Speaker 1: Welcome to the Women's War, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Rojava might be the friendliest place on earth. And I
Speaker 1: mean that in a purely literal sense of the word friend.
Speaker 1: See in Kurdish the word have all means friend. I'm
Speaker 1: not a linguist, and I can't explain to you exactly
Speaker 1: how it happened, But over the decades of fighting in
Speaker 1: Turkey and Syria, the word have all came to take
Speaker 1: on a deeper meaning. Today it's used in a manner
Speaker 1: similar to the way the Soviets used comrade. And so
Speaker 1: when people in Rojava are trying to refer to the
Speaker 1: revolutionaries in their land, the people in this region who
Speaker 1: truly believe in the ideology of Abdulla Alan, they often
Speaker 1: call them the have alls. Now, if we were in
Speaker 1: the United States, a heavily armed group of true believers
Speaker 1: calling themselves the friends would absolutely be a terrifying death
Speaker 1: cult of some sort. But for whatever reason, the word
Speaker 1: have all has a friendly quality to it that somehow
Speaker 1: stops it from being on settling. Well, there's a certain
Speaker 1: militant formality to the word comrade. Have all just feels warm.
Speaker 1: You cross a checkpoint and the assay you say hello, friend,
Speaker 1: a soldier offers you a cigarette and you say thanks friend.
Speaker 1: There's something addictive about the term, and Jake and I
Speaker 1: fall easily into using it on a regular basis. The
Speaker 1: morning of July two thousand nineteen starts with us both
Speaker 1: packing up our crap, paying for our time at the hotel,
Speaker 1: and meeting a lawn outside. He picks us and our
Speaker 1: gear up. At around eight am, Alan offers us cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Were both hungover thanks to the terrible case of Turkish
Speaker 1: beer I bought last night, and neither of us particularly
Speaker 1: wants to smoke, but we take the cigarettes and say
Speaker 1: spats of all anyway that means thanks friend. After our
Speaker 1: first puffs, we rather performatively smile at Alan, look up
Speaker 1: to him and say bush that means good. A Laan
Speaker 1: responds with a ray, a grin and the words sus bush,
Speaker 1: which just means thanks. Good for the rest of our
Speaker 1: time together. Whenever a lawan offers us a cigarette, he'll
Speaker 1: wiggle his bushy eyebrows and grunt spas bash at us.
Speaker 1: It's a light, friendly jab at the fact that, like
Speaker 1: most foreigners, Jake and I have only learned the words
Speaker 1: thanks and good in Kurdish We get on the road
Speaker 1: and we roll through a checkpoint just outside of Drek.
Speaker 1: Alan slows to a stop to hand over his papers.
Speaker 1: I look out the window with the men and women
Speaker 1: manning the checkpoint, and I'm struck by how good looking
Speaker 1: they all are. Jake seems to notice the same thing,
Speaker 1: and he leans over to me to say, everyone here
Speaker 1: is gorgeous. My eyes are particularly drawn to the man
Speaker 1: in command of the checkpoint, a grizzled male. A saysh.
Speaker 1: I find myself staring at him for a while he
Speaker 1: converses with his colleagues. He has a broad, sculpted chin
Speaker 1: with a perfect John McClain level three days stubble. His
Speaker 1: hair is a dusky brownish blonde. He looks like a
Speaker 1: militant Kurdish George Clooney. There's a cigarette in his left hand,
Speaker 1: while his right stays behind his back, gripping the magazine
Speaker 1: of his rifle. As we pass by, he catches me
Speaker 1: staring at him and he smiles. Slah have all, he
Speaker 1: says to me. It means hello, friend. Calling the folks
Speaker 1: in rojav a good look or attractive doesn't quite get
Speaker 1: at what Jake and I kept noticing. It's not that
Speaker 1: everyone here looks like a runway model. It's more that
Speaker 1: they all look like the exact kind of people you'd
Speaker 1: cast if you were making a movie. The folks here
Speaker 1: are all striking, and Jake and I are not the
Speaker 1: first Westerners to come to Rojava and notice this. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, Agatha Christie, author of Murder on the
Speaker 1: Orient Express and about a billion other books, traveled to
Speaker 1: Kurdistan with her husband. He was an archaeologist. Christie herself
Speaker 1: was quite an adventurer, and she traveled widely through much
Speaker 1: of the region that's now Rojava. She wrote this about
Speaker 1: the appearance of the people here. Kurdish women are gay
Speaker 1: and handsome. They wear bright colors. These women have turbans
Speaker 1: of bright orange round their heads. Their clothes are green
Speaker 1: and purple and yellow. Their heads are carried erect on
Speaker 1: their shoulders. They are tall, with a backwards stands so
Speaker 1: that they always look proud. They have bronze faces with
Speaker 1: regular features, red cheeks, and unusually blue eyes. The Kurdish
Speaker 1: men nearly all bear a marked resemblance to a colored
Speaker 1: picture of Lord Kitchener that used to hang in my
Speaker 1: nursery as a child. The red brick fete, big brown mustache,
Speaker 1: the blue eyes, the fierce and martial appearance. We're waved
Speaker 1: on through the chat point and a line continues down
Speaker 1: the highway. As I stare out the window, slightly hungover,
Speaker 1: drinking coffee and smoking horrible cigarettes, I think about something
Speaker 1: Cabat mentioned yesterday. She told us that a decent amount
Speaker 1: of the men that she worked with in Rojava weren't
Speaker 1: really committed to the gender equality aspect of the revolution.
