The Graveyard of Revolutions

An Interview with a Kurdish-Syrian Youth from Kobane

Interview conducted and edited by Loubna Qutami

Transcribed, translated, and edited by Shireen Akram-Boshar

This May 2019 interview was conducted in Arabic by Loubna Qutami in Athens, Greece, where “N,” a Kurdish youth from Ayn al-Arab in northern Syria’s Kobane region, had been displaced because of war in Syria. N’s testimony sheds light on his process of developing political consciousness and his thoughts about and experiences since the 2011 uprisings as a Kurdish youth. It traces key moments in N’s life that reveal how the uprising in Syria and the catastrophes spawned in its wake were felt and experienced by everyday people. As a firsthand account of a war survivor, N’s testimony demonstrates that multiple global, geopolitical, and local actors have been complicit in the subjugation of people in Syria. The interview concludes with N describing his abduction and captivity by Daesh (ISIS) forces and his final release to freedom. N’s testimony exemplifies how for Kurdish youth, the promise of the uprising against authoritarianism devolved into political despair, internal fractures, and militarized violence.

Over the last decade, critical ethnic studies’ engagement in an immersive, transnationally situated study of power and resistance has allowed for a deeper exploration of the struggles of global Indigenous peoples. A glimpse into the catastrophes affecting the Kurdish peoples of northern Syria’s Kobane region offers crucial insights to the critical ethnic studies community. First, N’s personal testimony highlights the relationship between Indigeneity and displacement in the context of revolution and counterrevolution. Second, it reveals how everyday people were treated as collateral damage in the context of militarized violence, even by states and political forces who claimed to defend and fight for their liberation. Third, it demonstrates how revolutions cannot be contained by national boundaries, as the threat of a looming political insurgency transformed Syria’s border region of Kobane into a global and geopolitical battleground. N’s personal testimony also speaks to intergenerational divisions that have affected liberation movements and offers a sobering reflection on challenging internal dynamics within Kurdish political life. To write and publish N’s testimony in English for a largely U.S.-based readership is also an invitation to those residing in the heart of empire to contend with how global imperialisms are felt and experienced by residents of active war zones with a particular focus on Indigenous peoples who live in border lands.

