Speaker 1: Welcome to the Women's War, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: What would you do if the government was just gone
Speaker 1: one day? A couple of months ago, that question might
Speaker 1: have seemed more like a fantasy than it does Right now.
Speaker 1: As I type this, huge parts of the United States
Speaker 1: are in lockdown from the coronavirus. Millions of Americans are
Speaker 1: out of work. Guns stores across the nation have sold
Speaker 1: out of ammunition. Grocery stores are out of toilet paper.
Speaker 1: Collapse right now seems more plausible than it ever has before,
Speaker 1: perhaps even imminent, And depending on what movies and TV
Speaker 1: you watch, you might expect the retreat of your government
Speaker 1: to bring chaos and violence in its wake, But that
Speaker 1: is far from a foregone conclusion. In two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: as the Syrian Civil War heated up, the soldiers and
Speaker 1: secret police of the dictatorial Assad regime pulled out of
Speaker 1: northeastern Syria. The men and women who lived there took
Speaker 1: this opportunity to build something new over the ashes of
Speaker 1: the old. As the world order we've all grown up
Speaker 1: with phrase and crumbles, their story holds lessons for us all.
Speaker 1: The woman you're about to hear from is a Syrian
Speaker 1: militia woman named a Freen Masseo. I met her in
Speaker 1: July two thousand nineteen at a training camp in the
Speaker 1: Syrian desert. If you ask the Turkish government, a Freen
Speaker 1: and her comrades are all terrorists. If you ask many
Speaker 1: of the people in northeast Syria, they are saviors. And
Speaker 1: if you listen to the mainstream media over in the
Speaker 1: United States, they're just the Koords. As I write this,
Speaker 1: a friend and her comrades are fighting and perhaps dying
Speaker 1: for their revolution, a women's revolution. Throughout history, the first
Speaker 1: city states were built on the basis of exploiting the woman.
Speaker 1: If we go back to history, we see that it
Speaker 1: was the women who created everything. In natural societies. Before
Speaker 1: the rise of city states, women were leaders. But after
Speaker 1: the system of city states was built up by men,
Speaker 1: they began impressing women for the first time in history.
Speaker 1: Throughout the last four thousand years, a system has been
Speaker 1: built up over the woman. It doesn't allow her to work,
Speaker 1: to go outside, to take up the gun, even in
Speaker 1: her own home. She is not allowed to express her opinion.
Speaker 1: Even when you get married and should live a shared life,
Speaker 1: you cannot express your own opinion. You aren't free to
Speaker 1: say what you want. Our goal is to bring an
Speaker 1: end to this mentality. We don't say that women should
Speaker 1: take a higher position than men. Our goal is a
Speaker 1: quality between women and men, to make it possible that
Speaker 1: our society can live with a free mentality. Neither women
Speaker 1: nor men should be the oppressor. There should be equality.
Speaker 1: The land in which a fren and her comrades live
Speaker 1: and struggle is called Rojava. The word means west in
Speaker 1: Kurmaji Kurdish, the language of most of its inhabitants. But
Speaker 1: a Frien's comrades are not all Kurds. They are Arabs
Speaker 1: and Armenians and Yazidis, as well as Brits, Americans, Spaniards
Speaker 1: and Germans. The Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF are the
Speaker 1: umbrella organization they fight under, but a freen is a
Speaker 1: member of the Women's Protection Units or y p J
Speaker 1: and all female militia. You've probably seen videos and pictures
Speaker 1: of their fighters, beautiful young women bedecked in colorful kefia's
Speaker 1: riting into battle against the Islamic state. Such images made
Speaker 1: for easy, feel good coverage in a region where those
Speaker 1: stories are hard to come by. But then the Caliphate
Speaker 1: lost its last territorial holdings, and over the months, the
Speaker 1: news spent less and less time talking about the Koords
Speaker 1: and Rojava until in winter two thousand nineteen this happened.
Speaker 1: Now about breaking news in the fight against Isis the
Speaker 1: White House withdrawing troops from a key part of Syria
Speaker 1: as Turkey plans an attack on US backed forces there.
Speaker 1: Turkish forces have begun a major offensive in northeastern Syria
Speaker 1: with air strikes this evening. The streaks of artillery lit
Speaker 1: the sky of this border town, the Turkish army hitting
Speaker 1: Kurdish targets just inside Syria. What we're seeing here, sir
Speaker 1: is arguably one of the greatest betrayals um in the
Speaker 1: history of of military In military history, the Turkish invasion
Speaker 1: of Rojava, ironically named Operation peace Spring, immediately displaced two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people. Hundreds of thousands more would be made
Speaker 1: refugees by the end of two thousand nineteen, as majority
Speaker 1: Kurdish towns on the Turkish border were cleared out by
Speaker 1: military force. The government of Turkey bust in Syrian Arab
Speaker 1: refugees in a bid determanently changed the demographics of the region.
Speaker 1: Western media coverage touched on some of this, but nothing
Speaker 1: piqued as much fear in American and European viewers as
Speaker 1: the threat that the chaos and Rojava might allow for
Speaker 1: a resurgence of ISIS. A senior US defense official just
Speaker 1: told CNN, Turkey's attacks are already heard in the U
Speaker 1: S counter ISIS operations, effectively bringing it to a halt. Nick,
Speaker 1: what are you hearing there on the ground about what
Speaker 1: the attacks mean for the resurgence of ISIS. A Turkish
Speaker 1: shell slams into an ISIS prison compound. Moments later, IIS
Speaker 1: prisoners are seen making a break for it. Kurdish forces,
Speaker 1: already stretched too thin, warned US they'd struggle to contain
Speaker 1: ISIS detainees if Turkey attacked, and that's more or less
Speaker 1: the story. Everybody knows. Kurds fighting ISIS than Turkey, than
Speaker 1: Turkey and ISIS. There was a lot of talk about
Speaker 1: Trump betraying the Kurds, but very little talk about what
Speaker 1: those Kurds were really fighting for. If you listen to
Speaker 1: the mainstream media IS telling of events, you might think
Speaker 1: their ambitions extended no further than beating ISIS. But the
Speaker 1: Kurds of Northeast Syria and their allies weren't just fighting Isis.
