Speaker 1: Welcome to the Women's War, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: It's the dawn of our second morning in Rojaba, well,
Speaker 1: my first boarding in Rojaba, our first full day, our
Speaker 1: second day here. Anarchy gets a bad rap, mainly because
Speaker 1: the word sounds cool, and so it gets used as
Speaker 1: a synonym for chaos, disorder, and violence and awful lot
Speaker 1: of the time, many people will laugh when you bring
Speaker 1: up the idea of anarchist leadership or anarchist organizations, and
Speaker 1: if you happen to introduce yourself as an anarchist, you
Speaker 1: often wind up needing to cover a fair amount of
Speaker 1: rhetorical ground just to convince people that you're not either
Speaker 1: a violent maniac or an adult with the brain of
Speaker 1: a teenage skateboard punk from a Disney Channel original movie.
Speaker 1: There are a number of different ways to do anarchy,
Speaker 1: but the general goal is usually the same, the dismantling
Speaker 1: of unjust hierarchies. Murray book Chin was an American and
Speaker 1: ideas that wound up shaping the system in ra Java
Speaker 1: were originally conceived because they were the system he thought
Speaker 1: might best take hold of. The United States. Book Chain
Speaker 1: saw massive dense urban areas making laws for rural mountain
Speaker 1: dwellers hundreds of miles away, and he saw small town
Speaker 1: voters forcing their beliefs on cosmopolitan city dwellers. He thought
Speaker 1: both of these things were wrong, and the goal of
Speaker 1: libertarian municipalism was to break down these unjust hierarchies. Almost
Speaker 1: anywhere you live, if your goal is dismantling unfair hierarchy,
Speaker 1: you're going to eventually find yourself looking at your justice system.
Speaker 1: And prior to their revolution, Northeast Syria had a famously
Speaker 1: bad one. Every town was riddled with massive complexes for
Speaker 1: the mukabrat, or secret police. The Assad regime maintained compliance
Speaker 1: through an infamous system of torture designed by a former
Speaker 1: Nazi s S officer. It was a pretty easy system
Speaker 1: to justify tearing down, but it's not always enough to
Speaker 1: just remove an injustice. No nation needs mukah barat, but
Speaker 1: you do need people to investigate and adjudicate murders, domestic violence,
Speaker 1: and other sorts of crimes that we can all agree
Speaker 1: are in fact crimes. How does the society based in
Speaker 1: Moray book Chain's quasi anarchist principles handle this? On Sunday,
Speaker 1: July twenty one, two thousand nineteen, Jake Hanrahan and I
Speaker 1: set out with our friend Kabat to learn. We were
Speaker 1: both still a little bit hungover from the night before
Speaker 1: when a law on our driver picked us up from
Speaker 1: the hotel He lived nearby, and he was going to
Speaker 1: drive us into Comischelow to pick up Robat to start
Speaker 1: our day. Alan is a thin, wiry man in his
Speaker 1: early forties. He has an impassive, semi permanent poker face,
Speaker 1: and he expresses the vast majority of his emotions through cigarettes.
Speaker 1: As a rule, only the very worst cigarettes on earth
Speaker 1: wind up in Syria. If it can't pass inspection in
Speaker 1: the EU, it winds up in a Lan's pocket. His
Speaker 1: very favorite brand, argolis Is. He offers Jake and I
Speaker 1: each one and we enjoy a cigarette breakfast. As a
Speaker 1: lawn gets onto the highway, Jake and Alan take turns
Speaker 1: plugging in their phones and playing different Kurdish militant anthems,
Speaker 1: including the song of the y d g H the
Speaker 1: Kurdish Youth Movement. Jake was arrested for reporting on for
Speaker 1: the anthem of a children's militia. It kind of slaps
Speaker 1: pocket pocket bogget. You can tell a lot about this place.
Speaker 1: By looking at the window on a morning drive, we
Speaker 1: are passed by an ambulance, lights flashing. We see construction
Speaker 1: teams working on the roads, which are very notably and
Speaker 1: better shaped. In the roads in Iraqi, Kurdistan, we see
Speaker 1: oil fields in operation, men and women with a K
Speaker 1: forty seven's manning checkpoints and waiting for the bus alongside
Speaker 1: one another. And to my right, as we rolled north
Speaker 1: to Comischelo, we see mighty trenches being dug to build
Speaker 1: more and more tunnels. Archways and billboards covered with the
Speaker 1: faces and names of Shahids, the martyrs and the war
Speaker 1: against Isis line the highway to every town we enter.
Speaker 1: They are always vividly colored, set on a background of
Speaker 1: bright green and revolutionary read. Many women on the street
Speaker 1: wear head scarfs and somewhere the full nikop which covers
Speaker 1: them from head to toe. But I also see a
Speaker 1: great number of women with their heads uncovered, girls walking
Speaker 1: to school with back straight and stacks of books held
Speaker 1: in the crook of their arms. Freedom of religion and
Speaker 1: freedom from it are both visible here. Food is in
Speaker 1: clear and ample supply. The markets we pass are bustling
Speaker 1: at least as much as those we see in the
Speaker 1: k r G there are numerous military checkpoints which do
Speaker 1: slow the speed of travel, but they're necessary to protect
Speaker 1: people from the ongoing threat of is As sleeper cells.
