A mother carrying a rifle on her shoulder and gripping a walkie-talkie stands guard at the entrance to Jinwar, a women-only commune in Syria. Beyond the gate, about 30 mud-brick houses dot the desert landscape, their gardens filled with flowers, vegetables and fruit trees.
The village, just outside the city of Qamishli in Syria’s predominantly Kurdish north-east, is a burst of colour amid the dust. Opened in 2018, Jinwar has become a refuge for women from across the region – Kurds, Arabs and Yazidis among them. Some residents arrived after losing husbands to Islamic State (IS); others left abusive marriages in search of safety and independence. It describes itself as “a place for women who want to live a free life with other women and children, women who do not want to get married, women who lost their husbands in war or who were facing violence in their families”.
