite translate over my recording. No,
Speaker 1: we never thought the world could be like this, I
Speaker 1: asked her when she first realized that the world had changed,
Speaker 1: and that women in her society suddenly had more options.
Speaker 1: The memory was clear to her. She was sitting with
Speaker 1: a group of friends shortly after the start of the revolution,
Speaker 1: and as they began to talk about the changes happening
Speaker 1: to their society, an avalanche of buried desires began to
Speaker 1: bubble up from within them. We were young, and we
Speaker 1: wanted to study. One of us said I want to
Speaker 1: be a doctor, and I said, I want to study economics.
Speaker 1: Salam and her friends went to the women's house that
Speaker 1: had been newly established in their town. When this place
Speaker 1: was set up, our neighbors and other people in the
Speaker 1: community talked about it. Salam came from a fairly traditional
Speaker 1: Arab village, and it was not the norm for women
Speaker 1: and her family to have careers or to even really
Speaker 1: live independently before marriage. I asked her if her family
Speaker 1: made things more difficult for her when she announced that
Speaker 1: she wanted to do this work. The sound she made
Speaker 1: wasn't picked up perfectly by my little handheld audio recorder.
Speaker 1: I will try to recreate it as best as I
Speaker 1: can on my own. The sound only conveys half of
Speaker 1: her message. The other half was on her wide open
Speaker 1: eyes and cheerfully traumatized grin. It's the kind of look
Speaker 1: you see on your friend's faces when they were called
Speaker 1: the times their parents caught them out drinking underage, or
Speaker 1: sneaking out to visit a boyfriend or a girlfriend, or
Speaker 1: doing something else that caused their parents to blow up
Speaker 1: in a huge way. Announcing that she planned to leave
Speaker 1: home was clearly not a pleasant memory, but her family
Speaker 1: weren't able to make her stop either. Perhaps it's true
Speaker 1: that our work was men's work before, but now it
Speaker 1: is women's work. We said, yes, we will work like
Speaker 1: the men, and we put in long hours here to
Speaker 1: do so. After a period of study, Salama sided that
Speaker 1: her interest in economics would be best served by helping
Speaker 1: to start and operate a business. Her training for this
Speaker 1: involved classroom lessons and practical training and agriculture, but it
Speaker 1: also included the same month of ideological and armed training
Speaker 1: required of new recruits who joined the militias of the SDF.
Speaker 1: We had classes about ancient history starting with the Big Bang,
Speaker 1: classes on Abdullah Alan, on ethics, on how we should
Speaker 1: relate to others in our community. We had many classes,
Speaker 1: including education on economics. They also learned how to use
Speaker 1: a gun. Basic arm training is considered a critical skill
Speaker 1: for just about everybody who takes any sort of real
Speaker 1: role in Rojava. Did remember what she thought the first
Speaker 1: time that she had the first time that she fired
Speaker 1: a weather it was scary up until the first bullet
Speaker 1: I fired. My hand was shaking and the comrade had
Speaker 1: to help me. But the second time I fired it.
Speaker 1: I also asked what was probably a more important question,
Speaker 1: how had it felt the first time she was able
Speaker 1: to eat crops that she'd helped grow herself. It was
Speaker 1: hard work, but we enjoyed it when the crops were
Speaker 1: finally ready. The cucumbers finished first, We liked them a lot.
Speaker 1: The harvest was difficult, but after we had everything gathered,
Speaker 1: we were so happy. Now you can see our fields here.
Speaker 1: They're so big, and it took a lot of effort
Speaker 1: to make them this way. Days spent under the sun,
Speaker 1: irritated by the heat, but once we had that food
Speaker 1: in our hands, we forgot our discomfort. After we conclude
Speaker 1: our interview, Salamin Aheim take us on a tour of
Speaker 1: their farm. We pass a man cutting up metal segments
Speaker 1: of fencing while a female apprentice observes. We pass a
Speaker 1: fertile field filled with row after row of cucumbers, cantaloupes,
Speaker 1: and zucchini. I'm not an expert on agriculture, but I've
Speaker 1: spent a decent chunk of my life on small farms
Speaker 1: in Texas, Oklahoma, California, and Oregon. It is clear to
Speaker 1: me that this is not a tiny token endeavor. There
Speaker 1: is an enormous amount of food on the ground, a
Speaker 1: lot of thick, flavorful cucumbers with an almost media richness
Speaker 1: to them that's entirely absent from the ones I've back
Speaker 1: in the United States. We eat them while we walk.
