The Daughters of Kobani

What does it mean for women, long confined by patriarchy and war, to seize history’s reins and fight for their liberation — not just through politics, but through guns and grit? In The Daughters of Kobani, journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon answers this question by chronicling the astonishing rise of the Kurdish Women's Protection Units (YPJ) in northern Syria and their decisive role in defeating the Islamic State (ISIS). Her book is both a stirring war chronicle and an exploration of how women can transform societies—even in the heart of a region long dominated by male power and religious extremism.

Lemmon contends that the Kurdish women who fought ISIS were not only defending their homes but pioneering one of the most radical social experiments in the Middle East: a democracy built on gender equality. Their story reveals how war can accelerate social change, and how ideals tested in battle can ripple far beyond the battlefield. At its core, the book asks whether true freedom can exist without women’s equality—and whether the act of taking up arms can become an act of liberation.

From the Margins to the Front Lines

Lemmon situates her narrative amid the Syrian Civil War, an environment of chaos, competing powers, and collapsing state structures. Against this backdrop, Kurdish fighters—long denied political and cultural rights—seized the moment to build a self-governing region known as Rojava. Embedded within its ideology, shaped by Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, was a revolutionary principle: that no society can be free without the liberation of women. Out of that conviction emerged the YPJ, an all-female militia determined not only to fight ISIS but to dismantle millennia of patriarchy (a theme echoing authors like Martha Nussbaum in Women and Human Development).

Lemmon weaves detailed portraits of women like Azeema, a fierce sniper; Rojda, a calm, methodical commander; and Nowruz, a steady, strategic leader whose discipline shaped the movement. These women become living symbols of self-determination, transforming gender roles in one of the world’s most rigid societies. As they battle ISIS, they also battle the very notion that women belong at the margins of history.

Two Revolutions Collide: Equality vs. Extremism

Lemmon compellingly contrasts two irreconcilable worldviews. ISIS’s creed of enslavement and domination of women—seen in their mass abductions, sexual slavery, and public executions—is met by the YPJ’s doctrine of equality and inclusion. The battle for Kobani in 2014 becomes the flashpoint where these ideologies clash. Lemmon writes vividly of women fighting house-to-house in the devastated Kurdish town while the world watches via live broadcasts from across the Turkish border. For the first time, global audiences witness women fighting—and winning—against one of the most vicious terrorist movements of modern times.

The author portrays the YPJ’s victories not just as military ones but as ideological triumphs. When women who would once have been forbidden to walk alone in the streets can now command troops—including men—the revolution transcends the battlefield. Their defiance resonates far beyond Syria’s borders, becoming a statement about women’s agency everywhere.

America’s Unlikely Allies

Lemmon also explores a geopolitical irony: that America, a superpower that long resisted putting women in direct combat roles, ended up depending on an all-female militia in the fight against ISIS. Through U.S. Special Operations officers like Mitch Harper, Leo James, and Brett McGurk, the book reveals the evolving relationship between the YPJ and Washington. At first skeptical, American soldiers become awed by the tenacity and effectiveness of their Kurdish counterparts. These women, armed with little more than AK-47s and conviction, succeed where others had failed, turning Kobani into the first major ISIS defeat.

(Lemmon draws on her prior work Ashley’s War, which told of U.S. women who entered combat zones through the Cultural Support Teams. Here, she extends that inquiry globally: how women’s inclusion in warfare reshapes everything from battlefield tactics to national identity.)

The Meaning of Liberation

Ultimately, The Daughters of Kobani is not just about war; it’s about what comes after. As Lemmon follows her protagonists beyond the ISIS fight—to Manbij, Raqqa, and the eventual creation of a new Syrian democratic charter centered on gender equality—she explores the peril of building freedom in a region where every ally comes with limits. Even as the U.S. celebrates victory over ISIS, political abandonment looms, culminating in Turkey’s later offensive against the same Kurdish women it once relied on. Yet, Lemmon leaves us with a flicker of hope. The women of Kobani may have lost their Western allies, but they lit a torch for future generations of women determined to live—and lead—freely. Theirs is a modern epic of resilience, rising from rubble to rewrite the story of who gets to hold power when the world turns to ashes.

Long before the rise of ISIS, the Kurds had endured decades of erasure. Lemmon explains that they are the world’s largest ethnic group without a state—about 30 million people divided among Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. In Syria, Kurds were denied citizenship, banned from speaking their language, and stripped of property under Bashar al-Assad’s regime. By 2004, systemic discrimination erupted into riots after a soccer match in Qamishli, when police killed unarmed Kurdish fans. Out of this state violence grew a generation unwilling to remain silent.

Azeema, one of Lemmon’s primary heroines, experiences this repression firsthand. Her childhood under surveillance and her father’s quiet faith in Kurdish rights introduce her to politics before she ever fires a rifle. For her, as for many, joining the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and later the YPJ wasn’t just military—it was existential. To survive, they had to arm themselves.

