Inside Jinwar.
The All-Women’s Village in Syria Where Refugees Are Rebuilding Their Lives.
Happy Sunday. I’m landing in your inbox with a new dispatch from Lazo Magazine. Irish photojournalist James Forde travelled to Syria again and spoke to the people building an all-women’s village in a volatile region.
He writes:
The two most important Kurdish strongholds in the region are Qamishlo and Hasseke, about 80 kilometres apart. Jinwar, or the women’s village, lies roughly in the middle, further north, almost hugging the Turkish border. That is where I meet Yesmin, a 36-year-old woman, who lives in the village with her 13-year-old daughter.
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What I’m reading:
• Russia has intensified its efforts to undermine Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s bid for re-election next month, Reuters reports. In addition to disinformation campaigns, Moscow has plans to transport tens of thousands of Russian-Armenians to sway the vote, intelligence officials said.
• Romania has officially requested NATO “deploy additional counter-drone capabilities to strengthen our defence and that of the Alliance’s eastern flank” after a Russian drone strike on the city of Galati, Euractiv reports.
• NATO will strengthen the defence of its eastern flank by assigning the German-Netherlands corps to help defend Latvia and Estonia in the event of a war with Russia, Reuters reports.
• The Pentagon is substantially scaling back U.S. forces planned for Europe in a crisis, reducing military capabilities by one-third to one-half, the Wall Street Journal reports.
• The European Commission will propose opening the first ‘cluster’ of negotiating chapters on Ukraine and Moldova’s EU membership on 16 June, a senior official has told Euractiv.
• Moldovan President Maia Sandu is increasingly raising reunification with Romania as a potential fallback route into the EU if Moldova’s accession process stalls, Euractiv reports.
• Slovenia’s parliament elected veteran right-wing politician Janez Janša as prime minister for a fourth non-consecutive term, Balkan Insight reports.
• New Lines Magazine has a feature on how villagers in Kazakhstan are being poisoned by oil fields and falling ill.
• In EUObserver, Elena Sánchez Nicolás explains why Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, is popular abroad but unpopular at home.
• A growing movement in Spain argues that everyday gestures and phrases preserve the legacy of Muslim Iberia and offer a rebuttal to the far right’s narratives of national identity, New Lines Magazine reports.
• The United Arab Emirates trained Colombian mercenaries before sending them to fight alongside the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, Human Rights Watch said in a report.
• The International Stabilisation Force for Gaza still has no troops, as none of the five countries that pledged troops have come through with any significant contributions, the Associated Press reports.
You can write to me for any reason: c.maza@protonmail.com.