“The international community backed Ahmad al-Sharaa instead of the egalitarian, feminist democracy that we propose”

Jenkidar Shikhdmmar, Rojava’s representative in Spain, was born in 1986 in Kobani, a city in northern Syria that rose to fame in 2014 for the stoic resistance of its population against the siege by the Islamic State. Since 2019 he has lived in Catalonia, where he represents the Kurdish-Syrian movement and is studying for a PhD in Political Science at the University of Barcelona (UB). For this reason he wants to continue his life in Catalonia and has just co-founded the cultural organisation Berfin, which seeks to bring together the Kurdish population living in Catalonia.

As is the case for most Kurdish people, Jenkidar’s life has been marked by lack of opportunity, discrimination and conflict. He remembers a childhood in Kobani in which people emigrated to other countries to send money to their families or struggled to grow wheat and harvest pistachios and olives. From a family that has worked in carpentry for generations, with a grandfather, father and brothers who were all carpenters, Jenkidar was unable to pursue higher education in his youth, as he had to help his father in the family workshop.

“Kobani was very poor, we had no major investment, and there was a lot of pressure from the [ruling party] Baath. There were no water supply systems, and we used tanks. Many people did not go to university because they had to work to survive,” Jenkidar recalls. “Women in particular did not continue studying at university. If anything, it was a cultural issue typical of a conservative society, because to study you had to go to cities such as Aleppo, Damascus or Latakia, and many parents would not send their daughters so far away. So women had to get married,” he adds, and says that “this situation began to change from 2000 onwards, with the rise of the Kurdish movement for women’s rights and equality”.

Jenkidar’s life was upended by the civil war that broke out in Syria in 2011. Not wanting to serve in the Syrian Army, he fled to Lebanon, where he forged a completely different future from the one that awaited him in Syria: he studied Political Science and completed two master’s degrees while working as a carpenter and painter, in lift maintenance, even as a film extra, and collaborating with organisations such as Caritas and UNHCR. In 2019, he moved to Catalonia, where he continued his studies and became Rojava’s representative in Spain in 2021.

“I used to say I was the representative in Spain of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), but lately, since the administration no longer exists because it has been integrated into the structures of Syria’s interim Government, I introduce myself as the representative of Rojava,” Jenkidar now regretfully says, a reflection of the new position of this people, who make up around 15% of Syria’s population and live mainly in the north-east.

The Kurdish people, without autonomy in the new Syria

The Kurdish people are considered the largest stateless nation in the world. They currently number around 45 million people who, after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, were divided by the recognised borders of four countries: Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. In all these States the Kurdish community was repressed, although, after decades of resistance and struggle for basic rights, the 21st century brought hope: the invasion of Iraq made possible an autonomy that today allows the Kurdish authorities to issue their own visas and have their own armed forces in Iraq. When civil war broke out in Syria, many people hoped to obtain a similar form of autonomy. However, in 2026 the United States (US) has withdrawn its support for Rojava, and the Kurds have set aside their aspirations for decentralisation. After almost fifteen years of war, the final aftertaste is bitter.

Like many other communities, the Kurdish community was repressed by the al-Assad dynasty in Syria. When the civil war began, the Kurdish forces regrouped in the north-eastern third of the country and, once they controlled their borders, set up an autonomous administration that followed the precepts of Abdullah Öcalan’s democratic confederalism. For more than a decade, the Kurdish forces had the support of the international community and concentrated on fighting the Islamic State while, at the same time, governing their territory under the AANES.

After the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in December 2024, the jihadist militia that led the lightning offensive seized transitional power in Syria and began demanding that the various militias that had operated during the conflict be integrated into the new Government. The Kurdish and Druze communities, taking into account their positions on the ground, did not accept this, and began negotiating an agreement to secure rights and decentralisation. However, after a year of negotiations, in 2026 the US withdrew its support for the Kurds, who, left with no options, have had to accept an integration agreement that is far from what they had hoped for.

In this way, the US has chosen to placate an essential ally in the region, Turkey, which is the main guarantor of the current Syrian leader Ahmad al-Sharaa. For it is Turkey that has insisted on burying Kurdish hopes since the very beginning of the war: had Rojava opposed the latest agreement, Ankara would have attacked or delegated an attack, and a new conflict would have engulfed the population.

The Kurdish community, which feels betrayed in Syria, is key to the current reconfiguration of the Middle East. A shifting board on which this community is looking towards Iran, where the US wants to topple the ayatollahs’ regime, which would have consequences in Iraq, where Iranian influence is predominant; in Turkey; and, who knows, perhaps even in Syria once again.