The Daughters of Kobani

The Daughters of Kobani Plot Summary

Introduction

In the fight against ISIS in Syria, an extraordinary group of Kurdish women warriors defied all expectations. As ISIS swept through the Middle East, imposing their ruthless vision of female subjugation, these women picked up rifles and stepped onto the front lines to battle one of history's most brutal terrorist organizations. They weren't just fighting to defeat ISIS militarily; they were waging a revolutionary war of ideas - challenging the notion that women should be enslaved, rather than leading combat units against those who would enslave them. This remarkable story reveals how war unexpectedly created an opening for radical gender equality in the most unlikely corner of the world. Through the eyes of brave commanders like Azeema, Rojda, Znarin, and Nowruz, we witness how the Kurdish women's protection units (YPJ) not only fought ISIS street by street and house by house, but simultaneously built a political vision where women's leadership and equality stood at the center. Their battle represents a profound historical confrontation between two opposing worldviews: ISIS's medieval vision of female enslavement versus the Kurdish women's revolutionary vision of female emancipation. For anyone seeking to understand how military conflicts can sometimes lead to profound social transformations, or how determined women can change the course of history against overwhelming odds, this account provides a powerful testament to courage, vision, and the unexpected paths toward liberation.

Chapter 1: Kurds Rising: From Oppression to Self-Defense (2004-2013)

The seeds of the Kurdish women's military rise were planted in March 2004, when a soccer match in the Syrian Kurdish town of Qamishli erupted into widespread protests. What began as rival fans taunting each other quickly escalated when Syrian security forces opened fire on Kurdish spectators, killing over two dozen unarmed civilians. The incident sparked the largest Kurdish uprising against the Syrian regime in decades, with protests spreading across Kurdish regions for nearly two weeks before the government crushed the rebellion with tanks and mass arrests. For young Kurds like Azeema, a former volleyball star with a commanding presence, and her quieter but equally determined friend Rojda, the 2004 events were transformative. They witnessed how their people were brutally suppressed simply for expressing their identity, and crucially, how disorganized and defenseless they were against regime violence. "We asked these people to take on this fight. It was our fight, and Europe's, and all of the international community's," noted a later U.S. diplomat. "But we put almost exclusively on their shoulders this burden." The Syrian Kurds had long suffered under the repressive policies of the Assad regime. As Syria's largest ethnic minority at roughly 10 percent of the population, Kurds faced systematic discrimination - forbidden from teaching or publishing in their language, denied citizenship through deliberate government policies, and prevented from celebrating their cultural holidays. The regime's "Arab cordon" policy had even confiscated Kurdish lands along the Turkish and Iraqi borders, replacing Kurdish inhabitants with Arab settlers. When the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, Kurdish leaders recognized a strategic opportunity to organize for self-protection. They established the People's Protection Units (YPG) to defend Kurdish areas from both the regime and extremist groups emerging in the chaos. By 2012, as Assad's forces withdrew from northern Syria to fight elsewhere, Kurdish areas came under their own control for the first time in modern history. For these emerging Kurdish forces, the ideology of Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), provided intellectual foundation. Though jailed in Turkey since 1999, Ocalan's evolving philosophy emphasized that Kurdish liberation and women's emancipation were inseparable. "The 5,000-year-old history of civilization is essentially the history of the enslavement of woman," Ocalan wrote. "Consequently, woman's freedom will only be achieved by waging a struggle against the foundations of this ruling system." In April 2013, the women fighters who had been serving within male units took the extraordinary step of forming their own all-female military force - the Women's Protection Units (YPJ). Created on Ocalan's birthday, these women would fight under their own command, answerable to female leaders rather than male ones. Men didn't enthusiastically support the idea at first, but as Rojda argued, "Why should men take credit for our work? Women already have proven themselves in battle. They should know they have strength and bravery within them." This bold step would prove fateful when, just a year later, a new and terrifying enemy appeared on their doorstep.

