Rojava Diary

On October 6, 2019, US President Donald Trump announced that US troops would withdraw from Northern Syria. Three days later, Turkey launched the offensive called “Operation Peace Spring” on the Turkish-Syrian border aiming to expel from its border the Syrian Kurdish militia called People’s Protection Units (YPG). US troops had relied on the Kurds to defeat ISIS, however Turkey considers YPG a terrorist group due to its ties with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Following the Turkish offensive, in October 2019, Outriders started a diary from Rojava together with the Syrian journalist Massoud Hamid who for three months visited hospitals, funerals, cemeteries, prisons, schools, refugee camps, roads and markets in Rojava and shared his observations with Outriders by messages from WhastApp. The result is an interactive diary composed of a series of bilingual podcasts and videocasts named Rojava Diary.