The Ideological Seed: Abdullah Öcalan’s Teachings

Central to the Kurdish movement is the imprisoned Turkish Kurdish thinker Abdullah Öcalan. From his solitary confinement on Imrali Island, he transformed from Marxist insurgent to philosopher of a grassroots democratic order built on women’s equality. He argued that civilization began with women’s enslavement and could only be redeemed through their liberation. His writings—smuggled into Syria, passed hand to hand—became a new manifesto for Kurdish emancipation. Both men and women studied his ideas like sacred texts, with units debating philosophy between firefights.

Öcalan’s influence bridges the personal and the political. For the YPJ, his belief that society can’t be free if women aren’t mutates from theory to daily practice: women must lead, command, and govern. It’s no accident that the YPJ was founded on Öcalan’s birthday, April 4, 2013. Lemmon shows how these ideological underpinnings separated the Syrian Kurds from other factions—rooting their struggle not in nationalism but in communal democracy, reminiscent of Murray Bookchin’s eco-socialist writings from Vermont that Öcalan studied in prison.

Empowerment in Action

When war fractured Syria in 2011, this groundwork paid off. The Kurds declared autonomy in Rojava, enforcing co-leadership rules that required every position—political or military—to have one man and one woman. Women’s councils adjudicated domestic-violence cases, girls learned Kurdish in schools once dominated by Arabic, and armed women patrolled checkpoints. Lemmon makes clear that such reforms weren’t the byproduct of Western feminism but homegrown resistance: daughters who refused arranged marriages, teachers who opened underground schools, and fighters like Azeema who saw the rifle as their right to exist. Out of systemic repression grew one of the most progressive social experiments in the Middle East.

When ISIS stormed into Kobani in 2014, few believed the small Kurdish town had any chance. Yet, as Lemmon recounts vividly, what began as desperate house-to-house defense became a global symbol of defiance. For three months, young women fought seasoned jihadists armed with tanks and American-made weapons looted from Iraq. The fighting was ruthless: snipers dueled across shattered streets, car bombs ripped through defenses, and the air stank of burnt metal and fear.

Amid this carnage, field commanders like Azeema and Rojda held their lines. Lemmon describes Azeema’s quiet patience as a sniper—waiting motionless for hours, whispering to steady her breath before firing. Across town, Nowruz commanded the southern front, radioing orders between barrages, rallying weary troops with reminders that they were fighting not just for Kobani, but for every woman ISIS had enslaved. The Kurdish motto—“We are here to live free or die as women”—became their creed.

Global Witness: The Town on TV

Kobani’s siege unfolded live on international television. Cameras stationed on the Turkish border zoomed in on explosions just kilometers away. The world watched, paralyzed, as ISIS advanced, waving black flags over captured ground. In those same frames, viewers saw braids, rifles, and floral scarves—women who refused to retreat. Hashtags like #GlobalDay4Kobane went viral, and the YPJ became an internet phenomenon. For once, the story of Middle Eastern women wasn’t one of victimhood but valor.

(Lemmon notes the irony that Turkey, a NATO ally, allowed foreign jihadists to cross its border but not supplies to Kurdish defenders. Only later, under public pressure, did the U.S. intervene with airstrikes and airdrops of ammunition and food, marking a turning point in both the battle and U.S.-Kurdish relations.)

Victory and Its Costs

By January 2015, Kobani was nearly leveled—but it stood free. Lemmon’s descriptions of celebration are bittersweet: Azeema, wounded near the heart but triumphant, limps through the ruined streets. Hundreds of comrades are dead, yet their victory breaks ISIS’s aura of invincibility and launches the Kurdish women’s fight into history. Kobani wasn’t just a military win; it was proof of concept—that equality could endure the crucible of war. As Lemmon writes, the rubble of Kobani became the foundation for a revolution built on women’s hands.

After Kobani, the Kurdish political movement faced a challenge few guerrilla groups ever conquer: how to turn military victories into durable governance. Lemmon explains how the Democratic Union Party crafted the Charter of the Social Contract in 2014—a proto-constitution for northeastern Syria. It outlawed torture and capital punishment, recognized multiple languages, and mandated 40 percent female representation in all governing bodies. These were radical commitments in a region where dictatorships had silenced minorities for generations.

This new order drew directly from Öcalan’s philosophy of democratic confederalism—a decentralized system empowering local councils rather than a single state. Towns now had co-leaders (one man, one woman), and women’s councils handled cases of domestic abuse or forced marriage. Fauzia Yusuf and Ilham Ahmed, two activists Lemmon profiles, pushed relentlessly to encode gender equality into law. Their work anticipated the Tunisian constitution of 2014, one of the Arab world’s few to enshrine equal rights for women.

Resistance and Realpolitik

The Kurds’ bid for self-rule alarmed nearly everyone: Assad’s regime feared separatism; Turkey saw it as PKK expansion; even allied Iraqi Kurds viewed it warily. Yet, as Lemmon shows, the Rojava experiment persisted precisely because it operated in chaos. Syrian government troops, bled dry by other fronts, withdrew from much of the northeast, leaving a power vacuum the Kurds filled with competent administration and relative peace. For civilians, a functioning council mattered more than ideology.

