Fight in their names! Towards the 8 of March 2025 – Part 3

…read the part 1 and part 2 here…

My name is Sorxwîn Rojhilat, I will tell you a little about my memories from Kobanê. The Kobanê war is something you can report, write and talk about as much as you like, but you will never finish.

Every friend who was there has their own experiences and stories. You can tell so much about each friend, about their willingness to sacrifice, it would take hours or days.

But I will tell you a little about it now and keep it short.

Sniper war – Şehîd Gelhat

We took the wounded to the hospital. Only very few of us were left in this operation who could continue the fight. Daesh also had a lot of losses. And so there were very few of us left in this operation who could continue fighting, 24 dead ones in the house and another big group from the attack with the digger. So we could create a Daesh-free area around and in front of us. It was a strong operation from our side, but they had also fought back fiercely and called their reinforcements for the evening. They arrived around 5pm with a Zagros and more weapons.

Heval Gelhat wanted the digger back at our position. He was on the roof and took a look when he was also hit by a bullet. It targeted its shoulder right above the heart and he fell on the ground. The comrade who was with him directly turned and threw himself on him to cover. It caused a turmoil, nobody was listen to anyone any more. I shouted: “Stay back, nobody moves”. I knew that the sniper was active in that moment. I really had to scream. I called Abu-Ebdo, he was an older father of several children and in charge of bringing the wounded. He was from the village Blig. They shouted: “Bring a car”, but I screamed: “No, No, nobody is moving.” But it was too late, nobody heard me so they brought the car directly into the snipers vision. Yes, they wanted to rescue Heval Gelhat and bring him out. On their way to the car the sniper shot the driver directly in the head. I saw the car pass me with two comrades- Heval Serhad and Heval Gelhat. Heval Welat was also there and I saw his hot blood running out of his mouth and nose. The car drove fast and straight into a wall. When it hit, there was black smoke everywhere. Heval Harûn was right there and took Heval Gelhat and the driver out of the car. Thanks to the smoke, the sniper couldn’t target them.

Heval Gelhat finally fell Şehîd in this situation. The driver was an Arab friend. The Şehadet of Heval Gelhat, really, it had a great impact on all of us. Not only him, but also the death of Heval Çekdar, or Heval Cemal, they all hit us hard. Heval Gelhat and me had been together such a long time and knew each other very well. And whether you like it or not, a loss like that naturally has a very bad effect for the morale of all the friends that remained. It brought confusion and unwillingness to continue. But still we had to go on.

Tragedy and Comedy of war

I just shouted that we had to defend the digger and drive it in front of the wall so Daesh couldn’t reach us. Even we had lost so much and had suffered such a heavy blow, I wanted to make sure that we who were left would defeat Daesh so they could not take the digger from us. We fought the whole night defeating all their reinforcement troupes. I think we used half of the ammunition in Kobanê that night for the defence of this machine. We dropped four grenade launchers around the digger to explode the tyres. But because they were armoured the grenade launcher couldn’t destroy it. Daesh wanted to seize the digger but we really did everything to prevent that. So the morning came and with him a digger driver from Suruç, called Temo. He grew up in Kobanê. The commando was now in my hands only. I was still holding the position where Heval Gelhat had fallen. With Temo with us we were able to reach the digger again for getting our friends out of it and broke through the wall. Daesh had not stopped firing at us but I could see Temo entering the digger. Daesh fired on him, but the armour was in between. Watching through a little hole I saw Temo trying to communicate with me. His teeth were chattering so much I couldn’t understand anything. I tried to calm him down. But he wasn’t himself. He said he had never seen a corpse before and when he entered the door he stepped into all the blood of a friend. He hadn’t expect this. “Why didn’t you tell me there were Şehîds?” He was in shock. I felt sorry I had forgoten to tell him that the driver had got shot in the head.

He tried to start the digger but something didn’t worked. Something was broken. I wanted to get him out of this half funny half tragic situation, so we decided to come back during daytime. Temo went on saying that he never saw wounded or dead people in his life. I said: “At least point your gun at the digger so we defend it until tomorrow morning, you can hold a gun, can’t you?” He said: “Heval Sorxwîn, I would like to get my ammunition belt first, there are still magazines in it, so I can better defend the whole night.” He had also brought some food and water in his backpack he said, so the comrades could better keep up the fight. He wanted to get it. Of course I immediately understood he didn’t want to get anything but to take a opportunity to ran away. I said: “The comrades learned to fight without all of this, you don’t need to go.”

