When we arrived in Rojava, the sun was shining and we had finally made it after a long journey. In the days that followed, we met many very inspiring women who told us about their revolutionary work. They gave us çay and sweets and their complete trust.
Early in the morning we drove to Raqqa to stay there for a few days. Until seven years ago, the city was still the center of Daesh (ISIS), which is why the visit was marked by different emotions for all of us. The destruction and the consequences of the violence are still visible in the city and the friends’ memories are full of pain about the atrocities they experienced. During our stay in this liberated city, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an offshoot of Al-Nusra, advanced towards Aleppo.
A few days later, we visited Rojava University to attend an extraordinary meeting with friends from the Jineoloji faculty. The sun was shining on the campus and the students greeted us as we walked past. As we entered the dark lecture hall, we saw the first teary faces.
The Şehba region, which is currently under attack by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA) built up by Turkey, is home to tens of thousands of internally displaced people who had to flee from Turkish-occupied Afrin. Many young people came to Qamislo to study at Rojava University and left their families in Şehba. The fear they are facing now is a familiar one. They know what fundamentalists and the Turkish state are doing to them and their families and all Kurds because they have already experienced it.
“The conflicts here are also the result of globalized imperialism and colonialism and therefore we can only organize against them internationally. As feminists, we want to express our solidarity with the people in Rojava and Syria, with the self-defense forces, the courageous women who have been defending themselves for centuries and have been fighting for a better tomorrow for all of us. We will continue this struggle everywhere and forever.” With these words, we tried to express our solidarity to the students. But the fear for their families cannot be taken away from them. After the event, we joined the students at a demonstration denouncing the current attacks. Many people came together to transform the fear for their families and the grief over another painful attack into anger and hope.
Everyday life goes on here. The children play soccer in the streets and the women gather in the villages to educate themselves about patriarchal violence. They are familiar with the war, as the region has been in a permanent state of war for decades. In the small moments we feel the tension about the situation. Increased security checks, tired faces and silence where before there was laughter. Because what is happening at the moment can change everything. The Autonomous Administration appeals to the international community: “Stop this aggression! Otherwise, a new form of Islamist terrorism will establish itself, which will lead to major humanitarian disasters, pose a threat to Syria and have serious regional and global consequences.”
We have seen on our delegation an indescribable strength in the people and structures in Rojava who now have to defend themselves together against Islamist forces, fascism and war.
This strong will and the impressive perseverance of the people we met here has helped to liberate Raqqa from Daesh, the city to which the first evacuees from Şehba are now being brought.
This shows us once again that the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria must be defended as a revolutionary project. For a liberated, free and democratic society!
Jin Jiyan Azadî!