Chapter 2: Women Warriors: The Birth of YPJ in Northern Syria

Between 2012 and 2014, as Syria descended deeper into civil war, the Kurdish regions in the north were undergoing a remarkable transformation. With Assad's forces withdrawn to fight elsewhere, Syrian Kurds established their own governance structures in a de facto autonomous region they called Rojava ("land where the sun sets"). In this political laboratory, women weren't just participating - they were leading. The YPJ's formation in April 2013 represented a watershed moment in the history of women in warfare. Unlike Western militaries where women still faced restrictions on combat roles, the YPJ placed women on the front lines from its inception. Commanders like Nowruz, a disciplined, calm leader who had once dreamed of becoming a doctor, taught newer recruits like Znarin not just tactical skills but a revolutionary outlook. As Nowruz explained to her fighters: "We are not just fighting for ourselves, but for humanity." The women who joined came from diverse backgrounds but shared similar experiences of patriarchal restrictions. Znarin had been denied education by her uncle, who believed girls shouldn't attend school. Later, when she found love, the same uncle insisted she marry his son instead. For her and many others, joining the YPJ represented not just military service but personal liberation. "I don't regret the sacrifices I have made," Nowruz would later reflect. "I love my people and children; I don't want them to live in the painful life that I lived in." The YPJ's military development accelerated through 2013 as they faced increasingly deadly confrontations with jihadist groups. Their December 2013 "balance sheet" reported that "clashes throughout the year also left 379 members of the YPG and YPJ dead." Far from deterring recruitment, these losses strengthened the women's resolve. The YPJ trained intensively, learning weapons handling, tactical movement, and battlefield medicine, while simultaneously studying the feminist and democratic theories that underpinned their movement. Politically, the Syrian Kurds were establishing revolutionary governance structures. Their "Charter of the Social Contract," enacted in January 2014, guaranteed gender equality, mandated 40 percent women's representation in all governing bodies, and established women's councils in every town. Women like Ilham Ahmed and Fauzia Yusuf, who had long been activists, now found themselves helping to craft governance documents that placed women's rights at the center. "If we are not going to protect women's rights during the revolution," Fauzia insisted to male colleagues who urged moderation, "we certainly aren't going to protect them afterward." As 2014 began, few outside observers paid attention to this political and military experiment unfolding in northern Syria. The world's eyes were focused on the Syrian regime's brutal campaign against rebels and the rise of jihadist groups. But events would soon thrust the Kurdish women warriors onto the global stage in a confrontation that would test everything they had built.

Chapter 3: Defending Kobani: The First Major Stand Against ISIS (2014)