Speaker 1: The pastoral charm of the field is broken by the
Speaker 1: enormous oil refinery that dominates the horizon in the distance.
Speaker 1: Rojava holds a number of very rich oil fields which
Speaker 1: provide a significant amount of serious total oil output. The
Speaker 1: refinery ahead of US doubles as a base for US
Speaker 1: troops in the region. Oil production definitely does not jell
Speaker 1: well with the ecology balance bits of the Rojavan constitution,
Speaker 1: but selling it represents a pragmatic necessity. There are taxes
Speaker 1: in Rojava, but this is not a wealthy region of
Speaker 1: the world. War is expensive without oil sales the STFs
Speaker 1: position would be even less secure. A great deal has
Speaker 1: been written about the oil refineries of northeast Syria. A
Speaker 1: few months before my own arrival in Rojava, a reporter
Speaker 1: with Mother Jones named Shane Bauer published a massive long
Speaker 1: form article about his own experiences in the region. Rujava's
Speaker 1: oil refineries and the role of US played in securing
Speaker 1: them were a major focus of his story. Bauer was
Speaker 1: critical of the Rojavan Project, and he spends relatively little
Speaker 1: time discussing economic cooperatives like the farm Moron. He writes
Speaker 1: of them, quote, These profit sharing ventures are subsidized with
Speaker 1: interest free loans, but their role in the economy is
Speaker 1: relatively marginal. There are just a hundred and twenty nine
Speaker 1: cooperatives in Jazeera, which is one of the cantons in Rojava.
Speaker 1: Their goods are bought and sold on the free market.
Speaker 1: The question of whether or not these cooperatives really matter
Speaker 1: in the big picture is a debatable point, to be sure,
Speaker 1: but it's worth noting that none of those one d
Speaker 1: and twenty nine cooperatives existed prior to the revolution, and
Speaker 1: there are more cooperatives in the other cantons of Rojava.
Speaker 1: Fifty five of these co ops are all women endeavors.
Speaker 1: Like the restaurant we ate at in Darek and Salam
Speaker 1: and Ahms Farm, these employ more than seven thousand women.
Speaker 1: It feels significant to me that something of this scale
Speaker 1: has been accomplished while the people of Rojava have also
Speaker 1: fought an expensive, grinding war with ISIS. And it feels
Speaker 1: significant to me when we step into the large complex
Speaker 1: of greenhouses on Salam and Ahims Farm. Yeah. Here we
Speaker 1: see on one end of the very large greenhouse space.
Speaker 1: There's no internal walls between them group six women, all masks,
Speaker 1: cutting down plants. Watching these young women chopped down old vines,
Speaker 1: remnants of the last harvest to clear up space free
Speaker 1: planting pulls my mind back to California and the medical
Speaker 1: marijuana farms that I spent a sizeable chunk of the
Speaker 1: late Oughts living in and around. Perhaps Shane is right,
Speaker 1: and everything happening here is an insignificant side show, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel that way standing in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: We eat a cantaloupe before we leave. Like most right
Speaker 1: thinking people, I've spent most of my life considering cantaloupe
Speaker 1: to be among the very worst fruits. I find it
Speaker 1: dull and flavorless, and I've always sort of assumed that
Speaker 1: its main purpose was to be an inexpensive way to
Speaker 1: fill out the weight of cafeteria fruit salad. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's something in the soil or just the
Speaker 1: fact that I've never had a farm fresh cantaloup before,
Speaker 1: but it tastes incredible here, so much sweeter than i'd expected.
Speaker 1: Bellies full, We bet our hosts farewell and drive to Turbespi,
Speaker 1: a large town of about sixteen thousand. I want to
Speaker 1: get a sense of how men on the street feel
Speaker 1: about the changes to women's rights here since the revolution.
Speaker 1: We haven't heard from many men who are just normal civilians,
Speaker 1: not involved in any of the militias or political parties
Speaker 1: that make up Rojava. One allegation you'll hear from people
Speaker 1: who are critical of Rojava is the idea that the
Speaker 1: main political party in the region, the p y D,
Speaker 1: has basically dressed up their authoritarian rule as a democratic revolution.
Speaker 1: The p y D or Democratic Union Party, was founded
Speaker 1: in two thousand three. Shane Bauer of Mother Jones brings
Speaker 1: up the case of Burzan Leani, a Kurdish journalist who
Speaker 1: was imprisoned for six months in two thousand seventeen under
Speaker 1: charges of being part of an unapproved media organization. Forty
Speaker 1: five days of a sentence were held in solitary confinement.