Speaker 1: She thought they were mostly kept in line by the
Speaker 1: fact that at the moment, the weight of societal inertia
Speaker 1: was behind equality. In her opinion, a number of Rojava's
Speaker 1: men were just too afraid of being publicly shamed to
Speaker 1: rock the boat. No one wants to be Like, as
Speaker 1: soon as you feel astra size from your friend, you
Speaker 1: do anything to get back. You know, that really works naturally.
Speaker 1: So it's like they see everyone like, oh women now
Speaker 1: eventually exactly even it's those men. I'm sure deeply they
Speaker 1: are not conversed, some of them, or like they are
Speaker 1: not really but what they were gonna say, but just
Speaker 1: that that's it and do it. Then it became a habit.
Speaker 1: Hollis is a bit of Arabic slang that kabat uses
Speaker 1: a lot. It means finished or done. She's saying that
Speaker 1: in another generation, the bigotry hidden under the surface of
Speaker 1: some of Rojava's men will disappear, because those men will
Speaker 1: die and they'll be replaced by young men who have
Speaker 1: only ever known women as their equals. This is a
Speaker 1: heartening fact, but it's also a scary one. While the
Speaker 1: change is still skin deep, it's easy to revert. I
Speaker 1: pondered this as we drove on, and it led me
Speaker 1: back to thinking about my own country. In November two nineteen,
Speaker 1: the FBI reported that hate crimes in the United States
Speaker 1: had hit a sixteen year high as the coronavirus descended
Speaker 1: upon American society. Hate crimes against Asian Americans searched for
Speaker 1: the first time since World War Two. I think many
Speaker 1: people were shocked to see so much racist of violence
Speaker 1: and bigotry bubble up into the mainstream. Up until two sixteen,
Speaker 1: they felt like the fight against this stuff had been
Speaker 1: one for the last few years. We've all had to
Speaker 1: confront the reality that this was not the case. Some
Speaker 1: of the explosion in bigotry is new racism. People converted
Speaker 1: in dark corners of the Internet. But much of it,
Speaker 1: and probably most of it, is a result of people
Speaker 1: who were quiet bigots for years until they decided it
Speaker 1: was finally safe enough to be loud. As a lawn's
Speaker 1: van trundled into the outskirts of Comichelo, my eyes were
Speaker 1: caught by a trio of young girls on their way
Speaker 1: to school. They walked together, heads bare, laughing and giggling,
Speaker 1: and weighed down with probably twenty books between them. Not
Speaker 1: too long ago, these girls had stared into a horizon
Speaker 1: dominated by the black flags of Isis. I wondered what
Speaker 1: their future would bring. My mind was drawn back to
Speaker 1: something I had seen the night before in the bustling
Speaker 1: streets of Darek. Jake and I had been poorly navigating
Speaker 1: the crowded market looking for beer. As we'd stumbled about,
Speaker 1: my eyes had been caught by a young soldier on
Speaker 1: his drive home atop a scooter. His wife in full
Speaker 1: MiCab sat on the back, her face towards the traffic
Speaker 1: at their rear. It felt like a clear illustration of
Speaker 1: the fact that many of the people here could still
Speaker 1: go either way Rojava's revolutionary sentiments, its radical equality. That
Speaker 1: stuff did enjoy a lot of popularity, and still does.
Speaker 1: But the continued progress of those ideals relies on the
Speaker 1: mass of folks in the middle acquiescing to progress because
Speaker 1: that's where they feel the weight happens to be. The
Speaker 1: most important question I had to ask about Rojava was this,
Speaker 1: will any of it really last? And I knew that
Speaker 1: my only chance at getting an answer lay in the
Speaker 1: hearts of the people here. As we pass along, it
Speaker 1: became obvious that tensions in the area had ratcheted up overnight.
Speaker 1: The guards at checkpoints all checked our papers thoroughly, and
Speaker 1: there seemed to be more of them than the day before.
Speaker 1: A quick search through Google revealed that Turkey's president Radone
Speaker 1: had recently made more threats against the Syrian Democratic Forces
Speaker 1: or SDF. The military of Rojava. U SMS series were
Speaker 1: said to be in route to the region. As we
Speaker 1: waited in traffic, I couldn't help but stare up at
Speaker 1: the Turkish border wall up in the not too distance.
Speaker 1: I couldn't see them, but I out the weight and
Speaker 1: guns of NATO's second largest army just beyond the horizon.
Speaker 1: We pick up Kabat outside of her apartment in Comichelo,
Speaker 1: She greets us with a thernis of instant coffee and
Speaker 1: we go again to her favorite food stand for more
Speaker 1: falafel burritos. For months afterwards, I found myself periodically craving
Speaker 1: them the closest US equivalent. I found the garlic sauces,
Speaker 1: probably the sauce at Zankow Chicken and Los Angeles, but
Speaker 1: it's not nearly as good as we eat kabat walks
Speaker 1: us through our schedule, she set up a meeting with
Speaker 1: the head of the women's Economic Development Council for the
Speaker 1: city of Kamischlow. The building is located in a residential neighborhood,
Speaker 1: one floor in a tall, dusty brown apartment block. We
Speaker 1: park outside and Jake and I grabbed the minimal necessary
Speaker 1: equipment to bring inside. We've been warned that this location
Speaker 1: is a particular target for ISIS sleeper cell attacks. Security
Speaker 1: is high. I leave my backpack behind and I just
Speaker 1: bring my recorder, but I forget to remove my pocket knife.