N: I’m from a Kurdish region of Syria, known as Ayn al-Arab, Kobane. The beginning of my life was difficult, due to my family’s circumstances. When I first thought of leaving school to start working, I was around eight years old.; Before Al-Ahdath [“The Events,” in reference to the 2011 uprisings and war in Syria], Kobane, like all Kurdish areas in northern Syria, was an isolated and impoverished region without adequate health or educational services. Even though Kurds are indigenous to the area, many of us did not have Syrian citizenship and most of us were denied political rights. Many people had to leave their homes and their land, even before 2011—for example, following the 2004 Qamishli uprisings when the state cracked down on Kurdish political life. It deliberately displaced Indigenous Kurdish residents, fragmented our proximity to one another, and then settled Arab herders in our place. All these factors left us Kurds feeling alienated leading up to 2011.
Loubna Qutami: You refer to Kurds as “the Indigenous people.” Were you raised with the idea that Kurds are Indigenous?: N: Yes. For us as Kurds, whether we’re in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, or even [so-called] Red Kurdistan in Russia, we learn from childhood that we as a people were forced to give up our political sovereignty. We have been denied our self-determination throughout history. We are absent from history books. When the [1916] Sykes–Picot agreement divided the region, Kurds were split into four communities in different nation-states, leaving us without a unified nation. We have often been regarded as migrants or minorities to undermine our claims to the region, but this is not historically accurate. We are indigenous to this place.
Loubna Qutami: Before the uprisings began, would you say you were politically aware? Did you think that there could be a revolution in Syria?: N: The first time I entered a political space, I was ten. My father and two uncles took me, as the eldest son in the family, to my first forum, a discussion with a large group of Kurdish political figures. The party was the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). This is how I was introduced to the Kurdish struggle. Even though I was a young child, I was already entering the political arena.; Initially, we thought there might be a revolution in the Kurdish regions at least because we had many major political figures who had spent years in Syrian prison, were tortured, and so on.
Loubna Qutami: Do you recall how life started to change in the early months of the uprisings?: N: Before the Events, the group of Kurdish youth organizers that I was a part of would convene on a weekly basis. When the Events happened, we started meeting every day, going to the party offices to engage in discussions examining a variety of geopolitical forces and local movements present in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia; we studied their conditions and the path they were embarking on. There was continuous close study of what was happening. We drew many parallels and concluded something was coming in Syria. But we didn’t initially think it could be in all areas of Syria; to us it seemed less likely to occur outside the Kurdish areas.
Loubna Qutami: So when the protests started in Daraa, Syria, what was the situation in Kobane?: N: The first time I heard there were protests in Daraa, we were in language class. We heard protests in Daraa had erupted, and the Syrian regime had arrested young children for writing slogans on the walls. My youth group agreed we would go out and protest in solidarity. We called ourselves fedayeen [guerrillas]. We decided we would write on the walls, like the children of Daraa had done. I remember the first time we went out and wrote Hurriya (“freedom”) in English, Kurdish, and Arabic on the school wall and also on the wall of the center where we took classes. The next day, three guys from our group were arrested. They were imprisoned for about a month and a half. Though there was always the threat of the regime’s repression, we also knew the Syrian regime wasn’t pushing for mass arrests from here because it didn’t want to make things worse for itself. It was trying to take control of its southern provinces, so why light a fire here?
Loubna Qutami: In the beginning of the uprising, were you supporting the protest demands? Was there a specific Kurdish set of demands?: N: Many in my community generally supported the revolution. There was also Kurdish political discourse, which started in 2004 with the Kurdish uprising in Syria, and even before that. The demands included Kurds having the right to enter parliament and the people’s assembly and to have Kurdish recognized as an official language.
Loubna Qutami: So we can say the demands were political rights?: N: Yes. Any kind of political activity in Syria was criminalized. We therefore were forced to organize clandestinely. We even had to produce and disseminate our newspapers underground. We went out late at night and put the newspapers under our waists, hiding them in order to distribute them. And if we wanted to gather in someone’s house for a political meeting, we organized it discreetly. There were also economic struggles and a fear of racist attacks against us as Kurds. Kurdish political figures traveling from one region to another would be chaperoned by multiple cars, afraid of assassination or arrest.
