The Italian delegation visiting Rojava in the past few days is overwhelmed by emotions. Every word they write and say at the end of their day in Kobane, Qamishlo, is inevitably charged with the strong emotions and feelings accumulated while meeting people and their stories.

The heroic Kobane resistance

To read about someone’s story and to actually listen to him or her in the very place where this story has unfolded is a completely different thing.

The delegation of ‘Ya Basta’ Bologna visited Kobane and among the first people they met are those who have been wounded during the heroic resistance which eventually liberated the city from the DAESH (ISIS) invasion.

Kobane was attacked by the Islamic State in September 2014. Most citizens were sent out of the city to allow the YPG and YPJ (People’s and Women’s Defense Units) to engage in a fierce battle to liberate the town.

And they won: the men and women of the defense units, liberated their city in January 2015.

Eight months of heroic resistance: Kobane became a symbol. It showed the world that it is possible to win even the worst of enemies with unity, commitment, consistency, and above all perhaps love for freedom, justice, life.

Ya Basta Bologna met wounded of Kobane

The Italian delegation met some of the wounded citizens of Kobane. “It is not easy for the people to talk about their experience - they write in their daily report - yet many want to tell their story, despite the pain still clearly vivid”.

The stories unfold:

“During the siege, at some point we must have been only sixty people: we resisted three days without food nor water. It was really tragic, war is something difficult to describe. If we are alive today - says the interlocutor to the Italian delegation - is because we believed in something, in the rightness of our struggle”.

Another group of young people tells the Italian delegation about their wounds: “He stepped on a mine - said one indicating a friend with no legs - and the other one is blind because he was hit by fragments of bullets”.

Mishtenur Hill: the beginning of the end for ISIS

The delegation is taken to Mishtenur Hill, a strategic point in the city, from which you can see Kobane and its streets and even the wall marking the border with Turkey.

“This hill - writes the delegation - has a strong symbolic value, as it was here where the Islamic State’s black flag had been planted”. That day, Turkish President Erdogan stated that “in a matter of hours the city they call Kobane would capitulate”.

How wrong he was.

The YPG and the YPJ soon replaced that black deadly flag with their coloured one, marking the beginning of the end for the Islamic State.

The YPJ member who accompanied the Italian delegation, shares her memories with them: “From this hill - she said - all memories become alive. I can see all my friends who lost their life fighting. Every corner of every street brings me back to the day of war. After Kobane we began liberating the villages around the city, and then was when I was wounded. I lost my right eye. I was with other 12 fighters, a few kilometres from here, and we ended up caught in a DAESH ambush. Eight of us lost their lives that day. I was 19. I am still alive. I lost one eye, but I am proud because I know I served my people and mankind. I did what was my duty to free the world from the Islamic State”.

Visit to the martyrs’ graveyard

The day in Kobane ends with a visit to the martyrs’ graveyard. “So many graves - said the delegation - we read the names of the men and women who lost their kives to liberate their city and then the names of those who have fallen martyrs liberating Raqqa, Mambij, Heseke… Girls and boys. We meet a member of the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), a middle aged man in uniform. He is standing in front of the grave of his son, who lost his life when he had just turned 20”.

Outside the graveyard the delegation is met by some girls “with the marks of the recent invasion of Afrin by the Turkish state. One has lost a leg, another a hand, some have deep wounds. They are all young, the ‘eldest’ is 23”, write the delegation members.

Stories from Afrin

“We have resisted for 58 days - the girls tell the people of Ya Basta - without water nor electricity while the international community watched in silence. Be sure that Afrin like Kobane will be freed”.

The delegation listens, “feeling a bit unease, it’s difficult to find words in these situations. Anger rising knowing that the Italian Government and the European Union haven’t raised a finger to stop Erdogan from invading Afrin and massacre people”.

The uneasiness goes when “the same girls ask us curious what’s going on in Italy, and it is like we were in a square of Bologna, happily talking about this and that”.

* This piece has been compiled using the information contained in the report published by Ya Basta Bologna.