Speaker 1: As a little bit of context, I always have a
Speaker 1: good solid knife on me, particularly when I travel. I've
Speaker 1: used it to pry open bathroom doors into crepit public
Speaker 1: facilities in Serbia's grape Off Nazi graffiti on abandoned buildings
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, and to open more beers than I
Speaker 1: care to mention in more places than I can remember.
Speaker 1: Bringing a knife is so second nature to me that
Speaker 1: I often forget that I haven't. And that's what happened
Speaker 1: as I stepped up to the middle aged Assayish guard
Speaker 1: running the security checkpoint. His partners, I notice, are two
Speaker 1: women in their mid twenties. All three of them have
Speaker 1: a K forty seven's and they all seem to be
Speaker 1: on high alert. But the old man is by far
Speaker 1: the most thorough and the rest. He catches my pocket
Speaker 1: knife tucked into the waistband of my pants, and he
Speaker 1: is profoundly frustrated to find it. He laboriously explains to
Speaker 1: Chabat that I will have to pick up my blade
Speaker 1: on the way out. I say that's fine, but I
Speaker 1: can tell Hoobat's face that she is somewhat amusedly frustrated
Speaker 1: with me too knifeless. We are allowed to enter the building.
Speaker 1: The Women's Economic Development Headquarters is the cleanest building we've
Speaker 1: been to in Rojava. It smells sweet, a little like
Speaker 1: flowers and a little like fresh laundry. Pictures of female
Speaker 1: martyrs are during the walls, and my eyes are immediately
Speaker 1: drawn to a colorful portrait of a Rin mir Khan,
Speaker 1: one of the most review eared Shahids or martyrs in
Speaker 1: all of Rojava. Arin was one of the y PGS
Speaker 1: female fighters. In two thousand fourteen, during the desperate battle
Speaker 1: for Kobani, she stymied an ICE's advance by throwing multiple
Speaker 1: grenades into squads of fighters and then, in a last
Speaker 1: desperate act of defiance, charging into their ranks and blowing
Speaker 1: herself up. She is reported to have killed dozens of them.
Speaker 1: I will come to know her face well, her straight
Speaker 1: black hair, her wide honest smile, white teeth and flush
Speaker 1: round cheeks. Arin Merkhan hangs in thousands of homes and
Speaker 1: public buildings all around Rojava. In the Kamischlo Women's Economic
Speaker 1: Development Council meeting room, it hangs on the wall opposite
Speaker 1: from a gigantic woodcut portrait of Abdulla Ajalon Apo, the
Speaker 1: founder of the p k K. One end of the
Speaker 1: room holds a heavy bookcase filled with Appo's books. There
Speaker 1: are two long couches on either wall. Jake Cabat and
Speaker 1: I take our seats and Horium Chamid, head of the
Speaker 1: Woman's Economic Development Council, walks in and greets us. She
Speaker 1: takes a seat underneath the enormous apo wood cut and
Speaker 1: we begin to talk. My first question is one I've
Speaker 1: been pondering for a while. What does she see as
Speaker 1: a bigger struggle, the battle against Isis or the battle
Speaker 1: of the women in this region against entrenched male supremacy.
Speaker 1: We see the women's struggle as much more difficult than
Speaker 1: the struggle against Isis. Of course, Isis are barberous enemy.
Speaker 1: You come to fight them and either you eradicate them
Speaker 1: or they eradicate you. But the struggle against customs and practices,
Speaker 1: against religion which limits the rights of women, the struggle
Speaker 1: to change the mentality of women, this is much harder.
Speaker 1: In Horim's view, the victory against Isis was just one
Speaker 1: battle in a long struggle. Women have been suffocated in
Speaker 1: society by the politics of the Syrian state. Their rights
Speaker 1: have been limited, and this mentality has suffocated them. So
Speaker 1: they are scared to resist, to resist against the oppression
Speaker 1: around them, to rise up and say this is my right.
Speaker 1: I exist. We have difficulties with this. Isis were well
Speaker 1: known throughout the world. There were a barbarous enemy, not
Speaker 1: just for women but for all people. But women also
Speaker 1: have hidden enemies around them, oppressive men, customs, practices, economic repression,
Speaker 1: hidden things women struggle in secret. Much of Horium's work
Speaker 1: centers around helping the women of Rojava and their struggles
Speaker 1: against misogyny and bigotry. Rujava's war with Isis captured the
Speaker 1: imagination of world media, but this quieter war is the
Speaker 1: one that will bring actual, lasting victory to the women here.
Speaker 1: There was a woman whose husband was martyred in the
Speaker 1: war against Ices. His family wanted to take her children
Speaker 1: back because she had no money and they felt she
Speaker 1: had no opportunities. She was basically given the choice to
Speaker 1: either find a new man or give up her children
Speaker 1: to their dead father's family. Our job was to provide
Speaker 1: her with a belief in herself the economic opportunity to
Speaker 1: struggle against her family anxiety. Before the war, educational opportunities
Speaker 1: for women in Syria varied widely depending on their family
Speaker 1: background and location, and after eight years of fighting and
Speaker 1: years of ISIS occupation, many women in Northeast Syria haven't
Speaker 1: benefited from the kind of basic education that gives them
Speaker 1: a chance to survive as a single mother. This particular
Speaker 1: woman's situation was all the more challenging because she was deaf,
Speaker 1: but Horium Senter helped her find adult education classes that
Speaker 1: taught her how to sew, which gave her a marketable skill.