Speaker 1: Leoni is affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria
Speaker 1: or k DPS, a political party that many Syrian Curds
Speaker 1: say is just a wing of the Barzani family's empire
Speaker 1: of influence. Since the KDPS is a party for herds
Speaker 1: and for Kords alone, it is legal in Rojava. Under
Speaker 1: the constitution, political parties may not be found out on
Speaker 1: ethnic or religious lines. The Self Administration basically accuses Leani
Speaker 1: of being a spy in Rojava there to drum up
Speaker 1: unrest and resistance. Leoni denies this, and neither I nor
Speaker 1: Shane Bauer have any way of knowing what the truth
Speaker 1: here is. The best I can do with the resources
Speaker 1: available to me now is to try and gain an
Speaker 1: understanding of how free people in Rojava feel to express
Speaker 1: their feelings towards the p y D and the Self Administration.
Speaker 1: We park on a random street and Kabat approaches the
Speaker 1: first passer by. We meet a short, middle aged Arab
Speaker 1: man on his way to the market. We say our greetings,
Speaker 1: and then I start in questions, what do you think
Speaker 1: about the changes that have been made since the revolution?
Speaker 1: His answer to the second question is a bit more winding,
Speaker 1: but it's also broadly positive. Day said was just a
Speaker 1: woman who are educated, our functioning in the jobs as
Speaker 1: as well the women the men that they were like,
Speaker 1: I just have education for people like me alerted they
Speaker 1: didn't work, they were just always farmers. That might have
Speaker 1: been a little hard to follow. This guy was saying
Speaker 1: that back when ASSAD was in charge, only wealthy, educated
Speaker 1: women were able to hold any kind of job. They
Speaker 1: have always been liberated working women in Syria, but until
Speaker 1: the revolution they were primarily wealthy, generally from coastal cities,
Speaker 1: and generally benefiting from some sort of direct connection to
Speaker 1: the ASSAD regime. This guy expressed his opinion that now
Speaker 1: working class women had opportunities, and he felt this was
Speaker 1: a good thing. We approach another passer by a reedy
Speaker 1: young man who expresses a more critical opinion of the
Speaker 1: self administration. He praises the security, but he complains that
Speaker 1: some of the dishonest, corrupt officials who ran things under
Speaker 1: ASSAD were still around, and we're still dishonest, but the
Speaker 1: people who are already before the revolution have a problems
Speaker 1: with their like attitude or corruption. Kabat asks him next
Speaker 1: how he feels about, you know, the fact that women
Speaker 1: can do stuff here now, none of us. We'll hear
Speaker 1: variations of this joke several times today, and many times
Speaker 1: throughout our time in Rojava, as you can hear. Jake
Speaker 1: and I both laughed when we heard it the first time,
Speaker 1: but it grew a little bit less funny every time
Speaker 1: someone repeated it. I couldn't help but think that some
Speaker 1: of the men back at home in my own country
Speaker 1: who complain about the feminist movement oppressing American men. This
Speaker 1: feels much less aggressive than the men's rights movement, for instance.
Speaker 1: But it's certainly not all lighthearted jokes either. Many men
Speaker 1: in Rojava feel that what you and I would call
Speaker 1: legal equality is in reality women being placed over men.
Speaker 1: It's not exactly a new story in the history of
Speaker 1: civil rights movements. After a handful of interviews, we find
Speaker 1: ourselves talking to a tall, heavy set man in a thobe,
Speaker 1: the traditional Arab dressing gown. Kbat asks him how he
Speaker 1: feels about the changes to women's rights after the revolution.
Speaker 1: There have been great successes. Next, she asks him, before
Speaker 1: a woman could not pick up a gun or go
Speaker 1: to work, how do you feel about the fact that
Speaker 1: this has changed. I think it's very good that now
Speaker 1: women can take up the gun. Before women lived under violence.
Speaker 1: Now after the revolution, they have had chances. They have
Speaker 1: had their freedom. Before they weren't free, they couldn't speak.
Speaker 1: Now they can work, they can speak. There is an improvement. Next,
Speaker 1: she asks him if he feels the self administration government
Speaker 1: has treated his people Arabs any differently than Kurds. No,
Speaker 1: there's no difference. We are all one. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: here if you're Arab, Kurdish Christian. We are all brothers
Speaker 1: from this revolution who rose up together as one. We
Speaker 1: continue down the street, talking to Arab and Kurdish men
Speaker 1: of all ages about their feelings towards the new system.