Speaker 1: In fact, many of them considered the battle against the
Speaker 1: Islamic state to be just a side effect of the
Speaker 1: real fight, a war against the authoritarian virus at the
Speaker 1: heart of both ISIS and the dictatorial regime of Turkish
Speaker 1: President Erdwin. The people I met in Rajava believe the
Speaker 1: path to victory in this war the only way to
Speaker 1: achieve true peace is to strike at the heart of
Speaker 1: authoritari arianism, the domination of women by men. The next
Speaker 1: woman you're about to hear from is Horium Chamid. She's
Speaker 1: a feminist, anti capitalist community organizer in Rojava. She lost
Speaker 1: a son in the fight against ISIS, but she does
Speaker 1: not consider Islamic militants to be her number one enemy.
Speaker 1: Women have been suffocated in society by the politics of
Speaker 1: the Syrian state. Their rights have been limited, and this
Speaker 1: mentality has suffocated them. So they are scared to resist,
Speaker 1: to resist against the oppression around them, to rise up
Speaker 1: and say this is my right. I exist. We have
Speaker 1: difficulties with this. Isis were well known throughout the world.
Speaker 1: They were a barbarous enemy, not just for women, but
Speaker 1: for all people. But women also have hidden enemies around them.
Speaker 1: Oppressive men, customs, practices, economic repression, hidden things, women struggle
Speaker 1: in secret. What I found in Rojava in the summer
Speaker 1: of two thousand nineteen was so much stranger and so
Speaker 1: much more revolutionary than the battle against ISIS or the
Speaker 1: insurgent campaign against Turkey. This is the story of the
Speaker 1: war in Syria you have not seen on the news,
Speaker 1: the story of an idealistic dream that had the unlikely
Speaker 1: chance to flower in the dry, flame racked planes of
Speaker 1: northeast Syria. I'm Robert Evans, and this is the women's war.
Speaker 1: I first heard about Rojava in two thousand fourteen through
Speaker 1: a series of half credible far left blog posts and
Speaker 1: social media posts. The picture they painted was of an anarchist, feminist,
Speaker 1: utopian project in Syria, fundamentally reforming society at the same
Speaker 1: time as it led the fight against ISIS. It all
Speaker 1: sounded way too good to be true, and I was
Speaker 1: instantly suspicious. What I was reading about Rojava was so
Speaker 1: lacking in actual detail that it felt more like fan
Speaker 1: fiction than real reportage, and so I dipped in and
Speaker 1: out of the story. It became gradually clear something significant
Speaker 1: was happening in Rajava, but it was hard to tell what,
Speaker 1: and I didn't think about it too much until March
Speaker 1: of two thousand sixteen, when I traveled to Iraq for
Speaker 1: the very first time. I was there to report on
Speaker 1: the ongoing battle against ISIS and the siege of Mosul,
Speaker 1: which was then in its early days. I spent several
Speaker 1: days near the city of Sulimania in Iraqi, Kurdistan, visiting
Speaker 1: camps filled with Yazidi refugees. These men and women were
Speaker 1: members of a religious minority, neither Christian nor Islamic, that
Speaker 1: was targeted by ISIS for annihilation and enslavement. During the
Speaker 1: Caliphates days of expansion, its soldiers poured into the towns
Speaker 1: and villages around Mount Sinjar, the holy mountain of the Azides.
Speaker 1: Isis massacred men and boys, they enslaved women and girls.
Speaker 1: The Azidis have been targeted for genocide many many times
Speaker 1: over the past few centuries. ISIS targeted them in part
Speaker 1: because their women were considered famously beautiful, and since they
Speaker 1: were neither Muslims nor people of the Book, Christians or
Speaker 1: Jewish folks, they could be taken as sex slaves under
Speaker 1: the sick interpretation of Islam practiced by the Caliphate. The
Speaker 1: story I had heard on the news was that President
Speaker 1: Obama in the United States Air Force intervened to stop
Speaker 1: this genocide. Isis's advance was halted by air strikes, allowing
Speaker 1: the Azidies to flee up Mount Sinjar. Food had been
Speaker 1: dropped to sustain them. It was a good story, that
Speaker 1: rare tale of a timely U S intervention to halt
Speaker 1: a genocide. But once I started talking to survivors of
Speaker 1: the massacre, dozens and dozens of them, a different story emerged.
Speaker 1: The US air strikes had helped, and so had the
Speaker 1: food drops, but everyone I spoke to was emphatic that
Speaker 1: what had really saved them was not the U. S.
Speaker 1: Air Force. It was the men and women of the YPG,
Speaker 1: the y p J, and the p k K. The
Speaker 1: story of Rojava is unfortunately a story with very many acronyms,
Speaker 1: and I will do my best to stop them from
Speaker 1: getting confusing. The y PG is a Kurdish acronym that
Speaker 1: translates to People's Protection Units. It is a mixed male
Speaker 1: female force, although the vast majority of its fighters are men.
