The Black Plume

Good news received a couple of days ago.

Dear friends and supporters,

the Feed The Revolution campaign ended three months ago and you’re probably wondering how the project is going. So, here is the short version: It is going well!

And now for the long version: The work in Tirbespiyê is continuing. In May the municipality gave us an area south of the city for the fertilizer facility. The area had been designated as a waste dump by the Syrian regime before the revolution, and there was already a fence, a high three-sided concrete wall and a half-finished maintenance building there.

When the campaign ended in mid-June it was well short of our ambitious goal of 200 000 USD. We knew that we would not be able to do the project without further help because we needed workers and building machines to get the facility ready. We therefore talked with the municipality again, and with the ministry of social affairs of Cizîre canton, who were aware of the great importance of this project and quickly agreed to take over a large part of the construction of the site.

Construction then stalled again, because of the war: the needed machines were all at the frontlines in Minbic and Şedade. In August the construction finally began with Zagros company, a local enterprise contracted by the municipality. Since then work has been advancing fast and well.
So far the well has been dug, the outer wall has been repaired, the huge mount of gravel and earth in the middle of the place has been dug away, the whole ground has been leveled – the area for the primary mounds with a slope of 3% – and been covered with a gravel layer in preparation for the asphalt. The house has been completed, but still needs plastering, painting and water and electricity connection, which is happening this week, after Cejna Qurbanî, the Muslim sacrifice festival. It has three rooms: One changing room with showers, one common room and an office including an archive.
Secondly there are three machines needed for the facility: A shredder to cut the  straw, a large grinder to mix the biological waste and grind up larger pieces, and a a drum sieve for the final process, to separate the ready fertilizer from parts that still need more composting.

We first wanted to build a high-end grinder that would last a long time and not be affected by rust or damaged by solid pieces in the waste. For that we needed chrome, the required quantity of which we couldn’t get in Rojava. So we tried to import it from Iraqi Kurdistan, but that didn’t work out because of the embargo. Finally we decided on building the machine a little differently with locally available steel, and on an optimized pre-sorting process to prevent stones or other unwanted objects from entering the grinder.

Thirdly a mixed Kurdish and Arab education team of five people is ready to give lessons on the process and the importance of waste separation in the communes and schools of Tirbespiyê, and 3 000 explanatory brochures in both Kurmancî and Arabic have been printed so far. The education will not start until the facility is ready, so the people can start the waste separation right away and there will be a place for the waste to go to. Also we have been collecting empty petrol barrels and sent them to a workshop in Qamişlo where they are being remodelled to be used as waste bins.

Here is a link to some pictures of the Tirbespiyê facility taken last week:

https://rojava.network/?page_id=20&lang=kmr

***

During the two months of near-stagnation during the summer we have been looking everywhere for a solution to the ever more urgent need for fertilizer. In Til Temir, a town in the west of Cizîre canton, we found a huge industrial cow farm that had been out of service since the region was invaded by Cebhet en-Nusra (Jabhat en-Nusra/JN) four years ago.

Around the site there were several huge reservoirs holding thousands of tons of cow droppings accumulated over the years. Even better, the farm also held   several hangars full to the brim with straw. With so much readily available high-quality raw material we decided to start right away with a second facility in Til Temir. We managed to find an old grain storage just 3 km away from the cow farm with three empty hangars and a large asphalted area in front of them and got permission from the agriculture committee to use it for the project. As the local municipality didn’t have any vehicles available we rented two trucks and a wheel loader from a local entrepreneur at a very low price and started bringing the cow droppings and straw to the new place.

The Til Temir facility needs only a small budget as the place was almost ready to be used. The only further construction we did there was the digging of two wells. As opposed to the more mechanized Tirbespiyê facility the work will mostly be manual, apart from the three mentioned machines that are also being built for Til Temir.

If you want to see pictures of the work in Til Temir, follow this link:

https://rojava.network/?page_id=23&lang=kmr

So right now we are working on two facilities, one in Tirbespiyê and one in Til Temir. The money will be enough to get both facilities going until the project becomes self-financing. So far all of the money has been designated, except for 8 000 USD that we keep as an emergency fund in case of further obstacles (machine breakdown etc.). If everything goes to plan though we will use it to buy a skid loader for the Til Temir facility.

Once both facilities are producing fertilizer we will establish a fund for the financial surplus extra to what is needed to keep the facilities running, which will pay for upgrading and repairing the existing equipment as well as establishing further composting facilities all over Cizîre canton.

On behalf of the fertilizer project team and the Cizîre economic committee I want to thank you again for your trust and your support without which this project would not have been possible. We will keep you updated on the progress over the next months. If you have any questions or remarks, please contact us at info@rojava.network, subject: Feed The Revolution.

All the best from Rojava,

Îsmaêl Hêvî
Project coordinator
Cizîre canton economic committee

Title: Bijî Rojava
Location: Space Studios, 5 Swan Lane, Norwich, NR2 1HZ
Link out: Click here
Description: Rojava is the autonomous Kurdish cantons of northern Syria, who since 2011 have been implementing a system of horizontal direct democracy they call “Democratic Confederalism”. Influenced by the works of the late Murray Bookchin, as well as autonomous struggles such as Revolutionary Catalonia and Zapatista Chiapas, the people of Rojava are implementing one of the most inspiring and successful anarchic societies the world has yet seen – and it is happening RIGHT NOW. All this whilst also being just about the most successful force of resistance against the spread of ISIS in the region during the past few years.

For this evening we will take a slightly different approach to previous months. Rather than airing a single feature length documentary (of which there aren’t many out) we have decided instead to curate several short films that will hopefully show a number of different sides to Rojava and the revolutionary Kurdish peoples. We do not claim to be experts in the subject, and cannot claim the films shown are the best possible available, but we hope they will at least inform you and introduce you to what exactly is happening in northern Syria at the moment.

We hope to have some people with more experience than us coming along, to share their opinions and knowledge, but won’t guarantee it right now. Watch this space for updates though.

This will be on the third floor of Space Studios, 5 Swan Lane, Norwich on Sunday 4th September. Runs from 6pm to 9pm with the films running a total of approximately 80 minutes. There will be time after to discuss what’s been aired.

As ever, this is free entry. Bring your own food and drink.
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2016-09-04
End Time: 21:00