‘Look – here’s a human spine. That’s an ISIS spine.’
These absurd sentences reverberated in my brain as I turned to find my Kurdish guide holding out a collection of bones he’d unearthed from the rubble for me to inspect… before crushing a piece of skull underfoot.
This surreal moment unfolded last week amid the ruins of Kobani, a city in the autonomous Kurdish region of Rojava, northeast Syria, where I travelled to see firsthand the fallout of the fight against Islamic State.
Ten years ago, this shattered landscape was the stage for one of the most brutal and consequential urban battles in modern history as ISIS exploited the chaos of Syria’s civil war to expand its caliphate like a lethal plague.
By September 2014, a swarm of jihadists had encircled Kobani and launched a full-scale assault on the city and its surrounding villages, rounding up and slaughtering hundreds of defenceless inhabitants. Their campaign of terror triggered a mass exodus of some 200,000 people and Kobani looked set to fall beneath the black flag of ISIS in a matter of days.
But this vibrant crossroads of cultures and ethnicities was saved from extermination and assimilation by the YPG and YPJ – the Kurdish People’s Protection Units.
For months, these valiant men and women stood together, battling house to house in a conflict so bitter it earned the moniker ‘the Kurdish Stalingrad’.
On January 26, 2015, the ISIS scourge was finally expelled and Kobani was declared liberated – a stunning victory that proved a turning point in the global fight against ISIS, whose caliphate collapsed four years later.
This weekend, the people of Kobani gather to commemorate the 10th anniversary of their historic triumph. Yet the celebrations will be laced with anxiety, because now its citizens face another existential threat.
Just a few dozen kilometres away, the Syrian National Army (SNA) – a Turkish-backed patchwork militia – is clashing with Kobani’s defenders for control of a vital dam providing power for much of the region while threatening to cross the Euphrates River and surge into Rojava.
Meanwhile, Turkey – whose autocratic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees the Kurds as terrorists – is sending drones and warplanes to pound civilian convoys protesting the hostilities.
And all this instability has forced the Kurds to consider an even darker, and very real, prospect – the resurgence of ISIS ‘within a matter of days’, according to Rojava’s political and military leaders.
Fight for your right to exist
The Arab Spring protests of 2011 unleashed a wave of unrest and violence across the Middle East and North Africa, but nowhere did this upheaval result in more bloodshed than in Syria.
Former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – deposed late last year in a sudden coup by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – launched a brutal crackdown on those calling for political change in Damascus, triggering a horrific civil war that displaced millions of his own people and saw hundreds of thousands killed.
But Assad’s armies and the communities who assembled to fight against him were quickly forced to reckon with a yet more terrifying threat – the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Buoyed by the chaos of war, the terror group swelled its ranks, launching a sophisticated online propaganda campaign that enticed tens of thousands of its sympathisers from around the world to descend on the region in pursuit of one goal – to spread its violent, extremist ideology and establish an Islamic caliphate.
After beginning its expansion in earnest in 2013, within a year ISIS had seized huge swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and was bearing down on the Kurdish-majority city of Kobani located next to Turkey – a country that had allowed thousands of known extremists to transit through its borders on their way to join the terror group.
In September 2014, the jihadists began their assault with overwhelming force.
Thousands of fighters, supported by heavy artillery and American-made weapons looted from the Iraqi army, poured into Kobani’s outskirts.
Entire villages around the city were emptied as reports of massacres and beheadings emerged.
The situation seemed hopeless. But inside the city, the men of the YPG and women of the YPJ organised an extraordinary resistance.
Outgunned and outnumbered, the Kurdish militias used their intimate knowledge of the terrain, effective guerilla tactics and their unparalleled resolve to counter ISIS’s armoured vehicles and suicide bombers.
After a heroic month-long defence of Kobani by the Kurds, the US-led international coalition finally began coming to their aid, launching the airstrikes that helped to sever the extremists’ supply lines and command centres from the fighters engaged within the city.
But this Western military aid could only achieve so much. The YPG and YPJ were forced to comb through the city to eliminate the jihadists in savage close-quarter combat.
Every building became an ambush site, every alleyway a potential killing field – a hellscape described in detail by my Kurdish guide who showed us around the parts of the city still demolished.