Speaker 1: Most Kurds called the WIPEG, the YEPIGA the wy PJ
Speaker 1: are the women's protection units. These two malicious together composed
Speaker 1: the bulk of the Syrian Democratic forces. They are the
Speaker 1: core of the Rojavan military. In two thousand fourteen, the
Speaker 1: Iraqi Kurdish military, the pesh Murga, abandoned the Azides and
Speaker 1: fled from the Islamic state. As one survivor told me,
Speaker 1: nobody helped the Azides but the Yepiga, and while they
Speaker 1: were still fighting a desperate battle against ISIS and Syria,
Speaker 1: the people of Rojava diverted troops to invade Iraq, punch
Speaker 1: a hole in Isis's lines, and rescue roughly thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand Zidis from near certain annihilation. Hearing all this got
Speaker 1: me really interested. I started reading more. I learned that
Speaker 1: the Wipeg, the wy PJ, and the whole Rojavan experiment
Speaker 1: had only gotten started thanks to the help of a
Speaker 1: terrorist group called the p k K or the Kurdistan
Speaker 1: Workers Party. See what I mean about acronyms, the stories
Speaker 1: filthy with them. We'll talk about the p KK a
Speaker 1: little more later, but in short, the U. S Government
Speaker 1: and the Turkish government consider them to be a terrorist group.
Speaker 1: Other nations around the world disagreed and consider them to
Speaker 1: be more of an insurgent army fighting for Kurdish independence
Speaker 1: from the Turkish government. Depending on where you stand, both
Speaker 1: descriptors are actually pretty fair. I wound up covering Iraq
Speaker 1: two more times over the next year in order to
Speaker 1: cover the fighting against ISIS and Mosel. With every trip
Speaker 1: I made, I had heard more and more about the
Speaker 1: strange things happening in Rojava. The story percolated out, drip
Speaker 1: by drip. Most of the detailed coverage of the Rojavan
Speaker 1: political system was still confined to left wing sources, but
Speaker 1: the details had solidified a bit, and I started to
Speaker 1: run into scholarly publications too. In two thousand sixteen, I
Speaker 1: came across the book Revolution in Rojava, a very dense
Speaker 1: analysis of what was happening in the area. Now, finally
Speaker 1: I had a hard data to go with the lurid,
Speaker 1: praiseful stories i'd come across on the internet. What I
Speaker 1: read only made what was happening in Rojava sound more
Speaker 1: incredible and enticing. I learned about the women's houses buildings
Speaker 1: established by the new government, and towns and villages they controlled.
Speaker 1: These were places where women could go for help, escaping
Speaker 1: from abusive relationships, accessing education, or getting job training. In
Speaker 1: some communities, the divorce rate leapt to more than fifty percent.
Speaker 1: Almost overnight. I grew more and more convinced that something
Speaker 1: very interesting was happening in northeast Syria, and over the
Speaker 1: next two years I committed myself to visiting. Getting to
Speaker 1: Rojava was easier said than done. Though there are no
Speaker 1: commercially available airports in that part of Syria. The people
Speaker 1: of the region were still considered rebels by the Assad regime,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't just fly into Damascus either. The only
Speaker 1: safe way into Rojava was across the Tigris through the
Speaker 1: Iraqi border. It was not an easy or an inexpensive
Speaker 1: journey to take. It took time to get my career
Speaker 1: and find anansws into a position where visiting was even
Speaker 1: a possibility. And while I waited and watched from a distance,
Speaker 1: the situation on the ground in Rojava continued to evolve.
Speaker 1: In October of two thousand seventeen, Rocca was liberated by
Speaker 1: the Syrian Democratic Forces. Rocket is a large city in
Speaker 1: Syria that became the capital of the Islamic State for
Speaker 1: several years. The YPG and YPJ did the bulk of
Speaker 1: the fighting to retake it from ISIS, supported by U
Speaker 1: S artillery and air power, but once the Caliphate's territorial
Speaker 1: holdings collapsed, the United States reduced its support of the SDF,
Speaker 1: the majority Kurdish militias it had previously backed. The Turkish
Speaker 1: government considered the YPG and the YPG, which made up
Speaker 1: the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Forces, to be nothing
Speaker 1: more than Kurdish terrorist groups, and they wanted to wipe
Speaker 1: them out. In January of two thousand eighteen, the Turkish
Speaker 1: government launched Operation Olive Branch, and their soldiers invaded the
Speaker 1: Kurdish majority city of Afrin in Rojava. At this point,
Speaker 1: the United States still provided air cover and military aid
Speaker 1: to the sd F, but they withdrew their protection from
Speaker 1: the area around Afron. The Turkish government began an ethnic
Speaker 1: cleansing campaign against the Kurds there, bulldozing cemeteries, confiscating homes
Speaker 1: and businesses, and moving in Arabs to change the demographics.
Speaker 1: Many saw the invasion of Afron as a grim prelude
Speaker 1: to what would happen to all of Rojava when the
Speaker 1: Trump administration finally withdrew its support and American soldiers. I
Speaker 1: began to feel that perhaps there was a ticking clock
Speaker 1: on my chances to see this thing with my own eyes.
Speaker 1: By that point, the cause of the Rojavan Revolution had
Speaker 1: been taken up by left wing movements around the world.
Speaker 1: When I visited Athens in early two thousand eighteen, I
Speaker 1: saw protect Afron stickers up on light poles throughout the city.
Speaker 1: One of my friends in Dallas held fundraisers for the
Speaker 1: Kurdish Red Crescent of Humanitarian Aid organization in the region.
