Defending Life and Understanding the Reality of War
Andrea Wolf Institute, Academy of Jineolojî
We are living in a time of struggle, in which the stars are resisting the darkness, that wants to swallow their light. We are living a struggle, in which life is being strangled and at the same time vibrantly demands its freedom. We are living in the midst of the Third World War, in which, imperialism, nationalism, and religious fundamentalism, threaten and attack life everywhere. The current historical period is characterized as a war against women, which tries to hold our lives hostage and is empowered by global power relations. One knot of this war lies in the Middle East and with a center in the mountains and plains of Kurdistan. Since the beginning of this year, with the ongoing aggressive attacks against the Rojava Revolution and the self-administrated regions of North/East Syria, this war against life and freedom has reached a new form and expression.
Who feeds the war?
The war we are experiencing now is not a new war. It is a war that has been waged since patriarchy first appeared. First and foremost this is a war of mentality with the democratic forces, with society centred around women, holding the line of freedom and the patriarchal state aimed at destruction. DAESH can be understood as one concentration of the violent state mentality. The aims of creating one flag, one colour, one way of being, is a call to violently destroy life. It is the same mentality as the hegemonic forces of nation states, which subsume all identities into one. The war in Rojava that is happening now is not only a coalition of jihadist but of global hegemonic forces: it is not a civil war but a brutal extension of the third world war.
On January 20th 2026, Tom Barrack, as US Special Envoy for Syria, openly declared that the purpose of an alliance with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has expired. While HTS forces are unifying with Turkish’s militia and actively liberating ISIS prisoners Tom Barrack articulates the opportunist motives of the US in a very open and contradictory way: “Syria now has an acknowledged central government that has joined the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, signaling a westward pivot and cooperation with the US on counter-terrorism. This shifts the rationale for the US-SDF partnership: the original purpose of the SDF as the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground has largely expired, as Damascus is now both willing and positioned to take over security responsibilities, including control of ISIS detention facilities and camps.”
The day after, a video was spread on the internet: a man waving an ISIS flag standing on the top of the entrance of the city of Raqqa. The former capital of the caliphate is again veiled in violence, destruction and death. While french President Macron, who is also part of the coalition of counter-terrorism, and NATO’s general secretary Mark Rutte declared to stand in the line of the US regarding Syria, the forces of the Syrian Transitional Government succeeded to open prisons in the area of the Self-Administration, which was containing ISIS prisoners since the liberation of the land in 2017.
The Syrian Transitional Government is part of the project of reorganization of the Middle East, which is led by the US and western forces, as well as Britain, Turkey and EU are continuing the line of massacre that the people in North-East Syria are living through. Just days after the massacres in Aleppo began, Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission President, bowed and promising the exorbitant amount of 620 million dollars to the Syrian transitional government. This is not a coincidence. Genocide and war are not exceptions in the way nation-states act, but indeed, are inherent and integral tradition. We must continue to understand the current situation on a geopolitical level, but ideological clarity and understanding about what is being attacked right now is also required, as our defense is built upon precisely this.
Who feeds the world?
Since the revolution in Rojava and North/East Syria a process of rebuilding trust in humanity has been taking place. The people have taken back their dignity, which was heavily attacked by the Ba’ath regime and other terrorist forces, like ISIS. It is a process of building bridges between peoples, which have given themselves a model of self-government – different to the states model – and are becoming a united society. Following the paradigm of democratic modernity, the proposal of a democratic nation has become material reality. This reality formulates a way of governing based on unity in differences, solidarity and defense of the communal society against the attacks of capitalist modernity, the state and its mentality.
A new way of organizing life has been implemented and a free mindset has flourished. Agricultural cooperatives have been established, communal and ecological methods for managing energy, water and resources have been developed, new democratic institutions for restorative justice have been created and many research and study centers for history and languages began. Especially through women’s initiatives, educational methods focused of liberation have been developed and new sciences such as Jineolojî have become foundational in women understanding themselves. With profound ideological significance this war is attacking a revolutionary approach to life, a culture and a whole mentality.
Since the 6th January, when mercenary groups of the Syrian transitional government and the Turkish stateattacked the self-administrated neighborhoods in Aleppo, Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh, the reality of democratic institutions and especially the institutions of women werestrongly attacked. The women’s library in Aleppo dedicated to Ş. Nagihan Akarsel was protected by our friends of Jineolojî for days, until they were forced to flee and the library was set on fire by the enemy. The women’s commune of Aleppo, which had made its principled stand and took up a vanguard role in the resistance, was attacked heavily. In the mostly Arabic populated cities of Raqqa and Tabqa, women in the last decade since the liberation from ISIS, have organized themselves, struggling for their liberation in communes and councils, and formed the women’s gathering “Zenobia”. As Andrea Wolf Institute we met the women of Zenobia in the last months and in order to give meaning to their memory and learn from their collective experience. Our conversation in the form of an interview is now available to be read. They told us how being organized as women for them means struggling against all norms and traditions, that were left deep within society after the occupation of ISIS. Thousands of revolutions happened everyday, while women got to know their strength, their thought and will. This led to thousand revolutions everyday in the society, as they faced what it means to live.
