STRUGGLES

Rebuilding Kobanê
This article appeared on Red Pepper and Corporate Watch in January 2016.
Brighton Kurdish Solidarity visited Kobanê in November 2015 and and met
those trying to rebuild what Daesh and US bombs have destroyed.
"We have cleared 1.5 million tonnes ofrubble," Abdo Rrahman Hemo (known as Heval Dostar),
head ofthe Kobanê Reconstruction Board, tells us humbly as we sit in his office in Kobanê
city in November 2015. But as we walk through the bombed streets, with collapsed buildings
all around us and dust filling our lungs, it's hard to believe that Kobanê could have been any
worse. "We have estimated that 3.5 billion dollars ofdamage has been caused," he continues.
It's been one year since the US bombing ofKobanê—then partly occupied by Daesh—and
most ofthe buildings are still in tatters. Kobanê is in Rojava, a Kurdish majority region in the
north ofSyria that declared autonomy from the Assad regime in 2012.
When Daesh approached, the majority ofthose who were not involved in defending the city
left, most to neighbouring Turkey. The People's Protection Units ofthe YPJ and YPG
remained to defend the city, and were eventually given air support by the US. Most ofthe
refugees have now returned, only to find a city almost entirely destroyed and littered with
mines and booby traps, planted by Daesh before they were defeated. As we walk around, a
family waves at us from the wreckage oftheir home, which no longer has three ofits walls.
A street in Kobanê. Photo by Corporate Watch, November 2015.
183