Background

Kurdistan is a land that has been divided. The British and French empires chopped up the region, and put sections under the control of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria inthe early 20th century. Kurdish resistance to oppression runs back even further and continues to this day. The Kurdish region of Syria (known as Rojava) caught the attention of the world after the uprisings across the Arab world in 2011. The Kurdistan Freedom Movement, which had been organising across all four parts of Kurdistan for decades, seized its chance. Autonomous regions in northern Syria were officially established in 2012, with people’s councils driving out the Assad regime’s forces and taking control of defence and governance.