Speaker 1: These checkpoints are all manned by women and men of
Speaker 1: the SASH, the military police. Several of the Asaish we
Speaker 1: pass have patches on their shoulders that say salak jin Mabe,
Speaker 1: which means no life without our leader. The patches feature
Speaker 1: a silhouetted portrait of Abdula agolan Apo, the ideological founder
Speaker 1: of Rojava. I find this somewhat unset. The veneration of
Speaker 1: strong and singular leaders is always, you know, at best,
Speaker 1: a risky proposition. But I also can't help but notice
Speaker 1: that the Syrian regime and the ISIS flags that had
Speaker 1: once been painted over the walls and shutters of buildings
Speaker 1: in the towns we passed through. They haven't simply been
Speaker 1: replaced by YPG flags. Instead, they've been covered up by
Speaker 1: art paintings of flowers and clovers. The only political symbols
Speaker 1: that are on display everywhere are pictures of the men
Speaker 1: and women who died to build this place. We pick
Speaker 1: up Kabat from outside her home and she takes us
Speaker 1: to a nearby food stand for breakfast. We eat something
Speaker 1: that looks very much like a burrito, but with garlic,
Speaker 1: sauce and falafel inside. It is delicious. While we eat,
Speaker 1: we go over our schedule for the day. Before heading
Speaker 1: over here. Jacob sent me an NPR article about a
Speaker 1: judge named Amina who was working to build the legal
Speaker 1: code of this new autonomous region. The article was titled
Speaker 1: Revenge Is for the Weak Kurdish Courts in Northeastern Syria,
Speaker 1: A take on ISIS cases Now. The first part of
Speaker 1: that title is a quote from a Kurdish lawyer explaining
Speaker 1: why their system explicitly bans things like torture, the death penalty,
Speaker 1: and even life imprisonment. Amina is sited in it claiming
Speaker 1: that even Abu Baker al bug Dhatti, if tried and convicted,
Speaker 1: would only have been eligible for a twenty years sentence.
Speaker 1: Her hope is that he could be rehabilitated. This seems
Speaker 1: kind of crazy to me, and it seemed kind of
Speaker 1: crazy to Jake, but it was also really interesting. So
Speaker 1: we told about that we were interested in talking to
Speaker 1: Judge Amina, and she set up everything. We arrive at
Speaker 1: the courthouse around midday it's actually more of a combination
Speaker 1: courthouse jail, although it looks from the outside mostly just
Speaker 1: like a house with a large garden. When we enter
Speaker 1: the court, the first thing we see is a young
Speaker 1: man sitting in a chair. His eyes are covered by
Speaker 1: a black blindfold and his hands are bound in front
Speaker 1: of him. He sits facing the wall. It's later explained
Speaker 1: to me that the blindfolds are so many released prisoners
Speaker 1: will not be able to tell where they've been. Judge
Speaker 1: Amina and her colleagues are at constant risk of being
Speaker 1: murdered just for doing their jobs. Not only are they
Speaker 1: targets for ISIS sleeper cells, but as the architect of
Speaker 1: Roshava's new justice system, Judge Amina is a wanted criminal
Speaker 1: by regime controlled Syria. But char Alasad doesn't look super
Speaker 1: kindly on revolutionaries building their own law codes in his country.
Speaker 1: She chose to help make a new court system in
Speaker 1: her like country as sort of the the old regime
Speaker 1: was was pulling back. And I'm curious as to like
Speaker 1: as because she practiced law before the Civil war, what
Speaker 1: was it she wanted to see changed? Like when she
Speaker 1: thought about how she was going to like build a
Speaker 1: new system what were the changes she wanted to see
Speaker 1: instituted in the new system. Hobbat was the interpreter for
Speaker 1: all of our interviews, and we've brought in voice actors
Speaker 1: to represent some of our sources. But for now, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let Kabat summarize Judge Amina's answers. And fair warning,
Speaker 1: she's a fast talker. If you do have trouble understanding anything.
Speaker 1: On our website, the Women's War dot Com, we're going
Speaker 1: to have a PDF of the episode script and eventually
Speaker 1: all the episode scripts up for you to to access.
Speaker 1: So that's the Women's War dot Com. Um, here's Judge
Speaker 1: Amina talking through Kabad but wanted to She just said
Speaker 1: it's a pyramid. She means that the Syrian justice system
Speaker 1: is a top down sort of thing. All power flows
Speaker 1: from Assad to the population to be im people. She's
Speaker 1: saying that the Rojavan justice system takes place primarily between
Speaker 1: the people and each other, rather than having everyone follow
Speaker 1: laws dictated from someone or someone's up at the top.
Speaker 1: So a we are building from From talking through Kobad,
Speaker 1: Judge Amina explained to us that she and her colleagues
Speaker 1: were working to replace the old authoritarian vertical power structure
Speaker 1: they'd grown up under with a horizontal one. I don't
Speaker 1: think Judge Amina is an anarchist, but I suspect the
Speaker 1: justice system she helped to build would have met with
Speaker 1: Murray book Chain's approval. He believed that society needed to
Speaker 1: be altered in fundamental ways, but that taking power was
Speaker 1: not the way to do it. Power is the fundamental problem.
Speaker 1: Boction wrote this in his book Post Scarcity Anarchism. Quote.
Speaker 1: Power to the people can only be put into practice
Speaker 1: when the power exercised by social elites is dissolved into
Speaker 1: the people. Each individual can then take control of his
Speaker 1: daily life. If power to the people means nothing more
Speaker 1: than power to the leaders of the people, then the
Speaker 1: people remain an undifferentiated, manipulatable mass, as powerless after the
Speaker 1: revolution as they were before. So any way, for properties fighting.
Speaker 1: You'll notice she's using the word problems instead of the
Speaker 1: word crimes. I thought this was just sort of a
Speaker 1: translation issue at first, but over time it became clear
Speaker 1: that it wasn't. In her view, there are crimes and
Speaker 1: there are problems. A crime like an is as sleeper
Speaker 1: cell planning to murder a bunch of people that needs
Speaker 1: to be addressed by a bunch of folks with guns.
