When Attila bombed Rojava

John Damellos

"In Serêkaniyê, the people took up arms..." A girl with a rocket launcher said. "As a young woman, I too took up arms. Together with my friends, we will defend our lands, our country, our city." She is a member of the Women's Defense Units, an all-female militia actively fighting in Northern Syria. She fights alongside international volunteers who came from all over the world to Rohava to help the Kurds defend their territory from Turkish aggression and the ISIS. They also came to be part of one of the bravest experiments in participatory democracy, the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, an autonomous enclave practicing a radical form of democracy called Democratic Confederalism, and a freedom cell that Turkey has been bombing and shelling since yesterday. Yet, none of this would have happened, had American president Donald Trump, driven by his "unmatched wisdom", not played Pontius Pilate with the Kurds, allowing Turkish dictator Tajip Erdogan to release his dogs. 

The news are scarce and most of it is reported by tweets or Facebook entries. During the last several hours the cities of Serê Kaniyê‎ (Ras al-Ayn) and Girê Spî‎ (Tell Abyad) in Rojava / Northern Syria are been bombed, as part of a Turkish invasion plan to ethnically cleanse the Kurds and replace them with fanatic Muslims and refugees from their camps.

After Turkish reconnaissance aircraft flew over #Rasal_Ain, an hour-long of artillery and aerial bombardment began, which killed civilians and injured many others. At  Qamişlo countryside, a six years old child was reported murdered by the Turkish occupation army in the village "See Karka". Also, there was an attack around Ulashi, west of Manbij, by the TFSA, for the first time in a while they tried to advance. The attack was repelled with several jihadists killed.

The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES), often referred to as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria. It consists of self-governing sub-regions in the areas of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Deir Ez-Zor. 

This polyethnic region with a sizable Kurdish community gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 in the context of the ongoing Rojava conflict and the wider Syrian Civil War, in which its official military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has taken part. 

Rojava is an officially secular polity with direct democratic ambitions based on a libertarian socialist ideology promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability and pluralistic tolerance for religious, cultural and political diversity, and that these values are mirrored in its constitution, society, and politics, claiming it to be a model for a federalized Syria as a whole, rather than outright independence.