This reporting was supported by the Worldwide Ladies’s Media Basis’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Ladies Journalists.
AL-HASAKAH, Syria—On a sweltering summer season day in a army academy simply outdoors al-Hasakah, male fighters grumbled over a compulsory class referred to as “Jineology,” or “the science of girls.” They’d already spent a number of days studying the fundamentals of girls’s historical past and mythology in addition to concerning the damaging results of patriarchy of their area.
All 102 assembled males had been members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of militias in northeast Syria supported by the US and led by the Kurds, a stateless folks indigenous to the Center East. The jineology class was a part of an 18-week academy that may additionally embrace army coaching. A lot of the males had been Arab and got here from conservative communities. The lecturer, who glided by the tough-sounding identify “Roken 23 Doshka,” a nod to the Soviet-era machine gun, was a girl.
This reporting was supported by the Worldwide Ladies’s Media Basis’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Ladies Journalists.
AL-HASAKAH, Syria—On a sweltering summer season day in a army academy simply outdoors al-Hasakah, male fighters grumbled over a compulsory class referred to as “Jineology,” or “the science of girls.” They’d already spent a number of days studying the fundamentals of girls’s historical past and mythology in addition to concerning the damaging results of patriarchy of their area.
All 102 assembled males had been members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of militias in northeast Syria supported by the US and led by the Kurds, a stateless folks indigenous to the Center East. The jineology class was a part of an 18-week academy that may additionally embrace army coaching. A lot of the males had been Arab and got here from conservative communities. The lecturer, who glided by the tough-sounding identify “Roken 23 Doshka,” a nod to the Soviet-era machine gun, was a girl.
As Doshka spoke to the category, a few of the males nodded off. One male fighter complained that after a girl he knew had joined an all-female militia, she’d lower her hair brief, which was thought-about shameful within the Arab neighborhood. Then Dilbrin Rumailan, a younger fighter with jet-black hair and a assured method, raised his hand to say the courses had already modified his considering.
“Earlier than, I didn’t agree if my sister wished to go away the home as a result of I noticed how the ladies had been getting out and the way they had been behaving,” Rumailan mentioned, including that he didn’t let his spouse go to her household for longer than an hour at a time. “However now, I see that even the girl has a life, an ideology, and her personal impartial persona. … I notice I misbehaved and offended her.”
Though not everybody has been as receptive as Rumailan to the teachings of jineology, the programs have continued to unfold throughout the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). The self-governing, Kurdish-majority area, roughly the scale of Denmark, emerged out of the chaos of the Syrian civil battle. It declared itself democratic, egalitarian, and feminist, and the philosophy of jineology is core to the Kurds’ social revolution.
Jineology—whose identify is a mixture of “jin,” the Kurdish phrase for “girl,” and the Greek phrase “logos,” which implies “phrase” or “cause”—just isn’t solely required studying for many of the SDF’s 100,000 members. Programs are additionally increasing on the faculty and grasp’s diploma ranges in addition to in excessive colleges for the primary time this 12 months. Nobody appears to know what number of jineology institutes or programs exist, however it’s now being taught in not less than eight cities throughout northeast Syria, from Derik (often known as al-Malikiyah) within the north to Deir al-Zour within the south, from Kobani within the west to Qamishli within the east.
The proliferation of jineology programs comes three years after the SDF declared “complete” victory over the Islamic State in Syria, with essential battles received towards the Islamist militants by the all-female militia, the Ladies’s Safety Units (YPJ), which is a part of the SDF.
That victory gave the Kurdish-led forces undisputed management over northeast Syria, however it additionally meant the decline of assist from worldwide allies who now not wanted their assist in combating the Islamic State. That change has made AANES way more weak to longtime, outsized enemies, equivalent to Turkey, which the Kurds have been at battle with for many years and whose drone strikes on army targets in AANES are an ongoing drawback. In late Could, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened a brand new army incursion into northeast Syria.
Regardless of its shaky future, the Kurds have continued their efforts to remodel patriarchal attitudes within the area. The realm has lengthy been ruled by honor-based tribal and spiritual codes which have allowed for compelled and baby marriages, home and sexual violence, polygamy, and different dangerous practices.
