SYRIA
Written by Marta Morales
Friday, 31 October 2014 00:11

Every civil war often lays bare what is sheltered within the innermost of each one and certainly their position taken in face of such a specific fact of reality.
And if, during “peace time”, many women have no choice but to spend their lives between work and home, with all their daily chores and concerns, in times of war, this degrading and insignificant reality that capitalism offers, is remarkably transformed and women are raised in all their magnitude, coming to light all their altruism, solidarity and ability to fight.
It is enough to look at the attitude of Mayssa Abdo, known world wide now as Afrin Narin, who commands the Kurdish people resistance of Kobane against the Islamic State (IS) attacks on the Kurdish regions of Syria. This woman, unknown to many until a month ago, described by leaders from various sectors and bythe media as “intelligent and educated”, has shown with her own struggle, the best of hers.
The bourgeoisie speaks of Narin as a rare case in which an “intelligent and educated” woman brings to her life the struggle for the liberation of her territory. And, without saying so, the bourgeoisie often use the same logic they use to criticize the Islamic extremists: considering women a mere decorative object.
Narin and thousands of other women, young and old, gorgeous and not so much, “intelligent and capable” are behind the barricades fighting the “jihadists” who want to take ownership of their city and apply a reactionary dictatorship. And they are not any less feminine for acting this way. Rather, they are women who teach with their struggle, their steadfastness, their determination, that the true emancipation, yours, ours, of the humanity as a whole, is a matter of class that makes no distinction between men and women when it is time to defend what is fair and is denied to us.
Certainly, the horror of war, with hundreds of corpses, wounded and mutilated people, evicted from their homes, fleeing across borders to try to continue living, is not the picture we want to see. But it is what exists there. That is what the imperialist plunder and the interests of regional bourgeoisies do not hesitate to carry out when it comes to show who the “masters of the world” are. In this case we talk of the Syrian bourgeoisie and from other countries where Kurds live and where oil is the target.
 
So why those who consider themselves “masters of the world” doubt on her determination to fight against them? Why the disbelief when women take up weapons, along with male combatants, to face all those who attempt to seize their territory? Why the astonishment before a woman who heads a Kurdish front and thereby raise the morale and the fight spirit of her fellows, men and women?
Because it is necessary to consider – along with the objective need to train hands and eyes to point a gun to a much more powerful enemy – the subjective motivation that this war entails, the yearnings that are expected of it, the national self-determination to which the Kurds are entitled, although they have been evicted, since immemorial time, from a territory that belonged to them and still belongs.
And exercise this right in a greedy and unequal world, as this world in which we live requires technique and technology, but it also requires courage, commitment, conviction and morals. It requires a morals different from that used to bomb us and to which we are pushed by charlatans of every stripe. The morals of those who risk their own lives in defense of their ideals, their dreams, their aspirations for a better world, more egalitarian, fairer … a path of transition to a different society, a free and socialist society.
It is no coincidence that it is Narin, it is no coincidence that many women are fighting in this war. It is because today the fight against the Islamic State in Kobane happens in every neighborhood, street by street. And in these neighborhoods and these streets are their families, their children, their parents, their companions, who are exposed to death at any time.
A few days ago, on October 5th, the Kurdish fighter, Dilar Gencxemis, known in her movement as Arin Mirkan, carried out a suicide bomb attack that killed about twenty jihadists around Kobane.
This suicide resistance has served to show the IS and the “jihadists” that they are confronting an enemy who deserves to be feared and that this enemy does not care about the size of the “sacrifice” to be paid for, provided that they are convinced of their cause.
Although the presence of women in the armed struggle in Kurdistan dates back to the 1990s, and they occupy a number of positions in the local councils of the cities that resist today the pressure from the IS hordes. It is particularly Kobane the city which has become, over this month, since the fights began, an example of resistance, the symbol of the struggle for autonomy. And these are the women, rifles in hand, hungry, thirsty and almost without sleeping, who turn the black hordes hysterical, fearing these women as if fearing a pest.
Narin’s words are symptomatic and they demonstrate determination: “We have lost martyrs in every town, in every village and in every hill. We have injured people everywhere. In some places, they passed over our dead bodies, but they will never tread on the honor of the Kurds”.
Every war lays bare what is sheltered within our inner most, feeds our determination with the blood of our dead martyrs and gives us the courage we need to face the sacrifices imposed on us.
The struggle of the Kurds, the struggle of the Kurdish women, reveals a truth that is rarely expressed as clearly as in a war: the emancipation of humanity, and together with it the emancipation of women, will only be possible with the unified struggle of men and women for the construction of a socialist society.