Standing beside a mural erected at a building in which a senior YPG commander died fighting alongside his comrades, he said: ‘It was hell. We fought room to room, ISIS were right there.
‘They were throwing grenades through our windows… Holding the bombs by hand and dropping them next to us.
‘We had no choice but to go through these buildings one by one. They were everywhere – in front, behind you, next to you.’
As if to prove his point, moments later he clambered into the ruins of what he said was a structure used by ISIS as a field hospital.
Within a few seconds of pulling away rocks and digging through the rubble, he was holding up chunks of what were unmistakably human bone.
A little more digging and he was able to produce three vertebrae of a jihadist’s spinal column, along with parts of skull and a jawbone.
Moments later, as I was trying to compute just how many skeletons were lurking beneath the piles of debris surrounding this dystopian scene, he said bluntly: ‘Anyway… let’s go.’
He opened his hand and let the bones tumble unceremoniously to the ground. Then, one by one, our guides and translators slammed the heel of their boots into the remnants of the skeleton and ground them into the dirt.
Picking up the pieces
Kobani’s liberation was a triumph of epic proportions. Footage from the city in January 2015 shows people flooding back to the streets as the YPG and YPJ flew their flags above bombed-out buildings.
But this freedom came at a staggering cost.
An estimated 70% of Kobani’s infrastructure was demolished in the fighting, whether by the hand of ISIS, the Kurds’ resolute defensive efforts, or the US-led airstrikes that helped to drive back the extremists.
Schools, hospitals, and homes had been obliterated, and the overwhelming majority of those who left the city returned to find their livelihoods erased.
Yet, within weeks of ISIS’ expulsion, the war-torn community set about rebuilding. International NGOs provided some assistance, but the reconstruction of Kobani was largely a grassroots effort led by its resilient citizens.
Some of the streets were cleared of debris as makeshift markets sprung up amid the destruction, and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), a democratic confederation established by Kurdish leaders in 2015, coordinated efforts to restore basic services.
Meanwhile, other groups set about honouring the memories of the YPG and YPJ fighters who made the ultimate sacrifice to safeguard the freedom of their people.
A towering, winged statue of Arin Mirkan – a fearless YPJ fighter who turned ISIS’ suicide bombing tactic against the group by sneaking into one of their packed command posts and blowing herself up – now stands pride of place at a central roundabout and serves as a meeting point for public demonstrations against the threat of Turkish-backed militias.
Deeper into the city, there is a centre maintained by the Assembly of Martyrs’ Families – a local organisation run by the families of Kurdish militiamen and women – where a headshot of every fighter who perished on the frontlines is hung on the walls of a gigantic memorial hall.
It was in this immensely sobering location, wallpapered by the faces of the dead, that I interviewed a woman who had the unenviable job of cleaning the bodies and preparing them for burial.
‘I am a member of the Martyred People’s Council… I am personally from a family of martyrs,’ she said. ‘Whenever we received the corpses of our people, we had to clean them, sew the shroud for them, and bury them.’
Tears streaming from her eyes, she went on: ‘When you bury one of your people, you bury a part of your soul with them in their tomb. When someone who lives with you, works with you and shares their lives with you is martyred… it is too difficult.’
Despite the inescapable pain and trauma experienced by so many, walking among the city’s streets one senses an unmistakable and inspiring sense of pride and identity exhibited by its inhabitants.
The people of Kobani have proven their resilience and the city, though irrevocably scarred, is alive again and stands as a testament to the strength of a community that refused to be erased.
Now though, it is set to face a new peril.
A new war and the spectre of ISIS
A few months after Kobani’s liberation in January 2015, ISIS tried to launch a second attack and slaughtered some 233 civilians on the city’s outskirts, but the YPG responded immediately and eliminated every last one of the Islamists. The city never again suffered a large-scale assault by the extremists.
Kobani was also fortunate enough to be left untouched by the trio of Turkish military operations launched across the border by Erdogan from 2016 to 2019.
Unlike in Afrin, where hundreds of thousands of residents were displaced and thousands killed in a ruthless landgrab by Turkey and the SNA, Kobani’s residents were granted a tense but relatively stable period in which to rebuild.
