"None of these girls are scared": Syria's Kurdish artists defy ISIS mentality through music, dance

December 23, 2025: Inano Genco, a 24-year-old English teacher from Qamishli, danced in the video and on stage that night. As the death threats poured in, her mother got on the phone and ordered Genco to come back immediately. 

“She told me that now my face was all over the internet, I would never be safe performing again. She wanted me to stop,” Genco told Al-Monitor's Amberin Zaman. "I told her to relax and told her, 'No. I want to remain part of the revolution.'”

“None of these girls are scared,” said Delil Mirzaz, who wrote the lyrics for Vejin and has been involved in efforts to keep Kurdish culture alive for more than three decades as it was being determinedly erased in assimilation campaigns in Turkey, Iraq and Syria.

Read more from Amberin Zaman's dispatch from Northeast Syria.