Speaker 1: She works in Taylor's shop now, and her economic situation
Speaker 1: has improved. Her children are with her, and her late
Speaker 1: husband's family now has no excuse to take them. Years ago,
Speaker 1: when I worked for a website called Cracked, I spent
Speaker 1: four long days reading nearly a thousand pages of ices propaganda.
Speaker 1: It was filled with pictures of young men posing with
Speaker 1: enormous rifles, wielding swords, and galloping on horseback, firing rocket
Speaker 1: launchers and on rushing tanks, in between articles about the
Speaker 1: proper care and raping of sex slaves. It was a
Speaker 1: veritable cornucopia of toxic masculinity. And I thought about that
Speaker 1: as I sat in the air conditioned meeting room and
Speaker 1: looked at the portraits of Shahid's on the walls. These
Speaker 1: women had been martyred in a struggle against the human
Speaker 1: distillation of misogyny. Horium clearly venerated them, but during our
Speaker 1: conversation she labored repeatedly to make the point that these
Speaker 1: martyrs were but the tip of an iceberg. Even more
Speaker 1: women are being martyred by the male mentality and by
Speaker 1: the capitalist mindset. In these times, our economy is based
Speaker 1: on money and earning money. Women who get caught up
Speaker 1: in this can lose themselves in it, and they too
Speaker 1: become martyrs. In two thousand and thirteen, American billionaire and
Speaker 1: Facebook chief operating officer Cheryl Sandberg published the book lean In.
Speaker 1: It advised women that they could move forward, fight against
Speaker 1: entrenched sexism in their industries, and succeed under capitalism if
Speaker 1: they did stuff like refused to take off work just
Speaker 1: because they were pregnant. Lean In was a guide for
Speaker 1: women to excel under capitalism by pushing through the unfair,
Speaker 1: unreasonable demands and biases they faced until they reached success.
Speaker 1: Cheryl herself realized that her advice was not quite as
Speaker 1: good as it seemed when her husband died and she
Speaker 1: found herself trying to lean in as a single mother.
Speaker 1: The rest of the world realized that Cheryl Sandberg might
Speaker 1: not be the best source of advice on anything. When
Speaker 1: the Cambridge analytic as scandal broke. This was followed by
Speaker 1: an ocean of bad pr for Facebook, the worst example
Speaker 1: being an ethnic cleansing in Myanmar fueled by viral Facebook posts.
Speaker 1: It was soon clear to everyone that Sandberg, the adult
Speaker 1: in the room at Facebook, had really just used her
Speaker 1: credibility to help gloss over the social networks reckless culture.
Speaker 1: I am certain that Horium never read lean In, but
Speaker 1: Cheryl Sandberg's mentality, the idea that women can force capitalism
Speaker 1: to treat them equally, well, that is very much what
Speaker 1: Horium was arguing against. Equality, in her eyes, was not
Speaker 1: about enabling women to exploit people from money just as
Speaker 1: well as men. It was about providing women with tools
Speaker 1: to take care of themselves. Western women they work, but
Speaker 1: received less. They work in mentality of the men. If
Speaker 1: I am free here, I can only be as free
Speaker 1: as the other women here. What we talk. One of
Speaker 1: Horium's assistants brings in tea. Kurdish tea is normally served
Speaker 1: with lots of sugar. Often half the glass or more
Speaker 1: will be sugar, But today the tea arrives unsweetened. Horium
Speaker 1: tells us about her son who fell Shahed, fighting against Isis.
Speaker 1: She believes he died to make this woman's revolution possible,
Speaker 1: but that's only a part of her motivation. Horium is
Speaker 1: a fierce looking woman, tall with a pointed jaw and
Speaker 1: large eyes that burrow into me. She answers our questions politely,
Speaker 1: but she radiates a strange coolness the whole time. It's
Speaker 1: not unfriendliness or anger exactly. I described the sensation of
Speaker 1: sitting in the room with her as a little like
Speaker 1: talking to a coiled spring. Later, over the course of days,
Speaker 1: I'll come to recognize this particular type of energy. Horium
Speaker 1: is from the mountains. That's the term people in Rojava
Speaker 1: use for the old fighters, the members of the p
Speaker 1: k K who started off as Marxist guerrillas in the
Speaker 1: mountains before coming down to help build this place. The
Speaker 1: people from the mountains have a definite hardness to them,
Speaker 1: an edge that sets them apart from everyone else we meet.
Speaker 1: It helps explain a little bit of where Horium is
Speaker 1: coming from. At the end of the interview, we bid
Speaker 1: Horium goodbye, gather our gear and make to leave the
Speaker 1: Woman's Economic Development Center. On our way out, Habbat points
Speaker 1: to a brightly colored mural on the wall. It says
Speaker 1: jin Jian Azadi. This Habbat informs me is one of
Speaker 1: Rojava's most popular slogans. It means women, life and freedom.
Speaker 1: On our way back to the van, we wave hello
Speaker 1: to the two young female soldiers at the guard post
Speaker 1: outside the center. They smile back and wave excitedly, so
Speaker 1: we asked them if we can come take some pictures.
Speaker 1: The older male, Asaish, the gruff man who'd taken my
Speaker 1: knife earlier, comes up to hand it back. He trundles
Speaker 1: away afterwards, rifle in hand, scanning the alleyways around us.
Speaker 1: I find myself wondering how he feels about working with
Speaker 1: two women who are young enough to be his granddaughters.
