Rojava Women Resist Siege: Feminists Stand in Solidarity
Jin, Jiyan, Azadî – The feminists of the EL send solidarity with women in Rojava
In view of March 8, International Day of Women’s Rights, as feminists of the European Left, we express our deepest solidarity with Kurdish women and all the comrades of the Rojava revolution, who for years have been carrying out a living example of emancipation, self-management and freedom.
We all remember the first siege of Kobane, in 2014, when the whole world got to know the comrades of the Women’s Defense Units (YPJ) and their heroic resistance against the Islamic State (DAESH/ISIS). Kurdish women continue to defend a unique political experience: Democratic Confederalism.
In the towns and villages of Rojava / Northeast Syria, from Qamishlo to Derik, from Raqqa to Kobane, the population has built day after day a society based on democratic autonomy, ecology and women’s liberation. This political experiment, born from the ashes of war and oppression, is a direct challenge to patriarchy, capitalism and nation-states that continue to deny peoples and identities.
In February 2026, the situation in Kobane is critical due to a suffocating siege that has been ongoing for about four weeks. Despite theoretical agreements between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the central government, the city remains isolated from forces linked to the interim government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani),
It is a true medieval and continuous siege that affects more than half a million people. These include the city’s original residents, as well as displaced families who had found refuge there from Afrin, the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods, Tabqa, Raqqa and the surrounding rural areas. This siege has been accompanied by the deliberate suspension of electricity and water services, as well as restrictions on the entry of medical supplies, food, fuel and other essential goods. As a result, the humanitarian and health conditions in the city have deteriorated alarmingly.
Women, who were able to defeat ISIS militarily, now find themselves defending their own revolution amid international indifference. In this struggle, women’s bodies have been – and still are – battlegrounds. When, a few weeks ago, a video released by an ISIS militiaman showed a braid of hair as a war trophy, the images deeply struck us. That braid, for us, becomes a thread of memory and strength. It is the braid of a woman who has chosen freedom, and who in that freedom continues to live in the others: in the companions who braid their hair before going to the front, in the echo of the song Jin, Jiyan, Azadî that reaches our squares.
We, European feminists, at a time when new nationalisms, fundamentalisms and gender-based violence are growing in Europe, as the 8th of March approaches, we symbolically intertwine our braids with theirs, as a gesture of sisterhood and collective commitment to a world free from all forms of domination, patriarchal and colonial.
Jin, Jiyan, Azadî – Women, Life, Freedom.