Seven women swathed in chadors, their eyes barely visible through netted apertures, stride purposefully toward seven marble headstones in a forest clearing. A lone woman in traditional Kurdish garb stands in the distance. A low wind hisses as she raises her head and croons softly in the purest of voices. Her face is tattooed with symbols of matriarchal power and fertility. The others caress the headstones marking the mock graves of exalted Kurdish women fighters who perished in battles against Turkey or the Islamic State.

Then, as one, the women tear off their shrouds to reveal Kurdish guerrilla clothing. Their waists are bound with the floral printed scarves popularized by the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), the all-women Syrian Kurdish fighting force that awed the world with its steely courage in the fight against the Islamic State. The women break into a martially inspired dance as the singer carries her melody to an impassioned, pulsating pitch. 

The song in the YouTube video is called "Vejin" (“Resurrection”), and is performed by Mufide Hemdi, a much-beloved singer from Afrin, a bastion of Kurdish nationalist sentiment in northwestern Syria. Vejin aims to convey the indomitable spirit of resistance of a people who have survived centuries of brutal repression to emerge as indisputably influential actors in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Above all, it telegraphs the empowerment of women, a cornerstone of the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration in Northeast Syria, which sets it at ideological odds with the country’s former jihadi rulers who overthrew the country’s long-time dictator, Bashar al-Assad, a year ago.

"Vejin," or "Resurrection," performed by Mufide Hemdi and organized by the Hunergeha Welat Center.

As US-brokered talks to integrate the Kurdish-run entity with Damascus continue in fits and starts, bridging differences over the role of women in society stands out as one of the biggest challenges, said Sero Hindi, a Kurdish Syrian documentary filmmaker and co-founder of Hunergeha Welat, the arts and culture commune in Qamishli that produced Vejin.

That reality was driven home on the night of Sept. 29, when the troupe performed "Vejin" in Sulaimaniyah, the........

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