The summer of 2014 marked ISIS's ascendance to global infamy. In June, the extremist group shocked the world by capturing Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, sending hundreds of thousands fleeing. ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the establishment of a "caliphate" spanning territories in Iraq and Syria. By August, ISIS had perpetrated genocidal horrors against the Yazidi minority in Sinjar, massacring men and systematically enslaving, raping, and trafficking women and girls. For the women of the YPJ, ISIS represented the embodiment of everything they were fighting against - an ideology that placed women's subjugation and enslavement at its very core. When ISIS turned its attention to the Kurdish town of Kobani in September 2014, the stage was set for an existential confrontation between these opposing visions. "We will fight to the last person," Kurdish fighters scrawled on a basement wall in Kobani, a declaration that would be tested to its limits. The battle for Kobani began on September 15, when ISIS launched a sophisticated combined arms attack using tanks, artillery, and recoilless rifles. The extremist group had thousands of experienced fighters, many veterans of conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere. They were armed with American weapons captured from the Iraqi military in Mosul. By contrast, the Kurdish defenders had only AK-47s, a handful of rocket-propelled grenades, and limited ammunition. Azeema, now commanding a sector of the city's defenses, found herself leading several hundred fighters against a much better-equipped enemy. "If you asked any of her sisters and brothers to describe her when she was young, none of them would have included the word patient," but now patience became a survival skill as she positioned snipers, coordinated defenses, and led dangerous rescue missions when her fighters became trapped. When ISIS commanders taunted her by name over the radio, threatening beheading, her response was characteristic: picking up a cigarette at the mention of her name and offering her soldiers a sideways smile. By early October, ISIS had encircled Kobani and controlled three-quarters of the city. YPJ commander Nowruz divided the city into four defensive fronts and ordered a shift in tactics: they would fight house by house, street by street, using small mobile units and snipers. The Kurdish fighters were at their most desperate when an unexpected alliance began to form. U.S. special operations forces, who had been tracking ISIS's advances, convinced their superiors that the Kurds were the only viable ground force that could effectively combat ISIS. On October 20, in a pivotal moment, U.S. aircraft dropped weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies to the besieged defenders. One of Kobani's few remaining doctors "burst into tears and shouts in the middle of a blackened, empty street, raising his hands to the sky in elation" when the supplies landed. American airstrikes increasingly targeted ISIS positions, gradually turning the tide of battle. By the end of January 2015, after more than four months of brutal fighting, Kurdish forces declared victory in Kobani. The human cost was enormous - hundreds of Kurdish fighters killed, thousands wounded, and the city itself reduced to rubble. But the strategic and symbolic importance was even greater: ISIS had suffered its first major defeat, and the world had witnessed the central role of Kurdish women in achieving it. As Azeema, who had been seriously wounded by an ISIS sniper but returned to see the victory, declared before cameras: "Now that Kobani is free, what we want to tell the world is that women have played a great role in liberating this town."

Chapter 4: Strategic Alliance: U.S. Support and Battlefield Evolution (2015-2016)

In the aftermath of Kobani, an improbable alliance solidified between U.S. special operations forces and the Kurdish-led fighters. For American military leaders, the discovery of these disciplined, tactically adept forces presented a potential solution to a vexing problem: how to defeat ISIS without deploying large numbers of American ground troops. For the Kurdish fighters, American airpower and eventual material support offered a chance to push back against overwhelming odds. By early 2015, Kurdish forces began retaking territory from ISIS on multiple fronts. In June, they recaptured the strategic border town of Tal Abyad, cutting a key ISIS supply line between Turkey and Raqqa, the self-declared capital of the Islamic State. American military advisors watched with growing respect as the Kurdish forces demonstrated increasing sophistication in their operations. The alliance faced significant diplomatic complications, however. Turkey, a NATO ally, vehemently opposed any U.S. support for Kurdish forces, viewing them as extensions of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), which both Turkey and the U.S. had designated a terrorist organization. U.S. policymakers performed delicate diplomatic gymnastics, insisting that the Syrian Kurdish YPG/YPJ were distinct from the PKK, despite their shared ideological foundations in Ocalan's teachings. In December 2015, the U.S. helped establish the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an umbrella group that incorporated Arab fighters alongside the Kurdish forces. This move aimed to broaden the anti-ISIS coalition's appeal in Arab-majority areas and alleviate Turkish concerns. The following month, Brett McGurk, America's special envoy for the anti-ISIS coalition, made a historic visit to northeastern Syria - the first official U.S. visit to the region since the war began. For the Kurdish women commanders, battlefield demands continued to evolve. In May 2016, the SDF launched its most ambitious operation yet: crossing the Euphrates River to capture Manbij, an ISIS stronghold that served as the main entry point for foreign fighters coming from Turkey. Nowruz personally supervised the nighttime water crossing that initiated the campaign. "The secret is to keep calm," Azeema had been telling newer snipers. "No movement, no excitement. Any excitement at all, and you won't hit your target." The Manbij operation showcased how far the women commanders had developed as military leaders. Znarin, once Nowruz's aide who had been denied education by her family, now commanded dozens of fighters. During the operation, she encountered a young Arab girl wearing a niqab who asked how she could join the women fighters. "We would be very glad to have you and all the other girls in the village who would want to join us," Znarin told her. "We would be very happy to have a girl as brave as you with us." After two months of intense fighting, the SDF liberated Manbij in August 2016. ISIS fighters eventually negotiated a withdrawal, using human shields to prevent coalition airstrikes on their convoy. Throughout the campaign, women commanders played crucial roles in planning, leading front-line operations, and making tactical decisions. Their presence as combat leaders made an impression on both local populations and American advisors. As Dean Walter, an American special operations soldier, recalled watching women prepare for battle: "I felt guilt that these young women were going off into battle on their own when we could have helped them more... Admiration for the fact that these young fighters had the guts to put themselves on the line for their people."

