The Water for Rojava Committee contacted our friends in Aboriya Jin, the women’s economy committee of Kongra Star Women’s Movement in North and East Syria. We wanted to express our solidarity in the wake of five days of large scale attacks on infrastructure and the means of life across the region by Turkey 5-9 October 2023, and to find out how these attacks had affected the work of Aboriya Jin and other democratic economy work and cooperatives in Rojava.
The following messages are English translations of the voice messages we received in response. We are publishing this correspondence on International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict, 6 November, 2023.
“There were attacks everywhere and we were facing difficulties in finding people to bring to the cotton harvesting, because now is the time for that. In Derbesîyê, five women workers were injured from the mixed gender economy structure because of the attacks, because they also attack these kinds of projects and we are struggling to find workers for the harvest.
Our situation is not great. People are facing attacks every day. The situation is really devastating, but it is our duty to resist.
As you know, now is also the time for planting a lot of seeds like wheat and lentils, but we are facing difficulties because a lot of places like water and energy stations have been bombed. Especially if you remember our greenhouses in Tirbespî, this is the time to do a lot of planting there but the lack of electricity has a big negative impact on that.
We as Aboriya Jin did not stop our work, we are continuing. We are used to these kinds of situations, we have been in these situations for years now and we will not stop our work.”
