>>2661881But it seems this agreement was only made to stall the STG advance. In the Kurdish heartlands in the very northeast corner of Syria, there has been a call to arms and popular mobilization in recent days. People across society from grandmothers to their granddaughters have responded by arming themselves. A Yazidi friend told me how his elderly father, unable to walk, is sitting in bed with his rifle, waiting for the transitional government’s soldiers to show up.
Sleeper cells supporting the STG have been activated in the city of Qamişlo on the Turkish border. The Civil Defense Units (HPC) have been keeping watch in the streets each night and have already arrested some of these undercover agents. Meanwhile, on Tuesday night, Turkish drones struck a Kurdish Red Crescent hospital and an Internal Security Forces checkpoint.
I met one of the many women to join HPC, Hevin Hassan, at a demonstration in Qamişlo where the municipality announced the popular mobilization. “As the people, the young, the old, the elderly, we’re all protecting our streets, until the early morning. We don’t sleep! Today isn’t the time for sleep. It’s time for resistance. We’re protecting our truth and our conscience,” Hevin explained.
Kurds don’t see it this way. Al-Sharaa isn’t reformed, they say, but a jihadist in a suit. “We gave so much in the fight against ISIS, and this is how they repay us?” one woman told me. “Don’t they realize that the new government has the same mentality as ISIS?”
Other people have responded to the mobilization by taking in refugees. Homes and schools have been opened to families fleeing the government advance. They are mostly Kurds and Yazidis from Afrin, Syria’s predominantly Kurdish northwest corner that was invaded by Turkey in 2018. Since then, many Afrinis have found themselves become refugees several times, first in 2018, then again in 2024 as Turkish mercenaries, the Syrian National Army (SNA), swept across the north during the offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad. Some settled in Sheikh Maqsoud but fled their homes again at the start of the year.
At one school I visited, the teachers told me how they had given up their school and jobs to look after the people fleeing war. Every room was full with refugees, yet they didn’t have enough blankets, food, drinking water, or fuel to keep hunger and the freezing January air at bay.
In one of these schools, I met an elderly woman, rubbing her ankles in pain, who described how she had to walk for five hours in the pouring rain to leave Tabqa. Next to her sat Ahin, a mother of three who gave birth to her last child two months ago. She fled from Afrin in 2018 to a refugee camp in Shahba and then again to Tabqa when the Turkish-backed SNA attacked in 2024. This is the third time she has had to flee war, and when she arrived here the locals helped her settle in. “I thank the people here a lot. . . . They brought clothes for children. They brought blankets and carpets, water, food, and milk [for the babies]. No, really, we’re grateful.”
As I walked the street the other night — fires and dancing on every street corner, convoys of cars miles long waving the People’s Defense Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) flags — even the mosques joined in. Dance music and chants of “Long Live YPG/YPJ” blasted from the minarets. Young men roamed the street hanging out of cars, flags and guns in hand. “I can’t hear you, Qamişlo,” yelled one as they urged the few neighbors still asleep in bed to join them. Car horns blared across the city until sunrise.
The revolution in Rojava is still in a very precarious position. Kobane is close to being encircled as it was by ISIS in 2014. Sleeper cells are operating across the Jazira Canton in the northeast, and Turkish airpower is a constant threat. Despite a four-day agreement to halt fighting, clashes continue as STG forces continue their tradition of breaking ceasefires. But after weeks of retreat, the revolution has stopped running and turned around to fight al-Shaara. As Kobane is again encircled, many have begun comparisons to the heroic stand Kurds took against ISIS, which marked the beginning of the caliphate’s downfall and the expansion of the women’s revolution. Maybe that comparison isn’t too far off. Time will tell if this is the end of a revolution, or if the resistance has only just begun.