Speaker 1: On left wing media, the story of Rojava attained mythic proportions.
Speaker 1: One representative example is this episode of the now defunct
Speaker 1: podcast The Guillotine, at the time, a popular far left
Speaker 1: news and politics show. I don't know you keep waiting
Speaker 1: around for a revolution. These motherfucker's are walking around with anarchists,
Speaker 1: symbols painted on walls, hammers and sickers, sickles painted walls,
Speaker 1: a K forty seven. They're literally fighting against states, trying
Speaker 1: to destroy them. They're trying to create gender equality, They're
Speaker 1: putting property in common. They've eliminated fucking prisons and cops.
Speaker 1: I mean, what what more? What what if this movement
Speaker 1: is too complicated for you and and not pure enough
Speaker 1: for you? To get involved in. You're gonna be waiting
Speaker 1: all goddamn day. Now, I knew a lot of that
Speaker 1: had to be wrong. For one thing, Roshava definitely had prisons,
Speaker 1: and there were numerous stories about the ones where they
Speaker 1: kept captured ISIS fighters. But at least some of the idealistic,
Speaker 1: anarchist wet dream stuff was in fact written into the
Speaker 1: Rojavan Constitution. Here's how it starts. In pursuit of freedom, justice,
Speaker 1: dignity and democracy, and led by principles of equality and
Speaker 1: environmental sustainability, the charter proclaims a new social contract based
Speaker 1: upon mutual and peaceful coexistence and understanding between all strands
Speaker 1: of society. It protects fundamental human rights and liberties, and
Speaker 1: reaffirms the people's right to self determination. This constitution declared
Speaker 1: all cantons, which are essentially states, and the autonomous regions
Speaker 1: to be founded upon the principle of local self government.
Speaker 1: Article twenty three of the constitution is particularly compelling to me.
Speaker 1: It declares everyone has the right to express their ethnic, cultural,
Speaker 1: linguistic and gender rights, and everyone has the right to
Speaker 1: live in a healthy environment based on ecology balance. Under
Speaker 1: Article twenty six, all residents of the autonomous regions have
Speaker 1: the inherent right to life. Execution is banned in Rojava.
Speaker 1: Article twenty seven guarantees women the inviolable right to participate
Speaker 1: in political, economic, and social life. Some parts of the
Speaker 1: constitution do run counter to the far left fantasies about Rojava.
Speaker 1: The Charter Esta wishes a police force the sayish and
Speaker 1: explicitly guarantees the right to private property, but it also
Speaker 1: guarantees the rights of children, prohibits monopolies in shrines labor rights,
Speaker 1: and guarantees a minimum representation of for either sex in
Speaker 1: the judiciary. In short, the Rojavan Constitution represents what would
Speaker 1: be a shockingly progressive platform in the United States, let
Speaker 1: alone a chunk of rural northeast Syria. And this constitution
Speaker 1: was not just a pie in the sky dream cooked
Speaker 1: up by some left wing radical smoking weed in a basement.
Speaker 1: At its height, three to four million people lived under
Speaker 1: this system, and more than two million people still do today.
Speaker 1: And right now you're probably wondering, how in the hell
Speaker 1: did any of this happen in the first place. That,
Speaker 1: my friends, is a weird and winding story, Like everything
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. The origins of what's happening in
Speaker 1: Rojava stretch back many centuries, but for the sake of brevity,
Speaker 1: we will start with the tale of a Felon named
Speaker 1: Abdullah a Jelan now Aujelon is one of those folks
Speaker 1: who gets labeled as both a terrorist and a freedom
Speaker 1: fighter depending on who you ask, and to make matters
Speaker 1: more confusing, both of those terms are pretty accurate descriptions
Speaker 1: of the guy. He was born in nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 1: Probably that's essentially a guest because Aujelon was born in
Speaker 1: a tiny village in eastern Turkey Oor merely and it
Speaker 1: was no one's priority to keep track of birth certificates
Speaker 1: back then. He was born part Turkish and part Kurdish
Speaker 1: in the eyes of the Turkish government, though that Kurdish
Speaker 1: part of him didn't exist from its beginning. The government
Speaker 1: of Turkey has had a weird obsession with denying the
Speaker 1: existence of non Turkish people's native to Anatolia. When Aujolan
Speaker 1: was born, it was a crime to even speak the
Speaker 1: Kurdish language. He got a job working in civil service
Speaker 1: and eventually started teaching political science at the University of Ankara.
Speaker 1: As the years went by, Aujolon found himself more and
Speaker 1: more frustrated by the outright denial of Kurdish identity in Turkey.
Speaker 1: To give you an idea of exactly how bad it is,
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one, Layla Zanna became the first Kurdish
Speaker 1: woman to win a seat in the Turkish Parliament. After
Speaker 1: she took her oath, she spoke this single sentence in Kurdish,
Speaker 1: I take this oath for the brotherhood between the Turkish
Speaker 1: people and the Kurdish people. Now, at that point nineteen
Speaker 1: nine one, Kurdish was still illegal to speak in public.
Speaker 1: It had only been legalized to speak in private earlier
Speaker 1: that year. In videos of her speech, you can hear
Speaker 1: the immediate, almost violent response to her words. Layla was
Speaker 1: not jailed immediately for her actions because she had parliamentary immunity,
Speaker 1: but her brief Kurdish speech set at emotion a sequence
Speaker 1: of events that in nineteen ninety four led to her
Speaker 1: arrest and imprisonment for ten years. This all happened in
Speaker 1: the nineties, when Turkey was working towards EU membership. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties and seventies, when a Jolan was a
Speaker 1: young man, even speaking Kurdish and private was illegal, and
Speaker 1: as he grew more politically aware, Abdullah began nursing a
Speaker 1: deep rage over how his people were being treated. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, he met up with between seven and
Speaker 1: eleven other young men who were furious at the status quo.