To fight these customs, the Kurds’ ideological chief, Abdullah Ocalan—who famously mentioned, “A rustic can’t be free except the ladies are free”—has been a outstanding advocate for the teachings of jineology. Cynics level out that radical gender equality has additionally meant doubling the recruitment potential for Kurdish-led militias; the YPJ is at present 5,000 girls sturdy, in accordance with SDF commander Newroz Ahmed. Kurdish army forces have additionally included minors of their ranks: A United Nations report final 12 months discovered the recruitment and/or use of 119 minors within the Kurdish-led forces within the span of roughly a 12 months. (Ahmed mentioned many ladies “come to us and say they need to be part of, and we refuse them.”)
Safaa Noori, a 35-year-old YPJ fighter with lengthy black hair tied again in a messy braid, mentioned she joined the YPJ in 2019 after listening to about its battle for ladies’s rights, a radical notion to her on the time. She mentioned she was married off at age 13 to a person 30 years her senior with a number of wives, who locked her of their mud home every time he left residence and beat her when she didn’t put together meals adequately. “As a result of I used to be solely 13, I couldn’t even cook dinner an egg for him,” Noori mentioned. “All of the neighbors would hear me screaming.”
The wedding solely lasted two years earlier than she fled residence to dwell along with her household in Deir al-Zour; they had been later displaced to al-Hasakah. Since becoming a member of the militia in 2019, Noori has studied jineology in two coaching classes. She discovered that many early cultures had been matriarchal till about 5,000 years in the past, when energy shifted into males’s fingers (an thought many Western historians contest). “However an important factor I discovered in jineology is methods to eliminate the masculine mentality, which has been planted in [men’s] thoughts[s] by the Ba’ath Get together,” Noori mentioned, citing the celebration of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Though the AANES banned baby marriage after taking management of the area, Noori mentioned the observe stays prevalent in her village, the place “a girl continues to be prevented from going to highschool; she has no character and can’t even categorical herself.” However seeing girls bear arms has slowly begun to alter attitudes, as have the foundational concepts of jineology, she mentioned.
Not all college students of jineology in northeast Syria are militia members. Roz Abdulbaki Ali, a 22-year-old faculty graduate in a sizzling pink shirt with a gentle, insistent voice who studied jineology on the College of Rojava in Qamishli, mentioned the course started with philosophy and historical past. She discovered “methods to acknowledge and depend on myself as a girl,” she mentioned, and the way girls have been handled by totally different religions, together with unfavourable depictions of girls within the Quran, the Torah, and the Bible.
However then, the jineology courses did one thing new: They taught Ali and the opposite college students bodily self-defense, together with boxing and knife-wielding, and gave them weapons coaching, together with a number of days of taking pictures classes with dwell bullets in a close-by village.
“We’re doing this as a result of we’re in a battle zone, and we don’t know when there can be combating,” Ali mentioned. However the change additionally raises questions on whether or not the YPJ plans to make use of jineology programs as a recruiting instrument, which might grow to be extra pressing if the Turkish incursion occurs.
Ali mentioned she just isn’t planning to grow to be a fighter except wanted. As an alternative, she plans to get a grasp’s diploma in jineology so she will train the topic to others. She as soon as dreamed of getting married however mentioned it’s now not her focus. “After finding out jineology, my goals are now not associated to marriage, the home, and the person,” she mentioned.
The course didn’t have the identical impression on her classmates, lots of whom Ali mentioned dropped out to get married or had been wed instantly after commencement on account of parental strain. Newroz Sabah Sheikmus, a professor of jineology on the College of Rojava, confirmed dropouts are an ongoing drawback: “The dad and mom don’t need their daughters to review this type of [women’s] science,” Sheikmus mentioned. Final 12 months, 4 of Sheikmus’s 15 feminine college students didn’t full the course.
However jineology is now being taught at a youthful age—to boys—and it’s obligatory. Zachariah Ahmad Haider, an 18-year-old pupil on the all-boys Arabstan highschool in Qamishli, is taking jineology this 12 months together with physics, chemistry, and English. He’s a part of the primary crop of highschool college students in northeast Syria to take action. Haider mentioned not all of his pals had been thrilled to have to review girls.
“A number of the fellow college students say, ‘Why don’t they examine us when we now have to examine them?’” Haidar mentioned, who paused typically to assume earlier than talking. “However I don’t agree with my pals as a result of with out girls, there is no such thing as a life. They’re those that give delivery and construct society. Or that’s what I’ve been taught in class.”
Extra reporting was carried out by Solin Muhammed Amin and Obeid Sheikhi.