Speaker 1: But problems should not be solved by a bunch of
Speaker 1: folks with guns. They should be solved by communities at
Speaker 1: the neighborhood level. Society in Rojava is divided up into
Speaker 1: local communes representing a few dozen to a few hundred
Speaker 1: households each. These communes have a number of committees dedicated
Speaker 1: to solving different problems. A lot of issues that we
Speaker 1: tend to send and police to deal with, like domestic
Speaker 1: disturbances and the like, are instead handled by social committees.
Speaker 1: Only the most complex and ugly problems get escalated out
Speaker 1: of the committees and into the courts. The local communes
Speaker 1: are democratic structures and they include every member of the
Speaker 1: neighborhood committee. Members are elected by their neighbors and selected
Speaker 1: for their perceived level of wisdom and trustworthiness. A lot
Speaker 1: of older men and women, grandmothers and grandfathers, wind up
Speaker 1: in these positions. Now, law and order in Rojava is
Speaker 1: complicated by the unavoidable reality of tribalism. This part of
Speaker 1: Syria is filled with a number of very powerful tribes,
Speaker 1: and there are often blood debts going back decades between
Speaker 1: one tribe or another. The complicated nature of tribal politics
Speaker 1: means that any murder could potentially spawn a brutal series
Speaker 1: of reprisal killings that leave numerous people dead. When a
Speaker 1: murder like this occurs in Rojava, the police do the
Speaker 1: job you'd expect and arrest the killer, at least ideally,
Speaker 1: but the social committee also springs into action, and their
Speaker 1: job is to stop the violence from spreading. So we
Speaker 1: were starting to communicate with this. What happens next is
Speaker 1: a series of negotiations between the family of the victim
Speaker 1: and the family of the killer. The committee members act
Speaker 1: as mediators, gradually working out a way for both families
Speaker 1: to remain in the area without gunning each other down.
Speaker 1: Judge Amina tells us about one particular set of negotiations
Speaker 1: that took six months. At the end of the process,
Speaker 1: the arrangement was sealed with a feast, having a big
Speaker 1: public party where the family of a murderer and the
Speaker 1: family of his victim all hang out. That sounds weird,
Speaker 1: and it is weird, but it serves a purpose of
Speaker 1: making sure there is a large public show of both
Speaker 1: sides squashing the beef. That way, if either family attacks
Speaker 1: the other later, the whole community will know who broke
Speaker 1: the peace and broke their word are In the Rojavan system,
Speaker 1: violence is seen as a community problem as well as
Speaker 1: an individual problem. Judge Amina didn't consider justice to be
Speaker 1: achieved when a criminal was behind bars. She and the
Speaker 1: other architects of the system here thought it was equally
Speaker 1: important to try heal communities racked by violent crime who
Speaker 1: wanted to forgiveness existence. Rujava still has many of the
Speaker 1: same mechanisms of justice were familiar with in the United States.
Speaker 1: They have criminal courts in prisons, but the maximum sentence
Speaker 1: is twenty years, and the goal of incarceration is rehabilitation,
Speaker 1: not punishments. It's not about education. Our prisoners in every
Speaker 1: different communities in different ways, so they are prepared different
Speaker 1: they are educating. Judge Amina explained that the goal of
Speaker 1: her Java's prisons was too prepare to integrate the prisoner
Speaker 1: back into society without a murderous mind. I had troubled
Speaker 1: disagreeing with this on a moral level, but all the
Speaker 1: prisoners I had seen so far in the jail were
Speaker 1: suspected Isis fighters. The vast majority of her Java's prisons
Speaker 1: were occupied by captured isisman I lived through portions of
Speaker 1: the battle from Mosel, I talked to hundreds of people
Speaker 1: Syrians and Iraqis who suffered under Isis, the idea that
Speaker 1: these people could somehow be fixed with job training seminars
Speaker 1: ward with my desire to see them quickly and violently punished,
Speaker 1: I had trouble believing that people in Rajava, who had
Speaker 1: suffered much more from ISIS than I could ever imagine,
Speaker 1: would support de radicalization over punishment. And I told this
Speaker 1: to Judge Aminaret More. I want to want to do people.
Speaker 1: I asked Judge Amina about the prisoners we've seen on
Speaker 1: our way and the ones handcuffed to chairs and blindfolded.
Speaker 1: She assured me that the blindfolds and handcuffs would be
Speaker 1: removed once the prisoners were processed. It was just a
Speaker 1: matter of necessary safety. For the moment, it all sounded
Speaker 1: good enough, but of course, you know all I had
Speaker 1: to go on with me sitting in a room talking
Speaker 1: to a woman verifying how this entire justice system actually
Speaker 1: fun and is beyond my ability. It's larger work than
Speaker 1: one reporter can carry out. And I asked Judge Amina
Speaker 1: how she'd feel about international observers from the UN or
Speaker 1: Amnesty International coming into report on the justice system in Rojava.
Speaker 1: She said that she and her colleagues very much wanted
Speaker 1: the international community to come. This is consistent with other
Speaker 1: reporting I've seen on the courts in Rojava, and as
Speaker 1: with most things in this place, there's a really pragmatic
Speaker 1: explanation that goes along with the idealistic one. See, Rojava
Speaker 1: is quite literally under a gun right now. International recognition
Speaker 1: and the protection that legitimacy provides, that's a matter of
Speaker 1: life and death for these people. If the u N
Speaker 1: came in to observe their justice system, it also means
Speaker 1: the UN is here and they're not going to get
Speaker 1: bombed by the Turkish Air Force. Um So, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons they do that. To emphasize the
Speaker 1: openness of the court system. Judge Amina offered to take
Speaker 1: us on a tour of their facilities, and it was
Speaker 1: absolutely not a polished affair. We hopped downstairs and she
Speaker 1: threw open the door to an interrogation that was in process,
Speaker 1: and then beckoned for me to walk in. The first
Speaker 1: thing I saw in the room was a young man
Speaker 1: handcuffed to a chair sitting in front of a table
Speaker 1: with four people behind it and even mix of women
Speaker 1: and women. Three of the people are judges and one
Speaker 1: is an observer from the village the arrested man came from.