Speaker 1: They put together plans to build a Kurdish leftist organization,
Speaker 1: one unlike any political party that existed in Turkey. Augelan
Speaker 1: was elected the leader of this political youth group, which
Speaker 1: was initially just called the Epocular or the Followers of Appo.
Speaker 1: Appo is Aujolan's nickname. It means uncle, and it's a
Speaker 1: word I was to hear hundreds of times throughout my
Speaker 1: days in Rajava. Over the next several years, the Apocular
Speaker 1: evolved into the p k K, which was officially established
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy eight. It was initially a Marxist Leninist
Speaker 1: movement whose aim was the overthrow of the Turkish government.
Speaker 1: In its early days, the p KK feuded with other
Speaker 1: left wing political parties, at times fighting their members in
Speaker 1: the streets and carrying out assassinations. Gradually, the movement morphed
Speaker 1: into a ragged guerrilla army, executing acts of sabotage and
Speaker 1: inciting riots against the Turkish state. In the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the p k K launched a mass of violence campaign
Speaker 1: aimed at destabilizing the government. By nineteen eighty four, this
Speaker 1: had erupted into a full fledged insurgency, and the p
Speaker 1: k K were as vicious and brutal as any other
Speaker 1: insurgent movement in history. They frequently killed civilians who did
Speaker 1: not support them. The vast majority of their targets were
Speaker 1: Turkish soldiers or police, but they did not hesitate to
Speaker 1: murder innocent people who stood even non violently against them.
Speaker 1: Throughout this period, Abdulla Agellon and his fellow leaders fled
Speaker 1: to the safety of Syria and dug in There. The
Speaker 1: Assad regime was hostile to Turkey and more than happy
Speaker 1: to sponsor rebels on their soil. For nearly twenty years,
Speaker 1: Augellan and his comrades ran one of the most brutal
Speaker 1: insurgent campaigns in history. Well relatively safe themselves under Hafez
Speaker 1: al Assad's protection. Tens of thousands of people were killed,
Speaker 1: mostly by the Turkish government, but Apple was not squeamish
Speaker 1: about sending huge numbers of people to their deaths, and
Speaker 1: as in nearly all wars, most of the dead were civilians,
Speaker 1: normal people caught in the crossfire. Up to this point,
Speaker 1: the story of the pe KK and of dela Agelon
Speaker 1: sounds like the story of many other insurgent groups and
Speaker 1: their leaders. But there was something that separated of de
Speaker 1: la Agelan from his blood soaked peers. He was capable
Speaker 1: of admitting his failures. In the early nineteen nineties, the
Speaker 1: b KK realized that their campaigns of indiscriminate violence had
Speaker 1: cost them the support of many civilians in the rural
Speaker 1: Turkish villages where they operated. Aujelon ordered an end to
Speaker 1: the targeting of civilians. Abdullah's ideas about women were also
Speaker 1: evolving in this period. The first p KK women's organization
Speaker 1: had been formed in nineteen eighty six. Seven years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four, Augelon created the first all female
Speaker 1: military unit. Now this was not entirely a new idea.
Speaker 1: Iranian Kurdish rebel groups had experimented with female ele military
Speaker 1: units back in the early nineteen eighties. But Aujelan did
Speaker 1: more than just crib ideas from his fellow revolutionaries. He
Speaker 1: committed himself to fighting for improvements in women's rights. Along
Speaker 1: with his bloody guerrilla struggle. Aujelon, the unquestioned leader of
Speaker 1: a violent authoritarian insurgent army, started asking his men to
Speaker 1: cook for their wives. He wanted women's time freed up
Speaker 1: for armed training and ideological study. Aujelon's political view shifted
Speaker 1: considerably throughout the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. While once
Speaker 1: to committed Marxist Leninist dedicated to the global struggle of
Speaker 1: the proletariat, Augelon softened into more of a moderate socialist.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, he named Germany as an example
Speaker 1: of a socialist state he supported. In nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: Abdulla Agelan was captured on the Lamb in Kenya thanks
Speaker 1: to a multinational intelligence operation. He was jailed on an
Speaker 1: island prison named Mrali and the Sea of Marmara, and
Speaker 1: he remains there to this day, alone in his small cell,
Speaker 1: guarded by a thousand men. He began to delve in
Speaker 1: a Sumerian mythology and history textbooks focused on Neolithic humanity.
Speaker 1: He grew convinced that the root of all authoritarianism the
Speaker 1: essential moment in which human civilization had gone wrong? Was
Speaker 1: the domination of women by men. Prisons seemed to have
Speaker 1: wrought a permanent change over Augelon. Whether this was a
Speaker 1: coldly calculated plea for mercy from a brutal terrorist warlord
Speaker 1: or the very real evolution of a man reconsidering his past.
Speaker 1: Abdullah's new ideas had a profound impact on the p
Speaker 1: k K, for he was still their leader. Augelon wrote
Speaker 1: book after book about his new theories. He smuggled them
Speaker 1: out of prison by hiding them as legal briefs sent
Speaker 1: to the lawyers who were permanently appealing his court case.
