Ongoing attacks on Rojava had shaken me deeply — attending daily demonstrations and shouting “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” no longer felt like enough. End of January I 2026 I applied for a permit to enter and booked a flight. By then the region was almost completely cut off from the outside world, with only one open border crossing at Sêmalka, on the Syrian–Iraqi border.
After visiting Rojava in April 2025 and seeing with my own eyes that even in the deeply patriarchal Middle East, a grassroots democratic, feminist, and secular model of society can exist is something that has never let me go. Today, my heart beats for this region — and above all for the people I met there.
Semalk was the only way into Rojava end of January 2026. Map shows military forces. KDP=Iraqi-Kurdistan, SDF=Rojava
Arriving in Rojava end of January
Heading towards the border without permit
Crossing into Rojava requires permission from the authorities of Iraqi Kurdistan, which I did not have yet, when I arrived in Erbil. During the three-hour drive from Erbil to Sêmalka, I checked my emails obsessively. I was sharing a taxi with a group of Swiss activists, hoping it might be easier to cross as a group.
Swiss Activists who travelled to Rojava for 2 days
Even at the very border, there was still no confirmation. While the others received their permits, I stood at the counter trying to appear calm — when I suddenly spotted my application with its bright orange letterhead in a stack of papers. I felt like shouting, jumping, hugging people next to me, but I constrained myself, acting like I had arrived a permit. The official “approved” email only arrived after we had crossed into Rojava.
The Bridge to Rojava- the only life-line to the out-side world
A narrow, slightly wobbly bridge over the Tigris River at Sêmalka is the only way in. It looks as if green plastic panels were pieced together — fragile, provisional — and yet it is the only real connection to the outside world.
Immediately I noticed, this time, far fewer people were crossing than during my first trip in April 2025. Back then, the border was buzzing —with Syrian families from Germany arriving for weddings and family visits. Now, instead of families, trucks dominated the scene. Around 25 to 30 aid trucks arrive daily from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, carrying desperately needed supplies — medicine, baby formula, basic goods.
Border in April 2025-January 2026 is was empty
Good arriving from Iraqi-Kurdistan in Rojava
Lonely oil pumps scattered across the landscape — many of them broken – most of Syria’s oil fields lie further east.
On the drive to Qamişlo, we passed small villages where many shops were shuttered. Our driver explained that numerous residents had joined local “Community Protection Units,” guarding their neighborhoods at night. Exhausted from patrols, they can no longer keep their businesses open regularly during the day.
deserted check points on the way to Qamishlo
Closed shops- many shopkeepers are not patrolling their nieghboorhood at night
I returned to the same hotel as before, the Hotel Al Burj. Even the construction on the eighth and ninth floors looked exactly as it had when I left in April 2025 — unfinished, paused in time.
8th and 9th floor of Al Burj Hotel
My room at Al Burj
Qamishlo street scene
Qamishlo street scene
Classrooms turned into emergency shelters
Immediately after I arrived in Qamişlo, I spoke with representatives of the Executive Council of the Canton of Cizîre about the current situation. All 120 schools in Qamişlo, as well as all schools in nearby Amûdê, had been closed since the end of December. Even schools that had been shut down, because they were in such a horrid state, reopened as shelters. In the middle of this particularly harsh winter, there was no other choice. The solidarity among the residents of Qamişlo towards the refugees was amazing. The people of a city that has been deprived of basic infrastructure for years, helped by hosting families arriving from area being invaded by HTS and other militias.
What I saw there broke my heart: school desks piled up high in the corridors, clotheslines heavy with laundry across rooms and hallways, in-between them men smoking, desperate looking women and children – so many children. Many have never attended school, which weighs heavily on the parents. Some were seriously ill. One child had cancer in an eye; the desperate mother held the child out to us. I have never felt so powerless.
Children from Raqqa
Classroom turned into shelter for displaced persons
In some classrooms up to 17 people slept on the floor, wrapped in blankets. I talked to a family who fled from Raqqa in mid-January, it was extremely cold. They had nothing with them, but the clothes they were wearing. They had watched people being killed, had members of their family missing and nowhere to go.
Families from Aleppo and Raqqa fled to Qamishlo
many children only know shelters, never attended school
Truck from Süleymaniy / Iraqi Kurdistan arrive with warm clothes.
Even before the attacks on Aleppo in December 2025 and on Rojava, Qamişlo’s infrastructure was overstretched. Since Turkey bombed the power plant two years go, Qamishlo has had no electricity from the grid. Noise and stinkig generators run on diesel provide energy for the ever growing number of people.
News clip about the attack on the power plant in Qamishlo
Between 2018 and 2019, many people had already fled to Qamişlo from the Turkish-occupied areas of Afrin and Serekaniye. Since December 2025, around 150,000 more people have arrived from Aleppo, Raqqa, and Hesekê.