When Raqqa was attacked and taken by the Syrian Transitional Government in the last days, the women that had been active in the institutions of women’s liberation, as Zenobia, as well as women in co-chair positionsor working in councils and associations, schools or cultural worksare under a big threat. As we write this we are unsure wether everyone is safe. As in Aleppo, the centers of women’s liberation were burned down, as these gangs activate a flood of blood and destruction. It’s not the first time that Zenobia’s centers are being attacked: last year, during the global woman campaign with the slogan “With the unity of women, we build a free, democratic, decentralized Syria”, the Zenobia center in Abu Hammam near Deir ez Zor, was set on fire by a fascist gang. While the exclusion of women from participation in decision-making processes is one of the deepest manifestations of the crisis in this region, the biggest effort to change this comes from all the women’s structures, that are opening the doors of women’s houses and showing them that there is place for them.
The work of the women’s commune starts where connection and relations between women are created and women get to know themselves, their dreams, will and strength. Women’s thought has been suppressed and devalued for ages, which impacts the possibility to develop a mentality that refuses the master-slave hierarchy of patriarchy, state and capitalism. Without free thought, creating free life stays impossible, as the way we think changes and creates the world in which we live in. A society where women are aware of themselves, trust their own gender and find organized base in unity in a democratic and communal form, is a healthy society. And a healthy society, like a healthy organism in nature, means to have a strong communal self-defense and the ability to create and enjoy “the art of freedom”: democratic politics.
The Democratic Society is the political program of this period. It does not target the state. The politics of the Democratic Society is democratic politics. The commune itself is a democratic commune. It would be mistaken to separate these notions from one another. The communal society is democratic.
(Abdullah Öcalan’s perspective for the 12th PKK Congress)
As the friends of Zenobia were writing last year after the attack: “they can destroy our spaces, but not our will. Such attacks will never break the determination of women fighting for freedom and a democratic society”. This time, the attack was not an isolated case, but part of a violent war, led by forces of a mentality that is opposing the line of the commune and women, opposing the line of life. This war, these attacks, this violence – it is not about oil or land – it is about the subjugation of women against their liberation. This is what we mean when we say it is an ideological war, a war about what it means to live, a war led by an enemy that is thousands of years old, and a war that we have been resisting and fighting for thousands of years.
This enemy is now again spreading and imposing black veils among the women in Raqqa, in order to impose its truth and destroy the possibility for a free life. This is not only a threat that puts the life of society in danger, it’s torture and an attempt to kill society. How can a society, that lives under the banner of a single imposed truth and is not free to develop its own ethics and culture – a society in which women are obscured and imprisoned – be accepted? And even, if we try to think in the terms the hegemonic powers are using, speaking about a plan of reorganization of the Middle East, how can peace be built, or a solution be discussed, if it’s based upon a degradation of the value of life, and is built upon a murdered memory? This cannot be accepted.
Power feeds mainly on lack of memory.
(Nagihan Akarsel)
When the city of Raqqa was liberated from ISIS in 2017, women threw away and burnt their black veils that had been imposed on them, embraced and kissed the YPJ fighters and together mourned their daughters and brothers, that had been murdered during the long-standing occupation. “We dedicate the liberation of Raqqa to all the women of the world.” YPJ wrote in their announcement. And after a long dark night, the sun was rising bright. In Tabqa, a city in the same Euphrates area, women built a statue at the entrance of the city and danced around it celebrating the new symbol of freedom and the liberation from ISIS. The face of the statue is symbolically the one of Ş. Rojbin Arab, a young Arab woman born in Lebanon who joined the liberation struggle of the Kurdish Freedom Movement and gave her life for it. The clothes she wears are those of the YPJ, a symbol of women’s liberation, defense and the unity of women in the struggle against the mentality of patriarchy, of nation-states and all the oppressive powers.
On January 18 this year, that statue was torn down by a few dozen men raising their fingers in the sign of the Turkish fascist organization “Grey wolves”, proud of the violence they are capable of, even on a symbolic level. In order to again conduct and dominate women, they need to exterminate proofs and collective memory about Arab women struggling side by side with Kurdish women. Again, we are touching the memory of society and talking about culture. Culture is, in fact, the world of meaning, the expression of societies mentality in art and science and its ability to produce new social and creative acts. It is through culture that society lives, recovers the values of its traditions, creates new ones and allows them to settle, as they are passing from hand to hand between generations. This enemy, with long historical existence as patriarchal dominant mentality of the killer cast, can burn women’s communes, can destroy our statues, torture us and even cut the braids of our fighters and present them as war trophies, but these atrocities won’t be enough to destroy the historical line of women and the commune, which exists since the beginning of humanity and neither will it be enough to stop this revolutions will for freedom.