Speaker 1: Most people are broadly positive, particularly about the security situation,
Speaker 1: but also generally out the new opportunities for women. After
Speaker 1: an hour or so, we find ourselves in a vegetable
Speaker 1: market talking to the owner of a small shop. He's
Speaker 1: the first man, we think who is emphatically against the
Speaker 1: changes made by the Rojavan Revolution. Okay, so he is
Speaker 1: not with this system of the woman. He feels like
Speaker 1: it's too much or it's over Why because he already
Speaker 1: have one wife and he wanted to get a second wife.
Speaker 1: But he's a friend. Do you not saying now a
Speaker 1: lot that it's not allowed to get a second wife.
Speaker 1: I'm not particularly sympathetic to this fellow's complaints, but I
Speaker 1: am happy that he felt perfectly comfortable voicing them at
Speaker 1: length to foreign journalists because he don't have a children
Speaker 1: from the first one, so you have a reason for
Speaker 1: the second. But even that, I certainly can't say that
Speaker 1: the members of the p whitey Rojava's largest political party,
Speaker 1: or any other officials involved in its governance, have never
Speaker 1: targeted or oppressed individuals with political differences. That statement would
Speaker 1: not even be true of my own country. But I
Speaker 1: can't say that this man on the street, talking to
Speaker 1: a foreigner with a clear and visible record device, felt
Speaker 1: fine voicing his criticisms of the system, and that same
Speaker 1: thing would not have happened and Bashar al Assad, Syria.
Speaker 1: At the very least, we finished our time on the street,
Speaker 1: and after a couple of terrible, terrible cigarettes with a
Speaker 1: lawn which we enjoyed very much. Thank you. Alan. We
Speaker 1: hop in the van and roll off back to Kamisch.
Speaker 1: Lookbat and I start talking about her feelings towards the interview, Um,
Speaker 1: how did you feel about the running joke about the
Speaker 1: women being in charge of everything? Now? Yeah, I accepted.
Speaker 1: I even sometimes expect like a more harsh comments. You know,
Speaker 1: I know deeply they are many of them don't like
Speaker 1: it at all. They don't believe it at all. They
Speaker 1: and even sometimes I feel like if it came again
Speaker 1: their control, if this system has been done, the woman
Speaker 1: will be like the U is losing this because maybe
Speaker 1: they were going to take revenge again. Yeah, which of
Speaker 1: those guys, like some of them were clearly she's like
Speaker 1: a gay in the vegetable card seemed to be having
Speaker 1: a laugh about it. Do you feel some of them
Speaker 1: were or maybe he was. I think, yeah, this division
Speaker 1: because the other one and he said, like it's strong
Speaker 1: system and like I want to because he wanted to
Speaker 1: just get another wife because of the kid. He have
Speaker 1: a reason why he's criticizing this system. But the other
Speaker 1: one he's clear like don't like it at all, and
Speaker 1: he's like even make fun on it, Like yeah, they
Speaker 1: were going to take us to a whole somehow. Our
Speaker 1: whole is the open air prison slash refugee camp or
Speaker 1: isis prisoners are help interesting, yeah, because that's the first
Speaker 1: time in their life, like never they imagine they have
Speaker 1: been right up. Like the woman, she's basically an Arab
Speaker 1: culture that they want. She cannot do anything, She's just
Speaker 1: a housewife, maximum for home at fellows. So now it's
Speaker 1: another thing. It's so difficult for them to accept it.
Speaker 1: Even they said by their eyes they feel like it
Speaker 1: s will be changed. She means they all hope will
Speaker 1: go back to the way it was before, and perhaps
Speaker 1: it will. As we drive past yet another towering stretch
Speaker 1: of the Turkish border fence, I can't help but think
Speaker 1: about how suddenly this could all end. Our last stop
Speaker 1: for the day is a residential neighborhood and Kabbat's hometown,
Speaker 1: kamisch Loo. We're going there to meet the members of
Speaker 1: one of the local women's councils. This council represented the
Speaker 1: women in the neighborhood and met regularly with them to
Speaker 1: vote on how to handle specific hyperlocal problems. Since all
Speaker 1: of the women in it were older and grandmother's Hobbat
Speaker 1: referred to them collectively as the Mamas, and introducing us
Speaker 1: to them was clearly the most excited she'd been in
Speaker 1: the three or four days since I had known her. So,
Speaker 1: what they are doing, they are like organizing. They cannot
Speaker 1: read all right, it's one of them. They have a smartphone.
Speaker 1: What they are doing They just sent the or share
Speaker 1: voice messages together in order to organize for our meeting,
Speaker 1: gore or gathering. Go. You know, they are discussing the
Speaker 1: cases or issues together. So you see it's one of them.