Speaker 1: As the years went by, Augalon's politics evolved further. He
Speaker 1: came across the work of Moray Bokchin, a Jewish American
Speaker 1: writer and anarchist philosopher who, like Augelon, had once been
Speaker 1: a Marxist Bookshin had been one of the very first people,
Speaker 1: back in nineteen sixty five to be warning humanity about
Speaker 1: climate change. He believed this looming crisis required a fundamental
Speaker 1: shift in reordering of society away from capitalism and towards
Speaker 1: a less destructive, more egalitarian society. Libertarian municipalism is the
Speaker 1: system he eventually proposed for this reordering. In brief, libertarian
Speaker 1: municipalism calls for a radical participatory democracy, with every person
Speaker 1: having an equal say over the matters that affect them directly.
Speaker 1: Local communities in this system should govern themselves directly through
Speaker 1: citizens assemblies and elect recallable representatives who coordinate and communicate
Speaker 1: with other communities. The goal is to prevent situations like
Speaker 1: we have in the modern United States, where voters in
Speaker 1: a city make laws to govern the lives of people
Speaker 1: in vastly different rural communities, and vice versa. Book Chain
Speaker 1: believe this system would also make it easier to form
Speaker 1: an ecologically responsible society. No community would vote to have, say,
Speaker 1: an incredibly toxic oil refinery in their own backyard. Book
Speaker 1: Chin wrote in nineteen ninety one that libertarian municipalism is
Speaker 1: not merely a political strategy. It is an effort to
Speaker 1: work from latent or incipient democratic possibilities towards a radically
Speaker 1: new configuration of society itself, a communitarian society oriented towards
Speaker 1: meeting basic human needs, responding to ecological imperatives, and developing
Speaker 1: a new ethics based on sharing and cooperation. That it
Speaker 1: involves a consistently independent form of politics is a truism.
Speaker 1: More important, it involves a redefinition of politics, a return
Speaker 1: to the words original Greek meaning as the management of
Speaker 1: the community or police by reasons of direct, face to
Speaker 1: face assemblies of the people in the formulation of public policy,
Speaker 1: and based on an ethics of complimentarily and solidarity locked
Speaker 1: up in m orally, book Chin's ideas merged with Aujolon's
Speaker 1: own theories about history and feminism. He named his ideal
Speaker 1: system democrat at a Confederalism and published an essay laying
Speaker 1: out how it should work in two thousand eleven. This
Speaker 1: became one of the foundational documents of the political system
Speaker 1: in Rojava, and so through this very unlikely chain of custody,
Speaker 1: the ideas of a fringe American anarchist thinker became the
Speaker 1: foundation of a system that more than three million people
Speaker 1: live in today over in Syria. It is easily one
Speaker 1: of the unlikeliest things that's ever happened. From my perspective
Speaker 1: as a journalist, judging how real everything in Rojava was
Speaker 1: was complicated by the impressive level of pr savvy that
Speaker 1: can be found among the Kurds in Iraq and Syria.
Speaker 1: It started back in nineteen eighty eight when Saddam Hussein
Speaker 1: began gassing Iraqi Kurds and world attention was drawn to
Speaker 1: their plight by Iranian and British journalists who filled the
Speaker 1: massacres from the air. Ever since, Kurdish movements have had
Speaker 1: an intense appreciation and a deep gut understanding of how
Speaker 1: the power of the global press can be harnessed to
Speaker 1: help their movements for liberation, and so as the SDF
Speaker 1: advanced against ISIS, they did so with the aid of
Speaker 1: a BRU and social media campaign which spread footage of
Speaker 1: the beautiful young women of the YPG squaring off against
Speaker 1: fundamentalist militias. Regular Twitter videos of liberated towns showed women
Speaker 1: discarding their veils in Ni Cobbs. This sort of content
Speaker 1: was true, these things were actually happening, but it was
Speaker 1: also a targeted propaganda campaign aimed at warming the hearts
Speaker 1: of liberals and conservatives alike back in the West. The
Speaker 1: Good Wild campaign succeeded in drumming up support for Rojava
Speaker 1: around the planet. It also drew in hundreds of international volunteers,
Speaker 1: mostly young men and women from around Europe and North America,
Speaker 1: who traveled to Rojava to fight and to help build
Speaker 1: a new egalitarian society. The stories of these international volunteers
Speaker 1: created something of a sensation, particularly within the global left
Speaker 1: wing media ecosystem. The revolutionaries of Rojava position themselves as
Speaker 1: the tip of the spear in the global battle against
Speaker 1: creeping fascism. In late two thousand seventeen, after the deadly
Speaker 1: Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Anarchist International SDF volunteers
Speaker 1: posted pictures of them selves with an anti fascist action
Speaker 1: flag the Antipha flag you might have seen it rallies,
Speaker 1: and the words from Mojava to Charlottesville, Solidarity with all
Speaker 1: anti fascists Avenge heather Higher. Some of this messaging was
Speaker 1: carefully coordinated by different organizations in Rojava, like the Syrian
Speaker 1: Democratic Forces, but a lot of it, including the Avenge
Speaker 1: Heather Higher photo, was ad hoc and grassroots, a product
Speaker 1: of the fact that this revolution genuinely drew in large
Speaker 1: numbers of committed leftists from around the world. These people
Speaker 1: saw themselves as inheritors of a great anti fascist tradition,
Speaker 1: the spiritual successors of the leftist partisans who first fought
Speaker 1: fascism during the Spanish Civil War and the members of
Speaker 1: the French, German and Italian resistance movements. During World War Two,
Speaker 1: Kurdish fighters in Syria began to adopt foreign anti fascist
Speaker 1: anthems as the soundtrack to their revolution. This ranged from
Speaker 1: revamped versions of old Irish militant folk music to covers
Speaker 1: of rage against the Machine songs to the old Italian
Speaker 1: anti fascist anthem, the Chow Chow. Bela Chow means goodbye beautiful,
Speaker 1: and in its original incarnation, it was a protest song
Speaker 1: by female laborers and the patty fields of northern Italy.