Speaker 1: This is the way terrorism charges are handled in Rojava.
Speaker 1: The judges were clearly in the middle of questioning the
Speaker 1: man when I barged in. We shared a long, awkward glance,
Speaker 1: and then they greeted me. The prisoner said nothing. On
Speaker 1: my way out of the room, my backpack flipped off
Speaker 1: the light switch and plunged the entire room into darkness.
Speaker 1: Everyone was very cool about it, but I felt like
Speaker 1: an idiot. I didn't, however, feel that what I was
Speaker 1: seeing was stage managed or set up in any way
Speaker 1: to impress me. Amina shows us everything we asked to see,
Speaker 1: including sales where prisoners weight. And I will not say
Speaker 1: these facilities are plush and luxurious. They look like a
Speaker 1: jail there, they're they're not a place you'd want to be,
Speaker 1: but they aren't, you know, filthy, dank or tortuous seeming either.
Speaker 1: I would say things are about as comfortable as you
Speaker 1: could expect them to be given the resources available. The
Speaker 1: willing us to be observed is so consistent and so
Speaker 1: pervasive that it's hard not to be convinced by it.
Speaker 1: We leave the court pretty impressed with what we've seen.
Speaker 1: We start to drive back into Kamichelo. As we drink
Speaker 1: lukewarm instant coffee and watch the road go by, three
Speaker 1: of us start to chat. Kabat tells us about one
Speaker 1: of Rojaba's less reported problems, people firing guns into the
Speaker 1: air and celebration. It's a major issue in Syria and
Speaker 1: across the Middle East. Since it's also an issue in Texas,
Speaker 1: where I hail from, Kabat and I bond over this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: shooting into the air as I can't, I can't. I mean,
Speaker 1: speaking as a man, I get what you want to
Speaker 1: It does sound fun. I know I want I love,
Speaker 1: but I know it would be fun. It's like says
Speaker 1: I was a kid jake, and I admit that as
Speaker 1: men were fundamentally driven to break things, sometimes mostly to
Speaker 1: see what it looks like men, we have like a
Speaker 1: destructive stream, like all men have a bit of like
Speaker 1: you want to grab the smash somethings. When we here
Speaker 1: from the Red we saw a couple of guys on
Speaker 1: a fifty cow shooting into a quarry. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fun. It's fun. Can guys, I'm not saying it's healthy.
Speaker 1: I'm just say something. It's something we do because we're dumb. Okay,
Speaker 1: I understand. It's not just the culture. Culture problems problem,
Speaker 1: a problem everywhere. There are men. God, when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, we used to take stones and we have
Speaker 1: like we have like glass phone boxes and we just
Speaker 1: smashed them, like no idea, why like ten years old?
Speaker 1: Like yeah, where the kids also they have this trend
Speaker 1: of destroying. Yeah, men, some of us we can't grow
Speaker 1: out joined this joint smashing things instead of building. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you really have because of that now destroyed because it's
Speaker 1: a oh yes, absolutely, we are absolutely like the kids are.
Speaker 1: Throughout the Syrian Civil War, the fighters of the YPG
Speaker 1: have been praised is probably the most ethical, least war
Speaker 1: crime armed force in the country. Kabbat credited some of
Speaker 1: this on the fact that both genders were present on
Speaker 1: the battlefield, the existence of the woman with next to
Speaker 1: them in religion. Yeah, this is the thing that's always
Speaker 1: prevented to act like that sometimes, like you know, when
Speaker 1: you are just around otherwise, as we re enter commischela,
Speaker 1: I take notes on the things. I see a smiling
Speaker 1: boy in a hoodie kneeling, a young woman in military
Speaker 1: garb grinning and looking at a colleague nearby in mid conversation,
Speaker 1: brightly colored pictures of Shahid's hanging over a traffic circle,
Speaker 1: a wall painted with the international symbol for recycling. Jake
Speaker 1: and I wanted to spend a day in Rocca, the
Speaker 1: former capital of the Islamic State, and go out on
Speaker 1: troll with an st F unit. Before we could do that, though,
Speaker 1: we'd have to collect the proper permissions, Alan drives us
Speaker 1: to an Assais base on the outskirts of Comischelow. We
Speaker 1: park outside of failings of nondescript one story white office
Speaker 1: buildings surrounded by a low wall dotted with guard posts.
Speaker 1: The inside of the facility reminds me more of my
Speaker 1: old high school in Plano, Texas than of anything. This
Speaker 1: feeling is reinforced after we're ushered into a waiting room
Speaker 1: that is filled with kids. Okay, not literally kids, but
Speaker 1: eighteen and nineteen year olds. They're all off duty, a
Speaker 1: sash taking a tea break before picking up their guns
Speaker 1: to go back on duty. Two of them are women.
Speaker 1: One wears a veil, the other does not. The remaining
Speaker 1: five or men, three of them have visible tattoos, including
Speaker 1: one of the women. Before heading here, I've been told
Speaker 1: it was unusual to see tattoos on people in this
Speaker 1: part of Syria, but this is apparently much less true
Speaker 1: for young folks here. The officer in charge is slightly
Speaker 1: older than the rest, perhaps in his mid twenties. He
Speaker 1: is also the most heavily tattooed of the bunch. I
Speaker 1: can see a hawk on his arm and words written
Speaker 1: across both of his forearms. He wears a T shirt
Speaker 1: that says black is the New Black. If he'd had
Speaker 1: boots instead of sneakers, he wouldn't have looked out of
Speaker 1: place at a punk show. I asked him if he
Speaker 1: knows any local tattoo artists. The line work on his
Speaker 1: inc is pretty good, and I decide then and there
Speaker 1: that while I'm in country, I want to get a tattoo.
