The Women's Protection Units (YPJ) is an all-female militia involved in the Syrian civil war. The YPJ is part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the armed forces of Rojava, and is closely affiliated with the male-led YPG. While the YPJ is mainly made up of Kurds, it also includes women from other ethnic groups in Northern Syria. As of late 2017, the YPJ had over 24,000 volunteer fighters between the ages of 18 and 40. In the Syrian civil war, the YPJ and the YPG have fought against various groups in northern Syria, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and was involved in the defense of Kobane during the Siege of Kobanî beginning in March 2014, with YPJ troops being
… Read more vital in the battle.
Additionally, the YPG, YPJ and the PKK were involved in an August 2014 military operation at Mount Sinjar, where up to as many as 10,000 Yazidis were rescued from genocide at the hands of ISIS. ISIS had taken control of most areas around Mount Sinjar after pushing out the Peshmerga. Because ISIS views the Yazidis as "a community of devil worshipers," those formerly inhabiting the town of Sinjar were forced to flee into the mountains. This left many Yazidis, including children and the elderly, without food, shelter, or resources. Those still in the town were either massacred by ISIS or forced into sexual slavery.
The YPJ is politically aligned to the PYD, which bases its libertarian socialist philosophy on the writings of Abdullah Öcalan, the leading ideologue in the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who is imprisoned by Turkey. Central to YPJ ideology is the PYD feminist ideological concept of "Jineology".
The term "Zapatistas" broadly refers to the group of people participating in the anti-globalization struggle for democracy and land reform in Chiapas, Mexico, organized around the EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Front). With the goal of disrupting the state and creating a space for the "democratization of democracy," the EZLN guerrilla forces, in cooperation with indigenous peoples, incited a rebellion in Chiapas in January 1994. Though the signing of NAFTA is generally agreed to be the most direct catalyst for the rebellion, additional significant factors include a combination of ecological crisis, lack of available productive land, the drying up of nonagricultural sources of income,
… Read more the political and religious reorganization of indigenous communities since the 1960s, and the re-articulation of ethnic identities with emancipatory political discourses.
The EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) is a libertarian socialist political and militant group that controls a substantial amount of territory in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. In recent years, the EZLN has focused on a strategy of civil resistance. The Zapatistas' main body is made up of mostly indigenous people. Subcomandante Marcos was the most prominent and frequently identified member of the EZLN leadership. The EZLN takes its name from Emiliano Zapata, the agrarian revolutionary and commander of the Liberation Army of the South during the Mexican Revolution, and sees itself as his ideological heir. Nearly all EZLN villages contain murals with images of Zapata and Subcomandante Marcos.
While EZLN ideology is similar to libertarian socialism, the Zapatistas have rejected and defied political classification. The EZLN aligns itself with the wider alter-globalization, anti-neoliberal social movement, seeking indigenous control over local resources, especially land. Since their 1994 uprising was countered by the Mexican Armed Forces, the EZLN has abstained from military offensives and adopted a new strategy that attempts to garner Mexican and international support.