Loubna Qutami: Was there a moment that changed your orientation toward what was happening?: N: After we created coordination committees and started going to demonstrations, the situation changed. The regime responded to protests with live fire in places like Daraa, Idlib, and Homs. Then the revolution became militarized. When we saw that the situation was changing from peaceful to armed revolt, we retreated. We didn’t want what happened in Iraq between the Kurds and Saddam Hussein’s regime, for example, to be repeated. We didn’t want it to be a bloodbath like in Syria in 2004 in Qamishli. Or like the more recent arrests and repression in Turkey or Iran.; Many of us were also facing mandatory conscription, and we knew that the Syrian regime’s military would separate and dispatch Kurds to different regions. So when we saw that the situation was worsening—the militarization and battalions, the emergence of the Free Syrian Army (FSA)—we changed strategy . . .
Loubna Qutami: When you saw the FSA become increasingly militarized, did you foresee outside intervention?: N: When the FSA appeared, we knew the Syrian regime would not be able to quiet everything down like they did during the Hama massacre in 1982. We didn’t think Bashar al-Assad, [who we saw as] not as politically powerful as his father [Hafez al-Assad], could address the people effectively. Before the militarization, he addressed the people two or three times in speeches. The speeches were . . .
Loubna Qutami: Weak?: N: Very, very weak. He couldn’t quiet everyone down—in fact, it emboldened the spirit of revolution. People were fed up. But with the militarization of the opposition, we knew the situation was heading toward destruction and outside forces might interfere, making the situation worse. We knew from the beginning that the United States and Israel would intervene somehow. Eventually we also saw Russia intervene. The thing we were surest of at the time was that Turkey could intervene also. What Turkey feared most was that the Kurds there would gain strength, like what happened in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was gone, so it tried to engage the [Syrian opposition] battalions and win all the Syrian Revolution’s leadership to its side, and it eventually did that. This complicated the role of the Kurds within the revolution.; We had a group of young guys paying close attention to the situation of the Kurds in Turkey. We communicated with them over Skype and read newspapers they would bring from the Turkish border into Syria. I remember once they told us that in one of the political forums featuring Turkish political factions, one of the Turkish politicians had said, “We must make Syria the graveyard of revolutions.” The graveyard of revolutions! Meaning, the revolution started and must end in Syria. If it didn’t end in Syria, it would continue to develop across borders. So here the regional and global outside forces intervened. They helped to transform a peaceful popular struggle into a militarized situation in order to scare people from daring to think about starting their own revolution.
Loubna Qutami: Tell me about what was going on with you personally at that time and your views on the Kurdish leadership.: N: In 2011, I was studying for my baccalaureate exams. By June, I couldn’t continue because of the deteriorating situation, especially since my exams were set to be taken in Aleppo. It was hard to get from Kobane to Aleppo.; At the time the Democratic Union Party was strategizing. They had begun forming a small secret battalion in the mountains of Afrin. We caught onto the fact that they were trying to bring these trainees to our region, to Kobane, to form an armed battalion. Many of the youth were against this. We had seen Kurdish revolutions that were armed and had failed. And we knew we were still politically very weak. Instead of carrying weapons and entering the militarized environment, we saw the importance of preparing ourselves politically. And on top of that, the regime was targeting everyone carrying arms. It was using the excuse that “there are armed fighters in this region” to “liberate” the area or, rather, to conduct mass executions or arrests. So we were against any armed faction in the Kurdish region, though we still were supporting the revolution.
Loubna Qutami: How did the situation develop after some of the Kurdish forces began preparing militarily?: N: By 2013, the Kurdish movement in northern Syria split further. Another Kurdish battalion was formed. People fleeing from one of the other Kurdish armies joined this one. And Kurdish groups started attacking one another. With these repeated shifts, youth started losing trust in established political forces. There are so many Kurdish parties and factions but nothing allowing regular people to feel great pride and hope in being Kurdish, to have a unifying sense of identity. We have a broken political leadership unable to restore our freedom and represent the everyday people.; I stopped supporting the PYD and began supporting the Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party in Syria (PDPKS), one of the oldest groups for Kurds of Syria. The party’s founder is still the secretary general. See the dictatorialism in this all [laughs]. But I sensed this party was more open to youth engagement and to hearing our opinions.; So, by 2013, I started working with 40 guys and girls in the party’s youth group, and we started activities, like theater, calligraphy, reading groups on Kurdish history, and youth seminars. Eventually this group of 40 expanded to about 160 youths. Our goals were to grow youth political consciousness and engagement.; Of course, the growth of this youth bloc placed us under PYD suspicion—there were turf wars among Kurdish forces. PYD’s leadership didn’t want people, especially its youth, to leave its grasp. The PYD was powerful through military might, not politically, but they were acting in ways that oppressively demanded our loyalty. The Kurdish political leadership even started taking advantage of the influx of refugees from other parts of Syria: the cost of rent, and even the cost of bread, skyrocketed; checkpoints were created in their territories. Eventually, I saw that PDPKS’s leadership started behaving the same way, too. I started to lose hope.; In April 2013, I stopped all political activity. I told myself I’d return to my studies and seek a better future for myself.
