THE KURDISH CENTRE FOR STUDIES -

Kurdish women Kolbers are some of the most invisible segment within wider Kurdish society. Their labor, suffering, injuries and deaths are rendered invisible in the greater scheme of nationalist struggle. Due to the extreme nature of their work, ‘Kolbers’ are typically portrayed as a group of men who cross the Kurdistan borders (Iran, Turkey, Iraq, […]

The progressive, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) this week announced its intention to begin trials of the estimated 2000 ‘third-country national’ male ISIS fighters it is currently holding in its detention centres, along with around 8000 Syrian and Iraqi combatants. The mooted trials are commonly represented as ‘unilateral’ – a loaded […]

“Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried.” — Walter Benjamin As an occupied people without a state of their own, for the last century Kurds have had all elements of […]

On Monday (June 12), people in Rojava were astounded by a US Central Command press release revealing 22 US military personnel were injured in a helicopter “mishap” in southern Hasaka, part of the de facto Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES)- also known as Rojava. With the incident repressed for 24 hours, and […]

“We can no longer keep these prisoners without an indictment or trial. These people must be held accountable for their crimes. They remain a danger not only to the region, but to the entire world. These are thousands of the most brutal ISIS fighters. We cannot keep them anymore. It is creating a security problem […]

Ismet Tastan is one of those rare Kurds whose tireless efforts for the Kurdish people deserves detailed attention and praise. I have known Ismet for well over a decade and can say with confidence that his selfless passion and unending love for the Kurdish cause served as one of my inspirations and my own political […]

Kurdistan remains a widely occupied and terrorized terrain. For decades various forms of colonial and imperial violence has been imposed on the Kurds, ranging from ethnic cleansing, genocides, chemical weapons, mass execution of fighting-aged males, bombardments, systemic environmental destruction including widespread destruction of thousands of villages, forced migration and violent assimilation policies and more. The […]

On Saturday the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES) announced that it will commence trials of the thousands of ISIS militants it has held in detention since 2019. The Kurdish-led administration of northeast Syria (Rojava) had back in 2020 announced a similar trial with International Monitors led by the Swedish government but such […]

Back on April 24th and 25th of 2023, the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Middle East Centre held what became the largest Kurdish studies conference ever assembled. The inaugural event was held with the support of LSE’s Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity (AFSEE) program based at the International Inequalities Institute, the […]

Challenges in Documenting the Historical Role of Kurdish Women The nature of the ‘Kurdish Question’ has ensured that Kurdish women have historically played a prominent role in the liberation of their people across the four parts of Greater Kurdistan. More recently, at least since 2001 there has been intense interest in the historical and modern […]