Speaker 1: I wonder how committed he actually is to this revolution
Speaker 1: for gender equality. Cabat looks over to me. She's anticipated
Speaker 1: my question. Should we talk to him? She asks, Her
Speaker 1: question is rhetorical. We walk over to him, and he
Speaker 1: stiffened slightly in surprise. Before stopping to talk, he steps
Speaker 1: away and puts his back to the wall, standing in
Speaker 1: the place that gives him the most secure view of
Speaker 1: his surroundings. Kobat asks him first what he thinks of
Speaker 1: the Women's Economic Development Center and the work that hori
Speaker 1: Um and her colleagues do there. His answer is simple.
Speaker 1: In my view, it's a very good organization. We have
Speaker 1: many women who haven't had a chance to be educated.
Speaker 1: This helps that. Next, I have Hubbat asked him how
Speaker 1: he felt as a soldier the first time he saw
Speaker 1: women in his community picking up guns to fight for
Speaker 1: their liberty. I was very happy. It's nice to have
Speaker 1: women in the military, and I support them. Finally, I
Speaker 1: have Cabat ask him point blank, does he consider himself
Speaker 1: a feminist. I wonder if perhaps Kabbat will have to
Speaker 1: explain the term to him, but he doesn't ask for clarification. Instead,
Speaker 1: he scrunches up his eyebrows a bit, considers the question,
Speaker 1: and then answers, no revolution can succeed without the women.
Speaker 1: We thank the old soldier for his time and get
Speaker 1: back in the van just in time for a lan
Speaker 1: to hand Jake and I two more of his precious
Speaker 1: terrible cigarettes. Spas, We say, spas, bash Alan replies with
Speaker 1: an eyebrow wiggle. Our next destination is a place I've
Speaker 1: been excited to see for months, since long before I
Speaker 1: started planning this trip. In earnest jin War easily one
Speaker 1: of Rojava's most ambitious projects. Genoir is a village for
Speaker 1: only women and their children. Most of the inhabitants here
Speaker 1: are survivors of abuse, women who have had to leave
Speaker 1: violent spouses or oppressive traditionalist families. Genoir is a place
Speaker 1: where these people can remake themselves by building a new
Speaker 1: town from the ground up. The word jin means women
Speaker 1: in Kurdish and jin War is a living expression of
Speaker 1: one of the concepts of Rojava's founder of the law Augelon.
Speaker 1: Along with the democratic confederalist system that runs this place,
Speaker 1: Aujelon is the creator an advocate of something called genealogy
Speaker 1: or the science of women, or very literally women's studies.
Speaker 1: It's sometimes referred to as Kurdish feminism, but that definition
Speaker 1: doesn't really convey what's going on here. At its core,
Speaker 1: all of Aujelon's modern beliefs are rooted in the idea
Speaker 1: that women must be liberated in order to liberate the world.
Speaker 1: The oppression of the patriarchal system extends past just legal
Speaker 1: codes and religious rules and into the realms of what
Speaker 1: we'd call the social sciences. Genealogy, then, is the process
Speaker 1: by which women reevaluate history, economics, art, education, health, and
Speaker 1: many other things. In an attempt to cast off male
Speaker 1: centered biases on a societal level. Advocates of genealogy hope
Speaker 1: that this will lead to a more equitable civilization and
Speaker 1: a more accurate understanding of the world. On an individual level.
Speaker 1: Genealogy is a big part of the justification for women's
Speaker 1: only spaces like jennar As. A line written on the
Speaker 1: walls of gen War states, until women educate and empower themselves,
Speaker 1: no one is free. My first glance of gin Wir
Speaker 1: is of a lightly fortified desert compound, a dozen or
Speaker 1: so spacious uniform homes with lavender painted walls and a
Speaker 1: tall iron gate manned by a young woman with an
Speaker 1: a K forty seven. Atop the gate is the word
Speaker 1: gin War, which literally means women's land. We've arrived in
Speaker 1: gin War around nine. It's hot, dry, and sunny. Today.
Speaker 1: The ground below us is baked rock hard, and it
Speaker 1: appears to be that way everywhere but the rows of
Speaker 1: crops in the middle of gin War. Outside the walls,
Speaker 1: there's more farmland and rising pillars of black smoke. There
Speaker 1: are constant brush fires in northeast Syria during the summer.
Speaker 1: Some are natural, some are caused by isis sleepers, and
Speaker 1: some surely are the result of careless cigarette smokers. We're
Speaker 1: greeted by two women. One is in her mid twenties
Speaker 1: and Kurdish, and the other is a tall German woman
Speaker 1: in her thirties. She's the first foreign volunteer that I've
Speaker 1: met in Rojava. She's heavily tattooed and initially suspicious of
Speaker 1: Jake and I. She questions us politely about our intentions
Speaker 1: here and what she's satisfied with our answers. She agrees
Speaker 1: to an interview. What is your family think you're being here?
Speaker 1: M yeah, I mean, it's of course, um, let's say
Speaker 1: it's also process. Yeah, I think it's generally like affected
Speaker 1: by the of course, like the mass madea and in
Speaker 1: general dessituation when you when you say that you live
Speaker 1: in northern Syria and if you sounded like this, it's
Speaker 1: of course like the things which comes to the mind
Speaker 1: of many people's war and war and war. So it's
Speaker 1: hard kind of to convince them to understand what is
Speaker 1: it and actually me, I'm like in the process of
Speaker 1: like them understanding better or not, like they wouldn't probably
Speaker 1: you know what, Oh, no, good, thanks, you know water,
Speaker 1: just coffee, thank you. Yeah, it's uh. When I told
Speaker 1: my family I was coming here, I think their vision
Speaker 1: was that I'd be dodging sniper fire the whole time.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, I spilled coffee there, says it's fine though.