Speaker 1: She's hundling and get cooking in one this thing. Just run,
Speaker 1: She's just show me. So it's so funny. Alon glided
Speaker 1: his van to a stop in front of a nondescript
Speaker 1: tan colored building at the end of a working class
Speaker 1: neighborhood and commischelow. We headed in through the open gate
Speaker 1: of a courtyard, and inside we met the mamas. There
Speaker 1: are six of them, and the youngest looks to be
Speaker 1: in her late forties or early fifties. They all wear
Speaker 1: head scarfs and dressed traditionally no exposed tattoos. Here a
Speaker 1: gaggle of young kids scamper around doing kid things. There
Speaker 1: are no opo pictures on the walls, nor any hanging
Speaker 1: pictures of martyrs. A circle of plastic chairs sits out
Speaker 1: in the courtyard and we all take a seat, with
Speaker 1: a bot in between Jake and I to facilitate the interviews.
Speaker 1: She introduces the co presidents of the Women's Council, one
Speaker 1: of whom is also the co president of the larger
Speaker 1: local commune. And it's here that I should probably give
Speaker 1: you another brief overview of how Rojava's democratic confederalist system works.
Speaker 1: On the ground level, every neighborhood, which is in this
Speaker 1: case about a hundred and eighty house, has a local
Speaker 1: commune made up of all the adult members of that neighborhood.
Speaker 1: They elect co presidents which represent that commune and the
Speaker 1: People's Council for their district, and the People's Council elects
Speaker 1: co presidents to represent that district at the city council.
Speaker 1: And you know, so on. Co presidents are elected by
Speaker 1: simple democratic vote, and they are recallable through the same mechanism.
Speaker 1: The higher level councils are responsible for the kind of
Speaker 1: coordination necessary for handling life in large urban areas, but
Speaker 1: the root of all governance in Rojava are the local communes.
Speaker 1: They're responsible for hyper local maintenance tasks, basic security, and
Speaker 1: the distribution of many social welfare programs. They also act
Speaker 1: a little bit like a d MV, supplying people with
Speaker 1: stamps and papers they need to do official stuff. The
Speaker 1: women's councils run as auxiliaries to the local communes as
Speaker 1: well as to the larger people's councils. They have veto
Speaker 1: power over every women's issue decided in the area and
Speaker 1: can thus stop the mixed gender local communes from ruling
Speaker 1: on issues of domestic violence or women's healthcare should they
Speaker 1: disagree with the ruling. All these different communes and councils
Speaker 1: are further broken down into committees which handles specific issues
Speaker 1: for their community. The mamas were meeting with today are
Speaker 1: the Social Committee for the Women's Council of one local
Speaker 1: commune in Commissilow, and as they explained to me, their
Speaker 1: job is to act as a sort of emotional police force.
Speaker 1: The SA the military police don't show up to deal
Speaker 1: with domestic violence or a fist fight between neighbors. The
Speaker 1: belief is that getting the police involved is bringing outsiders
Speaker 1: and to solve which should be a community issue, so
Speaker 1: instead When problems like that crop up, the first responders
Speaker 1: are often the mama's. As we sit and talk, the
Speaker 1: mom must tell us the story of a recent domestic
Speaker 1: dispute they had to handle. He went to fix that
Speaker 1: problem between a couple the way she is in her
Speaker 1: parts in home since the month, because they like the
Speaker 1: has was getting here. So they went there and they
Speaker 1: wanted to solve this problem. And then they listened to
Speaker 1: the why then she had too, and she said, it's
Speaker 1: maybe she is not saying the genuine plan. Let's listen
Speaker 1: to the other side as because she said like a now.
Speaker 1: Also sometimes the woman they out of pressing. In short,
Speaker 1: what they initially thought was a simple case of domestic
Speaker 1: violence turned out to be a more complicated dispute between
Speaker 1: a married couple. The mamas grew concerned that the woman
Speaker 1: in this case may have been distorting or fabricating some
Speaker 1: of the claim she was making against her husband. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: like have been oppressed, and there is sometimes the at
Speaker 1: a tap of revenge, so let's not you know, we
Speaker 1: get powers or try because I do want also alerted
Speaker 1: than they have. They don't know how to handle all
Speaker 1: this to whatever. So sometimes the woman also they are
Speaker 1: not always right. The conclusion the mamas came to was
Speaker 1: that both parties had valid reasons to be angry. They
Speaker 1: talked things out with both and they helped them reach
Speaker 1: a place where they could apologize to each other and
Speaker 1: move back in together. This would be an example of
Speaker 1: a fairly light case for the social counsel, but they
Speaker 1: also dealt with more severe issues than quarreling spouses, issues
Speaker 1: like the fallout after a murder ten days ago. There
Speaker 1: there is a case like a murder case since sport is,
Speaker 1: it's there, but no one can sol But you know,
Speaker 1: now I can hear the true crime. Fans in the
Speaker 1: audience getting excited, but interestingly enough. When Hubbart said the
Speaker 1: murder was unsolved, she didn't mean that the killer was unknown.
