The female snipers fighting Islamic State

In the barren deserts in north-eastern Syria, a female Kurdish soldier and three of her comrades found themselves wounded, surrounded, and almost out of bullets.

Tasked with holding the line, Mizgin Rojda and her sniper-trained unit stood firm as a dozen Turkish-backed militia fighters ambushed them, shooting wildly.

“We had promised each other that we would fight to the end, no matter what,” the 29-year-old tells The Telegraph. “It was a fierce fight, we were injured, but we didn’t give up. We held out until reinforcements came.”

Mizgin is a senior field commander in Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), an all-female Kurdish brigade that helps lead the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF has been locked in Syria’s 14-year civil war, fighting the Islamic State on one front and Turkish-backed rebel groups known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) on another.

Her war has always been centred in the dusty hillsides close to the Turkish border, where miles of bunker outposts and tunnels stretch across scarred land that sits outside of Damascus’s control.

But when Islamist rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime and seized power in early December, the partially-frozen conflict between the SDF and SNA reignited. Supported by Turkish air power and drones, the predominantly Arab militia groups of the SNA launched a fresh offensive, shattering frontlines quiet since 2019.

The SDF has since agreed to integrate into the new Syrian state, raising hopes that the years of clashes and conflict will come to an end.

‘We are holding our ground’

Mizgin, however, feels her fight against those she calls “the occupiers” is far from over. Despite the demands of Syria’s new rulers in Damascus, she is not yet ready to put down her gun.

“The Turkish state and its proxy factions are attacking us in every way, but we are holding our ground,” says Mizgin, who joined the Women’s Protection Units in 2015 “when the occupiers were plundering and destroying the land I was born in.”

Alongside her male counterparts in the People’s Defence Units (YPG), she says, “we fight a war of honour” to protect the lands that Kurdish forces have ruled since 2012 as a self-declared autonomous region. They call it Rojava.

In recent months, the YPJ experienced a surge of new recruits as women took up arms to defend themselves against what some perceive as a dual threat from Turkey in the north and Syria’s new administration led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), to the south.

Turkey views the armed Kurds on its doorstep as a threat, accusing them of being an extension of the PKK, a Kurdish separatist movement – defined as a terror group by Ankara – that waged a 40-year insurgency against Turkey until giving up that fight this month.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, has no intention of allowing the Syrian Democratic Forces to stay on its border. In December, he warned them to “bid farewell to their weapons, or they will be buried with them”.

On March 10, the SDF signed the deal to merge with Damascus, integrating “all civil and military institutions” into the new Syrian state by the end of the year. However, the agreement is shaky and its implementation still unclear.

“I think the deal can be understood as confirming that ‘we will not go to war with each other’ – that both sides want peace with the other,” says Samantha Teal, a researcher from the Syria-based Rojava Information Centre.

“The situation on the frontline has not changed since the deal. Attacks are ongoing,” she tells The Telegraph.

The YPJ’s fight against Turkish-backed factions has been brutal.

“The war that is being waged is more aerial than ground,” says Aysel Sham, another veteran YPJ commander.

Turkish warplanes pound them from above, while drones buzz overhead.

‘Modest resources’

But the women’s unit do what they are good at: target enemy bases from the ground, relying on guerrilla warfare tactics they learnt fighting IS. The YPJ also has full sniper units.

Earlier this year, Aysel says her unit – “armed with our modest resources” – helped secure the Tishrin Dam after a weeks-long battle. Now, they are focused on stopping the SNA forces crossing the Euphrates river, which acts as a natural buffer zone between both sides.

Despite the Kurdish forces’ deal with Damascus, there has been no advancement or retreat from the SDF or SNA. Syria’s new government stays largely silent on the continuing clashes.

“The SDF has been holding its ground,” says Dr Renand Mansour, a Middle East analyst at Chatham House. “The situation remains fluid and the fighting has been intense.”

Hundreds have been killed so far in the fighting.

There is also mounting uncertainty about Washington’s role in the region.

The SDF has been the main US partner in the fight against IS in Syria and is reliant on Washington’s financing. The US spent $186 million on the group in 2024, yet Donald Trump has not yet committed to keep funding it.

There are also fears he intends to withdraw the last remaining 2,000 US troops from north-eastern Syria at the request of Ankara, paving the way for a Turkish invasion of Kurdish-held territory.

“The question people are asking is how far will Turkey go?” asks Dr Mansour. “Turkey has made it clear, it will not allow any type of SDF-led Kurdish autonomy in Syria.”

‘The brutality profoundly affected me’

The next big question, he says, is how long will the SDF be able to hold out if the US troops which act as a deterrence are withdrawn? “The biggest challenge for the SDF is they do not have a single, durable, external partner to support it from the threat of Turkey or elsewhere.”

Aysel, 30, joined the Women’s Protection Units a decade ago after IS began attacking the city of Kobane and she watched in horror as women were abducted and sold in markets. “The brutality profoundly affected me.”

Kurdish forces, led by the YPJ and YPG and supported by US airstrikes, liberated the city from IS in early 2015 after a four-month siege – later referred to as the “Kurdish Stalingrad”.

It marked a major turning point in the war against the terror group, but came at a high cost for the women’s unit, whose bravery came to be well-known on the path to toppling the IS “caliphate” in 2019.

Now the SDF guards the prisons filled with over 9,000 hardened IS terrorists and manage the sprawling camps that contain 40,000 of their families with receding US support and meagre resources.

But with its fighters occupied battling the Turkish-backed factions, US and Syrian officials have warned for months that a resurging IS is trying to exploit the security vacuum.

“IS cells are present in many areas and are taking advantage of any opportunity to attack,” Aysel says. “There is no doubt that their operations will increase – not only in our region but also at the regional and global level.”

Beyond the threat of terror, a lot is currently at stake for the YPJ and other Kurdish forces who position themselves as the protectors of Syrian Kurds, that make up 10 per cent of the country’s population.

Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is trying to unify the country’s armed religious and ethnic groups, pressuring them to disarm and become absorbed into a new, centralised Syrian army.

‘A life that is actually free, for all women’

But the SDF and al-Sharaa are both digging their heels in, says Dr Burcu Ozcelik, senior research fellow for Middle East security at RUSI. “The principal challenge is whether the SDF and its armed wing will agree to join the central Syrian armed forces as a block, or as individual fighters.”

The situation remains “highly volatile”, Dr Ozcelik notes, adding that if Turkey continues to perceive the Kurds as a threat on its border, the violent clashes in the north-east are very likely to escalate.

For the YPJ in particular, they are fearful of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s former jihadist roots and of women being excluded from public life; their hard-fought rights quietly eroded.

“After so much sacrifice and years of struggle, the new Syrian regime reminds you of the old regime, because it is one narrow vision being imposed on all of Syria and Syria’s diverse peoples,” says Mizgin. “Syria should be a homeland for all its people...[HTS] makes no reference to basic things like democracy and equality between men and women.”

The YPJ has a role to play in bringing Syria’s women together “and overcoming divisions, hatred and fear”.

Coming under Damascus’s control, Mizgin fears all this could be lost. “From its inception, the YPJ has shattered the mindset that sees women as powerless and inferior. It is the beacon of hope for a life that is actually free, for all women.” she says.