Loubna Qutami: What did your family think at this period? Were they supporting you?: N: My family, up until I left organizing, had no idea I was taking part in political activities. They didn’t know until I went out to a peaceful demonstration, faced live bullets, and someone very dear to me was killed.
Loubna Qutami: I am sorry for your loss. Can you say more about this protest?: N: At this protest, there were perhaps two thousand people. I was carrying the flag of the Syrian Revolution and had the map of Kurdistan on my chest. I think this provoked Kurdish forces who I suspect were operating in collusion with Syrian intelligence. Things took a turn for the worse at the protest when live ammunition started to be fired and people were beaten.; Our philosophy up until this point was that there should be no Kurdish infighting. When we saw that those attacking us protesters were Kurds, we had a visceral reaction. We began reacting, throwing rocks at them. I reached the corner of the street and threw a rock at a car with fighters in it. I retreated and suddenly they were shooting at me. My friend reacted even more strongly. He lifted a rock and threw it, but he was standing in the middle of the street.; I shouted and went to drag him out of the street, but as he reached to get another rock, he was shot in front of me. I was terrified. Feelings I can’t even explain. I couldn’t see everything clearly, but I felt the blood on my glasses, on my face. I still hadn’t comprehended that a bullet had hit him until I took off his shirt and saw the wound.; Imagine this happening to someone close to you for no reason at all, someone in the prime of life shot in front of you. Now, if he were a martyr at the hands of someone else, I would’ve understood this in the context of this war, but he was martyred by a Kurdish person like me—someone who speaks like me and claims to represent the same ideas.; Another friend of mine was also hit. He was also laying on the ground, and I lost it. This is my friend and that’s my friend. Which one should I run to and help? God. Where are we living?! I sensed we were just like any other people living under shelling in Aleppo or Homs or Daraa.
Loubna Qutami: How did the shootings end?: N: Most of the people had run in different directions. A few of us took my two friends to the hospital. One of them was shot in the leg and survived. The other, who was shot in the chest, W, didn’t make it. I remember when we arrived at the hospital, the rock was still in his hand. He had been holding it defiantly.; At the hospital, a friend of the family saw me there, covered in blood. He knew I was at the protest and got angry with me. He was a PYD fighter. He grabbed me by the neck and started shouting, asking me why I would involve myself in these protests, and threatening that if I revealed who shot my friends, there would be consequences. I said, “I’m going to tell the truth, I’m not going to lie. There’s the blood of the young man who died here today. Doesn’t his family deserve to know the truth about who killed their son?”; All of this was the end for me. A month before I had left politics but was still going to demonstrations. But now, I left everything behind. I said, “That’s it, I’ll go back to my studies and try to find a new future.” I really lost faith in the Kurdish struggle led by these forces.
Loubna Qutami: Did you go back home after the incident?: N: One of my elders called my father and told him what had happened and that I was threatening to say who killed my friend. My father came to the hospital to get me. When he saw me, first he slapped me, then he held me and took me with him. When I arrived at the town entrance, I saw all my siblings waiting on the road, asking where I had been. On the way back, I’d taken off my [blood-covered] shirt and got rid of it so no one could see, but there was still a bit of blood on my pants and my shoes, which were gray. They started to check if I was injured. I said nothing happened to me, but I was in such a state of shock.
Loubna Qutami: How about after the incident? I imagine you were incredibly psychologically exhausted.: N: Psychologically, yes. I even contemplated and once attempted suicide unsuccessfully. Shortly after, I left for Latakia to try to get a passport and take the exams. Some friends were annoyed when I told them I was leaving. They said, “Oh, you want to leave behind the guys who are here. What’ll happen to them after you leave?” I said, “Whatever happens, happens. Nothing matters to me anymore.” And so, I left. The commute to Latakia included multiple Syrian opposition checkpoints in different provinces. They harassed and tormented passengers. At that time, there was also a lot of regime shelling, so it was not easy.
Loubna Qutami: Describe the process of trying to get a passport. Did they suspect you of trying to flee?: N: It was very difficult. A Syrian officer told me I had to pay him for it. I was prepared for this; the war made extortion very normal. A relative, who worked in drilling rigs, connected me with a high-ranking Alawite officer with a lot of influence. That man gave me another contact who could help me, so I went to see this person to apply for the passport. They handcuffed me instead.