Chapter 5: Liberating Raqqa: From ISIS Stronghold to Women's Victory (2017)

By early 2017, attention turned to the ultimate prize in the campaign against ISIS: Raqqa, the self-declared capital of the Islamic State. For three years, Raqqa had been the administrative center of ISIS's territorial caliphate and the stage for its most horrific atrocities. In the city's central square, renamed "Hell Square" by locals, ISIS publicly beheaded its enemies and displayed severed heads on iron fence spikes. Women were bought and sold like property, and the most brutal interpretation of Sharia law governed daily life. The campaign to liberate Raqqa would be the most challenging yet. In March 2017, the SDF began operations to isolate the city by capturing surrounding territories, including the strategic Tabqa Dam. Rojda, who had evolved from a quiet soccer-loving girl to a battlefield commander responsible for thousands of fighters, helped lead the YPJ contingent in these preliminary operations. When male fighters failed in their first attempt to cross the Euphrates River near Tabqa, Rojda personally organized a successful crossing the following night, prompting an American advisor to joke that they should have "given the assignment to the women in the first place." On June 5, 2017, the SDF launched the final assault on Raqqa itself. Rojda commanded the western front line, leading approximately four thousand fighters - Arabs and Kurds, men and women. ISIS responded with the tactics that had become their hallmark: suicide bombers, car bombs, snipers, and a network of tunnels allowing fighters to appear unexpectedly behind SDF lines. The jihadists had booby-trapped virtually the entire city, placing explosives in doorways, kitchen cabinets, and even teapots. The battle quickly became a grinding urban slog. "ISIS wants to kill as many as it could even while the SDF backed it into a corner, and the more time passed, the more the SDF advanced, the more committed some in the Islamic State's ranks became to holding out as long as possible," observed journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. Every block and building had to be cleared methodically, with special concern for civilians ISIS was using as human shields. For the women commanders, the Raqqa battle held special significance. They were liberating a city where women had been brutalized, trafficked, and enslaved. Rojda had previously met Yazidi women like Dalal, who told her, "When ISIS attacked Sinjar, they took the women from my village. They took everyone they didn't kill. I ended up being sold ten times." Now Rojda and her comrades were dismantling the very heart of the system that had perpetrated these crimes. By October 2017, ISIS forces were cornered in Raqqa's central hospital and stadium. After negotiations mediated by local tribal leaders, most of the remaining ISIS fighters were permitted to evacuate the city with their families, though foreign fighters who had come from countries like France, Tunisia, and Russia were excluded from the deal. On October 17, the SDF declared victory. Rojda and her fellow commanders marched triumphantly through Naim Square, the former site of ISIS executions, now transformed into a celebration of liberation. The symbolic importance of women leading this victory was not lost on anyone. Where ISIS had once bought and sold women as slaves, now women commanders directed military operations that defeated the terrorist organization. As one young Arab woman who joined the YPJ after being liberated explained: "I wanted to join after all I saw. Women being raped in front of my eyes. I wanted revenge. As a woman, why should we be raped? Why should we face this? Now at least I feel I am doing something for myself."

