Documentary: Syrian-Kurdish Women Reconcile Family, Work and Fighting Duties

By Alexandra Di Stefano Pironti

BARCELONA, Spain – While most women in the world worry about reconciling work and family, in Syrian Kurdistan mothers like Gulizar have to find time for their duties as fighters in the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG).

Gulizar, a mother of three in her thirties and living in the city of Afrin in Syria’s Kurdish northeast, is one the main faces in “The Silent Revolution,” an hour-long documentary by Spanish filmmaker David Meseguer, who says the story of Syria’s estimated three million Kurds is not being adequately told in the media.

“The idea of this documentary came after realizing that the media were not reporting properly about the conflict in the Kurdish Syrian enclave,” Meseguer told Rudaw in an interview in Barcelona. “That's why we named the film 'Silent Revolution,' because what is happening there is not being told.”

While the rest of Syria has been burning since an uprising in March 2011 turned into a civil war, Syria’s Kurdish regions – called Rojava by the Kurds -- have largely escaped much of the death and destruction.  Kurdish groups have remained neutral in the fight between the opposition and regime forces.

The YPG and its umbrella Democratic Union Party (PYD), which together form the most potent Kurdish force in the country, have controlled Rojava since regime forces pulled out more than a year ago. Both are loyal to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey and its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.

The YPG has acted as a bulwark against al-Qaeda affiliates like Jabhat al-Nusrah and the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). Off-and-on since last summer, it has fought off jihadist groups that have become loosely affiliated with the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA). The PYD says it should get greater recognition and support because it is fighting the same Islamic radicals who remain enemies of the West.

“Al Qaeda considers the Kurds infidels, despite the fact that most Kurds are also Sunni Muslims,” Meseguer said.

One of the things he noticed and turned his camera on is the equal role of women alongside men in YPG’s fight to defend Kurdish land.

Meseguer, who has visited Rojava several times, said that because of the PKK’s immense influence in Syrian Kurdistan women are more represented in all social organizations, including the military.

“Due to the influence of the PKK, in the committees that run many social affairs there is always an effort to have a joint leadership of men and women,” said Meseguer, a 30-year old who worked with fellow journalist Oriol Gracia on the film, which is to be screened at the November 15-22 London Kurdish Film Festival.

The two Catalan filmmakers focused their lenses on Kurds like Gulizar and her husband, who is also a fighter and shares the duties of bringing up the couple’s three small children. Gulizar’s day includes helping run the family’s small grocery store, something rare among Middle Eastern couples, where women are generally only homemakers.

“Today in Syrian Kurdistan we have an authentic militia made up only of women that is growing bigger every day. It’s a step more in the fight for our rights,” says Gulizar in the film, explaining she has been in the force for a year.

The film also shows people like Ali Ali, a 70-year-old chemist now teaching the Kurdish language in schools as a volunteer. “I wake up, eat, drink and sleep in Kurdish,” he says on camera, expressing a general sentiment among Kurds who often display pride in their ethnicity.

The Kurds of Syria have gone from decades of authoritarian and repressive rule by the Damascus regime to dreaming about independence – an aspiration of all of the Middle East’s estimated 30 million Kurds, who are scattered in contiguous regions of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran.

“All Kurds I encountered in Syria are ready to give their lives for independence. You can see mothers crying for the death of their children, but they are also proud of their children if they died defending their land and they accept it,” Meseguer said.

He noted that, while there are shortages of basic necessities such as electricity or gasoline in the Kurdish regions, nevertheless the de facto PYD government has managed to establish some order. While the rest of Syria is in upheaval, in the Kurdish regions the PYD takes care of things like policing and garbage collection.

But Meseguer warned that the Kurds must watch out for internal divisions.

“A celebration in the main square of Afrin when we were filming ended up with a confrontation and shootings among the different parties. They have to beware of a Kurdish civil war inside the country’s larger civil war,” he cautioned.

So far, 250,000 Syrian Kurds have fled across the border to the autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. Many left out of fear or when the jihadist attacks began this summer. Some refugees complain that they fled because of the heavy-handed rule of the PYD.

For nearly a three-month period, the Kurdistan Region closed its border to Syrian refugees in May, after the PYD arrested 75 members of the Syrian Kurdistan Democratic Party who had close ties to the Kurdistan Region’s ruling KDP. When the border reopened in late August, some 50,000 more refugees flooded in, overwhelming authorities in Erbil.

“There is a feeling of brotherhood among all the Kurds but they don't understand that Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani has closed the borders with Iraq occasionally. This has created a mistrust among Syrian Kurds,” Meseguer said.

More recently, greater animosity was created between the two sides when the KRG refused to allow PYD leader Salih Muslim into Kurdistan en route to Europe to attend a conference. Muslim accused the KDP of being behind the snub, an accusation the party has denied.

Muslim, who has been at pains to deny accusations of cooperating with the Damascus regime, says that a solution for Syria must include President Bashar al-Assad if the bloodshed is to stop.

Rezan Kader, the KRG’s representative in Italy, agreed with Meseguer that the suffering of Syrian Kurds is not being fully told to the world.

“Kurdish people have been always orphans. Much fewer people talk about the suffering of the Syrian Kurds than they talk about other Syrian communities,” she told Rudaw by telephone. “This is despite the fact that Syrian Kurds have suffered most under the regime of Bashar al-Assad.”