Speaker 1: After Mussolini came to power, a new version of the
Speaker 1: song was adopted by anti fascist freedom fighters, and Bela
Speaker 1: Chow grew into an international anthem of freedom and resistance
Speaker 1: in Kurdish culture. The adoption of Bela Chow goes back
Speaker 1: to at least two thousand and nine, when Iranian Kurdish
Speaker 1: filmmaker as San Fatahian made a YouTube video which he
Speaker 1: dedicated to the Kurdish people and all people struggling for freedom.
Speaker 1: Fatahan felt a powerful emotional connection to the anti fascist
Speaker 1: version of the song, which centers on a partisan waking
Speaker 1: up in the morning to find a fascist soldier at
Speaker 1: his door. The partisan and the song accepts his duty,
Speaker 1: which is to die a beautiful death struggling for freedom,
Speaker 1: and he expresses his hope that he will be buried
Speaker 1: in the mountains and a flower will bloom over his grave.
Speaker 1: Fatajan's own death came later in two thousand nine, when
Speaker 1: the Iranian government executed him for being a member of
Speaker 1: a Kurdish militant group. In two fourteen, the Kurdish singer
Speaker 1: Chia Madani released the cover of Bella Chow that you
Speaker 1: just heard, set over video of the men and women
Speaker 1: of the YPG and J marching into battle against Isis.
Speaker 1: The positioning of Rojava as part of this global struggle
Speaker 1: against fascism was simultaneously canny, an intelligent way to get
Speaker 1: international support, and also a large risk to their political
Speaker 1: support from some of the governments of the world. Anti
Speaker 1: fascism is, shall we say, a touchy political stance in
Speaker 1: this part of the twenty first century. In two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: the histories of Italian and Kurdish anti fascism and the
Speaker 1: history of the song Belli Chow merged rather tragically in
Speaker 1: the death of Lorenzo Orsetti. Lorenzo was an Italian citizen,
Speaker 1: a cook, waiter and somalier from Florence who grew inspired
Speaker 1: by the Rojavan Revolution and joined the STF as a
Speaker 1: foreign volunteer. He died fighting Isis in March of two
Speaker 1: thousand and nineteen, and during his funeral service, men and
Speaker 1: women sang Beli chow in both Italian and Kurdish Lacha
Speaker 1: lachachachacha Roa. In the spring of two thousand nineteen, the
Speaker 1: stars finally aligned to allow me to visit. My podcast
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards took off that year. Right around the
Speaker 1: same time, I wrote several articles in the wake of
Speaker 1: the christ Church massacre that went very viral. I launched
Speaker 1: a fundraiser and asked my fans to support my desire
Speaker 1: to do more conflict journalism. To my utter shock, they
Speaker 1: raised more than forty thou dollars. I now had the
Speaker 1: opportunity in the funding. All I needed was a way
Speaker 1: to get into Rojava and get the access I needed
Speaker 1: to learn the truth about its system. I reached out
Speaker 1: to a colleague of mine, Jake Hanrahan. Jake is a
Speaker 1: four A reporter from Vice and currently an independent journalist.
Speaker 1: He has a podcast called Popular front that focuses on
Speaker 1: the gigy details of modern conflict. Back in two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: Jacob found himself as the only Western journalist in southern
Speaker 1: Turkey during an uprising by a Kurdish youth militia, the
Speaker 1: y d g H or yet aga Hash. It started
Speaker 1: when he received a message from a Turkish contact of
Speaker 1: his telling him that the y d g H had
Speaker 1: taken over a small city in southern Turkey named Jizra. Well,
Speaker 1: I was there in January when that happened. By the
Speaker 1: summer all it was total. So like they you know,
Speaker 1: all the different towns basically set up why d H franchises.
Speaker 1: And it went from being like the youth going like yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got some rifles, which you know everybody does down there,
Speaker 1: so the p k K coming the adults coming down
Speaker 1: from the mountains where they're kind of hide out and
Speaker 1: training them up and being like this is how you
Speaker 1: build a bomb, this is how you do this, this
Speaker 1: is how you do this. So I was like fuck,
Speaker 1: it went there straight there, and you know, with two
Speaker 1: of my colleagues and yeah, man, it was crazy. We
Speaker 1: just saw like PKK gerrillas in like civilian clothes being
Speaker 1: like we're the hy dg H. And it was like,
Speaker 1: what you're thirty five, Like you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like you're not the White d H. But then we
Speaker 1: were seeing like, you know, eighteen year olds becoming like
Speaker 1: pure militants, you know. So yeah, that's kind of my
Speaker 1: history with a film of them. As you know, that
Speaker 1: went bad, we got arrested and sent to jail for
Speaker 1: a little bit. Jake and his crew spent several harrowing
Speaker 1: days in a Turkish prison, incarcerated with a mix of
Speaker 1: refugees and ISIS fighters. He was obviously freed and returned
Speaker 1: to England. The whole experience sparked in him a fascination
Speaker 1: with Rojava. He started studying the movement and making connections
Speaker 1: to the people in the area. Since he'd been arrested
Speaker 1: covering a Kurdish uprising, he had sort of an in
Speaker 1: that most Western journalists lacked. It was a little like
Speaker 1: having done time for the mob. Even though as a
Speaker 1: journalist covering the White d g H, Jake had not
Speaker 1: been entirely sympathetic to the movement. In fact, we were
Speaker 1: actually questioning him. I was like, why are you shooting
Speaker 1: like police officers, like they're not, you know, they're just
Speaker 1: policing the air that used their job, you know, So
Speaker 1: to be honest, like some of it was quite critical.