Those moments can be tragic and funny in the same time. Because then he said: “Okay Heval Sorxwîn, but I really have to go to the toilet.”. I said: “Go, but come back” and he answered: “Comrade, what do you think of me?”. “If you will leave, how can you justify this for yourself” We were only three women comrades left, he was the only man. If he would leave there’d only be three of us again, could he live with this knowledge?. He said: “No No No of course I will come back”. And so he left and didn’t come back. We spent the whole night defending this machine on our own, not only until the morning but till the next evening.

Redesigning the town

The next morning the body of Heval Gelhat was brought to Bakûr. In the evening a group from Aleppo came to reinforce us. It was the group of Selahadin. Much later, after the war, he would run away and depart from the movement. But in this moment he brought Heval Xemgîn, Heval Cudî, Heval Rênas and Heval Agir with him.

He came to replace Şehîd Gelhat as the new front section commander and had brought his group with him from Aleppo. They started to build up their positions. Up to this point we had stopped fighting, we didn’t advance any further, we just built up and improved our positions. We had perforated walls so that we could pass through them more easily in order to overcome hidden sections. We had taken tarps and clothes from the stores and hung them up so that we could move behind them without being seen by snipers. This had all been done before, it was Heval Gelhat’s tactic to cover all the streets with carpets, tarps and fabrics. But the new constructions, like the enemy does it, were bases filled with sandbags. That was the tactic the group had brought with them from Aleppo. They built very stable constructions of walls, three or four layers thick with different methods. If a tank missile had hit it, it got stuck there. No matter what kind of weapon the enemy would use they would not be able to hit you behind these walls. So we had our new sturdy “castles” as we called them. It was the beginning of a new tactic we used in every house we had taken before. We wanted to advance further.

A hundred times Heval Hacî

After that the self-government was declared and the people came back. Our positions were suddenly filled up. It was a huge reinforcement. The advantages converged in our hands and our conditions improved a lot. The situation seemed good for us now. But how to deal with all the new friends, who were mostly inexperienced from society? A friend we called Hacî from the special forces suggested himself for self-sacrifice. When he asked me for a place to do it I refused: “No, you sacrifice yourself in every minute in every position for the comrades and the people but you don’t blow yourself up once”. And really I mean this serious. All the people here had done this every moment and with that have shown what sacrifice really is. They showed their readiness no matter what what for and which task. They fought bravely like Hacî until the end. The fallen friends from the Kobanê resistance were mainly from the society and the snipers often targeted them. If you remember them all, the young friends with their courageous and self-sacrificing spirit, like Heval Çekdar or Xwînda Genc. Those were the symbols of the Kobanê resistance.

This young friend from society, Hacî, was a reflection of this, on him there were always several grenade launchers and his ammunition belt and he was always somewhere at the frontline in action. Fireworks in his pocket, the Kalashnikov on his shoulder and the grenade launcher in his hand, that’s how he fought. I sent Heval Baran to him and later also Heval Nûjîn. They sneaked to the enemy and fired. Heval Nujîn was actually at the front section next to us, but came with the mobile troops and took action. Heval Nujîn always participated everywhere and was involved in every action. She was often wounded and took shrapnel out of the war. But till the end she didn’t loose her life. She once told me: “Hevala Sorxwîn, you should come too, we would be such a a great team together.” But Kobanê needed some comrades with at least a bit of experience who were also older and could coordinate the operations.

Really those forces who gave all of themselves in this war, were the people of the society. They had the spirit of Hevaltî with them and went without a doubt after the enemy. We used Hacî as their code names, because the real Heval Hacî herself was the role model of those who held up the Kobanê resistance. Once, 13 of them were enclosed for 15 days. It was the group of Heval Cîmê. We were close to them but no longer in contact. We just managed to speak to each other for five minutes, because he charged the batteries with a stone for the little. From this point I knew Heval Cîmê was still alive. She said a coordinated approach was needed and the support of the air planes of the coalition. They were supposed to bomb so we could move further. That’s the spirit of PKK. Heval Mustafa interrupted. They were right in the house in front of us and in case the air planes would bomb the house now, they would be buried alive. So I called the volunteer groups from society to support them instead.