The Meaning of Representation

For Lemmon, Rojava became a living question: how democratic can a revolution be when surrounded by war? The councils governed local justice, but military decisions remained centralized in YPG/YPJ headquarters. Still, the symbolic transformation was visible: girls once forbidden to attend school now led committees; widows became mayors. These civilian victories, though less cinematic than the war scenes, are where Lemmon’s humanism shines. They remind us that true liberation isn’t just seizing freedom from an enemy—it’s learning to sustain it.

Lemmon provides a gripping inside look at how the U.S. military went from wary observers to committed allies of Kurdish forces. After ISIS captured Mosul and massacred the Yazidis in 2014, American generals needed ground troops who could fight with both discipline and moral legitimacy. The YPG and YPJ, already bloodied in Kobani, became the obvious—if politically awkward—partners. Special Operations leaders like Leo James and Mitch Harper formed personal bonds with Kurdish commanders, trading satellite intelligence for local courage.

Their cooperation shows how pragmatism can override geopolitics. The U.S., aware that NATO ally Turkey considered the YPG terrorists, had to walk a diplomatic tightrope. Still, as one officer told Lemmon, “They’re the only ones who can win.” Together, they planned complex missions—airstrikes coordinated over walkie-talkies, nighttime rescues of trapped fighters, and the liberation of cities like Manbij, Tabqa, and Raqqa.

The Paradox of Support

Yet this alliance was built on contradiction. While the U.S. equipped Kurdish women to defeat ISIS, it refused to guarantee their defense against Turkey once that victory came. Lemmon’s American characters wrestle with admiration and unease—training women who quote Öcalan while knowing Washington officially listed his movement as terrorist. In moments of candid frustration, officers like Leo reflect on the irony that the women’s progress they admired might be erased by their own country’s policies.

Through these tensions, Lemmon draws a broader conclusion: alliances, like revolutions, are temporary. The women of the YPJ learned to count on themselves above all else. For them, American backing was a tool, not salvation. As Rojda remarks to her troops before Raqqa, “We are the future of women here, not anyone else’s project.” The partnership changed both sides—the soldiers gained new respect for women’s leadership, and the Kurds gained leverage for recognition, even if fleeting.

If Kobani was the YPJ’s trial by fire, the battles of Manbij (2016) and Raqqa (2017) were its test of endurance. Lemmon reconstructs these campaigns with cinematic detail: night crossings of the Euphrates under fire, Soviet pontoon bridges pieced together by headlamp, villages booby-trapped with mines and bombs. Led by women like Nowruz and Znarin, YPJ units spearheaded attacks while coordinating with American air support. Their fight was not just to retake land but to prove their capacity as equal military powers.

Manbij, once the gateway for ISIS foreign fighters, symbolized the closing of a dark chapter. Lemmon contrasts harrowing combat scenes with moments of revelation: liberated Arab women weeping at the sight of female soldiers; teenage girls approaching fighters asking how to join. Each small act, she writes, was its own revolution. Znarin, once forbidden to study, now commanded dozens in battle. The front lines became classrooms of equality.

Raqqa: The Capital Falls

The campaign to retake Raqqa—the self-declared ISIS capital—culminated in 2017. For four months, YPJ and SDF fighters endured ferocious street battles, facing snipers, tunnels, suicide car bombs, and drone attacks. Rojda led four thousand troops while American advisers, like Jason Akin, coordinated strikes from nearby bases. When the yellow flag of the SDF rose over Paradise Square, once littered with decapitated heads, Lemmon writes, “The women who had been fighting for survival now danced on the ground where oppression once ruled.”

Raqqa’s liberation ended ISIS’s territorial caliphate, but for Lemmon’s subjects, it marked a deeper shift: the women warriors had become nation builders. Out of conquest emerged conscience—the recognition that the real battle would be for education, politics, and peace.

The book’s final chapters trace a tragic arc: from victory to betrayal. After defeating ISIS, Kurdish women leaders like Ilham Ahmed sought inclusion in peace talks, presenting their newly ratified Social Contract of the Federation of Northern Syria—a document enshrining women’s political, legal, and social equality. But their success alarmed neighboring powers. Turkey, fearing a Kurdish autonomous zone on its border, launched Operation Peace Spring in 2019, invading the very towns—Kobani, Manbij, and Hassakeh—that the YPJ had liberated.

Lemmon describes the scene with restrained fury: U.S. troops, once partners, withdraw within hours of a presidential phone call with Turkey’s leader. Bombs fall on the same streets where women once danced in victory. Ambassador William Roebuck’s internal memo, quoted in the epilogue, calls it “an intentioned-laced effort at ethnic cleansing.” For the women who fought ISIS, the betrayal feels like the war’s bitter coda.

The Enduring Flame

Yet Lemmon insists their revolution endures. Even under occupation, civil councils continue, schools remain co-led by women, and the YPJ still trains recruits. When asked if the fight was worth it, commander Nowruz replies, “I fight so people can live freely.” This statement encapsulates the book’s soul. The Daughters of Kobani is not simply a war story; it’s a meditation on how ideals survive betrayal. The torch of equality they lit continues to flicker—in classrooms, in refugee camps, and in the memories of those who watched a new kind of freedom born from war.