Loubna Qutami: Did you know why?: N: They began interrogating me, accusing me of participating in demonstrations. It came to a point where they were showing me photos of myself in the demonstrations holding the revolution’s flag. I told them it was photoshopped—that I’d never been to a demonstration in my life. I said, “If I had participated in these demonstrations, you wouldn’t be seeing me here.” He turned the computer screen toward me and asked, “Is this you?” It was indeed a picture of me in a demonstration.
Loubna Qutami: Were you afraid?: N: Yes, but I knew how to control myself. We had done about three and a half months of training in our coordination committees, and even prior to the Events, security culture was taught in our community from an early age. The interrogation intensified and the guard said, “I’ll look up your whole family in Ayn al-Arab and bring them here. I’ll burn their house and all their lands.” He said, “This is the last time I’m asking you. Is this you or not?”; This is when a woman officer started slapping me. At the last moment, it reached the stage where I knew they were sure that the person in the picture was me. I said, “Sir, just let me use the phone to call my uncle and tell him that I’ve been detained because he thinks I’m here to see Officer So-and-so.” He looked at me, surprised. “You’re here to see this officer?”; Eventually they contacted that officer, and my uncle’s connection to him helped me get out of this situation. I was released and left without the passport, but at least I was not imprisoned. My uncle then told me to go meet another Kurdish guy who would help me out, so I went. I paid a large sum and received a passport, and from there I returned to Kobane.
Loubna Qutami: Upon your return to Kobane, what happened?: N: Well first, I was interrogated at the [Kurdish] police department about what I said and saw at the checkpoints on my way back to Kobane. They treated anyone coming into the area with suspicion.; In the period after, I reappealed to the PDPKS to join their ranks in youth programming, which was the best thing I could have done, considering the mess happening all around us. It was a long application process, but they rejected my appeal. And so there truly wasn’t much left for me to do—no work or school. The situation was bad everywhere, and I had already been through so much.; That is when I decided it was time for me to leave the country. So I left first for Turkey. I had a distant cousin in Algeria who got me a visa and sent it to Turkey. After I arrived in Algeria, I made my way to Morocco and stayed there from August 2013 to September 2014.
Loubna Qutami: Why did you leave Morocco?: N: I thought I would stay in Morocco long-term, but at some point I felt it would be better for my future stability and my family to head toward Europe. I was hearing about how miserable the situation was becoming in Syria, so I started making arrangements with smugglers to go through the migration routes that other refugees were using from Morocco to an E.U. country. Just as I began doing so, I learned of Daesh’s attack on Kobane.
Loubna Qutami: Upon hearing the news, what were your initial instincts?: N: I learned Daesh entered the region and was just two kilometers from my town, so naturally I was petrified. I asked friends about my family’s whereabouts because I could not get through to them. I learned they’d gone to the border with Turkey. I was hearing stories that entire families had been killed. I finally got through to my mother; she said they had made it past the border into Turkey and kept telling me to stay where I was. But then I learned my father and brother were still in Syria in a town near ours.
Loubna Qutami: Did you accept your mother’s advice?: N: My heart couldn’t. I went back to Turkey immediately.
Loubna Qutami: On arriving in Turkey, what did you do next?: N: Once I arrived at Aintab (Gaziantep), where my mother told me she was, I didn’t see my family. I just couldn’t see them in that condition. It was too difficult. I crossed the border, through Urfa [Şanlıurfa].; It took me three days. During that time, I thought, if I can’t get to my father and younger brother [alive], I want to retrieve their bodies at least. The same day that I entered Syria, I saw one of my friends. He said he had news that my brother, father, uncle, and his wife had just entered Turkey.; Before returning to Turkey, my friend and I agreed to go back to my house and get some of my things that were left behind: my camera, laptop, and flash drives I had hidden in a safe above the door. Word was that Daesh had already left my town.; Once I made it to my town, I couldn’t help but notice a foul smell. This period was around Eid al-Adha. Every home in my neighborhood had a goat or sheep that had died from starvation in our gardens.
Loubna Qutami: By then, most of the people in the neighborhood had left?: N: There was no one!; Soon after we arrived at my home, I heard a car outside, and shots fired outside the house wall. My friend shouted for me. I started going down the stairs and saw he had already been shot. I went back up through the house but couldn’t break down the heavy steel door to the back exit. Then a fighter approached me in the house.; I knew they wanted to kill me because they suspected I was part of the YPG [Peoples’ Defense Units]. All I could think was, if they are going to kill me, let it be in the most merciful way. While trying to negotiate with the fighter, I was standing by the window. And so, I jumped out of the window. That is the last thing I remember. When I woke and asked where I was, some people answered in Kurdish that I was near the Iraq–Syria border.; I then realized I’d broken my leg when I jumped. The wound from my leg was still open. I wasin and out of consciousness, but I eventually realized we were prisoners of Daesh. I was with a group of Kurdish and Arab prisoners. We were expecting to be slaughtered. We had seen their videos of how they slaughtered their captives.