We had a Dochka, dropped 10-15 grenade launchers around the house as well as other explosive devices, then I sneaked up to the comrades and entered the house. For 15 days they had been stuck, cut off from us and been surrounded by the enemy. We thought they had all fallen Şehîd but we managed to break through and make our way to them. I saw once how they defended themselves in this encirclement. They literally used everything they could find against the Daesh attacks: a fridge, carpets, they barricaded themselves with everything they could find and if there was a hole in the barricade, they stuffed it with their jackets. None of the comrades had a jacket any more.

A lot of them were injured. With them was also Heval Rûkên Amed. They had shrapnel everywhere, but in the places that they had entered their bodies the blood had tried up. One friend was completely black from dirt. That’s how their situation was. Heval Cîmê had splinters in her head, at one site her hair had been torn off. They first shot at us when we came cause they thought we were Daesh but then recognized our voices. It was me and Heval Medenî who came. Ten of them hugged us at once. It felt like being born a second time. Some cried. We had brought water, food and ammunition. Some of them we send to other parts. Heval Cîmê refused, she definitely wanted to stay with her group.

Psychological warfare

We cleaned the houses in front of them, which were occupied by Daesh previously to allow them to take a breath. From now on we moved forward day by day and pushed Daesh back further.

They had this philosophy that if they were killed during their meals they will go to paradise. And we knew when the time for food had come and prepared ourselves for this. Slowly slowly we knew their tactics and could force ours on their backs. We sneaked to them unnoticed when they were using special warfare methods. For example they recorded their Allah û Aqbar shouts and when one of us came they would play this tape to scare us. We found this tape when we captured one of them. Another example? They set up two chairs in front of our position and put two cut-off heads there early in the morning. We don’t know if it was their own forces or the people, but for sure it weren’t our comrades. It happened before, that they beheaded our friends and presented them to us, but in that time none of us was captured. That was the time when we didn’t give any Şehîds any more. But still there were always new cut-off heads.

The friends from society exposed this psychological warfare and took action against it. That’s why I again and again say the spirit of resistance were the comrades who became immortal in Kobanê. I will always think about them like this.

So the time passed and we progressed in the war. More and more people came back to Kobanê and we were able to build up three lines of defence. We advanced further and further.

Talking for days – Heval Nefel

I would love to talk about all our Şehîds one by one, but that would need days. But one was Heval Nefel. She came from Botan. She was really new in the movement, maybe six months and directly from her first military education came to Kobanê. She was trained on the BKS. Wherever she set up her position she stayed, showing no sign of fear and would never had surrendered. She called her BKC “Deer” and when I just said her name she instinctively knew what was needed. She then just said: “Tell me where I should set up my position?” Then she took her “deer” and got into position.

Believe it or not, if the situation became tricky, Heval Nefel was there. Normally you can’t put so much responsibility on such a new friend. But Nefel was born in war and always knew what to do. She exuded such a strong bond and love for her country. We had so many of those great people, like her or Heval Berîtan, Heval Zîn Sanzu, like Mazlûm Genc, like Heval Cudî or Baba Mislîm. There are so many historical stories lying inside Kobanê. Like Heval Hebûn or Şehîd Özgür, they were the spirit of the time of the revolution in Kobanê. Each of them has a heroic story and their own story, we could write an endless book about all these heroes and we still wouldn’t tell all the stories.

Miştenur

We made such good progress that we reached the “Miştenûr Hill”. One day I had a fight with Selahedin. He wanted to separate the women comrades from the others and forbid them to be the commanders of the mixed units. So we withdrew all the women comrades we had as commanders in Kaniya Kurdan and set up autonomous women units. When I was asked why I was doing this, I just said, “Don’t ask me, you have to ask Selahedin.”

We were at war, everyone had a different psychology and circumstances of life. Some started relationships during the war because they thought they would anyway die and never would see the liberation of Kobanê. If you are not in a stable mindset during a war and loose the control over your feelings you try to compensate and fill up the holes. It happens, especially if its a long war.