Chapter 6: Beyond War: Building a Women-Led Political Vision

As the territorial defeat of ISIS neared completion in 2018 and 2019, the Kurdish women and their allies began focusing more intensively on their long-term political project. The military victories had created space for a radical experiment in women-centered governance across northeastern Syria, including in Arab-majority areas like Raqqa that had been liberated from ISIS. In August 2018, women gathered in Raqqa to celebrate the opening of the Raqqa Women's Council. Under the August sun, women and men held hands and danced together in celebration - activities that would have resulted in torture or death under ISIS rule just months earlier. The council would organize women on economic, social, and political issues and push civil authorities to address women's needs. Similar councils were established across the region, creating institutions to sustain and advance women's rights beyond the military phase of the conflict. The political structures established in northeastern Syria reflected the same revolutionary vision that had animated the women fighters. Co-presidency became standard practice, with one man and one woman heading each administrative body. The 2016 "Social Contract of the Democratic Federal System of Northern Syria" - essentially a constitution for the region - mandated gender equality and established women's justice councils to deal specifically with issues affecting women and families. "Women shall have the right to equal participation in all fields of life," it declared, "and take decisions relevant to their affairs." American diplomatic and military officials who worked with these women leaders often found themselves amazed by their effectiveness. "Never had I encountered women more confident leading people, more comfortable with power and less apologetic about running things," observed one American visitor. For the Kurdish women, their political project represented the fulfillment of Abdullah Ocalan's vision that "women's freedom will only be achieved by waging a struggle against the foundations of this ruling system." The women's achievements, however, remained precarious. Turkey continued to view the Kurdish-led autonomous region as a security threat, and the Syrian regime had never accepted the loss of its northeastern territories. Russia, Iran, and other powers involved in the Syrian conflict had their own agendas that did not necessarily include supporting Kurdish autonomy or women's rights. These vulnerabilities became painfully apparent in October 2019, when Turkey launched "Operation Peace Spring," a military offensive against northeastern Syria following a U.S. announcement of troop withdrawal. The attack displaced over 200,000 people and resulted in the assassination of prominent Kurdish female politician Hevrin Khalaf by Turkish-backed militias. A U.S. diplomat described the operation as "an intentioned-laced effort at ethnic cleansing." Despite these setbacks, the women who had led the fight against ISIS remained committed to their vision. "We are trying to build a little lake in the middle of the desert," explained political leader Fauzia Yusuf. "It doesn't happen quickly, and it is so very difficult to build something in the middle of destruction." When asked what she wanted future generations to understand about their struggle, Nowruz replied: "I want her to know how to protect herself, how to be independent, and how to be powerful. I want her to grow up with this mentality, to have her own strength and not allow any obstacles in her way. We might not be alive then, but this must stay as part of history."

Summary

The Kurdish women's revolution against ISIS represents one of history's most remarkable confrontations between opposing worldviews. On one side stood ISIS, with its medieval vision of female subjugation, enslavement, and commodification. On the other stood the women of the YPJ, embodying a revolutionary ideal of female leadership, empowerment, and equality. What makes this story so extraordinary is not just that women took up arms against those who would enslave them, but that they simultaneously built political structures centered on women's equality while fighting a brutal war against overwhelming odds. This conflict teaches us that even in the most extreme circumstances, transformative social change is possible. The Kurdish women commanders demonstrated that deeply patriarchal systems can be challenged not just through rhetoric but through action - by women stepping into leadership roles traditionally denied to them and proving their effectiveness. Their experience suggests that women's full participation in both military and political leadership produces more inclusive and just societies. For those working toward gender equality worldwide, the lesson is clear: true transformation requires women not just to participate in existing structures but to remake those structures with equality at their foundation. As Fauzia Yusuf observed, "If we are not going to protect women's rights during the revolution, we certainly aren't going to protect them afterward." The struggle of these remarkable women reminds us that meaningful change often comes from unexpected places and that courage, vision, and persistence can overcome even the most formidable adversaries.

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Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

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