War in the time of Coronavirus
Heval Rizgar, a Kurdish nom de guerre meaning Comrade Liberation, landed in Iraqi Kurdistan on February 19, 2020.
It was his first time outside New York City where he lived for a little more than twenty years, a place that for him was also one of troubles and desperation.
After a week in the city of Sulaymaniyah, he crossed the Tigris River into Syria. There he would join the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a United States-supported and Kurdish-led fighting force, which for the last half decade rousted the Islamic State from its caliphate strongholds across the Euphrates River Valley in Syria.
Rizgar planned this moment ever since he received his acceptance letter in October, 2019, shortly after what many in the region call “Trump’s Betrayal.” That month the president announced a complete withdrawal of American military personnel from northern Syria.
“I had known about the Rojava revolution,” Rizgar told me recently, using the local name for northeastern Syria. “I had done political work in the states, considered myself a Socialist. I had never really felt the urge to go, but when Trump pulled the troops out it was a punch to the gut, so unnecessary, fuckin’ cruel and inhumane.”
He underscored that the fight against ISIS wasn’t political, likening the abandonment of those who fought side-by-side for years with a common goal to the greatest treachery. Twelve-thousand SDF fighters lost their lives, ensuring few Americans died while dismantling the jihadist caliphate.
Since the caliphate’s establishment in 2014, Rizgar found himself in good company.
Hundreds of foreigners, from North America and Europe, traveled to Syria to fight alongside the SDF. After years of fighting, in March 2019, they succeeded in pushing the militants to a small swathof land along the Euphrates River outside the city of Baghouz. At least 30 foreign fighters would die in combat. And many who returned home received less than a hero’s welcome, charged with crimes against the state in European countries who viewed the volunteers as possible terrorists. The SDF is politically an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a state designated terrorist organization.
But cooperating with the Kurdish-majority and Arab militias were the one way for many to contribute to a worldwide fight against terrorism. They were drawn to the specter of something more important than themselves.
Still, some fought as self-proclaimed Marxists, Leninists, or anarchists. Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also joined the fight, finding renewed purpose in life. Others, like Rizgar, an American, couldn’t sit by while his country undermined its stated values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
“In my life, right now, I’m not where I want to be, job-wise, or education-wise,” Rizgar remembers thinking as he prepared to fly to Iraqi Kurdistan. “I had little to lose.”
And he was willing to sacrifice his life for the principles of the people in northern Syria, who were seeking to establish their own society apart from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Rojava was in the midst of creating its own political system, founded on the ideals of shared-political responsibilities among females and males, placing a premium on civil liberties and inclusiveness no matter the tribe or religious sect.
Rizgar had come from a public school education before attending an Ivy League, pulling himself up out of a low-income household only to find himself unsettled, unclear of the best path forward. He dropped out, taking time off to work in construction and volunteering at his church while waiting to hear back from the SDF.
When he finally received his deployment orders, he delayed, telling few people of his intentions, least of all his parents. Some close friends knew where he was headed, but were unclear as to why then, why there. He felt he’d let his family and friends down, presenting a cavalier attitude toward life that had become semi-toxic.
“There’s also the factor of being detained for what you’re doing. I told them I was joining a commune, doing volunteer work, not armed work. It was a very tough goodbye,” he said.
While U.S. citizens who have fought and volunteered with the SDF have not been prosecuted, many have been questioned upon returning home. But their journey out of the battlefield presented its own challenges, which Rizgar stashed in his subconscious, choosing to deal with the consequences if and when they came.
“I wanted to learn about their struggle, how they organize, and take those methods back home,” he said.
Then, in February, he flew abroad, “tired as hell” and in “total shock.” He reveled in the Kurdish hospitality in northern Iraq and again when he crossed the Tigris River into Syria. For a month he was stationed in Derik while receiving training, his uniform, and informal Kurdish language lessons. By March word of the coronavirus pandemic had reached him and his comrades, but the commanders urged them to “focus on the now, focus on the training.”
They moved farther in-country to Hasakah, where weapons training started. Kurdish lessons continued.
The new recruits learned about communal living and how to cook and clean for the troops they would soon support. Ahead of the Kurdish new year, they were told the region was going into lockdown.
“I was increasingly worried,” Rizgar said. “I wasn’t expecting to be worried about my family like that: I was expecting them to be worried about me more.”
The volunteers didn’t have regular access to their phones or the internet for security reason. From what Rizgar could glean, New York City was undergoing a Covid-19 siege. He received the news in snippets. He thought back to his elderly parents, one of whose work was deemed “essential.”
Then one of the cadets’ teachers stopped showing up. No one in Syria left their home.
But the training went on. The cadets learned about women’s liberation and what the Kurds were calling Democratic Federalism. The teachings revolved heavily around the history of the Kurdish people in the Middle East, obscuring some of the underlying origins of the teachings that were linked to the PKK.
“We would watch documentaries,” Rizgar told me. “It was interesting because not everyone was a leftist, some people just wanted to help out.”
Rizgar imagined that by the end of his six-month tour, he’d return home to teach what he learned about bottom-up leadership. At the very least, he might apply those principles to his own life in New York.
Since arriving in Rojava, he had been promoted to squad leader. He felt like he was ready for battle, which by then meant maintaining military outposts and holding the line against advancing Turkish forces. But the pandemic was also calling. He felt the need to return and support his family, including his brother, a paramedic.
“I really started to feel like I needed to be there,” he said. “Losing two people in a year is crazy.” The commanders urged him to stay, but he pushed back and hitched a ride to the border before crossing back into Iraqi Kurdistan.
The crossing itself posed concerns and questions. Rizgar worried about possible detention or arrest for being viewed as a participant in terrorist activities. But he made it to the airport with the assistance of the SDF and other foreign officials who were able to charter him a flight to Doha, Qatar then back to New York in June.
“I had never hugged my parents as tight as I did when I got back,” Rizgar said. “I told them I was actually in an armed group (not a commune) and they flipped. They were devastated, really, really worried.” But his family made it through the first wave of the pandemic healthy and largely unaffected.
He quickly began to reminisce on some of the core concepts he learned in northern Syria: accountability, acceptance of constructive criticism — what he called the “egalitarian impulse of the movement.” It was something that had impressed him, but did not exist back home.
“We have a very self-centered ethos here in the west, and the United States in particular, with our individualism,” Rizgar said. “It’s an egotistical way of viewing things.” He lamented that what he’d learned was almost a fantasy now, something that he couldn’t directly fit into his life at home beyond the borders of his own self-awareness. “That would be very hard — criticism is seen as an attack here, with all the obsequiousness. Being frank and candid and willing to criticize isn’t something that’s gonna come over easy here.”
The disparity between the values assumed by the Constitution and the ideals many believe are the backbone of a nation built on individual freedoms and respect was more than disheartening. It remained as an internal compass, the notion that his needle could point North while those around him spun under the strain of social uprising, hate speech and racism. What he had sought to bring home came with him, and stayed internal.
“I admire the discipline of the people,” Rizgar said of Rojava and the Kurds. “They built something to last — not for money, not for fame, just a pure commitment to freedom.”
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