We were now two bigger groups. One of them was led by Heval Masîro and was positioned behind the Miştenur mountain to spy. According to their information we could access the mountain and set up two new tabûrs. To this point the whole site of Kaniya Kurdan was liberated so we wanted to move along quickly. Only Miştenur was left. If we would manage we could officially declare the liberation of Kobanê. Everyone was prepared, we already took our flags with us. In the Daesh radio we heard them saying “They are bringing red meat”. We knew the meaning of that. Red meat was their code for the hard fighters, “chicken meat” the one for the new fighter. We finally understood their codes. They had talked so much about meat the whole day. I once had the coordination shift, walking back and forwards between the comrades. Often Daesh attacked around 5am when the comrades were sleeping, so I got my Tekmîl for the day from Heval Helda that early. She was a sniper. She fell Şehîd but until the very end she carried the spirit of self-sacrifice. She was really a hero. Heval Devriş was also there as a sniper. He had performed great heroic deeds during the Kobanê resistance, but unfortunately afterwords he betrayed the movement and went away. The war had broken him and he couldn’t fill the void. It was the snipers who prevented Daesh to built their positions, not in the morning, the evening or whenever. They always had their eyes on the city. When the war was over, we had a lot of good snipers.

The tanks are coming

Sometimes, friends who newly arrived were first sent to education for around three months. So they only joined us at the end of the war. This really allowed us to make great progress every day. We knew from the Daesh radio that they planned a major attack. We also had received the information that 18 Daesh cars from Bakûr where on their way to the town. I got the Tekmîl around 5am in the morning and laid back down because the attack was supposed to start at 6pm. But as soon as I laid down a friend said: “Heval Sorxwîn, that’s the sound of tanks.” We knew that only tanks could break through, because our positions were now very stable and secure. They would probably try to blow up themselves with an armoured vehicle. So I got up straight away, grapped my belt and my weapon and went out. Heval Deştî was in charge of the ammunition supply. Because he was already badly wounded for the second time I made him the responsible for this.

There was also Abu-Şoreş, he was the father of 12 children and one of his children was also a guerrilla in the mountains. He was responsible for our logistics. I went up to the rooftop of a two-levelled house and spoke to the comrades on the radio. It was an autonomous team, only women friends. I told Hevala Cimê to get all her forces into position. The tanks were coming but no one should panic. They should take their precautions and protect themselves. So I informed all our forces and warned them that its gonna be a day of fierce war. I hadn’t even finished when fire broke out everywhere. It was the start of their attack. Daesh had set fire everywhere, they were burning cars and tires. The smoke was so thick you couldn’t see anything. There was a lot of bullets. A car exploded and with it dozen of other explosions started. The tanks came. One straight towards us. In three or four places were suicide bombers. They drove their cars in front of our positions and blew themselves up. They really had brought together a huge force which was willing to sacrifice itself.

Of course, I also went directly to our comrades to strengthen them and asked Heval Deştî to quickly bring in new supplies wherever the comrades’ ammunition was running low. I had also told the logistics officer to plan a good food supply so that the comrades didn’t run out of food, because it looked like it would be a long operation. Only the women’s group was in position. I really didn’t want them to fall Şehîd. There were bullets flying over me again and again, something exploded right next to us. It was a very hot phase of war. Dark clouds of smoke everywhere. I actually wanted to go straight to Heval Cimê, but I couldn’t see anything. A projectile flew directly over us, like a ball of fire it came towards us. Everything around me was burning and I fell on the ground. I was lying on my back, opposite our position was Heval Hamza and I saw him run straight towards me when he saw me fall. He carried me and others out. Then I just remember feeling something soft, but I was blindfolded and I just felt myself being moved and taken from one place to another.

The heart wants to live

I saw nothing. Someone next to us cried terribly and sobbed the whole time. I asked: “Who is that?” It was Heval Hamza, and I said to him: “Come open my eyes, what’s happened?” He just cried and said to himself: “Oh weylo, I wish my eyes had been hit instead of yours”. Slowly I understood that something bad had happened to my eyes. I fainted and didn’t realize that my comrades were taking me from Kobanê to Bakûr in an ambulance. When they loaded me from a bar into a Turkish ambulance at the Turkish border and pulled me along, I regained consciousness. I could hear Heval Arîn’s voice saying: “Our Sorxwîn, our Sorxwîn”. My clothes had been cut in the ambulance and I was given a patients dress. The voice “It’s our Sorxwîn” stayed in my ear the whole time, then I stopped noticing anything else. A long time passed. I opened my eyes some days later in a hospital in Bakûr. My injury was not small, my eyes were completely gone and I had a lot of particles in my head.