Speaker 1: In fact, the murder had been caught very quickly, tried, convicted,
Speaker 1: and imprisoned shortly after the crime itself. What hadn't been
Speaker 1: solved was how to reintegrate the families of the victim
Speaker 1: and the murderer back into civil society. It's so his
Speaker 1: wife have been the mother of this son and his sister.
Speaker 1: They are not accepting to solve this problem. She said
Speaker 1: that the immediate family of the dead boy refused to
Speaker 1: accept peace. When are we're going to kill that joke? Okay? Anyhow,
Speaker 1: they keep the children and then you kicked this and
Speaker 1: so his wife out and whenever the woman or anyone
Speaker 1: wanted to try to fix this problem, they said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill blood. Revenge killing is an extremely common
Speaker 1: problem in many parts of the Middle East. The specifics
Speaker 1: differ from region to region, but the basic idea is
Speaker 1: that it's still pretty normal for members of families and
Speaker 1: try as to revenge murder in response to the death
Speaker 1: of a loved one. I found an interview with a
Speaker 1: young Egyptian man, Joseph Nazir, on a website called Connect
Speaker 1: the Cultures dot Com. He described her revenge killings can
Speaker 1: often turn into all out war between families. Quote. When
Speaker 1: I was a child, five or six years old, there
Speaker 1: was a war like this between two families in our street.
Speaker 1: My little sister and I were inside our home with
Speaker 1: our mom when it started. My dad wasn't there, he
Speaker 1: was working. There was a fight going on outside our door.
Speaker 1: Families were shooting at each other. I was sitting with
Speaker 1: my mom inside the house, scared. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of guns. The shooting went on for about an hour
Speaker 1: or two. One person died in this gunfight, and per
Speaker 1: local custom, his family were unable to hold a proper
Speaker 1: funeral until one of them had killed a member of
Speaker 1: the other family, and that family would be unable to
Speaker 1: do their funeral until they committed another murder, and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. You get the idea, and as
Speaker 1: Joseph explained in his article, there's only one way to end.
Speaker 1: As such, a cycle of violence quote revenge killings can
Speaker 1: go on for a long long time, decades and decades.
Speaker 1: It doesn't stop until someone in one of the families
Speaker 1: wants to stop and agrees to go through a ceremony
Speaker 1: to officially halt the killings. This is the only thing
Speaker 1: that can stop it. Other than that it will never
Speaker 1: stop at all. Now. The ceremony, Joseph refers, who involves
Speaker 1: one man from one of the families marching over to
Speaker 1: the home of the enemy family, lying down in front
Speaker 1: of the man of the house, and saying some variant
Speaker 1: of I'm dead, I'm yours. You can do whatever you
Speaker 1: want with me. Now. The man who does this is
Speaker 1: generally never killed, but it is considered deeply shameful for
Speaker 1: him to take this action, and so, in other words,
Speaker 1: the cycle of violence can't end traditionally unless a young
Speaker 1: man is willing to sacrifice his pride and honor to
Speaker 1: stop the blood letting. They've taken the responsibility out of
Speaker 1: the hands of individual family members and put it into
Speaker 1: the hands of other members of the community. In this
Speaker 1: particular case, it took weeks of work by members of
Speaker 1: the social Committee and members of several other communes in
Speaker 1: the city. Eventually they got both families to agree to
Speaker 1: the terms by which they would make a peace. The
Speaker 1: next step was to host a gigantic feast attended by
Speaker 1: members of the community and by both families. There they
Speaker 1: would publicly make peace that way of one side or
Speaker 1: the other. The truth, all of the neighbors would know
Speaker 1: which family was going back on their word of honor. Now,
Speaker 1: convincing both sides to reach a place of agreement was
Speaker 1: not easy. The mam has told us of another story
Speaker 1: about a murder committed by several members of the whitepg
Speaker 1: against one of their comrades. It looked like so it's
Speaker 1: like one of them having in the other. Okay, brother
Speaker 1: was the pin because he's in love with his sister
Speaker 1: so what he done, he proped he and another three
Speaker 1: of his friends. They told now, I feel like I
Speaker 1: should also jett in here to say that if the
Speaker 1: self administration were secretly authoritarian, they probably wouldn't let foreign
Speaker 1: journalists here about murders within their own military units. What
Speaker 1: happened the families of those for four youngs likely because
Speaker 1: of the family to get so the white PG caught
Speaker 1: and prosecuted the murderers. But the families of those murderers
Speaker 1: had to their homes because they were terrified they'd be
Speaker 1: murdered in retaliation. This is the point at which the
Speaker 1: mama stepped in. So this solution, it was that the guy,
Speaker 1: he's already the killers and in this jail and the
Speaker 1: present and they get you dissolution that the families for families,
Speaker 1: they were going to turn back to their to their houses.
