Women's Protection Units (YPJ)

In 2012, the newly formed Kurdish self-defence forces took control of the town of Kobanê from the Assad regime’s forces.

Despite all the immense challenges facing it, the revolution has survived. It has provided tremendous inspiration to people around the world. It thus has a global meaning and relevance.

Since the liberation of the last of the ISIS-occupied territory this year, the self-administered areas of northern and eastern Syria set up by the liberation forces have enjoyed secure and stable conditions. However, they have been denied representation in the international negotiations to resolve the Syrian crisis, write Ismet Tashtan and Peter Boyle.

This is a war film unlike any other that you will see, written and directed by a woman, focusing on a squad of the Kurdish autonomous women’s protection units (YPJ). The systematic female enslavement and mass rape by ISIS are its subject matter. 

Women from the Tirbesipiye-Cizire Canton in northern Syria (known as “Rojava” in Kurdish) held a women-only demonstration through the city centre on February 9.

The marchers expressed their support for the resistance by women and others in the Afrin canton in Rojava against the fascist invasion from Turkey and Islamic gangs, which began last month — and in support of the feminist, multi-ethnic Rojava Revolution.