But the shocking ouster of former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and the toppling of his cruel regime in December by HTS, the SNA and a patchwork of other militias has placed Kobani and the western reaches of Rojava in great danger.
The SNA, bolstered by Turkish funding, intelligence and air support, have for weeks been surging through communities previously administered by Rojava’s governing authorities, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
After widespread reports of the ransacking of Kurdish neighbourhoods, forced displacement and summary executions of Kurdish prisoners and hospitalised fighters in towns in and around the city of Manbij, the SNA is now bearing down on the Qara Qozaq bridge over the Euphrates River while launching attacks in and around the Tishrin Dam.
This vital piece of infrastructure provides electricity for much of western Rojava, including the entire city of Kobani and Raqqa, and its collapse would cause untold environmental damage.
As of Friday this week, at least 20 civilians have been killed and more than 120 wounded following airstrikes conducted by Turkey, while the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – the Rojava’s Kurdish-led militia composed primarily YPG and YPJ units – continue to repel SNA advances.
The scale of Turkey’s attacks was made painfully clear to me last week when a civilian convoy I had been invited to participate in was struck by drones, with several people killed.
The next day, I witnessed thousands of protesters descend on Arin Mirkan Square to demonstrate against the conflict that led to their deaths before heading to Kobani’s Martyrs’ Cemetery, where one of the victims was being laid to rest.
It was only hours after hearing the wails of their heartbroken family members that I personally witnessed a pair of Turkish air strikes just a few kilometres away from my car as I drove out of the city towards the town of Sirrin.
Kobani’s residents are acutely aware of this looming threat and have unsurprisingly pulled together once again.
With large numbers of SDF, YPG and YPJ fighters battling the SNA on the frontlines, regular civilians have begun arming themselves and signing up for basic military training to create local defence groups.
Other groups are routinely preparing huge quantities of food, water and other reserves to fuel their steadfast defenders trying to prevent Turkey’s proxies from crossing the Euphrates.
But with the resources of the SDF stretched by Turkey and the SNA, there is an ever growing threat that ISIS could re-emerge.
After the liberation of Kobani, the Kurds and the US-led international coalition were locked in a brutal conflict against the extremists until the group was eventually defeated in 2019 in the battle of Baghouz.
Now, however, tens of thousands of ISIS fighters and their highly radicalised families are housed in makeshift prisons and huge tent cities across Rojava, biding their time and waiting for the perfect moment to break out.
Meanwhile, ISIS sleeper cells lurk in the shadows across Rojava’s towns and cities, communicating with their fighters and leaders inside the camps.
Last week, I visited the largest of them: Al-Hol refugee and ISIS camp, located on the outskirts of Hasakeh.
It is effectively a fully functioning city – a heaving mass of some 40,000 people held in place by nothing more than a chainlink fence and a few rolls of barbed wire.
Murders in the camp are commonplace and the most extreme groups routinely try to bully, abuse and terrorise unfortunate refugees to join their ranks.
The violence is such that the Asayish, Rojava’s internal security forces, only conduct patrols from heavily armed pickup trucks – except when they are forced to launch raids to confiscate all manner of weapons and contraband smuggled into the camp.
Officials and civilian groups in Rojava are therefore sounding the alarm about the very real prospect of an extremist resurgence amid the nationwide instability post-Assad.
There are only a few hundred members of the SDF who are spared to monitor these camps, creating a rough perimeter around the fencing to discourage ISIS cells from attempting a great escape.
And if Turkey’s SNA militia manages to cross the Euphrates and bear down on Kobani, those stationed at the camps will be forced to abandon their post, leaving the ISIS families and fighters largely unguarded.
Siyamend Ali, a spokesperson for the YPG, told me the dilemma is a simple one.
‘If you’re guarding these camps and you hear that the SNA are going to your city, to murder your family and your people, what are you going to do? Are you going to stay and guard the camp or are you going to leave and protect your family?
‘This is the choice we are faced with, and if Turkey, HTS and the international community do not put this war to an end, we will have no choice but to defend ourselves.
‘If that happens, ISIS could be back in a matter of days.’