Speaker 1: But three of them they already announced that they don't
Speaker 1: consider that this sons. They are sons. Eyning Kabat is
Speaker 1: explaining that the social counsels were able to convince the
Speaker 1: families of the killers to disown their sons. This placated
Speaker 1: the family of the victim and allowed everyone to return
Speaker 1: to their homes without further bloodshed. The mamas were pretty
Speaker 1: emphatic that they could not solve every problem that came
Speaker 1: their way. For one thing, none of them could read,
Speaker 1: and they freely admitted that some issues exceeded their depth.
Speaker 1: These problems could be escalated up to the educated ladies
Speaker 1: at the women's house, or up to the professional courts
Speaker 1: in the very most extreme cases. People in Rojava still
Speaker 1: have the option of dealing with certain problems and what
Speaker 1: ME America would call the normal way with cops and
Speaker 1: judges and lawyers, but they prefer not to start there
Speaker 1: with any of these groups or steps. One of the
Speaker 1: foundational ideas of democratic and federalism is that the folks
Speaker 1: who live in an area are generally better at managing
Speaker 1: their lives than the people outside it. Bringing a bunch
Speaker 1: of cops from fifteen miles away into a domestic dispute
Speaker 1: is often a lot less effective than having a group
Speaker 1: of older women everyone knows in respects rolling to investigate
Speaker 1: and talk things out like just about everyone else we
Speaker 1: speak with. The mom as have also trained in using
Speaker 1: their a K forty sevens during times of heightened tension.
Speaker 1: They take direct responsibility for the security of their neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: and they take this work seriously. It's not hard to
Speaker 1: see why. The co president of the commune tells me
Speaker 1: about her son, who died in an ambush conducted by
Speaker 1: ISIS during the darkest days of the war, when the
Speaker 1: SDF was losing forty fighters every day. Am Chad, you
Speaker 1: could have it, she plays as a music video made
Speaker 1: a tribute to her martyred boy. The pride is obvious
Speaker 1: in her eyes. She explains to us that her work
Speaker 1: on the Social Council and in her local commune is
Speaker 1: part of how she honors her child sacrifice. The more
Speaker 1: we talk, it becomes clear that all these women have
Speaker 1: lost children and other family members battling against ISIS, and
Speaker 1: rather than yielding to their rage and pain, they decided
Speaker 1: to throw their lives into building something. At one point,
Speaker 1: I ask if she can imagine things going back to
Speaker 1: the way they were before the revolution. She immediately tells
Speaker 1: me that such a thing is unimaginable. System because youth,
Speaker 1: because of imaginal names. For example, of minding it's a Cristan.
Speaker 1: But on the idea they they were just a Cristan,
Speaker 1: you know. Just to to change it, Tom for the
Speaker 1: Kurdish name, so we couldn't even speak it away. It
Speaker 1: was optional, I guess us. We couldn't excution, we couldn't
Speaker 1: do anything, so we cannot even imagine. Then, as we leave,
Speaker 1: the co president hands me a little plastic token with
Speaker 1: the face of her martyred boy on it. For the
Speaker 1: first time in my life, I'm glad I can't speak
Speaker 1: fluent Kurdish. It's much easier to just thank her, take
Speaker 1: her hand, and meet her gaze without another word. As
Speaker 1: we pile into the van, Kobat points out the little
Speaker 1: plastic memorial in my hand. She tells me, you can
Speaker 1: see where they get the morale to keep going. If
Speaker 1: they stop, then they're just grieving. We drive off, and
Speaker 1: Jake and I burned down another god awful cigarette with
Speaker 1: the lawn, but we mull over the day's findings. It's
Speaker 1: late and the sun is beginning to set, but we're
Speaker 1: not quite done yet. Kabat has one last stop for
Speaker 1: us to make. Our prior stops on this trip had
Speaker 1: all been places in groups. Jake and I told Kobat
Speaker 1: we wanted to visit. We'd read about women's cooperatives and
Speaker 1: local councils and Judgemina and genoir. Before we ever arrived,
Speaker 1: we informed Kabat where we wanted to go and we
Speaker 1: wanted to meet, and she worked out the logistics and
Speaker 1: got the permissions. But this last stop of the day
Speaker 1: was the first destination that Harbat had picked herself for us.
