Writing about them cannot be done in a few days or a few weeks. Of course, the details of a war that lasted three years, every day of which was epic, cannot be described in a single article.
Because, resisting in that tunnel was neither striking the enemy in a sudden random encounter nor going against the invaders with an ordinary action. Fighting in that position, in the Girê FM- Şehîd Munzur war tunnels was not like that.
It was not one-time patience; it was a will of steel, a bullet-proof perseverance against the faces of Nimrod, Pharaoh and Dehak in the 21st century… It was not a zeal that fit into time or seasons, but a century of zeal, a century of stubbornness in the hearts of Gabar, Şervan and Xebat.
For them, resistance was not an inclination or a whim. It was a way of life, even life itself. Like breathing in and out… Resistance and victory were more necessary and more essential than bread and water…
Every day of their resistance from May 2022 until the winter of 2025 was centered on the same goal. They melted their lives every moment of every day for three years so that they could be remembered in the pages of history as victorious, and they did not say “we surrender”.
Because, inside their minds were not the betrayers who raised the white flag and waited hand and foot at the door of a tunnel; in their utopia of the future were proud and bolt-upright revolutionaries celebrating the glory days of the war with their red flags in their hands.
Gabar, Xebat and Şervan were meant to be the revolutionaries of that great day. So, it was not in vain. Resistance was not a memory of a bygone time whose time had passed and whose name was no longer remembered…
The longest lasting tunnel resistance
Gabar, Şervan and Xebat engraved their resistance in Zap’s Şehîd Munzur war tunnels, built with the endless labor of the guerrillas, each carrying a piece of resilient spirit. Today, they struck the enemy every day with their hands on the trigger, so that we could say “the longest lasting tunnel resistance in the history of guerrilla struggle”.
Commander Gabar Botan was the victor of the last 12-hour battle. While the so-called war commanders of the Turkish army were “safe distance commanders” with binoculars in their hands, kilometers away from the fighting positions, Commander Gabar was a provincial commander who shot down invaders and enemy positions with his weapon in his hand.
Even in the midst of the sieges, in a dog-eat-dog world, they continued to fight as committed, selfless devotees of Rêber Apo [Leader Abdullah Öcalan]. Like their predecessors, like the Bager Gevers, they lived in the moment and place where they felt closest to the Leader. This was precisely the source of their endurance and strength. Otherwise, what resource, what power, what willpower could resist for three years against savage barbarians who had equipped themselves with the weapons of the modern age?
They were not the ones who suffocated under chemical gas bombardments. They were the ones who repelled the enemy from the front of the tunnels in breathtaking clashes even under those bombardments. They were the ones who rained guerrilla wrath under tank and artillery strikes; they were the ones who emerged victorious from the battle of wills, not the ones whose will was broken in every call for surrender!
Commanders Gabar, Şervan and Xebat…They will live free in the hearts of guerrillas for hundreds, thousands of years. They became the authors of a three-year epic with the philosophy of ‘a morsel and a cardigan’.
source: ANF English