Rojava: The Feminist Resistance in the Heart of the Middle East | Matt Broomfield

Planet: Critical March 5, 2026

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For over a decade, an autonomous zone in the Middle East founded on the principles of women's liberation has controlled and sustained a territory the size of Lebanon. Rojava is a beacon of possibility and hope, and a fierce exercise in self-determination for the Kurdish people at the heart of it. At its core, it is a self defence movement against imperialist forces, religious extremism and exploitation. It has successfully fought off ISIS and the former Assad government. But in just the past six weeks, with the United States backing a former jihadist to take over the Syrian government, the fate of this feminist, anarchist resistance has changed and is now threatening to collapse.

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__You can listen to the episode on your podcast app, in your browser,__download it or watch it on Youtube (where automatic subtitles are provided).

Matt Broomfield is a freelance journalist, PhD researcher, co-founder of the Rojava Information Center and the author of Hope Without Hope: Rojava and Revolutionary Commitment. In this extraordinary episode, Matt reveals how Rojava came to be, the contradictions and compromises that they had to make in order to retain their autonomy, and the lessons the Western Left can learn from this remarkable political project. Above all, he commends the vision of the Kurds to exercise their self-determination in the strident belief that, against all odds, new worlds are possible—a defence and determination which has kept the movement alive against imperial onslaughts from all sides for years.

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