HERO
Rojda Felat is a 39 year old commander of the YPJ, or Women’s Protect Unit, an all female Kurdish militia fighting in Northern Syria. In 2016, she spearheaded the assault on Isis’s self-declared Syrian capital. This week, she will be among those fighting the Turkish assault on Rojava, the de-facto autonomous Kurdish region in Northern Syria.
Felat is one of many female Kurdish fighters battling on the front line for both women’s rights and an independent Kurdistan. Her main goal, she has said, “is liberating the Kurdish woman and the Syrian woman in general from the ties and control of traditional society, as well as liberating the entirety of Syria from terrorism and tyranny”.
About 35 per cent of Kurdish forces are female: Rojava is the world’s most explicitly feminist revolution. Every public institution is chaired by a man and a woman and cantons require 40 per cent of political roles to be held by women. Felat and her Kurdish forces will aim to safeguard these laws as they defend Northern Syria from Turkey at “all costs”.
Additional reporting by Chiara Brown and Ellie Pogrund