Speaker 1: Spilling coffee is good luck if you don't do it
Speaker 1: on purpose. We sit and talk for a bit, feeling
Speaker 1: each other out. Our Kurdish host asks me how aware
Speaker 1: most Americans are about what's happening in Syria right now.
Speaker 1: She makes a point to ask me if they think
Speaker 1: that our country's effort here in supporting Rojava is seen
Speaker 1: as being a lot like the Vietnam War. I have
Speaker 1: to cringe and explain that most Americans know very little
Speaker 1: about Syria. They know there's a civil war, they know
Speaker 1: Isis was here, but that's most of it. They've probably
Speaker 1: never heard of the term Rojava. She is not overjoyed
Speaker 1: by this answer. In the UK, like most people, they
Speaker 1: don't really know about it, but they'll just be like
Speaker 1: the curtains Syrias. Oh yeah, they're the good guys, right,
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's about it. Yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: Americans were here, Yeah, like we like the like my
Speaker 1: friends at home, probably have no idea what's going on,
Speaker 1: but they just think they seem cool, like they seem okay,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's about it. Yeah. Yeah, they recognize
Speaker 1: that they seem you know, and they would probably say
Speaker 1: the Curds in Syria the pesh Murga because you're asking
Speaker 1: a lot for an American. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: laughter at the idea that Americans would confuse Iraqi Kurds
Speaker 1: with Syrian Kurds, and tension broken. I pivot to another question,
Speaker 1: based on something she'd said a few minutes earlier before
Speaker 1: I started recording. I was interested, she mentioned earlier, seeing
Speaker 1: growing up seeing that like it seems like all the
Speaker 1: people writing books whom and all the philosophers are men
Speaker 1: um And you know, there's a picture of a male philosopher,
Speaker 1: two of them on the walls of this room. Would
Speaker 1: she like to see a picture of a woman philosopher
Speaker 1: adorn it or adjoin it? At some point? The male philosopher,
Speaker 1: I mentioned, there is a delage on gin Warri's town
Speaker 1: hall hosts the obligatory very large framed picture of Apo.
Speaker 1: He looks a bit like Bill Cosby in this one,
Speaker 1: crossing his hands on or his chin and grinning impishly
Speaker 1: out at the world. I'm still concerned about the new
Speaker 1: life without our leader. Patches I've seen on some soldiers uniforms.
Speaker 1: The fact that Oppo's portrait hangs in the center of
Speaker 1: almost every meeting room doesn't diminish my worries. Her response
Speaker 1: is thankfully not the response of a zealot. She explains
Speaker 1: to me that students of genealogy, the women's science that
Speaker 1: they study in Rajava, have spent years combing through history
Speaker 1: books to find examples of female scientists, philosophers, inventors, and
Speaker 1: thinkers whose stories were buried by the traditional education systems
Speaker 1: of the area. So this section of the geneology of researching,
Speaker 1: they found out that they are still on the process.
Speaker 1: They came out with the many philosopher romans, and they
Speaker 1: really going to take the picture of all of them,
Speaker 1: that maybe there will be no place for the picture.
Speaker 1: The women of gen war haven't separated themselves from men
Speaker 1: because they hate them, or because they advocate for a
Speaker 1: permanent segregation of gender. The why of this place is complex,
Speaker 1: but a large part of it is rooted in history,
Speaker 1: not just Kurdish history or Arab history, but human His
Speaker 1: story over coffee, we talk about the oppression of midwives
Speaker 1: and wise women for witchcraft in European and American history.
Speaker 1: After coffee, they take me on a tour of the
Speaker 1: largest building in gen War, the school they've built for
Speaker 1: their children. It's clean, orderly, and decidedly low tech. In
Speaker 1: one corner of the room is a bookshelf covered in
Speaker 1: pictures and recreations of ancient artifacts. The one that catches
Speaker 1: my eye is a large, colorful picture of the Venus
Speaker 1: of Willendorff. You've seen this, even if the name isn't
Speaker 1: instantly familiar. It's that small prehistoric statue of a rotund,
Speaker 1: large breasted woman. So it's the symbol of of the woman.
Speaker 1: It's like the woman body, the like the fert symbol
Speaker 1: like it's like the woman goddess who was representing the society,
Speaker 1: and it's it's clear message. The venus dates back more
Speaker 1: than twenty five thousand years. It's the oldest known depiction
Speaker 1: of the naked female form, and starting in nineteen o eight,
Speaker 1: the universal archaeological consensus was it's porn. The name is
Speaker 1: even a form of mockery. European archaeologists thought this statuette
Speaker 1: was erotic art from a primitive civilization. This remained the
Speaker 1: scientific consensus until nineteen ninety six, when professor's Leroy McDermott
Speaker 1: and Kathleen mc coyd carried out some novel research to
Speaker 1: suggest an alternative theory. They took photographs of heavily pregnant,
Speaker 1: naked women possessitioning the camera and the rough location of
Speaker 1: the subject's eyes. Then then compared those photographs to similar
Speaker 1: shots of the venus and found that they were nearly identical.