The line of the state and the line of the commune.
In a society that self-administrates its living, meaning is central and is the base of living together communally. If meaning is missing there can be no ethics, and without ethics, what life can there be? Rebertî, Abdullah Öcalan, reminds us, that the question to ask for encouraging revolutions is not anymore What to do?, but How to live? If the social meaning of life is missing, this question will stay without solution. The revolution in Rojava is a revolution of meaning. With a very strong ethical line, politics become the art of freedom and not away to manipulate society. As Reber Apo said in his first video message from Imrali in July 2025, “politics knows no vacuum”, which means every lack of meaning is an open door for the enemy, to open a way for mistrust to penetrate the moral of people and a reason to lose unity.
Society is a communal reality based in the commune. All attempts to govern society with policies that moves towards destruction of communality is simply an attempt to kill society: This is not politic, this is war. It’s no accident that right now the leader of the freedom movement is, after long years of total isolation, speaks to his people and movement by insisting on the line of the democratic nation and the commune that all the big international and hegemonic powers are now working to dissolve. What is happening right now, is an attack on the democratic nation, whose essence is communalism and whose foundational unit is the commune of women.
The nation-state is contrary to socialism, it corrupts it. For this reason, we reversed not only the idea of the nation-state but also the goal of establishing one. In its place, we proposed the democratic nation. Our perspective for this new period is centered on the reconstruction of society on the basis of the democratic nation, eco-economy, and communalism. We now face the responsibility of developing the conceptual and theoretical framework required for this reconstruction to take root philosophically, ideologically, and practically within the fabric of society.
(Abdullah Öcalan’s perspective for the 12th PKK Congress)
If we try to look beyond these massacres, we can see that these forces are following the old and well-know line of the state, of the killer cast, that reproduces itself as a parasite, stealing and killing the life of society. On a ideological level, the hegemonic forces are pushing the nationalistic line – also for the Kurdish people: They are trying to manipulate the will of society, with proposing a fake-possibility of fake-freedom. This is done with pushing division on an ethnic base, dividing Kurds from Arabs and “normal and good” Kurds – the ones that want a nation-state – from “terrorist and dangerous” Kurds – the ones that are organizing them self autonomously, and follow the way of struggle against the state and the patriarchal mentality.
Coherently the Kurdish nationalistic forces, are now promoted, trying to convert the self-government, the self-defense and self-organization of society in the mentality and structure of a state on the basis of ethnic and cultural division. The proposal made by Al-Jolani to SDF General Commander Mazloum Abdi on the 18th of January, of “recognizing Kurdish cultural and linguistic rights, resolving civil issues and property restitution”, while leading genocidal attacks can exactly be seen in this line. Can a society that screams Yek yek yek gelê kurd yek e (one one one the kurdish people are one) – while breaking through the state border between the Syrian and Turkish territory, and taking down the Turkish flag from the pole, be fooled like this? No. There’s no vacuum that they can fill in this way. The old strategy of divide and conquer, is what all the dominant powers have used since the beginning of the first oppressive system- patriarchy. They are now using HTS, as well as ISIS, as tools to put this strategy in practice.
The US pretends to play a role of mediator, when the situation touches its highest peaks. To let the US mediate between democratic, socialist and jihadist, fundamentalist forces means, not only to be ready to accept a dirty peace and to move on the level of diplomacy, but also that everything reached will be used for them too. A commander in YPJ, Nesrin Abdallah, declares, while defending the city of Kobane for another time against ISIS: “We believe that even the dirtiest peace is better than war. Ours is a revolution that wants peace, an agreement that guarantees rights and stability. But all this can only be achieved through resistance.”
To organize the Middle East on a communal and regional confederalist base is not only a proposal, but a clear necessity. After more than 10 year of living in a democratic, socialist and revolutionary system, a revolutionary culture – a revolutionary mentality – is alive and passing generation from generation and will not see an end.
We are the children of people who have paid a heavy price for years; surrendering in the face of those sacrifices is impossible. That is why our people’s trust in us has always been unwavering, and we will be worthy of our people’s stance and resistance. (…) We will carry forward the legacy of dozens of comrades who fell as martyrs due to the betrayal of international powers in the areas we liberated. This is our promise to our people. Believe in your children, believe in your fighters. Victory will belong to our people. Our people will live with dignity among the peoples of the world. There is no option but victory.
(Message from the YPJ forces resisting in Heseke, 20th January 2026)
As the children of the ones that where struggling before us, we are continuing the struggle to live a free life and in this struggle there can only be victory.