We want our life back
The hardest moments were listening to the horrid stories of the displaced people, some of whom were fleeing for the fifth or sixth time between 2018 and 2026: from Afrin-Serekaniy-Aleppo-Raqqa- Hesekê – Qamişlo.
Map of Rojava beginning of January 2026- a month later everything south/ southwest of Hasakh was conquered by HTS forces
“We want a life in dignity and peace and to return to our houses and apartments,” was a sentence I heard again and again, always with the emphasis that they wanted to be safe there.
I heard stories about people returning to Afrin, still occupied by Turkey, who had to pay US3000 to people who had taken over their homes, only to find their homes stripped: no doors, window-frames, cables, completely gutted.
A birthday under curfew
It was my birthday when suddenly a curfew was imposed on Qamişlo. The internet was shut down without explanation. Word spread that a delegation from Damascus was on its way to negotiate with representatives of the city. The atmosphere felt almost dystopian — silent streets, shuttered shops, rumors traveling faster than any official statement — and yet, strangely, I would not have wanted to be anywhere else.
Deserted streets during curfew – patrol cars of the Community Protections Units block intersection in front of hotel
When the curfew began, the only people outside were patrols from the community protection units, stationed at the intersection in front of the hotel. Rumors popped up: the delegation might not arrive after all; the curfew could be extended indefinitely. The previous day, a similar delegation had reached Hesekê. Photos circulating on social media showed heavily armed HTS fighters escorting the convoy, some raising the infamous IS finger gesture. We expected the worst.
Forces of Rojava in front of our hotel
By evening we were still confined to the hotel. From the rooftop, we looked down at deserted streets bathed in fading light. The silence was unsettling. The only other Europeans were two French parliamentarians and three French journalists, they had permits to visit Camp Roj despite the curfew. The camp — the last one still under AANNES control — where detainees are kept, considered less radical than those once held in Camp Hwol, from where thousands had been allowed to flee by the Syrian government.
Dylon Boutiflat, French parlamentarian and a Kurdish journalist
Later, I sat alone in the hotel restaurant, the waiter approached with a small masterpiece: a stack of pancakes layered with chocolate and decorated with whipped cream. During registration, someone had noticed that my birthday was only days away. I was close to tears, in a city under curfew, packed with refugees, someone had made thought of my birthday.
in the misst of a war and siege, people had thought of my birthday
Guarding neighborhood against IS cells
One night in Qamişlo, I was taken out after dark to meet members of the so-called Community Protection Units. Armed guards and an interpreter accompanied me through the sleeping city, stopping at checkpoint after checkpoint. At each one, civilians with rifles checked passing cars, their silhouettes lit by the glow of gasoline burning in open barrels. The scene felt spooky and unfamiliar.
Community Protection Units patrolling their neighborhoods.
It was bitterly cold, the reflection of the fire on the rain-soaked streets added to surreal feeling. Most of them have ordinary jobs during the day. Shopkeepers, mechanics, students. That night, they were guards. I could suddenly sense the urgency that drove them — the feeling of threat that had become part of daily life.
These units had been introduced during the general mobilization in January 2026 by the administration of Rojava, in support of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). After what these forces had experienced in Raqqa: the attacks came not only from outside — from HTS government forces and Islamist militias — but also from within, through ISIS sleeper cells.
Community Protection Units
The guards seemed grateful for the break in routine, eager to talk. Many spoke about their worries, especially those with family in Kobane. I was deeply impressed — and unexpectedly moved — by their determination and endurance.
There were lighter moments, too. At one checkpoint, a young man suddenly called his aunt in the UK on FaceTime and insisted I speak to her. In the middle of a rainy Syrian night, I found myself waving into a phone, laughing with a stranger thousands of miles away.
I would have stayed until dawn, listening to their stories by the fire, but my interpreter, shivering beside me, eventually pleaded that we leave.
Rojava’s vision and success threatens patriarchy
If Rojava falls, women will lose the most. Again and again, I heard the same words: “We fought for these rights. We fought ISIS for you too, and now Europe stands with those who threaten us.”
Rojava offered women freedom and equality not only on paper, but in daily reality — for all women, not just the privileged. The experiment of Rojava — democratic, secular, feminist — stands in direct opposition to the region’s authoritarian, patriarchal order and to Islamist ideology. It is precisely that vision that endangers its existence.
When we visited in 2025, the fear of an attack on Rojava was already present, but the forces of the Syrian Democratic Forces still stood a fighting chance against HTS. However, after the United States abandoned the Kurds, it became clear that military escalation would end in a bloodbath — especially with Turkey waiting in the wings.
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