Speaker 1: The Cemetery of the Martyrs in Kamischlo is one of
Speaker 1: the places where Rojava buries its war dead, the Shahids.
Speaker 1: From the outside, it's a large stone facility with a
Speaker 1: gathering field to one side and long rows of orderly
Speaker 1: graves on the other. As we stepped through the gates
Speaker 1: following Kabat, I turned on my recorder to capture the moment.
Speaker 1: We're walking into a cemetery. It's around sunset. The muzzen's playing.
Speaker 1: This is where the graves of the Shahids are held.
Speaker 1: M m M. I see marker after marker. They're colorful
Speaker 1: with the kind of traditional gravestones on the top written
Speaker 1: in both in kind of Arabic characters. On the bottom,
Speaker 1: there are pictures yellow backgrounds, faces and color of different Shahids.
Speaker 1: Most of them are very young in their twenties, some
Speaker 1: of their teens, some older people, men and women, young
Speaker 1: women who look like they should be in high school,
Speaker 1: and middle aged women mothers. Probably. They're brightly colored pictures
Speaker 1: surrounding it. Essentially looks like like a gravestone on top
Speaker 1: of a like marble box, and the sides of the
Speaker 1: box are covered in sort of colored picture inserts of
Speaker 1: the person. There's a picture I'm looking at right now
Speaker 1: of a martyr named barn There's three pictures of him
Speaker 1: on the front, one of him holding a puppy dog,
Speaker 1: one of him gesturing with an ak by his side,
Speaker 1: and other of him smiling. He was born in nine
Speaker 1: and died in two thousand fourteen. I'm looking at Shahid
Speaker 1: Zana next. Oh, that's how About's brother, Zanna Abbas, was
Speaker 1: born in nine. He died in two thousand and fourteen
Speaker 1: fighting isis. Colbat puts a hand on the picture of
Speaker 1: his face frozen forever as a teenager. She kneels down
Speaker 1: and kisses her brother's grave. We walk in silence for
Speaker 1: a while, given Colbat space for her grief and doing
Speaker 1: our best to take in the feel of this place
Speaker 1: for ourselves. We reconvene as the sun falls down past
Speaker 1: the horizon line. I don't know how you can understand
Speaker 1: it unless you how you can start to understand it
Speaker 1: without saying it's who they have to come to the
Speaker 1: first to understand what. Hoobat tells us that it's not
Speaker 1: uncommon for the parents of martyrs to spend hours at
Speaker 1: a time here reading or speaking to their deceased loved ones.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you cannot express this. You know, there
Speaker 1: is a man I showed, like elderly man, how he's
Speaker 1: ready for unto his son. Some mammas they just say,
Speaker 1: like you know, speaking to them as you know, for hours.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can and you say randomly mamas speaking for
Speaker 1: a little while. We just walked through the rows of
Speaker 1: graves together and mostly silent. Yet as we walk I
Speaker 1: noticed something written on one of the walls of the
Speaker 1: cemetery in Kurdish. I asked Hobart what it means? What
Speaker 1: is said? So are our symbolic leaders, and that's She
Speaker 1: explains that the Shahids hold a particularly sacred place in
Speaker 1: people's hearts here. They are the only people in rojapan
Speaker 1: society who are considered to be beyond criticism. They sacrifice
Speaker 1: their own futures to provide one for their neighbors. In
Speaker 1: this way, they are seen as leaders, opening the door
Speaker 1: to a new world that the people they've left behind
Speaker 1: now find themselves challenged to step through. Thank you for
Speaker 1: taking us, for me to be honest, team, even if
Speaker 1: they don't ask me, because for me, the story it's
Speaker 1: will not be completed without this book. Yeah dat chow
Speaker 1: chow chow chow chow a dinner at Radoslajano, or me
Speaker 1: via bell A Chow chow chow chow chow Dejano or
Speaker 1: me via Jimmy said. The Women's War is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you into your favorite shows.