Speaker 1: The venus of Willendorf, long assumed to have been sculpted
Speaker 1: by a man, looked precisely like the kind of sculpture
Speaker 1: a pregnant woman might make if she was attempting to
Speaker 1: create a clay representation of her own body. This analysis,
Speaker 1: when you look to the body of the of the
Speaker 1: of the venus, it's like the women body looking them
Speaker 1: from top. Back in two thousand sixteen, I actually published
Speaker 1: a book, A Brief History of Vice, and it discussed
Speaker 1: the venus of Willendorff and the theories around it. I
Speaker 1: interviewed Professor McDermott and he explained to me that the
Speaker 1: venus was likely the very first medical device in recorded history,
Speaker 1: an obstetric aid made by women for women. He explained,
Speaker 1: quote women alone un face the inevitable, life threatening and
Speaker 1: painful event of giving birth, and it is very likely
Speaker 1: that the thought of preparing for it had crossed the
Speaker 1: mind of a woman before the process became of intellectual
Speaker 1: interest to men. It's always been fascinating to me that
Speaker 1: everyone just agreed for nearly a century that the venus
Speaker 1: must be pornography, rather than even considering another possibility. And
Speaker 1: seven thousand miles away from my door, the women of
Speaker 1: gin War had been struck by that same reality. And
Speaker 1: it's but it's crazy, you know, I feel for example,
Speaker 1: if you go to different places and then there's an
Speaker 1: archeological research and there's like figures appeared many times. Of
Speaker 1: course the interpretation, oh, it was the goddess, it was
Speaker 1: the representation of the of the society, it was the
Speaker 1: symbol of the clan. If those whatever, and when it's
Speaker 1: like a statue with women body found, then like the
Speaker 1: interpretation that is pornographic or that it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: you can already see like the mentality in it. How
Speaker 1: like the historical moment in the historical like a foundation
Speaker 1: so in the gin War exists for the same reason
Speaker 1: that the White PJ exists, and the same reason that
Speaker 1: towns and Rojava have women's councils as well as town councils.
Speaker 1: There's an understanding here that the sheer depth of oppression
Speaker 1: women face means that they need dedicated spaces to build
Speaker 1: and to rediscover their history. And in keeping with the
Speaker 1: bottom up nature of governance here, gen War's creation wasn't
Speaker 1: ordered by some central figure or agency. The initial idea
Speaker 1: came from the collaboration of a number of different local
Speaker 1: women's organizations, including Congrega Star and the Free Women's Foundation
Speaker 1: of Rojava. These local groups and international NGOs provided some
Speaker 1: of the funding, but many of the raw materials that
Speaker 1: built this place were donated by the villages and towns
Speaker 1: around it. The villages around they from from one region.
Speaker 1: That because the houses, the foundation of the houses the
Speaker 1: stone's foundation, so like it's a really big amount of
Speaker 1: stone which needs to be tought. So for example, that
Speaker 1: was the one donation. Other donations which is usually for
Speaker 1: example really expensive sync is the vote because there's not
Speaker 1: so much wood. So from the different region, like people
Speaker 1: from different places, they donate. This gin War is one
Speaker 1: of the most peaceful places i've ever been. The color
Speaker 1: lavender is everywhere. The buildings are short, squat and handsome,
Speaker 1: resembling the architecture one finds in New Mexico. It's very quiet,
Speaker 1: but outside its walls, wildfires race across the land, burning
Speaker 1: through dried brush in the brutal Syrian summer. I watch
Speaker 1: as a small fire tornado. Hall's asked just a football
Speaker 1: field or two away. Our guide admits that fire is
Speaker 1: a constant threat. Fortunately like nothing bigger happened, No like
Speaker 1: nothing like, no cables, no uh, people was heard. The
Speaker 1: children two times were equated, and we together with neighbors
Speaker 1: are so with like help of the surrounding people, we
Speaker 1: very fighting with the fire. With the woman here, it's
Speaker 1: almost kind of like it's an immediate danger, but there's
Speaker 1: also like it's kind of symbolic. As we were driving
Speaker 1: up here, we saw that big wall Turkey built sort
Speaker 1: of that that threat looming. I don't know, it seems
Speaker 1: like it's like an expression of it. Not I was
Speaker 1: also thinking about it. Not, it's like the direct threat
Speaker 1: here also to the attack and for the like the
Speaker 1: political situation of the like of the Turk troops and
Speaker 1: of the occupation of the Turks. It's still it's really
Speaker 1: it's really present, so it's kind of fair you could
Speaker 1: see that. It's three months after I visit, the Turkish
Speaker 1: military surged forth from behind its walls. Artillery fire and
Speaker 1: missiles rained down on the land around gin Wir, and
Speaker 1: the town was temporarily abandoned by its residents. I was
Speaker 1: surprised by how hard the news hit me. Seeing the
Speaker 1: fires from miles away doesn't make it hurt any less
Speaker 1: when they reach you. After our tour, we head back
Speaker 1: into the town hall. A few more of gen War's
Speaker 1: women have assembled and agreed to talk to us, so
Speaker 1: we have another cup of coffee and sit down for
Speaker 1: an interview with a young Arab woman. She's a large
Speaker 1: flower tattoo on her left forearm and a T shirt
Speaker 1: that says every day is a second chance. I'll play
Speaker 1: a little bit of the audio from this, but I
Speaker 1: have to tell my recorders started having issues at just
Speaker 1: this point in the day. If you didn't understand that,
Speaker 1: I'll repeat This young woman was explaining to me that
Speaker 1: this month she was the village representative that made her
Speaker 1: the point woman for talking to journalists, and it also
Speaker 1: meant that she was expected to represent gen War to
Speaker 1: the other towns in the area. All the women here
Speaker 1: take turns doing this job, which is scary for some
Speaker 1: of them, but our host points out it also forces
Speaker 1: them to grow as people. She and most of the
Speaker 1: women we talked to prefer not to use their names,
Speaker 1: but she explains to us how she came to gen War.