Speaker 1: He gives Cobat the phone number of his guy, and
Speaker 1: I wonder fleetingly if this same hookup can maybe find
Speaker 1: us weed. But then I remember I'm technically talking to
Speaker 1: a cop. Instead, I use the opportunity to ask this
Speaker 1: young gender mixed group about genealogy and gender integration. I
Speaker 1: want to know how they feel about the changes that
Speaker 1: have recently been made. They are instantly awkward, giggling, and blushing.
Speaker 1: It was as if I had asked a group of
Speaker 1: American men and women at work, why do you all
Speaker 1: treat each other like people? Shortly after that, we're called
Speaker 1: in to talk with the SASH press officer and to
Speaker 1: square away the details of our trip to Rocca. When
Speaker 1: that's done, we pile back in the van and head
Speaker 1: home to Derek. Cobat asks me if I'm really serious
Speaker 1: about wanting to get a tattoo. I assure her I am,
Speaker 1: and that the only question is what it will be of.
Speaker 1: On our way back, Jake and I talk with Cobat
Speaker 1: about our thoughts on the interview with Judge Amina. One
Speaker 1: thing I was struck by is how many of the
Speaker 1: new structures in the Rojava legal system boiled down to
Speaker 1: groups of people sitting around and talking to one another.
Speaker 1: Cobat explains that this is a central facet of the revolution.
Speaker 1: From the beginning of this project, military units in the
Speaker 1: YPG and YPG engaged in what they called tech mill sessions,
Speaker 1: where squads would gather together after actions and discuss what
Speaker 1: had gone well and what haddn't. The word tech mill
Speaker 1: just means report, and tech mil sessions can be called
Speaker 1: by anyone in the military or civilian structures of Rojava.
Speaker 1: Most often tech mill is done at the end of
Speaker 1: a project. I found a write up by a foreign
Speaker 1: volunteer in Rojava, Philippe O'Keeffe. He explains that the ideological
Speaker 1: justification for this system is rooted in a critique of capitalism. Quote.
Speaker 1: Capitalist modernity does not foster equality nor mutual trust. It
Speaker 1: divides us and forces upon us as hyper competitive culture
Speaker 1: built upon internal and external deception and facades. In this system,
Speaker 1: criticism is not seen as a means by which we
Speaker 1: can improve our helps and each other, but rather as
Speaker 1: a means by which we can attack and destroy our competition.
Speaker 1: Our enemies are fellow humans. O'Keefe connects the tech milk
Speaker 1: system to one of the foundations of the Rojavan revolution.
Speaker 1: Have all. The word hall literally means friend and so
Speaker 1: havalti just means friendship. Essentially, quote, it is the idea
Speaker 1: that we work together, we help each other, we share
Speaker 1: everything from the tangible to the intangible. Not because we
Speaker 1: expect something in return, but simply because we are comrades,
Speaker 1: that we are humans living, struggling and experiencing life together,
Speaker 1: that we are sharing the same purpose of trying to
Speaker 1: advance the collective well being. It is the idea that
Speaker 1: we can trust and believe in each other and that
Speaker 1: we need not fear ulterior intention. By establishing the culture
Speaker 1: of Havalti as the basis of revolutionary life, we create
Speaker 1: the alternative environment and society conducive to constructive criticism and
Speaker 1: the means by which together we improve ourselves and the collective.
Speaker 1: This is critical to tech mil because it allows us
Speaker 1: to respectfully give criticisms and more importantly, except absorb and
Speaker 1: address the criticisms in an efficient manner, free of ego, fear, mistrust,
Speaker 1: or conflict. The technical system was initially just a thing
Speaker 1: for the military and civil administration, but over the years
Speaker 1: it started to spread into the home lives for a
Speaker 1: number of the families who are most devoted to the revolution.
Speaker 1: So they have this system of the community in the home.
Speaker 1: They have, you know, the same in differnce lines. You
Speaker 1: have it with the military, or they have it with
Speaker 1: each other. So each one of them have a rotation,
Speaker 1: to cook, to clean the house, to do, you know, shopping.
Speaker 1: They criticize each other at the same level, the children
Speaker 1: with the father with the mom. Now, this is all
Speaker 1: part of a broader trend and one of the things
Speaker 1: that interests me so much about Rojava. The fact that
Speaker 1: this place exists at all is due to the tenacity
Speaker 1: and the skill of the militias that defended it from isis.
Speaker 1: The people of Rojava have responded to this reality, not
Speaker 1: by seeding control of their lives to the militias, but
Speaker 1: by adopting what Kabbat calls a culture of self defense.
Speaker 1: We have this community is publicly at but self defense
Speaker 1: culture we haven't here. This is the way that we're
Speaker 1: going to protect ourselves for any stress. Whatever Americans wanted
Speaker 1: to be thrown all of the stuff. We start by ourself,
Speaker 1: We're gonna end up by ourself because we have this
Speaker 1: catch off self defense. So what they are doing, they
Speaker 1: are organized. You can't see all these different military inside
Speaker 1: the cities, plus the front lines and the army, plus
Speaker 1: that there is a society militaristic. You know, somehow there
Speaker 1: is the mamas and that's like you know, the the
Speaker 1: elderly men and women fifties up fifty sometimes like Grandma's
Speaker 1: you know, you can't see them. They get the training
Speaker 1: and they have their clashes during their during this critical situation.
Speaker 1: Always they are starting because I know everyone in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood say, we're they we're gonna start to make these checkpoints. Now.
