JINHA

HESEKÊ - Ebir Kemal Khelef thought her life was over when she learned that she was going to be married at 15. Then she found the YPJ.

"The life I lost in my childhood, I began to find in the ranks of the YPJ," said Ebir, a fighter in the YPJ. Ebir, who comes from the Begara Arab tribe in Hasakah, lost both her parents as a child. When she turned 15, her uncle planned to marry her off. Those were the years when women fighters with guns began to be seen in the streets of Hesekeh. Ebir learned that they were members of the defense units of the autonomous region of Rojava, in Syria, who have a presence in Hasakah.

Ebir's thought at the time: "If I had a gun, no one could force me to get married." Ebir began to ask Kurdish friends in her neighborhood about the Kurdish fighters she saw in the street and learned about the YPJ. This began to awaken questions in her head.

For three years, Ebir resisted her uncle's efforts to force her to marry. When she turned 18, she ran away from home and made her way to a YPJ checkpoint. There, the fighters asked why she had run away from home.

"I told them what I had experienced. They recommended me for training, and I accepted," said Ebir. "After I finished my political and military training, I took the name Rojbîn Hesekê."

In the training session, Ebir said, she learned about the struggle of women. "It seemed what I had learned until now was wrong," she said. "Life in the YPJ taught me persistence, a love of freedom and a desire for equality."

Since she joined the YPJ nine months ago, Ebir has taken part in operations in a number of locations: Til Hemis, Til Temir, Mt. Kezwan (Mt. Abdul Aziz) and her native city of Hasakah. She is hoping that forces will announce the liberation of Hasakah from Daesh within a few days. "As an Arab YPJ fighter, I want to be the one who gives the good news to our people in Hasakah that its liberation is close at hand," she said.

Ebir reacted to claims about the YPG/YPJ harming Arab civilians.

"There are hundreds of Arabs in the YPG/YPJ ranks right now," she said. "They're here to protect their own regions, their own people. They're spilling their blood for this. No one outside can tell us about this; the ones experiencing it are us.

"The YPG/YPJ defend the fraternity of peoples. As an Arab woman in the YPJ, if I had witnessed a single civilian harmed at the hands of our forces, I would not be here."

(gc/cm)