NEWS CENTER – Nasrin Abdullah, commander and spokesperson of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), the Kurdish self-defense force of Rojava, stressed the need to create a world front of women to combat the current system of oppression that capitalism uses against the people.
During the meeting “Revolution under construction: weaving the future,” Abdullah also referred to the common links between the struggles of the peoples of Kurdistan and Latin America. On these meetings between peoples, the YPJ commander recalled the teachings of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and brought to mind the Argentinean doctor Alina Sánchez (Legerin Ciya), who died in March 2018 in Rojava while doing community health work.
The meeting was convened by the Network of Women Weaving the Future, the Committees of Solidarity with Kurdistan in Latin America and the Kurdistan Women’s Movement. The activity was part of a series of dialogue rounds as a continuation of the First Conference “Revolution Under Construction” held in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2018, which gave birth to the Network of Women Weaving the Future. Abudllah began her speech by greeting Latin American women, as “our struggle always beats with your struggle,” adding that “Latin America is a place of revolution”.
The commander of the YPJ recalled that both in Kurdistan and in Latin America there are disappearances by the states today, for which she emphasized the promise “that we will continue with the struggle” and that, in the case of Rojava, the disappearances of women by terrorist groups like the Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh) “will be avenged. “To all our comrades who are under oppression, we are going to free them,” she said.
Abdullah reflected that “the revolutionary struggle of the Kurdish people and the peoples of Latin America is not something new. We have been in the same struggle for tens of years. The whole struggle of Che Guevara and of all the revolutionary peoples of Latin America was an example for us. When I was a child, because of these values I decided to enter the struggle and the revolution. The spokeswoman of the Women’s Protection Units pointed out that there are many important issues for women today, among which the struggles for freedom and autonomy stand out. “When we talk about freedom we have to talk about women,” she said. Freedom and women are universal issues that touch us all. They do not belong to one people, but to all of us. If we see that our problems are global, then the antidote has to be global.
For this reason, she explained, there is a need for “an organization, a worldwide and universal union. For us, this is our strategic struggle: how to get organized on the broadest possible level”.
Abdullah pointed out that “the capitalist system has organized itself in a hegemonic way at the global level, so if we want to end it, we have to create our own organization at the same level. “The system of capitalist domination always tries to divide us among ourselves through nationalism, it divides women and our societies, and we have to overcome that,” he said. What the system has also done is that it has organized itself through international institutions under the name of democracy, but we know that what it seeks is not democracy, but it seeks to establish its domination and oppression over all peoples, over women, so that all nations are at its service.
“When women, or a people, protest against this, they directly want to silence them, and with this system of international institutions this objective is developed. Against this, we have to create a long-term union and organization,” reiterated the Kurdish commander.
Abdullah also referred to the Redeva Revolution, which the Kurdish people – together with other national and religious communities – have been leading since 2012 in northern Syria. “In our revolution, we have understood well that the problems that society and women are experiencing are not only ours. If we want to overcome these problems we can not only do it locally or by ourselves, but we have to be many, we have to be all, together with all the people”.
“We have also seen that our revolution has had an effect far beyond our country. We have understood that it has had an effect on the whole world,” she said. The YPJ commander also referred to the internationalists of the Rojava Revolution, such as the cases of Alina Sánchez or the British Anna Campbell, who was martyred on March 15 during the defense of the Kurdish canton of Afrin against Turkish military attacks. The participation of internationalist women in our revolution has served to strengthen it and expand its effect throughout the world,” she said. In turn, Abdullah stressed that the women of Kurdistan “have understood that if we unite on the same front, we will succeed and we can reach victory. It may be that now our revolution and Kurdish women have been a vanguard, but we know that our freedom will not be complete if we do not achieve freedom for all. Because as long as there is slavery and oppression we will not be free”.
The YPJ commander reiterated the need to “debate and talk together” on issues such as autonomy and freedom for women and peoples. “There are many common issues that we have to discuss. One of the most important is that of freedom, because it is empty of meaning if we think that freedom is for some women and not for all,” she said. At the same time, Abdullah said that if we understand these central issues “very well, if we feel them within us and in our soul, we can create a very strong front against fascism. That is why it is important to go beyond the boundaries of borders. We may not speak the same language, but we understand each other, so we have to overcome these boundaries as well.
“We must not limit ourselves to understanding words, but to feeling and understanding each other from the heart,” she reflected, “without having to speak, when we look at each other’s eyes, when we laugh, when we feel our breath, we women understand each other. We don’t need the words, we just need to feel each other. And what we need to strengthen is a front of mentality and thought. For us it is very important to create academies for the knowledge of women and to transmit and develop it.
Abdullah stressed that there are many women’s organizations and platforms in the world, but that it is necessary to create a platform “that is not only for a specific issue”, but to give birth to a “common front”. “The enemies of freedom are very well organized, they have a multitude of fronts, they are in the law, in the economy, in social policy, but as they see them and not as we want to do it. They have a military front against the people and against women. They have their psychological warfare front, they also have the means, they are very well organized.
Therefore, “thousands and thousands of women have to organize themselves in these fronts to continue our struggle and strengthen it,” she said. We need to create a system of self-defense as women. This means not only on the military plane, but on all fronts. We have to create our own system to defend ourselves. The women’s front is much stronger than the men’s front,” said the Kurdish commander. When we organize our front it is always for peace, for freedom, for the environment, it is a front that has an essence, it is a front of thought. If we organize ourselves on these bases we can have many more victories. Our hope and belief in the struggle, the way we see ourselves responsible for this struggle, has very big objectives, and now those objectives have to reach a new organizational level.
The YPJ spokesperson criticized “the system of capitalist oppression and domination, which always puts us in crisis, and if we want to overcome it we have to look for solutions”. In Rojava, Abdullah explained, “we have seen that the culture of democratic society is our best weapon. We have to build connections and democratic links between women, that is the basis of the whole struggle. We have to develop confederal and democratic thinking.
The Kurdish commander also reflected that these days we have many problems that are common: nationalism, classism, the relationship between oppressor and oppressed, ecological problems, which touch us all. We have to start an internal struggle to solve these problems. In the world we live in we see that when there is a problem in one place it will have an effect on the whole world. When Latin America has a problem, it has an effect on us. When there is a problem that arises in Kurdistan, it also has an effect on Latin America.”
Before finishing, Abdullah explained that “women’s energy is very big, the problem is that now it is dispersed, so we have to bring that energy together again in a global and universal framework. In Rojava we have experienced this on a small scale, and we have seen that when we women unite this energy no one can turn against us. For example, Daesh was a copy of the system of oppression and world domination, and thanks to the energy of women, of the people, and the support we have received from all over the world, we were able to overcome it. All the women and peoples of the world have taken their responsibility to support our struggle against Daesh. And now we are ready to support all women and all peoples of the world in these common struggles.
Finally, the YPJ commander said: “We have the hope and belief that we can create a world of peace on the victory of freedom for women, men and all peoples”.