Speaker 1: When she says clash, she means a collashf an a
Speaker 1: K forty seven? What about is talking about? Here are
Speaker 1: local networks of men and women, most of whom are elderly,
Speaker 1: who have taken responsibility for armed self defense of their
Speaker 1: communities onto themselves. You cannot believe it. It's not clash, No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's super real. Believe me. Look, I mean, and you
Speaker 1: haven't been in the like when the time, it's like
Speaker 1: any celebration, any thinks. So they have everyone just organized,
Speaker 1: starting from the neighborhoods whenever we passed there. And they
Speaker 1: are more strict than the normal size, to be honest.
Speaker 1: They are taken over responsibility under our fifties. So they
Speaker 1: are like doing those of the jet generations of the eighties,
Speaker 1: you know. So they are over me always just my
Speaker 1: eyes up and I just saw them with this elderly
Speaker 1: you know and have this clash, and they are super nice.
Speaker 1: It's true. Do you think for some of them that's
Speaker 1: probably like the first time in their lives as women
Speaker 1: have been allowed to have some kind of exactly and
Speaker 1: they are accepting, integrating, adapting. Now this all brings up
Speaker 1: the natural question how much honesty can we trust her
Speaker 1: about to express about this place, which is after all
Speaker 1: her home. When you're working as a journalist in a
Speaker 1: place like Iraq or Syria, your experience of the country
Speaker 1: is deeply colored by your fixer, their opinions and their relationships,
Speaker 1: their biases and their beliefs. Jake and I needed someone
Speaker 1: whose relationships with the SDF were good enough to get
Speaker 1: us access, but we were also worried about working with
Speaker 1: someone who was literally aligned with the powers that be
Speaker 1: in the region. As a journalist, you never want to
Speaker 1: work with a man, even if he happens to be
Speaker 1: a woman. Between their obsession with a delage alon and
Speaker 1: strident left wing political views, the military forces of Rojava
Speaker 1: have been accused of brainwashing their members. Patches saying no
Speaker 1: life without our leader did not exactly squash that worry
Speaker 1: from my mind, and we were certainly concerned with the
Speaker 1: possibility that habbat herself might wind up somewhere on that spectrum.
Speaker 1: What do you think about people that you know? Some
Speaker 1: people say, oh, they're just brainwashing everybody. What do you
Speaker 1: think about it? No, I mean you're gonna suggest something,
Speaker 1: you're gonna implement it, and if it doesn't work, if
Speaker 1: it's out of your nature, it will be clear the outcomes.
Speaker 1: It's it's proof it that it's everyone more happier, more
Speaker 1: feel value as a human beings. So which kind of
Speaker 1: brainwashing if it's not relevant to your you know, mind
Speaker 1: and and and even your feelings, it's deeper than just
Speaker 1: you know, brainwashing. Yeah, let's say people say there's a
Speaker 1: lot of criticism. Yeah, it's it's the no one oblished anyone.
Speaker 1: I mean brainwashing in a way like if it's on
Speaker 1: behalf of the community and they sit by their own eyes,
Speaker 1: you know, you feel it, you see it, you live it.
Speaker 1: Like my family they don't know. I go into the
Speaker 1: front side, but I go I'm going nuts because of anything.
Speaker 1: I like that. I can't find myself, part of me
Speaker 1: it's there. It's something you cannot even express it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's no wants it with me in full independence. I'm
Speaker 1: not a part of an institution. I'm doing this because
Speaker 1: I found myself there. The more we talked about this,
Speaker 1: the more Kabat began to share about herself and her
Speaker 1: own motivations for doing this work. There was an element
Speaker 1: of patriotism to it. The Rojavan revolution had made life
Speaker 1: better for people here in her eyes, and she supported that.
Speaker 1: But Kabat was also not anyone's zealot. You lived the
Speaker 1: commission on your whole life. No, my father, he is
Speaker 1: working in the oil fields, so he moved from different
Speaker 1: citiesen and so we are seven siblings, each one of us.
Speaker 1: But my other siblings, each one of them in a
Speaker 1: different city, some of them in the village and spropol commishially,
Speaker 1: some in hask in uh where else. Young village has
Speaker 1: four cities, which eangered her out seven houses, and now
Speaker 1: my parents are which is the city of the oil.
Speaker 1: And again the fact that Kabat lives alone is hugely significant.
Speaker 1: This is simply not done. Even given the revolutionary spirit
Speaker 1: that has overtaken Rojava. Young women tend to live with
Speaker 1: their families or communally in cooperative farms or military units
Speaker 1: like the White p J not alone. To just break
Speaker 1: this rules also of the community. That's for the woman
Speaker 1: to have a house, she had to get married and
Speaker 1: it will be the house of the man. For me.
Speaker 1: It's again we are struggling on the civil side as well,
Speaker 1: not just you, not to break all this outdates customs
Speaker 1: and traditions. So I said, okay, I'm gonna live by myself.
Speaker 1: I can't have a house without get married. And my
Speaker 1: mother she was like, no, it's shame, and how people
Speaker 1: are going to speak about us and this. Hey, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm fully independence woman. I don't need a man to
Speaker 1: have a house. I have a house and I have it.
Speaker 1: And then I can't see the reaction of the famous
Speaker 1: and I think, wow, like you want to we wish
Speaker 1: we can do the same. And I'm sure it's just
Speaker 1: you open you pad the way for the next generation
Speaker 1: next year after that. It's a bit super normal for
Speaker 1: the woman in framption to live by theirselves. Whether or
Speaker 1: not you trust about it is up to you and
Speaker 1: aimed to be a perfect judge of character or motivations.