Speaker 1: Between Jake's connections in Syria and my friends in Iraq,
Speaker 1: we were able to put together a rough plan for
Speaker 1: getting into Rojava. It was sort of unclear up until
Speaker 1: the last moment whether we'd be able to cross the
Speaker 1: border legally with the permission of the Iraqi government, or
Speaker 1: if we'd have to pay a smuggler to sneak us in.
Speaker 1: Either way, both Jake and I were committed to trying,
Speaker 1: so in July I plopped down three thousand dollars on airfare.
Speaker 1: I had to be careful to make sure I didn't
Speaker 1: accidentally book Jacob leover and is Standbul. He is quite
Speaker 1: literally a wanted man in Turkey. Jake's main job was
Speaker 1: to find us a fixer, and fixers are a mix
Speaker 1: between a journalist and interpreter, a tour guide and a
Speaker 1: security adviser, or at least the good ones are. They
Speaker 1: helped foreign journalists find stories, gain access, and conduct interviews
Speaker 1: in war zones. The quality of your fixer largely determines
Speaker 1: the quality of your story. When I was working in Mosle,
Speaker 1: I'd had the extreme fortune of working with two of
Speaker 1: the very best fixers in Iraq, Sangar Eel and I
Speaker 1: are was Sul. Most of the journalists working in Syria,
Speaker 1: we're all going after the same stories, interviews with captured
Speaker 1: ISIS fighters and ISIS brides. World media only really wanted
Speaker 1: stories from Syria that involved ISIS. I wanted to capture
Speaker 1: something different, an exploration of the Rojavan revolution, of this
Speaker 1: women's war and how it had transformed society. To get
Speaker 1: that story, we were going to need the very best
Speaker 1: fixer we could find. A couple of weeks before our flight,
Speaker 1: Jake reached out to me with the name Kabat a Bass.
Speaker 1: His sources said she was good, very good, but neither
Speaker 1: of us had met her. Picking Kabat was a roll
Speaker 1: of the dice, as these things always are. Thankfully, it
Speaker 1: would turn out to be one of the luckiest rolls
Speaker 1: of my life. For the trip from Iraq to Rojava,
Speaker 1: we leaned on my old friends Sangar. I had spent
Speaker 1: days watching him smooth talk Iraqi generals into letting us
Speaker 1: in bed with troops at the bleeding edge of the fighting,
Speaker 1: and Mosle Jake, and I figured he could probably talk
Speaker 1: his way through any issues we had at the border.
Speaker 1: With all that settled, the only thing left to do
Speaker 1: was to actually fly to the Middle East. I'm on
Speaker 1: my way first to Dubai, where I have a fifteen
Speaker 1: hour layover, so about fifteen hours in the air and
Speaker 1: about a fifteen hour layover. The nice thing about that
Speaker 1: is that the hotels in Dubai are really luxurious and
Speaker 1: very cheap. The journey to Iraq from the West coast
Speaker 1: of the United States is not a simple one. It
Speaker 1: started with a four hour flight from my home to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and then a one hour layover, and then
Speaker 1: a thirteen hour flight to Dubai, and then a fifteen
Speaker 1: hour layover and then a short hop to Suleimania. I
Speaker 1: had a lot of time for reading during all that,
Speaker 1: and during the final flight of my journey I finished
Speaker 1: reading George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. It's a book about
Speaker 1: that famous author's time as a volunteer soldier fighting against
Speaker 1: fascists in the Spanish Civil War. George Orwell had rather
Speaker 1: complex political views. Most people would probably sum them up
Speaker 1: as broadly socialist, but more than anything, he was anti authoritarian,
Speaker 1: so in the late nineteen thirties he traveled to Spain
Speaker 1: to fight alongside anarchists and communists, battling desperately to stim
Speaker 1: the onslaught of the deadliest ideology mankind has ever produced.
Speaker 1: In the book, he described his attitude in going over
Speaker 1: this way, I had promised myself to kill one fascist.
Speaker 1: After all, if each of us killed one, they would
Speaker 1: soon be extinct. Sadly, for Orwell and the world, the
Speaker 1: struggle of the Spanish anti fascists ended in defeat, and
Speaker 1: it was a defeat that began within their own ranks.
Speaker 1: The anarchists who had started the struggle against Francisco Franco
Speaker 1: were outmaneuvered by social democrats and communists. Many of them
Speaker 1: were purged violently by the people who should have been
Speaker 1: their comrades or well. Watched in horror as his friends
Speaker 1: and battle buddies were arrested and executed. He barely escaped
Speaker 1: Spain with his own life intact. Musing over the tragedy.
Speaker 1: Months later, he wrote, the fact is that every war
Speaker 1: suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that
Speaker 1: it continues, because things such as individual liberty and a
Speaker 1: truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency. The
Speaker 1: situation Rojava has more than a few parallels with the
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War, and as my plane descended into Sulimania
Speaker 1: Airport in Iraqi, Kurdistan, I couldn't help but wonder if
Speaker 1: I too was stumbling into the last days of an
Speaker 1: equally beautiful, doomed effort. Jan game Moy The Women's War
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.