Jinwar is a very special community. It is a tiny village in the easternmost part of Syria, close to the borders of Turkey and Iraq. It is Kurdish land but open for all ethnicities and denominations. That being said, no men are allowed. The village is a refuge for women and their children. Some inhabitants have escaped abusive husbands, others are widows, and a few just feel this is the right way for them – to decide their own fate and prove their own strength.
The landscape is open and windswept. There are no neighbors to be seen from the cluster of small clay houses, and this is important. The whole idea has to be close to nature, to be self-sufficient. This way the women of Jinwar live according to a Kurdish saying: On this soil, ants, birds, snakes, humans, and foxes have the right to live.
Mountains as protectors
Lebanese filmmaker #Marwa Arsanios# has taken upon herself to describe this take on life in her latest documentary – a truly gripping tale, visiting women on three locations in the region. Apart from Jinwar, she has visited female soldiers in the mountains of Kurdistan and has given voice to refugees from a Lebanese cooperative on the Syrian border. Together, they give important insight on life and survival in war-torn environments and a refreshing view of our resource exploitation’s impact on our eco-political models.
«I remember my childhood,» says Arsanios as some kind of mission statement in the beginning. «My first ecological feature was my mother because she told me that we as humans have a place in nature like a tree, the bird, and I have the right to exist like all other species at the same time and in the same place. We should not hurt the earth, we should protect the tree, don’t eat meat, don’t kill the animals. But we are children of the 20th and 21st centuries, and it took a long time before this philosophy reached us.»
Some inhabitants have escaped abusive husbands, others are widows, and a few just feel this is the right way for them
With that in mind, the female soldiers seek shelter in the mountains and form their philosophy of guerilla warfare in accordance with their surroundings. Here, nobody can threaten them. They gain strength from the mountains and the land.
The mountains have always been a strong protector of persecuted people. We are reminded that the Yazidis fled to the mountains in 2014 when ISIS attacked them. ISIS is no longer around in the same way, but new dangers lurk and, therefore, the women keep up their guard. As they put it, they sing songs to the mountains, not about them.
New Beginning
This is a film about a new beginning. The women of Jinwar are fully aware that the Syrian regime is planning to regain full control over the Jezireh region where they live – but now, Turkey’s security zone is also very close, as we know from its current situation. But they do not intend to let the rulers reinstate the old system that was centralized and lacked all respect for local populations. They did not want to understand the people, and a lot of social and psychological ills spread before 2011. There is an abundance of public land around them and 80-85% is fertile. The 59 women of Jinwar have built new hangars for the sheep, and in all of Jezireh, 15 million trees have been planted. The war has made the women realize what was stolen from them, and they are determined to correct things.
the female soldiers seek shelter in the mountains and form their philosophy of guerilla warfare in accordance with their surroundings.
This is their message as well as the message of this spectacular film. If you are Kurdish, you do not get a security approval but if you are from Aleppo, you do right away. The war has taught each of the women that they can gain strength from nature, cooperation, and mutualism – and that is true ecology.