Loubna Qutami: Can you tell me what you remember about your imprisonment?: N: They took us to a dark room. They asked me about Kurdish activists and their political activities. They asked if I was a fighter, and I swore I had nothing to do with anything like that. I told them I had stopped all political activity a long time ago and went to live in Morocco and didn’t know about anyone.
Loubna Qutami: What is your most potent memory in their prison?: N: I remember dreaming about a loaf of bread. One of the prisoners with us died after losing a lot of blood. He could no longer walk and had been using two pieces of wood for crutches. We found him dead among us with his eyes closed. The stench of death stayed with us. I remember this clearly. We got used to it after a while. We became numb emotionally and physically.
Loubna Qutami: Did you have any knowledge about what was happening on the outside?: N: After some time, we noticed things were changing. The higher-ups who were holding us captive were visibly anxious. They brought in another group of twenty-five Kurdish detainees. In this group, someone told me that the situation was likely to change rapidly. He said, “All Daesh’s leaders are being killed, the Americans are bombing the area heavily, and the Kurds have nearly reached Raqqa.” So this all led to some political negotiations that saved my life.; Before that, I was certain that these would be the last days of my life. I was half in the grave. I didn’t know how long I was there, over a month or so. One other prisoner, ten or so years older than me, kept pushing me not to give up hope and reminding me God was with us. He told me his son and daughter had been killed in front of him, and I could see that this tortured him endlessly. I would look at him and think, “How is he so strong?”
Loubna Qutami: How were you released?: N: In this last phase, captives were given random assignment numbers—the higher the number, the faster the release. The numbers were ransom sums demanded of our families for our release.; When they finally let me out, they threw me on a street with another prisoner. We weren’t sure where we were; it looked like the middle of nowhere. We were picked up after a while by a small pickup truck, with people who spoke to us in Kurdish, but the dialect seemed to be from Iraq. They took us to the hospital.
Loubna Qutami: Did you contact anyone at the hospital?: N: I asked the nurses to give me a phone. I didn’t have anyone’s phone number, so I went on Facebook Messenger and found many messages. From my mother alone there were hundreds. The last message I’d received from her was from fifteen minutes earlier, saying, “Call when you see this, we are waiting to see you.” So, they knew about my situation and whereabouts. I called her and we both started crying immediately. She told me my dad had just left Turkey to come get me.
Loubna Qutami: Do you remember how you felt when you opened those messages?: N: Overwhelmed—pain, relief, processing so many things at once.; Later, I remembered the older friend I had in prison whose son and daughter were killed in front of him. I couldn’t forget him, and my memory of the details during my imprisonment got stronger when I saw a therapist in Turkey who was working with the United Nations in the camps. I don’t know why, but God made it so that we would live. And after all this, after everything that happened, I can’t help but blame the politicians, including Kurdish politicians, for creating a situation where regular people suffered, many at the cost of their lives.
Loubna Qutami: After the hospital visit, what was next for you?: N: I had surgery on my leg in Iraq, which was broken from when I jumped out of the window before the capture. Eventually, I was able to go to Turkey to be with my family. After Daesh was kicked out of Kobane, families began to encourage each other to return. Tens of thousands of people began to return in 2015. I stayed with my family in Turkey until 2018, until I decided to come here to Greece... I am now only beginning my new life.
Loubna Qutami: With the distance you now have, how do you make sense of it all?: N: All these moments were matters of fate. In the end, these experiences strengthened me. I am grateful for my life and for my family, and I still have high hopes for the future.

Author Profiles

Loubna Qutami is an assistant professor in the Asian American Studies Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Qutami is a former President’s Postdoctoral Fellow and received her PhD from the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside (2018). Qutami’s research examines transnational Palestinian youth movements after the 1993 Oslo Accords through the 2011 Arab Uprisings. Her work is based on scholar-activist ethnographic research methods. Her broader scholarly interests include critical refugee studies, the racialization of Arab/Muslim communities, settler colonialism, youth movements, transnationalism, and Indigenous and Third World feminism.

Shireen Akram-Boshar is a socialist organizer and writer and alum of Students for Justice in Palestine. She has organized, spoken, and written on the Syrian uprising, Palestine, anti-imperialism, and solidarity with the Middle East/North Africa region. She is on the editorial board of Spectre Journal and contributed to the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction.

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The Graveyard of Revolutions

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