Speaker 1: All I can say is that by the end of
Speaker 1: our first full day in Rojava, Jake and I were
Speaker 1: at least completely convinced of her sincerity. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we agreed or understood everything she believed. For one thing,
Speaker 1: Jake and I had both spent large chunks of our
Speaker 1: careers face to face with the bloody consequences of ices
Speaker 1: IS ideology, the idea that the Rojava and legal system
Speaker 1: supported some kind of forgiveness for these people. It seemed
Speaker 1: almost obscene to us. Well in my head, you know,
Speaker 1: as a Western, I even having like that, I've deserved
Speaker 1: that and don't deserved the period educating or whatever. Look
Speaker 1: at the Western it's completely different. The ISIS with the
Speaker 1: Western wants specifically that I, I, meand them. They are not,
Speaker 1: like the city, completely ideological. She's talking about the difference
Speaker 1: between foreign ISIS fighters and local ones, and this is
Speaker 1: a meaningful distinction. In Syria and in Iraq, a number
Speaker 1: of local supported ices for a period of time because
Speaker 1: quite frankly, they didn't have many other options. The night before,
Speaker 1: when we've been drinking with our friends, one of them
Speaker 1: had told us about arian rebel commander he embedded with
Speaker 1: a few times at the start of the civil war.
Speaker 1: That guy eventually wound up joining ISIS, not because he
Speaker 1: was ideologically drawn to Isis, but because all of his
Speaker 1: sons had died fighting the Syrian regime, and Isis was
Speaker 1: the only group who would give him more bullets and
Speaker 1: more guns to keep fighting the regime. Foreign fighters, the
Speaker 1: people who leave places like England or the United States
Speaker 1: to go fight for Isis, well, those are very different
Speaker 1: sorts of people, and Hubbat had no time for them.
Speaker 1: The lying that are like it's very clear like oh
Speaker 1: poor me, I didn't do anything else, just a cooking there,
Speaker 1: la la la. But it's very obvious like no, for those,
Speaker 1: I'm sure this program is still not gonna work. But
Speaker 1: for the Syrian because you are have this social approach,
Speaker 1: cultural approach, you know, and you check them as a
Speaker 1: human beings, and all of them, and even I met
Speaker 1: to Isis, they were in the jail Syrian from They said, like,
Speaker 1: when we have been in the front lines with the ISAAC,
Speaker 1: they lose part of you know, handicaps, they are losing
Speaker 1: their legs. But for the normal Syrians of Leans who
Speaker 1: got caught up in something bigger than themselves, I believe
Speaker 1: those men and women deserved another chance at life. This
Speaker 1: is a powerfully different attitude than the one I encountered
Speaker 1: most often when I visited the refugee camps around Mosel.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember when near the end of the
Speaker 1: fight again Mosel, I talked to a lot of people
Speaker 1: who like had been run out of like they've been
Speaker 1: tortured by us IS or something, and like we were
Speaker 1: talking about a refugee camp and they'd say something along
Speaker 1: the lines of and when I get back home, I
Speaker 1: know who I'm going to turn in to the to
Speaker 1: the Iraqi police, and like then they're going to get
Speaker 1: there's and then it'll be on the other foot. And
Speaker 1: it's like like you could you already see the cycle
Speaker 1: of violence starting up again, and it has with the
Speaker 1: Shia militias who have just been very brutal um and
Speaker 1: it's just gonna there's gonna be another Sunni uprising. There's
Speaker 1: going to be And like everything everyone in Mosel was
Speaker 1: like in another ten years, there will be more fighting
Speaker 1: on the sitting. Yeah, it's just gonna take a little
Speaker 1: bit of time. This is what we do on at
Speaker 1: this example, because as as that on islence attract more violence,
Speaker 1: we don't want this revenge, it's revenge, it's we don't
Speaker 1: want that. So when you you forgive them, you give
Speaker 1: them a chance. Let's see. Kabat spoke with deep passion
Speaker 1: about the importance of forgiveness and her fervent belief that
Speaker 1: radicalization and terrorism must be treated as social problems, as
Speaker 1: the result of flaws and the culture, rather than as
Speaker 1: individual problems a result of the terrorist in question just
Speaker 1: being a bad person. I'm sure to do a lot
Speaker 1: of Americans. This may sound like naive, hippy dippy nonsense,
Speaker 1: but Hobart is anything but naive to the consequences of terror. Now,
Speaker 1: my brother had been murdered by eyes Is like my brother,
Speaker 1: So I went to I'm always making the eyes Is
Speaker 1: never have a hit against them, and I don't feel that,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes I feel pitiful for them. Really, I
Speaker 1: feel like, oh my god, no, never even hey, do
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't even when I go to
Speaker 1: the Rose camp, so usually I know all the girls there.
Speaker 1: So I got to the action and I was like,
Speaker 1: I wanted to make a coffee. So I asked the
Speaker 1: eyes Is why she was. Canadia said how's your coffee?
Speaker 1: And she was like, what do you wanted to make
Speaker 1: coffee for me? And said yeah, And she was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. Since the years, no one you know,
Speaker 1: have they asked me this question and not for sure.
Speaker 1: We were going to have a coffee old woman together,
Speaker 1: you know, and then I said, and she was like,
Speaker 1: oh you're so sweet. You can't touch people where you humanity?
Speaker 1: I cannot say, like you devil lords of what the point?
Speaker 1: I don't have any And even I cried too much
Speaker 1: with her story. Well I cannot stop crying, like you know,
Speaker 1: we have to help you, like you know, I help
Speaker 1: many of them with the lawyers. There is international lawyers
Speaker 1: and always, like I started, sometimes they give me numbers
Speaker 1: or names. So I passed to the lawyers like help
Speaker 1: them because if we want to because if we wanted
Speaker 1: to stop this, do not repeat it again. If we
Speaker 1: wanted to repeat it again. The Sweden case, I remember,
Speaker 1: there is this very fair was switten isis uh you know,
Speaker 1: very famous on the Twitter and and they always make
Speaker 1: it calls for Islam things like that, and he have
Speaker 1: been kids and his wife also you have five or funds.
Speaker 1: So for me, I play a basic role in order
Speaker 1: to push the media this within India where highlighted that case,
Speaker 1: to push the politicians to kim and take those our
Speaker 1: fun Why because for me, all of them have been malnutrition.