Speaker 1: Her husband, she says, was a tattoo artist, but over
Speaker 1: time he developed a problem with alcohol and then he
Speaker 1: became violent. At first, she thought that maybe having a
Speaker 1: child would fix their issues these problems. So she gets
Speaker 1: first child and it was like not that bad, but
Speaker 1: it was like still on the problems there. So then
Speaker 1: she get another child. She thought that it would be
Speaker 1: fixed there, have more children and their relationship would be
Speaker 1: more tight. But doesn't but last of her life with
Speaker 1: him because it's too bad and she couldn't manage to
Speaker 1: to offer that anymore, so she started. When she decided
Speaker 1: she'd had enough, she went to the women's house in
Speaker 1: her town and reported him these places. The women's houses
Speaker 1: were formed by an organization called Congreya Star, a confederation
Speaker 1: of different women's groups across Rojava. Their core belief is
Speaker 1: that no society can be truly free unless it's women
Speaker 1: are liberated. It's basically the same sentiment that old fighter
Speaker 1: had expressed a Hoobatani, there is no revolution without the women.
Speaker 1: The people at the women's house helped her divorce from
Speaker 1: her husband separate her life from his. They told her
Speaker 1: about gen War and suggested it might be a good
Speaker 1: place for her to go make a new start, So
Speaker 1: she took her children and moved there. In the months since,
Speaker 1: she has learned to farm, how to help manage a store,
Speaker 1: and how to administer a small village. I asked if
Speaker 1: she would ever have been able to consider leaving her
Speaker 1: husband before the revolution. Her answer is simple, law is
Speaker 1: the Arabic word for no. We next talked to a
Speaker 1: woman who introduces herself as the wife of a she Heed.
Speaker 1: She is also Arab, and she wears more conservative clothing
Speaker 1: and a fuller head scarf. One of the criticisms you'll
Speaker 1: hear sometimes is that Rojava is really a Kurdish supremacist
Speaker 1: movement and that Arabs are oppressed in the area. It's
Speaker 1: an idea that the Turkish government has a vested interest
Speaker 1: in pushing. Several months after I conduct these interviews, in
Speaker 1: the wake of their invasion, the Turkish government will force
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of Kurtish civilians out of their homes
Speaker 1: and move in Arab refugees from elsewhere in Syria to
Speaker 1: take their place. It's a deliberate act of ethnic cleansing.
Speaker 1: We see no evidence of racial animosity here in genoir,
Speaker 1: though our next INTERVIEWE expresses that her kids are happy here,
Speaker 1: learning with the Kurdish children and studying both Kurdish and
Speaker 1: Arabic languages. She and a number of the women we
Speaker 1: talk to engen War don't express a great depth of
Speaker 1: knowledge about Abdula Jolan's ideas or about any of the
Speaker 1: radical politics that have made this place such a cause
Speaker 1: celeb among the global left. And I suppose some people
Speaker 1: might find that disappointing to me. It's a pretty clear
Speaker 1: statement about the relative lack of brainwashing that occurs here.
Speaker 1: The ideological underpinnings of this place are important to many
Speaker 1: of its residents, but no woman is denied a place
Speaker 1: to live here because they haven't read enough political theory.
Speaker 1: Gin War is not large, just a bit over a
Speaker 1: dozen families, but it's also very young. Our hosts explained
Speaker 1: that the goal is to build more places like it,
Speaker 1: and not just women's villages, but other villages made using
Speaker 1: the eco friendly construction methods used in the creation of
Speaker 1: these homes. The buildings in gin War all have high
Speaker 1: ceilings and carefully positioned ceiling fans in order to stay
Speaker 1: comfortable during the blazing Syrian summer without using air conditioning,
Speaker 1: and it is in fact very comfortable inside. One day.
Speaker 1: They tell me villages like this will help to reduce
Speaker 1: the influence, size and ecological toll of overcrowded cities like
Speaker 1: Kamischlow sentiments like this are common in Rojava. The goals
Speaker 1: of the true believers here are always spectacular and ambitious,
Speaker 1: and it would be easy to see them as a
Speaker 1: lot of hot air if it weren't for the huge
Speaker 1: amount of work that's evident all around me. It is
Speaker 1: far too early to say if the things they're aiming
Speaker 1: for will ever actually happen. Of course, everyone I speak
Speaker 1: to is conscious of the fact that this could all
Speaker 1: be swept away in the space of an evening, with
Speaker 1: the speed of a wildfire tearing across a wind swept plane.
Speaker 1: But in spite of that, they struggle on putting one
Speaker 1: foot forward in front of the next doing the work
Speaker 1: and hoping they'll get the chance to keep doing it tomorrow.
Speaker 1: We say our goodbyes, pile into Alan's van, and drive away.
Speaker 1: I look back as we roll off, and I noticed
Speaker 1: that the word jin war atop the gate has been
Speaker 1: split in half by its opening. Now I see the
Speaker 1: two halves of the word as separate terms. Gin Women's
Speaker 1: War game in the moy The Women's War is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.