Chris Den Honds latest film, Rojava the suspended future, documents the Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria and it’s uncertain future, trapped between Turkish occupation and the Syrian regime which wishes to retake its former territory.
Chris is a video-journalist and author of several documentaries about the Kurds and the Palestinians, including “Rojava: A Utopia in the Heart of the Syrian Chaos” and “Rojava in Syria: Between Compromise and Utopia.”
What remains now of Rojava
Since the United States withdrew from northern Syria in October 2019, and the Turkish military operation began, the cards have been reshuffled among the protagonists of the Syrian conflict. What remains now of Rojava, created in 2014 during the battle of Kobane, won by Kurdish forces at the cost of enormous sacrifices? Kobane was a turning point in the war against Islamic State. Afterwards, the Kurds established a political and military alliance with the Arabs and Syriac Christians under the name Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with a political branch, the Syrian Democratic Council. They are managing an area covering about 30 per cent of Syrian territory, called the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, or the self-administration.
Pluralistic, democratic and threatened
Rojava is now caught in a vice between Erdogan, who is threatening to occupy all of northern Syria, and Bashar Al-Assad, who would like to regain control over his former territory. Between the appetites of Russia, the US, Turkey, Iran, and the Syrian regime, is there still room for the self-administration, where diverse peoples live in relative harmony? We travelled across the region, from east to west, to see what remains of the pluralistic and democratic Rojava that some have buried too soon.