Speaker 1: They were in the suffering, already have this. So if
Speaker 1: we didn't help them after a few years, we were
Speaker 1: going to have five jihadis instead of on. Syria has
Speaker 1: been at war now for almost a decade. Everyone is
Speaker 1: tired of bloodshed and killing. This exhaustion has driven Rojava's
Speaker 1: humanitarian policy towards ISIS prisoners at least as much as
Speaker 1: ideology has naivety is believing that more executions and more
Speaker 1: incarceration and more torture can possibly solve a problem like isis.
Speaker 1: How about Feelings on this were fully crystallized into has
Speaker 1: An eighteen when she watched the very last stronghold the Caliphate,
Speaker 1: a place called the Goose Fall. I went there to
Speaker 1: just because I had loose many friends, my brother, like
Speaker 1: I wanted to fil something victoria or whatever. No, there
Speaker 1: is no victory, all of us losing all of us.
Speaker 1: There is no victorian this just because it happened. We lost, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of us. Look to this mal nutrition babies of eyes,
Speaker 1: what they are just victims, you know, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are mal nutrition thousands of Look so why if
Speaker 1: some insane people wanted to destroy this world? We're not
Speaker 1: gonna for sure to all of us being said, no,
Speaker 1: we have to repair it. It's again someone destroying. You
Speaker 1: have to be, you have to bid. We have this ideology. Okay,
Speaker 1: I saw everything, all of there is something new, just
Speaker 1: no way. Near the end of the day, we crossed
Speaker 1: back into the rik home for one more night. On
Speaker 1: our way in we see some graffiti written on a wall,
Speaker 1: the Kurdish phrase that translates to we shall take revenge
Speaker 1: for the martyrs of the homeland. It's a sign that
Speaker 1: despite what Kabbat and Judge of Mina told us, not
Speaker 1: everyone here considers revenge to be for the week. This
Speaker 1: is not a place of unanimous voices, and in truth,
Speaker 1: I Rajava is truly democratic. That's what you'd expect, disagreement,
Speaker 1: pain and confusion over the issue of whether or not
Speaker 1: to forgive the people who fought to dominate them, just
Speaker 1: as there's deep confusion over the thorny question of gender equality.
Speaker 1: Our evening ended with a dinner at a prominent local
Speaker 1: restaurant and all women's cooperative that had been organized with
Speaker 1: help from the Women's Economic Development Committee. Projects like this
Speaker 1: are increasingly common in Rojava. A compromise between the realities
Speaker 1: of capitalism and leftist political theory. The food was incredible,
Speaker 1: and I'm not generally a fan of eggplant, Syrians do
Speaker 1: something with it that makes it taste almost meeting. It's
Speaker 1: just it's amazing. It was also incredible to see a
Speaker 1: large and prosperous business, and the chunk of the Middle
Speaker 1: East that we were in owned and operated and entirely
Speaker 1: managed by a collective of nine women who all share
Speaker 1: work and share profits. After dinner, Cabot and I sit
Speaker 1: down with one of the co owners and I asked
Speaker 1: just how this place got started? One on my name,
Speaker 1: She said, Municipal Council. There. It's one of the bottom
Speaker 1: up governing organizations that manages most daily life in Rojava.
Speaker 1: It took a lot of convincing to get some of
Speaker 1: the older men in the group on board with the
Speaker 1: idea that a woman run business would work, but eventually
Speaker 1: the municipal council decided to back the project and helped
Speaker 1: provide funding for it to get off the ground. After
Speaker 1: a few months, the co op was successful enough to
Speaker 1: stand on its own. Just kind of project and cooperative
Speaker 1: blankets run Bible and it's all run. Possible to her
Speaker 1: ten years ago before the road. You know, I didn't
Speaker 1: need a translator for that answer. We bid goodbye to
Speaker 1: about for the night, and Jake and I set out
Speaker 1: on a vain quest to buy beers. The bustling market
Speaker 1: streets of the recold many treasures, particularly cigarettes. But in
Speaker 1: the end we have to rely on a boy in
Speaker 1: our local motel to bias a case of beer. It's
Speaker 1: kind of the opposite of the way things work in
Speaker 1: the United States. Two adults asking a child to buy
Speaker 1: them alcohol. I pay about fifteen dollars for a dozen
Speaker 1: tall boys, and Jake and I go up on the
Speaker 1: roof to drink him in moderation, and me too mild excess.
Speaker 1: As I stumble, rather piste down the stairs towards our room,
Speaker 1: the hotel manager stops me. There's been a mistake, he explains,
Speaker 1: I've been overcharged for the beers. He gives me back
Speaker 1: like four or five dollars worth of Syrian money. Since
Speaker 1: I didn't really know the price of the beers to
Speaker 1: begin with, I never would have noticed the fact that
Speaker 1: I'd been overcharged. His honesty here is a small thing,
Speaker 1: but it surprises me. I'm used to a rack where
Speaker 1: hotels and bars understandably try to get every possible diame
Speaker 1: out of Western clients. Rujava so far has been filled
Speaker 1: with little moments like this, moments of shocking, honesty and
Speaker 1: compassion from a place that's been racked by war for
Speaker 1: a full third of my lifetime. There's this odd sort
Speaker 1: of assumption we have in the West, spread on by Hollywood,
Speaker 1: that war and violence must by necessity make people harder, colder,
Speaker 1: more ruthless, And I think the truth is more nuanced.
Speaker 1: War can harden the hearts of a culture and its
Speaker 1: people and turn them away from compassion, but it can
Speaker 1: also be the catalyst for something very different, a verdant
Speaker 1: bloom of compassion growing out from a field of blood.
Speaker 1: The Moory The Women's War is a production of I
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