Where Do the Kurdish Militias Go From Here?

In the dusty, dry town of Hasakeh, eastern Syria, commander Rohlat Afrin welcomes her visitors from behind a gray metal gate surrounding Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) military headquarters. Inside are lawns; not big, but green, neatly mowed, shaded by trees and without any of the litter that dominates the roadsides and fields across the region. Small groups of women fighters sit in the shade.

Afrin leads the YPJ, a Kurdish militia that celebrated its 12th anniversary this spring. Founded as the jihadists of ISIS began to occupy large swaths of Iraq and Syria while also targeting Kurdish-majority lands, the YPJ fought to protect women from imminent threats to their lives and dignity. In 2015, the YPJ became part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who played a critical role in the international coalition that ultimately defeated ISIS.

But the YPJ was also the protector of a revolutionary project that had been unfolding in the north and northeast of Syria since 2012. When then-president Bashar al-Assad withdrew his troops from Kurdish-inhabited areas to fight elsewhere in the country in the early days of the Syrian civil war, the Kurds took the chance to implement their highly local, decentralized version of democracy. Among its key components are respect for ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity as well as respect for women’s rights.  

The government embarked on a radical experiment in equality. All leadership positions were shared between a man and a woman, and a 40% goal was set for women’s representation in government positions. Child marriages and polygamy were banned, women and mothers attained more rights after divorce, and fierce measures were taken to address domestic violence. The YPJ helped to protect all of these gains. 

Now, Assad is gone, replaced by interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa. He led the HTS, a jihadist group. After Assad’s fall, the HTS was swiftly turned into the official Syrian army, with several other islamist groups merging into it. This raised alarm for women’s rights advocates and members of the YPJ. But the Kurds, including the YPJ, agreed this year to merge into the Syrian army.

Tensions between the SDF and the Syrian government increased in early August, and while direct talks in Paris between al-Sharaa and the SDF’s Mazlum Abdi have been cancelled, the deal between the two sides has not been called off. Both sides still have too much to lose. Afrin answered some urgent questions. (This discussion has been edited for brevity and clarity.)

Truthdig: Mazlum Abdi, the general commander of the SDF, of which the YPJ is a component, signed this agreement with interim-president al-Sharaa in March. Were you involved? 

Rohlat Afrin: I was present during the first meeting with al-Sharaa. I was there to let him know we are a pivotal part of the SDF and you cannot ignore us. When we founded the YPJ, it was to protect women and to protect Syria on behalf of all women and all Syrians. Now, a negotiation process has started [about how the integration must be implemented] and the YPJ is part of the military commission.

TD: What are your demands before integrating?

RA: The interim government wants to take the SDF members and the members of the groups within the SDF into the Syrian army as individual fighters. But we have 13 years of struggle behind us. We have our system of training, we have our command structures, we have our antiterrorism units. With all our experience, we want more impact on this army than integration as individuals.

What worries us is the new temporary constitution that was announced [just after the deal between Abdi and al-Sharaa was signed]. It was totally opposite the general points that were mentioned in the deal, which included representation and participation in the political process for all Syrians. It increased our doubts about the government’s approach, which didn’t take the peoples’ opinions and women’s opinions into account. This increased the fear of women. 

In the conference in which the newly formed army was announced, one of the murderers of women got a high rank. He was responsible for the 2019 murder of Hevrin Khalaf [a prominent Kurdish politician]. The Minister of Defense has also committed crimes. There is one woman in the cabinet, but she works within the patriarchal mindset.

What they do is present the power of the state without inclusivity. We fought against ISIS, and this struggle is in the DNA of the SDF as a whole. We will insist on real integration.

TD: But why would you want to integrate into the army of such a state? 

RA: We don’t only want to integrate into the army. We struggle to integrate into it. This is our most important struggle now. We are owners of the land too. We are part of the SDF, but as YPJ we have our own role to play. Our willpower gives us the self-confidence to strengthen our position. We see that it is impossible to rule Syria with this mindset [of the interim-government]. We witnessed massacres on the Syrian coast [of Alawites, by groups that are supposed to be under the Syrian army’s control], and there are many such massacres in the history of the world. [Shortly after this interview, similar massacres happened in Syria’s south against the Druze community.] 

After these massacres, Syrians contacted us and asked about our system of self-defense. People become more conscious. This is what we aspire to be: a role model for self-protection for all Syrian women, for all Syrians. Everybody is in need of a secure life, everybody has suffered a lot.

TD: But we don’t see a change in al-Sharaa’s approach, do we?

RA: What we understood from our meetings with al-Sharaa is that he says: ‘Okay, so far you did good, now go home and we’ll take over.’ But we don’t accept that. He didn’t shake my hand, but he talked to women, so we can see this as a kind of progress.

TD: Aren’t you just stalling for time? Is it your calculation that interim president al-Sharaa doesn’t last in his position till the end of the year, and are you just trying to hold out until then, to see what comes next? 

RA: No, it is al-Sharaa who is buying time. He acts in contrast to the March agreement and that approach is not solid ground to build Syria’s future on. We want to decentralize. Europe has decentralized systems, why couldn’t we have it too? It depends on al-Sharaa how long he remains in power. If he continues his centralist way of thinking and puts murderers in positions of power, it will be problematic. But al-Sharaa is a pragmatic man. He has to think for himself and not import ideas from elsewhere.

TD: Are you talking about Turkey? After all, Turkey gave a green light for the HTS’s offensive to topple Assad and has supported the HTS for years. And U.S. President Donald Trump could decide to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria, which could open the way for a Turkish offensive against the Kurds. Doesn’t this all worry you? 

RA: Turkey’s President Recep Erdoğan has said that anyone who wants to break up Syria will find Turkey standing in their way. He was referring to us. But we don’t want to break up Syria, we want decentralization. And yes, we have concerns. No stability has been achieved yet, and ISIS could benefit. Of course, the SDF fought against ISIS, and Turkey helped ISIS. We have no guarantees that Turkey won’t attack us. But we insist on one thing: There must be one democratic Syria.

TD: The longer we talk, the more I get the idea that you don’t strive to merge into the Syrian army, but that you want the Syrian army to merge into the SDF and adopt its vision of local self-government and self-defense. Is this what you mean with “real integration“?

RA: (Smiles) 

TD: Do you really think this is possible? 

RA: If no external interventions occur, we trust our mindset, we trust our goals and we can really benefit from this process. This will happen with women’s leadership, and we have no doubts. You know, if you put a stone in a river, like we did, no flooding can remove it from its place.