Everything from my ear was slipped upwards and I was completely burned from top to bottom on one side. My skin was black. It looked as if someone had poured burning liquid over me and set it on fire. My right hand was wounded, I had also taken a bullet there. I had my old injury on my left side. My legs were also full of shrapnel and I had 30 objects in my upper stomach. There were three very large pieces that injured me in my stomach, one piece as big as my hand went into my abdominal cavity and injured my intestines. Both legs, both arms, the old wound on the left and a few new injuries, the right hand was badly injured, my stomach and head, we can say I felt like a person patched up in small pieces. There were four other wounded comrades. When the doctor brought me to them, he realized that I was awake and said: “When you were brought to us among the three wounded, we thought there was nothing left of you that wasn’t injured. We said to ourselves, she is a women, how is she supposed to live with that appearance. Even if we treat her, how shall she continue her life? So they decided to let me die, because I was bleeding so much you could see right through the bone and they decided to save the others first.

However another doctor at least stopped my leg from bleeding. He told me: “It really looked like all your blood was gone and only yellow fluid left. But your heart kept beating so strong it didn’t want to stop. It wanted to live so much and just kept going.” Doctor Osman had seen all of this: “This women doesn’t want to die, let’s get her fixed up”. And so they started to treat me, after half an hour my situation was stabilized a little bit. They had to give me blood. I don’t remember exactly what blood group I have, A or B negative. In any case a blood group that can’t be found so quickly. They tried for 10-15 minutes to get blood for my blood type till they requested blood from the state. They treated me and the doctor said to me: “You’re like a little miracle, you were about to die but you didn’t go.” He was shocked when he saw me a long time later, still alive. He was so happy, came to me, took my hand and kissed me on the forehead because he was so overwhelmed. I was sitting in a wheelchair next to the window.

That was exactly two months later. I was sitting there looking through the window. And when the doctor who did the check-up saw me again after such a long time, that I was on my feet and he asked my name, he could remember me coming straight to him from the war. That I survived made him scream. A whole group of nurses was around him and together we covered the entire corridor. The doctor told the nurses that I had come straight from the war in Kobanê and that I didn’t speak Turkish. So that was my situation when I was wounded and had been in hospital in Bakûr for two months but was still alive. Kobanê was liberated just a few days after I was wounded.

Liberation and never forgetting

I was lying backwards in the hospital bed and there were three Kurdish channels on the television. I had switched to Çira TV and so I was able to follow all the news from Kobanê. Heval Dilbirîn who got wounded next to me came with me here, but he died. I saw the death of Heval Viyan Peyman in the news. I followed everything what happened in the town in the last days via the Çira channel.

Then the day came when we announced the liberation of the Kobanê. This day, I don’t even know how to describe it now. This great joy and excitement that this day really had coming was and remains indescribable. On the one hand my heart exploded with joy, on the other hand my eyes were full of tears that wouldn’t stop flowing. One eye was completely wounded and consisted only of a deep wound. At the same time, my heart was beating so strongly, it was on the one hand the love of liberation and on the other hand all the comrades who had fallen in the battle. The people who had fled and came back to rebuild the ruins. The great joy and the great pain for the loss of the comrades. I cried terribly. Because of the wound there were no tears only blood.

A nurse came in who hadn’t seen me before. I didn’t even noticed here. She immediately called all the doctors together, but there was no eye specialist. She saw the TV videos of the Kobanê liberation. How the comrades were hoisting the seven-metre-long flag. How the people were gathering together all over the hill of Miştenûr. The doctor looked at me, then at the TV and then back at me until he switched off the TV and gave me a relaxing injection. I fell asleep for quite a while and only opened my eyes again after a long sleep. When I woke up again, I immediately said: “Switch the TV back on”. I had calmed down a bit. It’s not easy for a person to express such feelings, what I had been through is not something that can really be told. And I think what I was going through at that moment was something I had never experienced before in my whole life.

That’s how it was. After that, I came back to Kobanê. I would like to tell you a bit more about Şehîd Deştî, Şehîd Azê, Şehîd Serbest, Şehîd Xemgîn, Şehîd Nûda, Şehîd Nefel, Şehîd Zîn Sanzu, Şehid Hamze, Şehîd Berîtan, Şehîd Feyzal (Abû Leyla), with whom I was together for a long time, Şehîd Ebdu and all the others. I would like to tell you a bit more about all of them afterwards.

Because all these comrades were such dear friends. Şehid Hebûn Derîk, Şehîd Özgür, with whom I was at a meeting, Heval Çekdar, and there are really thousands of them, the comrades from the society who fought with us, we can tell you much more about all of them individually and remember them. But this is what I can tell you for now.

 

Read the full version here